THE ROOM OF FEAR IS OPEN TILL MIDNIGHT

Ilya came back to bury his grandfather and sell a derelict funfair. In the old ledger he finds two halves: on the left, tickets and takings in a clerk's neat hand; on the right, names, and after each one a single word, paid or unpaid. At midnight the till rings by itself, and the man at the window is a factory hand the town buried without a name, though the body was never found. He is not there for a ticket. He is there for the envelope his last shift was never paid.