Dark Companions by Ramsey Campbell Page A

here, from the kitchen to the living-room, that everything had happened—here that the bank manager had systematically rendered his wife unrecognisable as a human being. Miles stood in the empty room and tried to imagine the scene. Had her mind collapsed, or had she been unable to withdraw from what was being done to her? Had her husband known what he was doing, right up to the moment when he’d dug the carving knife into his throat and run headlong at the wall?
    It was no good: here at the scene of the crime, Miles found the whole thing literally unimaginable. For an uneasy moment he suspected that that might have been true of the killer and his victim also. As Miles went upstairs, he was planning the compromise to offer his publisher: Murderers’ Houses? Dark Places of the World? Perhaps it mightn’t be such a bad book, after all.
    When he switched off the lights, darkness came upstairs from the hall. He lay in bed and watched the shadows of the curtains furling and unfurling above him. He was touching the gate, which felt like flesh; it split open, and his hand plunged in. Though the image was unpleasant it seemed remote, drawing him down into sleep.
    The room appeared to have grown much darker when he woke in the grip of utter panic.
    He didn’t dare move, not until he knew what was wrong. The shadows were frozen above him, the curtains hung like sheets of lead. His mouth tasted metallic, and made him think of blood. He was sure that he wasn’t alone in the dark. The worst of it was that there was something he mustn’t do—but he had no idea what it was.
    He’d begun to search his mind desperately when he realised that was exactly what he ought not to have done. The threat had been waiting in his mind. The thought that welled up was so atrocious that his head began to shudder. He was trying to shake out the thought, to deny that it was his. He grabbed the light cord to scare it back into the dark.
    Was the light failing? The room looked steeped in dimness, a grimy fluid whose sediment clung to his eyes. If anything the light had made him worse, for another thought came welling up like bile, and another. They were worse than the atrocities the house had seen. He had to get out of the house.
    He slammed his suitcase—thank God he’d lived out of it, rather than use the wardrobe—and dragged it onto the landing. He was halfway down, and the thuds of the case on the stairs were making his scalp crawl, when he realised that he’d left a notebook in the living-room.
    He faltered in the hallway. He mustn’t be fully awake: the carpet felt moist underfoot. His skull felt soft and porous, no protection at all for his mind. He had to have the notebook. Shouldering the door aside, he strode blindly into the room.
    The light that dangled spiderlike from the central plaster flower showed him the notebook on a fat armchair. Had the chairs soaked up all that had been done here? If he touched them, what might well up? But there was worse in his head, which was seething. He grabbed the notebook and ran into the hall, gasping for air.
    His car sounded harsh as a saw among the sleeping houses. He felt as though the neat hygienic façades had cast him out. At least he had to concentrate on his driving, and was deaf to the rest of his mind. The road through Liverpool was as unnaturally bright as a playing field. When the Mersey Tunnel closed overhead he felt that an insubstantial but suffocating burden had settled on his scalp. At last he emerged, only to plunge into darkness.
     
     
    Though his sleep was free of nightmares, they were waiting whenever he jerked awake. It was as if he kept struggling out of a dark pit, having repeatedly forgotten what was at the top. Sunlight blazed through the curtains as though they were tissue paper, but couldn’t reach inside his head. Eventually, when he couldn’t bear another such awakening, he stumbled to the bathroom.
    When he’d washed and shaved he still felt grimy. It must be the