Ramsey Campbell by The Pattern

Author:The Pattern
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-02T13:16:08+00:00

The scream woke him. For a moment he thought he’d dreamed it, or had cried out in his sleep. But the last echo was caught in the hills. Faint as it was, he could feel its intolerable horror, its despair.

He lay blinking at the sunlight. The white-painted walls shone. Di hadn’t woken; he was glad. The scream throbbed in his brain. Today he must find out what it was.

After breakfast he told Di he was going into Camside. She was still depressed after completing the book; she looked drained. She didn’t offer to accompany him. She stood at the garden wall, watching him blindly, dazzled by the sun. “Be careful driving,” she called.

The clump of trees opposite the end of the path was quivering. Was somebody hiding behind the trunks? Tony frowned at her. “Do you feel –” but he didn’t want to alarm her unnecessarily “– anything? Anything odd?”

“What sort of thing?” But he was wondering whether to tell her when she said, “I like this place. Don’t spoil it.”

He went back to her. “What will you do while I’m out?”

“Just stay in the cottage. I want to read through the book. Why are you whispering?” He smiled at her, shaking his head. The sense of someone watching had faded, though the tree-trunks still quivered.

Plushy white-and-silver layers of cloud sailed across the blue sky. He drove the fifteen miles to Camside, a slow roller-coaster ride between green quilts spread easily over the hills. Turned earth displayed each shoot on the nearer fields, trees met over the roads and parted again.

Camside was wholly the colours of rusty sand; similar stone framed the wide glass of the library. Mullioned windows multiplied reflections. Gardens and walls were thick with flowers. A small river coursed beneath a bridge; in the water, sunlight darted incessantly among pebbles. He parked outside a pub, The Wheatsheaf, and walked back. Next to the library stood an odd squat building of the amber stone, a square block full of small windows whose open casements were like griddles filled with panes; over its door a new plastic sign said Camside Observer. The newspaper’s files might be useful. He went in.

A girl sat behind a low white Swedish desk; the crimson bell of her desk-lamp clanged silently against the white walls, the amber windowsills. “Can I help you?”

“I hope so. I’m doing some research into an area near here. Ploughman’s Path. Have you heard of it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She was glancing away, looking for help to a middle-aged man who had halted in a doorway behind her desk. “Mr. Poole?” she called.

“We’ve run a few stories about that place,” the man told Tony. “You’ll find them on our files, on microfilm. Next door, in the library.”

“Oh good. Thanks.” But that might mean hours of searching. “Is there anyone here who knows the background?”

The man frowned, and saw Tony realise that meant Yes. “The man who handled the last story is still on our staff,” he said. “But he isn’t here now.

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