Whiteout

by Gabriel Dylan

  “While you were getting cosy with your girlfriend, I was up on the second floor and I saw something. A light, in one of the chalets. It was on for a while then it went off. I thought I could use your help. Now I’m not so sure I should have bothered. You and that girl, Leandra. Have you two done that before?”

  Charlie felt his face redden anew and he shook his head. “No. I’d never spoken to her before this trip, not really. I didn’t see that coming. I just … I woke up and she was there.”

  Hanna stared at him, a glimmer of mistrust in her eyes. Her voice was neutral but she seemed agitated. “How lovely for you both. Well, I’m sorry I got in the way. We won’t be long. It looked like it was about to get serious. You two can always pick up where you left off once we’re back.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Hanna started off again into the wall of snow. “Come on. It’s going to be dusk in an hour or two. And there’s no way we want to be outside after dark. Follow me.”

  The snowfall seemed heavier than ever and Charlie was constantly wiping at his face with wet gloves. The drifts they slogged through were waist-deep in places and he found himself sweating at the exertion. They turned a corner around the side of a whitewashed cottage and Hanna grabbed Charlie by the shoulder, pulling him down alongside her so that they crouched among the drifts.

  “There! See it, just there, that chalet on the left. There’s a light in there, candles or a lantern. Look!”

  Charlie blinked through the falling snow, trying to pick out what Hanna was pointing at. In front of them were some of the more modern buildings in Kaldgellan, a row of chalets that faced the village but backed on to the sheer drop that fell away to the floor of the valley miles beneath.

  At first Charlie couldn’t see what Hanna meant, then he spotted it, an orange glow that shimmered in the centre of the long bay window. “You think there’s somebody in there?”

  Hanna nodded. “That day everyone vanished, I couldn’t understand where the villagers had gone. I thought they’d been taken by those things. But what if that’s one of them? It might be a signal, another survivor. Or it might be one of your friends, somebody else who got away. Come on.”

  As they reached the door, Hanna gestured for Charlie to stay put, then she crawled across and peered up through the bottom of the window. She watched for a moment, then ducked down and made her way back to Charlie.

  “I can’t see anybody. There’s a living room there, some lit candles in the corner, but no sign of life.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We need to take a look inside.”

  The echo of Charlie’s feet on the floorboards seemed far too loud as he followed Hanna out of the storm. The inside of the chalet was a nest of shadows and gloom. Fresh logs sat piled up in a clean hearth and on the mantelpiece above them faded black-and-white photographs seemed to move in the light from the dancing candles.

  Charlie pushed the door to, cutting off the wind, and crept closer to the hearth. The frames showed family photographs taken in the village and the surrounding valleys. They were drained of colour, their definition slowly decaying from years on display. As Hanna stepped into the next room, Charlie picked up one of the pictures, brushed off the dust and brought it closer to the light so that he could see the faces of the people in the photograph.

  “Guten Nachmittag.”

  Charlie jumped at the words and swore out loud. The photograph leaped from his fingers. It hit the stone floor and sent tiny fragments of glass spinning away in a dozen different directions.

  The unknown voice came from behind him, in the next room along.

  Charlie turned and darted after Hanna, pausing at the entrance to a small kitchen.

  An old man sat in an armchair in the corner of the room. He was wearing a battered sheepskin jacket, and his grey hair hung down on to a furlined collar. There was a table in front of him, with a bottle of whisky standing upon it, half empty. The stranger smiled at Charlie, but the warmth of the expression didn’t drift up to the old man’s eyes.

  Behind him, a sink and a few kitchen counters gave way to a huge bay window with what would have been a stunning view of the valley below. Today, though, the tiny streets and villages far beneath them were obscured by the snow and cloud.

  “Schon, nicht wahr?”

  Charlie’s eyes flicked across to Hanna. “What did he say?”

