Ramsey Campbell - Midnight Sun

That was how Ben spent much of the summer. He read all the fantasies and myths and legends he could find, partly because he knew his aunt wouldn't quite approve, and some of the science fiction Dominic liked, which led Ben to the astronomy books. The measurements of space and time, the photographs of far stars and of points of light which proved to be composed of thousands of stars, filled him with an awe which felt like the edge of a delicious panic. Sometimes he was glad when Mrs Milligan rescued him from these thoughts by bringing him a bowl of cereal or a fried-egg sandwich from the house. Otherwise Mr Milligan could be relied upon to provide some diversion, reading aloud to prospective customers or trying to dissuade people from ordering books he disapproved of or disentangling authors' names and titles from their memories, whenever Ben's thoughts threatened to grow too large and dark.

When he lay in bed at night, however, there was nothing to distract him, especially once he was back at school and it was growing dark by the time he went to bed. Soon there was an autumn chill in the air, and he felt as if the summer had failed to keep it away, just as the daylight couldn't hold back the nights. As the nights lengthened, it seemed to him that the dark grew larger. He didn't know why the increasing cold and darkness should make him apprehensive; he wasn't even sure if praying every night in front of the photograph of himself and his family helped. Each night the reflection of the sky in the dressing-table mirror beyond the photograph seemed darker. Once he thought he saw the sky go out, having failed to hold back the starry emptiness, and he prayed as hard as he could.

Each night he crept out of bed to pray after his aunt had tucked him up, and he didn't realise she'd heard him until she took him to Father Flynn. That Sunday was the day the clocks were put back in order to bring the night forward an hour. Perhaps that was why the church service seemed so remote from him, the priest and his assistants performing their slow ritual motions while their prayers and the responses of the congregation fluttered under the arched ceiling like trapped birds. After the service he tried to sidle unnoticed out of the porch, but his aunt steered him in front of the priest. "Thank you for a lovely mass," she said.

"One tries to do one's best, Miss Tate." The priest bared his small even teeth in a smile which concealed his gums, and gave

Ben's head a token pat. "I don't need to tell our young Ben that, do I?"

Ben had been afraid that the priest would see from his face that his attention had been wandering during the service, and now his panic started his thoughts chattering: a lovely mass of coconuts, a mass of pottage, a mess of a mass… "I want you to know I admire the way you've borne your cross," the priest was telling him.

"Actually, Father, that was what we wanted to talk to you about," Ben's aunt said. "The tragedy, that is."

Ben hadn't wanted to talk to him about anything. "My door is always open," the priest said.

His house must get cold in the winter, Ben thought, and struggled not to smirk – but nobody was looking at him. "I always have a pot of tea after mass, and like everything else in this life, it's better shared," the priest said.

The presbytery was at the end of a street in which twinned houses placed gardens between themselves and a row of discreet shops. An elderly housekeeper with beads as big as acorns rattling around her stringy neck opened the door. "One more for the pot," the priest said breezily, "and I think there might be an order for a glass of milk."

One chair faced several in the front room, before a tiled fireplace in which a coal fire was crackling. Records were stacked beneath an old gramophone in one corner. "You sit there," Ben's aunt said and nudged him into the chair directly opposite the priest's before sitting on the edge of the chair next to him. "I hoped you might be able to make things clearer to him, Father."

"I believe that's why I'm here. What about, now?"

"About, as we were saying, the tragedy. He isn't over it yet, not that you'd expect him to be. Only I've heard him praying for them as if his heart was about to break. God can't mean a child to feel like that, can he?"

"We mustn't presume to know what God means, Miss Tate. I was taught it may take us the whole of eternity even to begin to glimpse his meaning." The priest ducked his head towards Ben. "Perhaps our little soldier would like to tell us in his own words what he feels."

He was trying to make it sound like an adventure, but it didn't seem at all like one to Ben. "What about?" Ben said awkwardly.

"Why, how you've felt since God took your family to Him."

Ben managed to think of something he could put into words. "I keep wondering where they've gone."

"Well, Ben, I would have thought a good boy who goes to such a fine Catholic school would know."

"He means purgatory, Ben."

"You knew that, didn't you? And I'm sure you can tell us from your catechism what it means."

Ben parroted the answer. Perhaps his aunt sensed his mounting dismay, because she said "It's a hard thing for a little boy to grasp."

"Hard means durable, Miss Tate. Shall I tell you something that may surprise you, Ben? I expect you're feeling very much as I felt when I was just about your age. See my grandmother up there? I lost her when I was nine years old."

He was referring to a yellowed oval photograph on the mantelpiece, Ben saw as his thoughts began to chatter. "I couldn't understand why an old lady who'd never done anyone any harm had to wait to be let into Heaven," the priest said.

Whatever Ben had avoided thinking since the car crash, it wasn't this. "Do you think she's there yet?" he said.

His aunt made a shocked sound, but the priest smiled indulgently at him. "That isn't for us to know, is it? If we thought we did we might stop praying for them, and that's one of the jobs God gives us on earth, to pay Him our prayers so our loved ones can get to Heaven sooner."

Ben was beginning to panic because this meant so little to him. "But some dead people don't have anyone on earth to pray for them."

The priest flashed his teeth at Ben's aunt. "He's a bright boy. It's a good job you're bringing him up in the faith," he said, and to Ben: "That's why we pray for all the souls in purgatory, not just those who belong to us."

"That's better now, isn't it, Ben?" his aunt said as if he'd scraped his knee. "You know where your mother and everyone is now, and you know you're helping them."

Ben knew nothing of the kind. Mustn't there be more souls in purgatory than there were stars in the sky, since Mr O'Toole had once told the assembled school that a single unconfessed sin could keep you in purgatory until the end of the world? If praying for all the dead people you'd never even met could help them, what was the point of singling out your own? If praying for them by name reduced their time in purgatory, how could that be anything but unfair to people who had nobody to pray for them by name? The whole set-up struck him as so unreasonable as to be meaningless, and that terrified him.

The priest leaned towards him almost confidentially. "I think you're wondering what all this suffering is for, aren't you? Such a bright boy would. Now, Ben, whatever happens to us in this life and after it, however hard it may seem, don't you think it must be worth it if it leads us to see God?"

"I don't know."

"I mean, if we have to suffer so as to be worthy of it, mustn't being able to see God for all eternity be a reward beyond anything we can imagine?"

"I suppose so."

The priest sat back. "I think that may do for now, Miss Tate. There's a little chap with a few big new ideas to turn over in his mind. If they're too much for you, Ben, don't be afraid to ask questions. Now what's this I see coming for a good boy? I do believe it's a glass of milk."