Whiteout

by Gabriel Dylan

  Stefan shook his head and gestured towards the Panoramic Hotel, a faded, dumpy, three-storey building a few metres away. “Come on, you guys, nearly there. Let’s get inside before this snow really starts to fall.”

  Chapter Three

  Charlie was stuck in a dream.

  He was somewhere back in time – a year ago, maybe more, in one of his worst memories. The twisted faces of those around him were only a heartbeat from morphing into something much more monstrous.

  He and a social worker sat in the headmaster’s tiny office, the news getting worse and worse. A hail of words stuttered out of the teacher’s mouth like gunfire.

  Fading light. Building swell. Little hope. Halting the search.

  Charlie wanted more than anything to be away from this place, this memory.

  Then he was.

  Pain started to cut through his dream, vague at first, then more severe. There was a tightness around his throat like a noose. It wasn’t just sadness that choked him, but something physical, biting into his neck below his Adam’s apple. The sound of his own gagging started to wake him and he became aware that he was being pulled backwards, into the light, someone or something roughly dragging him by his collar.

  He opened his eyes and it all came back to him. The blindingly fast powder run, the rumble from above, the huge wave of snow and debris that picked him up and swept him along like a piece of stray driftwood. He coughed, spat out a mouthful of snow and took a deep breath. He realized that he had been gasping for air, starving for it.

  Rolling on to his knees, he stared back up the way he had come and saw a landscape a world away from the one he had admired just moments ago. Where there had been flawless, pristine blankets of fresh snow there was now a sprawling chaotic mass, as if the entire mountainside had been unearthed and churned up by huge, unseen diggers. Here and there, chunks of grey rock protruded through the snow like mines and Charlie realized how lucky he was to be in one piece.

  He coughed, spat, staggered to his feet through a mist of dancing stars and suddenly remembered that he wasn’t alone.

  A few feet away from him, a figure watched him through a pair of mirrored ski goggles. There was a snowmobile a little way behind them on the slope, and Charlie realized that the stranger must have seen him fall and set off to rescue him. The figure lifted a gloved hand to their face and pulled down the scarf that covered their mouth.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  His rescuer’s face was covered by a hood and goggles, but her voice was unmistakably female and foreign. When she spoke, her English had a harsh, angular tone to it. And there was no mistaking the anger in her voice.

  Charlie tried to speak but found that he couldn’t get the words out. He coughed again, brushed the snow out of his hair and eyes and shook his head. “What?” he sputtered.

  The girl lifted her goggles and stared at him, incredulous. “Dummkopf! Out here. On this slope. What were you thinking?”

  Charlie spat at his feet. A mixture of ice and blood splattered on to the churned-up debris. His head was pounding, and he squinted against the snow that was steadily falling from above and turned to the girl wearily. “What’s it to you?”

  The girl’s grey eyes blazed and she lashed out, catching Charlie full on the side of his face with her fist. He staggered backwards and struggled to stay on his feet. The girl poked a threatening finger in his direction.

  “I had to come down here and save you from choking, that’s what! Scheisse, you don’t deserve to be alive! You idiots, coming out here, thinking you’re something cool. What if there’d had been skiers below you, or hikers? What if you’d brought the mountain down on top of them?”

  The girl was beyond furious and Charlie took another step away from her. He realized he was still strapped into his snowboard by one foot, and clumsily bent down and unclipped it. The other binding had snapped off and must have been buried in the snow somewhere alongside his goggles, gloves and headphones, probably lost forever. He gingerly stood back up and sighed.

  “I knew it was just me out here. I wouldn’t put anyone else in danger. And I’m sorry you had to come and dig me out.”

  The girl looked down at his snowboard and shook her head slowly. “That board must be twenty years old. From the nineties or something, a relic! You shouldn’t be out here. Do you even know anything about the mountains? Have you ever set foot on snow before this week? Go back to your little group of English friends. The sooner you’re gone the better!”

