Authors: Graham Masterton
The thought of that gave him a last burst of energy. He kicked his legs and flapped his one free arm and then miraculously he broke the surface. Strong, eager hands dragged them both out.
“Get her heart started!” Jim shouted out, his teeth chattering so much that he was barely intelligible. “She’s precious! Don’t let her die! Get her heart started!”
A woman paramedic wrapped him in a blanket and led him toward the edge of the pool, where a gurney was waiting. It was Rachel, the red-haired woman who had amputated Ray Krueger’s hands. “Lie down,” she said, gently. “We’ll soon have you warmed up again.”
“I don’t want to lie down. I need to make sure that Suzie’s okay.”
“They’re working on her now. I’ll tell you as soon as there’s any news.”
The ambulance abruptly whooped its siren, and bounced off across the grass, taking Suzie with it. Jim sat on the small wall beside the swimming-pool but he wouldn’t lie down. Dr Ehrlichman came up to him and laid his hand on his shoulder. “I just want to tell you that was a very brave thing you did, going in for Suzie like that.”
“Don’t let him break up the class, will you?” Jim shivered.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m a little upset, that’s all.”
Dr Ehrlichman patted his shoulder again. “Quite understandable. You just take care of yourself.”
The coppery sky began to lighten, and gradually the sun came through. With surprising rapidity, the ice on the surface of the pool began to melt, and within twenty minutes there were only a few large lumps of it left, slowly circling around in the sunshine. Jim saw Rachel the paramedic talking to Karen, and eventually Karen came across and sat down next to him.
“You need to change into something dry. Do you want me to drive you home?”
“I’m waiting to hear about Suzie.”
“I know that. But the paramedics have promised to call my mobile.”
Jim suddenly felt very tired. He nodded, and said, “Okay … why don’t you take me home? I feel like a goddamned snowman, sitting here.”
As they walked toward the parking-lot, Lieutenant Harris appeared, looking as hot and sweaty as ever.
“They told me the pool froze over.”
“That’s right.”
“Any ideas how it might have happened?”
“Winter came early, I guess.”
Lieutenant Harris folded his notebook and shoved it back into his pocket. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Merry Christmas, Mr Rook.”
Karen drove him home and came up to his apartment with him. TT greeted her with her usual suspicion, but Karen stroked her chin and that seemed to appease her. She jumped up on to the back of the couch and resumed her vigil on the windowsill.
“That’s a very strange cat,” said Karen. “She almost seems to think that she’s human.”
“In some ways, I guess. But no human would eat what she eats.”
“Do you want me to make you some coffee? You’re looking kind of pale.”
“That would be good, thanks. I’m just going to change into something dry.”
Karen went into the kitchen and filled up the espresso machine. “I guess I have to eat my words, don’t I?” she called.
“About what?”
“About the stars we saw. They
were
an omen, weren’t they?”
“Yes, I think they were. And this isn’t over yet. We’re going to suffer more and more sudden freezes like this; and they’re going to get worse; and more students are going to be hurt.”
“So what can we do about it? We have to do something.”
Jim came into the kitchen, tucking a crumpled white T-shirt into his jeans. “If I knew what it was that I was looking for, it would make things a whole lot easier. But this is invisible, unpredictable, and it may be completely imaginary. For all I know, we could still put these incidents down to some kind of freakish weather conditions.”
“So why don’t you call in a meteorologist?”
Jim didn’t have time to answer before the phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Jim Rook.”
“James, this is Dr Friendly. I’ve just had word from the hospital and I thought you ought to be the first to know. They took Suzie Wintz off the life-support machine about fifteen minutes ago, with the consent of her parents. I’m sorry, James. I truly am. I admire what you did to save her and I know that you’re going to be deeply grieved.”
Jim hung up without saying a word. Karen stared at him and said, “What is it? Not Suzie Wintz?”
He nodded. He felt utterly stunned. But he also felt a rising anger, too. Nobody was going to maim and kill his students, nobody. And he was going to do whatever it took to stop it happening, now.
