by Peter James
Somewhere above was the clatter of a circling helicopter; ski patrol, she thought, straining her eyes with sudden hope, but she could not see it.
A savage gust of wind blew, whipping the surface snow up into a bitter stinging mist that she had to turn her face away from. She stared up at the sky again, dark blue through her goggles, like deep silent water. The clattering was fading into the distance.
Behind her Richard’s skis scraped on the ice; he had stopped at the lip and was peering down at the sheer ice wall.
‘Where the hell are you taking us, Andreas?’ he shouted. ‘We’re not bloody mountaineers. Are you trying to fucking kill us?’
Andreas grinned at Sam, ignoring him. ‘This snow is sitting on ice. You must not traverse. Make your descent straight down. Short turns. Follow in my tracks exactly. If you traverse, you could cut it away and it will avalanche. Follow me exactly. If you are not turning in the right place, you go over the lip at the bottom. There’s another ice wall. Sheer.’
She stared down, then looked at him. The fear was paralysing her.
Andreas launched himself, compressing his body, exploding in a spray of powder, compressing again, exploding again, turning, sharp tight turns, controlling his speed. He compressed again, but came up oddly, twisting, tried to recover but he fell face forward, somersaulted and disappeared completely for a moment in a spray of snow. One hand emerged, then his head. He lifted himself up a fraction, and put his hands over his face.
She knew what she had to do, knew that she had to go now or she never would. She launched herself gingerly down, making the first turn, in Andreas’s tracks, too slowly. She had not enough momentum and her upper ski caught in the heavy powder and nearly pulled her over. She jerked it free, panicking, and turned again, gathering speed now, too much. She turned again, then again, surging; she saw Andreas fifty yards below her, and beyond him the lip, a long way down. Don’t look down. Don’t fall. Her muscles were so clenched she was turning all wrong. She was trying to slow, but she was not slowing; she was accelerating.
Twenty feet above him she turned out of his tracks and began to traverse across the slope, accelerating fiercely now.
‘Bugs!’ she heard Richard scream. ‘Don’t traverse! Bugs! Turn, for God’s sake, turn!’
The lip was rushing up.
She was going too fast to turn now.
‘Bugs! Turn! Turn, Bugs! Fall over, for God’s sake! Fall over!’
It was getting closer.
She screamed; tried to force her skis to turn. Tried right. Then left. The lip was hurtling towards her.
Then the snow exploded around her. Her neck cricked painfully and she was lying flat on her back, staring at the sky.
She heard Richard’s voice, anxious.
‘Bugs? You OK?’
She felt her heart thumping. She rolled over and the snow moved under her. ‘Fine,’ she shouted. ‘I’m fine.’ She pulled herself up, brushed the snow off her goggles and saw Richard looking fearfully down, first at her, then at the long cut she had made in the snow. Andreas, a hundred yards above her now, still had his hands over his face, and she saw blood running down his gloves.
‘Andreas!’ Richard shouted. ‘Are you all right?’
The gradient was more gentle here and she was still some way from the lip. Both her skis had come off, and she hauled them out of the snow, laid them down, and reset the bindings. Richard waited. Andreas was sitting, his hands covering one eye, and she looked again at the diagonal line she had cut above him as she pushed her foot back into one ski, and trod down hard, trying to get the lock of the safety binding to snap home, her hands numb, her mind numb.
There was a sound like a clap of thunder, and she felt as if someone had kicked the soles of her feet. Cracks began to appear in the snow above her. They spread out, like veins.
Like eggshell, she thought.
There was a loud rumble, and the ground began to shake. The cracks spread out all around her, with a strange, terrifying sound, like a giant sheet of parchment being torn.
Like a giant eggshell cracking.
Like the ceiling of the hotel room.
She heard Richard’s voice scream at her: ‘Go, Bugs. Go!’
She tried to move, but she was frozen with fear.
Frozen as if she was in a nightmare.
‘Go, Bugs!’
There was a whiplash crack and a chunk of snow slid away right beside her. She heard the roar of a breaking wave above her, and looked upwards; saw the cloud moving down the slope towards her, saw it in slow motion, boulders of ice and the foaming spray of snow.
She pushed herself forwards, trying to skate with the one ski she had on, her other foot sinking into the deep powder.
The roaring was becoming deafening now and she heard a mad howling wind, felt it blasting her. She was almost at the edge, almost, then the snow slid away under her and she was falling.
The wind tore at her face, its wailing banshee howl in her ears, then she felt the pressure pushing in on them.
She heard the drumming and thudding of falling rocks and ice all around her, a crazed, accelerating, terrifying cacophony, like a million footsteps racing down a tunnel. The clatter and rattle and howling, echoing, getting louder.
Swim. Try and keep to the surface.
She moved her arms. Something hit her on the head, blinding her with pain, then she was tumbling again. She felt her hands sliding down something bitterly cold that was burning them.
The ice wall.
She was spinning.
Vortex, she thought.
