Rook: Snowman Read online

  “If Edward Grace had found a way, though, there might be some evidence of it, up in his house? If his playing cards were still intact after all that time, who’s to say that he doesn’t have papers, or notebooks, or diaries, something like that?”

  “A very slim chance, I’d say.”

  “Slim, yes. But still a chance.”

  Henry Hubbard tiredly rubbed the back of his neck. “You’d have to find the house first. There must have been dozens of expeditions over the years, but apart from one or two chance sightings, nobody knows exactly where it is.”

  “You’d help me find it, though, wouldn’t you?”

  “You? You’re not serious, are you? Do you have any idea what kind of terrain we’re talking about? What kind of conditions? You have to be one hundred per cent fit, with years of experience in trekking and climbing and survival techniques.”

  “I don’t trek, but I schelp down to the liquor store now and again. And I used to climb into my old apartment all the time, when I’d forgotten my key. As for survival … I teach Special Class Two, Mr Hubbard, and anybody who can survive that can survive anything.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible. Nothing is impossible, so far as protecting my students is concerned. If finding Dead Man’s Mansion offers them some kind of a chance, then I’m going to go find Dead Man’s Mansion. I don’t care whether you come with me or not, but since you have the know-how, it would probably make things a whole lot easier.”

  “Mr Rook, I don’t think you have any idea what you’re proposing to do.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. But I’m going to do it all the same.”

  “You realize that you’ll probably die.”

  Jim said, “I’m talking about the lives of nearly twenty young people here. Including your own son.”

  Henry Hubbard looked away. “I’m not sure that I can face going back to Alaska, Mr Rook. That creature robbed me of all the nerve I ever had.”

  “Listen, my students feel like that sometimes, when they’re faced with an English test.”

  “There’s a hell of a difference between taking an English test and crossing the Sheenjek glacier.”

  “No there isn’t, if it frightens you just as much. I have a severely dyslexic girl in my class. She’s nineteen years old and she still can’t make a rhyme or recite the days of the week. Do you know what she said to me the other day? She said that English tests made her feel physically sick and that sometimes she felt she would rather take an overdose than have to show up for class to take another one.

  “So I let her take it a step at a time. I encourage her to plan what she’s going to do, and make one success out of a series of small successes.”

  “Mr Rook, you don’t tackle an Arctic exploration as a series of small successes. Either you succeed totally or you die. Alaska isn’t a land of half-measures.”

  Jim was silent for a long time. Then he said, “That’s how we’re going to leave it, is it? You’re just going to sit here feeling sorry for yourself while this Snowman creature tracks Jack down and freezes him to death?”

  Henry Hubbard didn’t reply for so long that Jim thought that he was never going to. Eventually, however, he stood up and said: “It’s going to take money. We’re going to need clothing, equipment, transponders; and we’ll have to rent a snowmobile.”

  “I have a couple of thousand in my savings account.”

  “Well, that’ll help. The TV producers have already paid me twenty-two thousand; and my wife left a little when she died.”

  “Does this mean you’ll do it?”

  Henry Hubbard gave him the haunted look of a soldier who knows that he has to go back to the Front. “When it comes down to it, I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  Eleven

  That afternoon, Dr Friendly rapped on his classroom door and said, “Sorry to interrupt, James. But there’s a phone call for you. Madeleine Ouster.”

  Jim told his class to continue reading from The Lost Boy and followed Dr Friendly down the corridor to the principal’s office. There were at least fifteen police officers and six or seven forensic investigators milling around in the college lobby, along with reporters and two TV crews. West Grove’s frozen swimming pool had made news all around the world, and meteorological experts from five different countries had come up with wildly differing opinions as to how the phenomenon had occurred.

  Two or three reporters came hurrying up to Jim, asking him for quotes. “How do you feel about the tragedy today, Mr Rook?” “How are Suzie’s fellow students coping?” “Some TV preachers are saying that this was a sign from God to bring Bible study back into our colleges, what do you say?”

  Jim waved them away and went into Dr Ehrlichman’s office and closed the door. Dr Friendly held out the phone and said, “This is your big chance here, James.”

  “Mr Rook? This is Madeline Ouster. I’m leaving for Washington in a half-hour and I was very disappointed not to hear from you this morning.”

  “I’m sorry, that was discourteous of me. I was kind of tied up with this swimming-pool business.”

  “I was very sad to hear about that. I hope you’ll accept my condolences. I also hope that you’ll accept my offer of a job.”

  Jim said, “I’ve thought it over very carefully, Ms Ouster. But I’m afraid that I have to think of my commitment to my class.”

  “I know you’re a very loyal teacher, Mr Rook. But think about this on a national level. The needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few.”

  “Didn’t Mr Spock say that?”

  “Whoever said it, Mr Rook, they were wise words. There are millions of American students who desperately need the kind of enthusiasm for language and literature that you have the gift to inspire.”

  “Well, I’m very flattered. Don’t think that I’m not. But I have a crisis to deal with here, and Special Class Two really need me. So I’m going to have to say thanks, but no thanks.”

  “I could enhance your salary and pensions package.”

