Midnight Sun

FORTY-FOUR

It was nearly time, Ben thought. The winter had finally emerged from the forest, and soon it would come for them. Everything around them was a sign of it. The world had been awaiting it without knowing, disguising it as myths to suppress the terror of it, but you had to give yourself up to the terror before you could experience the awesomeness. He'd done his best to guide the family through the process, but Johnny had made Ellen stop him. Now she and the children weren't ready, and it was nearly time.

He mustn't blame them. They hadn't had his upbringing. At least they had responded to his stories, which had been symptoms of the imminent awakening in the forest and of his buried awareness of it – responded so enthusiastically that he was sure their minds were capable of being opened further. He must be patient with them, as patient as he had time to be. Surely now, after seeing so much in the town, Ellen had to accept that he knew best. He moved closer to her and put his arm around her. "We're here to stay. There never was anywhere else for us."

He had to feel sorry for her – she was staring at the damaged engine as though she had been robbed of her last hope – but he thought that, disillusioned as she was, she might be more receptive to the message he had to finish communicating. When he turned her towards the house she didn't resist, which was encouraging. "Come in with us, you two," he said. "I hope you enjoyed your walk."

Ellen grew tense at that. He hadn't intended to sound as if he was dismissing what she'd seen; after all, the children hadn't encountered anything they couldn't handle. He ought to be able to choose his words more carefully – he'd had enough practice – though he found the task burdensome now that he was brimming with the imminence of an experience beyond words, older than the hindrance of words. "We want to talk to you," he said.

Ellen glanced at him, too briefly for him to meet her eyes. He was unexpectedly relieved not to have to meet them, because he had realised he wasn't referring to her. "We're together," he said loudly, and snatching Ellen's keys from the ignition, strode to the house. "We'll go up," he said.

"Do you think the phone may be working now?" she whispered.

So the car hadn't been her last hope. Perhaps there was always one more so long as you were alive. He had forgotten the phone, but he was willing to pretend he'd had it in mind if the pretence would lure them to the workroom, where he could keep an eye on them and on whatever might emerge from the forest. "We'll have to see," he said.

The reawakening of hope seemed to restore her to herself. As he prepared to unlock the front door she took her keys from him, gently but resolutely. He found her determination both touching and frustrating; couldn't she understand that it was irrelevant? She was clinging to fragments of life as she had always lived it, as if they contained some magic which would revive normality when this winter came to an end, but they were only a refusal to accept that it never would. At least she was opening the door, and it was up to him to ensure that was a first step towards acceptance.

"Quick, you two, into the warm," she said tightly, flapping her hands at them as if she was trying to limber her quilted fingers, and pushed the children into the house as soon as they were within reach. Once she was over the threshold she faltered, blinking at the lit hall. She must be wondering belatedly why their house hadn't yet been overtaken by the winter. Wasn't that his cue to explain that whatever happened, she and the children would be safe with him? If she understood that, he could begin to persuade her that they were being saved for last, to complete the awakening as they experienced it and became part of it – but her concern for the children had already preoccupied her. "Don't stand there like statues, take some things off and keep moving," she urged them.

There really wasn't time for this, Ben thought, especially when it would make no difference, but if he told her so the argument would delay them further. He watched her and the children drag off their outer clothes, hanging them on the coat-stand and piling their boots around it like some kind of sacrifice to the night beyond the door. It was only when they stared at him that he remembered he was wearing a coat and boots himself. "You could have been trying to phone," Ellen said, her voice uneven and accusing, as he hung his coat on the single bare hook.

"We don't want to be separated now."

Her eyes grew suddenly moist, and he sensed that she wanted to run to him. He wondered what she could be thinking: was she remembering the new shape the Wests had formed? He felt as though whatever was dreaming him was using his words to convey more meaning than he had intended. He'd worked with words for so long that they wouldn't let go of him, but he'd had enough of wordplay; it was time to be clear. "Ready now," he said.

As he climbed the stairs she followed him and shepherded the children after him. He couldn't help smiling to himself as she switched on the landing lights; they wouldn't need those for much longer. He opened the workroom door and stood aside for the family to precede him.

Ellen hesitated once she had switched on the light and stepped into the room. For a moment he thought she'd seen what he had seen: a vast swift movement beyond the window, as if the frozen forest had betrayed its stillness for an instant, though he knew it was rather that the disguise of the forest had slipped momentarily as it or its denizen watched her. But she was only bracing herself to pick up the telephone, praying silently that it would work. Never mind: she had brought the children into the room, and he closed the door and leaned against the inside. "See what you can raise," he said.

He watched her approach the desk, the children trailing after her. From where he stood, the room and the desk and her drawing-board and the rest of the contents looked like an entrance to the forest, a last symbolic clutter to be left behind on the route to the truth. He saw that the forest was beginning very gradually to shine, ranks of trees in its depths growing dimly visible as if they or what they hid were inching towards the house. Wasn't there the faintest pallor of frost on the interior wall around the window? Ellen gained the desk and stood staring at the phone, visibly keeping a final prayer unspoken so that it wouldn't dismay the children, and then she thrust out her stiff hand and fumbled the receiver up to her face.

