The Overnight

by Ramsey Campbell

  He's hurrying to open the shop. His haste seems pointless, since he lets in nothing but a surge of fog that immediately vanishes. The absence of customers may be why Mad doesn't restrain herself at the sight of the children's section. "Well, thank you, whoever you were," she cries close to the top of her voice.

  "That would have been me," Woody calls.

  "I doubt it. I hope not."

  "Where are you seeing a problem?"

  "Where aren't I? Take a look."

  Gavin doesn't see why that shouldn't include him; there are no customers for the counter to be guarded from. He follows Woody to the Teenage bay, where Mad is staring at the books and gripping her hipbones with her splayed fingers. When Woody swings around he seems ready to order Gavin back to the counter, but then he says "See anything out of place? If you do you're a better man than me."

  Gavin finds his having to take sides makes his skin tingle while his mouth recalls the stagnant taste of the fog. "Sorry, Mad," he's forced to admit. "It looks fine to me."

  "Maybe it's something men can't see," Woody offers, and a smile as well.

  Mad isn't won over by either. "What's that meant to mean, I'm seeing things?"

  "Maybe it's the time."

  "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm wide awake."

  Woody tilts his head leftward and slits his eyes, a pose that he appears to think renders his smile apologetic. "Time of the month. The girl I used to be with—"

  "Keep it to yourself," Mad says so fiercely and unblinkingly that he retreats a step. "Looks like men aren't welcome right now," he murmurs.

  Gavin is even less inclined to side with him, but Mad turns her back as if he has. He leaves Woody observing her and retreats to the counter. At least the shop has attracted customers; two squat figures are plodding across the car park. They're past the splintered stump, which grows mouldy with fog and then merges with it, before Gavin is certain they're the two men who have spent he doesn't know how many days in armchairs in the shop. As they shamble through the entrance he dons his wildest grin. "Welcome to Texts," he enthuses. "Can I recommend Dance Till You Drop by D J E?"

  He couldn't do this if he didn't find it hilarious, but Woody can't object to the recommendation, since they do stock the disc jockey's memoirs. Gavin's grin is threatening to own up to a giggle by the time the men finish frowning wordlessly at him and stump off to Tiny Texts. Mad doesn't conceal her distrust as she watches them. When they each select a copy of the same picture book for infants without disarranging its neighbours she shakes her head, perhaps at herself. As the men sink into armchairs, which emit creaks like frogs exchanging calls, she raises her hands beside her shoulders, though Gavin doesn't think she's blessing anyone. "All right, maybe it's me," she says and heads for the stockroom.

  It sounds less like an admission than some kind of accusation of whatever has confused her. Gavin used to think she took the same attitude as he does to the job—have fun wherever you can find it and make fun of the rest to yourself—but she hasn't shown much of that lately. When Woody dodges through the gap as the door closes after her, Gavin wishes he'd taken the chance to let her know he's on her side. At least she has to realise he's not like Woody's pet Greg.

  He leans on the counter to watch how long it takes either of the seated men to turn a page. One rouses Gavin's hopes by pinching a corner crablike between a finger and thumb, but then he releases it. In perhaps no more than a couple of minutes his friend takes hold of a corner so as to let it drop. Gavin doesn't notice that their lethargy is dictating his pace until Mad reappears with a trolley full of books. He's about to find some way of appearing to be busy, in case Woody is observing him from upstairs and doesn't think Gavin looks as though he's pondering how he can excel, when Woody emerges from the delivery lobby and pushes a loaded trolley over to Animals. "Here's half your stock that's waiting to be put out," he tells Gavin through a smile his words leave behind. "You'll be close enough to the counter."

  Is it his lack of sleep that's compelling Gavin to examine every cover before he shelves the book? By the time he has finished in Pets he feels as if his head is full of eyes gazing up in stupid worship. In Zoology he has the notion of reorganising the volumes in the order opposite to evolution, but why? It's a good job he has no books on amoebas, or he might. Before he has unburdened the trolley of many more volumes he doesn't know if he's filing them or supporting himself on them. He has never been so glad to see the next shift arrive.

  Greg bows Connie and Agnes in, though there's room between the security pillars for all three, then sends his voice after at least one of them. "Glad to see I'm not the only person who's eager."

