Now the tears flowed so easily, and they just wouldn’t stop. He was so lonely, and full of despair, and he didn’t know if he wanted to live or to die. And he tried to cry as gently as possible, he didn’t want to move about or make too much noise, just in case it set the ice breaking once more—but pretty soon he was almost slapping the tears from his face, and that hurt, and there was a strange moaning sound coming out of his mouth that didn’t quite sound human.
It seemed as if he heard the moaning echo back at him, from long long away.
It pulled him up short. He listened again. Strained to listen. And just as he was giving up, there, there it was again—the same moaning noise, a cry in the distance. As if the ice itself was mocking him. It made him quite angry. It made him want to shout out and tell it not to be so rude. And he listened to the noise harder, and he realised it wasn’t a moan. It was a howl.
He scanned the horizon once more, on all sides. He lowered his head away from that dark ribbon of night. And, out there—a black dot. He’d have thought it was nothing, just a speck, a trick of the eyes—but as he tried to focus upon that speck, Simon could see that it was moving.
He didn’t know how long he watched that speck. For a while he couldn’t tell whether it was getting any closer, but it was definitely in motion—if Simon kept his head straight, really straight, and didn’t move a muscle, he could see it quiver. And after an hour or so, maybe much more, the speck no longer seemed to be part of the horizon, but a chunk broken off from it and running free. And the howling was getting louder.
By the time Simon could see that it was indeed a wolf it was quite clear that the wolf had already seen him, and long ago, and that it was making straight for the bed, and it wouldn’t stop until it reached him. And Simon thought about making a run for it, he really did—maybe the other side the ice would be stronger, maybe the ice wouldn’t burn. He’d long since stopped crying. But he still hid under the covers.
When he dared to check, he saw that the wolf had stopped, no more than ten feet away from him.
Simon thought he had seen a wolf before. At a zoo, surely? He’d thought they were like pet dogs. This wolf was nothing like a pet dog. Maybe it was surprised to see him, all this sudden concentration of flesh and blood right in the middle of nowhere. It was tilting its head to one side in what looked like intellectual contemplation of the matter. Then it grinned, and just for a moment the grin looked welcoming—but the grin just kept growing, it got wider and wider. Drool leaked from the mouth. When it hit the ice it sizzled.
“Go away!” said Simon. Thinking that if he sounded angry enough, it might be convincing. “There’s nothing for you here!” But that wasn’t strictly true, was it?
The wolf began to circle the bed. With every lap it took, it seemed to Simon that it was closing in. It was unhurried, nonchalant even. A wolf of sophistication, making plans.
And Simon kept shouting at it, and swiping ineffectually at it with his arm. At one point the wolf stopped, and seemed to look over its shoulder, in deadpan to an invisible audience—what does this guy think he’s doing? Simon would have laughed if he hadn’t been about to die.
At length the wolf settled down on its haunches and watched him.
Simon watched it back. He thought that if the wolf broke eye contact it might give up. Or rather—he thought that if he broke eye contact, the wolf would leap up at him and bite open his throat. He wouldn’t blink first. He mustn’t blink.
God knows how long this went on. And in the distance Simon heard more howling, and his heart sank, but he didn’t dare turn round to look.
The wolf closed its eyes. For a moment Simon thought that maybe it had died, maybe he’d stared it to death. Could you stare a wolf to death? But the wolf’s body stirred in sleep. Its fur looked so thick and warm and cosy. Pretty soon the wolf started to snore.
This would have been a chance to escape, if Simon had had somewhere to escape to.
The wolf squirmed deliciously, it was dreaming. And though Simon didn’t want to take his eyes off it, he found that they were getting impossibly heavy. And he was dreaming too.
3
WHEN HE WOKE up he was back in his bedroom, but his pillow was wet with tears, and his foot still ached from the burning cold.
He decided not to sleep in his bed the next night. Instead he lay down on the sofa and watched television. It was uncomfortable, he didn’t fit on the sofa properly, and the quality of the television programmes was, frankly, poor.
