The Overnight

by Ramsey Campbell

  "I meant if she was American." Ross sees Lorraine straining to listen and turns away for fear she'll intervene before he says "Maybe she lost the connection."

  "I guess then she'll call back. What did she say to you exactly?"

  Ross is going nowhere near Woody's last word. "She'll be seeing you, I think she meant soon."

  "Really. That is news." Woody glances from his watch to the phone, and Ross deduces that he's reminding himself that no personal calls should be made from the shop. "Anyway, back to work," Woody says. "I need a hand unloading the new stock. I'll try and find you an extra hour to finish shelving."

  Clearing the trolley will take more than an hour, but Woody is already on his way. "Bring that with you," he says over his shoulder and admits them to the lobby as Ray shuts the outer door with a clank. "We'll take over now, Ray," Woody says. "You're busy enough."

  He jabs the button by the lift. "You can leave the cart here," he tells Ross as Ray heads upstairs and the lift speaks. "If anyone needs it they'll let you know."

  Ross is trying to decide how recently he heard the voice beyond the doors. He's about to risk a question when Woody says "Can you grab that?"

  He's leaning on the handle to release the brake and push the pallet truck into the lift that is only a few inches wider, but one of the uppermost of the cartons has started to topple. Ross squeezes between the entrance to the lift and the contents of the truck to clamp the topmost cartons of all four stacks between his arms. He presses his forehead against the insecure carton, which is as cold as the fog it smells of. "Better hold on till we get upstairs," Woody says.

  Ross shuffles backwards into the lift as the truck advances until his spine thumps the rear wall. "Okay?" says Woody and pokes the UP button. The voice of the lift still sounds muffled as a laugh somebody is hiding behind a hand; it must be blocked by the cartons that are all Ross can see or feel or smell. When he opens his mouth he tastes cardboard and fog. "Was that …"

  The lift jerks as it sets about hauling itself upwards. The truck lurches perhaps no more than an inch towards him, enough to pinion him against the wall. "Okay?" Woody says again.

  "I should be." A carton has trapped the left side of his face against the icy metal wall, but at least that leaves most of his mouth free to shout "Who did we hear just then?"

  "All I heard were you and the elevator. Who do you mean?"

  "The lift," Ross yells, though his squashed nose is struggling to breathe. "Whose voice is it?"

  "Haven't the foggiest. Came with the elevator."

  The lift jerks again, and the carton grinds Ross's face against the metal. "Can you pull it away a bit?" he's barely able to shout.

  "No room to let the brake off. Don't worry, nothing can move."

  Cartons are crushing Ross's chest now. They're robbing him of the last of his breath and any chance to take another. "Please," he gasps, but it travels no farther than the darkness that's a carton leaning on his face. The announcement that the lift is opening sounds so muffled it might be underground, and he no longer cares how much the voice reminds him of Woody's caller on the phone—they couldn't have been so similar. In a few seconds the lift carries out its promise, and in a few more Woody manages to release the brake. Ross staggers forward, clinging to the stacks of cartons. "Just drop it," Woody says as he halts the truck at the unloading bin, then peers at Ross. "Everything okay?"

  "Will be."

  Once Ross has filled his lungs so hard they ache he dumps the carton on top of the bin, which is the size of a table for four and crowned with thick wire mesh. Woody slices through the parcel tape with a knife and inverts the carton. When he lifts it, armfuls of books are left standing on the mesh while the packing falls into the bin with a tinkle of polystyrene. Before Ross has picked up a single book Woody deals at least a dozen onto the stockroom racks. By the time Ross begins placing a handful Woody has grabbed another pile and lets his gaze slump on his assistant's meagre burden. Ross tries to match his speed, heaping books against his bruised chest, which they chafe as he dodges from rack to rack, scarcely glimpsing the titles as he divests himself of them: Insects Have Rights Too; The Royal Corgi Annual; Collectible Hotel Freebies; Jesus Was a Joker: Puns and Wisecracks of Christ; Chat Shows that Changed the World; To Boldly Split: English as It's Spoke... Ross has helped sort three cartons' worth, though Woody is leaving him even further behind, when Connie wanders into the stockroom. "Help," she remarks. "More books."

