Read Online The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell - Free Book Online Page B

encrusted with mud are strewn about the floor and block the sink. He uses a handful of paper towels to dump them in the toilet, then he takes most of a roll of towels to rub mud off his clothes. He keeps being distracted by the absurd notion that the next time he raises his head, the mirror will show him he isn't alone. Of course behind him there's only the greenish wall as blank as fog. Once he has rid himself of all the mud he can he sits in the staffroom with an old friend, War and Peace.
    He's feeding himself the first sentence and a Japanese mouthful when he hears voices in the office. "I forgot to tell you I was sitting on something for you, Jill," Connie says.
    "Is it very squashed?"
    "That might be funnier if you hadn't said very."
    "Sorry. Clumsy of me. Is it squashed?"
    "Not so funny second time round. I've got your author photos, so if you could put the promotion up today that would be brill. Get your imagination working."
    "It's been doing that quite a lot lately."
    "Did you want to tell me something?"
    "I don't know about want. Let's leave it, shall we."
    "No, let's not. Look, Jill, if I'd known you'd been married to Geoff …"
    "He's nothing to me, so don't give my feelings a thought."
    "That's very, sorry, what?"
    "I was going to say my daughter's are a different matter."
    "Is she likely to be coming to the shop much?"
    "Not much, I shouldn't think. Even less if she's banned."
    "No call for that, surely. Shall we just try leaving our home lives at home? That's the pro's way. Why the look?"
    "I wasn't sure what you meant for a moment."
    "Got it now? Super. Here's Brodie Oates for you. I'm giving you a window display. Get me all the custom you can."
    "I don't know if I'll be as good at that as you are, Connie."
    A silence follows in which Wilf imagines both women pretending they've no idea what Jill means. He's about to make a noise to indicate they aren't alone when Jill opens the door. She and Connie stare at him as though he has been eavesdropping, which he has. He fills his mouth with sushi and tries to take refuge in reading the book.
    "Eh bien, mon prince..." He can't progress past that while the women are staring at him, and even once the door is shut and Jill is dealing the stairs a series of blows with her feet his mind keeps snagging on the words. He knows Tolstoy is demonstrating that French was the second language of the Russian aristocracy in Napoleonic times, but the thought is no help. He reminds himself what a joy it was to be able to read any book, one a day sometimes, but the memory falls short of his feelings: it's as though greyness like a combination of fog and cobwebs has settled over his brain. Abey Ann, mon prance … A B Ann … A Bloody Awful Nonsensical Nonsense … Has Slater done this to him? Blaming his old enemy only wastes time when he needs to regain himself. He shoves a forkful of sushi in his dry mouth and swallows hard as he sees from his watch that he has been rereading the first line for minutes. Can't he entice himself into the story by recalling its scope? The romances, the duel, the society occasions, the hunt, the battles, above all the people? When he turns to the list of characters at the front of the book, the names might as well be lumps of mud.
    Bezuhov, Rostov, Bolkonsky, Kuragin … They sound like consonants rasping together—like language groping for itself and failing to take hold. He knows it's his mind that's doing so, which is worse. When he returns to the opening paragraph the names seem to lose shape, filling his head like chunks of a substance too primitive to have meaning. Are they why he can't read more than a phrase at a time and takes so long over each one that its sense has sunk out of reach by the time he drags himself to the end of the sentence? The paragraph is less than eight lines long, yet he hasn't finished it when he scrapes the last forkful out of the plastic container. As his eyes labour back to the first words, Greg's voice appears above