  “In my dictionary, Ms Ouster, to enhance anything means to increase its beauty. And it would not be very beautiful of me to leave twenty young people right when they need me the most.”

  Dr Friendly had been listening to this conversation with mounting frustration. “You can’t turn her down!” he spluttered. “Don’t you realize with a fantastic opportunity she’s offering you?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms Ouster,” said Jim. “I didn’t quite catch that. The coffee was just starting to perk.”

  Madeleine Ouster said, “I wish you well, Mr Rook, that’s all I can say. I personally think that your sense of commitment is a little misguided, but I admire you for it, all the same.”

  Jim hung up. Dr Friendly stood staring at him in disbelief. “How could you do that?” he demanded.

  “Because Suzie Wintz is dead and I don’t want the same thing to happen to any more of my students.”

  “And what, precisely, does Suzie Wintz’s death have to do with your turning down a very exciting and lucrative position in Washington?”

  “I can’t tell you, I’m afraid; and you probably wouldn’t believe me, even if I did.”

  Dr Friendly took a few tight breaths to steady himself. “This won’t stop me from rationalizing the special education department, believe me.”

  “Rationalizing?” That’s a good word for abandoning the needs of hundreds of kids who might never be given another chance to learn how to communicate.”

  “Oh, they know how to communicate all right. I’ve heard them. They have the widest vocabulary of slang, obscenity and assorted grunts that I’ve ever come across outside of the Marine Corps.”

  “I didn’t know you were a Marine. Maybe I should have guessed. You do have a certain gung-ho attitude when it comes to teaching English.”

  “I was in charge of drafting orders, if you must know.”

  Jim said, “That figures.” But then he laid his hand on Dr Friendly’s shoulder and
said, “Sorry. I’m a little wired, that’s all. I want to ask you a favor. I have two weeks’ vacation time still owing to me, and I was wondering if I could take it on Monday.”

  “On Monday? This coming Monday?”

  “That’s the one. I’ve already talked to Mrs Sennehauer and she’s agreed to take over Special Class Two until I get back.”

  “I don’t know how I tolerate you, James. I truly don’t.”

  “You tolerate me because you’re trying to live up to your name, that’s all. Friendly by name, friendly by nature.”

  As he left college that evening, he saw a group of his students in the parking-lot, talking quietly together. They had all been subdued since Suzie died, but he could see that they were giving each other tremendous support and affection, as if they were all members of the same family. Laura Killmeyer was there with her mirror, as well as Dottie Osias, draped in a black fringed shawl, Christophe l’Ouverture and Tarquin Tree.

  He gave them a high-five and walked over to his car. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. At that moment, an orange dropped out of the tree above him and landed on the passenger seat. He picked it up, ready to toss it out, when he realized that it was ice-cold, and hard as a baseball, and that its surface sparkled with frost. He looked up. The orange tree under which he had parked was glittering with white rime. Just like the orange, it was frozen solid.

  Jim valuted out of his car, looking around him in all directions. From the rear of the car, he could make out a faint track of sparkling footprints, already melting in the sun. They crossed the parking-lot and headed toward the grassy bank that led to the back of the science block. He saw a quick, furtive moment beneath the trees, but when he shaded his eyes against the sun and stared at it more intently, he realized that it was nothing more than a flicker of sunlight through the branches.

  “Laura!’ he called. ‘Laura, bring me that mirror!”

  “What?”

  “Bring me that mirror, quick!”

  Laura came over, carrying the mirror. “What’s the matter, Mr Rook? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “The point is that I haven’t seen a ghost. But it could be here. Do you think you might be able to see it in the mirror?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to perform the ritual.”

  “You mean I have to eat half an apple facing east and the other half facing west? I don’t have an apple. Do you have an apple?”

  “That’s only for people you love. If you want to see a spirit you hate, all you have to do is spit once at every point of the compass. Then you have to spit on the mirror and say, ‘Mirror, mirror, with this bile; reveal to me the spirit vile.’”

  “And then I’ll see it?”

  She looked at him with deep earnestness in her eyes. “You should do, if you really believe.”

  Jim said, “North, which is north?”

  “That way, I guess.”

  He turned around and tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry. “Here,” he said to Christophe l’Ouverture, “give me a swig of that Seven Up.”

  “Say what?” asked Christophe.

  “I said, give me a swig of that Seven Up; and make it snappy. I’m all out of spit here and I’m trying to track down an evil spirit.”

  “I’ve been drinking out of the bottle, Mr Rook. And, you know—”

  “For crying out loud.” Jim snatched the bottle of Seven Up out of his hand and took a huge effervescent mouthful. It wasn’t just Seven Up, though, it was fifty per cent Bacardi. It burned down his throat and fizzed up his nose and he coughed and coughed and in the end he had to lean against his car, trying to get his breath back.

  “Jesus,” he said. “You could have warned me.”

  “Yeah? And get myself busted for breaking college rules?”

  “Forget the rules,” Jim told him.

  He bent forward and spat to the north. Then he spat to all of the other points on the compass. Laura Killmeyer held up the mirror so that he could see his own face, strained and tired and wavering like a character in a 1960s cinema-verité movie. “Spit,” she said. “I can wipe it off afterward.”

