Midnight Sun Read Free

told anyone he was coming? Even if he'd left a note that told his aunt not to worry about him, didn't he think she would? "Suppose so," Ben muttered, feeling small and mean.
    At least he wasn't shaking now, though his body felt so brittle that he thought a touch might set if off again. While the policeman went to a desk behind the counter to phone Ben's aunt, the policewoman held Ben's hand and told him about her daughter who wanted to be a train-driver when she grew up. Before long the policeman called him. "Just tell your aunt how you are, will you?"
    Ben could hear her voice demanding a response as he trudged to the phone; she sounded like a tiny version of herself buried in the desk-top. He picked up the receiver in both hands and held it away from his face. "I'm here, Auntie."
    "Thank God," she said, so tonelessly that he wasn't sure if she was telling him to do so. "Are they feeding you? Have you had nothing to eat all day?"
    "I don't want anything," he said, and knew at once that honesty would do him no good. "I mean, I had something before."
    "I'll be speaking to you when you're brought home. Put the policeman back on."
    Ben dawdled back to his seat, feeling as if he had nowhere to go. "We'll look after him, don't you fret," the policeman was saying, and then his voice grew efficient and stiff. "Yes, ma'am, of course I know who the Sterlings were ... A sad loss to our town ... I'm sure we can, ma'am, and then I'll see to it that he's delivered safely to you ..."
    By now Ben was squirming with embarrassment. Every time the policeman said "ma'am" he sounded like the children on the train. "I shouldn't like to specify a time just yet, ma'am ... He was in a bit of a state when we found him ..." Was that all? Could he really not have seen what Ben had seen in the graveyard, when he had been so close to him? "I believe the doctor's here now, ma'am," the policeman said.
    The doctor was a dumpy rapid woman who smelled of mints, one of which rattled against her teeth as she shifted it into her hamsterish cheek. "What's his name?" she said as she peered into Ben's eyes and palmed his forehead, and he felt as if he wasn't there, as if the dance in the graveyard had carried him off. "What's his story?" she said.
    The policeman had managed to terminate the phone call. "He just wanted to come back to Stargrave and pay his respects, 1 reckon — it's only been a few months since. Is that about right, son? Nowt wrong where you're living now, is there?"
    "My auntie's good to me," Ben said with a guilty vehemence which left him short of breath.
    The doctor was holding Ben's wrist and gazing at her watch. "Remind me why you called me. He seems right enough now."
    "He was shaking like a leaf when I got hold of him," the policeman said, and Ben remembered the leaves turning white. "Shivering with cold on a day like this. The other thing was, I thought I saw — they must have been insects flying around him just before I got to him."
    "They weren't insects," Ben protested.
    The doctor glanced at him as if she'd only just noticed him. "Ah. Ah. Ah," she said, and stared at his mouth until he realised he was meant to echo her. "Wider, wider," she urged, and eventually met his eyes. "What were you saying?" she said, poising her thermometer as if she would use it to cut him off as soon as she'd heard enough.
    While she had been peering down his throat he'd decided to keep his secret. "I didn't see any insects."
    "They were there, son, a real swarm of them. They flew off into the forest when they saw my uniform." To the doctor the policeman said "I just thought you'd better know."
    She elbowed Ben's head onto one side and then the other so as to examine his neck. "Thinking of bites, were you? None here." She thrust the thermometer into Ben's mouth and tapped the linoleum with the heels of her scuffed boots until it was time to glance at the reading. "Nothing up with him. Too much travelling and running about on an empty stomach, that was all. I'd