Snowman

by Norman Bogner

  Chapter Twelve

  The plane banked steeply through a web of dense clouds. Bradford was transfixed. The snow . . . he had thought he would never see it again. Glistening and forbidding, it possessed a mystery for him as inscrutable as the sea's. The attraction was so profound that he was shaken. He was a man who had been in exile. Now he had come home.

  From the air he saw frozen alkali lakes. The mountain was made up of minarets and volcanic domes. Cirques, mosaiclike amphitheater-shaped bowls, formed giant pocks in the range.

  The landing seemed to take forever. When he finally left the plane and felt the chill wind gust over the tarmac into his face, he embraced it like a lover. He felt the snow with his bare hands. The sense of complete peace that had eluded him during his wandering slowly returned. He was back in his element.

  Intoxicated by the air, Bradford drove the large equipment-loaded truck with the window open. The men in the rear grumbled, but Pemba's good spirits had returned, and he was shouting, "Sherpas Zindabad!" Long live the Sherpas! Even the crunch of the tire chains grating on the slick, icy road excited him.

  As they approached the lodge the traffic increased, and they saw groups of colorfully dressed people carrying their skis along the steep embankment. Surrounding them were the high Sierras, their summit obscured by a haze of swirling frosted air.

  Where would the Snowman be? Bradford visualized the giant form climbing over a layer of snow, bridging a crevasse as it scoured the mountain for prey.

  He turned the truck into the driveway, and cinders splayed against the rear axle.

  "It's not going to be an easy climb," Pemba said, his eyes narrowing, focusing on the terrain. But then he smiled and clasped Bradford's arm, moved by the challenge. They were climbers, and they had been away too long.

  The team was staying in the ski instructors' building. To explain their presence, Bradford told them all to say they were engineers carrying out a survey for additional ski lifts. He asked the men to avoid getting involved with the guests while he and Pemba set out with maps and binoculars for a preliminary reconnaissance of the mountain.

  From her office Cathy watched him fixing the bindings on his two-meter Rossignol skis. He crouched low and pushed off in fluid thrusts, moving like a powerful engine. For the first time since she had met him, Bradford seemed truly happy. He and Pemba got on the ski lift and were soon out of sight. She returned to her work, thinking of him, unable to still the strange excitement he aroused in her.

  From the lift, Bradford and Pemba scanned the mountain for signs of tracks. Neither of them knew at what altitude the Snowman would descend. They had encountered him at twenty-eight thousand feet, but the attack on the girl had occurred at roughly half that altitude. The slopes were filled with skiers of all ages; they'd be defenseless if the Snowman attacked.

  At the experts' slope they skied off the lift and went into the hut, where the man awaiting them showed them where to store their skis and change to their boots and crampons. Pemba was wearing his old parka with the Tiger badge awarded him by the Himalayan Club for climbing proficiency. The man in the hut stared at Pemba with a mixture of curiosity and respect. It was obvious to Bradford that he had never seen a Sherpa. But when the man asked where they were from, Bradford simply ignored the question and set out with Pemba for the first climb.

  The thin, rarefied air slowed them as they kickstepped above the hut. Their boots were stiff, and the prongs of the crampons slashed into the icy slope. When they had advanced some four hundred feet, they stopped and noted a col, a depression in the mountain chain that they could use as a mark when the full party made the ascent. Just above them a snout appeared, the lower terminus of the glacier. It was the bluish-green color that came from melting during the summer months before the freeze with the first snows.

  "It will go," Bradford said, indicating that the terrain was passable.

  "The south ridge might be the best way of attack if we have to go up to the summit," Pemba said, speaking slowly to conserve his energy. In the past a climb at this altitude would have been simple for him, but now he was out of condition.

  "Cornices below it . . . to the west it looks tricky. Could be snow bridges, so we better avoid it," Bradford replied, even though the alternative was a treacherous climb into the prevailing wind. At this altitude wind was the constant, relentless enemy.

