The Lonely Lands
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About this ebook
The latest bestseller from the ultimate craftsman of the dark fantastic, Ramsey Campbell. Joe Hunter has begun to adjust to the loss of his wife when he hears her calling from beyond, “Where am I?” His urge to help leads him into her afterlife, which is made up of their memories. Even the best of those is no refuge from the restless dead, and Joe can only lure them away from her. Soon they begin to invade his everyday life, and every journey he makes to find her leaves him less able to return. When her refuges turn nightmarish he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep her safe…
FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing Independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress.
Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell has won more awards than any other living author of horror or dark fantasy, including four World Fantasy Awards, nine British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and two International Horror Guild Awards. Critically acclaimed both in the US and in England, Campbell is widely regarded as one of the genre's literary lights for both his short fiction and his novels. His classic novels, such as The Face that Must Die, The Doll Who Ate His Mother, and The Influence, set new standards for horror as literature. His collection, Scared Stiff, virtually established the subgenre of erotic horror. Ramsey Campbell's works have been published in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and several other languages. He has been President of the British Fantasy Society and has edited critically acclaimed anthologies, including Fine Frights. Campbell's best known works in the US are Obsession, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, and Nazareth Hill.
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The Lonely Lands - Ramsey Campbell
*
For Kyle ( ), with love –
a tale from far away in space and time
*
The dead use our dreams to return.
Christian Noble, addressing members of the Church of the Eternal Three
Chapter One
When he heard his wife say I’m not alone
he thought at first she meant to reassure him.
Chapter Two
That takes me back,
Joe whispered. That takes me back.
He couldn’t tell whether anybody overheard him. He couldn’t distinguish a single face for the sunlight glaring from the flagstones varnished by the latest February downpour. As he avoided a headlong cyclist, either wearing a helmet or bald, he almost collided with one of the trees that sprouted from the pavement to help keep vehicles at bay. He only needed to see the sign above the window of Olivia’s shop. The graceful letters – Made of Memories – seemed to solidify out of the light in his eyes, and he reminded himself he had yet to learn her name.
The window kept the promise of the sign. Costumed porcelain dolls surely too delicate to risk presenting to a child stood next to wooden puppets poised on strings as if the cast of a fairy tale were waiting for the signal to perform. Annuals representing vanished comics like fragments of a youth too remote to reconstruct lay beside a 3-D viewer and its slices of the past. A line-up of coronation mugs spanned half the previous century, while a china tea set older still was so demurely miniature it might have belonged to the porcelain dolls. All this felt like clutter in an attic or in Joe’s mind, a mass of distractions from the item he needed to see. There it was, perched on its carton at the back of the display – the Yellow Submarine musical box. That takes me back,
he prepared to say, and let himself into the shop.
The bell above the door sounded like a memory blurred by age. It made Olivia look up from a vintage album on her desk, a collection of photographs gilded by time. As Joe made his way between the crowded shelves, her dark eyes and her smile widened as if her features framed by glossy straight black hair were eager to embrace a new experience. Her snub nose was a mite small for her oval face. Joe saw her part her lips, but he was sure he had to speak first, and didn’t even take a breath. You’ve taken me back.
Her eyelids froze on the way to a blink. In his haste he’d used the wrong words, and he had no idea how to proceed until her eyes regained their openness. I know you,
she said, don’t I?
He mustn’t risk any more haste. He took longer than a moment to recall his line. Do you remember where from?
The library.
The memory added to her smile. You stood up for me the other week,
she said. I hope I didn’t get you into any trouble.
If anybody did I did, and I’m sure it was for the best.
Did this anticipate too much? He was starting to regret the additional remark when she leaned across the desk to take his hand. I’m Olivia,
she said.
Her hand was warm and soft but firm, even if the sensations delayed reaching him. Joe,
he said and made himself let go before she could feel he was clinging to her.
Would you like a coffee? I’m having one.
This appeared to prompt the percolator on the floor beside the desk to bubble, alerting Joe to the aroma he’d overlooked. I would,
he said and realised he should also say Sugar if you’ve got it but no milk, thanks.