  "That's what Christmas means." Woody slashes a carton and tips it up. "Coming to help, did you say?"

  "Still working on events. I'm afraid Adrian Bottomley won't be one. I asked him if he'd like to do a signing, and he seemed fine with it till I mentioned where we are."

  "Don't stop," Woody tells Ross, who has halted to listen. "What's wrong with that?" he says just as sharply to Connie.

  "I got the impression he didn't think enough people would turn up to make it worth his while."

  "Screw him and anyone that doesn't want to be part of the team. Okay, see what else you can put on our leaflets." When she hesitates, Woody says "You can leave us alone. I guess we're both safe."

  Connie grins in case she's meant to but looks puzzled as she exits. Woody is recalling how he fancies he caught Ross and Jake together, of course. Ross can't think how to deal with this; his mind seems entirely occupied by the process of sorting books. Indeed, it doesn't occur to him to check the time until Woody opens the last carton but one. "Getting tired?" Woody enquires as Ross consults his wristwatch.

  "It's supposed to be my break."

  "Want to finish this first? Shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes."

  Ross imagines Lorraine's reaction if she even suspected him of agreeing to that. He does so mutely nonetheless, and the task is finished not too long after Woody said it would be. "I guess that won't have hurt your appetite," Woody tells him.

  Does he eat in his office? Ross has never seen him do so in the staffroom or even help himself from the percolator, which presents Ross with a gush of coffee so strong that an inch of milk still leaves it resembling mud. As Woody returns to his office Ross fetches from his locker the ham sandwiches he made last night while his father loitered in the kitchen as if he was close to finding a way to help. He drops them on the table and opens the crinkled foil they're wrapped in before flattening a cybergaming magazine beside them. If Mad saw him now she might emit a single tut and bring a plate to slip under the sandwiches; Lorraine would shake her head and her ponytail at the sight of the kind of magazine she says only men read. He finds himself willing them both to stay downstairs. He should have realised asking Lorraine out would lead to problems.

  Enjoy your episodes, his father says. They're what life's made of. Don't expect to spend it all with one person; that's not natural. He sees this is his father's method of dealing with the way his wife left him with three-year-old Ross and never came back from a holiday with girlfriends that was meant to be just a break—it justifies how his father has never lived with anyone except him for longer than a few months since—but it feels right to Ross too. It was why he took his chance with Lorraine when she surprised him with friendliness, but should he have been no more than friendly? Is he bound to antagonise either her or Mad? Struggling to think about them reduces him to gazing at pictures of computerised fights while he sticks food in his mouth. When he hears Woody utter a sound too savage to have time for words, for a moment it seems to be expressing his own frustration. "What is it?" Connie cries.

  "Little—" Whatever else Woody might have said he leaves behind as he flings the door to the stairs wide and bounds down them, missing every other one. Connie's startled gaze catches Ross's as she swivels her desk chair and peers into Woody's office. "We've been invaded," she says as though she doesn't understand what she's seeing.

  She's watching the security monitor. Ross joins her in time to observe Woody rushing through the top left-hand quadrant while Frank the guard tramps across the sector diagonally opposite. The r
est of the screen shows a pair of deserted aisles until two figures dart into the lower left-hand section, throwing books off shelves as they run. There must be a fault with the monitor, because the figures are trailing grey strands of themselves—but a fault can't explain why their faces look as though they've left all their skin and flesh somewhere else.

  If they're made up or wearing masks, how reassuring is that? Ross feels as though he's less watching than dreaming the sight of two prancing dwarfish shapes with faces so basic they resemble primitive images. He has to see what they really look like. He runs downstairs almost as fast as Woody did and hauls the door open, to be met by two skulls topped with hair.

  He sees the boys are wearing masks left over from Halloween before the wearers dodge out of reach, masks so cheap they couldn't be more rudimentary. As he starts after them the boys sprint past the counter and out of the shop. "Leave them to it, Frank," says Woody as they merge with the fog. "Just so they don't get back in."

  "I think we may already have had to chase them once," Agnes says from the counter.

  "Nobody told me. When?"

  "The day we had the quiz. I think they're the ones that were being a nuisance."