  The glacier was large, magnificently angled, and so steep that the force of gravity which created it allowed the snow to move downhill. To Bradford each new glacier was an uncharted river which he, the explorer, must study, learning its drops in elevation, its rises, the speed at which it moved. Where the change was precipitous, the glacier always contained a mass of fissures which were as dangerous as the rapids in an unnavigable river. Fortunately, they were not now near water. Once, in a climb on the Humboldt Glacier in Greenland, he had almost been killed when a section of it had shattered, calved, and a great mountain had joined the other monolithic icebergs floating in the sea around it.

  They climbed another two hundred feet and were confronted by a gigantic icefall. The frozen cascade of ice was not on their map. It had been formed when the glacier had changed direction in the slope of the ground beneath it.

  "It's a fucker," Bradford said.

  "We'll have to make base camp below it," Pemba agreed. This would increase their hardship if they had to reach the summit, since their camp would be thousands of feet below it. They would have to cross the icefall horizontally, perhaps even diagonally higher up; this traverse would use up vital time and deplete their energy.

  On the climb back down to the hut they carefully followed the platforms made by their kick-steps earlier. The afternoon light was still good. When they changed back to skis, Bradford led Pemba down to the place where Janice had been found. He still skied magnificently, but he knew that time had warped his skills; the driving power required for a giant slalom, whipping past the gates at fifty miles an hour, was now beyond him. The fluid grace was still present, but that inner rhythm had been lost. The two men threaded their way through a cordoned path of whitebark pines off the main ski run; the slopes had thinned out considerably since they had gone up. Occasionally Bradford caught a blurred glimpse of a solitary figure getting in a final run for the day.

  The snow along the path was mixed with gray spikes of frozen rock. They continued to search for tracks, even though they were losing the light. As they skied along the cross-country trail, loose snow constantly blew in a spatter from the tree branches. When they reached a clearing in the woods, they saw a trail of frozen blood and beyond it huge triangular indentations pocking the ice. Pemba said, "Husiar"—be careful. Then he fell silent, mesmerized by the sight. The soft cast of his face seemed as lifeless as a mask.

  Bradford's past flight flooded back, and he trembled. Somehow he had to overcome his fear. He had spent years dreaming about the Yeti, but now, faced with the possibility that an encounter might occur at any time, he began to lose his resolve. Panic would be contagious. He forced himself to examine the tracks. He took off his gloves and touched the blackened ground formed by the tracks.

  "It's petrified," he said. "The heat he gives off must burn right through the ice . . . down to the rock layer. When the tracks are new they're rainbow-colored."

  He managed to gain control of himself, and realized that his fears stemmed from the fact that he was un-armed. Pemba shied away down the side of the trail and signaled him to move. Yet Bradford stood his ground. The ecstacy of mindless blood lust overwhelmed him. For now, at least, he too was a savage.

  Monte's office was expensively paneled in tongue-and-groove cedar, but one wall was made entirely of glass with sliding doors; it commanded a magnificent view of the slopes, now illuminated in the full moon. Bradford stood watching the mountain. He had a Scotch in his hand, which he sipped almost absentmindedly. He anticipated some movement, but all he was able to see were the long shroudlike shadows cast by the cliff line. The sky was candescently clear, and outside
the window lovers kissed under the stars, unaware of the dangers thousands of feet above.

  "The smartest thing you could do would be to close down," he said.

  "Listen, I'm not totally crazy," Monte replied indignantly. He turned to Cathy. "Our sales are taking off and he wants me to chase the buyers."

  Monte's ferret face registered disapproval, and in his small blue eyes there was that shady glint of a shopkeeper's avarice.

  "Monte, we're up against something completely unpredictable. From the tracks I saw today, I know the Snowman's prowling."

  "I don't like to take sides, Dan, but I think Monte's got a point. There's more than nine hundred people up," Ashby said. "You'd have to mount an evacuation. People'd start talking . . . On the other hand, they could stay and draw even larger crowds if they think they're going to see something."

