The Overnight (41 page)

It's down the alley by the nameless properties. It's in the guards' hut, a long white almost featureless box with small smeary windows as grey as the backdrop of fog. Ross is unable to distinguish a word, but that doesn't matter. There must be at least two people in the building; indeed, two sets of muddy footprints lead to the door.

Suppose Nigel's in the hut? What will Ross have to say to him? He's starting to feel awkward and embarrassed, but slowing down even slightly allows the chill to fasten on him. He rubs his arms so hard the chafing muffles the voice, which he's beginning to suspect may not belong to anybody in the cabin. If it's on the radio, someone has to be listening. Perhaps there's only one listener, since one trail leads out of the building, the other in.

His shadow smears itself across the whitish door like another example of vandalism as he reaches for the metal handle. Whoever's in the cabin must be asleep to have allowed the radio to drift so far off the station. The misshapen voice sounds as though it's trying to force its words, if there is more than one, through mud. "Hello?" Ross shouts and knocks on the flimsy door.

That seems to rouse a guard to switch off the radio, but not to answer. "Hello," Ross calls, resting his fingers on the icy handle. At the end of a pause that lets him watch several of his breaths join the fog he realises what is causing him to hesitate. To be so muddy, wouldn't all the smudged footprints need to have started from outside the hut? That simply means they don't belong to whoever is inside. "I'll come in, shall I?" Ross shouts and pushes the handle down.

The door swings inwards, disclosing that the cabin is lit only from outside. It doesn't contain much to illuminate. A shelf extends along the left side to a metal sink. The shelf is strewn with pages of a basic newspaper and also holds a microwave oven, an electric kettle, an empty mug and one half full of a liquid that must be tea or equally stale coffee, however much it imitates mud. Beside it an ashtray is stuffed with butts, and at first Ross thinks at least one of them is smouldering, but he must have stirred the ash by opening the door; the hint of drifting greyness surely can't be fog. To the right of the sink an open door reveals a toilet with an upright lid, which the dimness turns into an oval mask so primitive it's featureless. Two swivel chairs, one behind the other, face the entrance, but of course they didn't swing to greet his knock, nor did their occupants jump out of them to hide. If that's absurd, is the situation any less so? The cabin is deserted, and he can't see a radio.

There has to be one, which must have wandered off the station as he knocked, though in that case shouldn't he be hearing static? He shoves the door against the wall as he's compelled to step into the cabin to discover what he hasn't understood. The bare floorboards yield underfoot more than he likes, but where in the cramped dimness could anyone be hiding? If he let himself he could think they're behind the door. It isn't as close to the wall as he assumed; there's an obstruction between them. As he leans hard on the door without wanting to define why, he senses that the soft obstacle is exerting an equal pressure; perhaps it's about to push harder. It isn't an experience he's anxious to prolong. He slams the door after him as he dashes towards the shopfronts.

Even Texts seems like a refuge, but he still has to summon help for Agnes. Once he reaches the spillage of discoloured light along the alley he twists around, but the door of the hut hasn't opened. He's less sure that the thick voice hasn't recommenced mumbling; perhaps the hindrance behind the door was the radio, which he managed to set off again. He hurries out of the alley towards Stack o'Steak.

He's passing the supermarket when he falters. Is someone working late? Will they let him phone if he shows them his Texts badge? He advances to the nearest door and squints past the unstaffed checkout desks into the aisle where he thought he glimpsed a figure crouching or kneeling at a shelf. "Anyone in there?" he shouts and knocks on the glass door, which tolls like a drowned bell. "I'm from Texts. We've got a problem."

Perhaps Frugo has as well. Belatedly he notices that the only illumination in the supermarket comes from the spotlights. Would anyone be working late in that? He has to lift his wrist almost to his face to discern through the condensation inside the plastic on his watch that it's past two in the morning. They must have locked a stray cat or a dog in Frugo by mistake; at the far end of the aisle the indistinct hunched shape is flinging packets off the next to lowest shelf. Ross doesn't linger to watch. He's supposed to be phoning from Stack o'Steak.

The fog mocks his pace by grudging every inch it releases of the supermarket before it yields up any of the diner. The k and a and e of the sign, bright yellow letters embedded in fat orange outlines, look not just dulled but doused by fog. He thinks it has stolen their glow until he sees it has kept none for itself. The sign doesn't matter, but the fog appears to have overcome the light inside the diner too. He plants his hands against the window with a concerted thump he's desperate enough to hope will bring the staff to find out what he wants, and leans his forehead against the cold glass.