  "What are you saying you're eager for, Greg?" Connie wants to know, unless she's pretending.

  "Work, of course." He seems genuinely—Gavin would say stupidly—unaware that she could have meant anything else. "You'll have given yourself time for parking, Agnes."

  "My car's not in my handbag if that's what you're asking."

  "You know what I'm getting at. It's where we're supposed to park."

  "It's where it is right enough."

  "I'm asking if it's round the back. I'm putting you on your honour."

  "I'm not even going to answer you, Greg."

  Her stare does that. When she glances at Connie for agreement with her disbelief, however, Connie says "He is right really. No point in arguing over something this silly."

  Agnes looks betrayed. "I'm parked where I feel safe and that's where I'm staying," she tells anyone who cares to hear, and stalks off to the staffroom.

  Gavin wants to giggle to himself at the pompous pettiness of it, but the confrontation has revived an unwelcome taste in his mouth. Greg and Connie follow her upstairs, but Greg reappears almost at once. "I'll take over at the counter, Gavin," he says as if Gavin should have stayed there. "I'm sure you'll need to catch up on your sleep for tonight."

  Gavin presents him with a yawn even huger than it has to be. Once he has seen Greg's jaw work like a camel's to contain a responsive gape, he pushes the lightened trolley to the lift and sends it upwards. Hearing the cheery but decayed voice of the lift sets off the lingering taste in his mouth. He collects the trolley when it arrives at the stockroom and unloads the books that will have to wait until later to see—he was about to confuse himself by thinking daylight, but since when has that entered the shop? As he clocks off he observes Agnes and Connie not speaking to each other, sitting as far apart as they can manage at the staffroom table while Woody watches for the rest of the shift on his screen. The hostile atmosphere feels yet more suffocating for the lack of windows, but Gavin veers into the office to ask Nigel "When are those videos you're sending back going?"

  "They'll have to be tomorrow now."

  "Could I take a couple home and bring them back tonight?"

  "They've all been returned faulty, you know. That's why they're on my rack."

  "There'll still be stuff on some of them, won't there? I just wanted to see if there's anything I'd like to buy a copy of."

  "I shouldn't think our lord and master would object to that," Nigel says, having glanced at Woody's closed door. "Show me downstairs what you're taking."

  Presumably he doesn't want to linger near the mute confrontation in the staffroom. As Gavin hurries through, the rest of the shift arrives and Connie and Agnes compete at greeting everyone. Gavin dodges into the stockroom to grab tapes of concerts by Cuddly Murderers and Pillar of Flesh. Nigel is down by Games and Puzzles, and favours the cassettes with a nod before saying "I hope you'll be shutting your eyes as well."

  Gavin resists explaining that he only means to watch them until the speed wears off. He's making his temporary escape from the shop when something insubstantial yet ominously vast swells out of the blind fog to meet him. His mind takes longer than he appreciates to grasp that it's a sound—an unyielding thunder that drags itself across the sky to sink into the shrill whisper of the motorway. When the airliner falls silent beyond the unseen horizon he fee
ls as if the world has shrunk to the size of Fenny Meadows. He hopes he can leave that impression behind well in advance of reaching the bus stop.

  As he passes the splintered remains of the tree, a car crawls out of the fog behind Texts. He recognises Mad's green Mazda before it cruises over to pace him and Mad lowers her window an inch. "Am I going your way, Gavin?"

  "I'm walking to the bus."

  "That's miles. You're Cheetham Hill, aren't you? Not too far away from me at all," she says and halts the car. "I wouldn't mind company if I'm going to tell the truth."

  He grows aware of the left-hand headlamp lens, which is splintered like a dragonfly's wing. It's hardly surprising if Mad doesn't want to be alone just now. He thought he might be able to walk off some of the speed, but he climbs in. She doesn't speak again until they're driving up the ramp to the motorway overlooked by a sky that's indistinguishable from the fog except for an ill-defined paler blob of sun, and then she says "What did you think about the funeral?"

  "I thought it was sad. What was I going to think?"

  "It was lots of kinds of sad all right," Mad says, poising the car on the starting line at the top of the ramp. "The priest trying to convince everyone she'd achieved so much in her life and not being able to think of much, and if he was just trying to convince her parents that's worse. Do you know what he reminded me of?"

