Midnight Sun

by Ramsey Campbell

  "Shouldn't it be?"

  "S'pose so," Johnny said, clearly dissatisfied.

  "So what did you think of the rest of it?"

  "Good," Johnny said, so automatically that he contradicted himself.

  "I don't think it'll mean as much to anyone but us," Margaret said.

  That seemed so perceptive it stayed in Ellen's mind after she had put the children to bed. Rather than feel cold and lonely at the workroom desk she took the typescript to the dining-table and read through it again. Before long she found herself visualising the lady of the heights: eyes grey and bright as sunlit slate, pale skin smooth as untrodden snow, a long dress which looked intricately woven out of heather but which didn't hinder her barefoot climbing. She thought of sketching the images, but scribbled them down instead for Ben to consider, together with a few ideas for bringing the character alive in prose. That done, she felt ready for bed.

  She bolted the front door and locked the mortise-lock, though none of that seemed necessary in Stargrave, and checked the downstairs windows and the back door. As she switched off the kitchen light she heard a thin whisper of snow beyond the blind. When she glanced out of Johnny's window, however, the air above the moors was clear. She gave the sleeping children each a kiss and brushed back Margaret's hair from her forehead which was frowning at a dream.

  It took her a while to get warm under the duvet, and by then she was almost asleep. Perhaps that was why her dreams were cold, though they hardly seemed like hers at all. The only familiar image, which they kept repeating like a refrain, was Sterling Forest, crouching beneath its white shell. Beyond it and around it was icy blackness. If she didn't go into the forest she would have to venture under the bridge or into the unlit town, but she was afraid to move in any direction until she had determined where the whispering was coming from, or what the vast thin voice was saying from its throat which might be as wide as the sky – so afraid that she started awake.

  That wasn't the kind of dream to waken from alone in the dark. Nevertheless she relaxed almost at once, because Ben was home. She hoped he wouldn't leave the front door open long; an icy draught was reaching all the way up to her. She was awaiting the slam of the front door when she wakened enough to realise that he couldn't have let himself into the house. Both the front and back doors were bolted on the inside.

  She had just imagined he was there because she needed comforting, she told herself. She was all right now, the dream had gone away. But so had the last of her sleepiness, yet the impression which had greeted her as she awoke was growing. She was sure that she and the children were no longer alone in the house.

  The thought of the sleeping children jerked her out of bed. She grabbed her dressing-gown from the duvet, where she'd spread it for extra warmth. She dug her fists into the sleeves and tied it around her as she padded shivering to the door. She closed one hand around the doorknob, which felt like a sculpted lump of ice, and snatched the door open. A white blur the size of her head rose out of the dark in front of her face.

  It was her breath. The landing was so much colder than her room that she couldn't help flinching. The cold seemed to bring the darkness alive below her, a solid icy mass waiting for her to touch it unawares. She'd left the bedroom light turned off, but now she fumbled for the switch on the landing wall and pressed it, holding her breath to keep down the cry she was suddenly afraid she would have good cause to utter.

  The stairs were deserted. The children's doors were ajar as she had left them, but she could hear no sound from either room. By craning over the banister she saw that the front door was still bolted. Surely the house couldn't be so cold unless a window or an outer door was open. Her mind was frantically cataloguing the contents of the workroom, but she could think of nothing in there that would be of any use to her as a weapon. She darted back into her room and seized an empty wooden coat-hanger from the wardrobe, and ran on tiptoe down the stairs.

  She was shivering so much she had to hold the coat-hanger away from the wall and the banisters. Even her heartbeats felt shivery. "Don't you touch my children," she hissed through her chattering teeth. She reached the middle landing and stared into the dark of Margaret's room.

  Margaret was in bed. As Ellen made out her shape the girl shifted beneath the duvet, her hair spilling over the edge of the mattress. Ellen tiptoed to the adjoining room and peered around the door. That must be Johnny under his duvet, however oddly flat it looked. She took a nervous step forwards and saw that the shape was a faint shadow on the duvet. Johnny wasn't there.

