The Influence by Ramsey Campbell

mower droned on a lawn, but otherwise the hillside above Holywell was quiet as the evening crept down the mountains. Fat clouds the colours of pigeons and doves flocked above the distant strip of sea, stirring drowsily. Around her the gardens and cottages and fields were paying back the hours of daylight to the pale sky. She might have sat and watched the colours of the landscape rekindling gently, but she needed the work as much as the garden did.
    She’d made a generous dinner before her parents left for Waterloo, and then she’d eaten too much of it herself. Weeding would keep her from nibbling, from sitting in the cottage like a fat-faced rodent in its larder. She knew she ate whenever she was nervous, but what excuse had she now? Queenie was dead, and so were the terrors of Hermione’s childhood, and perhaps that meant it was time to remember, in between worrying while her parents were on the road and being anxious that Alison and Derek might have taken on too much. Even if Queenie had turned her childhood into a nightmare, she mustn’t let that rule the rest of her life.
    The thought felt like the start of freedom. If she could blame Queenie without flinching, perhaps she could also forgive her; perhaps she could accept, as Alison apparently had, that Queenie had been nothing but a lonely embittered maiden aunt with no understanding of children. “You’ll be where I can keep an eye on you,” Queenie had said when Hermione had moved into the cottage. Hermione laughed out loud at that, at having been made nervous by it when she’d been thirty years old. She was too old now for Queenie to seem terrifying, she thought, just as the phone rang in the cottage.
    She ran in so hastily that a fist seemed to close around her vision, squeezing it dark as she grabbed the receiver. “Who is it?” she cried.
    Her urgency had thrown him, for seconds idled by before he said “It’s Lance.”
    “It’s you, is it?” she said, and quieting her panic, “What can I do for you?”
    His answer was a mumble that she had to ask him to repeat. “Alison’s number,” he said as if she were deliberately adding to his difficulties.
    “Yes, what about it?” She was feeling as protective as she had when she used to warn Alison not to go on the beach with him. “She’s pretty busy just now, Lance. What did you want to say to her?”
    “About the little girl.”
    Hermione took a long breath while she chose her words. “I don’t think Alison’s husband would appreciate your interest, Lance. If you need to talk to someone, you can talk to me.”
    “It’s nothing like that.” He must be pressing the receiver against his face out of frustration with her and his slowness, for his voice blundered closer, blurring. “I was thinking about the old woman.”
    “Queenie? What about her?”
    “About her will. I want to tell Alison. It’s hard enough for me to talk.”
    “I’ll tell her you’re trying to get in touch and then perhaps she’ll call you. That’ll do, won’t it?”
    “I hope so,” he said, so inadequately that she waited for the rest. “You could remind her I never hurt anyone.”
    Except yourself, Hermione thought. He’d locked away his fantasies and lacerated himself with guilt, and all she felt once she put down the receiver was pity for him. If he’d believed Queenie was capable of seeing into his mind, he must have been even more frightened of her than Hermione had been. She wondered if he might have aggravated her own fears.
    Her parents had. She’d dreaded visiting her aunt all the more for knowing they dreaded it and yet gave in when they were summoned. Eating at Queenie’s had been the worst, feeling her waiting for you to drop food on the tablecloth or on the floor so that she could rap the table with her knuckles and cry “Look what the child’s done now.” She made you feel like an animal at the table, feel as if you’d smeared your mouth or dribbled or that your chewing was the loudest sound