Read Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother for Free Online Page B

the
impression he lived near the school; maybe he’d been visiting a friend—he had a
lot of friends, though I never spotted any really close ones. I was sitting at
the front of the upper deck, and he sat a few seats behind me. I was trying to
think where I’d seen him before. There was one of those mirrors above my head, that the driver uses in a kind of periscope to see
upstairs. So I looked at this lad in the mirror, trying to place him. He didn’t
see me looking. The bus was just coming up to Mulgrave Street when his expression changed.”
                 He
leaned forward at Clare, gripping his knees; she sat back involuntarily. “I’ve
tried to describe that expression for years,” he said. “You’ve seen lads of
that age. There he was, picking his nose while nobody was watching, staring out
the window, looking a bit aimless and bored. And all of a sudden, just as we
came to Mulgrave Street, this other expression came
welling up—welling up, and I don’t care if this sounds melodramatic, like
poison. It was the unhealthiest look of anticipation I’ve ever seen in my life.
                 “But
that doesn’t make you even begin to see it. He looked eager, dreadfully eager, to do something he wanted to keep secret even from
himself. He looked apprehensive and somehow secretly delighted all at once. His
eyes were shifting about as if he were afraid to see
himself, and he was licking his lips, really, licking his lips. He didn’t look
that way long. We were only a few blocks past Mulgrave Street when the expression went back into him. But believe me, it was hotter
than today, yet it took me a while to get warm again. And he had that
expression at the spot where your brother was killed.”
                 He
was gazing at her. “Well, that’s strange,” Clare said, “but even so—”
                 “Oh,
that isn’t all. That was only what made me begin watching him. And you know , that look was there most of the time. Not as blatant as
that, obviously. But it was there, a kind of tension and anticipation. He was
waiting for something.
                 “Now,
I never thought it related to the school. School doesn’t make kids look like
that. Once or twice the expression looked as if it might surface. I pointed it
out to some of my friends, but all they could think of was he’d left his
glasses at home, his eyes were strained. But he never wore glasses. I’d found
out that about him, and his name, Christopher Kelly. Nobody else seemed to see
what I saw in his face. I began to get as tense as he looked, with waiting.
                 “The
first thing that happened was the cat. This cat lived in one of the houses
opposite the school, or it may have been a stray that begged its meals round
there. It used to come and howl outside the playground, and we’d feed it when
the masters weren’t looking. We were trying to entice it in to have it off with
the school cat, though I don’t think anyone was even
sure what sex it was.
                 “One
day it got run over. Someone was waving a sandwich at it through the railings,
and it came straight across the road and under a car. The driver just left it
twitching in the middle of the road. Most of the younger boys were terribly
upset. Most of the older ones too, though we tried not to
show it. But not Kelly.
                 “He
stood and watched that cat twitch and die. And then he held on to the railings
and watched the dead cat. I think he’d have stood there all day if a master
hadn’t made him leave off. As it was, he must have stood there for ten minutes,
because the masters were busy cheering people up. When they took the cat away
he was still trying to see, past everyone else who was trying not to hear the
shovel scraping it up.”
                 He
squirmed a little at the memory, but his amusement was less faint now: Clare
could see he enjoyed storytelling.