  She sucked in a breath which felt like a shudder, and made herself step into the room, praying that the sight meant what she thought it did, afraid to switch on the light until she knew. But yes, it was Johnny's shadow on the bed. He was leaning out of the open window, his head and arms reaching for the dark.

  He must be sleepwalking; otherwise, why didn't he move when she spoke to him? "You'll catch your death, Johnny," she said, and put one arm around his waist to pull him back while she closed the window, beyond which she glimpsed a hint of snow, eddying around the corner of the house towards the forest. Under the pajama jacket his body was dismayingly cold. She carried him to his bed, trying to persuade herself that she'd felt him begin to shiver but knowing that the shiver had been her own. She deposited him gently on the bed and then, before she made for the light-switch, she dared to look directly at him. Whatever she had been trying not to admit she was afraid to see, it wasn't this. His hands and face appeared to be glittering dimly like ice.

  She ran to the switch. The light dazzled her. As she blinked, the traces of crystal melted from his hands and face, leaving his stiff features looking as though they had just been washed. Then his mouth twitched unhappily and, thank God, his eyes flickered open momentarily. "Where's Daddy?" he mumbled. "When's he coming home?"

  "Soon, Johnny, soon. Let's get you warm." She sat him on the edge of the bed and set about rubbing him from head to foot with a warm towel from the bathroom. "You gave me such a fright," she murmured. "We'll have to ask Mr Elgin to put a lock on your window if you're going to start sleepwalking."

  He seemed not to have heard anything she'd said. His mouth twitched again as though it was stiff. "When's Daddy coming home?"

  "We'll see him on Saturday." She pressed her mouth against his to warm his lips. "Why do you keep asking? What were you dreaming?"

  "Wanted to know."

  "Of course you did. 1 understand. He's never been away from us like this before. Don't fret, he'll be back."

  The boy shook his head impatiently and let out a loud breath. "Wanted to know."

  The breath sounded so like an unspoken word that Ellen blurted "Who did, Johnny? Someone in your dream?"

  His face crumpled as if he wasn't sure how the memory affected him. "The big white," he said.

  She thought of an enormous butterfly, and wondered why the vague image caused her to shiver. "It's gone now. You were dreaming."

  She finished warming him at last, and dabbed away drops of moisture which lingered in his hair. When she laid him on his side on the mattress and covered him with the duvet, he was almost asleep. She fixed the catch of the window as immovably as she could. "No more roaming, Johnny," she murmured, kissing his forehead, and left his bedroom door open. As she tiptoed to her own room she glanced at the front door, and couldn't avoid wishing it had already let Ben into the house. "Come back soon," she whispered, hugging herself.

  THIRTY

  Ben awoke convinced that he ought to be on his way home. He was halfway out of bed before he remembered that he had yet to sign books at the shop. He listened to the world awakening around him – a bird shrilling at the dawn from a branch of the cherry tree outside the window, one of Dominic's parents plodding downstairs and back up – and leafed through books chosen at random from the several bookcases in the room. He wasn't reading, only occupying himself in order to avoid getting in anyone's way so early, and that gave him time to think.

  Last night he'd falle
n asleep thinking of the Milligans, having gone to bed before them to sleep off his long day. He'd heard Dominic's mother reading to her husband, whose eyes had grown too weak for him to read for more than a few minutes at a time. Whenever anything she read revived a memory for either of them she would stop so that they could share it aloud. Ben had been touched by this, but he'd thought it should mean more to him. Now, as he blew the dust off a faded book whose author he had never heard of, he wondered if it had reminded him of how he'd realised yesterday that his own books were lacking.

  As he'd read through The Boy Who Caught The Snowflakes, not a line of it had inspired him in the way imagining the story had. Ellen's illustrations were truer to his inspiration than the writing was, and more genuine in themselves. He was sure that they were the source of the appeal of all the books.

