The Ice Wolves (18 page)

 
CHAPTER 18

—

In the darkening nursery, Brad stood quietly, letting the murmuring from outside the door slowly diminish until it disappeared completely. He didn't know if the others had simply stopped talking, or if it was some otherworldly characteristic of the room, but it felt like he was in a bubble, enveloped in an atmosphere of tense anticipation.

“Hello?” he said tentatively. His voice was unaccountably dim, the word dropping like a pebble. In contrast, his strained breathing and the rattle of his heart sounded too loud.

For a while, he turned slowly, peering through the half-light into the corners of the room, where the sense of someone waiting was palpable.

“I want to talk,” he continued. “I'm betting it's been a long time since you've spoken to anyone.”

All remained still and quiet. Just as he had decided that nothing was going to manifest, the rocking horse moved, so slightly that it could well have been in response to a draft, but in the quiet of the room the creak was like a gunshot.

“Hello,” he said.

A draft of air moved past him, tingling the hairs on the back of his neck. The temperature dropped several degrees.

His thoughts seesawed as the chill dark of the nursery receded, to be replaced by the stifling heat of the souk, the aromas of spices and incense being wiped away by the chemical stink of the explosion and the sharp bite of acrid smoke.

It's the past that really haunts us
, he thought.
Ghosts are just symbols
.

Overwhelming claustrophobia gripped Brad as the sensations of that day rushed back in: the suffocating pressure of canvas and wood from the blasted stalls crushing on top of him, the oven heat rising fast, the sticky, iron scent of blood; and then the gradual realization that the insurgents had struck again, laying low innocents for the labyrinthine political games and ancient rivalries that no one really understood anymore; the feeling that he might be dying, and his brain still trying to catch up with the sensations before it accounted for missing limbs or torn organs.

“Help,” he had croaked, was croaking, a feeble cry that had been slipping from his lips since he was ten, one he was sure would never be answered.

A weak response came from nearby, and another, both in the local dialect; a susurration, a whispered prayer.

Turning his head as much as he could under the pressure of the detritus, he saw, lying next to him, the boy who had been torn away from his father by the blast. The boy lay facing away from him, but Brad recognized the cut of the hair, his shirt. He wasn't moving. Frantically, Brad struggled to shift his hand so he could check the pulse in the boy's neck; it was thready, but still pumping.

“We need help here!” he shouted.

Dragging his fingers down, he felt around until he found the boy's hand and held it tightly for support. In that stifling world where death pressed on every side, Brad found himself moving into a new life with new rules and hopes and aspirations; every thought process was subtly altered. He recognized there was a deep bond between him and the boy, that in some way they were the same, though he couldn't quite grasp the mechanics of that revelation. If the boy survived, he would survive. If the boy went on to have a happy life, so would he. The two were one. And so, in his dazed state, he gave whispered voice to his hopes, and made deals with God, and when he heard loud voices drawing closer, and felt the vibrations of the rubble being torn away, he knew his prayers had been answered. The touch of the boy's hand gave him all the hope he needed.

He called out loudly, knowing few would understand him, but hoping his urgency would draw them closer to give the boy the critical treatment he needed. Finally, a shattered stall was pulled away and the sun streamed onto his face, blinding him.

As his eyes cleared, silhouettes hovered above him, one of them familiar.

“You're going to be all right,” Lisa whispered. “No sense, no pain, right?”

“There's a boy here beside me,” he croaked. “He's in a bad way. Get to him first.”

Lisa responded with urgency, tearing away the material all around him until the boy was revealed.

“I checked his pulse,” Brad said. “I've got his hand.”

Lisa began to work on the boy, then stopped, stepped back.

“Help him!” Brad cried.

“Brad . . . ”

A crowd of wailing men and women drove Lisa to one side as the boy was plucked out of the rubble and carried off. It took a second or two for Brad to realize he was still holding the boy's hand. The shock rippled through him. It was reflected in Lisa's face before being replaced by a deep pity, and then the compassion he had grown to appreciate since he had met her.

The boy's arm lay in a pool of blood that had leaked out of him and seeped into the dust. The arm that had been reaching out for his father had been separated by the blast, as Brad had been separated from all his hopes.

