As the men left, Lamson said that he could do with a whisky.
‘Just because of what you heard about some poor old sod of a tramp?’ Sutcliffe asked.
‘It’s not him,’ Lamson replied. ‘God help his miserable soul, but he was probably better off dead anyway.’ Though what he said was meant to sound offhand, his voice lacked the lightness of tone to carry it off successfully. Realizing this, he pushed his glass away. ‘I’m sorry — I must seem like poor company tonight. I think it would perhaps be better if I set off home. Perhaps we’ll meet up again tomorrow night? Yes?’
‘If you say so,’ Sutcliffe replied amicably. ‘You do look a bit under the weather tonight.’ A Hell of a lot under the weather, he added silently to himself. ‘Anyhow, now that you mention it, it’s about time I was on my way as well. I’ll walk along with you to my bus stop. It’s on your way.’
As they stepped out of the pub, Sutcliffe asked if he had been sleeping well recently.
‘What makes you ask?’
‘Your eyes,’ Sutcliffe said as the wind pushed against them, a torn newspaper scuttering along the gutter. ‘Red-rimmed and bleary. You ought to get a few early nights. Or see if your doctor can prescribe some sleeping pills for you. It’s probably what you need.’
Lamson stared down the road as they walked along it. How cold and lonely it looked, even with the cars hissing by through puddles of rain, and the people walking hurriedly along the pavement. There was a smell of fish and chips and the pungent aroma of curry as they passed a takeaway, but even this failed to make him feel at home on the street. He felt foreign and lost, alienated to the things and places which had previously seemed so familiar to him. Even with Sutcliffe he felt almost alone, sealed within himself.
As they parted a few minutes later at Sutcliffe’s stop outside the Unit Four on Market Street, his friend said:
‘I’ll be expecting you tomorrow. You’ve been keeping far too much to yourself recently. If you don’t watch out you’ll end up a hermit, and that’s no kind of fate for a friend of mine. So mind you’re ready when I call round. Okay?’
Lamson said that he would be. There was no point in trying to evade him. Sutcliffe was too persistent for that. Nor did he really want to evade him, not deep down. He pulled his coat collar up high about his neck and started off purposefully for his flat.
There was a gloom to his bedroom which came from more than just an absence of light, since even during the day it was there. It was a gloom which seemed to permeate everything within it like a spreading stain. As soon as Lamson stepped inside he was aware of the gloom, in which even the newest of his possessions seemed faded and cheap.
He looked at the stone head.
It drew his attention almost compulsively. Of everything it was the only object in the room that had not been affected by this strange malaise. Was it gloating? he wondered. Gloating at the way in which it had triumphed over everything else in the flat, including (or especially) the framed photo of Joan, with her blond hair curled so characteristically about her face? You’re trapped with me, it seemed to say like some grotesque spider that had caught him on its dusty web, smirking and sneering with its repulsively hybrid, goatlike features. Lamson rubbed his hands together vigorously, trying to push the thoughts out of his mind. I must get rid of the thing, he told himself (as he had continually done, though without result, for the past two weeks).
He glanced at his unmade bed with distaste and a feeling of shame.
‘Oh, God,’ he whispered self-consciously, ‘if only I could get rid of the obsession. Because that is all it is. No more. Only an obsession, which I can and must somehow forget.’ Or was it? There was no way in which he could get away from the doubt. After all, he thought, how could he satisfactorily explain the way in which the tramp had seemed able to read his thoughts and know just what it was that he’d dreamed? Or was he only a part of this same single-minded and delusive obsession? he wondered, somewhat hopefully, as his mind grew dull with tiredness. He glanced at his watch. How much longer could he fight against falling asleep? One hour? Two? Eventually, though, he would have to give in. It was one fight, as he so well knew by now, which no one could win, no matter how much they might want to, or with how much will.
In an effort to concentrate his thoughts he picked out a book from the shelf randomly. It was Over the Bridge by Richard Church. He had quite enjoyed reading it once several months ago, but the words did not seem to have any substance in his brain anymore. Letters, like melting figures of ice, lost form and swam and merged as if the ink was still wet, and slowly soaking through the pages as he watched.
When, as was inevitable, he finally lost consciousness and slept, he became aware of a change in the atmosphere. There was a warmth which seemed womb-like and wrong in the open air. It disturbed him as he looked up at the stars prickling the sky, the deep, black, canopied darkness of the sky.
On every side trees rose from the gloom, their boughs bent over like thousands upon thousands of enormous, extended fingers, black in their damp decay. Their leaves were like limpets, pearly and wet, as they shivered in the rising winds.
Before him a glade led down beneath the trees.
Undecided as to which way he should go, Lamson looked about himself uncertainly, hoping for a sign, for some indication — however faint or elusive — as to which path was the one he should take. There seemed to be so many of them, leading like partially erased pencil lines across a grimy sheet of paper through the over-luxuriant grass. Somewhere there was a sound, though it was so dimmed and distorted by the distance separating him from its source. Sibilantly, vaguely, the rhythmic words wound their ways between the trees.
Finding himself miming them, he turned his back to the sounds and started for the glade. Even as he moved he knew that he had made a mistake. But he knew, also, with a sudden, wild wrenching of his heart, that there was no escape. Not now. It was something which he knew had either happened before or was preordained, that no matter what he did there was no way in which he could escape from what was going to happen next. He felt damned — by God, the Devil and himself.
Crestfallen, as the awfulness of what he knew was about to happen next came over him, he felt a sudden impulse to scream. Something large and heavy rustled awkwardly through the ferns. Fear, like lust, swelled within him. He felt a loathing and a horror and, inexplicably, a sense of expectation as well, almost as if some small part of him yearned for what it knew was about to take place. He began to sob. How could he escape from this thing — how could he possibly even hope to escape from this thing — if some perverse element within him did not want him to be free?
He turned round to retrace his steps up the glade, but there was something dark stretched across his path, barring his way, some yards ahead of him. It turned towards him and rose. Starlight, filtering through the trees, glittered darkly across its teeth as it smiled.
Lamson turned round and tried to run back down the glade, but the creature was already bounding after him like a great black goat. He felt its claws sink into his shoulders as it forced him forwards, knocking him suddenly face down onto the ground. He tried to scream, but his cries were gagged on dried leaves and soil, as his mouth was gouged into them. The creature’s furiously powerful fingers tore at his clothes, strewing them about him. The winds blew cool against his hot, bare flesh as sweat from the lunging, piston-like body ran down the hollow of his spine.
There was a crash somewhere and the dream ripped apart.
The next instant he seemed to blink his eyes open to find the comforting sight of his familiar bedroom in front of him. The book he had been reading when sleep overcame him earlier, lay against his feet on the floor.