Ramsey Campbell - Silent Children

Silent Children

By: Ramsey Campbell

"Over the past two decades, Ramsey Campbell, always strikingly gifted at the evocation of unease, terror, and the uncanny, has been refining himself into our most nuanced, evocative, and profound writer of what is called horror or dark fantasy. Greatly to his credit, Campbell has always relished being described as a horror writer, but the depth of his achievement demonstrates the inadequacy of conventional genre-classifications. At this level, fiction exists beyond category, enlarges our lives, and offers ambiguous truths available through no other means. Silent Children brings into being, by grace of imagination, a painful and transcendent world we have no choice but to recognize as our own.

This thrilling book is Ramsey Campbell's finest work to date."

-Peter Straub

"I'm stunned by Silent Children. Ramsey Campbell distills the sort of pure quiet terror few other writers even know exists. Like Stephen King at his very best, Campbell plumbs the depths of what humans can do to each other. A terrifying, ferocious, and deeply compassionate book."

-Sarah Smith, author of The Vanished Child

"Campbell has perfected a story style distinctive for its stifling atmosphere of dread and oblique approach to horror. Applying it here to the shocking theme of a serial childkiller, he has crafted a nail-biting psychological thriller, his best in nearly a decade. The tale begins on a high note of menace; the sense of impending terror only intensifies. The climax is a tour-de-force of suspense, in which Woollie's abduction of Ian is abetted by miscommunication, duplicitous moves and a freakish but plausible succession of near discoveries and cliffhanger escapes, all expertly set up hi the early chapters. Ingeniously imbedded reflections of family ties, personal responsibility and even the esthetics of horror fiction give the narrative substance without ever slowing its relentless, cinematic pace. -Publishers Weekly (starred review) BY RAMSEY CAMPBELL FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES Ancient Images Cold Print The Count of Eleven Dark Companions The Doll Who Ate His Mother The Face That Must Die Fine Frights (editor) The Hungry Moon Incarnate Influence The Last Voice They Hear The Long Lost Midnight Sun The Nameless Nazareth Hill Obsession The One Safe Place The Parasite Silent Children Waking Nightmares SILENT CHILDREN Ramsey Campbell TOR* ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed8ffthe publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. SILENT CHILDREN Copyright [*copygg'2000 by Ramsey Campbell All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 www.tor.com Tor* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. ISBN 0-812-56872-9 First Edition: July 2000 First mass market edition: November 2001 Printed in the United States of America

