Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell Page A

           He
relaxed visibly. “Yes, you’re a teacher,” he said. “I thought for a while you
were trying to delude me. We have to be careful in this district, you see. Last
year we had a man pretending to be an electrician. He didn’t get past me. I
don’t exercise every day for no reason. He must have been thirty years my
junior, but I held on to him until the police arrived.”
                 Seventeen
minutes to one. Clare smiled, nodding. He doesn’t suspect any more, she
reassured the cold hole of fear in her stomach. “You were saying Kelly came
back,” she said.
                 “Yes,
he came back. Dear me, he did. When I saw him in the playground I thought it
must be his double, until I saw his expression. No one else on earth ever
looked like that. He always looked as if he were listening to something no one
else could hear. Like Joan of Arc. But it must have been a devil he was
listening to.
                 “I
went straight up to him, among all his schoolfellows, and took him by the
collar. His school had sent one young girl in charge of the whole group,
supposed to keep discipline. She didn’t look much older than her charges. I
told her in front of them: “We’ve thrown this one out once, don’t think we
won’t throw him out again if he isn’t on his best behaviour .”
                 Clare
smiled down at the magazine; she didn’t trust herself to look at him. Interfering old maid. She’d have liked him to try that on
with her. “Am I boring you?” he said.
                 WAS
HIS POWER OVER HIS VICTIMS BLACK MAGIC? “No, of course not,” she said, forcing
herself to lay aside the magazine and smile at him. “Please go on.”
                 “This
young girl told me they were from the Vale School. They’d come to give us an
end-of-term treat,” he said. “I wasn’t interested. That’s not why the country
pays for schools. Of course it wasn’t up to me to challenge the head’s decision,”
he said rather bitterly. “So here was Kelly back again, as if he hadn’t
entertained us enough when we had him.
                 “My
class had to go to watch their treat, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to let that
boy have me as an audience, though some of my colleagues had no compunction. I
came up here and marked homework. And that was how I came to see Kelly chasing
the cat.
                 “The
caretaker had a cat called Felix. I was opposed to letting him keep it in the
school, but of course that was the head’s decision; he didn’t consult me. Half
the boys here would set fire to a cat, given half the chance. But Felix had
managed to escape injury.
                 “I
presume they didn’t need Kelly for a while, otherwise he couldn’t have slipped
out of the hall unnoticed. I might not have noticed him myself if I hadn’t
found this room stuffy and got up to open the window. I was about to do so when
I saw Kelly down there in the playground, chasing the cat. But chasing isn’t
the right word. He was stalking it, like an animal.
                 “I
once saw a film on television. I don’t watch as a rule, but I don’t think a
little does harm. They showed a lizard which had lived underground all its
life, an eyeless thing. They showed how it walked, slowly and delicately, with
its fingers stepping along, feeling its way. I had never seen anything so
furtive and horrible—until I looked out of that window. Because
out there in the sunlight that enormous fat boy was stalking exactly like the
lizard, on all fours. And on his face was a sort of hungry joy I shall
always hope to forget.
                 “When
I knocked on the window he looked up at me. You know I’m a strong man, but I
was glad there were two floors between us. Then he fled back to the hall.
Afterward I told the girl in charge what had happened. Do you know what she
did? Nothing. Oh no, the cat had