  Charlie experienced a mixture of anger and guilt at what he’d done. His words came out before he had time to regulate them.

  “I know the mountains and I can ride well enough. The board was my dad’s, and yeah, it’s old, but I can still use it better than anyone else I’ve seen on these mountains all week. I’m sorry you had to come down here, dig me out. I didn’t want that to happen. But I go home in a few days and I wanted to see what else was out here.”

  The girl laughed, but there was no humour in the sound.

  “Well, now you know, don’t you? I hope you enjoyed your little run, the one that brought half the mountain down. You know this place is off limits. People have died in these mountains. A lot of them. People I cared about. I heard Stefan telling your group on your first day here. Nobody comes up here unless they want to wind up under the ground.”

  Charlie nodded slowly. He felt tired and hollow, horribly aware that his body was a mass of aches and pains. He didn’t want to argue. He just wanted to go back to the Panoramic Hotel and lie down somewhere.

  “Look, I’m sorry, really, I didn’t want to upset anyone, or—”

  The girl glared at him and stormed back up to her snowmobile. Halfway there, she paused and turned round. “Why did you do it, then? For the rush? So you had a great story to boast to your friends about?”

  Charlie rubbed at the spot on his jaw where she had punched him and shook his head. “I don’t have any friends. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell them about this.”

  The girl snorted. “What, then? A death wish?”

  Charlie held the girl’s eyes for a moment, while her words seemed to drill into his skull. He felt his vision start to blur and he found himself wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. Instead of answering her he bent down, retrieved his broken board and started to trudge down through the snow. In places the drifts were waist-deep, and he struggled and slipped as he tried to put some distance between himself and the girl.

  It was growing darker by the second. Far below, the orange lights of the village twinkled in the twilight. It was going to take Charlie hours to reach Kaldgellan and he suddenly realized the lunacy of his plan.

  It was a few minutes before Charlie heard the noise of an engine starting and revving. Seconds later, the girl’s snowmobile slid to a halt alongside him. He couldn’t see her eyes. Instead his own dishevelled reflection peered back at him in the mirrored lenses, snow caked in his messy dark hair, something like regret swimming in his brown eyes.

  When the girl spoke, her voice had lost its angry edge and her words were flat and emotionless.

  “It’s getting dark. And this storm is only going to get worse. If you try to make your way down the mountain and back across the valley chances are you’re going to fall, trigger another slip or freeze to death. And I don’t want any of those on my conscience.”

  She gestured to the seat behind her.

  “So you better get on. And hope I’m not so pissed that I throw you off.”

  Chapter Four

  From her seat on the sill of her second-floor bedroom window, Tara watched the light gradually drain out of the day. She moved closer to the frosted glass, nestling into her hoodie as she felt the draft hissing from the sides of the pane. If she squinted, she could just see a procession of laughing, chatting figures, making their way back from the lift station, skis and snowboards clutched under their arms. The sky that brooded above their heads was the colour of slate, stark white flecks of confetti whi
rling above them on the wind.

  They better have enjoyed their time out on the slopes, mused Tara, because for the next few days they were going to be confined to the hotel. And Tara knew only too well how little fun that was.

  The hot topic at breakfast that morning had been the storm that was due in. Tara had been listening to one of the instructors calling it a whiteout and explaining that once the blizzard arrived, any skiing and snowboarding was going to be officially cancelled for the day – the lifts shut down, the runs closed off. Tara had wanted to hear more, but just then Mrs Newman had thundered over and started rinsing her in front of the whole school party. And that was pretty much the last bit of contact with the outside world Tara had had.

  She shook her head, checked her phone for what must have been the hundredth time in the last hour, and swore quietly.

  Nothing. Not a thing.

  There’d been no internet or signal since breakfast, and it was really starting to piss her off. She swore again, tossed her shiny iPhone back on the bed and was just about to go back to watching the progress of the tiny figures on their way back from the lift when there was an urgent knock on her bedroom door.

