Spirit (50 page)

Elizabeth lifted the bonnet out of the musty, varnished hatbox. She put it on her head, and it was uncomfortably tight, but it would have to do. She went back downstairs. Laura was waiting in the hallway, holding the mescal buttons in her hand.

‘You look terrific,' she said. ‘But do you really want to do this?'

‘Laura, this has got to be ended, once and for all.'

They went into the library. Elizabeth sat down on the leather sofa, with
Bleak House
open on her knees. She closed her eyes for a moment and said a prayer, the prayer that Gerda had recited in
The Snow Queen
. Then she looked up at Laura and said, ‘I'm ready.'

‘Remember what Eusebio told you . . . chew it slowly.'

She took the mescal button, and she was just about to put it into her mouth when the wind, already furious, let out a shriek that sounded almost human. It came screaming down the library chimney, so that the logs were hurled out of the hearth, blazing and cartwheeling across the room. At the same time, the french windows burst open, and the blizzard came lashing in. The heavy velvet curtains flapped and rumbled, and snow flew around them like angry white bees. It was so fierce that rows of books toppled from the shelves, and fell with their pages flapping to the floor. Papers whirled in the air, and the desk-lamp tipped sideways and smashed.

‘Lizzie!' screamed Laura, in terror. The noise of the storm was deafening. The french windows flapped and banged, flapped and banged, until the glass shattered. Snow tumbled across the floor and began to pile up in the corners of the room, and on the chairs. The coldness of the wind was unbearable. Elizabeth held her hand up in front of her face to shield her eyes, but she still felt as if the skin of her cheeks were being scrubbed with a cold wire brush.

The wind and the snow extinguished most of the logs, but one was still burning underneath her father's desk. She kicked
it out of the kneehole and into the open, and stamped on it. As she did so, however, she dropped her mescal button, and it disappeared somewhere in the snow.

‘Laura!' she shouted. ‘Keep hold of that peyote! I've just lost mine!'

But Laura shouted back, ‘
Look
!' and pointed frantically to the garden.

Walking towards them through the blizzard was the Peggy-girl, her white dress napping, her face black-and-blue with frostbite. Her expression was angry and haunted, and even though her feet didn't quite touch the ground, and she left no footprints in the snow, she seemed to be flagging as she approached them, as if the snow and the icy winds were taking their toll on her.

But it wasn't the Peggy-girl that had alarmed Laura so much. Behind her, in the darkness, a tall black shape was approaching them, too. It was only visible because the snow was flying off it, and it looked like a huge ungainly woman in a cloak.

‘Oh God, she's bringing it here,' said Laura.

She turned to run but Elizabeth caught her arm. ‘Peggy won't hurt us, you know that. She's here to protect us.'

‘You think so? Then why is she leading that thing here?'

‘She won't hurt us. She can't.'

‘You can believe that if you want to. I'm not going to stay to find out.'

She ran to the library door, but when she tried the handle it wouldn't turn, and it was so cold that it flayed her fingers, the way that Lenny had burned his hand on the stove.

‘It's frozen solid!' she called out. ‘Help me open it!'

‘Leave it!' said Elizabeth. ‘You won't be able to!'

‘Then I'm going the other way!' Laura shouted at her. ‘Come on, Lizzie! You can't just stand there and wait to be turned into ice!'

The Peggy-girl had already reached the snowbound patio, and was gliding towards them with those strange, tired footsteps, rather like an exhausted skater. Close behind her, the huge black shape of the Snow Queen grew larger and larger, and Elizabeth was sure that she could hear it, over the shrieking storm. It was making a deep, thunderous sound like a subway train passing beneath her feet, mixed with a clashing noise, like hundreds of scissor blades. Beneath its cowl she could make out a long pale horse-skull kind of shape, which must have been the Snow Queen's face, if it had a face.

She tried to turn to Laura but she couldn't. She suddenly realized that she was paralysed with fear. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak. She could hardly even breathe. Laura snatched her hand and tried to pull her toward the french windows, but she couldn't think how to make her legs work.