  "Explains the masks. If any more of those show up we'd better see their faces."

  Woody stalks into Homecrafts, where his angry head ducks and reappears like a bird's as he picks up cookery books. When Ross starts to retrieve medical volumes from the adjoining aisle, this only seems to aggravate Woody's rage. "Go finish your break," he mutters. "We don't need anybody saying you were cheated out of it."

  No doubt he means Lorraine. Ross thinks she has approached to keep an eye on how he's being treated until she says "I haven't had my coffee break yet. Can I take it now?"

  "Sure, why not. Leave me to fix these."

  Ross shelves the books he picked up and is heading for the staffroom when Lorraine takes hold of his arm. "Let's talk outside."

  She lets go once he follows, and hugs herself as they step out of the entrance. The fog beyond the three scrawny trees has soaked up all the heat and light of the sun, transforming it into a sourceless greyish diffused presence. The murk retreats a pace as though acknowledging or mocking Lorraine and Ross, then drifts back, leeching colour from a few parked cars. Ross wonders if the boys could be hiding nearby in it as Lorraine trots along the shopfront and waits for him to catch up. "Did he make you come down with him?" she demands.

  "Of course he didn't, Lorraine."

  "Then why do you have to jump to his defence?"

  "I didn't think I was. I didn't know he needed it."

  "Men don't, you mean."

  Though Ross keeps his sigh quiet, he sees it swell in front of his face like a thought balloon in a comic. "I don't, no. I mean, I don't mean that. Why do you …"

  "Go on, tell me it's my fault somehow."

  "I'm not saying it's anyone's fault. It just seems sometimes you don't like working here at all."

  "I expect I'll like running my reading group. I like talking to people about books. That's why I thought I'd like a job that was all about them, but it isn't, is it? Do you know what I'd love to do?"

  "Is it something for Connie?"

  "For God's sake, Ross, there's more to my life than this place." Lorraine glares at the fog as if it has dared to contradict her and says "I'd like to teach riding."

  "Can you?"

  "I've taught my little cousin Georgie on her pony. You should see her bouncing up and down on it all proud of herself. There was a job at the riding school, but I didn't know then I was that good at it, so I applied here instead."

  "There'll be other riding jobs round where you live, will there?"

  "Not often. I don't think the girl the school took on has settled in too well, though."

  "Maybe you'll be able to take over, and you've got to like more than your reading group while you're here, have you?" When her eyebrows rise a slow quarter of an inch, perhaps to let the possibility in, Ross says "At least that's something to thank Woody for."

  "I put myself forward. He didn't choose me," Lorraine objects and twists around as if to confront Woody through the window. As he straightens up, tenderly smoothing the comers of a paperback, his gaze snags on Ross's and his lips move. "What does he mean, you're busy?" Lorraine requires to be told.

  "Maybe you should ask him."

  "Fair enough, I will."

  The fog seems to greet her intention with a dance, trailing its hem over the tarmac. "Hang on," Ross blurts. "He'll be thinking of me and Jake."

  "Well, that is unexpected. Why would he do that?"

  "I think he thought I was giving Jake the wrong kind of hand in the stockroom. I hope you don't need me to tell you I wasn't."

  "No reason to get defensive if you were, Ross. That's half the problem with the world, men not accepting their feminine side."

  "The other half is women not owning up to their male part, you mean."

  He knows she doesn't before he has finished speaking. His attempt at wit seems nothing more than automatic now that it's exposed; he feels as though he's being forced to perform a script for an unseen audience—the boys in the masks, perhaps? When Lorraine turns towards the fog he thinks she has the same impression, but she says "I'm going for a walk."

  "Shall I come with you?"

  "I wish I were riding." She mustn't intend him to hear any wistfulness; none is left in her voice as she says "There's really no need."

  "I just thought you mightn't want to be alone in this."

  "I won't be going far." Apparently deciding that's too much of a concession, she adds "Unless I want to."