  Once he'd met the publicist the day had become too demanding for Ben to reflect on any of this, but now he didn't find it as dispiriting as he might have. He'd done his best with the books, and now they were separate from him. They were really Ellen's books – Howard Bellamy had virtually told him so on meeting him – but that was a reason for him to feel prouder than ever of her. The trouble was, it also made today's session at the bookshop seem even more irrelevant to his real task.

  Perhaps once the bookshop was out of the way his task would become clear to him. Last night, drifting off to sleep surrounded by old books, he'd thought it had to do with Edward Sterling. He'd realised that while he had been searching for his own books in Charing Cross Road he hadn't even considered trying to track down Edward Sterling's last book. He no longer needed it, he understood that much – because being denied it as a child had caused him to retell its stories, having forgotten where he'd found them. Whatever remained to him to tell or to perform, he felt instinctively that it had been with him since before he could remember.

  The knock on his door and Dominic's announcement that the bathroom was free came as something of a relief. Ben took his time over bathing and shaving, though his thoughts had given way to nervous anticipation, and then ventured down to Mrs Milligan's inescapable breakfast. "That's it, you tuck in," she said, dumping more bacon on his plate as soon as he'd made room. "You've a big day ahead."

  "We've been telling all our customers for weeks how you were coming back to us," her husband said.

  "The second coming of Ben Sterling," Mrs Milligan suggested with a wry grimace at her own wickedness.

  "Mother," Dominic reproved her, and turned to Ben. "What will you do until this afternoon?"

  "Eat, by the look of it," Ben refrained from saying. "I'll revisit some of my old haunts," he said.

  Outside, where all the parked cars had gone blind overnight with frost, he decided to visit the houses where he used to live. His aunt's hadn't changed much, though there were dolls in the windows and more stray twigs poking out of the shrubs in the garden than she would have allowed to grow, but it seemed small and unfamiliar. When he strolled to his and Ellen's first house it looked shrunken too, and secretive with net curtains. He was glad Ellen wasn't there to see it, although the sight of it only confirmed the impression which had been developing in him, he didn't know for how long, that the whole of his life in Norwich had been no more than an interruption.

  After a pub lunch which he would have been unable to describe as soon as he was out of the pub, he strolled for a while through the historic part of Norwich, old uneven streets which no longer seemed ancient enough to satisfy him, and then headed for the bookshop. A photograph of Ellen and himself was enshrined in the window by their books. Mr Milligan opened the door and applauded him, to the bemusement of the customers. "Here's our celebrity," he announced, so enthusiastically that Ben had to feel pleased for him.

  During the next hour the shop sold over forty of the Sterlings' books. Whenever a child brought him one to autograph, Ben wished that Ellen were there to see – that they were meeting her rather than him. As he kept up a stream of conversation, he felt as if he were talking for her. The last child was led away from the cash desk, clutching a copy of The Boy Who Caught The Snowflakes and being told that it mustn't be unwrapped until Christmas, just as Mrs Milligan bore a cake into the shop. The skullcap of white icing was inscribed well done, ben in pink so fierce it looked inedible. "That's fantastic, Mrs Milligan," he said. "I wish the children could have had some. Do you mind if I let Ellen know how we did?"

  "You keep asking," she chided him, though behind her Dominic looked as if he would have liked to be asked.

  She cut the cake as he dialled and tried to indicate to her that he would be happy with not quite so generous a slice. He listened to the ringing of the distant phone and eventually replaced the receiver. "No luck?" Dominic said.

  "Ellen must be on her way to the school. I'll try again later. This is really kind of you," he told Dominic's mother as he bit through the white icing to the sponge beneath.

  "We'll save some for you to take home to the family if you like."

  "That's kinder still. I'll tell them when I speak to them," Ben said and took refuge in the staffroom, hoping that a few minutes by himself wou}d calm his nerves. Surely it was the last of the energy he'd used to entertain his audience which was making him feel as if he should be rushing onwards. One or more of the Milligans kept coming to find him, and he chattered to them, hardly aware of what he was saying. He accepted coffee, and then a refill of the mug, by which time it was four o'clock. Ellen would be home, the children weren't due to go anywhere. He went smiling to the phone, and listened to the ringing until his smile grew so stiff he had to let it fade. As the hands of the clocks in the jeweller's across the street crawled silently towards fiveo'clock Ben tried the Stargrave number several times, and each time the ringing seemed more distant in the midst of the silence and the growing dark. At last he could stand it no longer. "I'm sure there's nothing wrong," he lied, "but I think I'll head back."