‘Come on!' screamed Laura. ‘Lizzie, for God's sake, come on!' The cold was so appalling that she couldn't say any more, and the temperature was falling like a stone down a well.

Laura pulled her one more time, and then gave up. She stumbled out of the windows, and across the patio, heading for the tennis-court. But she hadn't gone further than the patio wall when she tripped on a step that was hidden beneath the snow, and fell, and knocked her head. The knock was so loud that Elizabeth could hear it over the wind.

‘Laura!' she called, and managed to walk stiffly towards her. But as she reached the french windows, the Peggy-girl came and stood in front of her, with both hands raised, palms forward, as if willing her to stop.

‘Laura's hurt!' Elizabeth protested. All the same, she glanced behind the Peggy-girl at the black hunchbacked shape which loomed in the darkness. If it came any nearer, she was going to try to run, too.

‘I know what you're trying to do,' said the Peggy-girl, dispassionately. ‘But you must stay as you are, and lead your
life as you always wanted to. You don't want your Lenny to suffer, do you?'

‘Leave us alone!' Elizabeth shouted at her. ‘Why can't you leave us alone?'

‘You have to be protected, Lizzie. I don't want anyone to harm you.'

‘I don't need protecting! I don't want protecting!'

The Peggy-girl said nothing more, but turned her back, and glided away through the teeming snow. At first Elizabeth thought that the Snow Queen was going to come closer, but as soon as the Peggy-girl had passed it by, it turned away, too, and within seconds it had vanished in the blizzard.

Elizabeth limped over to Laura and knelt beside her. Her face and hair were already covered in a thin veil of snow. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was very shallow. She looked almost as white as the Peggy-girl. ‘Laura!' she called her. ‘Laura, wake up!'

Laura's eyes stayed shut, her face pressed against the snow. Elizabeth took a deep breath, and managed to lift her up in her arms, and slowly carry her back into the library. She cleared the snow from the couch, and laid her down. ‘Laura, wake up! Laura!'

She turned Laura's head to one side, and it was only then that she saw that her blonde curls were matted with blood and snow. ‘Laura! You have to wake up! Laura!'

She went to the door and tried to open it. The lock was still frozen solid, and the handle wouldn't turn, no matter how furiously she rattled it. Desperate, she went across to the fireplace and picked up the poker. She wedged it at an angle in between the doorhandle and the door, and heaved. To her relief, the lock gave way, and she was able to drag the door open. She carried Laura into the sitting-room and laid her carefully on the sofa. Then she picked up the telephone to call for an ambulance. The receiver was dead; the storm must have brought the lines down.

Gently, she sponged Laura's head with a wet tea-towel from the kitchen. It was difficult to see how deep the wound was, underneath her hair, but Laura still seemed to be deeply unconscious and her breath kept catching. Her pulse was faint and irregular. There was nothing else Elizabeth could do; she would have to borrow Mrs Patrick's pick-up and drive to the doctor's, and bring him back to help her. The blizzard was far too fierce to risk driving to New Milford, and she didn't want to take Laura with her to the doctor's in case the pick-up broke down, which it very often did, even in good weather.

The fire had died down to ashes, but they were still glowing, and she quickly jabbed at them to liven them up, and put on more logs. Then she took off her great-grandma's bonnet, wrapped her head in a scarf, and pulled on boots and gloves.

‘I'll be back as quick as I can,' she whispered to Laura, and left her a scribbled note,
Gone to doctor
, in case Laura regained consciousness before she got back.

She went out through the front door and trudged down to Green Pond Farm through the furious snow. She kept slipping and stumbling, and the wind was so fierce that she had to lean into it, to stop herself from being blown over. It took her nearly ten minutes to walk the short distance to the farm, and by the time she passed the old pigsty her nose was so cold that she couldn't feel it.

To her surprise, the farmhouse was in darkness. Not a light showing anywhere. Maybe the power was out. The Patricks must be at home, because the pick-up was still parked in the farmyard, and there were no tracks in the snow to indicate that they might have walked anywhere, or that another vehicle had come to collect them. What was even more peculiar, the front door was wide open, and snow was drifting into the hall.