As she stooped to lift the percolator off its stand her hair swayed to hide her face. The sunlight flickered into dimness with the passing of a cloud, and Joe fancied the shop interior had stuttered like an electronic image. The impression troubled him until Olivia straightened up to meet the light that surged into the shop, restoring her face. He watched her fill two mugs and dig a spoon into a jar of sugar before tapping the utensil with the gentlest of clinks against the rim until the spoonful was precisely level. Perfect,
he said as soon as she’d sugared his mug twice.
I wish we could say that more often.
Let’s hope we will.
How precipitate was that? As Joe grabbed his mug drops of coffee spattered his wrist, but there was no point in wincing. Each mug was encircled by Slumberland, an architectural labyrinth so intricate you couldn’t see where it began, through which little Nemo and his companions seemed doomed to wander without end. Joe hoped this appealed just to Olivia’s nostalgia, but he tried to ignore it while he took a sip and then a gulp of coffee. Hot, yes; harsh, quite; sweet, just about: it tasted as it had to, and he was bidding to confirm it with another mouthful when Olivia said What were you saying before?
His words felt like a maze he had to pick his way through. Before what?
Her laugh seemed uncertain if she’d heard a joke. You said I’d taken you back.
I meant your Beatles item in the window. I used to have one next to my bed.
Where do you keep it now?
It’s long gone. I expect my parents got rid when I went to university. Recycled, I’d hope.
It’s yours.
Joe tried to look as though he’d failed to understand. It can’t be. I never had the box.
No, it was mine. Still is, but you can have it if you like.
That’s really kind, but I don’t want to rob you of memories.
I’ve plenty more. The whole shop’s one. I used to help my grandmother in it and now she’s made it mine.
You’re happy staying in it, then.
Why had he felt the need to say so? He was afraid he’d let her sense his desperation until she said It’s where I live.
She planted her mug on the desk as she stood up, and he heard the ceramic scrape the wood. The more memories we have the more alive we are,
she said, or anyway that’s what I think.
She retrieved the musical box so deftly that nothing else stirred in the window. She turned the handle that protruded from a porthole, and the simple tune accompanied her back to the desk. She shut the photograph album with a thud and scraped it aside to make space. Was it meant to help you sleep?
she said.
I never had much trouble doing that back then.
Do you now?
Before Joe could venture a guarded response she said I shouldn’t be getting so personal when really we’ve only just met.
If that’s what you think.
In breathless haste Joe blurted I mean, we met in the library before.
I won’t be forgetting. That’s why I’m saying this is yours.
Remind me of the price,
Joe said, only to regret his choice of words.
It’s my gift to my champion.
Her smile winced inwards, overtaken by embarrassment. We shouldn’t throw out anybody’s childhood,
she said.
But isn’t that a piece of yours?
He was afraid he hadn’t shown sufficient ignorance until Olivia said I don’t call giving someone a present throwing it away.
If you keep it here—
Joe was floundering among his words again. I’ll be able to see it when I want,
he said, and it can belong to both of us.
Was this premature? He forgot to breathe while he waited for her answer. Who gave you yours?
My parents did one Christmas.
I bought mine, so yours means more. I can hear how much your childhood did.
Some of it still meant too much, but if she’d overlooked her inadvertent reference, surely this was all that mattered. The musical box emitted an incomplete phrase and died into silence with a final tuneful ping. As Olivia reached to hand it to him, it thumped the desk and scraped the wood. No, she hadn’t touched it yet, and he could no longer avoid realising the noises were outside. Olivia saw him fail to refrain from jerking his head in that direction. I expect somebody’s cleaning the street,
she said, or maybe they’re digging it up.
Her words seemed to invite the noises closer. How could he have mistaken their nature? The harsh thumps were on the pavement, and so were the purposeful scrapes. He would have identified all this sooner if he hadn’t been desperate to fend off the truth. I need to be somewhere else now,
he said as calmly as he could. I’ll see you again very soon.
As he made for the street at just under a run, Olivia called after him We’ll be waiting.
She meant the musical box, of course. She’d given him no reason to experience a twinge of panic. As he left the shop a dark shape lurched at him – the shadow of a tree – while the renewed sunlight on the pavement flared in his eyes, blinding him. Darkness spread like an infection as a cloud apparently anxious to be elsewhere raced across the sun, and then the multitude of shadows welled up as the pavement shone afresh. Faceless silhouettes crowded towards Joe, but he couldn’t see which had a walking-stick. He could only make for the nearest entrance to the mall opposite the shop.