  The old man glanced at Charlie. His face looked impossibly old and lined, his blue eyes dull and faded. There was a flicker of recognition in them as he examined Charlie.

  “English, aren’t you? I haven’t spoken English for years. I’ve made it a point not to mix with the few visitors we have had to Kaldgellan in recent times.”

  The old man reached down and picked up a glass of whisky that sat next to the bottle. He took a sip and smiled again, the lines on his face growing deeper with the expression.

  “You must be one of the school party I saw arriving last week, a few days before the storm came in. And you,” his eyes slowly slid towards Hanna, “you’re the guide, aren’t you? I’ve seen you before, over the past few months. I remember your brother.”

  Hanna took a step closer to him, the hockey stick still held tightly in her fingers. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “My name is Wolfgang. I’ve always lived here, in this mountain range, but I settled in Kaldgellan more than thirty years ago. I’ve seen the winters come and go. I’ve seen many like you. But you two have done well. What is it now, two days? Three? You’ve done well to stay alive so long.”

  Charlie had been looking around the room, but suddenly his attention switched squarely to the old man. His heart seemed to thump in his throat and he stepped into the dining room and stared at the stranger.

  “You know what’s going on? You know what those things are?”

  The old man smiled. “I hoped you would come. Usually, their hunt only lasts a day, two at the most. But you and your friends have evaded them. I lit the candles to try to draw you here, to talk to you. How many of you are there left?”

  Charlie felt scared now, more scared than he’d been the night before when he had listened to the screams of the boy out on the street. Somehow the old man, his words, were more real than anything that had come before. Charlie’s voice shook when he spoke again. “You didn’t answer the question. What are those things?”

  “This place is cursed. This whole mountaintop, the neighbouring peaks. You may not know, but this is the most remote region of the Austrian Alps. There’s a reason they were trapped here.”

  The old man took a deep breath, collected himself for a moment then looked up at the visitors.

  “My first memory of them is from when I was a little boy. I still remember my parents hurrying to get my little sister and myself away from the mountains, down to the valley below. I remember the fear in my father’s eyes. It’s funny what stays with you. So many things I’ve forgotten, but not that day. I knew something was wrong. I might not have understood, but I knew.”

  Hanna took a step closer, the stick raised threateningly. “What is going on? Where’s everyone gone? Tell us!”

  The old man waved at a hand at the valley below. “Down there, the people know nothing. I envy them. They carry on with their little lives, oblivious. They suspect, perhaps, that this place is haunted, blighted. That’s why so few outsiders come here now. Because every few years they come out again. Even though the people down in the valley don’t know what it is, they can sense the evil on the wind.”

  Hanna tapped the table with the tip of her hockey stick, splashing droplets of whisky from the tumbler. When she spoke, there was a trace of fear in her words. “You tell us, old man, you tell us what is going on.”

  “The first time they came in my lifetime, as I said, I was a boy. There were many times before, my grandfather told me, but that was the first I knew of them. I don’t know how many lives it took to satisfy them but they slept for many years after that. They ne
xt came when I was a man, thirty years later. Then again a score of years after that. The last time they came must have been no more than ten years ago. Now they come again. And this time you are the sacrifices.”

  Outside, the light had started to fade, the trees along the mountainside bathed in blue shadows. Apart from the howl of the wind as it whipped around the side of the chalet, there was a deathly silence.

  Charlie’s mouth felt so dry he could barely get the words out. “What are they?”

  The old man carried on as if he hadn’t heard the question. “The last time they grew hungry, they fed on the next mountaintop, a few miles from here. An avalanche, we told the world. A dozen outsiders taken by the mountain. But it wasn’t an avalanche. It was them. Twenty years before that the story was told that it was a plane that came down. But there was no plane wreckage. No plane at all. It was them. We have kept their secret. Just so long as they let us live.”

  Hanna swore, the words loud and angry in the dim light. “What are they? What do we do?”