He hammered on the door of Henry Hubbard’s apartment like a man hammering on the door of hell. After a few moments Henry Hubbard opened it, looking shocked. Jim pushed past him into his apartment and went straight into the living-room. Jack was there, too, sitting on the couch with a brightly colored woven blanket wrapped round his shoulders. He lifted his head and blinked at Jim in bewilderment.
“Mr Rook?”
Jim said, “Suzie Wintz is dead.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry. Oh, God.”
“Who’s Suzie Wintz?” asked Henry Hubbard.
“A classmate of Jack’s. A young girl of nineteen years old from a broken family background with very little chance of ever becoming very much more than a cocktail waitress or somebody’s beaten wife. She drowned today when the college pool froze over. We thought that we could maybe save her but we couldn’t.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Henry Hubbard.
“Oh, but that’s not true. You know exactly what to say. You know why that pool froze over, just like you know why that handrail froze up, and the washroom was all iced up. There’s something here and it’s looking for Jack and it freezes everything that feels like Jack or smells like Jack. It wants him, and I want to know why.”
Henry Hubbard turned his face away. “I can’t tell you that.”
Jim went up to him and grabbed his shirt and stared him fiercely in the eye. “A girl died today, Mr Hubbard. A young boy has lost both of his arms. Whatever this thing is, it’s going to get Jack in the end, and then what will you say to me? ‘No comment’? ‘I can’t tell you that’?”
Henry Hubbard took a deep breath. Then he said, “Jack … why don’t you leave us for a moment?”
“No,” said Jim. “He’s one of my students too. If you have anything to say that directly concerns him, I think he has a right to hear it, don’t you?”
Henry Hubbard sat down in one of the armchairs. He lowered his head for a while. Then he said, “Very well. You don’t give me much choice, do you?”
“This is not about choice. This is about survival.”
“Well, yes. You’re exactly right. It
is
about survival. I never really believed that it would come to this. But now that it has … I’m afraid that I don’t really know what to do about it, how to stop it. That sounds pretty damned feeble, doesn’t it? But sometimes life throws you a problem and you simply don’t have the wherewithal to deal with it. The faith, or whatever it takes.”
He sat down. Jack was staring at him as if he had never seen him before – as if he had just discovered that his father was a total stranger.
Jim said quietly, “What really happened in Alaska, Mr Hubbard?”
“It was the worst blizzard that any of us had ever experienced. The winds were so strong that most of the time we could barely stand up straight. It was no use hoping that anybody would come to pull us out of there. The weather was far too severe for an airplane or a helicopter.
“On the third day Randy fell down a rocky slope and broke
his ankle. I strapped it up and we took it in turns to help him hobble along. But after nine hours we were all exhausted and Randy was in too much pain to go on. We decided that we’d pitch our tent and that Randy and Charles would stay there together while I went on to find help.
“I walked through that blizzard for a whole day. We had all experienced the feeling that a ‘fourth man’ was with us, but now that I was on my own I started to see it more clearly, and closer. A tall figure in a white hooded robe, carrying a long staff. It was always off to my left, and slightly ahead of me, so that I could never see its face.
“Once or twice I shouted out to it, but it never showed any signs of hearing me. If I stopped for a rest it went striding on and disappeared into the snow, but when I started walking again he reappeared. It frightened me, but at the same time it reassured me, too, because I thought that it must know where it was going, and that as long as I followed it I had a chance of survival.
“Of course I didn’t have the video camera with me now, so I couldn’t take any pictures of it. That’s why I’ve been looking at the video footage so hard … to make sure that it was real, and that it wasn’t just an hallucination. Sometimes I think I can see it, but then I rerun the video and look again and it was only a flurry of snow.”
“So what happened?” asked Jim. “Did it guide you out of there?”
Henry Hubbard took a deep breath. “By the time it started to grow dark, I still hadn’t reached any trading posts or settlements and I still couldn’t see any landmarks. I was expecting to come across the Sheenjek Glacier, which would have showed me the way south to Fort Despair. But the terrain was all the same, mile after mile, and none of my navigational equipment was working. I didn’t have a tent. The ground was so frozen so hard that it would taken
all night to dig myself any kind of shelter. I kept on walking but I didn’t know where I was going and I was quite certain then that I was going to die.
