The Count of Eleven - Ramsey Campbell, ebook
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The Count of ElevenbyRamsey CampbellTTKBooks by Ramsey CampbellNOVELS The Doll Who Ate His MotherThe Face That Must DieThe Parasite (To Wake The Dead)The NamelessIncarnateObsessionThe Hungry MoonThe InfluenceAncient ImagesMidnight SunNOVELLA Needing GhostsANTHOLOGIES Superhorror (The Far Reaches Of Fear)New Terrors New Tales of the Cthulhu MythosThe Gruesome Book Fine Frights: Stories That Scared MeBest New Horror and Best New Horror 2 (with Stephen Jones)SHORT STORIES The Inhabitant of the LakeDemons by DaylightThe Height of the ScreamDark CompanionsCold PrintNight Visions 3 (with Clive Barker and Lisa Tuttle)Black Wine (with Charles L. Grant)Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and DeathDark Feasts: The World of Ramsey CampbellWaking NightmaresTHE COUNT OF ELEVENA Macdonald BookFirst published in Great Britain in 1991 byMacdonald &. Co (Publishers) LtdLondon & SydneyCopyright Ramsey Campbell 1991The right of Ramsey Campbell to be identified as author of this workhas been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act 1988.AH characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance toreal persons, living or dead,is purely coincidental.All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the priorpermission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated inany form of binding or cover other than that in which it is publishedand without a similar condition including this condition being imposed,on the subsequent purchaser.British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Campbell, Ramsey Countof eleven. I. Title 823[F]ISBN 0-356-20216-XTypeset by Leaper & Card Ltd, Bristol Printed and bound in GreatBritain byBPCC Hazell BooksAylesbury, Bucks, EnglandMember of BPCC Ltd.Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd165 Great Dover StreetLondon SE1 4YAA member of Maxwell Macmillan Publishing Corporation for Pete andJeannie, with love a monster to live withACKNOWLEDGMENTSPart of the blame for this book must fall on the usual suspects: mywife Jenny, my British agent Carol Smith, and various folk at MacdonaldFutura Peter Lavery, John Jarrold, Julia Martin. Brian Jones advisedme about blow lamps Gary and Uschi Kluepfel provided me with a cellaroutside Munich in which to squeeze out a few paragraphs.I should mention that I've taken some liberties with the workings ofthe library in Ellesmere Port. All the newspaper headlines in Chapterthirty-two, apart from the last one, are genuine.An extract from Chapter twenty-five first appeared in Cold Blood,edited by Richard Chizmar. An extract from Chapter forty-one firstappeared in Tekeli-li 3.ONEThat Sunday morning Jack Orchard slept until the smell of the housewakened him. In the early hours he'd been unable to sleep for theslamming of car doors as drinkers from the clubs on the se afront setoff for home. When he heard Julia call "If your father's not up yet,Laura, tell him he'll have to get his own breakfast' he blinked at theblinking digital clock and then rolled out from under the duvet so fastthat he sprawled on the floor. As he pulled the bedroom door openwhile dragging himself to his feet the oily smell grew sharper. "Don'tbother, love, I won't have time," he called.Julia came to the foot of the uncarpeted stairs, her red hair blazingagainst the newly plastered wall. "There's plenty if you want some.Some kind of crisis at the office," she said."I'll grab something on the way to work.""Make sure you do, all right?" She let a flicker of concern show onher long pale freckled face. "We don't want you economising yourselfinto a sickbed."He ran downstairs and kissed her pink lips. "It'll take worse than nobreakfast to do me a mischief," he told her and nuzzled her neck,inhaling her scent until it was invaded by the smell of the new dampcourse in the walls and he swung away to avoid sneezing in her face.He'd felt a head cold beginning to tickle his throat while he'd lainawake. "That's what comes of having to leave windows open," hemumbled."It'll be worth it, won't it? Some day we'll look back and laugh.""Got to laugh, haven't you?" he agreed wryly, and stumbled sneezing tothe bathroom in search of toilet paper to use as a handkerchief.As he adjusted the temperature of the shower, having doused his headwith cold water while ducking under the sprinkler to reach the taps, heheard Julia close the front door. He was dressing when Laura called upto him "I'm just going to cycle to Seacombe and back' as if the notionhad occured to her that very moment and she couldn't wait to try itout. He poked his head