The mad dark roaring was all around her. Something smacked into her cheek and hurt, then she was falling, free for a moment. She bounced off something hard, then something else again.
Then she stopped moving. She could hear the mad noise continuing all around, the drumming and rattling and howling, becoming more muffled, slowing down. Distant.
And then silence.
She lay in darkness. She closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again. But she could see nothing at all.
She tried to move her hands. They would not move.
She tried her legs – her head. It was as if she had been set in cement.
She began to tremble.
The void. The void that she had dreamed of when the Mercedes had crashed, and gone over the edge.
The void where she would never see Nicky again.
Nor Richard.
Nor anyone.
She felt the terror surge through her. Half an hour.
Half an hour was all you had if you were trapped in an avalanche. After that you were virtually given up for dead.
Where was she? How far down? How deep?
She felt the cold all around her.
And the silence.
This is death.
She tried to move. Her right hand felt loose, but something was trapping it.
The strap of the ski pole. She wriggled her hand, and it came free. She was able to touch her face. She ran her fingers over her forehead, her nose, her mouth. It is me. I am alive. She touched her cheek. It was stinging.
Which way up am I lying?
They had talked about avalanches so much in the past. Joked about them. Discussed what to do. They said that you crapped yourself in the fear. That was how the dogs found you. From the smell.
She wondered if she had done that.
How embarrassing. If they found you like—
Spit. Someone had once said that you should spit. If the spit landed on your face you knew you were lying on your back. She spat. Damp spots landed on her forehead.
‘Help me!’ she shouted. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ But she could tell, from the flatness of the sound, that her voice was trapped with her inside the tomb.
At least I could be unconscious, she thought. At least I could have been knocked unconscious and allowed to die without waking up.
A drip fell on her face; then another. Melting snow.
Where was Andreas? Richard? Was R
ichard buried in it too?
They were way off the piste, down the side of the mountain. Would anyone even have seen the avalanche? She put her hand up and pushed. Hard as rock. She tried to scrape with her glove. It slid, uselessly.
Ski pole, she thought, putting her hand down and grasping the top of it. But it would not move.
Something sharp, metal. There must be something.
She pulled her glove off with her teeth, feeling another drip as she did so, and scraped at the snow with her fingers. Cold shards dropped onto her face, into her eyes. Her goggles must have come off, and she was suddenly annoyed that she had lost them. Maybe they’ll find them? Maybe they’ll find them even if they don’t find me?
Identified by my goggles.
Her hand was getting cold. Conserve heat. She wriggled it back into her glove, then tried again to free the ski pole, yanking it, twisting it around, but it was jammed. She closed her eyes and punched the snow above her head, listening to the muffled thuds. It felt good to make a noise. To break the silence. The dark silence.
Could you breathe through ice? How much air did she have?
She heard a sound, like a handful of pebbles flung against a window. Right above her.
Her heart raced. They had found her. Found her!
Then nothing. She heard a faint echo. It could have been a footstep a few yards away, or an explosion way in the distance.
She punched the snow again, in anger, despair, closing her eyes against the falling slivers. It seemed to give a fraction, or was she imagining it? She punched as hard as she could, and suddenly her hand broke through. She felt a shower of snow over her face and down the inside of her sleeve. She wiped her face and opened her eyes.
Daylight.
Brilliant white daylight.
She stared at it through a small hole, barely wider than her fist.
‘Hey! Help me!’
The daylight seeped into her tomb and she could see around her.
Could see that she was not alone.
That there was someone else in here with her.
Could see the livid red eye socket staring sightlessly through the slit in the blood-stained hood. Inches above her face. As she looked, another drop of blood fell from the socket down onto her cheek.
She screamed. And screamed again.
Andreas’s hooded face inches above her, squeezed out of the roof of the tomb like a gargoyle. His mouth was open in a twisted smile and the eye socket gaped, stared at her, seeing as much as his good eye which was also staring at her from its slit, staring blankly, not moving or blinking.
Oh sweet Jesus no. No.
Then she saw the hand at the strange angle above her, as if it did not belong to the same person as the face; the hand, stripped of its glove, the deformed hand, withered, with just the thumb and the little finger, sticking motionless out of the snow like a claw.
She shook her head, trying to turn away, trying to look up through the tiny hole she had made at the daylight. Then the daylight darkened, and for a moment it vanished completely. The ground around her seemed to be drumming, shaking.
Oh God don’t avalanche again. Don’t move. Please.
She saw blades rotating above her.
A fan.
Black blades.
Descending down towards her, whirring madly.
Propeller.
The fan.
The ceiling cracking.
Eggshell.
The black blades.
Helicopter.
Then they began to move further away. The drumming stopped.
Helicopter.
Oh please come back. I’m here. Please come back.
But it had gone.
‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘Help! Help me!’
She heard a scrabbling, rattling sound above her, and voices, excited. ‘Ici! Ici! Ici!’
