The Glory Hand (36 page)

The specters of Sarah and Miss Grace sank into a single charred husk on the floor. Beside it, the Glory Hand curled into a fist, dwindling, melting, devoured by its own flames.

The fire had spread to the wood frame of the cottage, and a ceiling beam crashed to the floor, blocking Cassie's path to the door. Her eyes and mouth shut against the smoke, she leapt over the beam and fought her way out of the cabin.

Outside, flames were everywhere. It was as though the cabins, the lodge, the other buildings, had burst ablaze at the same moment, as if they could not exist without the old woman who had breathed them to life. Far from extinguishing the fire, the melting snow seemed to feed it, Cassie thought, like the gasoline that had drenched the straw men on the night of Consecration. Shutters exploded off the cabin windows from the heat, and the doors burst their locks, leaving dark hollows that looked like blind eyes.

And did she hear screams? Or was it just the rusty hinges giving way? The roof-beams buckling? The shingles splintering apart? Unless . . . Could a place become as evil as the people who had lived in it?

At first, in the flames, the brooding December day shone as bright as noon. The smoke and cinders darkened the sky. The air reeked of ashes, and of something else: the smell, she guessed, of something burning that had once been alive. She waded through the snowdrifts in the graveyard, brushing past the headstone chiseled 'Choose Death,' and remembering the fate of Iris and Robin and the others, she understood the epitaph.

Cassie veered away from the lodge and across the snowy expanse of lawn towards the frozen lake, her legs smarting from the burns. What was it about Miss Grace's words that had driven her here? Cassie wondered.'
There's maple syrup in the
frees,' she'd said,
'andfish hibernating in the lake with their eyes open, just waiting for spring to come.'
Somehow Cassie sensed what the old woman had meant, even if Miss Grace had been too senile to grasp it herself: the hint of a promise Cassie could only dimly understand.

A ragged scar of ice marked the water's edge, and on the shore Lakeside cabin was burning, rocking precariously on its pilings, a flimsy boat on choppy seas. The frozen lake reflected the flames, ice and fire merging into one ruby-hard glaze.

Cassie stepped out onto the ice.

A chill assaulted her, but not from the cold. It was her mother's legacy afflicting her still, this nearness to the watery darkness. She could hear the ice starting to give way beneath her feet, cracking with each step as though she were walking on a mirror, and she didn't look down until she had counted a hundred paces.

Only when she reached the middle of the lake did she glance towards her feet. The ice was veined blue and green, translucent, like a thin slab of marble. And far beneath the surface . . . Was it only the way the light from the flames refracted on the ice? Or was there a form ... a human form . . . lying there? A woman, as white as if she had been chiseled from ice herself? She lay on her back, her hands folded over her chest, her eyes open, staring at Cassie with a deathly melancholy. When she reached out a hand towards her, Cassie tugged at the ring.

At first it wouldn't come off, as if the metal were resisting. She had to pull so hard to remove the ring, it tore the flesh of her finger, but she didn't notice the pain. She held the ring in her hand for a moment, then dropped it towards the ice. It fell terribly fast, piercing the slab with a hiss and leaving a tiny hole, like one left from the impact of a bullet. Below the ice, the silver ring glinted for a moment, then vanished in the depths, along with the image of her mother.

With the crack of pistol shots, the ice was starting to break up under her feet, the thick blocks splitting, splintering, clashing like the blades of knives. Cassie walked calmly towards the shore, walked with a sure and steady pace. She no longer felt the Chill.

The fire encircling the lake was dying, and the sky was black with smoke, as if a thousand crows had smothered the clouds with their wings. Cinders rained over Casmaran, as though to cover it in a final dark snowfall, descending as silently as dusk. Cassie trudged past the charred rubble of the cabins, and the scar on her chest felt tender and raw. As she started up the driveway towards the main road, following the tracks of the taxi, she realized she was limping, like her mother.

The flames had fanned a hot wind, and the air seemed terribly warm, so warm that Cassie could no longer see her breath in frozen clouds before her. A tear rolled down her cheek, as if a piece of ice that had been frozen inside her for a long time had finally melted. As if, after a long winter, there had been a sudden, startling thaw.

Take a steamboat ride into hell.

FEVRE

DREAM

mum George R. R. Martin «

In the magnificent heyday of the Mississippi River steamboats and sultry New Orleans decadence, Abner Marsh teams up with the mysterious Joshua York, to captain the splendid steamer
Fevre Dream
on its maiden voyage. But Joshua's strange nocturnal habits and pathological obsession with the newspaper reports of unsolved murders along the River begin to disturb Abner, especially when they approach the luxuriously crumbling New Orleans plantation of the sinister patrician, Damon Julien, master of the last branch of an ancient race, who emerge only at night, to feast on human blood ...

'Slowly unfolds its horrors like the petals of some corrupt flower... One could almost suspect Martin of being a vampire himself and having lived through the times. There were moments when I was frightened to turn the page .. . masterfully written.'
City Limits.

'A powerful tale of supernatural terror. . . frightening, moving, haunting, beautiful, with utterly believable characters, both human and other.'
Ramsey Campbell.

'Wonderful . .. the atmosphere reeks of river-misted heat and fitful moonlight... Martin has created an unforgettable madness. I really couldn't put this one down.'
Woman's Own.

FICTION/HORROR 0 7221 5730 4 £2.25

A selection of bestsellers from SPHERE

NON-FICTION

BACHELOR BOYS - THE

YOUNG ONES' BOOK Rik Mayall,

Ben Elton & Lise Mayer
£2.95 □

THE COMPLETE HANDBOOK

OF PREGNANCY Wendy Rose-Neil
£5.95 □

THE STORY OF THE

SHADOWS Mike Read £2.95 □

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC'S

HANDBOOK Dr. Lee Schreiner

and Dr. George Thomas £i-50D

All Sphere books are available at your local bookshop or newsagent, or can be ordered direct from the publisher. Just tick the titles you want and fill in the form below.

Name_

Address

Write to Sphere Books, Cash Sales Department, P.O. Box n, Falmouth, Cornwall TR10
9EN

Please enclose cheque or postal order to the value of the cover price plus: UK: 55P for the first book,
22p
for the second and 14P per copy for each additional book ordered to a maximum charge of £1
.75.
OVERSEAS: £1
.00
for the first book and 25P for each additional book. BFPO & EIRE: 55p for the first book,
22p
for the second book plus 14P per copy for the next
7
books, thereafter
8p
per book.
Sphere Books reserve the right to show new retail prices on covers which may differ from those previously advertised in the text or elsewhere, and to increase postal rates in accordance with the PO.