He started to cry, silently at first, and then deep, racking sobs, for the boy, for himself, for everyone. Trying her best to comfort him, Lisa sat with her arm around his shoulders while the market was engulfed in rescuers and security forces. She was still by his side in the sparse hotel room later, though he remained unaware of the transition. He was aware only of looking up into her face, which showed more concern each time he examined it. And she had been there in the months that followed, listening as he told her it didn't matter, the boy had died, and everything he hoped for had gone with him. She put her own life on hold to help lead him back to life, and even in America, when it seemed like it would never happen, she had stayed with him. His hand in hers, always.

And now they were still linked, in a desperate place with death closing in all around, but this time he had a chance to bring about a different outcome. No deals with God or whispered prayers. This was down to him.

He snapped back into the cold reality of the dark nursery.

“Yes, I've been like you,” he said quietly. “Alone for so long. Lost in the shadows. We understand each other. But things are changing for me now. Help me get back out into the light completely.”

Silence at first, and then a child's ball bounced and rolled across the bare boards, coming to a halt against the wall beneath the window.

Making no sudden movements, Brad raised the opera glasses to his eyes. At first it appeared as though shadows were sweeping back and forth across the room at great speed, but eventually they coalesced into one form. A halo of dull light limned the dark figure, gradually fading as details emerged, as though a person were walking into the light from a long tunnel.

Finally, Eliza Grant stood before him, her long sable hair framing a snow-white face with eyes as filled with emotion as Abraham's. A state of anxiety gripped her constantly; she wrung her hands in front of her, and leaned forward onto her toes before rocking back to her heels in a nervous fashion. She was still tormented, trapped in the house in life, trapped in death, too.

“Hello, Eliza,” Brad said.

Her mouth opened and closed silently a few times, and then the words finally came. “I feel your pain, like knives cutting my flesh.” Her hand-wringing paused briefly, allowing Brad to see the scars that crisscrossed her forearms.

“Help me,” he began. At first, he struggled to find the words, but when he allowed his emotions to speak, they came freely. “I don't want to be trapped like you, Eliza. I want to escape this house—”

“And you wish to escape the prison around your soul.”

“Yes.”

“There is no escape from this house, for any who have let its essence taint them. When you die, you will be standing here with me, in the dark, forever.”

Brad shuddered. “I'm not doing this just for me. I want to help my friends. My father. I want to help you, and all the others here, if I can.”

Silence. Eliza flickered, an image breaking up under interference.

“Is there a way to free all the souls trapped in this house?” he continued.

“There is a path, but no one can ever walk it. Great evil stands in the way. Great evil, drawn to this place by the power that in another form keeps it protected. It is like a well that gives water, but also pulls in all who peer over the edge.”

“I know there's something in the house that we haven't encountered yet. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared. But I have to walk that path, Eliza. I have to find the Kiss of Winter, whatever lies in the way.”

The sadness in her face grew more intense. “So brave.”

“No. I just want to help people, like they've helped me. Tell me how to find the Kiss of Winter.”

“All who lived here were charged with keeping its location hidden, for all time. It is a mirror of the house. Both a boon, and a curse. Life giving and death dealing. Abraham does not want it found.”

“Why did Abraham bring the Kiss of Winter here?”

“That great and terrible thing has the power to transcend all barriers. Time. Space. But, most importantly, the barrier between life and death.”

Brad considered this for a moment, and then said, “Sarah.”

“His daughter,” Eliza concurred. “So ill, from the moment she was born. Clinging on to life as best she could, but eventually her grip failed. From the time he first held her, Abraham understood the inevitable, and from then on, his life was dedicated to the search for something that would keep his daughter close to him. So much love! It hurts me to think of it. He searched the world for objects charged with the power of the supernatural world, not caring if they were touched by the Devil, or witchery, or the glorious power of God. He built this house as a haven for them, so no other could take them from him, and he stored them here, and he probed their workings, and tried to understand the mysteries that plague existence. Somewhere, he knew, there was a power that would keep Sarah alive, or failing that, unlock a way for him to be at her side in death. For many years, it seemed he would be thwarted. Nothing came even close. And then, shortly before Sarah died, he found the Kiss of Winter.

