The Overnight

by Ramsey Campbell

  It shouldn't have been on the Returns racks, but that doesn't absolve him of failing to check. He grabs a slip and describes the catalogue as damaged on delivery. It could almost be true; certainly the cover feels grubby. He's lowering the book into the carton with belated care when Woody darts into the staffroom.

  Is he due yet? Nigel's start of guilt sends the book half out of its jacket, which tears as he lunges to save it. As he fumbles both of them into the carton, Woody advances to watch. "Say, that's some damage," he remarks.

  Does he mean the price, or wouldn't an American? "That's how it came," Nigel manages not to stammer.

  "Are we seeing much of that?"

  Whatever face Nigel is showing feels treacherously warm. "This is the first," he makes it reply.

  "How about once we've taken delivery?"

  "Just about the same, I'd say."

  "As long as everyone is careful. We can't sell books we don't have." Woody passes a hand over his turfy hair as though he's feeling for overnight growth or perhaps for his next thought. "How long does the fog stay like this around here?"

  "It does seem to be hanging around in the mornings."

  "Seems like it's keeping customers away. We may have to think about our hours." He takes a step away from Nigel and halts to demand "Who went in my office?"

  "I thought I could keep an eye on security while you weren't here and I was."

  "I do take a break once in a while, you've got me there." Before Nigel can decide whether to explain he wasn't criticising, Woody says "No, you were right" and shuts himself in his room.

  Nigel seals the carton with tape and heaves it onto the trolley. He sends it down in the lift and dumps it in the lobby to be collected, then hurries upstairs to tabulate the latest stock reports. The windowless rooms no longer bother him now that someone else is there. Nevertheless as he sits down Woody's muffled voice rather takes him aback. Woody must have heard him return and is calling to him. Since Nigel doesn't know what's behind the words, he isn't sure how to reply. He utters a sound that may not be audible, or perhaps it seems insufficiently agreeable. "We'll need to be here longer," Woody said, but now there's silence.

  Agnes

  "Agnes please call nine. Sorry, I mean Anyes. Anyes please call nine."

  Agnes would suspect some people of getting her name wrong on purpose, but not Jill. She sticks the last corner of her Warm Up With Winter Breaks notice to the end of her European Travel shelves before hurrying to the phone next to Humour. Perhaps a stray child has been playing with it; the receiver feels grubby. Agnes holds it between a finger and thumb and says "Hi, Jill."

  "Sorry again. I forgot how to page for a moment. There's so much to remember, isn't there?"

  "I expect we won't even think about it soon. Why did you want me?"

  "Your father's on line one."

  "Thanks, Jill," Agnes says and thumbs the Line One button. "Hello?"

  "Annie. She's there, June. You're in one piece then, Annie."

  "Such as it is. A bit pale and wrinkled but still intact."

  "You always look fine to us. You ought to think of yourself more, all the same. Find someone to go away with for a couple of weeks if you won't on your own, or failing that, a few sessions on a sunned."

  "Yes, dad," Agnes says rather than revive the disagreement. Her parents took her around half the world when she was little, but now they're too frail to travel, and she would only worry if she left them alone together for any length of time. Making herself look as though she has been away appeals to her even less—it would be like suggesting slyly that she wants to go. "Anyway," she says, "you remember we aren't supposed to get personal calls at work."

  "I thought it was calls from friends that are prohibited. I didn't realise it applied to family as well."

  "I hope we'll always be both, but is it something urgent?"

  "There was a crash on the motorway near you just now on the news. How are the conditions there?"

  Agnes turns from crouching secretively over the phone and glances down her aisles towards the window. Fog that has blotted out the supermarket swells the brake lights of a mammoth lorry as it lumbers out of the retail park. "It's a bit murky," she admits.

  "I can't hear you, Annie. You know our ears aren't what they were."

  "I said there's a bit of fog, Dad. I'll take extra care on the way home. I know that's what you want."