On the third night he went back to the bedroom. But this time he’d come prepared. He put a sharp knife under the pillow. At the bottom of the bed, wrapped up in a plastic shopping bag, he placed a pound of raw meat. If he couldn’t fight the wolf, then maybe he could distract it.
He wasn’t sure if he slept that night or not, but if he did, the sleep was dreamless, and there was no return to the ice world.
One evening he called the Samaritans. The man on the end of the phone sounded smooth and professionally concerned. “How can I help you?” he asked.
Simon was quite rude to him. “You’ve got the wrong name.”
“I haven’t told you my name.”
“The Samaritans. The whole point of the Samaritans was that they were uncaring shits. That’s why they talk of the good Samaritan, the one who stood out from the crowd, because the rest were so bad. Do you see? Like a good Nazi. Or a good member of the Taliban. Just calling yourselves the Samaritans, it’s stupid. You might as well call yourselves Nazis.”
The Samaritan said, very gently, “Is there something else you’d really rather be talking about?”
“No, there bloody isn’t,” said Simon, and hung up.
A few more days, and he took the raw meat away from the bed. It was beginning to stink. The day after that, he took away the knife as well.
A month to the day after Cathy had killed herself, Simon went back to work.
Everyone seemed so pleased to see him. And so sorry for his loss. Lots of brave smiles shot at him from the cubicles of the open plan office, one or two people gave him a thumbs up—good for you, we’re thinking of you, buddy. A couple of the women hugged him, and that was nice, but the hugs weren’t very tight, and were taken back pretty quickly, as if maybe Simon had some infectious disease, as if by touching him too close their loved ones too might start topping themselves. “Hey hey,” said the boss, open arms but not quite offering a hug, the arms being opened was gesture enough, “it’s good to have you back!” There was lots of paperwork piled up on Simon’s desk; “Don’t worry, we’ve taken care of all the urgent stuff. Just to get you back in the saddle, okay?” Simon looked at the paperwork. Some of it needed filing. He filed some of it. He began to cry. He filed some more paperwork, he cried a bit more, he went to lunch. When he came back from lunch he sorted some more paperwork for filing, cried, and the boss asked if he could see him. “It’s too soon, isn’t it?” said the boss. He looked so sympathetic. And only the smallest bit impatient. “How about you try again when you feel better? Why not take another week? Another week won’t kill us.” Simon thanked him. He left. He did it without fanfare. No one noticed. No one looked up from their cubicles and waved goodbye.
He phoned the Samaritans again. He apologised for being rude last time, but he’d got a different Samaritan, or the same Samaritan didn’t remember, or the same Samaritan didn’t care. Simon told the Samaritan he was depressed. The Samaritan asked for his name, and Simon gave him one.
“It seems to me that you loved Cathy very much,” said the Samaritan at last. “And maybe there’s no explanation for why she left you. Maybe you can never know. But you sound like a kind man. And you sound like an honest man. I can tell you’ve been straight with me, and that’s so brave, you’re open and sincere, and I’m sure you were to Cathy too. You’re a good person, Ben. Ben, you’ll be okay.”
Simon thanked him.
“And just remember this important truth,” said the Samaritan. “The flames of Hell don’t burn.”
“I’m sorry?” said Simon. “What was that?”
“You heard,” said the Samaritan, and the line went dead.
That night, when Simon went to bed, he took the knife with him, and put it back under his pillow.
4
HE WAS BACK, just as he knew he would be. The moon above, the ice below, the darkness all around. The wolf was there too. It got up from its haunches, stretched, heaving itself to attention, the holiday was over and it was time to get back to work. Simon wondered whether the wolf had been waiting for him all this time. He supposed it had. He almost felt sorry for it.
The wolf padded across the ice towards him. Closer than it had ever come before.
“Go back!” said Simon. And when that didn’t work, “Stay!”
The wolf leered.