  Gavin remembers how the priest droned through the eulogy and the prayers that followed as if there was no difference between them and kept singing "Aaah-men" on exactly the same two rising notes. "He reminded me of a priest."

  "I was thinking more of one of those letters you get where a computer's filled your name in. I bet he says most of what he said whoever's funeral he's taking. Like a singing telegram except he goes on a lot longer and doesn't sing as much."

  Gavin wonders if this is what she expected him to think, and also whether she is ever going to risk driving onto the motorway. She leans towards the side window, where her breath blooms in imitation of the fog before she sends the Mazda forward so abruptly that Gavin's seat thumps the back of his head. "The saddest part," she says, "the saddest part was how her parents kept insisting it wasn't my fault and I mustn't blame myself."

  Gavin has begun to feel he may as well stay quiet, having been enlisted simply as a listener. The fog is retreating ahead of the car, but Mad's eyes are glistening as if they've blurred to compensate. "No, that wasn't the saddest," she says.

  She has to blink at Gavin to prompt him to ask "What was, then?"

  "Didn't you hear what her mother wanted the priest to tell them when he was trying to get away for the next funeral?"

  "Saw him trying. Didn't hear."

  "She was saying there had to be a reason for Lorraine to die, otherwise nothing makes sense."

  "Did he say what he was supposed to?"

  "That's just about exactly what he did. It had to be God's will, and we've got to accept it even if we don't understand it yet, that's what he said. He only made her wonder what kind of god would want that to happen to Lorraine."

  Gavin assumes Mad has left off the big G now. "You would."

  "I wished I could have told her. That's when I went to find out how Wilf was."

  "He seemed better than when he was here last."

  "I know," Mad says impatiently and throws Gavin a look that shakes the car. "What would you have said to her?"

  When he says "The same as she asked" she stares at him as if he's refusing to think. Ahead the fog has dissipated into mist in which the outskirts of Manchester are regaining their shape, churches and chain stores sparkling like images of a renewed clarity that falls short of his intellect. He's beginning to nod off or to lose seconds of his consciousness, maybe longer, so that the sight of a high-pitched primary school class spilling out of the gates of Granada Studios is followed at once by a tram pacing its reflection in a canal a mile later. Then the chimney of Strangeways Prison pokes over the towering wall, which means another mile has fallen through a gap in his mind. "Nearly there," he says at least as much for his own benefit as Mad's, and props one eye open with a finger and thumb until he can announce "Here's fine."

  "Do you want me to pick you up tonight?"

  "Thanks, but I'm not sure where I'll be. I'll see you at work."

  More than likely he'll be starting off from home. He doesn't like to give up his options, that's all, which is one reason why girlfriends end up arguing with him and then leaving him to himself. As the Mazda chugs away towards Chadderton he turns along the side street under trees that lean out of the overgrown gardens to drip jewels on him.

  He lets himself into his flat beyond the senile porch and drops the videotapes on his parents' old sofa on the way to tossing his coat on the bed across the room. He holds up the rickety toilet seat with one hand while he directs himself with the other, then leaves the bathroom for the even smaller kitchen to discover what he left himself for breakfast. There aren't too many pimples in half a carton of milk, and it isn't so sour that he's unable to use it to wash down the cold remains of last night's second hamburger. He dumps the carton in the pedal bin and the plate in the sink, and shoves Cuddly Murderers into the video recorder before he lands on the quarter of the sofa that isn't occupied by clothes or compact discs or magazines or books.

  Cuddly Murderers dance onto the stage like forks of lightning, and the forest of an audience starts to sway as though it has been caught by a wind. The band launches into screaming "My Sweet Uzi", but they're less than halfway through the song when the screen turns grey and swallows them. They're replaced by a film of two gangs of men in armour fighting, and then some more wearing another kind in combat with a group clad in none. Gavin speeds them up, only to have to watch a further mob dressed in nothing much clubbing one another to the earth. He wouldn't even call this a battle; it's a contest for who'll be left alive. Eventually a single hulking figure survives to be raised high on some kind of triumphal platform, though not for long while Gavin's pressing the fast-forward button. Then a crowd of squat shapes hold one of their number down on a mound and slash at her with a knife or a sharp stone. What kind of film is this supposed to be? Was someone copying a video of death scenes and did they put the Cuddly Murderers tape in the machine by mistake? The victim swiftly twitches her last and vanishes into renewed greyness. Gavin keeps speeding the tape, but when five minutes' worth has shown him nothing more he lurches off the sofa to substitute Pillar of Flesh.