  She marches along the side of Texts to the staff car park and disappears into the fog without a backward glance. Her rapid footsteps grow muffled as if she's walking into mud. Ross can hear no other sound except the unresolved thunder of the motorway, but suppose the boys are lurking in the fog, waiting for Lorraine to see their skulls bob up from it? When her footsteps shrink to the size of pins being tapped into a board and then dwindle into silence, Ross wanders back past the bleary display window, rubbing his arms hard. He has just trodden on the READ ON! mat when the alarm begins to shrill like a bird gone blind and insane.

  Woody is the first to reach him, trying while he sprints to rub creases out of the pages of a book on puddings. "Who went out?" he's eager Ross should tell him.

  "I think it was me coming in. I don't know why. I didn't touch anything."

  Woody types the code only the managers know on the keypad to gag the alarm. As he resets it Ross produces the comb that's all his shirt pocket contains, then empties his trouser pockets of a handkerchief and some change, not to mention a stone that reminds him of an eye asleep, which Mad picked up last week in the car park. Frank the guard watches Ross's pockets hang their tongues out and continues to look suspicious even when Woody says "Okay, Ross, we trust you. Put your stuff away and walk back through."

  Ross is pocketing the stone that feels coated with fog as he ventures between the security pillars. He snatches out his hand as the alarm pipes up. A woman in a fawn coat and matching scarf and hat, who is wheeling a toddler lagged in a hooded one-piece suit of the same colour, pulls the push-chair back from entering the shop. "Please, ma'am, step right in," Woody urges and informs the toddler "I guess a goblin got into the works."

  The child starts wailing either at the noise or at Woody's explanation. It sounds as if the alarm has taken on an extra note, a siren that persists once Woody finishes retyping the combination. "It's gone now," the mother mumbles through her scarf, but the puffed-up bundle of a boy or girl arches its back in an attempt to escape its bonds as she wheels it between the security posts. "Sorry," she says more indistinctly still.

  "That's perfectly all right, ma'am," Woody says. "Any time you're ready, Ross."

  Somewhere in the fog a woman is coughing as she runs, and someone is driving a car. There's no reason why these sounds should make Ross nervous, though the antics of the alarm do. The moment he ad
vances between the posts it begins to screech. The toddler enters the competition, and Mad ambles over to give the child a grin of amused reassurance. "What's your secret, Ross?"

  "Nothing that I know of. I don't see how I can be doing it."

  "Then show me who is." Woody frowns at the keypad as the mother unwraps her mouth to tell the toddler "It's only a silly machine, look. The gentleman who sounds like the funny men in your cartoons can switch it on and off."

  "Let's hope so, ma'am." Woody has to raise his voice to be heard over the toddler's solo. Yet louder and a good deal more sharply he says "Hold it, Ross. I want a few seconds before I reset it."

  The step Ross was about to take hovers above the mat. What's happening in the car park? The coughs sound almost starved of breath, and he feels anxious for whoever is running about in the fog. Perhaps she's breathing the fumes of the car as well. He steps towards Woody instead of through the posts. "Can't I just—"

  "In a minute." Woody doesn't glance away from peering over the hand he's using to ensure nobody can read the combination. "Try it now," he says. "On second thoughts you try, Madeleine. See if it likes girls better."

  "Watch," Mad says to the toddler. "It isn't going to hurt me. There's nothing round here to hurt anyone." She takes the longest stride she can between the posts, and the alarm commences yammering at once.

  As she turns to offer the toddler a laugh, the running footsteps and the breathless coughs that sound entangled in them veer towards the shop, and so does the snarl of the car. Lorraine staggers out of the fog beyond the nearest trees so fast she almost falls. Her arms are outstretched as if she's trying to dive clear of the murk. Perhaps she's wishing the shop closer than the two hundred yards or so she has to cross. Her eyes and mouth are wrenched wide, and her face is almost as grey as its background. Whatever she might want to cry out collapses into another spasm of coughs. Ross is struggling to understand why she looks backlit when the fog behind her shines more fiercely and emits a rising snarl. "That's never—" Mad says as if she hardly knows she's speaking. "That's my car."

  Before Ross can shout a useless warning the car rushes at Lorraine. The windscreen is coated with fog through which he glimpses a blurred figure that looks too small to be in charge of a vehicle. He has distinguished nothing more except a swollen shapeless grey mass that must be a head when the left-hand headlamp slams into the backs of Lorraine's knees.