“They say that when you’re dying of exhaustion and hyopthermia you reach a point where all you want to do is lie down and let the snow cover you and go to sleep. But I didn’t feel that at all. I felt angry. I felt angry because everything had gone so badly wrong, and the weather had been so severe, and because I was going to die so young and never see my son again. I railed against God, if you must know, for letting me down. Hadn’t I always prayed? Hadn’t I always believed in Him? And so where was He now – now that I really needed Him?
“I collapsed on to my knees. I couldn’t walk any further. It was then that I saw the figure standing not far away, quite still. I dropped my flashlight and when I managed to pick it up the figure was standing even closer, so close that I could have touched it. Although the wind was blowing so hard, its robe didn’t stir at all. It was brilliant white, with a kind of soft white halo of light all around it. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I couldn’t even tell if it was human. Its face was completely hidden inside its hood.
“It stood beside me without moving for – I don’t know – maybe it was only ten minutes but it seemed like hours. Then I said, ‘Can you help me? Are you here to help me or are you just going to watch me die?’
“For a long, long time it didn’t say anything at all. Then it spoke to me. It’s very hard to describe its voice, but I won’t ever forget it for as long as I live. It was like thin ice cracking, that’s all I can say. It could have been either a man or a woman, I couldn’t tell. It had an accent of some kind but I don’t have any idea what it was. It said, ‘You didn’t come here to die, did you? You came here looking for glory.’
“I don’t think that I have ever been so frightened in my life. There was something about it, that figure. Its presence was so cold that it made the blizzard seem warm, by comparison. At least the blizzard was alive, howling and shrieking and full of whirling snow. But this figure, this was something else. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was Death. You know, Death with a capital ‘D’. The Grim Reaper, in person.
“I shouted at it. Well, I had to shout, to make myself heard. I said, ‘I’m not interested in glory any more. I want to live, that’s all! I want to survive!’
“The figure was silent for a while. Then it said, ‘How much do you wish to survive? What will you give me, in return for your life? Will you give me the thing that it is dearest to you?’
“I said—” and here Henry Hubbard had to stop, overwhelmed with the memory of what had happened, overwhelmed with what he had done.
“You said what, Mr Hubbard?” Jim coaxed him.
Henry Hubbard lifted his eyes in a look of utter despair. “I said it could have anything at all, so long as I survived. You see, I didn’t really believe that it was real. I thought it was something inside of my head. Not an hallucination exactly, or a mirage, but a kind of external projection of my survival instincts, to help me think more rationally about how I was going to get out of this situation.
“I said it could have everything I owned. Everything. But it said, ‘What do I want with possessions, here in the cold? I want warmth. I want the warmth of a human soul.’ I said that I didn’t understand. What soul? And that’s when it said, ‘I want you son. I will let you live, in exchange for the soul of your son.’”
Henry Hubbard’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s when I was sure that it wasn’t real. Because how could a figure in
the middle of Alaska know that I had a son? That’s when I was sure that it was my own mind playing tricks on me. So I said, yes. You can have my son’s soul, and anything else you want, but just let me get out of here alive.”
“You offered it my
soul
?” said Jack, incredulously. “You’re my father! You offered it my
soul
?”
Henry Hubbard nodded. “I don’t have any excuses, Jack, except that I was still convinced that I was hallucinating. The figure said, ‘Be assured that I will keep you to that promise. Others have tried to renege on their agreements with me, and they have come to regret it.’ I mean, for God’s sake, here was this tall mysterious figure in the middle of a blizzard and it was talking like my lawyer. I
had
to be hallucinating.”
“But you weren’t,” said Jim.
“No. The figure knelt down beside me in the snow and said, ‘Climb on my back.’
“At first I didn’t want to, but it stayed where it was, waiting for me, and in the end I put my arms around its neck and climbed on to its back. I could feel its body through its robes: it was bony, as if it had hardly any flesh on it at all. But it hefted me up, and put its arms under my thighs to stop me from sliding off, the way you do with your kids, and it began to walk.