The Overnight (42 page)

Yet another reason why he's close to panic is that the fog is thickening. That has to be why the light appears to be retreating into it, matching his pace. Shouldn't he have reached the stile or at least the hedge by now? He risks looking away from the glimmering track long enough to glance over his shoulder in case he can judge how far he has progressed. Nigel has been erased by the fog into which Ross's footprints trail, an irregular series of depressions in the flattened path. He faces forward, only to wonder what he overlooked. His head throbs with the effort and then with realising. There was just one set of his footprints behind him; there are none ahead. At this moment the glow he's following ceases to hover. From sailing as high as a floodlight it sinks through the fog into the earth, abandoning Ross to the dark.

He stumbles to a halt, or at least as much of one as his shivers will permit, and glares at the suffocating blackness. His eyes are so parched of sleep that they're dreaming of light, shapeless waves of it that drain away and reappear in time with his pounding heartbeat. Though his vision is useless, he should still be able to find his way back. He only needs to turn the way he came, and surely he'll be able to discern enough not to trip over Nigel by the time he reaches him. He inches his left foot around until it's more or less at right angles to the other. His stance feels unstable even when he presses his feet together, but he simply has to repeat the manoeuvre and he should be ready to walk. He's edging his left foot away once more when behind him Nigel speaks his name.

Ross spins around without thinking. His feet skid on marshy ground, and he's terrified of losing his balance. He flails at the clinging invisible fog with both arms and manages to remain standing, but now he has absolutely no idea where he is in relation to the shops. He's turning his head as gradually as his latest fit of shakes will allow, and narrowing his eyes in the hope that may help him identify some hint of light, when Nigel calls out again. His voice is at the level of Ross's waist and sounds close enough for Ross to touch him.

Ross shrinks away. His fingers dig into his palms rather than risk brushing against Nigel's face stuffed with mud. He finds himself striving to recall anything his father has told him that can help, but his skull is cluttered with sayings of his father's like chunks of useless rubble sticking out of murk: be yourself, do what you have to, don't drive tomorrow unless you're sure you're awake … How can Nigel speak when his mouth is packed with earth? But he does, this time from the direction Ross recoiled in. Ross hurls himself forward with no thought except to dodge out of range. He no longer cares where he's treading, but he should. The ground slides his feet from under him, pitching him into blackness.

He thrusts his hands out just in time for them to sink into unseen mud, taking his wrists with them. As he props himself on his quivering arms, Nigel's voice addresses him. "Ross see here," it chortles sluggishly, and before it has finished speaking it echoes itself from the other side of him: "Ross see here." He hears the pair of mimics take shapeless shuffling paces towards him, but all he's able to think is how pointless the whole game has been; why bother enticing him into the dark when he was helpless once he fell beside Nigel? At once he's almost throttled by a sense of vast resentment of his ability still to think—a sense of malevolence with a solitary purpose as primitive as itself: to reduce him to its own mindless state. As though aroused by his understanding, it fills his nostrils with an exhalation that smells like water stale beyond words, like the breath of an ancient toothless mouth—the mouth that gulps his arms up to the shoulders. Before it closes over all of him it gives him time to experience how it's composed not quite of mud, not quite of gelatinous flesh, but worse than both.

He's so on edge with straining his eyes for Ross or headlights every time he thinks he glimpses movement of something more solid than fog that Woody's giant voice almost makes him drop a book. "Hey, I'm the only one around here that needs to wait. Any idea how I can help all of you work?"

Jake's first reaction is to duck guiltily to find the right location for the book or at least pretend he has, but he can't resist watching Connie frown at Greg in case he presumes to respond. The only aspect of the present situation that gives Jake any pleasure is how Greg has started to annoy people besides him. Greg is either unaware of Connie's feelings or ignoring them. He raises his face as though catching more of the slimy light may help him think, unless he's miming thought for Woody's benefit. As Connie emits a compressed breath like the reverse of a sniff, Mad says "What's that?"

She's peering down the aisle she's in and along the one that leads to the exit to the staffroom. "What are you seeing?" Jill asks across the shelves.