  “Tara! Can you open up, please? I need to get changed and get down to dinner but I have to see you before they start serving.”

  Tara sighed, yawned, stumbled over to the door and pulled it open a fraction. Mrs Newman’s stern, pinched face peered at her through the sliver between door and frame. She had her padded purple North Face jacket zipped up to her chin, a pink snood just below her mouth. Flecks of melting snow glistened in her hair.

  “I’ll get you some food brought up here tonight, but I do not want you down there, mixing with the others. You’re staying here, in your room, staring at the walls if you have to. You can do your psychology or sociology study if you’re bored. But don’t even think about leaving your room, or sticking so much as one foot into the snow outside. You understand?”

  Tara shrugged. “It’s so cold tonight I don’t want to go out anyway, so I’m not really bothered.”

  She pushed a long strand of blond hair out of her eyes then glanced back at Mrs Newman with as much disdain as she could muster. The teacher’s scowl deepened, the lines around her eyes and on her forehead becoming more pronounced.

  “You might think this is all a joke, Tara. But let me assure you, if I find you on the boys’ floor again after dark I’ll take you down to the valley, throw you in a hire car and drive you to the airport myself, no matter how bad the weather gets.”

  Tara shrugged and looked down at her nails. When her family’s money had run out and she’d been thrust into the horrors of comprehensive education, she never dreamed it would be this bad.

  Mrs Newman pushed the door wider, her face flushed with agitation. “I don’t care what you get up to at home but there are rules here. You might think you’re untouchable but you’re not. And roll your eyes at me again and you’ll stay in your room until we fly home.”

  Mrs Newman waited for a response, but Tara knew she when she was cornered and she forced herself to bite back an acid retort. There was a long silence and then the teacher nodded with satisfaction and pushed the door to. Tara listened to her footsteps as she thumped down the stairs.

  “Bitch,” Tara muttered.

  She turned and slinked back over to the bed to retrieve her phone. Thumbing on to Snapchat, she was met with the all-too-familiar Cannot connect to server message. Those four words had been the best it or any other app or website had to offer since just after breakfast. And no matter how many times Tara obsessively checked, there was no change.

  Pulling her fleeced hoodie tighter around her shoulders, Tara turned her attention back to the window and watched as the tiny figures trudged back through the storm towards the warm light of the hotel.

  Chapter Five

  Without the background drone of the television, the dining room seemed strangely sombre, Nico realized.

  Even though most of the seats were occupied with babbling students and a raging fire filled one corner of the rustic room, there was still something missing without the battered old relic of a TV and the smaller screens dotted around the room.

  There was supposed to be a football match on the television tonight, England versus Russia. Nico didn’t even like football. He couldn’t kick a ball to save his life unless he had an Xbox controller in his hand, but he liked the way that when a big game was on TV it brought everyone closer together. It made him feel a little bit more of a part of things.

  But now the football was the latest casualty of the blizzard that shuddered and gasped outside, its exhalations seeming to almost flex the flimsy walls of the hotel back in on themselves. Nico had never heard a storm quite like it, but then he’d never been out of Bristol in pretty much his entire life so he didn’t have a lot to compare it to.

  Television wasn’t the only casualty. The internet had gone too, not only on their phones and tablets, but also on the tired old computer in the lobby. Nico had gone on there earlier to try to send an email home to his mum but there was no connection. And there was zero signal on his phone.

  So for now there was no Minecraft, no Grand Theft, no kind of online entertainment at all. He was so used to the students around him having glowing screens in their hands that their absence now seemed strangely unsettling. He peered over at his best friend Chris. “Nothing on yours either?”

  Chris shook his head, scratched at his long greasy hair then went miserably back to the last of his supper. Nico watched him for a moment then leaned back in his chair and glanced around the room.