  THIRTY-ONE

  It was almost six o'clock before he left for Stargrave. Dominic's mother followed him to the Milligans' house, trotting as fast as was safe for the plateful of cake she was bearing. He would have taken it from her to hurry her up, except that then she might have realised that he was more anxious than he was trying to appear. At least he had time to call home again while she searched for a container in which to pack the remains of the cake. But the phone in the Sterling house only rang and rang far away in the dark.

  Mrs Milligan was securing the carton of cake with a festive bow when the rest of the family came home, Mr Milligan enthusing about Ben's performance at the shop. He wouldn't let Ben go until Ben had inscribed a copy of each Sterling book to the Milligans. "You'll have a coffee at least before you set off, won't you, Ben?" Mrs Milligan pleaded while he was struggling to think of a different inscription for each book, and he seemed to have no words left with which to explain a refusal. "We don't want the cold getting to you on your way home," she said.

  While he sipped the scalding coffee as rapidly as he could she began to wonder aloud why Ellen wasn't answering. "Maybe she was out shopping, buying something special for the prodigal. Try her again if you like," she said, and when he had: "Maybe she's stopped to gossip. You know how we women are."

  "We all of us talk too much and say too little," Mr Milligan said.

  His wife took that as a rebuke. She turned her back to him and cleared away the dinner-plate and cutlery she'd set for Ben. Ben gulped the last gritty inch of coffee, grabbed his bag from beside his chair and stood up. "Thanks for having me. Next year you may see how grateful I am to all of you," he said, thinking of the book he planned to dedicate to them, but for an instant his plan seemed lost in a darkness which lay ahead.

  Dominic carried the boxed cake out of the house and placed it on the passenger seat while Ben threw his bag onto the rear seat. Beyond the lit hall Ben saw Dominic's parents settling their disagreement before they came out arm in arm. "Give our love to your family," Mrs Milligan told him.

  "Godspeed," Dominic said.
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  "So long as he doesn't exceed the speed limit," his father said, and was rewarded with a helpless grin from Dominic. As Ben swung the car away he saw the three of them beneath the leafless tree, standing so close together they appeared to be supporting one another. The sight stayed with him as he drove out of the lit streets.

  The road wandered for hours before it reached the Al. It gave him no chance to think, but it couldn't stop him feeling. Whenever the headlights showed him a place-name which the family had enjoyed on their journeys to Stargrave – Swines-head, Stragglethorpe, Coddington, Clumber Park – he felt increasingly nervous. Not long after eight o'clock he had to stop for petrol near a pay telephone, shielded to some extent from the uproar of the motorway by a plastic hood which, in the glare of the lamps above the forecourt, looked like a giant helmet carved from ice. He dialled and poised the coin, which was chill even though it had come from his trouser pocket, and listened to the feeble pulse of the phone bell. Suddenly there was a lull on the motorway, and he heard the ringing isolated by a vast silence. All at once he could no longer fend off thoughts he had been afraid to think. He was hardly conscious of digging the edge of the mouthpiece into his lips while he tried to make up his mind what to do: ring someone in Stargrave, invent a story which would send them looking for Ellen and the children? He didn't know where the family might be or what to say to have them searched for: his imagination seemed to be out of his reach and fleeing towards Stargrave. He flung the receiver into its cradle and ran to the car.

  Most of the vehicles on the motorway were lorries, which left the outer lane clear. He shouldn't be staying in it, he shouldn't be driving at over ninety miles an hour; suppose the police stopped him? He felt as if he was trying to leave his thoughts behind. He knew why last night he had fallen asleep thinking of the Milligans growing old together, and why the sight of Dominic and his family had followed him as he'd driven away.