“Though his heart was broken by her passing, for months after the funeral he labored on unlocking the secret of the Kiss, to no avail. Its powers were great, but the ones he really wanted—the bridge between life and death, between the present and the past where Sarah still lived, escaped him.

“And so the Kiss of Winter remained in its hiding place, and Abraham passed on, but remained, and all of us, the long, unending line of misery, became trapped in the orbit of that thing, denied our eternal rest by its unshakable bonds with life itself. A boon and a curse, then, like all magical items. Always a price to pay.” Her voice became a long sigh of pain.

For a long moment, Brad weighed what Eliza had said and gradually a deeper understanding spread through him. Stifling a pang of deep regret, he said, “It's time to change all this. Too many people have suffered. I completely understand Abraham's love for his daughter, and the lengths he went to, but I'm betting that price got much higher than even he imagined, and it's going up by the year. Something has to be done.”

Eliza's large, desperately sad eyes narrowed in thought. Her form flickered and distorted so that Brad became afraid she was leaving, but then she said, “You are correct, sir. A change must come. But are you prepared for the sacrifice that lies ahead?”

“I am.”

“Then follow the path through the house. It is clearly marked.”

“I've searched everywhere. I can't find it.”

“I have already given you the eyes with which to see.”

For a moment, Brad was baffled, then slowly he removed the opera glasses and examined them. “These?”

A breeze passed him, and the rocking horse moved gently backward and forward. The nursery once again felt empty, and when he looked through the opera glasses he saw it was true. Eliza Grant was gone, and all that lingered was a faint sense of dread at what lay ahead.

 
CHAPTER 19

—

Pinching his nose against the sickly sweet smell, Hellboy knelt down to examine the candle in the drawing room. It had already lost half its length.

“This is burning down quicker than I expected,” he said.

His unease was amplified when he glanced at Lisa scraping the frost away from the window to peer into the garden, where the gloom now puddled in advance of the falling twilight. She grew rigid, and he quickly came to her side. Snow lay thick across the winding paths, the herbs and lavender, and it was still falling fast. There was a certain tranquility to the wintry scene, but Hellboy's attention was immediately caught by what Lisa had seen: two burning points of red light in the thick shadow of the trees at the far end, watchful eyes ensuring there would be no escape from the rear of the house. The wolves still bided their time, awaiting the inevitable. Hellboy quietly helped her to refasten the shutters. There was no point mentioning it to the others.

Hellboy turned back to William, who prodded the ashes inside the old range. They were out of fuel, and the house was growing colder by the moment. “I never expected it would come to this,” William said absently.

“Mess with this kinda stuff, it's gonna blow up in your face sooner or later,” Hellboy said.

Forlornly, William closed the stove door. “So long looking into the past, trapped with life in the rear view, and now I've forsaken the future. I'm dragging all of you down with me.”

“It's not over yet,” Hellboy said.

Brad came in, and from his expression Hellboy could tell something had changed.

“Did you make contact?” Lisa asked. “Listen to me, I sound like some Victorian medium.”

“Yeah, I made contact.” Brad handed the opera glasses to Hellboy. “You're going to need these. They'll let you see the path through the house.”

“You're telling me we had the key in our hands all the time?” Peering through the glasses, Hellboy turned slowly. “When you've got ghosts comin' at you from every direction, you're not looking for subtle signs.”

“Where do we start?” Brad glanced uneasily at the diminishing candle.

“The hall? Entrance point to the house. That seems like a good point to get into the maze,” Hellboy said.

Though there was still a thin glimmer of light outside, the boarded-up and shuttered windows made the ground floor unbearably gloomy. With the lamp to light their way, Hellboy led them to the hall.

Putting his back to the front door, Hellboy looked through the opera glasses. A brief moment of dislocation passed, and then he realized Brad had spoken the truth. Now that there were no ghosts to distract him, he could just make out a trail of sparkling blue light, like phosphorescent grains of sand.

“Okay, first problem,” he said. “There's not one path, there's two.” Carefully, he followed the bifurcating path. “One goes up the stairs. The other goes back into the sitting room, and I'm betting it ends up going down in the depths.”