  He spat, and his saliva trickled down the mirror. Laura touched her hand to her forehead and whispered, “Repeat after me, ‘Mirror, mirror, with this bile; reveal to me the spirit vile.’”

  Jim repeated the incantation word for word. “Will it work now? Will I be able to see it?”

  “It depends how much you believe.”

  “Believe me, I believe.”

  “Then take the mirror for yourself, and look.”

  Laura handed the mirror over. It was surprisingly light, almost as if it were nothing but an oval of reflective air. “It used to belong to my great-grandmother. She had it hanging in her hallway in New Orleans, but always facing the wall. She said that if she hung it outward, it would capture the souls of everybody who stepped over her threshold, and she didn’t want the responsibility for that.”

  “So why did she hang it there at all?”

  “I don’t know. But she always used to say that she didn’t want a mirror full of souls. She had eleven children. What would she do with a mirror full of souls?”

  While they were talking, Jim was slowly panning the mirror from one side of the parking-lot to the other, searching for any trace of the hooded Snowman in white. He couldn’t see anything to begin with, just a collection of jumbled visions. Dr Ehrlichman, shaking hands with George Hepplewhite from the college fund-raising committee; the roof of the arts block; the steps that led to the college main entrance; Linda Starewsky in a very short skirt and a tight white T-shirt, walking down to the sport stadium, chewing gum. Three quail, fluttering past.

  Then he managed to angle the mirror toward the trees, where the sunlight was dancing through the leaves. At first he couldn’t see anything clearly, there were too many harlequin patterns of sun and shadow. But then, deep in the shadow, he saw something standing upright against the trunk of a birch tree, slightly to the right of the main stand of trees. The silvery bark effectively camoflaged it, because its robes were equally pale and silvery, and the darkness of its face could have been a hollow in the trunk.

  Jim stared at it in silence, not knowing what to do next. The figure remained where it was, as if it were watching him, and because he knew it was blind, its watchfulness somehow made it even more frightening. What was even more disturbing was that he could see it only if it was behind his back, and he had a sudden surge of dread that it was going to come rushing up to him. If he turned around, it would vanish, and he would be left helpless.

  The Snowman was much taller than Jim had imagined, and its shoulders were like the arms of a rocking-chair, covered with a sheet. Jim guessed that it shoulders needed to be wide, if it really carried stranded explorers for miles and miles across the Arctic tundra. But all the same, there was something frighteningly out of proportion about it. Its arms were unusually long, and the shape of its hood suggested that it had a huge and bony head. It carried a tall staff, with which it endlessly prodded and poked at the ground all around it.

  The wind restlessly stirred its robes, and there was a lack of clarity about it, a lack of focus. It wavered and danced like a poor television picture.

  Even from a distance, the Snowman gave off a deep chill of undiluted malevolence. It smoked with cold. Blind, invisible, and insatiably hungry for the soul that Henry Hubbard had promised it.

  “You can see it, Mr Rook?” asked Laura.

  Jim nodded. “I can see it all right. It’s … I don’t know. It’s very weird. Very scary.”

  “Let me look.”

  Jim titled the mirror away. “Laura – this is something you really don’t want to see, believe me.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m a witch. I’m not scared of spirits.”

  “Laura, this isn’t like seeing your dead grandma or the boy that you’re going to marry. This is the same thing that killed Suzie and froze Ray’s hands. It’s real and it’s only about a hundr
ed feet away.”

  “Please let me look.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t have you involved in this. You or any other student.”

  He directed the mirror back toward the trees, but the figure had disappeared. Anxiously, he twisted it from left to right, but there was no sign of the Snowman anywhere at all.

  “God damn it,” he swore. He took the mirror and walked toward the trees, until he came to the place by the silver birch where the Snowman had been standing. Again he swiveled the mirror around, and for an instant he thought he saw a white flicker, as if the Snowman had turned the corner by the gymnasium, but it could have been nothing more than a breeze-blown fragment of paper.

  Laura caught up with him. “I could help you,” she insisted. “I really know magic, and this is magic, isn’t it? Kind of magic, anyhow.”

  Jim handed her the mirror and knelt down on the ground. Underneath the silver birch tree, the grass was frozen into razor-sharp spikes. “Look at this,” he said. “This thing freezes everything it touches.”

  He stood up, looked around a few moments more, and then walked back toward his car, with Laura following him.

  “There are all kinds of spells to ward off the cold,” she said. “There’s an incredible spell that old babushkas used to cast in Russia, to revive people who had frozen to death. You boil three live rats, two pounds of butter and five hot peppers in a samovar.”

  “This isn’t just cold we’re talking about here,” said Jim. “This thing freezes the sidewalk wherever it walks, even in eighty-degree heat. It can freeze catfood in the can. It can freeze paper into dust. He picked up the orange which had dropped into his car, and threw it against the ground. It shattered into tiny frozen fragments, as if it were made of bright orange glass. “It can freeze a human being the same way. You want that to happen to you?”