Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  Lucy didn’t know where to look. She stared at the bleeding, motionless men and flung her hand over her mouth. Seeing the state of Lauren, she wailed into her hand. ‘My baby sister,’ she said, fighting hysteria. ‘My baby sister, no!’ She turned to me. ‘Are they dead?’

  Lauren was trying to rouse herself from the couch. ‘There was a …’ said Lauren, half into the cushion, trying – and failing – to lift her head. ‘Lu – Lulu, there was a—’

  I snatched Lucy’s arm. ‘They’re both out cold. I think someone must have seen what they were doing to Lauren and come in and busted it up … Maybe they went to get help?’

  ‘Lauren’s concussed,’ said Lucy.

  I shook my head. ‘She’s been drugged. Look at her eyes. There’s a glass on the floor – only one – and it’s got her lipstick on it.’

  Now Lauren was trying to sit up and latch her bra, but she couldn’t do it. ‘Lulu—’ she said to Lucy.

  ‘I’m here, baby,’ Lucy said instantly, fixing Lauren’s bra even as she turned back to me. ‘At least they only got her shirt off.’

  ‘The guys were making a video.’ I didn’t know how to tell her. ‘With Lauren. Maybe that’s what got whoever beat them up so angry.’ I pulled the camera out of my handbag.

  Lucy’s face was a study in rage. ‘Did you call an ambulance?’

  ‘I found her just before I got you. I’ll call one now.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘No – run right downstairs to the guys on the front door. Tell them Lucy needs Bruno and it’s an emergency, and bring him up here immediately. If she needs to go to hospital they’ll be faster than an ambulance. Don’t tell anyone about that video camera. Keep it in your handbag. I’ll stay here.’

  I got up and shuffled across the room. The man in the corner had his head slumped to his shoulder and was drooling out of his mouth. He had a wound on his brow that was coagulating with thick, black blood.

  ‘Go as fast as you can – Bruno’s got to be here if these guys wake up,’ said Lucy. She nursed Lauren’s head as she peeled Lauren’s blue shirt from the ground and began to untangle it. ‘My poor baby sister …’

  ‘Mummy?’ said Lauren.

  24

  Bruno turned out to be the head of security at the club; he was a bald Polynesian, and the largest human being I had ever seen. I told Bruno Lucy needed him on the second floor, repeated the story that I’d told her and didn’t mention the video camera.

  ‘Scumbags,’ he said, barely frowning.

  He walked me to the elevator. He was so huge that we had to walk in one at a time, and he had to stoop in the carriage. I came up to his elbow.

  The elevator stopped on the second floor. Bruno walked to the bar and said something to the bartender. The bartender retrieved a black parcel from under the bar and handed it to Bruno.

  When we were back in the cubicle, I realised it was a first-aid kit.

  Lucy was sitting on the couch, with Lauren’s head on her shoulder. She was gripping her sister’s hand. From the moment Bruno walked into the room, it seemed much smaller.

  ‘Scumbags,’ Bruno said again when he saw the two guys in the cubicle.

  ‘You know them?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Sort of,’ Bruno said. ‘They’ve been trouble before. Aggressive with the female staff.’

  He put down the first aid kit and with one lift moved the table, then kneeled down next to Lauren.

  ‘I’m going to have to listen to her breathing,’ he said to Lucy. She nodded permission for him to come closer.

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Lauren.

  ‘What state did you find her in?’ Bruno asked me.

  ‘Just like this,’ I said.

  Bruno looked at Lucy. ‘Drugged – it’s a hospital visit. We’ll be faster than an ambulance.’ He radioed someone and ordered a car for out the back. He clicked his radio again and told someone else to get an ambulance for the injured men. Lucy stroked Lauren’s hair.

  Once off the radio, Bruno moved Lucy gently aside and scooped Lauren into his arms, as if she weighed nothing.

  He stood waiting for Lucy pick up Lauren’s handbag and shoes from the floor. Lucy didn’t move. ‘We don’t want them waking up and getting away,’ she said.