He mustn’t move too fast. He had to ensure he was followed. The determined thuds of the stick felt like a succession of weights that were gathering to hinder him. Halfway across the street he glimpsed a portion of a man’s face on the pavement, grimacing at its own inversion. He wanted to think just the edge of the puddle had rendered the reflection incomplete, but he lunged up the ramp to the doors of the shopping mall. Almost before they flinched apart to admit him, he was through. The stick thumped the ramp and squealed over a tile, and Joe had to glance back. As the doors slid together he saw them let in half a face.
Chapter Three
At first Joe was unable to place the laughter. It was trapped like a bird beneath the library ceiling, where the skylight displayed a February sky that resembled a frozen sea paled by the thinnest carapace of ice. The mirthful girl wasn’t on the Victorian gallery that clung to the walls twenty feet up, following the circuit of elevated bookcases full of volumes deemed unpopular. She wasn’t at any of the tables occupied by old men disarraying newspapers in the style of a windstorm as loud as their chorus of breaths. She was nowhere near the trolley loaded with new romantic novels, around which old women had gathered like grandmothers at a pram, nor the children’s section, where toddlers unrestrained by teenagers – their temporary guardians if not their parents – were on the loose. Once he’d handed several readers their tickets in exchange for books Joe abandoned the counter just as Russell left the librarian’s desk.
The old men glanced askance at Russell’s footfalls, which were as soft and fat and dogged as the rest of him, in case he was on his way to reprimand them yet again. Except for how the six-foot summit of his scalp peeked through his red hair, whose wildness rather undermined his image, he might have been taken for at least a decade younger than his forty years. He located the young woman at the same moment Joe saw her at the table of books for sale, from which she’d selected The Wooing of Wooster. At close range her laughter sounded just as delicate as its echo overhead, but Russell stared at her until she looked at him. Are you intending to make a purchase?
the librarian said.
Sorry if I’m disturbing anybody. I’d forgotten how much fun these are.
That isn’t what I asked.
As Russell frowned at her for using her forefinger as a bookmark she said I’d say it was for me.
Not for the shop I believe you run. I rather think I’ve seen you selling items from our system.
Then I expect you saw my grandmother would have bought them.
They’re put out for the public, not for profiteering.
I’d call it finding books a good home. Anyway, I told you I’m not buying for the shop.
Kindly keep your voice down. I’m not so sure I heard you say so.
Does she need to?
Joe was provoked, not least by her increasingly uncertain smile, to ask. You heard how much she was enjoying the book.
I’m certain everyone even slightly within earshot did. Are you not on duty at the counter?
Nobody’s waiting, and I just—
In any case I don’t believe your view was asked for.
I don’t mind having it,
the young woman said, when it’s the truth.
I’m sure you’ve been telling that as well.
Russell thrust his pressed lips forward, a gesture that made him look petulantly younger. I’m asking you to return to the counter.
As long as I’m there,
Joe told the young woman, I can sell you that book if you like.
Then I do,
she said and handed it to him. Her touch was as gentle as her laughter. She touched him less fleetingly while paying a pound at the counter. Next time you’re in Birkenhead,
she lingered to say, come and say hello if you like.
Where do I do that?
I’m made of memories.
She added capitals by explaining That’s my shop in Grange Road.
As she headed for the exit Russell came to the counter. Congratulations on your conquest,
he murmured close enough for Joe to smell a hint of minty mouthwash.
I don’t know if I’d call it that.
I imagine I know why. Aren’t you still attached?
Dawn and I are splitting up.
As a result of this latest encounter?
We already were.
No doubt this new development will help. I should have thought as colleagues you and Dawn would get on. My wife and I do.
There’s more to life than liking books.
Yes, caring for them.
Before Joe could finish opening his mouth Russell said And I’ll thank you not to undermine my authority here.
I wouldn’t say I did that. I just—
You’re persisting in it now.
Russell glanced at Chloe as she returned from her break. There are books to be fetched from the gallery,
he told Joe as if the confrontation had never taken place. Bring them down singly. You don’t want to risk any damage.