Simon fished underneath the pillow. He grabbed the knife. He should have brought a carving knife, but he’d worried he might cut himself accidentally whilst sleeping—this ordinary dinner knife looked pathetic. He gripped it hard by the hilt, waved it in the wolf’s direction. “Stay,” he said. “I will hurt you.” The knife caught the glow from the moon, it twinkled bluntly.
And incredibly, the wolf seemed deterred by all this. Or maybe it was just confused? Either way, it backed off a few steps, and that was good. It lowered its head, as if ashamed. But then—then, the body tensed, the wolf gave a growl, and all too late Simon realised what it was doing, it was preparing to attack—head still low, but now the legs rising, and now sprinting across the ice, the growl a shriek, and the wolf was in the air leaping straight for Simon.
For the knife—Simon saw the open mouth coming towards him, he stabbed clumsily at the air—but the wolf didn’t want him, it wanted the knife. Simon felt the wolf’s jaws snap as teeth bit into the blade, felt the full weight of the beast as it flew over him with inches to spare. The wolf was so close and then it was gone. It had stolen the knife from out of Simon’s hand and now it was making its getaway, its back feet didn’t even touch the bed as it jumped clean over it and landed nimbly on the other side of the ice.
Simon felt a damp on his neck, and wondered what it was, and thought it might be blood, that the wolf had bitten him after all, that he was going to die—but it wasn’t blood, his fingers came back from the wetness clean—it was drool, he’d been splashed by the stream of flying drool.
He stared at the wolf, and the wolf, shamelessly, stared right back. Simon’s knife still clamped tight between its teeth. It was panting, maybe with the effort of the leap, maybe as some mocking triumph.
The wolf gave a warning growl.
Simon thought it would drop the knife then. The wolf shook its head, fast, from side to side—too fast, and for too long, it seemed the wolf’s head blurred with it. And then the knife was out of the mouth, and into the air. Not dropped, but thrown—high up, it looked as if it might hit the moon.
And the wolf got onto its hind legs. It raised up its body tall. It looked like a performing seal. Sat beneath the knife. Opened its mouth as wide as it could go.
The knife arced, it didn’t reach the moon, it seemed to hang in the air with disappointment at that. Then it fell, fast, blade down.
The wolf caught the knife in its open mouth. It was like a circus trick. Simon got a ridiculous urge to clap. The knife dropped from sight, straight down the wolf’s throat. A circus trick gone wrong.
Still on its hind legs, the wolf looked at Simon then. It grinned. From the peculiar angle of its head, the grin looked especially cheesy. And then, as Simon watched, it seemed that a dark shadow had fallen upon the wolf’s stomach, and the shadow grew, it spread fast and thick and liquid, it spread right up to the throat.
And then—like a wet bag, the stomach split open. Guts splashed out onto the ice.
The wolf gave a little hiss that sounded like laughter, but couldn’t have been, it was a death rattle that didn’t work, it was hard to do a death rattle when a knife’s cut through your insides. It seemed to wink at Simon, first one eye, then the other—and then the eyes stayed shut, and the wolf stopped hissing at last. It pitched forward, heavy, wet, and quite dead.
Was it deliberate? Had the wolf known what it was doing? Had it killed itself just to spite him? Simon turned, leaned gently over the side of the bed, and threw up.
He lay beneath the sheets, shivering, trying to keep warm, with the wolf carcass on the ground beside him. The blood leaked out until there was no more blood to leak. On the hot ice it began to bubble; when the bubbles burst they made funny little popping sounds.
It wasn’t long before Simon could smell the meat. Some of the fur had burned away, Simon saw where the wolf’s skin was turning crispy brown. His stomach gnawed. He remembered how the wolf had drooled. He was drooling too.
Simon didn’t eat the wolf. He turned his head away, refused to look at it, stared out into the wilderness, tried to block out the smell of roast dinner cooking so close by. He ignored the way the head seemed to loll towards him so genially, as if inviting him to tuck in—the dead mouth fixed into a generous smile. He didn’t eat the wolf, because he didn’t dare to. He didn’t dare reach across to take the food in case he fell off the bed, or in case he made the ice crack, or in case (in case!) the wolf even now was faking it, in case, in case, in case. He felt hungry. He felt ashamed he was a coward. He felt lonely, and wanted company, and wished that the wolf were still alive.