She dropped the receiver at once. It clattered like a bone across the desk until its cord jerked at it, swinging it round with a screech of plastic on wood. Margaret cried out as it fell, and Johnny did when it struck the desk. It was the loudness of the sound which it was emitting that had caused Ellen to lose her grip on it, and at first even Ben thought the sound was only static. Then, as Ellen reached shakily to cut it off, he heard that there was more to it. "Ellen," he shouted.

She had already depressed the receiver rest, but it didn't matter; the sound returned unchanged. It was a mass of whispering, so many whispers that it seemed to fill the room – a sound like wind through a forest, except that it was more elaborate and more purposeful. "Listen, all of you," Ben said in a voice which he heard merging with it. "Hear what it's saying."

Ellen stared uncomprehendingly at him, then her expression became one of loathing. She was trying to pick up the receiver to silence it, her fingers growing clumsier with rage, when Johnny cried "I can hear something."

He'd learned the secret, and Ben was proud of him, though it didn't take much effort to decipher the message – it was rather a matter of relaxing and allowing the sound to make itself clear. "It's calling us," Johnny said, clutching at his mother's arm.

That was why it sounded so elaborate: it was pronouncing all their names at once with its voices like an endless snowfall. Ben saw Margaret begin to hear them, her eyes widening and trembling. Then Ellen managed to seize the receiver and slammed it onto its rest. "What are you trying to do?" she whispered, glaring at him.

He had to speak plainly, he reminded himself. "Give you an idea what's on the way," he said, "so that it won't be so much of a shock."

She looked capable of creating trouble when there was no more time for it. He ought to remember that she hadn't had his advantages – that she'd been confronted unexpectedly with part of the truth when he had been anticipating it all his life – but he mustn't allow her to deny it, even if, given more time, that might have been her first step towards comprehending it. The forest, or the entity it symbolised, stirred again restlessly beyond her and the children, and he felt himself losing patience. "You've already seen more than they have," he told her, lowering his voice to show her this wasn't meant for the children to hear. "Won't you help me get them ready for it? We only saw a tiny hint of what's in store for us, and I know they were your friends, but even so, didn't you think it was beautiful?"

He seemed to have overestimated her. Her face pinched tight around her mouth as if she didn't trust herself to answer him. She glanced past him, so fleetingly that he knew she was considering a bid to sneak the children out of the room. He leaned hard against the door, his body stiffening with impatience. "I'm not saying we'll end up like that," he said. "I don't know how we'll end up, but I'm eager to find out. Aren't you, just a little? You know we'll all be together – they were, you saw." A sudden idea brought a smile to his lips. "If you ask me, I think we just now heard them and the rest of them letting us know they're waiting for us."

He kept the smile up for as long as he could, but when even putting an appeal into it didn't win him a response he felt his mouth droop clownishly. He could sympathise with her for being confused earlier, but how could he express himself any more clearly? Was she deliberately resisting the truth? Observing her and the children, all of whom had turned so pink with the heat of the house that they looked unshelled, he was positive she couldn't ignore it; these raw soft shapes weren't how life was meant to be. She'd had her chance, and he couldn't afford to waste any more time on her when he still had to reach the children. At least up here she wouldn't find it so easy to prevent him from talking to them, and surely at their ages they must be more open to newness than she was. "Have either of you any idea what your mother and I are talking about?"

"Of course they haven't," Ellen cried.

His impatience was suddenly almost uncontrollable, and seemed to twist his body into a new shape under the skin. "Let them speak."

Margaret was visibly struggling to do so, and he produced a smile to help her. But all she said was "Stop it, Daddy, you're frightening us."

"You aren't frightened, Johnny, are you," Ben said, so certain of the answer that he didn't bother to make his words sound like a question. The boy shook his head and moved closer to his mother, looking shamefaced. He hadn't grabbed her arm before in order to stop her replacing the receiver; he had been afraid to hear. All at once Ben was disgusted with the three of them, and with his own efforts on their behalf. "I'm not trying to frighten you. I'm trying not to," he said through his teeth.

The children huddled against their mother. The three of them stared at him. At least he had succeeded in holding their attention, and perhaps they would keep quiet now; they appeared to have run out of words. Behind them the forest stirred again like a spider sensing movement in its web, though of course it wasn't really like that; his mind was simply clinging to old metaphors. "You can't just go on being frightened," he said urgently. "Unless you look at what you're afraid of you'll never see how much more is there until it's too late for you to appreciate it. I want us to share it, don't you understand? You don't want to be alone with it, do you?"

