Part 6 (1/2)

”I'll use my key.” I punched at the gla.s.s with the b.u.t.t of the shotgun. After three attempts the gla.s.s shattered and I used my gloved hands to clear it all away. I caught a waft of something foul and stale. Charley stepped back with a slight groan. Brand was oblivious.

We peered inside the car, leaning forward so that the weak light could filter in around us.

There was a dead man in the driver's seat. He was frozen solid, hunched up under several blankets, only his eyes and nose visible. Icicles hung from both. His eyelids were still open. On the dashboard a candle had burnt down to nothing more than a puddle of wax, imitating the ice as it dripped forever toward the floor. The scene was so still it was eerie, like a painting so lifelike that textures and shapes could be felt. I noticed the driver's door handle was jammed open, though the door had not budged against the snowdrift burying that side of the car. At the end he had obviously attempted to get out. I shuddered as I tried to imagine this man's lonely death. It was the second body I'd seen in two days.

”Well?” Brand called from behind us.

”Your drug supplier,” Charley said. ”Car's full of snow.”

I snorted, pleased to hear the humor, but when I looked at her she seemed as sad and forlorn as ever. ”Maybe we should see if he brought us anything useful,” she said, and I nodded.

Charley was smaller than me, so she said she'd go. I went to protest, but she was already wriggling through the shattered window, and a minute later she'd thrown out everything loose she could find. She came back out without looking at me.

There was a rucksack half full of canned foods; a petrol can with a swill of fuel in the bottom; a novel frozen at page ninety; some plastic bottles filled with p.i.s.s and split by the ice; a rifle, but no ammunition; a smaller rucksack with wallet, some papers, an electronic credit card; a photo wallet frozen shut; a plastic bag full of s.h.i.+t; a screwed-up newspaper as hard as wood.

Everything was frozen.

”Let's go,” I said. Brand and Charley took a couple of items each and shouldered their rucksacks. I picked up the rifle. We took everything except the s.h.i.+t and p.i.s.s.

It took us four hours to get back to the manor. Three times on the way Brand said he'd seen something bounding through the snow-a stag, he said, big and white with sparkling antlers-and we dropped everything and went into a defensive huddle. But nothing ever materialized from the worsening storm, even though our imaginations painted all sorts of horrors behind and beyond the snowflakes. If there were anything out there, it kept itself well hidden.

The light was fast fading as we arrived back. Our tracks had been all but covered, and it was only later that I realized how staggeringly lucky we'd been to even find our way home. Perhaps something was on our side, guiding us, steering us back to the manor. Perhaps it was the change in nature taking us home, preparing us for what was to come next.

It was the last favor we were granted.

Hayden cooked us some soup as the others huddled around the fire, listening to our story and trying so hard not to show their disappointment. Brand kept chiming in about the things he'd seen in the snow. Even Ellie's face held the taint of fading hope.

”Boris's angels?” Rosalie suggested. ”He may may have seen angels, you know. They're not averse to steering things their way, when it suits them.” n.o.body answered. have seen angels, you know. They're not averse to steering things their way, when it suits them.” n.o.body answered.

Charley was crying again, s.h.i.+vering by the fire. Rosalie had wrapped her in blankets and now hugged her close.

”The gun looks okay.” Ellie said. She'd sat at the table and stripped and oiled the rifle, listening to us all as we talked. She ill.u.s.trated the fact by pointing it at the wall and squeezing the trigger a few times. Click click click Click click click. There was no ammunition for it.

”What about the body?” Rosalie asked. ”Did you see who it was?”

I frowned. ”What do you mean?”

”Well, if it was someone coming along the road toward the manor, maybe one of us knew him.” We were all motionless save for Ellie, who still rooted through the contents of the car. She'd already put the newspaper on the floor so that it could dry out, in the hope of being able to read at least some of it. We'd made out the date: one week ago. The television had stopped showing pictures two weeks ago. There was a week of history in there, if only we could save it.

”He was frozen stiff,” I said. ”We didn't get a good look... and anyway, who'd be coming here? And why? Maybe it was a good job-”

Ellie gasped. There was a tearing sound as she peeled apart more pages of the photo wallet and gasped again, this time struggling to draw in a breath afterward.

”Ellie?”

She did not answer. The others had turned to her, but she seemed not to notice. She saw nothing, other than the photographs in her hand. She stared at them for an endless few seconds, eyes moist yet unreadable in the glittering firelight. Then she sc.r.a.ped the chair back across the polished floor, crumpled the photos into her back pocket and walked quickly from the room.

I followed, glancing at the others to indicate that they should stay where they were. None of them argued. Ellie was already halfway up the long staircase by the time I entered the hallway, but it was not until the final stair that she stopped, turned and answered my soft calling.

”My husband,” she said, ”Jack. I haven't seen him for two years.” A tear ran icily down her cheek. ”We never really made it, you know?” She looked at the wall beside her, as though she could stare straight through and discern logic and truth in the blanked-out landscape beyond. ”He was coming here. For me. To find me.”