  Bruno smiled. ‘Our friend the vigilante knew what he was doing. Those two will be out for a while.’

  ‘Are you going to look for the guy who did this to them?’ I asked.

  ‘Only to tell him I owe him a favour,’ Bruno said.

  ‘Will Lauren have to make a police statement?’ asked Lucy as we walked out the cubicle and back towards the elevator.

  ‘Not if they’re dead by tomorrow morning,’ said Bruno with a chuckle.

  25

  With a special key, Bruno turned a lock in the elevator and we descended to a lower-ground floor. When the door slid open, another Polynesian security guard almost, but not quite, as large as Bruno took Lauren from his arms. We were in an underground car park, and the security guard’s feet slapped against cold cement as he carried Lauren to a waiting grey van.

  After he placed Lauren in the open front passenger seat, he opened the back doors of the van and indicated for me and Lucy to get in.

  I turned to her. ‘If you want to stay at your party, I can take a spare key to your flat and take it from here,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay with her at the hospital—’

  ‘Screw the party – she’s my sister,’ said Lucy. ‘Come on.’ She took my arm, and we climbed into the van.

  26

  The nearest hospital, St Vincent’s, was practically around the corner from the club. Even in the few seconds it took to drive there, thoughts I’d managed to push away while we were dealing with Lauren started to flood back in. I’d seen a man turn into a crow, my friends strung up from a mediaeval gibbet, my own hand covered in fur and someone else’s blood.

  The whirr of images was so overwhelming that my brain started to believe it was dreaming – and then it was … dreaming of forests and animals and Ashley Ventwood raising herself from the steaming waters of a black pond, her face a thousand years old. I woke up when Lucy started punching me in the arm: we were driving into St Vincent’s Emergency.

  My day, which had more or less started in a hospital, was now ending in one. Lauren was put on a stretcher and as doctors and nurses wheeled her down the corridor, Lucy got me to explain what had happened at the club. We turned into a room and an oxygen mask was strapped to Lauren’s face. This was a resus cubicle, they explained. There were going to be needles; if we were squeamish, we should stand outside.

  I almost laughed. Of all the things I’d seen in the past twenty-four hours, needles came very far down in the catalogue of horrors.

  Lauren kept trying to lift her arms. I could tell she thought the lights were too bright, but she was confused and her slow, bloodshot eyes couldn’t focus properly. Lucy kept repeating, ‘It’s gonna be all right, Loz. It’s gonna be all right,’ but it was hard to tell if Lauren could understand us or not. We stood back as the young doctor prepared a syringe.

  ‘You’re with this girl?’ she said to Lucy.

  ‘I’m her sister.’

  The doctor took Lauren’s pulse. ‘We’re going to take some blood and hit her with some Flumazenil – to counteract Rohypnol, if that’s what the pricks have used. If it is, she’s going to wake up suddenly. You might want to hold her hand and reassure her that she’s safe. It can make people a bit manic sometimes.’

  Lucy moved closer to Lauren as a nurse wiped alcohol on Lucy’s arm and applied a tourniquet.

  ‘If it’s not Rohypnol it’s GHB and we’re going to have to put an oxygen tube down her throat,’ advised the doctor.

  Lucy held one of Lauren’s hands, and her other hand reached for mine. I could tell she was hoping she could squeeze some strength out of me; she was crushing my fingers.

  ‘What’s GHB?’ I asked Lucy.

  ‘A designer drug,’ she said. ‘God, Lauren would have had no idea—’

  The d
octor stuck a needle into Lauren’s arm, and Lucy jolted a little. I watched the capsule of the needle spray full with Lauren’s blood. The nurse switched the capsule with another capsule. Then another. Then another.

  ‘Do you need to take that much?’ asked Lucy, her hand clenching mine.

  ‘We’ve got to get this to the lab immediately. If they’ve added opiates or anything else, we need to know.’ Lucy let out a sob. ‘She’s not the first and it’s not your fault,’ the doctor said to her plainly, as the nurse changed the capsule in the syringe to one full of clear liquid. ‘You’ve brought her in. If you’d have taken her home and put her to bed or shoved her under a table and kept partying, then we’d have a serious problem.’

