Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother Read Online Free PDF Page A

had once switched on
by mistake. She could feel Dorothy wanting her to promise; the wanting filled
the lift oppressively. “The beginning of the school year’s always hectic,” she
said. “I just go home and doze.”
                 When
Dorothy made to follow her to the car, she said, “Goodbye, Dorothy. Thank you.”
She watched her stride gracefully back toward the lifts as if she were entering
a hotel foyer. If it keeps her happy, Clare thought, shaking her head sadly.
She was glad she didn’t need illusions. She stumped toward the Reliant as she
imagined a hobbit might walk, to show she didn’t care.
                 The
passenger door was new; around the edge of the doorframe someone at the garage
had scrubbed pale a large irregular patch. Aside from the door and the new rear
axle, he was mostly the Ringo she’d had for years. The seat leather burned her
through her thin dress; she rolled down both windows, flapping her arms at the
inert heat. Then she fastened her seat belt and drove home.
                 Her
father had paid for the repairs. “Good for you,” he’d said when she admitted
she might continue driving. She’d fought not to take the money he offered, but
he’d stuffed it into her purse. She was still determined it would be only a
loan against the insurance. It had been like taking money for killing Rob.
                 Even
when the car was repaired she hadn’t driven. She’d made an excuse and had had
the garage deliver the car. She’d sat in the driver’s seat a few times, beneath
the shifting trees in Blackburne Terrace. Each time
her gaze had been drawn to the scrubbed patch; each time she’d left the car
hurriedly. She couldn’t drive that car again.
                 A
bus ride had changed her mind. She disliked buses; if she sat upstairs the
stench of stale tobacco smoke clung to her clothes all day, while the lower
deck was often packed full as a lift with nonsmokers. She had been on her way
to visit Dorothy, to get it over with, the day after she’d returned from
Cheltenham; she was rather hoping Dorothy would be out. The driver had been
playing ninepins with the press of passengers in the aisle; the bus swung a
child screaming at the length of his mother’s arm, too far ahead for Clare to
reach. As the bus laboured past the lamp standard
Clare had heard the car door chop shut. All at once everything had swelled up
in her like nausea; the cramped ventilation whose breeze came nowhere near her
face, the soft thighs that thumped her shoulder as passengers rocked in the
aisle, the flaw in the window glass that pinched thin everything that passed
before letting go with a jerk, the tobacco smoke trickling down the stairs, the
screaming child, her own sticky body, her helplessness. She’d pulled at the
bell cord as if it were a lifeline and had struggled to the folding doors,
which parted with a gasp of relief. Once home, she’d climbed into Ringo and had
driven for miles. After a few days she’d hardly noticed the scrubbed patch.
                 She
was driving past the lamp standard now—at least, she was in that area. From
this side of the reservation she couldn’t be sure, for someone had removed the
bloodstained gravel. Weren’t there darker spots scattered over the reservation
even now? Never mind. It wasn’t good to dwell on such things. But she knew she
had only shrugged it off until next time, for she had to drive this way to
school.
                 Christ
leaned out from the church beyond the reservation. She’d never liked that
Christ; he looked famished, poised to leap on anyone who came too close to the
wall. Now she liked him even less. He should have saved Rob. But she knew she
was trying to shift the blame. Rob’s death had been her fault, of course.
                 Her
parents hadn’t blamed her. Her father had blamed Rob for talking to her while
she was driving. Dorothy hadn’t mentioned