‘Mrs Patrick? Seamus?' she called. She peered into the darkness and listened, although it was hard to hear anything over the wailing of the wind. ‘Is anybody at home?'

She stepped hesitantly into the hall, and felt her way through to the kitchen, where Mrs Patrick and Seamus spent most of their time. The door was open and she could see that the kitchen itself was illuminated only by the ghostly, reflected pallor of the snow. It was cold, too, and her breath was visible as she looked inside.

Everything in the kitchen was covered in glistening layers of ice. The plates and jugs on the hutch were buried in ice, and the shelves were dripping with icicles. The dried flowers sparkled with ice, and even the pie that Mrs Patrick had been baking was frozen solid, with spangles of frost on it.

Mrs Patrick herself was sitting at the table, and Seamus, as usual, was sitting in his blanket beside the fireplace. Elizabeth said, ‘Mrs Patrick, thank God you're – ' even as she realized what had happened to them.

She approached them cautiously and tenderly, with a feeling of overwhelming grief. Mrs Patrick was frozen so hard that her eyeballs had turned opaque, and her skin was deathly white. Elizabeth gently touched her hair, and it broke in a shower of frozen white filaments. She went across to Seamus. Her footsteps crackled on the frozen floor. Seamus sat with his head on one side, a string of ice dangling from his lower lip. He looked oddly peaceful – more peaceful than Elizabeth had ever seen him before.

On a wooden chair she found Mrs Patrick's black leather purse. It was frozen solid, too, but she chiselled it open like a big black oyster, using a kitchen knife. She looked at Mrs Patrick and said, ‘Forgive me, won't you. I'll be back, when this is over.' She took out the keys to Mrs Patrick's pick-up, and went outside.

It was no use, however. The pick-up whinnied and chugged, whinnied and chugged, but wouldn't start. Elizabeth sat back in the old leather seat and let out a long, smoky, breath of resignation.

There was nothing left for her to do. She would have to use the glamour, and confront that hideous black figure that Peggy's imagination had brought to life, and try to destroy it.

 

 

Laura was still unconscious when Elizabeth eventually made it back to the house. It was almost six o'clock now, but the storm was screaming unabated, and the sky was just as dark as it had been in the middle of the night.

She tried patting Laura's cheeks, and coaxing her back to consciousness, but Laura remained as floppy and as unresponsive as ever. Elizabeth could only hope that she was sleeping . . . nature's way of helping her to recover. She prayed to God that she hadn't suffered brain damage.

Laura's left hand was clenched, and she carefully pried it open. Empty. The mescal buttons had gone. She looked around the floor, but there was no sign of them there, either. She forced her way back into the library, and groped around in the snow, trying to find the button that she had dropped, but she couldn't feel it anywhere. There was too much debris under the snow, too many books and pens and logs and inkstands. She went out through the french windows and braved the storm for three or four minutes, trying to find the buttons on the patio, but the snow was impossibly deep, and even the bloodstain that Laura had left on the snow had been covered over.

She returned to the sitting-room. It was well past six now, maybe she could find somebody in town to help her. She stoked up the fire as high as she dared, then wrapped up again and walked up the road to the end of Oak Street.

Sherman was deserted. In places, Oak Street was three or four feet deep in snow, and a long curving drift went halfway up Endicott's front window.

Blinking against the blizzard, Elizabeth shouted, ‘Hallo! Can anybody hear me?' But her voice was swallowed by the wind.

She was about to struggle back to the house when she saw a long unnaturally-shaped lump of snow on the sidewalk. Shivering, she knelt down beside it and dug at it with her hands. First of all she felt something leathery, then something soft. She scraped all the way around it, and even before she knew who it was, it was obvious what it was. A man lying frozen, face-down on the concrete. She didn't want to dig very much more, but she cleared the snow away from his face. It was Wally Grierson, one-time sheriff, his face as white as dead pork.

Elizabeth slowly stood up. She was beginning to realize now the extent of the Snow Queen's revenge on all who touched her, all who helped her, all who denied her. God, for all she knew this blizzard had covered the whole of Litchfield County, and beyond.