Incarnate by Ramsey Campbell Page A

she turned it seemed that the passage behind her was crowded. Where had the crowd come from? She was wishing desperately that she had something in her hand besides her handbag, which contained the letter that dismayed her as much as anything here in the dark. She fled past doorways in which figures loomed, almost certainly naked as babies. She couldn’t see their faces, nor did she want to. Some of them were close enough to touch now and so, she sensed, was the crowd at her back.
    Panic must have blinded her, for the end of the passage came as a shock. So did the noise of the bright street, and she realized that she hadn’t heard any sounds in the passage, or if she had, they had been very soft and vague. More neon signs and bookshops, and she was struggling through the crowds before she realized she was out of Soho and at least a quarter of a mile from where she had meant to emerge. She was on Charing Cross Road, and there was a taxi, thank God.
    By the time she reached MTV she felt calmer. Leon and Martin were still in the studio, working out which clips to use before they concluded an interview. She scribbled a note for Martin about the Soho possibility. It infuriated her that she had been so anxious to escape that she had neglected to get the woman’s name. She mouthed at Martin through the glass that she had left him a note and then made her way home to try and sleep off her panic.
    She couldn’t help glancing round when she reached her gate, and when she found she was wondering if anyone was in her flat, she swore aloud. She stalked through the rooms muttering nobody, nobody, nobody. Nor was there, but it disturbed her that she wished she had company.
    She switched off the lights and lay down on the bed. Just breathe and rest and then she would be calm. A car’s lights brushed her curtains, an airplane shrieked overhead. She hoped Martin would like the Soho proposal, if only because watching the film being made ought to defuse Soho in her mind, give her back her confidence that she should never have lost at all. The airplane was gone, and she felt as if she were following it into the quiet dark. If a pimply man had followed her through Soho then that was his problem, not hers. It didn’t matter whether he had overheard her name, there was no way he could trace her. Suddenly she realized what she’d thought he had said.
    Panic seemed to jerk all her muscles. She felt as if her body was out of her control, for she couldn’t find the dangling switch. It didn’t matter, she wasn’t alone, she had only to call to her parents and they would come, they would open the door and drive out the dark, they would tell her that what she thought she recalled wasn’t real, just her imagination again, they were real and it was a dream. Then she had the light switch and was staring at the door, trying to inhale her lost calm, get hold of her thoughts, wake up.
    Her parents were in Devon. A phone call would prove that, but she didn’t need to phone. She was alone in the flat, which was the way it ought to be. She flung open her bedroom door to give herself no chance to be nervous. She was awake now, she knew what was real. The mirrors on the hall walls multiplied themselves as she switched on the lights. Coffee was what she seemed to need, not sleep. Or perhaps she should go back to MTV, except that Martin and Leon might have left by now. Her parents weren’t here and she ought not to want them to be, she would be staying with them over Christmas. Their presence had been a dream.
    She halted halfway between the kitchen and the front door. Had the pimply man whose moustache seemed to have decided that it didn’t want to come out after all really spoken to her, not today but years ago? Had he really said that she had made it happen, whatever it was? She mustn’t think that, the world was full of pimply men with spiky hair, Soho especially. It was ridiculous to think he was the same man or that she could recognize him after