  "If we were to close the slopes, what would you expect the people to do?" Cathy asked.

  "They could stay indoors and screw for all I care. I just don't like it."

  Ashby sensed trouble. Any unusual restrictions would be certain to draw outside attention to Sierra. Stringers on some of the maior papers as well as human-interest TV reporters might be alerted.

  "Fact is, there's been no attack or even a sighting since he killed the girl," Ashby said in support of Monte.

  "Jim, I saw a trail of frozen blood in the pine forest."

  "Could've been anything . . . an animal." Ashby poured him another drink. Bradford had to be handled delicately, and Ashby joined whichever side afforded him the most protection. He'd already written five thousand words on Janice, but he realized that, apart from the facts provided by Bradford, most of the material could be dismissed as speculation. He needed the buttress of a visual sighting, photographs, or better yet, the dead Snowman to support his story.

  "I think it might help if you spoke to the young man who saw Janice last. He might have noticed some detail that would mean something to you," Ashby continued. "Monte fixed it. He's waiting in the bar for you."

  Cathy picked up the signal, and she remembered what Ashby had told her earlier in the day

  "I'm not anybody's enemy, honey, just my own best friend." He had proved his case.

  She put on her parka and with Bradford in tow left the ofice. She was glad to be alone with him finally, even though he seemed to calculate emotional investments with the care of an orphan's guardian. He gave very little of himself.

  The slopes were like black steel knifeblades in the moonlight. They were no longer, and never again would be, the innocent runs of the past. They had a texture of something malevolent, forbidden, and a chill ran through her as they made their way through the crowded lobby to the bar.

  At a table in the corner she spotted Barry and threaded her way to him through an aisle of ski-bunny waitresses whose trays were slopped with pitchers of beer. Bradford stood awkwardly, as though inhibited by the sight of the crush of people. He nodded formally when she made the introductions.

  "Christ, it scares me to think of this bunch skiing," Bradford said.

  "Monte just needs a few more bodies to make him change his mind," Barry said, sullen and red-eyed with booze.

  "You were with the girl when she was attacked, weren't you?" Bradford said.

  There was a burned expression on Barry's face, of an indelible memory, which Bradford recognized. He had seen it on his own face for years.

  "I should've been. I never left a beginner before—"

  "It happens. Did you notice anything odd or hear something before you left her?"

  Barry leaned back on his chair, gripping his drink tightly.

  "No, not really. It started to snow, which is hardly unusual up here. Nothing else." He paused for a moment and tried to control himself, but the strain was too great. "I can't get her face out of my mind—"

  "Barry—" Cathy interrupted, sharing his distress.

  "Her face. She was eaten! I mean, it was like a cannibal had—"

  "I know," Bradford said.

  "How could you possibly know?"

  "I saw the photographs."

  "Man, maybe you know about world-class skiing, but you don't know shit about what went on up there."

  "Get it all out," Bradford said. "It's eating your guts."

  Barry stared at him. "I'm afraid—I mean, just the thought of being up there on the slopes makes me panic. I watch the chairlift on seven every day and I know that I'll never be able to get on. It's all I can do to take a group up the poma on the ski-school slope. I've been getting headaches and vertigo. I see a girl's face and it's suddenly transformed into Janice's. I hear her voice, crying, accusing me. I deserted her. God, when I think of how much fun this used to be, I could cry. It's a life for chosen people, and you last until you're thirty, maybe; then you have to grow up and find something to do in the real world. But I'm finished at twenty-three. I've been skiing all my life, and there's nothing else I can do."

  To Bradford, it was like listening to a voice from his own past. When he had tried to explain what had occurred to the skeptical members of the Explorers Club, he had suffered an anguish so fine that he himself had wondered about the accuracy of his own account. It was impossible even now to communicate the dread that had afficted him. He felt a curious kinship with Barry. But Barry had not been attacked, had not seen the monsirosity towering over the mountain, ripping the flesh out of men, his mouth dripping blood as his teeth gnashed bone.

