Rook: Snowman (24 page)

“What with?”

“You have a cigarette-lighter, don’t you? Break up some of this furniture and burn it.”

“But it must be priceless, some of it.”

“No, it’s not. It’s ugly, heavy, 1900s mahogany. The stuff that Sears, Roebuck used to sell to Nebraska farmers with delusions of grandeur.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

They broke up several chairs by kicking them and smashing them against the floor. Up here in Dead Man’s Mansion, miles from any civilization, the noise seemed twenty times louder than normal, and they had to stop now and again to listen to the silence. Jack piled chair-legs into the grate and soon got them crackling and spitting. Jim propped the notebook next to them, hoping that it wouldn’t take long to thaw. It was only three or four minutes before
the fingertips dropped off the cover into the grate, and Jim was able to scoop them up with the ash-shovel and drop them discreetly into the blaze.

“This guy was supposed to have found the secret of destroying the Snowman, wasn’t he?” asked Jack. “I mean, this is the whole reason we’re here, right? So where’s the secret?”

The dining-room was filled with dancing, jumping light from the hearth. The shadows on the walls looked like hopping Inuit wonder-workers in their mukluks. The air began to feel distinctly warmer, and as it did so, all kinds of smells began to emerge – smells that had been locked inside this frozen mausoleum of a house for over three quarters of a century. The smell of Berlinwork rugs, and quarter-sawed oak, and horsehair upholstery. Smells that existed these days only in the memory of the very old.

There was another smell, too – sweet and unmistakable and stomach-turning. The smell of frozen meat thawing out, as the ice-crystals that had preserved Edward Grace’s body for so long gradually began to melt.

“This is amazing,” said Jack, walking around. “I mean, why did this guy build a place like this? And right up here, where nobody could find it?”

Jim picked the notebook out of the hearth. The pages were gradually defrosting and coming apart. He used the blade of his penknife to open up the cover. In places the ink was badly smudged, but Edward Grace had written with a fine, clear hand, and almost all of it was decipherable.

Jack went around the table to the chair where Tibbles Two was sitting close to Edward Grace’s body. He tried to stroke her but she ducked her head away. She remained where she was, staring at the gradually decaying ruin that had once been a man.

Jim took the notebook close to the fire and read the very first page:

February 8th 1921. I believe that I have discovered at last the means by which the malevolent spirit known as the Snowman may be finally appeased. It has taken me many years of [
illegible
] and psychic divination, but I now feel prepared to confront it and attempt to send it back to the Other World from which it appears to have sprung.

At this point, I feel able to make a full and true confession of my weakness and my [
illegible
]. I have been known since I booked my passage on the
Titanic
as Mr Edward Grace, of Bakewell, Derbyshire; but my true name is Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates – the very same Captain Oates who accompanied Captain Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.

I have read with unimaginable shame the stories of my heroism … of how I left the expedition’s tent in a blizzard, in order to hamper the progress of my comrades no further. But none of the stories has mentioned that for days before this incident, we all felt that we were being accompanied by somebody who did not belong to our original party, somebody who always walked on our left, and who somehow helped to guide us through the worst of our difficulties. And of course nobody knew that when I was lying alone I was approached by this figure and offered my life, in return for the soul of the person who was dearest to me.

In my pain and my delirium, I accepted its offer. When I stepped out of the tent that night, with the blizzard in full spate, I did not walk to my death, nor did I have any intention of so doing. I walked instead into the arms of the Snowman, which creature carried me on its back to the nearest whaling depot. I sailed only a day later bound for
London, under the name of John Trethewen.

It was only when I reached London that I learned of the fate of my companions. I have to admit that there was a time when I contemplated suicide, particularly when I read about my own so-called heroism. But I had more urgent matters to consider. When I made discreet contact with my dearest love, Anthea Vane, she was overjoyed that I was still alive. But she told me that she had all manner of terrifying experiences, in which her apartments had been frozen solid, and a visitor had been trapped in her bath, the hot water of which had instantly turned to solid ice.