“How are you supposed to follow two paths at once?” Lisa asked.

Hellboy shrugged. “That's gotta be part of the puzzle.”

“Let's go down first,” Lisa prompted. “It's still light . . . just. Might give us time to crack the puzzle before night falls.” She tried to sound hopeful.

“You keep tellin' yourself that.” Hellboy gave a grim smile, and then pressed the opera glasses against his eyes and set off.

The sparkling blue trail followed a precise path, sometimes heading directly between door and door, at other times veering to follow the edge of the room or making a detour into spirals and ritual patterns.

“Old Abraham must have had a good memory if he had to learn this route,” Hellboy grumbled. “It's already making my head spin.”

“It's a spell,” William noted thoughtfully. “A three-dimensional spell. We follow the ritual path through space, and hopefully something will happen.”

“Hoping gets us nowhere,” Hellboy replied. “We make this work, or nothin'.”

In the belowground kitchen, Hellboy felt the atmosphere was charged, as though someone had just vacated the room ahead of them. He could see the others were aware of it too. They hesitated at the door in case they encountered what may, or may not, have been there, and he had to urge them to move; there was no time to waste. On the stairs, the blue trail became even more convoluted, going up and down several times on one flight. On the landing, the path went along the entire length against both walls. As Hellboy passed the closed doors, he felt a gravity behind them, trying to draw them all in. Something wanted them to step into the rooms, but he was sure no good would come of it.

For most of the journey, Hellboy had kept his eye on Brad, who had been increasingly on edge. Hellboy was worried that the constant background threat was starting to take its toll, but as they ventured cautiously onto the second floor, Brad revealed it was something more insidious.

“Dad, I know why you came here,” he said, apparently unable to contain himself any longer.

“This isn't the time—” William began. Hellboy wanted to agree.

“No, it has to be. You put things off and you might miss the only chance you ever get to say them. Like I should have done to Mom.” He paused. “Like you should have done.”

Hellboy watched William's shoulders sag as his carefully maintained façade slipped.

“There's something waiting in this house that's going to do every-
thing it can to stop us,” Brad continued. “I need to get this out in the open now, Dad.”

“If you've got something to say, now's the time,” Hellboy said. “You might not get another chance.”

“I was wrong about you. I know. I've been wrong all my life.” Brad choked back the hard knot of emotion that had risen in his throat. “I thought you didn't care. Nothing seemed to touch you. Yeah, I even thought you had something to do with Mom's disappearance. Even when I found out you'd bought this place, it all fit together. You were hiding away. Guilty, maybe. Or just the kind of person who had contempt for people. You could separate yourself from them, look down on the city from your big, old house up here. I'm sorry for thinking that. I've made a real mess of things.”

William's voice was flat and dead: “I did have something to do with your mother's disappearance.”

Hellboy saw Brad flinch, his eyes narrowing. He was ready to act if Brad lost control.

“I'm as bad as you always said I was, Brad,” he replied. “A bad husband as well as a bad father. I drove your mother away.” He saw the anger flare in Brad's eyes and added hastily, “Not that. I never laid a hand on her. I would never hurt her. Sometimes the less dramatic things are the most damaging. I was . . . cold. Insular. I never learned how to give your mother the emotion she wanted. I never tried, if truth be told. And we argued, and fought, and I think after a while she came to hate me. At least . . . she didn't love me anymore. And one day she'd had enough.”

“Mom left me,” Brad said, devastated.

William covered his face, suddenly looking very old. “That's the only explanation I can find, Brad. God knows, I've thought about it enough. We argued that day, and then she walked out, and she never came back.”

“I don't believe it. Mom wouldn't have left me like that.”

“I don't know, and that's the thing—we're never going to know,” he said wearily. “We're not so different, you and I. We've both wasted our lives waiting for a truth that will never come. Waiting for some moment of blinding revelation. Waiting for the door to open, the bell to ring. Picking up the newspaper every morning, fearing an answer, hoping for one too. In the end, it defined every aspect of my life. The bitter, cold, not-knowing consumed everything. Somewhere deep inside was the person I used to be, but there was no way of reaching him. Finding out what happened to your mother, discovering if she was alive or dead, and escaping that torment was the only thing that mattered to me.”