  They fell silent, and a waitress brought them another round of drinks.

  "You'll get your confidence back eventually," Bradford said, hoping he was right.

  "Really? I was going to the Olympic tryouts in Sun Valley later this winter. I can't now, I'm unstrung," he said without self-pity. "I've got time to practice, but all I do is sit around and get bombed."

  "It happened to me at the Olympics. I missed a gate on two practice runs and I knew that when I was in the shoot for real I'd have trouble. I got psyched."

  "You won a bronze," Barry reminded him. Bradford threw his head back and laughed raucously.

  "Since when does finishing third get you brownie points? At times I can't believe that I even skied. It's all so long ago. When you're busted out in South America or wherever, a bronze medal doesn't get you a drink on the house."

  "What brought you up here?" Barry asked.

  "I used to climb as well. A lot better than I skied. And Cathy talked me into coming up as her guest for Thanksgiving."

  "Climbing on ice?" Barry was incredulous. "Uh-huh."

  "But what does that have to do with what happened to the girl?" Barry persisted.

  "I'm going to climb above the experts' slope with a team."

  "To do what?"

  "Find out if I can who or what killed Janice Pace." He extended his hand, then patted Barry on the shoulder. "This isn't general information, so don't discuss me with the other instructors or guests, Tiger."

  "The temperature's forty below zero up there, and the summit is eighteen thousand feet."

  "So I heard."

  "It's an animal of some kind that we don't know about, isn't it?" Barry said.

  "New strain of bear, maybe. I'll let you know. Now, why don't you haul your ass into a sauna and hit the slopes early tomorrow morning and get yourself into shape?"

  "Do you want to take a few runs with me?"

  "I'd fall on my can. You guys are too good for me. I'd need a snowmobile to keep up with you."

  "Come on, Dan."

  "Another time." As he was about to leave, he could not restrain his curiosity. "What do you ski?"

  "Two point three Rossies."

  "I hear they're leaning back now on the downhill."

  "Better balance and traction," Barry explained.

  He turned to Cathy and said with resignation: "Everything changes."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cathy's town house, which was just beyond the furnished models, had a sense of permanence. In the central living room there were books on the shelves, old
family snapshots on the walls, and a rug which she had woven herself. The furniture appeared to have been acquired over a period of time: an antique desk, a low coffee table with a brass brazier holding a sprawling philodendron, a pair of brass lamps on the end tables. Large multicolored cushions were arranged around the fire. The cathedral ceiling and the stone fireplace the height of the wall gave Bradford a feeling of space.

  It was good to see how she lived, for she now had an individuality that he had overlooked because his nightmare had reemerged. She was a warm, vulnerable woman, but married to a job she didn't quite belong in. He respected her independence yet wondered what sacrifices she'd been forced to make to secure it. Her attractiveness had been masked by a high-powered business persona, and he thought he would like to take off her clothes slowly, deliberately, and touch her body. Cathy's energy was a disguise which he was determined to expose. It occurred to him that he might never again have an opportunity to make love. He reminded himself of a soldier going off to war who on his last night's leave had met a girl who'd carry him through the bad times.

  She went into the bedroom to change her clothes. "What do you do for women on the reservation?" she asked through the partially opened door.

  "Pick one for the night. What about men for you?"

  "I'm still recovering from the last one. I was engaged to a married man, if such a relationship can exist."

  "What happened?"

  "His lawyer advised him that he'd be better off staying married. It came down to keeping his net worth or starting again with me, so here I am," she said, coming out of the bathroom and throwing her arms out in a theatrical gesture which made him smile. She was wearing blue suede pants and a light pink turtleneck sweater. She put on a pair of dark gray aprés-ski boots.

  "You don't sound very wounded."

  "It's my poker face. And it's a damned useful story when any of the men up here come on too strong. The male ego is pathetically fragile, and guys quit fast when they're told that you're still in love with someone else."