Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother Read Free

Curtains
blinked warily in the by standing houses; one house lit up its six flats, one
by one. A third-floor window opened. “Do you need an ambulance?” a man shouted
down.
                 “Quickly,
yes!” the driver shouted. He turned back to Clare. “I’ll get that swine,” he
said, furious again. “Running off like that,” and he
ran toward the side street, amazingly fast for his build.
                 Clare
managed to unclasp her seat belt. Her blood was slowing; the threat of nausea
seemed to have passed. Rob still lay against the door. She reached toward him, then drew back: mustn’t touch. She was surprised by how calm
she felt. But there was nothing she could do, after all: Rob was unconscious,
she couldn’t comfort him, she must wait for the
ambulance. She climbed out of the car and almost fell into the road; her legs
were unstrung. She propped herself against the side of the car. She was still
calm. She only wished daylight would hurry up, to wash away the clinging sodium
glow.
                 Something
was dripping beneath the car. She bent and peered. It was fluid from the
brakes; the hydraulic link had snapped. Never mind that. It was Rob she should
be looking at.
                 He
was leaning out of the window. His head lay on one side, resting against the
outside of the door. Blood and the shadows of branches blotted out his face,
his eyes. He lay as if gazing down at the hailstones of the shattered window,
scattered over the gravel in a thickening trail back toward the lamp standard.
The few hailstones beneath him, and the patch of gravel, glittered restlessly
with black blood.
                 Clare
gazed at all this calmly. She’d seen children bleeding in the playground, after
all. But something was wrong. The sight of Rob she had now didn’t quite fit
together with the way he looked from inside the car. She went back to her side
of the car to look. All at once the ambulance was braying to a halt beside her,
its siren sinking; people were surrounding her—the helpful red-faced butcher, a
couple from one of the flats, ambulance attendants, police.
                 “A
man walked straight in front of me,” she told the police. She only had to speak
quietly, they would know she was telling the truth; shouting did no good,
teaching taught you that. They couldn’t know about the brakes. “Straight into
the road,” she said.
                 “That’s
right,” the butcher said. “I saw him. A bloody madman. I chased him, over there, but he got away.”
                 An
ambulance attendant was taking her arm. “I’m all right,” she said, giggling at
his look of concern. “What do you think’s wrong with
me? I’m only shivering because it’s so late. It’s my brother you’ve got to look
after.” But they had, she saw; the car was empty.
                 “He
was out in the middle of the road. He wouldn’t go one way or the other. He
distracted her completely, and I don’t wonder,” the butcher told a policeman
who was writing down the butcher’s name. They would believe him, Clare thought
gratefully. But another policeman was examining the car, the door, the
interior, the brakes.
                 “Come
on now, love,” the attendant said, steering her gently toward the bright white
box of the ambulance, away from the orange glow. “You don’t know how you are
yet. Anyway, you’ll want to be with your friend.”
                 Her brother, not her friend. But let the man have his own
way; he was only trying to be kind. Except that she wanted to hear what the
other attendant would say to the policeman who had beckoned him urgently over
to the car. She was sure they were talking about Rob. There was something they
didn’t understand, that much was in their faces—perhaps the same thing that had
confused her as she’d looked at the outside of the car. The policeman was
urging