Incarnate by Ramsey Campbell

MTV would pay quite decent money if we can use him.”
    Perhaps the mention of MTV impressed him. He stared at her as he said, “Got a reporter here from the television wants to make a film about us. Want a word?” He listened, then passed Molly the receiver. He was smiling oddly. “Here she is.”
    “I’m not actually a reporter, I’m a researcher.” The phone answered that with silence. Molly had to think aloud. “I understand that you’re making a film. If my director is interested, would you let us film you filming?”
    “Come off it, dearie. They wouldn’t let you show a corporal punishment film on television and you know it.”
    Molly had to take a breath, for the throaty voice was unmistakably a woman’s. “I think they would. I think it’s the only kind of pornography we might be able to show.”
    The silence lengthened as Molly resisted an impulse to look round, to make sure the man who had last come into the shop wasn’t watching her. “What’s your game, dearie?” the woman’s voice said.
    “We’re thinking of making a film about Soho. I believe my director would want to include your point of view. He’s Martin Wallace,” she said, and wondered why she should expect that to mean anything in Soho. “There’s nothing to prevent you from appearing, is there? Your kind of film isn’t against the law.”
    Silence. Then: “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” the voice said. “I’ll give some thought to what you’ve said and call you back at wherever you work. I can do that, can’t I?” The voice was all at once sharp.
    “Of course you can. I’m at MTV,” Molly said, and gave the number. “Ask for Molly Wolfe.”
    “I might just do that. Put Desmond back on now.”
    Molly handed over the receiver. She was suddenly anxious to leave, however irrational that was. She had a vivid impression that the man who had come in last had turned when she’d given her name, had perhaps even said something. She went quickly to the door and glanced back. Her fists clenched. She had seen him before.
    She dodged into the crowd at once. She was heading for Chinatown, to be out of Soho more quickly and onto Shaftesbury Avenue. She glanced back and saw him in the doorway, neon turning his spiky hair and his pimples green. He’d followed her from Wardour Street, where he had been pretending to look at the Columbia posters. As he caught sight of her and lurched out of the doorway, his eyes glaring like traffic lights at go, she struggled away, yearning for space to run.
    But the street was narrowing. She seemed to be heading deeper into Soho; dim staircases led upward beyond doorways without doors, shops reverberated with amplified orgasms. The street was hot, suffocating. An endless oneway train of cars prevented her from stepping into the roadway. Now men were starting to try to detain her, and she shoved them out of her way.
    Beyond the dazzle of the mouth of a neon side street, she looked back. She couldn’t see the man who’d followed her, and she wished she had confronted him at once. Had he slipped past her in the crowd? She dodged into the side street. The next turn left should bring her to Chinatown. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t already there.
    The next turn left was narrow and unlit. Nevertheless she stepped into it, for the side street had come to a dead end. Her neon shadow jerked ahead of her. and then she was in the dark, heading for the lights at the far end. She was halfway down the narrow passage before she began to glimpse the walls. There were open doorways here and there with staircases beyond, and many windows overhead, all dark. How could she have thought she was halfway down the passage? She was nothing like halfway, and all she could do was hurry forward, ignoring her impression of figures coming down the staircases and along the hallways, figures that looked pink and naked. Perhaps she should run back to the bright streets rather than stumble onward, but when