  "I wouldn't have thought it was much."

  She hears the hurt just under the thin skin of his voice—the loneliness he and her mother will never admit to feeling as their old friends grow too old to visit them, those friends who aren't older than alive. "Of course it isn't," she assures him. "You and mummy look after each other till I'm home."

  "We can for longer than that, Annie."

  This could be the start of another of their family disagreements that take hours to reach no conclusion, because they're all so anxious not to injure one another that they have to pick their way through every detail. She's desperate to terminate the conversation without giving him an excuse to feel slighted, because she can hear Woody's voice nearby. She peers at the computer terminal next to the phone and types in the search box the first words that come to her: Fenny Meadows. "Well, you don't need to," she's saying meanwhile. "You know I'll always come home."

  "Poor girl, except you aren't one any longer, unless we've kept you that way."

  "I' ll always be yours." Agnes feels as if she's struggling to drag herself free of a slough of emotion that has grown stagnant. "I really must do some work," she says. "Kiss mummy for me."

  "We might get up to more than that," he says, which he ought to know makes her uncomfortable. At least it shows there's some life in her parents, and she's able to replace the receiver. The computer screen has turned blank, and here comes a reflection to see why. When she spins around guiltily, however, nobody is approaching. She didn't see a blurred figure rising through the greyness after all. In a moment Woody does arrive, but from her right. "Problem, ah, Anyes?"

  "It's gone."

  "Try switching it off and on again."

  She pokes the button on the block of the computer, and darkness wells into the screen. As she waits for a few seconds, Woody says "What were you trying to find?"

  "Just the, the history of this area."

  She presses the button a second time and feels his scrutiny gathering on her. She's telling herself that it can't be apparent she was talking to her father when Woody says "It's for whoever called just now, right?"

  "Right. That's to say that's right, I mean, yes."

  "I don't see where you took their number to call them back."

  "They've, oh, they said they were going out. They'll ring in a bit, they said."

  "Always get a number." At last he transfers his gaze to the screen, which has turned blue while the computer checks for errors. "When you're through here, can you give Madeleine a hand with the quiz?" he says, and frowns towards the counter. "Keep an eye out for lines, what you Brits call queues."

  There are more than a dozen customers at large in the shop, but she suspects most of them are parents of the children who are gathering around Mad in Teenage Texts—children of too many ages to compete with one another at anything but noise. As the computer produces its icons Agnes is afraid Woody will stay to watch her fake a search. She has typed Fenny Meadows in the box before he heads for the door by the lift. Once she's sure he isn't coming back she ends the search, which hasn't found a single title, and hurries into Teenage. "What would you like me to do, Mad?"

  Mad raises her small wide-eyed oval face and, having shaken back her shoulder-length blonde tresses, taps her plump pink lips with a fingertip as if to release an idea. "Do you think you could take about half of them up the other end for a quiz?"

  "I'll have the little ones, shall I?"

  "If you're feeling mummyish. I'll try and keep order while you bring some chairs down."

  Agnes badges herself through the door up to the staffroom. Ross is on
his break, and Lorraine is sitting next to him, so close she's almost on his chair. She turns as if her face is being lifted by her rising golden eyebrows, while Ross seems to hope Agnes will be content with the back of his head. "It's only Agnes," Lorraine reassures him. "Anyes, I know we're meant to say."

  "Please don't if it's too much trouble."

  "There are worse things round here. Are you coming for your break?"

  "No, I'm here for Mad."

  Ross twists to face Agnes. "You mean she sent you up?"

  "That's what she did."

  "Sometimes I think she's sending us all up," Lorraine says in her almost chortling voice.

  Ross won't be distracted from his theme. "If that's what she calls still being friends—"

  "She sent me to get some chairs for the quiz."

  "You might have said that."

  "I just did. We only need one in here at the moment, don't we? There's only supposed to be one of us having our break at once."