For Poppy Z. Brite, who helps me remember how strange I am ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Jenny helped as always, not least by finding some scenes more disturbing than I'd realised they were. Good, say I. Are our children in here too? They must decide-it's inspiring to have them around, at any rate. As to research, some American details were supplied by my friend Pearl Elsasser. Barry Reese advised me on care in the community, Asa Casey was the medical advisor, and Cyrelle Mace was responsible for the tour of London and its suburbs. ONE Terence was following the boss through the trees, down the slope that led away from the hotels to the wide bright trembling sea, when he couldn't keep quiet any longer. "I know what I saw." "That's as may beea8sd Mr. Woollie as if imitating Terence's loudness might make him lower his voice. "Let's wait till we're out where you want to go and you can tell me all about it." "In the kitchen at that house.8Terence was on the edge of confusion, unsure if Mr. Woollie understood, unable to judge how loud he himself was speaking. "It wasn't a worm with a funny head, was it? It wasn't a worm with earth on the end." A helter-skelter in the forest on the slope sent a little girl twirling down toward the promenade, a gull seesawed in the blue air above her, and for a moment Terence couldn't distinguish which of them was uttering a plaintive scream. Mr. Woollie leaned sideways toward him, his grey caterpillar eyebrows squeezing his reddened eyes thin and revealing pale cracks in his broad leathery forehead, and gestured with one large calloused hand at children trotting to the playground. "Let's keep it to ourselves for now, shall we? We don't want little ones upset when they've come for a lovely day out by the sea." Terence might have felt as guilty as Mr. Woollie seemed to hope he would if he hadn't heard two boys in fat white shoes and shorts garish as cartoons, laughing just ahead of him. "A worm with a funny head," chortled the boy with a back like a wall half-stripped of pink wallpaper. "A funny headea8his friend repeated, his voice even shakier with mirth. "That's the styleea8Mr. Woollie said. "Let's have a laugh or let's have nothing." "It wasn't a head. I'm saying it wasn't, that's what I'm saying. It was a nail, a nail on a finger." Neither boy looked at Terence-they were busy laughing at a woman's voice from a public lavatory window: "How are your bowels performing today, dear? Are they behaving themselves?"-but at least a dozen people below them on the slope did. "Come along nowea8Mr. Woollie said, and dug a thumb into the crook of Terence's elbow. "If you make any more of a scene they won't let you on your boat you want to go on." His tone was telling everybody that Terence wasn't like them, that he was one of the people they tried to stay away from in the street and shouldn't be taken too seriously: he was talking as if he'd no idea what Terence meant even though Terence had done his best to explain to him yesterday. But he was leading Terence down to the sea that always calmed him as not even his medication did, and Terence didn't want to seem ungrateful when the Woollies had taken care of him for so long, Mrs. Woollie mothering him at the Haven while her husband trusted him enough to take him out on building jobs. He watched the broken line of boats swaying on the edge of the water close to the start of the mile of pier, the bunch of them swaying on their stalks of ropes, pods emptied of their seeds on a tree in the wind. He brought his mind more under control as the keeper of the boats, a wrestler dressed in trunks that sprouted black hair wherever they had the chance and with all the muscles of his arms tattooed, turned to examine his customers. Now Terence saw that each boat was rocking like a cradle, and began to hear a lullaby in his head, though not the words. "Two for an hour's worthea8Mr. Woollie said. "Handled a motorboat before?" "Many a time, andwitha lot younger than him in them.8When the man blinked less than happily at Terence Mr. Woollie said "It's his treat. He's been looking forward to it. He wouldn't spoil it for the world." "Keep out from under the pierea8the man said, having visibly decided to forget about Terence, and pointed a finger black with hair along the coast. "Stay well clear of all the danger flags." Terence hadn't realised there was supposed to be any danger. As he planted his right foot between the two low benches that spanned the boat, the floor lurched and he went staggering helplessly forward to trip over the pointed end of the boat and sprawl in the jittery water-except that Mr. Woollie had grabbed his arm and bruised it. "I've got you. Turn round. Sit down now. Sit down." He sounded exactly as Terence's parents used to-the sullen urgency, their voices willing him not to be an embarrassment-and Terence had to do as he was told. He watched Mr. Woollie sit opposite him and pull the string to start the motor once the tattooed wrestler had thrown the rope at him. The boat steadied itself and eased itself away from the swaying of its companions, and then there was sea all around Terence. As the seafront shrank away from him he saw the red flags shaking their warnings at him along a stretch of wet sand past the end of the promenade. They were too distant, and swiftly more so, to mean anything to do with him. A train chugged along the pier, and he pretended the boat was racing it-would have emitted appropriate noises if those mightn't have made his boss think worse of him. When the train reached the end of the pier first, he contented himself with willing it not to start back until the boat was past it, and that was a kind of victory. Off it chugged again, carrying an assortment of dolls for return to the hotels a mile away. The trees were dragging the hotels down into the green fuzz that was squeezing the children's playground smaller, muffling the tiny squeals that could have been of panic. The sounds reminded Terence of something the boss had said. "Mr. Woollier" "Talk to me, Terence." "Did you have children?" "What's making you ask me a question like that88Those were too many words, and Terence had to struggle free of the tangle of them. "Because you told the man you'd had some in a boat." "A long time ago." Behind Mr. Woollie, to the left of the pier, a long thin gleaming blade rose from a bird sanctuary to vanish and reappear further along the coast, where the trees had crushed the playground almost to nothing. They pressed it down into the sea and followed it with the hotels, and the paddlers and swimmers near the beach were only cries and shrieks. "How far are we going?" Terence said. "That's up to you.8As if this were part of the same answer, Mr. Woollie stared at him and said "What did you want to tell me?" "I don't ... tell you ... you mean..." Terence felt the waves splashing up into his brain to wash away his thoughts. "About..." "What you wanted everyone to hear when we were coming down to your boat." "You know, Mr. Woollie. Just before we were pouring the concrete at the house in, where was it, you know, Jericho Close." "Never mind telling me what I know. It's bad enough you're seeing things when you're supposed to be capable of doing a job, when Adele and me have been doing our best to get you back in the community. What are you trying to make out you saw?" "I did see it, and you did, because you threw some earth on it and banged it down, remember? I thought it was a worm coming up at first, but it couldn't have been, because it wasn't moving. Maybe it had been, but now it was just sticking up." "A bit of rubble. That's all you saw, a bit that needed smoothing over." "But you always say we can't do that. We've got to dig CHILDREN