There was a sudden, deafening rumble, and a shower of snow and ice fell onto her face. Andreas’s face was shaking, vibrating as if he was laughing, the black hood lifting up and down as if he was still alive, still breathing, still mocking. The head was coming closer, nearer, inching down to her, inching down as if he was trying to kiss her.
No. No. No. No.
There was another rumble. Then the light went and she was in pitch darkness again.
Entombed in darkness and silence.
In the void.
In the void where you could scream for ever.
Her eye lashes touched something, soft, cold, damp, flicked backwards and forwards, making tiny scratching sounds as the face came closer, started pressing against her face.
She pushed her head away, swivelled it backwards and forwards, trying to drill into the ice behind, but all the time she could feel the face pressing more and more, the hard cheekbones through the silk pushing into the side of her own mouth, pushing harder and harder, grinding, as if their two heads had been put together inside a vice which was slowly being tightened.
The pain was getting worse. It was getting harder to breathe, she was gulping and choking, trying to think through the terror that was blinding her even more than the darkness.
You’re smothering me.
You’re crushing me.
You’re hurting me so much.
Then she felt the explosion inside her head.
Like a light bulb.
And everything stopped.
46
A bald man smiled at her out of the darkness, and stretched his arms down towards her.
She shrank back, tried to kick out at him, but her legs wouldn’t move. ‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed.
He blinked, startled, then smiled again, a gentle reassuring smile. Sam frowned. Different, she realised, quite different. Large warm eyes and a bushy black beard. ‘It’s OK, please, it’s OK,’ he said.
She watched him, puzzled. Puzzled by the vibration and the dull roaring din that echoed around as if she was inside a tin drum, and the curious smells of rope and oil and grease and exhaust fumes. She heard the snap of a shackle, the clank of a chain, and a voice shouting; the man with the beard shouted something back which was drowned. Someone squeezed her hand.
‘It’s OK, Bugs. You’re fine. You’re going to be OK.’
Richard.
She turned her head a fraction and saw fir trees slide past, then a blue wall of ice, then nothing but a grey haze, as if she had just caught the end of a home movie.
‘How you feel?’ The man with the bushy beard was leaning over her again.
‘My leg hurts.’
‘We give you something for it. Do you have allergies to any drug?’
She shook her head. It hurt to do that. ‘Where am I?’
‘In the helicopter. We will have you in hospital in Visp very quick now. Just we wait a few more moments.’
Her hand was squeezed again, and she felt her forehead being caressed. She dosed her eyes and immediately felt sick. She opened them and saw Richard standing over her. He stroked her forehead. ‘You’re OK. You’re going to be fine.’
Beside him she noticed the silhouette of the Matterhorn spin past in the distance. She sat up a fraction, ignoring the pain, remembering.
‘Lie down, Bugs. Don’t try to sit up.’
She could see a sheer wall of ice, steely blue, dropping away below a long gully. Near it, a wide strip was missing from the side of the mountain.
That was where she had been.
It went out of sight for a moment, then she could see it again clearly, just below her. They were level with the couloir, and she followed it across and down. The top part of the slope which had been covered in powder snow was now rock and mud. To the right, the rock and mud continued all the way down to the lip, and then gave way to the ice wall. To the left, the mud turned into snow, great chunks, like white boulders strewn across, piled up at the bottom making a wall several yards high that stopped just short of the lip; and further to the left, where the ice wall ended and there was a lesser gradient, the ice boulders carried on, stopping short of
a second lip below.
On both the higher and lower lips men in brown clothing were trudging through the boulders, fanned out, taking short steps forward and pushing thin metal rods into the snow between each boulder. They raised their heads, moved forward and pierced again.
‘Crazy,’ said a voice behind her. She turned and saw the man with the bushy beard look first at her, then at Richard. He shook his head and looked angry, angry and hurt. ‘Crazy. You English. Crazy. Why you go skiing down there?’ He tapped the side of his forehead with his finger. ‘Crazy.’
‘I—’ But there was no fight in her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘I think you have very lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
He gestured to the window, and shook his head again. ‘You see there? The ice, the walls? It’s impossible. Look where you are coming down.’
She could see clearly now. The whole side of the mountain dropped away sheer. If they had succeeded in getting down the slope that had avalanched, they would still . . .
The lip where Andreas had told her to turn ran on around the side for a few yards, then dipped steeply. They wouldn’t have seen it from above when they were on it. They wouldn’t have seen it until their skis had left it, and they were tumbling down the rock face that fell away sheer beneath it, down a thousand feet or more, into the rolling mist.
47
There was a knock on the door of her hospital room.
‘Entrez,’ she said.
A policeman came in, in his dark blue uniform and black holster, holding his cap in his hand. He closed the door behind him and nodded politely at her. He was short, trim, precise-looking, with neat dark hair and a neat thin moustache.
‘Meeses Curtis?’
She nodded.
‘Kaporal Julen from the Walliser Kantonspolizei,’ he said.
‘Hallo.’