You have guessed, of course, that in my delirium at the South Pole, I had offered Anthea’s soul to the Snowman. I had never imagined that it would really seek to claim its fee.

I booked with Anthea a sailing to America on the
Titanic
, hoping to escape the Snowman by travelling to another continent. Who am I to guess that the Snowman was responsible for the tragedy in which so many people drowned? But I have learned since that the southward drifting of the iceberg which struck the
Titanic
was completely at variance with the winds and the tides and all predicted meteorological reports.

I lost my Anthea on the
Titanic
. She drowned in sight of me; and the Snowman claimed the soul which I had offered it.

That was why I came here to Alaska and built this house. I came here to study the Snowman and to learn how to destroy it for ever. I would live in this house, in the intense coldness in which the Snowman is always visible, and I would learn its ways, and its weaknesses, and in the end I would ensure that it never again preyed on those who are fighting for survival. I should have walked out of that tent in 1912, and allowed the blizzard to overwhelm me, as the legend
tells it. I should have died at least with dignity. Instead, I sit here, bearing a guilt which is greater than any man can be expected to bear. For Captain Scott and all of my dear companions at the South Pole. For all of those hundreds of innocent souls who drowned on the
Titanic
. And I damn the Snowman, and I will engineer his downfall, even if I never live long enough to see it myself.

Jim lowered the notebook.

Jack looked at him in the dancing firelight and said, “Jesus.”

But it was then that they both heard footsteps outside on the veranda. Footsteps, and the persistent tapping of a stick.

“It’s here,” said Jim. “It’s come to collect its dues.”

Fourteen

“Doesn’t he tell you how to destroy it?” Jack asked, frantically. “What about all this stuff about sending it back to the Other World from which it sprung?”

Jim said, “Lock the door. Let’s keep it at bay.”

“Lock, no key,” Jack reported.

“Bolts?”

“Bolts, yes. Bolts.” He shot two large bolts, one at the top of the door and the other at the bottom. “That should hold it.”

“Don’t count on it. Let me take a look at this book.”

Jim opened the notebook again. At the end of his meandering confession about what had really happened at the South Pole, and the sinking of the
Titanic
, Captain Oates had written in a very firm hand:

The Snowman is obliged to save those travellers in cold places who find themselves in danger. Therefore it can be destroyed by one who has courage enough to place himself in such peril that the Snowman is forced to attempt a rescue, and perishes as a result. If, for instance, you were to dive through a hole in the Arctic ice, the Snowman would be obliged to follow you, and if you made a particular effort to thwart its attempts to save you, the Snowman would drown, too
.

The tapping on the veranda outside sounded louder; and the decorative stained-glass window at the side of the dining-room window suddenly frosted over. Tibbles Two sat up in her chair and her fur bristled.

“You understand what this means, don’t you?” said Jack. “The only way to get rid of this thing is to kill yourself, and to hope that it’s going to kill itself, too, in trying to rescue you.”

“Well, I guess I could throw myself off the edge of the escarpment, on to the Ghost Salmon Glacier.”

“But that’s
cold
, right? This creature revels in cold. You might throw yourself onto the Ghost Salmon Glacier, and die; but this creature would probably love it. This creature
is
cold, incarnate. What did Laura tell you about fire?”

Jim clapped his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Actually, Jack, you’re right. You’re a genius. That thing out there is duty-bound to save me, no matter from what. If we burn this place down, it’s going to have to come in and save me. It has to burn itself voluntarily, otherwise the magic doesn’t work.”

“But you’re not going to stay in here while it all burns down.”

“Of course not. You think I’m crazy? I just need enough of a drama to lure the bastard in here, and get it trapped.”

Tibbles Two mewed, and stood up with her front paws on the dining-room table. Her late master was already beginning to smell like overripe blue-vein cheese and his tongue had dropped out from between his teeth, swollen and black, like a huge leech.

