The Influence by Ramsey Campbell Page B

still howling when they reached Jo’s, a sound as sad as the For Sale sign outside the big house that looked almost inconsolable to Rowan, like a child so big and ugly nobody would play with it. Jo let the three of them into her house and hung up their schoolbags before herding them into the kitchen. “Now, what have I got for little people who aren’t giving me a headache?”
    Paul stopped crying at once, and Mary said “Don’t give her more than me.”
    “You can have the most if you like,” Rowan said.
    “You’ll neither of you get any if you start arguing.” Jo hurried to the foot of the stairs, her backless sandals flapping. “Patty, just take these on the beach until teatime, will you? They’re squabbling over sweets and giving me a headache.”
    Patty stumped reluctantly downstairs, a trace of cigarette smoke looming in her nostrils. “I’m not feeling well, mam, and I’m doing my homework.”
    “You can do that later, can’t you? You won’t be out dancing if it’s your time of the month. Just take them for an hour like you used to and see they don’t get into mischief.”
    Patty took the bag of sweets from the top of a wall cupboard. “See you all behave yourselves or you’ll get none.”
    By now Rowan didn’t want any. She would have liked to walk to the marina and watch the sleepy yachts, but Patty didn’t want to go so far from the house and Paul might have fallen in. Paul and Mary argued about the plastic buckets for a while, and when Mary insisted the red one was hers he kicked her castle down. Rowan offered to take him to the water’s edge and show him how to dig a stream, but Patty said he had to stay near her. Feeling small and unwanted, Rowan wandered away from the others to gaze across the bay.
    The Welsh coast was quivering with heat. It seemed to gather itself and surge forward into the swarm of light that was the bay. Rowan often closed her eyes so as to open them and make everything look new, but now she had to close them to keep the light from swarming inside her head. She opened them a crack, and found that she must have been gazing straight at someone and unable to see her for the dazzle: a figure in white.
    For a moment that was all she could see, in the midst of a blankness too bright for her eyes. She couldn’t even hear the waves. I don’t like this, she thought, wondering what the heat had done to her now. Then the figure turned to her, and the sound of the waves rushed into her ears, the bay and the sky and the beach flooded back into focus as the girl came toward her across the sand.
    It was Vicky, the girl she’d met in Wales. Around her neck and over her dress, which looked exactly like the one she’d worn before, hung an old pair of binoculars. She halted a few steps away from the water, her pale eyes inviting Rowan to go to her, her small mouth smiling. “I promised I’d see you again, didn’t I? I’ve seen you when you didn’t see me. I brought these for you, but I didn’t think you’d be with dirty children. We don’t want them sullying our glasses.”
    “I had to come with Patty because my mummy and daddy are at work. I only have to stay near.”
    “You’ll see better from the dunes,” Vicky said and, lifting the strap over her head, handed her the binoculars. Rowan was trying to focus them when Paul scampered up. “Me look through those,” he demanded.
    “You’re too little, Paul. You might break them,” Rowan said.
    He began to howl at once, and Patty limped over, groaning. “He was happy playing and now you’ve upset him. What did you say to him? Where did you get those?”
    “My friend gave them to me,” Rowan said angrily, for Patty had made her sound like a thief. “I only said he was too young for them.”
    “Which friend?” Patty said, then shrugged off the question impatiently. “Just you let him have a turn. I’ll see he doesn’t wreck them. He’s giving me a headache, do you mind? If you don’t stop tormenting him I’m