The Nameless by Ramsey Campbell

Author:Ramsey Campbell [Campbell, Ramsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9780708852576
Publisher: Warner
Published: 1992-07-22T23:00:00+00:00

Halfway round the two-way rotary Barbara's head began swimming. Ted stopped the car beyond the rotary just in time for her to stagger to the grass verge and vomit her cup of tea. Eventually he got out of the car and stood by her, watching her so calmly he must mean to be reassuring. When she felt able to return to the car he drove more slowly through the sluggish waves of heat toward the highway. "I know I ruined that for you," he said, then he smiled at the unstable landscape. "But I've thought of something else I can do." ------------------------------------228 ------------------------------------229

229

Twenty-eight

As Iris glanced at the mirror on the dressing table she saw movement behind her in the sunlit bed, a grublike writhing beneath the sheets. It was about to nudge the sheets aside, and then she would see what it was. For a moment she felt as she'd felt yesterday--her limbs wanted to clasp her so tightly that she would be squeezed too small for anything to reach--then she realized that the movement was only the shadow of the curtains that was trailing over the bed. She was home now. Nothing could harm her. The bad wasn't here, even though it had come visiting.

When she reached for the top drawer her hand faltered. In the street a small boy was singing a song, blurring the words like a radio whose batteries were failing; down the hill someone was clipping a hedge, the sound tinier than scissors; inside her room the sunlight kept everything still, ------------------------------------230

and yet she was afraid it might not be able to do so for long, not now that the bad had seen where she was.

But that was why she had to search. The thought jerked her into motion, made her open the drawer. There was nothing but her father's underwear, nothing lay in wait for her as she leafed hastily through. Of course the address wouldn't be in there; the woman had given it to Iris's mother. She knelt down and pulled out the next drawer. She had to be quick, before her mother found out what she was doing. Her mother wouldn't let her if she knew.

Perhaps her mother was right sometimes. Yesterday she had told Iris to stay upstairs until the visitors had gone. Iris had crept downstairs--she wasn't a child to be told to stay in her room, she felt as if she never had been, she was piecing herself together out of the present, having forgotten almost the whole of her past--and then the door had opened, and the huge bearded man was there.

As soon as she saw his eyes she had known what he was. All the nameless had that hidden look that nobody else could recognize, that look as if something had eaten them away from within until they were shells of themselves. She'd begun to shrink into herself at once. The worst of it was that he'd called her by her name, which she had only just started to believe was hers.

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