Rook: Snowman Page 20

  The fire in the bedroom spread even more quickly than the blaze in the dining-room downstairs. Before he knew it, the bed was a blazing funeral-pyre of wood and horsehair and curling springs, and the drapes were being eaten up by the fiercest fire that Jim had ever seen. The heat was growing intolerable, and the smoke was so thick that he was coughing and whining, rather than breathing in and out.

  But he stayed where he was as the room burned even more wildly all around him. In his mirror he could see the figure on the landing outside, torn between its greed to feed itself on Jack’s immortal soul, and its duty to rescue Jim from any harm. Jim was an Arctic wanderer: no matter what threat he faced, the Snowman was bound by the terms of its punishment to save his life.

  Still the creature hesitated. The fire was so hot now that Jim’s stormproof coat was softening and melting, and his bootlaces were beginning to smoke. Sweat was running down his face and he could smell his hair starting to smolder. His cheeks felt as if they were actually burning, but he didn’t flinch. If he gave in now, the creature would have them both.

  The Snowman came nearer to the bedroom door. It stood with both its hands raised across its face, as if it were making a secret sign, or shielding itself from the heat. Jim could see it in his mirror but even that was becoming too hot to handle. The rug under his feet was glittering with tiny orange sparks and the wool was charring like old, burned flesh.

  At that moment, Jack recovered. He dragged himself up on to one elbow and stared at Jim in horror. “Jim! Get out of there! Jim, your goddamned hair’s on fire!”

  Jim could feel the heat on his scalp and he patted it with his hand. The palm of his hand was filled with charred black hair.

  Oh Christ, he thought. I’ve overplayed it this time. I’m going to roast to death, right here in this room.

  Still the tall white creature held back. It turned again to look at Jack, and it lifted its hand as if to seize him and tear out his heart. But it hesitated, hesitated. It had made a promise to the Great Immortal Being and it couldn’t deny it.

  The soles of Jim’s boots began to burn. But at that instant the tall white creature made a lunge into the blazing bedroom to rescue him. Jim saw the figure in Laura’s mirror, its shoulders hunched, its arms outstretched, and for one split-second he thought that he saw its face. But as it tried to seize him, he sidestepped, and rolled over on the burning carpet, two quick rolls and he was out of the door.

  The Snowman whirled around in the center of the room. “You fool!” it screamed at him. “You will pay for ever for this!”

  But Jim slammed the bedroom door and twisted the key in the handle.

  There was a furious beating on the other side of the door. Then the beating subsided, and they heard a low, agonized moaning. The moaning rose higher and higher, until it was a piercing, mock-operatic screech. It went on and on until Jim thought that it was never going to end and they were all going to go out of their heads.

  Then something inside the room exploded. Maybe the creature was too cold to withstand such heat. Maybe there was ammunition in the room; or even a couple of sticks of dynamite. But the whole house shook to its foundations, and fragments of window-frame were sent tumbling into the snow-clouds far below.

  Jim and Jack staggered down to the front door, and out into the freezing cold. Dead Man’s Mansion was burning from basement to attic, with huge flames rolling out of every window. Its roof collapsed, sending showers of sparks up into the air, to join the stars. Then the upstairs floor fell in, followed by the stairs. They stood two or three hundred feet away, close enough to feel the heat of the fire, and watched as it brought down the greatest private house in northern Alaska.

  Long after the main fire had burned itself out, and there was nothing left but smoking ruins, Jim circled the house whistling and calling. “TT? TT? Where are you, TT?”

  But the cat didn’t answer. Jim could only conclude that it had stayed with Captain Oates in the dining-room, and preferred the loyalty of death to the disloyalty of survival.

  Jim put his arm around Jack and said, “Let’s go. It’s a long walk back and all of my Snickers have melted.”

  Jack said nothing, but turned and stared at the black, skeletal wreckage of Dead Man’s Mansion. Then he tightened the straps of his rucksack and started to walk.

  When he arrived at college the following Monday, Karen came across and said, “Jim! Look at you! What on earth happened? Your hair!”

  “Little accident with a barbecue,” he told her.

  “How was your trip to Alaska?”

  “Well, how do you want to put it? It was partly successful.”

  “Only partly?”

  “I think I learned something. Not to interfere with other people’s problems. Not to get involved in other people’s lives.”

  “You’re kidding me. I thought you loved interfering with other people’s lives.”

  Jim walked across the parking-lot into the college building. As he turned into the main corridor, he saw Dr Friendly talking to Clarence, the janitor. He went over and waited until Dr Friendly had finished.