Hellboy watched a connection grow between Brad and William, common ground that neither of them realized existed.

“I thought . . . I hoped . . . you'd just get on with your life if I let you be.” William's eyes were luminous in the lamplight. “I didn't want you poisoned by my misery.”

Brad shook his head, his own eyes gleaming. “You heard about the Kiss of Winter . . . what it could do. Breaking the barriers between life and death. You think Mom's dead, and you thought you could get back to her.”

“That was the only hope I have of redeeming myself. Without that, there's nothing. No point.”

“And even if you couldn't cross that barrier, there's always the past,” Brad continued. “You could go back to when she was alive. Maybe even follow her on that day that she disappeared.”

“And I'd find out the truth, for good or bad. And finally I'd have peace.”

“Then we can do it together!”

William shook his head forcefully. “My life is over, Brad. I've wasted it. You've still got a chance. Don't let yourself be consumed by the past anymore. It's like a drug, always pulling you in, always promising you answers, but disappointing at each turn while offering something else to keep striving for. Some things we'll never know. We just have to deal with it and move on.”

“How can I do that?”

William nodded toward Lisa. “You've got someone who can help you now.”

Brad sighed. “I just want to know what happened to her.”

“No. You don't. The details of what happened aren't important. Whatever the truth, it's not going to be good. But just knowing the question's been answered, that's the important thing. It's about putting to rest the things that haunt us, and moving on.”

Hellboy felt uncomfortable amid the raw emotions, but both Brad and William were oblivious to him.

“The past always tries to sink its claws into you, dragging you back, always back,” William said. “We both have to find a way to shake it off once and for all, and look to the future.”

“So it doesn't matter what happened, just that we know there
is
an answer?”

William nodded.

“I don't know if I could live with that.”

William stared deep into Brad's face for a moment, and then surprised him with a forceful hug. “I'm going to find a way to put things right for you,” he whispered.

Hellboy saw Lisa had come to a sudden halt at the top of the final flight of stairs down to the attic room. “Do you hear that?” she said.

At first, there was only the ringing silence, but as his ears grew accustomed to what lay behind it, he heard faint whispers echoing behind the walls. Though it didn't appear to be a foreign language, the words were incomprehensible.

“They're waking,” William said.

Hellboy started down the stairs. “We all know where this is ending up. We're nearly there now.”

By the time they reached the door to the attic room at the bottom of the house, the whispers were punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter that sounded like steam escaping from a pipe.

“I don't like the noises they're making.” Lisa kept looking over her shoulder up the dark stairs. “It sounds like they're happy. That can't be good.”

“Keep moving,” Hellboy urged. “We're too close to go back. Not that we have a choice.”

He swung the door open and marched in. The room was as empty as always, with only the four paintings hanging on the wall, illuminated in turn by Hellboy's lamp.

“Nothing's changed?” Lisa said.

“You're not seeing what I'm seeing.” Hellboy adjusted the opera glasses as he followed the blue trail up the wall. It became a rectangle on the wall in the space left by the missing painting.

“What are you seeing?” Brad asked.

“A door. Or a mark where a door could be.”

“You were right, then,” Lisa said. “
Know my mind
. Sarah was always the key. Here, the absence of Sarah is the path to the Kiss of Winter, and, in Abraham's head, the path back to Sarah herself.”

“Does it open?” Brad asked.

“Careful,” William cautioned. “There may be another layer of protection. That's been the pattern for this place.”

“I can't see a handle,” Hellboy said. “What am I supposed to do? Say,
open sesame
?” He paused. “Open sesame.” Nothing happened. “Okay, worth a try. Scratch that.”

“How about knocking?” Lisa said.

“When you do that, something usually answers,” Hellboy noted. “So maybe you ought to stand back.”

As he raised his right hand to hammer on the wall, a distorted face thrust its way out of the plaster.

“Whoa!” Hellboy took a step back. “Nearly hammered you on the nose.”

Appearing to be a part of the wall itself, the face resembled a Notre Dame gargoyle, with a hooked nose, pointed ears, lowering brow over shadowed eyes, and an elongated chin. “What is the word?” it said in a rasping voice.