  ‘My mother will never forgive me,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to tell her if you don’t,’ said the doctor, squeezing the syringe and pushing the fluid into Lauren’s arm. ‘We don’t like people leaving their friends to die without treatment just because they’re frightened of their parents.’ The nurse took the spent needle and the doctor pressed on the puncture wound with a cotton ball. The nurse disposed of the syringe and pressed a plaster over the hole.

  Lucy stared over Lauren’s unconscious face, tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Sorry, girls,’ the doctor said, after a moment. ‘She’s unresponsive to the Flumazenil – we have to put her on the tube.’ The nurse had already sprung to action and was unhooking hoses and a mouthpiece from a machine.

  ‘This isn’t very pleasant to watch,’ said the nurse, with a nod towards the door.

  ‘What’s the tube going to do?’ trembled Lucy.

  ‘It’s going to do her breathing for her,’ said the nurse, fitting the tube over Lauren’s face as the doctor fed it down her throat.

  ‘It’s going to stop her getting brain damage,’ said the doctor curtly. ‘And hopefully keep her alive.’

  27

  We were outside the cubicle. Lucy made some calls on her mobile phone. I was debating whether to call and explain everything to my parents, when Lucy dropped her phone into her bag and asked if I had a tissue.

  I found one in a rumpled packet in my handbag. She dabbed it at her eyes and then blew her nose. Mascara had run in black streaks down her face.

  ‘She was supposed to have fun for once,’ Lucy said.

  ‘It’s hardly your fault those pigs went after Lauren,’ I said, putting my arms around her shoulders.

  ‘I called Mum,’ she said. ‘She’s on her way.’

  ‘Is she mad?’

  ‘No – just … frightened. I’ve called the police – do you still have that video camera?’

  I was silent. I thought of the four wounds opening on that man’s face; my hand, covered in fur. I froze.

  ‘I’d like to look at it,’ Lucy said.

  I spoke carefully. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘I want to remember their faces forever,’ Lucy said. ‘I want to know what they look like in case they survive, so if I’m ever in my car and I see one crossing the street in front of me, I can ram him down and run over and over him until he understands what he’s done to my sister.’

  ‘Speak to the police before you look at anything,’ I said. ‘If you want those guys to get it from the cops you’ve got to make sure the evidence is clean.’

  Lucy nodded, wiping her eyes again.

  ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ I said. ‘Be here when I get back?’

  ‘Just don’t let anything happen to that camera.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I lied.

  28

  When I’d found a bathroom, I locked myself in and sat on a closed toilet seat, pulling the video camera out of my handbag by its handle. Some dim recollection of cop dramas on television reminded me that evidence items could be inadmissible in court if they were taken from the scene. Not wanting to completely implicate myself in some kind of evidence-tampering offence, I wrapped my fingers in toilet paper and tried to work out how to turn the camera on.

  The ‘on’ switch was easy enough to find. It took a few more seconds for me to work out how to play back recorded footage through the viewfinder. I followed some on-screen menu options until something started to play. Sound burst out of the camera at its highest volume – I stabbed at buttons for volume control, paranoid that the sudden burst of noise might be heard outside.

  My heart rate was still high when I got the volume low and could concentrate on the screen. At first, what I saw was Lauren, sitting in the booth at the club with this one guy – the smoker. ‘So Lauren tells us she wants to be a model,’ came the voice of the guy doing the filming. Then—

  Then—

  I couldn’t actually force myself to watch. I searched the camera for a fast-forward button. I didn’t want anyone to see Lauren like this. I tried to focus my eyes in such a way that I would only see the action where I came in.

  A flash of darkness crossed the screen and I knew that this was what I was looking for. I hit ‘Play’, then rewound, slowly. I hit ‘Play’ again. Lauren and the man were on the couch, and he was doing to her what I’d seen him do. From his face I could see he was alerted by a noise. It was something like a growl. The camera guy must have heard it too because he turned, with the camera in his hand, to film what was at the curtains.