  "About time a few of us queried that," says Lorraine with very little of a chortle. "I don't know about anyone else, but I don't like being up here by myself."

  "So I'll take that one if I may, Lorraine."

  Lorraine rests her fingertips on Ross's shoulder while she stands up. "There's your little chair, Agnes. I'll see you later, Ross."

  He looks uncomfortable until the stockroom door closes behind her, and then he jumps to his feet "Here, I'll take some," he says and stacks five chairs as Agnes picks up four. He bumps his way into the stockroom, where Lorraine is planting books on a trolley, more loudly when she sees him and Agnes. "Shall I come down with you?" he asks Agnes.

  "You finish your break. Thanks, Ross," she adds over the voice of the lift.

  As the doors close he saunters over to Lorraine. "Want a hand as well?" he says so coyly it makes Agnes suck her teeth. Their conversation dwindles and grows blurred as the windowless cage lumbers downwards. Before it settles at the bottom of the shaft she can't hear them. It tells her that it's opening in a voice that seems slower than last time she heard it—perhaps the tape or whatever it uses to speak is developing a fault. The doors quiver like slabs of grey mud as a preamble to heaving themselves apart, and she blocks them with the chairs. She dodges out and drags the chairs after her and hobbles them onto the sales floor, to be greeted with a cry from Mad. "Here's the chair lady."

  About as many of the children cheer as mutter "Big deal" or one more word. "We'll pretend we didn't hear that, shall we," Mad says without looking directly at anyone, "and let's make sure we don't again. Anyes, I think you'd better take the little ones before their ears can get any grubbier."

  Agnes isn't certain only older children said the word, but she lifts six chairs off the stack to move them to the farthest alcove. A little girl jumps up from sitting crosslegged on the floor and lays her book on top of a shelf. "Shall I help carry?"

  "This is Jill's Bryony," Mad informs Agnes.

  "Thank you, Bryony," Agnes says and leans the stack towards her while she removes a chair. "You five come with us."

  Two boys scowl. "We aren't little," the squatter of the pair objects.

  "Youngsters, then," says Mad. "We'd like to be called that, wouldn't we, Anyes?"

  "We aren't them either," says his lanky friend with a sniff like a prelude to spitting.

  "You aren't teenagers, are you? You have to be teenagers to be in my quiz."

  "Won't you give me and Bryony a hand?" Agnes suggests. "We appreciate young gentlemen, don't we, Bryony?"

  The boys ungraciously grab a chair each and tramp after her. She thinks it best to ignore the word one grunts as they see she's leading them to Tiny Texts. Once everyone is seated she hands out pencils and paper. "Ready?" she says with more enthusiasm than any of the contestants except Bryony is displaying. "Listen carefully, then. Number one."

  She wonders if Mad gave her the wrong sheet, and then she sees the questions about books are aimed at the age group she's quizzing. There are also questions on bands in the charts, which all the children answer, and sports, which produce a conflict of cheers and boos when the answer has to do with Liverpool or Manchester. Mad's mistake appears to have been too many queries about books, since only Bryony attempts to answer every one. The boys who wanted to be thought older screw up their pages and drop them along with the pencils before stalking into the next alcove. Agnes is repeating the literary questions in case any of Bryony's opponents might make a belated guess when she hears the boys start to compete at loudness. Most of their words have a single syllable, but the longer ones are at least as bad. "Excuse me, could you stop that?" she calls as she hurries around the shelves.

  "Don't shout at us," the lanky boy smirks. "We're just reading your book."

  It should be in Tiny Texts. "I don't think so," says Agnes. "Will you give it here at once, please."

  He's eager she should have it, and in a moment she sees why. Each double page displays a picture and a solitary word for it, but the words have been crossed out and replaced in crude scrawled capitals with the ones she had to hush. Since Bryony has followed her, Agnes makes a swift decision. "Bryony, I'm trusting you to take this to your mummy and not look inside it. Give me your answer sheet to keep safe. Tell your mummy the book's defaced."

