It was a glorious party. The fire was ablaze, heaped with logs and fir cones, spitting the blue flames of holly. The Christmas tree twinkled. The oak panels were lit by golden flames, leaping with great, dark shadows. The boys shouted and laughed. They ate and drank until all the food and drink was gone and the plates were littered with crumbs and bones. Then, still seated at the table, they sang carols, their sweet boys’ voices high and clear. From time to time, Ian caught the eye of the boy sitting beside him at the head of the table; and the boy nodded back, lifting a bloodied hand.
Outside, the snow fell softly, heavily, muffling the world in a thick, white blanket. It drifted on the open downs, weighing on the deep, dark woods. The fox limped through the trees. The deer coughed and shuddered. The hare was huddled in a snowdrift. The owl floated in the moonlight, its cry echoing in stillness.
At last the feast was over. The carols were done. The fire burned low. Together, as though at a given signal, the boys stood up, blew out the candles on the table and the tree and made for the foot of the stairs. All but one . . . Dimly lit by the dying embers, the boy at the head of the table did not move as the others stepped silently to the top of the stairs. There they paused. They turned to watch as the remaining boy stood up and crossed the hall to the front door, opened it and trod into the snow – still barefooted, in his pyjamas – leaving the door open behind him.
Ian followed the procession along the corridor. There was no sound of footsteps, except his own. Again, the corridor seemed endless, like a cold, dark tunnel. Again, the dormitory was swirling with a silvery mist, as dense and clinging as smoke . . . As the boys climbed into their beds, slipping off their dressing-gowns and stepping out of their slippers, Ian undressed too. He leaned out of the window, to see the world weighed down and smothered with snow. The cedar branch was out of reach. Stretching as far as he could, he tried to grasp it and shake it, but all he could feel was empty darkness.
And below him, standing on the lawn, was the last boy, barefoot, shivering in his pyjamas. He was staring up at the window, waving furiously, shaping his mouth in a terrible shout but making no sound, gesturing for Ian to make the leap himself.
So Ian climbed onto the sill. He was dreaming. The dormitory was dense with choking smoke. He had to get out. The boy below him was urging him to jump, to launch himself across the cold, black space between the window and the bristling branches of the cedar. Ian stood on the sill. His heart was thumping. The night was icy. He stood there and leaned out and he dreamed he was leaping . . . flinging himself at the tree and grasping with his fingers, tearing his face and hands on the tough, sharp needles . . . falling and falling through the branches and landing with a breath-taking thump on the drifted snow.
But then the boy was gone. It was only a dream, after all . . . There was no smoke in the dormitory. All the beds were empty. Ian stepped down from the sill, shut the window and climbed into his bed. He fell asleep at once.
*
In the morning, he woke from the heaviest of all sleeps and sat up, rubbing his eyes. He had dreamed of laughter and singing and firelight. But now the dormitory was silent: the muffled silence of all the snow outside, the sunlight of a bright, cold Christmas morning. The other beds were neatly made-up. He got up, washed and dressed and made his own bed. When he looked around the room, when he looked out of the window, tantalising shreds of his dream came hovering to the edge of his memory . . . but that was all. He could not remember it.
He went along the corridor and downstairs, into the dining-hall.
No. It wasn’t a dream he’d had. On one of the refectory tables there were the remains of a splendid feast – all the plates and glasses and crumbs and bones, all the candles blown out. There was a Christmas tree, whose branches were spattered with wax. The grey, cold ashes of a dead fire lay in the grate. Around the chair at the head of the table, the floor was scattered with cedar needles.
Nobody there.
So cold! The front door was open, and a long drift of snow had blown across the hall. Ian went outside. The world was a crisp, dazzling place. He trod through the deep snow which covered the drive and the lawns. Something was moving there, whimpering at the foot of the cedar. It was Brutus. The dog was scrabbling in a great avalanche which must have fallen from the branches of the tree. Ian waded towards it, calling the dog’s name, but it did not even lift its head to see the boy come closer. Whimpering, whining, Brutus worked to clear the fall of snow.
Still and frozen, Mr Hoddesdon lay half buried in a deep drift. The dog was licking his face. The man’s hands were bloody and raw, prickled with cedar needles, and the tears were frozen on his cheeks. The yellowed photograph lay in the snow beside him.
The headmaster was not moving. He was not breathing. But, at the last, he was smiling a wolfish, wonderful smile.
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two Page 31