Soon the fur had all burned away. The meat lay on the ice, such a waste—good grub, and no one had wanted it. Burned black now, too tough to eat, and shrunken dry with all the juice boiled out of it. Simon found himself looking at the remains for a long time. Those few spoiled hunks of flesh, some bone. Is this what death was, really? Is this all that it amounted to? How could these fragments of limbs and this blackened fat ever have been part of something that lived and hunted and fed? It was ridiculous to think of. It made no sense.
And in time even these last stubborn pieces of dead wolf were absorbed by the ice. Just the knife was left, and it looked new and clean.
Simon slept.
5
HE ARRIVED AT the house punctually, as always, and yet when the front door was opened Arthur affected a look of delighted surprise to see him there.
“Simon! Hello, hello. Please come in.”
“Thanks,” said Simon.
“Are those flowers for us? How kind. Sarah! Sarah, Simon’s here.”
Sarah called out, “Hello, Simon.”
“Why don’t you come in? Please. So. How are you?”
“I’m doing okay, thanks.”
“That’s good.”
“I’m not sleeping well, though.”
“No. Sarah! Sarah, Simon’s brought us flowers! Again. Do we have a vase?”
“I’ve got a vase,” called Sarah.
“How are you, Arthur?” asked Simon.
“Oh, I’m all right. Come on through! Life goes on, doesn’t it? Come on through.”
“You’ll love my parents,” Cathy had said to Simon, and it was so early on, wasn’t it, it was on the second date? The second date, and already she was wanting him to meet the family, it almost put him off his starter. “And they’ll love you too, I know.” Cathy had told him that she went to see her Mum and Dad every Sunday afternoon, without fail, and Mum would cook a roast, and Dad would pour glasses of sherry and make lots of bad jokes. It didn’t matter that she’d left home nearly fifteen years ago, that she’d been married once (it hadn’t worked), that to all intents and purposes she was now unavoidably classed as a grown woman. Those Sundays were still sacrosanct. And that was so alien to Simon, that a family could be that close; he saw his parents only at Christmas for a mutual exchange of indifferent presents, and the encounter was fleeting, and the atmosphere was strained. He envied the way that when Cathy took him for that first Sunday roast she was able to fling her arms around her mother without embarrassment, that she talked to her father like they were both proper adults. He envied it, but was charmed as well.
At the funeral he’d sat with her parents, of course. Sarah held Simon’s hand throughout the service, squeezing it hard from time to time. And Arthur gave him a hug afterwards, still in the chapel, still in front of all the world, and wept without shame. “You will keep coming for Sunday lunch?” he asked. And Sarah, taking his hand again, was nodding fiercely. “It would mean so much to us,” said Arthur. “And we can get through this together.”
Arthur was a burly broad-shouldered man. He didn’t look anything like Cathy. Sarah was slight and had Cathy’s hair, and sometimes Cathy’s expression if she were amused or puzzled, but Sarah wore glasses and the wrong kind of lipstick, and Simon thought her face looked crooked.
“Sherry?” asked Arthur, and Simon said yes, though he didn’t much like sherry. “The weather’s getting better,” said Arthur. “I think next weekend I might be able to get out into the garden.” Simon said that would be nice.
Sarah appeared, with Cathy’s hair and the crooked face all her own. “Hello, Simon,” she said. She hugged him briefly.
“Simon’s brought us flowers,” said Arthur, again.
“So I can see,” said Sarah. “Thank you, Simon. Dinner’s nearly ready.” And she was gone.
“I’m sorry about Sarah,” said Arthur. “She’s a bit sad today.”
“Yes,” said Simon, though he hadn’t seen a difference.
Fearsome Magics Page 28