  Bryony hugs it to her chest as she heads for the counter and Jill, but she's halfway up the Religion aisle when a man accosts her. "That's a bit babyish for you, isn't it? More than a bit. What's the appeal? Come on, you can show me."

  "I'm supposed to take it to mummy, Dad."

  Agnes is confronting the boys. "Tell me the truth, now. You wrote all that, didn't you?"

  "We never," the lanky boy protests. "It was on the floor."

  "We haven't even got a pen."

  "Search us if you don't believe us."

  "You're not allowed to touch us. Anyway, he wouldn't have a pen. He can't write."

  "Neither can you either."

  "Never said I could."

  "Give over saying I can't, then."

  These are among the words they shout, together with a selection of the ones they were previously uttering. Agnes has told them twice that it's enough when Jake trots over, lowering his broad chubby freckled face and blinking lashes Agnes would be proud to sport. "Let's be polite, lads," he urges. "Ladies present. Other children too."

  The duo gape at him. "Why are you talking like that? Are you a queer?" is most of what the lanky boy responds.

  "That's what I am and proud of it. Now that'll have to be all, I'm afraid. Out of here till you remember how to behave."

  The boys stare at the hands he stretches out to usher them. "Keep your filthy paws off," the squat boy warns, which Agnes suspects he overheard his mother say except for an extra word or perhaps that too.

  "We'll say you tried to come up us, you dirty peedo," the lanky boy adds and much else in between.

  Agnes slips Bryony's answers into the hip pocket of her dress and grabs the boys by a shoulder each. "There won't be much point in saying that about me, will there? Come along now or—"

  The boys duck out of her grasp and dash through Psychology. "You touched us. You've had it now," one cries with embellishments as they fling books from the top shelves in their wake. Jake sprints after them, leaping over Jung, but they've fled the shop. Staff aren't supposed to pursue miscreants once they're out of the exit, since Texts isn't insured against whatever might happen next, and so he trudges back to Agnes. "I'll put them straight," he says.

  A nearby mother looks askance at that. While Jake retrieves the books as if they're injured birds and somehow his fault, Agnes picks up the boys' answer sheets. Their sole contents are drawings she would be embarrassed to see on a wall. She stuffs them in the pocket she has taken Bryony's sheet from and collects the rest. Bryony has outdone them by half a dozen answers and returns in time to see it. "This young lady is the winner," Agnes says, displaying the evidence.

  The others straggle off to find their parents. She's about to take Bryony t
o receive her prize when Woody darts out of the exit to the staffroom. "Why were you after those boys, Jake?"

  The nearby mother lets her wordless agreement with his doubts be heard as Jake holds up a textbook with a broken spine. "They were being stinky-mouthed," he says. "I chased them out and here's their revenge."

  "There's too much damage in this store."

  Woody sounds so accusing it's no wonder Jake refrains from exhibiting the other ruined volumes. Agnes is willing the confrontation to finish when the mother steers her young daughter over to Woody. "Are you the manager?" she demands.

  "That's me, ma'am. How may I help?"

  "We thought there was going to be a competition."

  "It's my impression we had one. I'm sorry if you missed it, but I'm sure there'll be—"

  An even sterner woman shoves one of her sons at him at the end of either arm. "Aren't you meant not to let staff or their relatives play?"

  "I don't believe the store has a specific policy on that, but I'd think—"

  "Then you should," she objects, and gives her sons a ventriloquistic shake. "Tell him what you told us."

  All three children start to clamour, but the girl's shrillness triumphs. "The one who won's mummy works here."

  "And you said the organiser took her answers and hid them, didn't you?" her mother prompts.

  It's to protect Bryony as much as herself that Agnes says "I didn't hide the answers. I just looked after them while Bryony was kind enough to take a damaged book to the counter."