Ramsey Campbell - Midnight Sun

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, but my purity – the purity I have in mind – is distinguished and aloof… metaphysical, of the stars… of the big spaces…"

David Lindsay, Devil's Tor

The children were expecting London to be an adventure, and it proved to be one. Ellen was congratulating herself on having navigated the Volkswagen into the West End despite the lunch-time traffic when they were confronted by a sign which said Oxford Street was closed to private cars. Now Ellen saw why it was surrounded by so many one-way arrows on the map. The car tailgating Ben's blared its horn at him for braking, and a businessman crossing in front of him brandished two fingers as if he had sounded the horn. "That's a bad example," ten-year-old Margaret advised her brother.

"I expect he was wishing us success," Ben said. "V for victory. I don't mean to change the subject, but where do I go now?"

The map appeared to have turned into a mass of arrows which collided and dodged away like a diagram of turbulence. "Across and next right," Ellen said, since that seemed to be the only way to go.

The route took them past the British Museum. "That's where they have lots of old weapons, isn't it, Dad?" seven-year-old Johnny said. "Could we go and see them if there's time?"

"I don't suppose they'd have an old tank we could use to make our way to where we're going," Ben wondered, showing his teeth at a No Entry sign.

"Only if there's time," Johnny said rather plaintively. "We aren't going to be late, are we? Won't they publish your book if we're late?"

"I'm sure they will, sweetie," Ellen said, turning 'to smile at his thin pale eager face, almost a miniature of his father's except for his hair, which was black like hers. "Be a little quiet now until we get there."

Shaftesbury Avenue led them across Cambridge Circus, beyond which Ben raced the oncoming traffic into a wide street, beating a double-decker bus to the intersection so narrowly that Johnny cheered while Margaret screamed and Ellen held her breath. Traffic wardens and women wearing fishnet stockings prowled a labyrinth of streets made even narrower by illegally parked cars, some immobilised by wheel-clamps. Whenever a gap opened in the traffic there seemed to be a taxi poised to dart into it. Ben drummed the wheel as if he was about to fling up his hands, and then he bumped the car over the kerb into a oneway street. "A miracle. A space."

Most of the parking meters in the street had bags over their heads, but the one at the end was working. He steered the car into the space and jumped out, and was reaching in his pocket when he read the sign on the meter. "How much for ten minutes? At this rate we'll just about have time to walk to the end of the street and back. My curse on whoever's responsible. May their noses turn into sausages and be eaten by dogs, may their toes grow so long they have to tie them in knots to walk

Anxiety and mirth and dismay because she'd brought no money were chasing one another over Margaret's long delicate oval face. "What comes after noses and toes?"

"Don't ask, or something might be after yours," Ellen said, searching her own purse. "Oh dear, the milkman took all my change."

"Shall I ask that lady in the doorway if she can change your notes, Mummy?" Johnny suggested.

"I think she might misinterpret your intentions, Johnny," Ben said, squeezing Ellen's knee and winking at her as he climbed into the car. "Let's blunder onwards. I see now, this is like a kind of life-size board game where the object is to avoid Oxford Street. I only hope this isn't an illegal move."

He backed to the intersection and was veering left when Margaret said "What's the name of your and Mummy's publishers?"

"Any other time I'd enjoy repeating it. Ember, a subsidiary of Firebrand Books."

"We just saw it."..

"Across the road you just came out of," Johnny gabbled, and Margaret added, "Where a lady's jumping up and down and waving."

Ellen looked back. On the far side of the crossroads a young woman was pointing at their car and gesturing with her other hand as she tried to cross the intersection. "She's telling us to go left twice and come back," Ellen guessed.

"You don't think her idea of fun could be misdirecting strangers."

When they managed to return to the crossroads the young woman was still there. She ran to the car as it turned right. She was wearing a moss-green suit, green tights and dark green shoes, and struck Ellen as altogether pixie-like, even her smile which was disproportionately wide for her small triangular face. "I didn't think there could be many families with children cruising through Soho. If I'd known you were coming by car I'd have given you better directions."

"We thought driving would be cheaper than training it," Ben said.

"Let me show you our car park and then we'll eat. You kids must be starving." She jogged beside the car as it coasted down the ramp beneath the Firebrand building. "I'm Kerys Thorn, as if you didn't know," she said when the Sterlings piled out of the vehicle. "It's really ace to meet you two at last after so much talking on the phone. How does Italian food for lunch sound? Slurp, slurp, if it's spaghetti, would you say, kids?"

Johnny giggled. "Sounds like him eating most things," Margaret said.

"You should hear me eating Chinese soup, Margaret," Kerys said.

"My name's really Margery."

"Do your mum and dad know?"

"We're kept informed of changes," Ellen said, and gave Margaret a kiss when the girl frowned at her.

Kerys led the Sterlings into the dull January daylight and through a confusion of streets to the restaurant, racing Johnny to it when they reached the block where it stood. A fat waiter who looked ready to burst into song ushered the party to their table as soon as he saw Kerys and brought them a bottle of Krug. "Here's to a bestseller. Success and long lives to us all," she proposed, and nudged Johnny when he made a face at the taste of his token glassful while Margaret demurely sipped hers. "We have to drink this stuff because we're grownups," she told him and helped him read the menu, which was half as tall as he was. When he remarked loudly on the prices before Ellen could hush him, Kerys nudged him again. "Ember's paying. You have whatever your mum and dad say you can have," she murmured in his ear, and Ellen found herself growing increasingly fond of her.