Free The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell Page A

legs and out into the dark.
    There's no sign of the departed audience. We're making for the
dim foreshortened avenue behind the tent when the field grows
abruptly darker, swallowing Mark's faint shadow and mine. All the
lights inside the tent have been switched off. Without its whitish glow
it reminds me of an ancient monument, but I'm wondering what the
clowns can be up to in the dark. Might they be creeping out of the
exit? I can think of no reason why they would, nor why we should
wait on the chance that they are. 'Let's see if we've time to watch the
film again,' I say to speed Mark onwards.
    It's even darker beneath the oaks. The entangled branches seem to
prevent any light from filtering down out of the scraps of sky. The
hulking trunks are closer together than I would expect oaks to grow.
I hold Mark's small chilly hand as we trot along the middle of the
avenue; I wouldn't want him to run ahead and collide with anything
unseen. Have we strayed into a different avenue? I'm glimpsing the
totem pole through the trees on our left, although the pile of wide-mouthed
glimmering faces seems to skulk behind them whenever I try
to distinguish it more clearly. I even imagine some activity beyond it,
rapid movements of pale dim limbs whose gait puts me in mind of an
injured spider. If it was one of the giant clowns, where would the
other be? When I look back the avenue appears to be deserted,
although blocked by the looming bulk of the tent. I face forward
again, and Mark clutches at my hand.
    The alarm is only the tune of my mobile: 'You must remember
this...' The song from Casablanca has lost some of its appeal in the
gloom caged by trees. Mark relaxes his grip as I continue walking and
lift the mobile to my face. 'What's been wrong with your phone?'
Natalie apparently doesn't want to know, because she goes on
'Where are you?'
    'Heading for the road near Frugoil.'
    'It's all over, then.'
    'It seems to be.'
    'I'll pick you up at the gate.'
    'What did – ' I begin, but the phone is unoccupied except by waves
of static. Mark pulls me left around a bend, beyond which the avenue
leads straight to the totem pole by the water. Once we emerge from
beneath the trees I'm certain that the faces are incapable of springing
apart and forming a line to meet us. I can see lamps above the wall at
the far side of the field, and I'm disconcerted to find the sight so
reassuring. I release Mark's hand as we cross the lawn to the gate.
    Natalie's Punto is panting on the road. 'Was it good?' she asks as
I let Mark have the front seat.
    'It was funny.'
    'Lots of laughs,' I say and shut the rear door. 'What did your
parents want?'
    Natalie meets my gaze in the mirror. 'I'll tell you later,' she says,
and I suspect that I won't relish the experience.

EIGHT - SMILEMIME
    There's something odd about Orville Hart as well.
    He was working for Mack Sennett when he discovered Tubby
Thackeray. He and the comedian wrote their early films together,
while Thackeray took sole credit for writing the later ones, and Hart
directed all of them. Once Tubby lost his stardom Hart found work
at the Hal Roach studios, initially as a writer, eventually directing
Oliver Hardy and James Finlayson in The Course-We-Can Brothers .
For several years after that he appears to have been confined to
writing gags until in 1932 he wrote and directed Crazy Capaldi , his
first feature film. 'The wildest of the Warners gangster movies,'
somebody posting as Smilemime comments on the Internet Movie
Database. 'Banned in Blighty and withdrawn in America after pubblic
protests, the severely cut reissue was a flop.' I stare at this until I disentangle
the sense it's presumably intended to make. Perhaps Hart was
better suited to comedy, since he's next noted as a writer for the Three
Stooges, whom he directed in 1934 as Eager, Meager and Seegar,
three hunchbacked laboratory assistants in a Frankenstein parody, Gimme Da Brain . 'The story goes the pokes in the eye got out of hand
and nearly