Read Online Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell - Free Book Online Page B

where I am if you need to talk," Mabel had wanted to tell the old lady — but mightn't that have brought her to Mabel's house as, perhaps, she grew more senile? In retrospect, too late, that seemed unlikely. Holding her head high, Charlotte had stalked out of the shop so abruptly that Ben's mother had had to trot to keep up with her. Mabel had never seen her to speak to again, but surely that was no reason for Mabel to feel guilty about the car crash.
    Nobody knew for certain what had caused it, even if the only witness had seen the Sterlings arguing as their car had passed hers — even if the witness had thought she'd seen the people in the back seat, Ben's mother and grandfather, trying to calm down an old woman. Perhaps Charlotte had finally lost her temper at the way they treated her, but could that have been enough to cause the crash on a moorland road where you could see for miles? It must have been. Surety there was no need to wonder if Charlotte had deliberately caused the accident to put a stop to something she'd imagined or to save Ben from his family.
    Mabel told herself that she had been reading her own anxiety about the little boy into Charlotte's behaviour, and huddled closer to the oven. Perhaps she wouldn't think about the Sterlings any more until she could discuss her thoughts with someone; just now they were making her feel vulnerable. Had she caught a chill? Though she would be disappointed if she had to forego midnight mass, she thought she might be well advised to take a glass of brandy up to bed once the last tray of pies was out of the oven. At least the tap had finally stopped dripping, but it would require some effort for her to wait for the pies if she kept on shivering like this. Could she have left the front door open? No, the cold was coming from the direction of the window, for her back felt like ice. The casement must have opened somehow. She staggered to her feet, her legs trembling, and waved her hands to try and clear away the sudden mist of her breath.
    The window was closed tight. It was closed, even though an icicle was hanging from the tap. At first she didn't understand what else she was seeing. Even when she held her breath until her head swam, the window still looked pale and blurred. She flapped her hands at the air as best she could — they were beginning to feel stiff and unfamiliar — and then she realised that the pallor wasn't in the air, it was on the window itself. Ice was spreading across the entire window, so swiftly she could see the translucent tendrils growing.
    She couldn't move. Her legs felt withered and unstrung, barely capable of supporting her. An intricate circular pattern of ice was spreading from the centre of the window as if a focus of intense cold was approaching the glass. It was like a mask, Mabel thought with a terrible clarity: a mask for a head that must be wider than she dared imagine, the head of a presence so cold that its advance was causing the ice to form — a presence, she knew suddenly, whose attention her thoughts had drawn to her. She sensed its hugeness in the dark outside her cottage. Please make it go away, please let her be preserved from seeing what it looked like behind its mask of ice. She vowed before God to stop thinking if that would make it go away ...
    And then she had a thought which would have made her clench her fists if she had been able to move them. If her thinking of Ben Sterling had brought this out of the night to her, what might it want of him? She could feel the arctic cold settling over her like sleep made tangible, but she mustn't let go: someone had to keep the little boy away from whatever was waiting for him. Then the ice on the window spread onto the wall like marble coming elaborately to life, and she felt that happening inside her too. As she fell helplessly towards the stove, her thoughts were extinguished like a match.

    THINGS OVERHEARD

    "Understand me, when I talk of purity. I don't mean a little matter,