The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

but she suspects most of them are parents of the children who are gathering around Mad in Teenage Texts—children of too many ages to compete with one another at anything but noise. As the computer produces its icons Agnes is afraid Woody will stay to watch her fake a search. She has typed Fenny Meadows in the box before he heads for the door by the lift. Once she's sure he isn't coming back she ends the search, which hasn't found a single title, and hurries into Teenage. "What would you like me to do, Mad?"
    Mad raises her small wide-eyed oval face and, having shaken back her shoulder-length blonde tresses, taps her plump pink lips with a fingertip as if to release an idea. "Do you think you could take about half of them up the other end for a quiz?"
    "I'll have the little ones, shall I?"
    "If you're feeling mummyish. I'll try and keep order while you bring some chairs down."
    Agnes badges herself through the door up to the staffroom. Ross is on his break, and Lorraine is sitting next to him, so close she's almost on his chair. She turns as if her face is being lifted by her rising golden eyebrows, while Ross seems to hope Agnes will be content with the back of his head. "It's only Agnes," Lorraine reassures him. "Anyes, I know we're meant to say."
    "Please don't if it's too much trouble."
    "There are worse things round here. Are you coming for your break?"
    "No, I'm here for Mad."
    Ross twists to face Agnes. "You mean she sent you up?"
    "That's what she did."
    "Sometimes I think she's sending us all up," Lorraine says in her almost chortling voice.
    Ross won't be distracted from his theme. "If that's what she calls still being friends—"
    "She sent me to get some chairs for the quiz."
    "You might have said that."
    "I just did. We only need one in here at the moment, don't we? There's only supposed to be one of us having our break at once."
    "About time a few of us queried that," says Lorraine with very little of a chortle. "I don't know about anyone else, but I don't like being up here by myself."
    "So I'll take that one if I may, Lorraine."
    Lorraine rests her fingertips on Ross's shoulder while she stands up. "There's your little chair, Agnes. I'll see you later, Ross."
    He looks uncomfortable until the stockroom door closes behind her, and then he jumps to his feet "Here, I'll take some," he says and stacks five chairs as Agnes picks up four. He bumps his way into the stockroom, where Lorraine is planting books on a trolley, more loudly when she sees him and Agnes. "Shall I come down with you?" he asks Agnes.
    "You finish your break. Thanks, Ross," she adds over the voice of the lift.
    As the doors close he saunters over to Lorraine. "Want a hand as well?" he says so coyly it makes Agnes suck her teeth. Their conversation dwindles and grows blurred as the windowless cage lumbers downwards. Before it settles at the bottom of the shaft she can't hear them. It tells her that it's opening in a voice that seems slower than last time she heard it—perhaps the tape or whatever it uses to speak is developing a fault. The doors quiver like slabs of grey mud as a preamble to heaving themselves apart, and she blocks them with the chairs. She dodges out and drags the chairs after her and hobbles them onto the sales floor, to be greeted with a cry from Mad. "Here's the chair lady."
    About as many of the children cheer as mutter "Big deal" or one more word. "We'll pretend we didn't hear that, shall we," Mad says without looking directly at anyone, "and let's make sure we don't again. Anyes, I think you'd better take the little ones before their ears can get any grubbier."
    Agnes isn't certain only older children said the word, but she lifts six chairs off the stack to move them to the farthest alcove. A little girl jumps up from sitting crosslegged on the floor and lays her book on top of a shelf. "Shall I help carry?"
    "This is Jill's Bryony," Mad informs Agnes.
    "Thank you, Bryony," Agnes says and leans the stack towards her while