  Clarence said, “Hey, Mr Rook! You look like you’ve been sunbathing – two inches from the sun!”

  “Little accident with a barbecue,” said Jim.

  Dr Friendly said, “You’re back, then. Successful trip?”

  “In a way. I did what I set out to do. And I guess I discovered something, too.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “It’s time I moved on. I can’t stay with Special Class Two for the rest of my life. You don’t support it, Dr Ehrlichman is only half-hearted, and what good am I doing, really? You’re right: I’m giving my kids nothing but false hopes and expectations they can never hope to fulfil.”

  He paused, and then he said, “I called Madeleine Ouster over the weekend and I’m flying to DC at the end of the week.”

  Dr Friendly put his arm around his shoulder. “You know something, James. For the first time in your life, I think you’re doing the right thing.”

  He sat in his classroom that afternoon and listened to his students analyzing ‘The Ball Poem’. Then, when they were finished, he stood up and walked to the back of the classroom.

  “What if the little boy had never had a ball to begin with? What if he had never had a ball to lose?”

  “I don’t get your meaning,” said Tarquin Tree.

  “Well, take you for instance. When you first came to this class, you’d never read a single book, you didn’t know a single poem. You thought that Walt Whitman was a country-and-western singer. When you leave this class, I’ll bet you money that you never pick up another book, and that you never read another poem. So what’s the point of your coming here, and what’s the point of my giving you that ball, when you and I both know that you’re going to let it go bouncing off down the road, and lose it for ever into the harbor?”

  “What’s the point?” asked Tarquin, confused. “What’s the point?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, yes.”

  “There doesn’t have to be a point, does there? Like, what’s the point of anything? What’s the point of music? What’s the point of red Corvettes? What’s the point of sex, when you’re not having babies? There doesn’t have to be a point.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jim. “Sometimes, maybe there does. Sometimes you feel that your own life has to have a point. Sometimes you have to do something for yourself and put other people second. I have a gift, as you all know, a very great gift. I can see spirits and ghosts and things that people normally can’t see. But it’s like being a healer, in a way. Everybody comes and asks you to help them, and sometimes they don’t even ask, but you help them anyhow, because you’ve got the gift and who are you to refuse anybody the benefits of it?

  “But right now I want to go away and lead a life where nobody knows what I can see; and nobody knows what I can do. Right now I want to try to be an ordinary person.”

  “You’re leaving us?” said Linda Starewsky, in disb
elief.

  Washington Freeman III shook his head and kept on shaking his head. “You can’t leave us, man. What are we going to do if you leave us?”

  “You’re going to do exactly what you did before you met me. You’re going to do the best you can.”

  “Yes, but who’s going to teach us about all of those poems and stuff?” asked Billyjo Muntz. “You know – who’s going to give us that, like, insight?”

  “You have your own insight,” said Jim. “Learn to rely on yourselves, instead of me. Look for your own poems. So long as you remember what I taught you – so long as you bother to read, and to think, and never to take anything at its face value – you’ll get along fine.”

  Laura Killmeyer said, “Don’t you believe in magic any more?”

  “Sure I believe in magic. But magic doesn’t solve everything. Sometimes we have to sort things out the hard way, the ordinary way, without the benefit of magic.”

  He reached the back of the class. Nestor Fawkes was crouched over his desk, writing something in his awkward, spidery script. Jim stood over him for a while, and then said, “What are you doing there, Nestor? Mind if I see it?”

  Nestor looked up. His shirt collar was grubby and there was a new red bruise on his cheek where his father had hit him. He handed the piece of paper to Jim, all folded up, and Jim took it back to his desk.

  “All right, everybody. You just have time to start reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Whatever your first impressions, this is a very strange spaced-out poem full of weird and powerful images.”

  Everybody made a noise opening their poetry books and scuffling their feet and whispering. Jim sat down and opened the piece of paper that Nestor had given him. It said, simply, ‘Dont go. Please. Regards, Nestor.’

  Jim sat for a long time with his hand covering his mouth. When the recess bell rang he remained where he was. He watched his students file out of Special Class II, and Nestor was the last of all.

  After a while Jim picked up his briefcase and left the room without looking back. Karen was waiting for him at the end of the corridor.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. It was ridiculous, but he found his eyes prickling with tears. “Nothing,” he said. “Somebody just stuck a knife in my heart, that’s all.”

  About the Author

  Graham Masterton (born 16 January 1946 in Edinburgh) is a British horror author. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton’s first novel The Manitou was released in 1976. This novel was adapted in 1978 for the film The Manitou.