Joe took the wad of orders sent by various libraries and wound his way up one of the iron staircases. An Edwardian explorer’s hefty memoir brought the threat of a sneeze off the shelf. The rest of the requested books were just as dusty, and when he opened and shut one to dislodge the dust it earned a smattering of applause. No, those were echoes, and the stare Russell sent him was far from appreciative. As Joe did his best to hush his descent, the librarian met him. You were told to take care,
Russell said.
You don’t want me disturbing everyone, sneezing all over the place.
Then for heaven’s sake find yourself a duster. Chloe, you’d think some people never helped with the housework.
Chloe emitted a sputtering giggle that sounded embarrassed on Joe’s behalf if not her own. He found a duster drooping like a mushroom on the stalk of a mop in the cleaners’ cupboard. At least dusting each requisitioned book with minute thoroughness let him spend much of the afternoon away from Russell. Thank you for your efforts,
Russell told the staff as he unbolted the door to release them, and Joe wondered how much the daily parting formula included him.
As he crossed Victoria Road to the bus stop a streetlamp brightened his breaths. At the bottom of the slope, tiers of lit windows crept out of the Mersey into the bay. The bus he caught roamed the suburbs before depositing him opposite Central Park, from which he heard the click of bowls on the unlit green. He was letting himself into the tall Victorian house when he realised the sound had been too shrill for bowls and saw the glint of upraised bottles on the veranda of the pavilion. He eased the door shut so as not to waken the new baby on the middle floor, and had tiptoed to the top when he faltered on the last stair. The door of his flat was ajar.
He stole across the landing to inch the door inwards. Though he closed all the doors whenever he left his flat, every one – bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, main room – was wide open. He dodged into the stubby corridor and grabbed a stick, his souvenir of mountain walks in Wales. The breath he took snagged in his throat, and he had to swallow a cough. Who’s here?
he called less steadily than he would have liked.
Nobody who shouldn’t be.
As he planted the stick with a restless clatter against the wall, Dawn glanced out of the main room. Her small compact roundish face looked resolute and ready to be more so. I came to find my earring,
she said.
Believe me, I’ve searched everywhere. I did say when you phoned.
It’s a good job she didn’t believe you.
Before Joe could react, the speaker appeared behind Dawn. He was a head taller than either of them, and in other ways too – emphatically handsome fierce-jawed face, outstanding shoulders, arms his tweed sleeves barely found room for – he resembled a declaration of himself. Another nobody?
Joe couldn’t resist asking, given Dawn’s initial remark.
Franklin.
The man grasped Dawn’s arms to ease her aside, a gesture she seemed to appreciate. You’re obviously Joe,
he said, thrusting out a king-size bushy hand.
Glad I’m obvious.
Joe did his utmost to equal the force of the handshake, which felt more like the first move in a contest if not the final one. I take it you’re here to help with the search,
he said.
Why else do you think I should be?
Joe managed to refrain from flexing his crushed fingers once he had his hand back. I’ve no idea.
Now I’ve met you I don’t think there was much need.
If you were led to think I’d give Dawn any trouble, somebody’s mistaken. And I hope nobody thinks I’d hang on to anything of hers.
Franklin let a silence speak for him before he said It’s been found.
Where did it turn up, Dawn?
Her gaze strayed between him and Franklin, engaging with neither. Down the side of the couch.
We wondered how it came to be hidden there,
Franklin said.
Joe was sure Dawn remembered the reason – their last erotic wrangle that had taken them to bed, scattering clothes along the route. We thought,
Franklin said, you might have done it to entice her back.
This was too much, but Dawn spoke before Joe could. I’ve got it and that’s all that matters.
So you won’t have any more use for the key,
Joe said.
I won’t.
This apparently required Joe to say Can I have it, then?
May would be more polite,
Franklin said.
I know it would.
This isn’t necessary. I told you not to get into a confrontation, Franklin. We won’t be bothering you any further, Joe.
You aren’t bothering me now. I just want my key back.
While Joe didn’t mean to block their way, he didn’t move aside either. He was awaiting Dawn’s response when Franklin gripped his shoulders hard enough to threaten greater force and pressed him against the wall. Go along, Dawn,
he said. I’m handling this.
