The Doll Who Ate His Mother: A Novel of Modern Terror by Ramsey Campbell

Author:Ramsey Campbell [Campbell, Ramsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780672522369
Amazon: 0672522365
Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill
Published: 1976-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wednesday,

September 17

As they turned from Lodge Lane into Mozart Street, Edmund said, “Let me do the talking. Just to be confronted with you three might make her say things she wouldn’t say otherwise. It’s a gamble, but I’ve a feeling it’ll work.”

So that was why he’d let them come. Clare was sure he would have preferred them not to. If she hadn’t rung George yesterday to discuss a school visit to the Newsham, she wouldn’t even have been aware that they knew the grandmother’s address. She’d rung Edmund at once. This woman knew why Rob had been killed; she might even be partly responsible. And Chris should meet her too; she’d shouted down the start of his protests. And George.

Each side of Mozart Street was an unbroken two-storey terrace; the front doors opened onto the pavement. A few of the houses were painted chocolate, to set them apart from the line. On some, the bricks that formed an arch around the front door and framed the windows were painted blue or moss-green. Snatches of television leaked from windows, some of which were new, with louvres. Several windows were filled with paler brick or boards; through a jagged upstairs sash Clare saw a doorway onto a dark landing. Beneath her feet the gravel of the roadway slithered, crunching.

Number 2a was the furthest from Lodge Lane. At the end of the street, large shallow steps led down to an alley; the twilight of the street was darker there. A shouting man played football among the parked cars; he and the children with him glanced at Edmund’s party. Edmund reached for the knocker on a front door that looked like part of a dead tree, mossed with paint. He halted, listening.

Inside the house, beyond the swollen, jammed sash of the grimy window, they could hear a woman’s voice. “Through my fault,” it said, “through my fault.” A television, Clare thought, turned up loud enough to be heard through the glass. But as she gazed, a figure took shape in the grime as in fog, flickering with firelight: a woman sitting forward in a chair, dim hands clasped, blurred face confronting an open doorway. “Through my most grievous fault,” she shouted, punching her breast so that her whole body shook. She was praying.

Clare saw her start when Edmund knocked. She rose and walked toward the doorway, so slowly that the grime of the window might have been thick around her. Clare gazed at the dim empty room, the colourless fat chairs. At last she heard the front door open.

The woman was in her seventies. Her thin sharp face, pinched toward the pointed chin as if between finger and thumb, peered forward on a neck whose wrinkles sagged. Her large pale-blue eyes frowned warily; her lips were gripped thinly together. Her hands, spotted like old food, clamped themselves on the doorframe, barring the way; a worn handbag hung from one arm. Her grey uneven hair stood up in spikes. She looked like a guard defending her post among her fallen comrades, or a martyr.

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