Ramsey Campbell - The Parasite

Campbell, Ramsey - The Parasite

Ramsey Campbell is the most respected living horror writer in Britain today. He has received the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award three times, and the British Fantasy Award seven times - more awards for horror fiction than any other writer.

He was born in Liverpool in 1946, and still lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny and their children, Tammy and Matty. After working in the Civil Service and in public libraries, he became a full-time writer in 1973. He also reviews films for BBC Radio Merseyside, and is President of the British Fantasy Society. His pleasures include good food, Laurel and Hardy films, and walking; and he uses music from Hildegard von Bingen onwards as an aid to his writing. His books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Polish, Japanese, Swedish and Dutch. He is much in demand as a reader of his stories to audiences.

`The greatest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition' The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural

`One of the few real writers in our field... In some ways Ramsey Campbell is the best of us all' Peter Straub

`He is unsurpassed in the subtle manipulation of mood... You forget you're just reading a story' Publishers Weekly

`Campbell is a rightful tenant of M. R. James country, the genuine badlands of the human psyche' Guardian

`Campbell writes ' the most disturbing horror fiction around' today

Also by Ramsey Campbell

NOVELS The Doll Who Ate His Mother The Face That Must Die The Nameless The Claw (Night of the Claw) Incarnate Obsession The Hungry Moon The Influence Ancient Images Midnight Sun The Count of Eleven NOVELLA Needing Ghosts ANTHOLOGIES Superhorror (The Far Reaches Of Fear) New Terrors New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos The Gruesome Book Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me Best New Horror and Best New Horror 2 and 3 (with Stephen Jones) Uncanny Banquet SHORT STORIES The Inhabitant of the Lake Demons by Daylight The Height of the Scream Dark Companions Cold Print Night Visions 3 (with Clive Barker and Lisa Tuttle Black Wine (with Charles L. Grant) Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell Waking Nightmares Alone with the Horrors

The Parasite

Ramsey Campbell

With a new Afterword by the author

FEATURE

Copyright @ 1979 Ramsey Campbell Afterword copyright @ 1993 Ramsey Campbell

The right of Ramsey Campbell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 1980 by Millington Books (as To Wake the Dead) First paperback edition 1980 by Fontana (as To Wake the Dead) Reprinted in this edition in paperback in 1993 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC A HEADLINE FEATURE paperback 10987654321

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 0 7472 40612

Phototypeset by Intype, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by Harper Collins Manufacturing, Glasgow

HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC Headline House, 79 Great Titchfield Street, London W1P 7FN

To all my friends in Chapel Hill particularly Manly and Frances Dave and Jo Karl and Barbara

Acknowledgements and the Like

Among the many people who helped this book I especially want to thank Chris Clarke, for one of the images which brought the story alive; and Matt, for various other stimuli for help and hospitality in some of the locations, Gary and Uschi in Munich - Tony and Marge in Manchester - Jack Sullivan, T. E. D. Klein, Kathy Murray, Kirby McCauley, Jay Gregory, in New York John and Ann Thompson, and Tony Beck, for details of the University setting - not the personalities, who are my inventions Peter Valentine Timlett, for expert advice on out-of-the-body experiences (though he should not be held responsible for my imagination, and would, I know, want me to make it clear that amateur experiments with these techniques can be dangerous) Three of my favourite film critics, whose accounts of teaching film were helpful: Philip Strick, David Thomson, Robin Wood Carol Smith, Thom Tessier, Tim Shackleton, Kirby again, for suggestions that improved the book my wife Jenny for many things, not least for advice and criticism while the book was.being written, and for the Tarot readings Finally, I had better say that the shop which is the setting for the finale of this book does not exist, nor did `Peter Grace' live in the location described.

Contents Prologue

PART ONE The Follower

PART TWO

Initiation

PART THREE Earthbound

PART FOUR The Hiding Place

Epilogue Author's Afterword Original Epilogue for To Wake The Dead

Prologue

`Did you hear me?' her mother called. `I said Wendy's here' - and all at once it was too late: the night had crept up on her, and she didn't want to go.

There was nothing in her room to help her. Sandwiched in its case, her tennis racket leaned against one wall. Posters froze wild birds in flight. Elvis Presley sneered above her bed, his hair shining like oil. Spines of encyclopaedias offered her fragments of words, none of which inspired an excuse.

She retrieved her coat from the wardrobe, where she'd hidden it after laying it out, in the hope that doing so might wish Wendy away. Buttoning the coat, her fingers felt hot and swollen, prickly with nerves.

From the top of the stairs she heard her mother saying `Look after her, Wendy, won't you. Don't let her get too excited.'

The Magic Flute was playing. Her father hung back in the living-room doorway, afraid to lose the opera. `What is this film, did you say? Rock Around The Clock?' He knew perfectly well, but meant to imply that it wasn't worth knowing. `I'm surprised that it interests you. Well, you must find out for yourself.'

Couldn't he tell that it was a lie? Just because the girl thought Elvis was sexy didn't mean that she wanted to watch fat Bill Haley sing three notes. Her moist hands squirmed, suffocated by her pockets. Resentment gagged her more than nervousness. How dare her mother suggest she was less mature than Wendy! Couldn't she both prove her maturity and save herself by admitting the lie? But her parents were waving, the door was closing, and she was outside in the icy night.

Beneath the streetlamps Wendy's eyes looked bruised with makeup. Scent crept from beneath her pink coat. By comparison, the younger girl was dressed childishly, which made her feel irritable and vulnerable. Already her knees were burning with the cold.

At least she wasn't going up the hill, where the watertower no longer resembled the maze of tall arches among which she'd used to play hide and seek with her friends. Now it was a looming crowd of legs, its body hovering above a scrawny glimpse of daylight as a spider stands over a wrapped fly. The night changed everything.

Even the main road was changed. Beneath the lamps the terraces glared as though trapped in the stasis before a storm. Two nurses marched like nuns towards the hospital, once a workhouse. Suppose they asked where the girls were going? But they vanished laughing into the hospital, leaving her alone with Wendy's footsteps and her own, with the repetitive brushing of Wendy's knees against her calf-length skirt, with her fears.

A young couple hurried by, their breath and their parcels of fish and chips steaming. Queues of cars passed each other on the narrow road; their scoops of light caught dust, petrol fumes, a moth. Soon they were gone, and the tarmac gleamed bleakly. `What do you think we're going to do?' she said uneasily.