There was nothing I could say. Ellie seemed to forget I was there and she mumbled the next few words to herself. Then she turned and disappeared from view along the upstairs corridor, shadow dancing in the light of disturbed candles.

Back in the living room I told the others that Ellie was all right, she had gone to bed, she was tired and cold and as human as the rest of us. I did not let on about her dead husband. I figured it was really none of their business. Charley glared at me with bloodshot eyes, and 1 was sure she'd figured it out. Brand flicked bits of carrot from his soup into the fire and watched them sizzle to nothing.

We went to bed soon after. Alone in my room I sat at the window for a long time, huddled in clothes and blankets, staring out at the moonlit brightness of the snow drifts and the fat flakes still falling. I tried to imagine Ellie's estranged husband struggling to steer the car through deepening snow, the radiator clogging in the drift the car had buried its nose in, splitting, gus.h.i.+ng boiling water and steaming instantly into an icy trap. Sitting there, perhaps not knowing just how near he was, thinking of his wife and how much he needed to see her. And I tried to imagine what desperate events must have driven him to do such a thing, though I did not think too hard.

A door opened and closed quietly, footsteps, another door slipped open to allow a guest entry. I wondered who was sharing a bed tonight.

1 saw Jayne, naked and beautiful in the snow, bearing no sign of the illness that had killed her. She beckoned me, drawing me nearer, and at last a door was opening for me as well, a shape coming into the room, white material floating around its hips, or perhaps they were limbs, membranous and thin...

My eyes snapped open and 1 sat up on the bed. I was still dressed from the night before. Dawn streamed in the window and my candle had burnt down to nothing.

Ellie stood next to the bed. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. I tried to pretend I had not noticed.

”Happy Christmas,” she said. ”Come on. Brand's dead.”

Brand was lying just beyond the smashed conservatory doors behind the kitchen. There was a small courtyard area here, protected somewhat by an overhanging roof so that the snow was only about knee deep. Most of it was red. A drift had already edged its way into the conservatory, and the beer cans on the shelf had frozen and split. No more beer.

He had been punctured by countless holes, each the width of a thumb, all of them clogged with hardened blood. One eye stared hopefully out to the hidden horizon, the other was absent. His hair was also missing; it looked like he'd been scalped. There were bits of him all around-a finger here, a splash of brain there-but he was less mutilated than Boris had been. At least we could see that this smudge in the snow had once been Brand.

Hayden was standing next to him, posing daintily in an effort to avoid stepping in the blood. It was a lost cause. ”What the h.e.l.l was he doing out here?” he asked in disgust.

”I heard doors opening last night,” I said. ”Maybe he came for a walk. Or a smoke.”

”The door was mine,” Rosalie said softly. She had appeared behind us and nudged in between Ellie and me. She wore a long, creased s.h.i.+rt. Brand's s.h.i.+rt, I noticed. ”Brand was with me until three o'clock this morning. Then he left to go back to his own room, said he was feeling ill. We thought perhaps you shouldn't know about us.” Her eyes were wide in an effort not to cry. ”We thought everyone would laugh.”

n.o.body answered. n.o.body laughed. Rosalie looked at Brand with more shock than sadness, and I wondered just how often he'd opened her door in the night. The insane, unfair notion that she may even be relieved flashed across my mind, one of those awful thoughts you try to expunge but that hangs around like a guilty secret.

”Maybe we should go inside,” I said to Rosalie, but she gave me such an icy glare that I turned away, looking at Brand's shattered body rather than her piercing eyes.

”I'm a big girl now,” she said. I could hear her rapid breathing as she tried to contain the disgust and shock at what she saw. I wondered if she'd ever seen a dead body. Most people had, nowadays.

Charley was nowhere to be seen. ”I didn't wake her,” Ellie said when I queried. ”She had enough to handle yesterday. I thought she shouldn't really see this. No need.”

And you? I thought, noticing Ellie's puffy eyes, the gauntness of her face, her hands fisting open and closed at her sides. Are you all right? Did you have enough to handle yesterday Are you all right? Did you have enough to handle yesterday?

”What the h.e.l.l do we do with him?” Hayden asked. He was still standing closer to Brand than the rest of us, hugging himself to try to preserve some of the warmth from sleep. ”I mean, Boris was all over the place, from what I hear. But Brand... we have to do something. Bury him, or something. It's Christmas, for G.o.d's sake.”

The ground's like iron,” I protested.

”So we take it in turns digging,” Rosalie said quietly.

”It'll take us-”

”Then I'll do it myself.” She walked out into the bloodied snow and shattered gla.s.s in bare feet, bent over Brand's body and grabbed under each armpit as if to lift him. She was naked beneath the s.h.i.+rt. Hayden stared in frank fascination. I turned away, embarra.s.sed for myself more than for Rosalie.