Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

the moist sucking earth and the wriggling insects. He
felt the dark, still house alert above him, behind his back, and dug faster in
panic, spitting out mouthfuls of earth. He could feel himself coming closer,
coming up out of the earth. When he saw himself, the two of himself would be one. He forced his face deeper into the earth, seeking impatiently.
                 The
man awoke snarling. He lay in the dark for a moment, then snatched at the light. He didn’t like lying in the dark. It was too much like
lying in earth. He lay trying to subdue his heart.
                 He
wouldn’t be able to sleep again. He never could, after the dream. Somewhere a
bell tolled four in the morning. He laughed, a
mirthless grunt. He didn’t need to be told. That was always the time of the
dream.
                 He
went to the window, but darkness lay thick as mud in the backyards; a dim glow
crawled on the houses. He closed the window and drew the curtains, but the flat
was already too hot. When he tried to read he was constantly aware of the dark
beyond the curtains, sucking him down.
                 The
book struck the wall and fell, broken-winged. He thrust himself into some old
drab clothes, which always felt right for this hour. He had nearly slammed the
door of the flat when he caught the handle and eased it quietly shut. Then he
tiptoed downstairs and out of the house. He would have used the fire escape
outside his window if it hadn’t been for the dark in the yard.
                 The
inert sodium light hung about him. The gravel beneath the trees squealed
underfoot. A breeze touched him, but the light never moved. He had to reach
somewhere, or flee somewhere. Of course he knew where. Abreast of Mulgrave Street he halted, staring past Christ posed like a
starving diver on the wall.
                 He
wasn’t going there. Whatever was up that street, he wasn’t going. It was
pulling at him, pulling him into the desire to cross the carriageway and walk
up the deserted street among the windowless houses, pulling him into a tiny
intense point of impulse, stretching him as if through a pinprick in darkness.
He felt pulling every time he passed the street. But it was worse now; it felt
like the time he’d eaten dope. He climbed back out of himself in panic,
grabbing at the orange light, the breeze, the trees along the central
reservation, the squeaking gravel.
                 The gravel. The gravel had squeaked as he’d walked across
toward Mulgrave Street, moments before the car had
come hurtling at him. He heard the car thud against the lamp standard, the
scattering of glass. He saw the car thump the tree, the dark eyecatching splash of blood. He turned his back on Mulgrave Street and began to hurry toward North Hill
Street, opposite.
                 It
was all right. He hadn’t hurt anyone, after all. The crash hadn’t been his
fault. He had been preoccupied. What he had done afterward hurt nobody. He
walked past shuttered corner shops, past the dark open mouths of a launderette,
their lids ajar. Beneath the flat hats of the lampposts hung
conical drops of cold white light.
                 This
was no good. He was simply becoming more restless. His mind was shifting
uneasily, snatching feebly at passing thoughts, vainly searching the deserted
street for something to grasp. He hurried into one of the side terraces of
little two- bedroomed houses. The houses were closer;
he might feel less isolated. They must have outside toilets, like his childhood
home.
                 Beneath
the white glare of the streetlamps, curtains hung faded, dead. Between the
lamps the houses lay under shadow like dusty glass. The icy light stood close
to him; he felt all the more isolated. His footsteps tapped on the still
houses.
                 He
emerged onto High Park Street. It was wider, and emptier. Even the sodium glow
of Princes Road at the end