  The old man shook his head gravely. “What do you do? You die. They won’t lift this storm until they have you all, not now they have your scent. Tonight. Tomorrow. They will hunt you down. You’ve done well to last this long.”

  Charlie felt the floorboards squeak under his feet as he took a wary step closer. “What are they?”

  “We do not speak of them lest our words wake them, not unless it’s to warn each other that their time is here again. We hear their voices in our dreams. Their stirring whispers let us know that they are wakening. The Lost Ones, my father called them. Monsters.”

  Hanna swore again, and spat her words at the old man. “There’s no such thing!”

  The old man raised his grey eyebrows and smiled. “We both know there are. They are ancient. My grandparents told me they were cursed to spend eternity in a living death, that they can never return to what they were. Just as they can never set foot off these mountains. But whatever they may be, they are hungry again. And you are their prey.”

  He pointed at a gnarled oak door at the back of the kitchen. “They don’t want me, but all the same, I have not dared show my face at night. I’d rather freeze and shiver down in the darkness than face them. The sound of them is more than enough for me.”

  Charlie looked out at the looming dark. “What can we do? How do we survive?”

  “You don’t. The sooner they find you, the sooner this storm will lift. The townsfolk will creep back to their houses, a story will be told to the world, another avalanche, perhaps, or a coach crash, or a faulty lift that sent a cable car crashing to the ground. Nobody will be any the wiser. And they will sleep again.”

  He glanced up at the grandfather clock that hung above the cooker. “But you should go now, go back to wherever you’ve been hiding. They will come for you tonight. Enjoy the dusk. It will be the last one you see.”

  Hanna cursed and swept her stick across the table. It sent the bottle smashing against the nearest wall where it shattered in an explosion of glass and whisky.

  The old man watched the ochre droplets slide steadily down the wall, his face serene and still. “There’s more in my cellar. Enough to last me tonight.”

  Hanna took a step closer. “I should kill you, you evil bastard! You say you’ve known about this for years! This is your fault! You could have stopped this. I should do the world a favour!”

  The old man’s fingers disappeared into his pocket and he pulled out a bottle of tablets. “You don’t need to. I don’t plan to sit here and listen to their howls again tonight. I’ll do it myself. There’s only so many sins one soul can bear.”

  He undid the cap, shook out a handful of small capsules and reached for the little whisky that was left in his glass. Then he placed the capsules into his mouth, swallowed and looked back up at his visitors. “I would do the same if I was you.”

  Hanna swore at him and grabbed hold of Charlie’s arm. “You’re wrong. We won’t die. Come on, Charlie, leave the old man to rot. Leave him to go to hell.”

  She started to march towards the door, but froze and slowly turned round. “You said last time it was an avalanche. Not far from here. When?”

  The old man’s voice drifted to Charlie’s ears. “Ten years ago. The year your brother died. He didn’t deserve his fate. None of them did.”

  Hanna swore, lifted the hockey stick and stormed towards the old man. Before she could swing for him Charlie caught her wrist.

  “No. He isn’t worth it. You’re better than he is.”

  Her grey eyes were blazing and for a moment he thought she might swing for him instead. Charlie put his arms around her. “Leave him. Come on. He isn’t worth it. He isn’t.”

  Hanna took a deep breath and glanced at the old man one last time. “You’re wrong, old man. You’re going to hell. But we’re going to live.”

  Then she stalked back outside into the storm.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Hanna didn’t bother to check that Charlie was with her as she made her way back to the hostel. Her head raged with the old man’s words and she found herself wishing she had caused him more than a little pain before the tablets did their work.

  They passed the awning of a butcher’s shop, the hooks hanging empty behind the glass. Before she knew what she was doing, Hanna turned to the right, pushed open the door and stepped inside, the bell above the doorway ringing merrily.