"Under the door."

Jill cranes her neck and then ventures down her aisle to veer into the one Mad hasn't glanced away from. "I can't see anything," she admits.

"Me neither with you in the way."

"Sorry," Jill says, to some extent as though she is, and backs against the nearest shelves, only for Mad to complain "Now I can't either. I could have sworn there was, I don't know, a big stain on the floor."

Jill is following her frustrated gaze out of politeness when Woody demands "What am I seeing now? Who called time out?"

"It's nothing," Connie tells him. "Just a mistake. I expect we're all getting tired." Before Greg can raise the objection he's opened his mouth for, she adds "Some of us, anyway."

Mad takes the criticism to be aimed at her but seems uncertain whether to focus her resentment on Connie or Jill. As Connie tramps back to her shelving Jake returns to his. He's hoping it may conceal him from the tensions he feels gathering like a storm, but it offers no refuge. Once he has found space for yet another of Jill's novels he has to retreat one shelf further from the window, and now he's unable to read the names on the packed spines except by pressing his neck against his shoulder and crouching like a hunchback within inches of the books. He straightens his head up and stoops lower to grab the next lump of cardboard and paper from the heap of them. Sweat collects behind his knees, clamminess encases him but keeps giving way to a chill, both of which make him feel so feverish he surely ought to be in bed. He wishes he were there with Sean and no fever except the kind they create between them. Since there's no possibility of that, he wants Sean to be peacefully asleep, not least so that he'll be ready to collect Jake if the sun ever rises. The dead glow through the window seems to have rendered time as inert as itself, and Jake has to squint fiercely at his watch to be certain why it appears to have lost a hand. He's about to speak when Connie says with hardly any patience "What now, Mad?"

"It mustn't be anything. You told Woody it wasn't. I expect it's just me being mad."

"Don't be like that," Jill says. "If you—"

"Don't be childish like you think everyone else is, you mean?"

"You are," says Connie, "if you don't tell us if there's something you should tell."

Mad stares towards her shelves along the rear wall and takes a long loud breath. "I thought I saw someone on the floor. Go on, say it's me imagining someone's been messing with my section."

Jake peers towards the alcoves, which are dim as the depths of the fog. For a moment he fancies he glimpses a head that inches around the end of an aisle and immediately shrinks or shrivels into hiding, but its owner would have to be on all fours or no taller than an infant. Nevertheless Jake is tempted to come to Mad's defence even before Greg remarks "Either that or Agnes has got out."

Incredible though Jake finds it, Greg apparently intends this as a joke. Jake is sure the girls would side with him if he attacked Greg for it, and has to force himself to concentrate on a more important issue. "It's quarter past three, no, seventeen past. When did Ross leave?"

"Some of us were too busy to be watching the clock."

"That isn't fair, Greg," Jill objects. "Jake wasn't. That's why he's asking."

"He's been out there too long," says Mad. "All night, it feels like. Even longer."

"I wouldn't put it past him to have sneaked off home," Greg says. "If we're expected to believe Nigel could have, Ross certainly could."

Jake is delighted Greg can't have realised he has given him the cue to say "Then someone else will have to go."

"So there'll be even more work for anyone who cares about the shop, you mean."

"No," Jill says, "because Ross mightn't have thought of going more than one way."

"That's clear as mud to me."

"Maybe he won't have gone on the motorway if he forgot the phones up there will still be working. If he'd found a phone box on the other road someone would be here by now."

"That's assuming he bothered to try."

"If he didn't," Mad retorts so furiously she sounds close to abandoning language, "that's all the more reason for someone else to, isn't it?"

Greg's face grows dull with understanding that he has trapped himself. He picks up a book and stares at it as though nothing else matters. "So what plan is anyone suggesting?" Connie asks.

"Someone tries the motorway," Jake says, "and someone tries the bottom road in case there's a problem."

"Don't tell us," Greg mutters just audibly. "You'd like to take the bottom road."

"I'd like to help, that's right. Agnes has been shut up long enough. But I haven't got a car."

"I'd rather not go out by myself if I'm going," says Mad.