The chill fails to enliven his brain, which feels tired past stupidity, unable to stop insisting like a child denied a treat that the diner is meant to be open twenty-four hours. His breaths swell up and fade from the pane while his hot eyes do their best to persuade him that the interior is lit as it should be. At last he grasps that the light beyond the window is more of the sludgy glow he's standing in, because the kindergarten colours of the furniture and ketchup containers and oversized cruets have all been simplified to shades of grey or black, as though a child too unintelligent to make any use of the items has muddied them instead. He can only assume the diner is closed because the motorway is, but that needn't mean the staff have gone home. He tramps to the glass doors and drums his fists on them. "Anyone still here?" he shouts. "I'm from Texts."

He's about to explain that it's the bookshop in case it has always been as invisible to them as it is now to him when he notices marks on the floor in front of the counter. Footprints oughtn't to be so nearly circular, and what kind of dance has someone been performing? As he grows aware of the photograph of a giant hamburger among the unlit images above the grill behind the counter, he recognises the objects strewn across the linoleum. They're hamburger patties glistening with rawness. There are at least a dozen, and every one has a piece missing. If those are bites, they're all the more disconcerting in their lack of shape.

He doesn't want to interpret the sight. It can't touch him except by letting the chill of the fog overwhelm him. His legs have begun to shake as they once did when he was a child with a fever that felt like a nightmare from which he couldn't waken. All he can do with them is run while he rubs his arms with hands he can barely feel, but which way does he run? To his car to drive to the nearest telephone box, and the route around the stretch of pavement he hasn't already traversed is shorter. Besides, it will take him past the shop so that he can inform Connie of his plan, or perhaps someone else should take over. Ross might prefer to stay with his colleagues, however the suffocated light makes them look. He's beginning to feel as if he has been cast out in the fog for not saving Lorraine.

He can still save Agnes. Though that isn't remotely as serious, it's something he's able to achieve—something Woody can't prevent. Perhaps once Ross has called about Agnes he may allow himself to get so lost in the fog that the only route he knows will lead home. The prospect lends speed to his agitated legs, and so do his surroundings. The building next to the diner is practically completed, but instead of windows it has sheets of whitish plastic that appear to billow stealthily as Ross dashes past, unless he's seeing the antics of his own faint distorted shape. Beyond that shopfront the murk bristles with poles that sprout from a shop-sized rectangle of pallid concrete, as if the metal sketch of a building has been abandoned because nobody could think how to finish it. The fog that trickles down the poles reclaims them as he sprints past a foundation surrounded by the lowest courses of its walls, which put him in mind of a ruin or an ancient construction whose purpose has been forgotten. Would the route across the car park be quicker? He's running like a puppet along the pavement while he struggles to decide, and a wall so mud-caked and uneven he can't believe it's newly built has loomed into view ahead, when someone calls him.

At least, he thinks it's his name. It's a whisper that's mostly a hiss, and surely he doesn't recognise the voice. "Lorraine?" he gasps.

"Ross."

Growing louder has lowered its pitch, and he's dismayed that he mistook it for Lorraine's. Remember but get on with living, his father advised when he saw what a lump of depression Ross kept turning into at home, as if the man knows anything about failing to save someone rather than just being unable to keep her. "Nigel?" Ross calls with a good deal more certainty. "Where are you?"

"Here."

He's somewhere behind the unfinished buildings. Halting makes Ross begin to shiver like a twig in a storm. As he heads between the abandoned stubby walls he feels as if he's blundering into a land of dwarfs no taller than the topmost bricks. The fog uncovers the wet black road that leads past the retail park to the motorway, and the spiky six-foot hedge along the far side of the road pokes blurred holes in the rotting curtain of murk. "I can't see you," Ross complains.

"Here."

Nigel is in the field beyond the hedge, which has broken out in beads of fog like sweat. However welcome Nigel's company is, Ross is cold enough without risking wet feet. "What are you doing there?" he calls.

"See."