  The interior of the shop stank, a high odour of dried blood and salted meat. She heard Charlie follow her into the store, his fingers clicking on the switch by the door. Hanna heard the back-up generator kick in and a bar of lights on the ceiling blinked and flickered into life, bathing the room in a bleached electric glow.

  Hanna stalked over to the till, ran her hands through her hair and found her reflection staring back from the cold metal of the counter. Somewhere a heavy door clanged in the wind. Charlie took a step towards the back of the shop, but Hanna shook her head wearily.

  “Don’t worry. I checked this place two days ago when I was with Stefan. There’s a meat storage locker at the back and nothing else.”

  She heard herself swear, closed her eyes. “I just need a minute.”

  Charlie moved alongside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She heard his voice, calm, steady. “No matter what he said, you did the right thing. You kill him, you’re as bad as he is.”

  Hanna opened her eyes. Her chest burned with a mixture of despair and anger, and she felt her fingers curl into fists.

  “It’s not that. I knew something was coming. And I could have run. I should have run. But something kept me here.”

  Charlie’s dark eyes bored into her. “What do you mean? What did you know?”

  Hanna realized the time for secrets had passed long ago. “The instructor. The older one, Matthias. He’s always looked out for me. And he spoke to me, the day before the storm came in. He said I needed to leave. Said he couldn’t tell me why, but just that I should go. He was scared. Shaking. But I knew I couldn’t leave. I had the strangest feeling that if I stayed, I might find out what happened to my brother. That’s why I came back. I needed to know. I knew Jon couldn’t have died in an avalanche. But now I’m going to die, aren’t I? Just like Jon did. We might as well take a stack of tablets from the chemist over there and do what that old bastard did! We’re dead, aren’t we? We’d be just as good if we’d gone with Ryan and the others out into the storm. At least that would be cleaner than letting those things … Scheisse!”

  Hanna bit back a cry of pain as her knuckles slammed on the counter. Charlie took a step closer to her so that only inches separated them.

  “You asked me, at the bar earlier, what I’d done and why Jordan called me a criminal. Why the others kept away from me. You still want to know?”

  Hanna nodded numbly.

  “Back when my gran got diagnosed, when I knew it wouldn’t be long, when I knew I was going to lose the only person I had left, I got angry. So angry I did some stupid things. It s
tarted with shoplifting. Magazines. Clothes. Stuff from school. I didn’t even want the things I took. I just wanted someone to notice me. But nobody did. So one night I stole a car, clipped a van, smashed into a tree. Maybe I just wanted to get away from my shitty life in the city. Or maybe I wanted to get caught. I just wanted someone to realize that I wasn’t OK, that I wasn’t coping. But people got hurt. And all I did was make things worse, get a criminal record. But you want to know what the worst thing is?”

  Hanna shook her head, picturing Charlie back in the city, trying to keep his head above water.

  “My dad. He’d have been disgusted with me. I let him down. He was all about protecting people, not putting them in danger. Maybe that’s why I stayed, when Ryan left, when the others went. My dad would have stayed. That was what he did. Whatever it cost him. Maybe I thought that by staying, I could make things up to him, make him proud again.”

  Hanna heard a choked cry slip from her lips. “You’ll find out soon enough. You’re going to die up here.”

  Charlie took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “Maybe. Maybe we both are. But maybe we can choose how we go. We can lie down, wait for those things to find us. Or we can try and stay alive. I know what my dad would want me to do. What would your brother want you to do?”

  Charlie’s words burned away at Hanna, and she realized there was truth in what he said.

  She turned to Charlie and found it was no longer despair that made her voice shake. Suddenly she saw that there was another way, a way to quell the anger that had dragged her back to Kaldgellan. “You know what I want? I want to find those things, smash them, kill them, kill every last one of them. If that old bastard was right, they murdered my brother. And I’ve mourned him every day for ten years, turned my back on everything, everybody, and now…”

  Charlie took her hand in his and Hanna realized again how similar they were, and how separate pasts of pain and suffering now somehow bound them together.