Holes for Faces by Ramsey Campbell Page A

again. Every time he’d filled the wait with jokes at which Todd had felt bound to laugh, although neither the quips nor his mirth had seemed to please the other patients. He’d felt not just embarrassed but increasingly aware that the joking was designed to distract someone—himself or his uncle or both—from the reason they were waiting in the room. He had never ventured to ask, and his uncle hadn’t volunteered the information. It had been the secret waiting beyond the door through which his uncle would disappear with a last wry grin at Todd, after which Todd would gaze at the scuffed carpet while he tried to hear the discussion muffled by the wall. Eventually his uncle would return, looking as if he’d never given up his grin. While Todd had seldom managed to distinguish even a word, he’d once overheard his uncle protest “This isn’t much of a joke.”
    Todd knew the secret now, but he preferred not to remember. He was even glad to be distracted by the waiter, who had stolen at some point back into the dining-room. Todd seemed to have been so preoccupied that he might have imagined somebody else had eaten his dinner, which he couldn’t recall tasting. The jug and carafe were empty too. He’d barely glanced at his plate when the waiter came swiftly but noiselessly to him. “Do go back, Mr Todd.”
    The subdued light and the oppressive silence, not to mention the buffet, were making Todd feel as if he were already at a wake. “I’ve finished, thank you,” he said. “The doctor says I have to watch my food.”
    When his uncle used to say that, Todd could never tell if it was a joke. Certainly his uncle had gazed at his food until his wife protested “Don’t put ideas in the boy’s head, Jack.” Since the waiter seemed ready to persist, Todd said “I’ll be down in the morning. I have to be ready for a funeral.”
    The waiter looked lugubriously sympathetic, but Todd was thrown by the notion that the man already had. “Whose is that, sir?”
    “I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind.” Todd regretted having brought the subject up. “I’m on my own now,” he said as he made his way between the empty tables, which had begun to remind him of furniture covered with dustsheets in an unoccupied house. When he glanced back from the lobby the waiter was nowhere to be seen, and Todd’s place was so thoroughly cleared that he might never have been there. A curtain stirred beside the long uneven mound draped from head to foot on the buffet table, and Todd discovered he would rather not see the mound stir too. He made some haste to leave before he realised that he didn’t know when breakfast was served. Calling “Hello?” brought him no response, neither from the dining-room nor from the impenetrably dark office beyond the reception counter. He’d arrange to be wakened once he was in his room.
    Why did he expect to be met in the lift? He was close to fancying there was no room for anyone but him as soon as he returned to the panelled box. He fumbled the gates shut and watched the wall ooze past them like a mudslide. He was anxious for light to appear above it well before that happened, and as soon as the lift wobbled to a halt he clambered up into the corridor.
    It was as silent as ever. The sombre doors between the dim glazed flames could easily have reminded him of a mausoleum. The rain on the window at the end was borrowing colours from the lights of the town. The storm was slackening, and Todd was able to read some of the illuminated signs. Beneath the race of headlamps on the motorway he made out several letters perched on a high roof— ELLE and also U . An unwelcome thought took him to the window, on which he couldn’t distinguish his breath from the unravelling skeins of rain. The sign swam into focus as if he were regaining his vision, and he saw it belonged to the Bellevue Hotel.
    If anybody heard his gasp of disbelief, they gave no response. For a moment he had no idea where he