“You’re right, too, TT,” said Jim. “The sooner we do this, the better.”

They heard the front door of Dead Man’s Mansion opening with a low, lubricious groan, and a further persistent
tapping as the blind spirit came searching for them. It tapped along the corridor until it reached the living-room, and for a few moments they heard it probing around the armchairs and the mahogany bureaux. Then it came back out again, and tapped its way over to the dining-room. It tried the doorhandle, and rattled it, but the door was firmly bolted.

It tapped, and tapped again, and rattled the handle harder.

Jim said, “Jack – out of the window. Quick. I’m going to set this place alight.”

“I can’t let you do this on your own.”

“I want you out of here. It wants you much more than it wants me. It’s supposed to save me, remember? From you, it wants your soul.”

“I can’t let you. You’re only my teacher, for Christ’s sake.”

“
Only
your teacher?
Only
your teacher? Do you mean to say that I’ve sweated blood for all of these years in Special Class Two and I’m only your teacher? Your teacher is your
teacher
, Jack. Your teacher teaches you facts, opinions, maturity, morality, humor, tragedy, everything. Who should be here when your parents are both dead and there’s some kind of terrible spirit trying to kill you too, if it’s not your teacher?”

Jack stared at him in amazement. “That’s what I
mean
,” he retorted. “There’s some kind of terrible spirit banging at the door and you get all fired up and start
lecturing
me.”

At that instant, there was a loud crackling sound, and the door to the dining-room froze. Jim could see it sparkling with frost, and a crazed pattern of fractures appear all over it. There was a second’s pause, and then the door was shattered apart with a single blow from the Snowman’s staff. Over the steaming fragments came the Snowman
itself, even taller than ever, its face completely concealed inside its hood, its eyes glittering. It stopped by the door and raised its staff high.

“
I have come only to collect what is rightfully mine
.”

“No human being belongs to anybody, least of all a Sno-cone like you.”

“
His father made a promise. His soul belongs to me
.”

“His father wasn’t
compos mentis
at the time. Besides, his father bought the farm out on the glacier. Don’t tell me you didn’t take his soul when you had the chance.”

“His father’s soul was not the bargain. I gave his father life, and in return his father freely offered me his soul.”

Jim edged sideways, nearer the fire. “Look – I don’t mean to disappoint you but this isn’t going to happen. When a man dies, all his debts are wiped off the slate. That goes for souls, too.”

The figure made a disgusting slavering noise inside its hood. “I was pledged his soul as a straightforward agreement. No money changed hands, no honor was impugned. I have a right to garner his soul and I shall have it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” grinned Jim. He leaned across and pulled one of the blazing chair-legs out of the fire. He walked calmly toward the drapes and set fire to them at the bottom, where they had once been lavishly braided, and now hung ragged and dry. They caught fire instantly, and Jim stepped backward to light the next set of drapes, and then the next.

“
You will pay for this!
” the figure roared at him, in a voice like a dozen tortured prisoners screaming at once. “
You will pay for this, and so will every single person you love!
”

Jim tossed another blazing chair-leg to Jack, and Jack set fire to the sofa and the small display cabinet, with its stuffed Arctic gulls in it, and big green eggs. Within a
few seconds, the whole dining-room was ablaze – chairs, side-tables, lamps, even oil-paintings. The atmosphere was so cold and so dry, up here in the mountains, that everything blazed as if it had been splashed in gasoline.

“
No
!” roared the figure, blindly lashing its staff from side to side. “
I shall have what you owe me
!
And I shall have you, too, whatever my master bids me to do
!”

Jim and Jack backed away from the figure as it came tapping its way toward them. Obviously it became blinder and blinder as the light and the heat increased – that was why it had been so blind in California. But as the heat in the dining-room rose from fifty degrees below freezing to four or five degrees above, the figure began to fade from sight. It was only visible to the naked eye in conditions of extreme cold. Now that the room was well above freezing, and growing hotter all the time, it vanished.