  A pair of black eyes shone, and an inhuman face leaped out of the dark. Bared teeth and two flying sets of paws lunged at the camera lens. The screen was suddenly a mess of shapes and the audio track thumped and scratched as the camera tumbled out of the cameraman’s hands, rolling to a stop. On its side, the lens still caught the image of the black shape on the table, the red hair of the girl tumbling into the cushions, and the look of terror on the man’s face before the animal slashed at his face.

  The shape was hard to discern with its back to the camera. Its growls gave it an unearthly sound, but once it had pulled at the cushions under the girl’s head, it turned in profile towards the camera and its form was all too clear.

  A pink tongue rolled out of the bear’s mouth, and it licked blood from its front paws. One lick, two, three, four – with each lick of its tongue, and a shudder, a growl, the form of the bear blurred. It shrank and stretched and, as if being rearranged pixel by pixel on a screen, the bear turned into me.

  On the screen, I slithered from the table. Just a young girl in gold jeans.

  Wanting to believe it wasn’t true, that it was just another waking dream, another bright hallucination, I replayed the footage. I replayed it over and over, but nothing changed. There was the bear, there was the man, there was me. After a tenth viewing, I sat on the closed toilet seat and let my head hang in despair.

  You may feel differently tomorrow, Izek had said. Izek who could conjure visions and turn himself into a crow.

  He had known.

  He had known about me – this magic world, everything.

  Paranormal la-la.

  I felt like crying, but a noise from the video camera caught my attention. It was the sound of laughter.

  I looked in the viewfinder. Lauren was laughing, splayed on the couch, half-naked. She cried out:

  ‘Sophie Morgan can turn into a bear!’

  29

  Panicking, I stabbed at all the buttons on the camera, leading myself into on-screen menus I couldn’t comprehend. I needed a ‘delete’ option. None appeared.

  Then I saw a red light flash on the screen. The battery was dying. If it died before I deleted the incriminating footage, whoever got their hands on the camera would get their hands on a secret I was very eager to keep. My brain raced through scenarios of throwing the camera in the toilet, smashing it on the ground, hiding it in an air-duct – all of which came back to Lucy, standing between me and the police, saying, ‘Have you still got the camera, Soph?’

  I breathed in and closed my eyes. Out of desperation, I prayed aloud: Mummi, I begged the air around me, what do I do?

  No voice came, of course – there was no sound in the room apart fro
m the dull buzz of hospital activity through the door. But in that space, alone, something did start to form in my mind.

  A word.

  A word I didn’t know, in a foreign language. Followed by more words. And a song.

  My ears were hearing a song and in my mind’s eye a book materialised. I could see I was in the toilet cubicle, but in some kind of simultaneous reality, I could see the bright yellow page of an old book. Words in another language scrawled themselves across its pages in brown ink. As I realised these were the words to the song, they started to form on my lips. The book disappeared from my mind but the song stayed – the notes hovered in the air as they hummed out of my lips.

  Mummi had answered my prayer before I’d even made it – delivering explicit instructions as to how to recharge the battery in the video camera as easily as if she’d handed me a pamphlet … because, in a way, she had. She had given me lots of pamphlets, and books, and songs, and poems and everything else you might keep in a library.

  A library of knowledge that had been in Nanna’s brain and which I now realised she had downloaded directly into mine – because, somehow, I knew to put my hand on the frosted light fixture on the wall. Somehow, I knew to lean my forehead against the back of that hand.

  I sang the words to a song I hadn’t realised I knew and I breathed in again.

  Through the skin of my forehead, I felt tiny arrows of white light start to fly into my body, arrows so small and hot they felt like they were fired by ants. Through the soles of my feet, I felt a different energy. I could only describe it as brown arrows, flowing in the opposite direction to the white ones. Each set travelled through my body – one down, one up, one brown, one white – and they were moved, not by ants, but by something I was saying to them. My lips were moving and, like a magnet, the song was drawing the arrows from the light fixture and the floor, guiding them towards the hand that held the video camera, and out from it, radiating an energy that flowed into the small machine in my hand.