The Kind Folk by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

hope I'll see no apawthling spethling this year. We don't turn out duthlards here. And make sure you conduct yourselves civithly. No mithling about in the corridors and no strowthling along, and no lothling against the walls either. I'll be muthling over what else you can do for the good of the school. You may think I'm a wathly with a swothlen head or even that I'm off my throthley, but if you abide by my rules you should have a jothly good time ..."
    His imagination falters as the headmaster starts addressing pupils by name—Dolly, Molly, Polly, the Halliday twins—and he brings the routine to an end. 'Just throw a shithling," he says when the mourners applaud.
    One of Terence's demolition team repeats the line with relish, and another says "Terry told us you used to do that. He said we'd not believe how young you were."
    "How young was that?" Sophie is eager to learn.
    "Too young to know what some of those words meant, I should think," Luke tells her, though he recalls being sufficiently precocious to unnerve his present self. "You were working for him back then," he says to Terence's veteran.
    "Since before you were born, lad," the man says and frowns extra wrinkles onto his weathered leathery face. "All right to talk about it, Maurice?"
    "Nothing to do with me, Rudy."
    "I was going to say Terry was over the moon when your boy came along."
    "The whole lot of us were."
    "I'm only saying now you know he hadn't anything to do with it, but you'd have thought the babby was his own to hear him. I thought I was nervous when mine were on the way, but I never had the shakes like him."
    "Blame the stuff he was putting in himself."
    "Smoking doesn't do that to you, Maurice," Rudy says and doesn't pause to add "I gave it up years back."
    "Carry on. You've still got a job."
    "That's all, mostly." When Maurice holds him with a gaze Luke wouldn't call inviting, Rudy says "He always had a photo with him. Your lad when he was in his crib, and you'd hear Terry talking to it if he didn't know you were about."
    "What was he saying?" Freda seems to feel they ought to hear.
    "You thought he was praying, didn't you, Dan?"
    "Did till I had a listen," Rudy's large slow curly-haired colleague admits. "More like baby talk. Not what I'd call words."
    "He was always showing us the photo," Rudy says, "and telling us how much like you two the lad was growing."
    As Maurice lets his lip sag while Freda responds with an uncertain smile, Luke thinks it best to intervene. "Did you work away from home a lot for Terence?"
    "We never went far," Dan says. "When he went off it was mostly on his own."
    "We thought he hired men where he went," Rudy adds, "but Eunice in the office told us not. Maybe he'd got a woman somewhere."
    As Luke reflects that many more than one would be needed to account for all the travelling Terence noted in his journal, Maurice says "More like it was another thing he'd got into his head. He was never the same after you pulled that house down in Toxteth."
    Perhaps Dan and Rudy feel he's holding them responsible, since they don't answer. "Why," Sophie says, "what happened?"
    "Some young scum hid in there from the police," Maurice says, "and the cellar fell in on him."
    "They got the body out," Dan risks contributing, "and then the place needed making safe."
    "You mean," Luke says, "someone having died there bothered Terence."
    "Not that he ever let on," Rudy says. "It was all the faces we dug up in the cellar."
    "Don't," Freda protests as though she sees them rearing up from the earth.
    "They were only carved on stones," Dan assures her. "All the same feller. Looked like he thought he was some god in a museum."
    "One of the lads smashed most of them," Rudy says. "He didn't like the look of them. It's the only time we saw Terry lose his rag. Fired the lad on the spot, and the only stone that wasn't broke he took home with him."
    "First I've heard," Maurice says like more than one accusation.
    "Do you know what he did with it?" Luke finds