"I don't see why you should." Connie waits for agreement to begin spreading over Greg's face before she says "Go out by yourself, that is."

As Greg shelves the book with a thump like a fist on a table she returns to the counter. She's only reaching for the phone when Woody's voice falls on her. "Let me guess. The cavalry's here at last."

"Not exactly. Well, not really at all. We think something may have happened to Ross or he'd be back by now and there'd be help."

"All the news is bad, huh? That's why you all look like you're stuck in mud. Okay, let's see if I can get you moving," Woody booms like an uncle talking at a child, and begins to sing. "Goshwow, gee and whee, keen-o-peachy …"

"We're just deciding what to do." Connie raises her voice to give it some authority or counter his. "Actually, we've decided. There's more than one place we could phone for help from, so we think it'll be best if we make a concerted effort."

"Talk English, Connie. I don't get why you Brits have to dress things up fancy."

Jake feels like shouting that they invented the language, but he would only be extending the argument that seems to be gathering around them, embedding them in the stagnant twilight. He has the notion that Connie intends to free herself of it by saying "I want to send people out to both of them."

"And how about the reason we're all here?"

"Getting the shop ready for tomorrow, well, today, you mean."

"Tell me another if you know one."

"We're never going to be able to finish in time now. I'm certain your New Yorkers will understand."

"Yeah? I don't. See if you can make me."

"The light's too bad. The further you go from the window the worse it gets. We don't want people ruining their eyes for nothing and having to go home, do we? I wouldn't be surprised if we all end up in bed with colds as well."

"You think that's too much to ask of the team when they promised to fix up the store."

"We've already been through that. There won't be time. Don't worry, you won't be on your own. I'll stay."

"You won't be the only one," Greg declares.

"Greg's saying he will too, and there's Angus and Ray even if they haven't had any luck with the fuses."

"That right? You two still there? I'm talking to Ray and Angus."

They grunt beyond the door in the darkest corner of the shop, so nearly in unison that they might be speaking in a single muffled voice. "They said yes," Connie transmits.

"So they're still working on the fuses, right?"

"Yes," the double voice responds.

"Tell me, Connie."

"They say they are."

"So let's give them a while longer. Could be they're almost there."

"Don't you think Agnes has been brave long enough? If I were her I'd be making a lot more fuss by now." With a movement that suggests an attempt to wriggle free of the retarded discussion Connie turns, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. "Anyone who's going, go. I'll take the responsibility. The door isn't locked."

Jake lingers to replace on the pile the book he's holding rather than simply dropping it. He and Mad and Jill are abreast of the counter when Woody says "I don't believe what I'm seeing. Looks like the dogs are out of their gates."

"They're all trying to leave," Greg shouts. "It doesn't need them all, does it? I don't think they'll come back."

"Try it shriller and maybe he'll hear you," Jake says before he realises Woody can through the receiver Connie is no longer soundproofing.

"I guess maybe I don't either. Okay, everyone back to the shelves."

"I said go," Connie insists, jabbing the receiver towards the exit.

"You wouldn't say that if he wasn't out of action," says Greg.

Jake's eager to watch her squashing him but is even more anxious to leave. As he hurries past the counter with Mad and Jill in his wake, Woody says in a voice like a huge false smile "Hey, am I not getting through any more? I can hear myself fine."

"You are," Greg shouts and nods hard at the ceiling. "Everyone can hear."

Jake closes his fist around the metal handle, which feels as cold and wet as a stick pulled out of mud. He has to blame his handful of sweat, which must also explain why the metal gives the impression of crawling with rust. He tugs at the handle, and the glass door vibrates against its twin with a faint low gong note, but that's all. "Connie," he says higher than he means to. "It's not unlocked."

"It shouldn't be, either," Greg remarks.

"It is, Jake. That's how I left it. Just push, pull, I should say."

Jake does both, vigorously. The glass clanks like a large loose pane in a storm while the fog beyond it stirs as though it's either mocking the movement he's desperate to produce or gathering itself to confront him. He shakes the door until it jangles, and then says as calmly as he's able "If it isn't locked I don't know what it is."