Ramsey Campbell: The Face That Must Die

“ Yes.”

She hadn’t time to be infuriated. “I want to see them on New Year’s Eve. We’ll go out for a meal, just the four of us.”

“ It’ll have to be somewhere cheap.”

She was looking forward to seeing her friends, and didn’t feel like arguing. “Did you like Fanny’s painting?”

“ It was all right.”

“ She wants us to go to her exhibition.”

“ Oh Christ, you didn’t say yes, did you? They’re all a con, those exhibitions. Full of posers pretending they know what they’re talking about.”

But it was Fanny’s. Her look of reproof must have reached him, for to break her silence he said ‘‘Anything interesting happen today?”

Interesting? She was no longer sure. She’d meant to tell him how the park had looked that morning, grass and bushes painted with light and rain – everything had glowed, and the tears it brought to her eyes had made the landscape crystalline – but he seemed to resent her ability to see these things without drugs.

“ Nothing special,” she said, hoarding the memory. “Come and help carry the plates.”

When she brought the rice from the kitchen he was peering through a crack in the curtains, like someone made wary by loneliness Before she could join him, he let the crack fall closed. “Just some guy watching the house,” he said. “Probably one of Craig’s boyfriends. I thought he might be fuzz. He’s gone now.” Perhaps he was reassuring himself as he said “Nothing to worry about.”

Lime Street Station was thick with queues, sluggishly advancing on the ticket windows while trying to avoid the rain that dripped through the roof. Horridge edged towards the bookstall. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.” Sometimes he had to shout. He felt absurd and irritable, as though caught in a dance in a dream.

Police were patrolling, and seemed on the lookout for someone. They needn’t look at him. Overhead the names of destinations clicked and changed, as though on a game board. Light exploded silently in a photo booth. Above the squealing of metal on rails a great vague voice boomed, echoing within the long iron shed. Horridge could never see where its owner was hiding.

He hurried past the Gents’. It was too public: there were always men watching surreptitiously, or moving behind him – and always a stench like perfumed urine, which must cling to one’s clothes. He’d use the toilet in the cinema. He bought a newspaper: sHocK REvELATIoN IN LIVERpooL mURDER hUNT, its headline said.

The pavements looked slippery and unstable, glittering and wriggling with rain. Light lay glistening outside a pub, like slops. He hurried up the street beside the Odeon. Side streets made him nervous. Submarine glows drifted before him to be engulfed by the multicoloured glare of London Road.

The Odeon’s four cinemas were offering a Peter Sellers comedy, a Disney full-length cartoon, Murder by Death and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That was the one he wanted to see. Horror films took you out of yourself – they weren’t too close to the truth.

Children raced about the foyer, knocking squat ashtray pedestals awry; others stood screaming, lost or frustrated. Children clamoured for sweets and hot dogs and Pepsi-Cola. A salesgirl watched two boys furtively handling bars of chocolate. Horridge gave his ticket to a harassed usher, who tore it and gestured him vaguely onwards, frowning at the children.

No time to use the toilet. He wanted to reach Screen 3 before the show began; he didn’t like groping about in the dark. Once he’d touched a face, and a tongue had stirred like a worm within the cheek. After the blaze of the foyer the passage was dim. The large Screen 2 was in the middle; 3 must be on the left.

The small cinema was bright and empty: not even an usherette to be seen. Good – there would be nobody shouting and laughing at the monsters as a proof of masculinity. His seat creaked in the silence. Were they waiting for the cinema to fill? Wasn’t he enough of an audience?

Beneath the red lights, the blue-green pelt of the floor and the seats threatened to turn violent. Floor and seats were tilted slightly to the right, though the screen was horizontal. He felt seasick. He shook open the newspaper, loudly and furiously.

The man whose mutilated body was found in a Liverpool flat was a male prostitute, police revealed today.

That made him more sick. He didn’t want to read on. But he must know all.

The body of Norman Roylance (21) was found in a cupboard in his flat in Toxteth, Liverpool, on December 24. He had been bound and gagged. Police say that there were more than 30 razor wounds on the body.

In a series of shock revelations, police gave us details of Roylance’s life as a homosexual prostitute since the age of 15. (Full story on page 2.)

Last month, also in the Toxteth area, the body of a young homosexual as found in a flat. He had also been bound and mutilated, and his body had been locked in a cupboard.

Police are anxious to interview a man in his forties. He is described as being of medium height and stocky build. From descriptions, police have been able to issue this identikit portrait.

He stared at the sketched face. The flat eyes were neutral as a corpse’s, but that was only slyness: they were hiding what lurked within them, as well they might. The face looked too small for the head. By holding itself stiff it hoped to conceal its real nature. In the flesh it wouldn’t look exactly like that. That was its trick, to avoid being recognised! The empty eyes stared up at him, daring him to imagine their thoughts.

Shuddering, he turned the page. Its rustling was loud as an insomniac’s blankets. Where the devil was the film? ONE YOUNG MAN’S LIFE ON THE STREETS was spread across page 2, but he felt queasy enough without reading that – if it was the truth. Who said the young man had been a prostitute? A victim, more likely. Young people weren’t homosexual until they were corrupted – nobody was born that way. Horridge had his own idea about the murders: the man interfered with his helpless victims before he killed them. If he was a homosexual he was perverted enough for anything. Killing on Christmas Eve showed how unnatural he was. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

He started. His neck felt spied upon. As he jerked round, a head dodged back from the projectionist’s window. He’d paid to watch, not to be watched. He flourished the newspaper and read at random.

An old man had been mugged by a gang of girls. That was what came of this Women’s Liberation.

He heard the doors open. Someone was coming to double the audience! But it was an usherette. “Can I see your ticket, please?”

He always kept hold of his ticket; nobody was going to accuse him of not having paid. Did she mean to tell him he was in the wrong seat and herd him into another?

“ Which film did you want to see?”

Good God, didn’t they even know what they were showing? “The horror film,” he said with brittle civility.

“ You’re in the wrong cinema. This is Screen 4.”

If he argued they would start the film without him. He hurried down the passage, feeling hot and prickly. Illuminated numbered arrows pointed the way to each cinema. Well, he couldn’t be expected to notice everything.

They were still showing the adverts. A lit bust, the head and shoulders of an ice-cream girl, hovered above her tray. He muttered his way along a row, touching hair that twitched away, cloth that squirmed; a pool of tobacco smoke drifted sluggishly about his face. A soft-drink carton crunched beneath his heel. At last he reached the unoccupied seat.

He felt hemmed in by shoulders. What was drooping over the seat in front? As the screen flickered, it shifted. It was the empty head of a duffle coat. He settled himself, pressing his knees together so as not to touch anyone. At once the film began – and he found that it wasn’t a horror film at all.