The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

her no harm. “Are you home?” she called.
    More silence. Redundant questions made him irritable. But he might have been going out again, for all she knew.
    “ The old arse-bandit was after me today,” he said loudly as he closed the door.
    “ Peter!” Why must he be so eager to shock? Mr Craig might have heard him. Perhaps Peter had wanted him to hear, or perhaps he didn’t care.
    “ He can’t get enough, that guy. He’ll end up leaving boys tied up in cupboards.”
    “ You shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing.”
    “ Who’s joking?” He strolled into the kitchen, pulling off his black wool cap. Dark straggly hair flopped over his shoulders. She must trim it soon, despite his protests. “He’ll be keeping them in his wardrobe soon,” he said. “Maybe he already is.”
    He often trapped himself in his own jokes — carried on until they ceased to be funny, if they ever had been. It was as though he couldn’t find his way out, and it annoyed both of them. “Were you really speaking to Mr Craig?” she said, to help.
    “ You mean the arse-bandit? Right on. We had a really intimate conversation.”
    “ What about?”
    “ What do you think? Can I please turn down that nasty rock and roll? I play it so late, and it’s so noisy. Not nice music like Beethoven.”
    “ He didn’t really say all that,” Cathy said, half-convinced by the gist if not the wording.
    “ He wanted me to turn the fucking records down.”
    For a moment she felt as though his unexpected violence were directed at her. “You ought to buy some headphones,” she suggested.
    “ Save up for them instead of buying comics.”
    “ No way. Comics are an investment. I just got a new Swamp Thing and a whole stack of Fantastic Fours by Jack Kirby.” Perhaps he was fleeing that subject when he added “I’ll tell you what was weird — there was some weirdo watching me and Craig.”
    That was all he seemed interested in telling her. “There was a man watching me in the library,” she said, mocking the hint of mystery in her words.
    “ Yeah?” He sounded indifferent, restless.
    “ The man with the limp. He came in the week you were working there. The one who limps. You know.”
    “ No, I don’t. That’s why you’re telling me.”
    He knew she couldn’t describe people, the pig. “There was a rag-and-bone man out there before,” she said: that seemed a better anecdote. “This little voice calling ‘Rags, rags.’ Or maybe he was calling his dog.” But Peter looked bored. She was glad when someone knocked at the door.
    “ Ben and Celia have split up,” Peter said.
    But they’d been married less than a year. News like that disturbed her, yet he’d announced it as though it were the weather forecast. Before she could begin the struggle of questioning him, he’d let in Anne and Sue.
    “ Can we borrow your phone?” Anne said. “There’s supposed to be some good dope around.”
    They must have heard him coming home: they wouldn’t have asked Cathy. Of course it was silly to be nervous — the phone wasn’t tapped.
    Sue wandered into the kitchen, smoking a joint. “Oh, hello,” she said as if she couldn’t quite place Cathy. Eventually she doled out a question. “Been to the library today?”
    No, she’d been pouring boiling oil on people’s heads. “Yes,” she said curtly. She disliked intruders in her kitchen. She refused the joint and said “Will you ask Peter to empty the bin?”
    When Peter appeared, he plainly resented being asked in front of the girls. But he grabbed the bin, and shouted to Anne “Ask if there’s any acid.”
    Cathy hoped there wasn’t. Grass she didn’t mind so much, but LSD dismayed her. In the park Peter had cried “For Christ’s sake don’t leave me” gazing at a crippled decayed branch; his pupils had been swollen and flickering. She wouldn’t take acid; the idea of losing control frightened her. Besides, she’d never seen anyone made more pleasant by a trip, nor any couple