  As the spotlight finds Pierre Peter onstage he begins to sing "Seeds Like A Pumpkin" while the audience finishes cheering and whistling. Another light settles on Riccardo Dick, but no sooner does he start his guitar riff than the image shivers, letting greyness in. The concert has been ousted by a blurred monochrome film or one so poorly copied it has turned black and white. Gavin is reaching for the control, though he feels as if he's trying to move while struggling to awaken, when he sees what else is wrong. More accurately, it's the same thing: it's the same film.

  He races through the battle footage before his grasp slackens on the control. Why would anybody want to copy this material over a second tape they'd bought? He opens the cassette boxes to peer at the name on the Return slips. He squeezes his eyes shut and stretches them wide and looks again. The tapes were bought by different customers, one from Liverpool, one from Manchester.

  He feels incapable of understanding what this could imply until he has been to sleep. He might as well be dreaming the images on the screen; he can't judge whether the savages clubbing one another are bathed in gore or mud. Now that the tape isn't speeded up he sees that the victor is elevated by an object like a huge rudimentary limb. Having brandished him, it plunges him into the earth or the fog, whichever it sprouted from, perhaps both. The screen is overwhelmed by grey before it shows what happened next, or was it earlier? The stunted shapes dragging their victim to the mound that appears to form itself out of the mud look even more primitive than the combatants did, and the object they use to open her up is worse than crude, har
dly even sharp. When at last she stops writhing and silently screaming, does Gavin really see the mound sink into the earth and bear her gaping corpse with it? Fog or blankness engulfs everything, and the featureless tape continues to run until he fumbles to switch it off. Perhaps he'll watch it again later, but just now he has no idea how much he may have only imagined he saw. Nevertheless as he pulls off his clothes and trips over his trouser cuffs as he flounders towards the bed, he tries to hold onto an impression that he has been given the answer to something he was recently asked. Once he has slept, perhaps he'll be able to remember both.

  Wilf

  He switches off the headlights and stares at the rear wall of Texts until his mind begins to grow as blank. That's no use. It may feel peaceful, but he isn't here for peace; he's here to work. He wants this job—he loves books and being able to take customers to exactly what they're looking for—and there's no reason he can't do it unless he lets himself believe there is. The shop is only like his flat with even more books, and if he can put them in order at home he has to be able here too. He climbs out of the Micra and slams the door, which echoes somewhere in the fog like a single giant heartbeat. Though the afternoon shift doesn't start for ten minutes, he hurries round the corner so fast that he could imagine he's fleeing his own lonely footsteps or how isolated they make him feel.

  A black Audi is parked across three spaces in front of the shop. As Woody strides to meet him in the entrance, Wilf hears people leaving the car behind him. "Welcome to Texts," Woody smiles.

  He isn't talking to Wilf. He's staring past him, lower than Wilf's eyes. Then his gaze flicks up to them, and he smiles harder still and hoists his eyebrows. What's wrong with him? Wilf swings around to see who's being greeted and to release himself from the disconcerting sight of Woody's distorted face.

  Two people are standing behind Wilf. The man is half a head shorter than he is, and wearing a suit of some red and white checked material bright enough for a dress. Above his white shirt and black cravat his round smooth face is pursing thin lips so nearly invisible they look in need of lipstick. His young companion is taller than Wilf but slimmer than the dumpy man to compensate. She's dressed in a grey suit pinstriped with black. Both of them appear to think themselves significant; could they be Woody's bosses from America? Wilf risks another glance at him, which provokes a fiercer smile and a silent repetition of his greeting. This time Wilf understands, though not why Woody took it to be anything like obvious. He moves to stand by Woody and face the newcomers and raise an expression suggested by Woody's as a preamble to saying "Welcome to Texts."