  A host of glassy-eyed deer and foxes stared down at him from the spots on the woodchip walls where their unfortunate heads had been mounted. There were dozens of the creatures, their mouths forever frozen in a mask of redundant aggression and all-too-real surprise. There was even a huge black bearskin in one corner, suspended upside down so that its rear paws almost touched the ceiling. Nico noticed that several of the students had placed pieces of their evening meal – some blackened and burnt chicken nuggets – in its jaws, skewering the chunks on the dead bear’s teeth. That’s how bad the cooking was.

  To be fair, the poor dinner wasn’t really the fault of the two Polish girls who dashed from kitchen to servery to table, bringing out a succession of plates of overcooked chicken nuggets, greasy chips and brown, wilting lettuce. The hotel manager had gone home sick, Nico heard, and left the two waitresses in charge of pretty much the whole hotel. And they were probably only a few years older than the students they were cooking for.

  But even before the food had come out there had been a bleak mood in the hotel that evening. Maybe it was the storm and the fact that there was unlikely to be any more skiing for the next few days. Maybe it was because the trip was going by a little too quickly. Or maybe it was the lack of glowing screens, the temporary disappearance of any contact with the outside world beyond the sleepy Austrian village.

  Whatever it was, the sense of holiday celebration had vanished tonight.

  Like Matthias, the other ski instructors who usually stood at the bar and drank beers and shots and hurled jokes at the students had also made other plans, leaving Stefan as their sole representative. He was chatting away to a striking but hard-faced girl at the bar. She had long black hair, shaved at the sides and pulled into a ponytail, and moody, piercing grey eyes. A silver ring in her nose shimmered in the dim light. She wore a pair of ski dungarees and a vest top. Nico studied her for a moment, making sure she wasn’t looking in his vicinity. Her upper body was skinny, but she looked toned and athletic. Nico was fairly sure he had seen her out on the mountain a few days ago, leading a group of walkers off-piste. Whatever it was she was bending Stefan’s ear about now, she didn’t look happy at all.

  As if they sensed Nico watching, the two of them abruptly broke off their conversation and stared over in his direction.

  Nico felt his face burn red and he studied his blank phone screen as fervently as he could. After
a few seconds, he broke cover and realized that they weren’t looking at him at all. Instead, their attention was focused on somebody else who had just walked into the dining room behind him.

  Nico glanced around and saw Charlie push past the table, dark hair hanging down into his eyes. He was wearing a tatty hoodie and a pair of ripped jeans, and his eyes never left the floor as he walked towards the servery.

  Now there, thought Nico, was somebody who didn’t fit in anywhere. Charlie made Nico happy to be one of the geeks. It was as if there was a dark cloud permanently over the boy, and Nico noticed that none of the group even acknowledged him as he made his way across the room.

  Charlie had appeared a few months ago, two weeks into term, just as A-level classes were underway. There was a lot of talk about him. Rumours bounced around that he had been thrown out of another school, had endured a horrific home life and had been mixed up with drugs, but Nico reckoned that nobody really knew the truth. The police had turned up at their school once or twice and Nico had seen Charlie being escorted to meet them. And from the look on his face it wasn’t for a community service award. There was even a theory doing the rounds that his dad was in prison for murder. Nico didn’t know if any of these stories were true, but they would explain why Charlie kept himself to himself and didn’t mix with the other students.

  Charlie studied art alongside Nico, but he’d never talked to anyone in that class either – he didn’t seem to have any friends at all. Nico had been more than surprised to see him on the coach when they had left their school in Bristol. During the twenty-seven-hour journey to Austria, whenever Nico had looked in Charlie’s direction, he had been either asleep or staring glassily out of the window with his headphones in.

  It had been the first day on the snow, as they’d gathered to be divided into different ability groups, that Nico had heard Malachi, Jordan and some of the other sporty boys laughing and sniggering. At first he’d thought he was the source of their amusement. It wouldn’t have been the first time.