He must be impatient if he has so few words at his disposal. Perhaps he's as eager not to be alone as Ross, who jogs across the deserted road to search for a gap in the hedge. Its countless beads have begun to remind him of dull yet watchful eyes. He's behind the diner when he finds a stile half overgrown by the bushes on either side. He takes hold of the right-hand post and steps on the lower rung. The wood feels spongy and slippery, and his handful of it exudes moisture as chill as the fog. Resentment close to disgust makes him shout "I've lost you. Where have you got to?"

"Here."

Nigel's somewhere on or near the muddy glistening path that extends out of the blanket of shadow draped across the hedge, impaled on it. As Ross clambers over the stile his silhouette appears to lift its head above the roof of the diner before flinching out of sight like a soldier ducking into a trench. He pretends he didn't see that or feel it was in any way appropriate as he plants one foot on the earth.

Under the lush sodden grass it's even less firm than he expected. His heel slithers over it before sinking at least an inch, and he glimpses moisture swelling up around his shoe. Surely the terrain has to be more solid farther on for Nigel to sound so unconcerned about wherever he's waiting. Ross lowers his other foot and attempts to steady himself before he relinquishes his grip on the oozing stile. As he plods cautiously forward his shadow hauls itself with a series of jerks out of the trench it's part of and begins to merge with the darkening earth. He's out of the darkness cast by the diner, but with every squelching pace he takes the fog around and behind him grows dirtier, as though it's sucking up mud. He hasn't progressed more than a few hundred yards along the flattened slimy trail when he finds he can barely distinguish it from the rest of the soaked field. "How much further?" he protests.

"Here."

Nigel sounds close. The question is whether the last of the glow from the retail park will have fallen short by the time Ross finds him. He must be able to see, otherwise how can he show Ross what's there? Perhaps that's it ahead, a low mound about six feet long over which the hem of the fog is trailing. No, it's a man stretched flat on the earth to peer into some kind of burrow. It's Nigel. "What are you doing?" Ross blurts.

Nigel doesn't answer. He's so engrossed in his discovery that he doesn't even move. What could be so fascinating it would make him lie in the mud? Ross hurries to him, but his haste is worse than useless; his vision has to catch up with the thick shifting gloom, and he can't separate the hollow Nigel is examining from the overgrown earth around it. He crouches, gripping his knees so their shivering won't topple him over, and ducks his head as near to Nigel's as he can without losing his balance.

His eyes still aren't equal to the dimness. He won't even consider what he appears to be seeing. With a grimace he rests one hand on the earth, which seems to shift to greet it, and brings his head almost level with Nigel's. The choked glow from the retail park begins to settle faintly on it—that is, his vision starts to grasp what's in front of him. He struggles to believe he's mistaken, but the sight is just too clear to be illusory. There's no hollow around Nigel's head. His face is buried so deep in the soil that it covers his ears.

How long has it been since he spoke? Surely not long enough for him to have stopped breathing. Ross stays more or less in his crouch as he shuffles frantically to grab Nigel's shoulders from in front. Has Nigel already tried to raise himself? Every joint of his thumbs and every inch of his fingers are buried in the earth at the ends of his arms flung wide. Ross heaves at Nigel's shoulders while he labours to stand up, but Nigel won't budge. In desperation Ross thrusts his fingertips into the mud, squeezing it under his nails, and locates Nigel's cheekbones. When he tugs at them Nigel's head wobbles up on its stiffening neck as the ground that was moulded to his face emits a slobbery gasp. Tears of relief or gratitude stream down his blackened cheeks, and then Ross sees the liquid is part of the mud that coats not only Nigel's face but also his eyes, which would otherwise be staring blindly. It has plugged his nostrils too, and appears to have forced his jaws to gape their widest so that it can fill his mouth.

The sound that escapes Ross as he flounders backwards leaves its words behind. Nigel's face slaps the earth, which sets about reclaiming it at once. Ross sprawls full length on his back and jackknifes upwards, terrified that the mud will swallow him. He's unable to think or to orient himself. Although he seems to remember approaching Nigel from the far side, the glow from the retail park is behind Ross now. As he staggers upright it's strong enough to spill his faint shadow over the mound of hair, all that remains visible of Nigel's engulfed head. It looks as though one of the tufts of muddy grass has been mounted on his neck. Ross strives to clear his mind of the sight as he flees, shivering with his entire body and maddened by the icy wetness that clings to the whole of the back of him, towards the retail park.