out of a turtle-neck in time to wave to herfrom the bedroom window as she cycled towards the promenade, her redhair streaming over her shoulders and then out like a flag, an absorbedexpression on her face, which was a twelve-year-old version of hermother's with some extra freckles. Now there was nobody to remind himwhat day it was when he hurried out of the house, snatching a carrierbag loaded with yesterday's business mail from beside the phone on thehall standA wind from Liverpool Bay blustered across the Crazy Golf course, wherestarlings were searching for worms, and shook the For Sale sign outsidethe Orchards' house. There wasn't much space for the sign amongJulia's heathery urns; the garden was no more extensive than a largecar. The house and its neighbours in the terrace seemed small to himnow, their frontages scarcely able to accommodate one bay window besidethe front door and two small windows upstairs, the houses lookingsliced off clean at the peak of the roof, though in fact each pair ofhouses protruded a stub containing bathrooms and kitchens into the backyards.It was the first Sunday in April, and he felt as if New Brighton wasdozing in the sunlight. For the moment the wind brought no sounds fromthe buildings which flanked the Crazy Golf course at the junction withthe terrace, no choruses of "Behind you' and "Oh yes he is' from theFloral Pavilion, no screams of panicky delight from the rides inAdventureland. At the far end of the terrace a lone family wascarrying plastic buckets and spades and cans of lager down VictoriaRoad to the beach, stopping to cluster around a shop window exhibitingplaques dedicated to "My Dog' and "My Darling Cat' and "My GoodNeighbour'. Boards were nailed over the windows of quite a few of theshops among the Bingo parlours and the arcades full of fruit machines.Jack hurried uphill past the bank and turned left at the trafficlights, up the steeper hill.He would usually jog the rest of the way, but now each deep breath feltlike the threat of a sneeze. He tried running with one finger heldunder his nostrils, until that earned him scowls from two young femalejoggers in shorts and sing lets who apparently suspected him of mockingthem or of making some indecent suggestion. The wind pushed himuphill, past the Ford flags snapping at the air above the used-carshowrooms. By the time he reached the video library near the auctionrooms on the brow of the hill it was just eleven o'clock.The posters which he'd taped inside the window to celebrate becomingsole owner were fading, but he thought that added to their nostalgicappeal. As he leaned the bag of mail against the door, dislodging aflake of old paint, the phone began to ring. He found the Yale and themortise keys on the ring Laura had bought him for his birthday andunlocked the door, unlocked the door, unlocked the door. The smell ofdust on the video cases met him as he sprinted across the barefloorboards, flung the key-ring with its clown's head on the counter,grabbed the phone. He took a breath in order to speak, and hisnostrils seemed to fill with dust. "Ah," he said, 'aaah '"Hello? Hello? Hello?"Jack was put in mind of a parrot, the quick voice was so high andharsh. "Is that Fine Films?" it demanded."Osh. Osh. Osh. Otheu1," Jack responded, so violently that theplacard listing requirements for membership fell on its face on thecounter. "Sorry. Dusty close," he said as soon as he could."I beg your pardon?""Code. Code id the dose," Jack tried to explain, and gave up. "FideFilbs here.""Do you stock black and white?""Bore that eddy body else for biles.""In quantity?""Warders, Udiversal, RKO." Jack was about to mention the mostextensive selection of subtitled videos on Merseyside, but had tosuppress a sneeze. "Yach.""What are you saying to me?""Just ad other sterdutation," Jack said indistinctly. "Are you aftereddy tidies id bardicular?""What do you imagine I'm talking about?""I thought you said black and white filbs.""For my camera.""Wrog dumber,1 Jack said, trying to keep down yet another sneeze, someof which escaped with a sound like stifled mirth. Th a libry. If youlike old filbs 'The voice interrupted sharply, vibrating the earpiece. "I didn't carefor April Fool pranks as a boy and now I like them even less. I hopeyou don't think you convinced me with your imitation of a cold. I'm adoctor.""So was Henry Jekyll," Jack retorted as the line commenced droning. Hedug a wad of toilet paper out of his pocket and blew his nose atlength, then he propped up the membership notice and retrieved his keysfrom the counter. "Got to laugh, eh, lucky clown?" he conf...
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