Unless she’d abandoned her dislike of confrontation, she must have been anxious to forestall worse. As she hastened to open the door to the landing, Franklin brought his face so close to Joe’s that Joe saw the tip of a black hair repeatedly twitch and withdraw into his left nostril. She left it on the table for you,
he said as low as a dog might growl, so I don’t imagine you’ll want to trouble her any more.
I haven’t been. Take your hands off me and get out of my home.
Joe’s knee was eager to be driven into Franklin’s crotch. He was about to yield to its impatience, whatever the consequences, when Dawn said Franklin
as sharply as he’d ever heard her speak. Franklin released him and stepped back, but not before muttering Just remember what I said.
He strode after Dawn and dealt the door a slam that sounded like a warning to Joe not to follow. Joe couldn’t help hoping it would wake the baby downstairs and set her mother on the culprit, a desire that left him feeling even grubbier and more absurd than the encounter with Franklin. He ought to find the key, and he stalked into the main room. The key wasn’t on the dining-table, and his rage sent him out of the flat before he thought of looking in the kitchen. The key was on the table flanked by benches, and the dish and spoon left from his breakfast were in the sink. The gesture felt as if Dawn had left him a mute rebuke.
As he retrieved the key he found his hand was shaking. It aggravated the fury he seemed to have no means of expressing. When he heard a bottle shatter in the road he felt as though it was manifesting his anger. He ran to the window in the main room and hauled up the sash. Three young drinkers were waiting outside the park for another car to invite a missile. Stop that,
Joe yelled. Put those down.
The youths responded tersely, both in words and with the bottles they shied in his direction. Glass smashed in the road as the youngsters ran off, and the baby in the flat under Joe’s began to wail. Sorry,
he said too low for anyone but him to hear. The baby hadn’t been placated when Joe noticed a faint trace of Dawn’s favourite perfume in the air, and the howls seemed to merge with the scent to form a wordless reprimand.
Some of the evening’s events might have been among the reasons why he caught a bus to Birkenhead on his next day off. On Grange Road a ferocious downpour drove him to shelter in the shopping mall. Through the window by the entrance he saw Made of Memories across the street. Waves of rain on the plate glass of the mall made the sign writhe as if the letters were losing all sense of their shape. As the cloudburst relented, an elongated yellow blob in the midst of the display recaptured its character. It was a miniature submarine, and Joe felt as if not just the item had come into focus – felt he had. He strode across the dazzling pavement and let himself into the shop. The bell above the door rang like an echo of his early years, and the proprietor behind the desk looked up. That takes me back,
Joe said.
Chapter Four
Blooming Blossoms was still open when Joe came home. Abigail had planted the cash drawer on the counter and was totalling the day’s take with a pocket calculator. Joe,
she said as if his unexpectedness wasn’t wholly welcome. I’ve done it again, haven’t I.
Won’t it add up? Can I help?
I meant I forgot to shut. You could turn the sign for me.
Shall I leave you to it if you’re busy?
You know I always like to see you and Olivia. Just lock the door as well.
Joe released the latch and reversed the dangling sign so that it told him the world outside was open. He crossed the shop as Abigail finished tapping the calculator. Although her slim nose was in proportion with her long smooth pale face, it could have been designed to distinguish the orgy of scents that overwhelmed him whenever he entered the florist’s. The glossy hair that framed her face gleamed black as overturned earth after rain, and her lips were exactly the pink of one of the roses in a vase beside her. She wrote the total in a ledger massive enough to have served generations of her family and slid the cash drawer into a recess beneath the counter. So is there an occasion or have we been naughty?
she said.
I don’t know about you.
When she gave him an amused look he could take as an invitation to continue, he hastened to leave it behind. I’m just after a few flowers,
he said.
Are they for Olivia? No charge, then. I’ve had a good day.
That’s tremendously kind, but I don’t want to trade on your friendship.
You’ll be doing me a favour now I’ve cashed up. Does she like roses? Have you got a vase next door?
Assured of both, Abigail lifted the flowers out of the vase on the counter. Saves me making up a bunch,
she said. "They’re fresh today and I’ll put some