They were staring at him as though they couldn't believe what they saw or heard. What was wrong with them? "Your mother has an idea what I'm talking about even if she won't admit it," he said, hearing his voice grow thin and cold. "It isn't so hard to understand if you let yourself dream it instead of trying to force your mind to work. Think of it as a story that's truer than anything you thought was true. What's happened to Stargrave is only a sign of what's coming, an image that's simple enough for us to grasp, like a picture in a baby's first book."

He thought they might laugh at that and by laughing realise how accurate it was, but it didn't seem to appeal to them. "If you're wondering why Stargrave has begun to change and yet we haven't," he said, doing his best to put some warmth into his voice because surely this was the moment which would bring the four of them together, "I think it's because the Sterlings have been part of what's happening ever since Edward Sterling came out of the midnight sun. I think we've been left until last because we were already closer to it. Come on now, that must make you feel happier, knowing we've been chosen because of who we are."

"Chosen for what?"

"Shut up, johnny," Margaret wailed, lashing out at him. "I don't want to hear."

"You won't have to," Ellen promised fiercely, hugging them both and glaring a challenge at Ben, and abruptly Ben had had enough. He was trying to think why the spectacle of the children cowering into the protection of their mother's refusal to use her mind should seem familiar, and then he knew: the three of them were exactly like the brainless woman and her brainless children who'd hindered his return to the family grave and the forest the day he'd run away from Norwich. He stared at their eyes moist as a cow's and their sniffling raw nostrils in their stubbornly stupid faces, and disgust overwhelmed him. "If you won't listen, you can look," he snarled, and punched the light-switch so hard that the plastic cracked.

The forest surged towards the house while standing absolutely still, and its glow reached into the room. He hoped that would draw their attention to the window, because there was certainly something to see: a pale shape which could only be a face, though it was broad as several trees and composed of swarming filaments, had appeared in the midst of the forest. Although he couldn't see its eyes, he knew it was staring into the room.

It was there for the family to see, a sight whose existence even they couldn't deny, but they wouldn't see it until they stopped gazing aghast at him. He wasn't threatening them with violence, it had been frustration which had caused him to break the light-switch. Words were useless. He raised one hand and pointed at the face behind them.

He stayed like that as a shiver passed slowly through him. The figure which had risen from the forest had lifted a pale hand and was pointing at him. He let his hand sink, and its hand disappeared into the snow, then reappeared as he made to touch his face. The children were sobbing, and Ellen was hanging onto them as though she wasn't sure if she was protecting them or herself. His hand faltered short of his chin, because he'd understood they were seeing what he was seeing: the face breaking out in patterns like frost, like music rendered visible in ice – his own face, which he could see reflected in the window.

It was just another metaphor, another sign of the imminent transformation, but he couldn't quite bring himself to touch his face and discover what exactly was there. Ellen and the children were to blame, shrinking away from the sight of him in such terror that he was beginning to lose his nerve. He couldn't stand them any longer. They screamed as he lurched towards them, and he thought they might topple across the desk and through the window. He no longer cared what happened to them. He'd moved away from the door so as to open it, to get away from them. He turned his back on them and seized the doorknob, frost flowering across the panels of the door as he did so, and strode out of the room.

He heard the children snivelling as he went downstairs, and Ellen murmuring to them. Let her say what she liked, about him if it improved her mood. Soon she and the children would be beyond such reassurances, ready or not. He flung open the front door and stepped into the embrace of the night.

He was stepping onto the track when he heard Ellen turn the key in the mortise-lock. He would have expected to hear the bolts, but they must be frozen open. He smiled sadly – apparently his face still could. Try as she might to keep him out, she was only wasting time in being afraid of him.

He slowed his pace as he continued along the track. Though he felt like running to find whatever was awaiting him, he wanted to see everything there was to see, every stage of the metamorphosis of Stargrave. Nothing moved except him, but he sensed that the frozen stillness was aware of him. He went forwards deliberately, relishing his anticipation, watching the forest begin to reveal its glimmering depths. Then a tiny sound from behind and above distracted him, and he looked back.

Ellen and the children were at the workroom window, gazing down at him. The sight of the family, so distant and yet so clear within the rectangle of brightness, took him off guard. Despite their fear of him, he could see that they were still concerned for him. The thought reawakened memories: Ellen saving him on the mountain, Margaret and Johnny appearing from within her in the delivery room, sleepless nights he and Ellen had spent worrying about childhood diseases, the years they'd struggled to make ends meet, the times they'd laughed together because at least they had one another… There was no going back to all that, nor to the family itself, but he was reluctant to turn away from this last view of them; he found himself willing them to step back out of sight so that he could move on. Then he sucked in a breath which made his lungs ache, because the cold was spreading swiftly up the outside of the house like flames of ice.

He'd taken one inadvertent step towards the building when the whiteness blotted out the windows. The workroom window turned opaque, and the only sign of Ellen and the children was a muffled short-lived scream.