The Silent Land

15

When they woke up the fire had gone out. It was impossible to see anything from the windows of the hotel because a thick mist had descended on the valley, bringing with it fresh snow. Zoe stood at the plate-glass doors of the lobby, huddled in her duvet. The doors were still barred by the ancient skis. She debated whether to tell Jake about the men walking around the hotel in the night.

She was still protecting him, just as he was trying to protect her. But from what? From what? They were already counted among the dead. What could possibly threaten them?

She heard him stir behind her. Without looking around, she said, ‘There were men, in the night. Walking round and round the hotel. Unless I was dreaming. But if I was dreaming it was the first dream I’ve had here.’

He came up behind her. He sniffed and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I heard them, too.’

She turned quickly, her eyes flaring. ‘You did?’

He slid the old skis out from behind the handles of the glass doors and leaned them against the wall. Then he dressed quickly.

‘You’re not going out there.’

‘I am.’

‘I don’t want you to. What did you hear? In the night, what did you hear?’

‘I heard some men pacing around the place.’

‘How do you know they were men?’ she said, and now there was a tremble in her voice.

‘Well, I don’t. But I heard their footfalls and it sounded like men. I heard their breathing. I heard a cough, too.’

‘Did they try to get in?’

‘I don’t think so. I think they came right up to the window but they didn’t try to get in.’

‘What if it’s not men?’

‘What would it be, if it were not?’

‘What if it were demons?’

He snorted with derision. ‘You don’t believe in demons.’

‘Maybe I do now. I don’t want you to go out there.’ Jake stamped his feet into his boots and laced them up in silence. ‘We can’t stay in here for ever, that’s for sure. I’m not going to be a prisoner. If there are men out there, I want to find out what they are doing. And if they are demons, well, I want to see what they look like. Are you coming?’

He held out his hand for her. She didn’t budge.

‘They can’t hurt us.’

‘They can.’

‘Zoe! We died! Some time ago we died in an avalanche! What can they do to us? What can they possibly do? Kill us again?’

She blinked. She knew exactly what they could do. Something Jake didn’t understand. But she didn’t say it. She just said, ‘Wait.’

She dressed hurriedly, pulling on the boots and ski jacket she had liberated from those deserted stores. He waited patiently; then, when she was ready he held the door open, and they stepped outside.

The icy cold clawed at them. Visibility was less than a few metres. The damp mist was in their faces and the fog of it was in their throats. Snow was coming down hard in small flakes.

They walked around the hotel, looking for boot-prints made by the men in the night; or if not boot-prints, then any kind of tracks that might suggest the nature of whatever had been out there. Or what might still be out there. But there were no boot-prints, nor claw-prints, nor tracks of any kind. They had presumably disappeared in the same way as those hoof-prints and tramlines left behind by the horse and its giant sledge.

But Jake did find something.

He held it up for her. It was a cigarette butt. The filter had been bent as if twisted between the fingers as it was put out. There were more. Every few yards they found another. They discussed how long the cigarette butts might have been there; how fresh they seemed; whether the residual tobacco smelled stale, whether the paper looked pristine and chalky white or weathered and grey. They discussed whether they had spotted the cigarette butts in the snow before that moment; they couldn’t be certain. Perhaps they had been there all along, and it was only now, after the presence of intruders, that they had spotted them. They sniffed the stubs, opened out and spread the remnants of paper, crushed the tobacco between their fingers. They pored over the discarded butts like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls, papyrus writings in an inaccessible language, all the time looking for meaning, meaning, meaning.

Then, behind the hotel, Zoe spotted another cigarette butt in which a single burning cinder of tobacco glinted and went out. A miraculously thin wisp of smoke floated upwards from the cigarette butt. She reached down and plucked it up, blew on it and it sparked.

She held the stub of cigarette at arm’s length for Jake to see and he gazed back at it with appalled eyes.

Zoe turned and shouted into the swirling mist. ‘Hello! Hello! Who is there?’

But her words were muffled by the freezing fog, seeming to fall back with a clatter at her feet.

Jake made a megaphone of his hands. ‘Helloooooooo!’ he bellowed. But his voice didn’t carry. ‘We know you are there!’ he shouted. Then he turned to Zoe. ‘No we don’t,’ he said quietly.

They both peered deep into the mist, and Zoe saw, or thought she saw, a tiny spark, crimson-to-gold, perhaps the glowing ember of the tip of a burning cigarette as it was inhaled by the smoker. But it was so small, and the flare was so brief, that she couldn’t be certain.

Perhaps Jake saw it too, because he set off into the mist, weaving slightly, as if targeted on some point in the middle distance. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps before his outline began to fade. Unable to conceal the panic in her voice, Zoe summoned him back.

‘I’m just going to take a look around.’

‘I’m afraid! You might lose your way back.’

‘No I won’t.’

‘Jake, you asked me what they could do that was worse than dying. I’m going to tell you. They could separate us.’

‘What?’

‘They could separate us.’

Jake hesitated, staring back at her. He seemed not to have considered this possibility. He returned to her side and hugged her to him. ‘I won’t let them do that. Let’s go back inside.’

They returned to the hotel, and once inside Zoe made to reinsert the antique skis through the door-handles, but Jake gently took the skis out of her hands and laid them aside. Suddenly she shivered. Her teeth started to chatter, like when she had the flu. Jake found the duvet and settled it around her shoulders.

‘You’re freezing,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the fire again.’ ‘Are you not cold?’

He shook his head, no. He’d never felt the cold all the time they had been in this place. But her teeth chattered, and she shook. Jake got down on his knees before the fire and struck a match. It sparked and hissed and in a few moments he had the fire going again and was banking it up with smaller logs. Then he cleared the area so she could sit before the comforting flames.

‘These logs don’t last long,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to go out there at some point and get some more.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t.’

‘Look, it’s about a hundred paces up the gradient of the road. Even in this mist I can’t get lost out there. And the way you’re shaking, we’re going to have to feed that fire.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll take the tarp and drag another load of logs back here. And after that I will make you a breakfast, cooked over the fire in a skillet, old-style. Won’t that be great?’

‘Take the tarp. Skillet.’

‘What?’

She blinked at him. She didn’t feel at all hungry. ‘Could we have the breakfast first? Before you go out?’

He smiled. ‘Sure.’ He sidled over to her and pulled the duvet around her shoulders and put his arm around her, trying to pass on some of his warmth. He held her tight but he seemed to drift off somewhere, deep in his own thoughts.

Her shivering had subsided. She could feel the heat of the fire now. She looked at Jake. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You look—’

‘I was just about to do something and I couldn’t remember what it was.’

‘You were going to cook breakfast. On a skillet. Over the fire.’

‘I was?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s right. I was. Funny. Funny how it comes back.’

He got up and headed off towards the kitchen and she watched him go. Something about his demeanour wasn’t right. She wondered if he’d taken a knock to his head during the avalanche that had affected him. His eyes still hadn’t recovered from being bloodshot. It was the sort of thing you would get checked out in a hospital. But here there was no hospital, no doctor, no nurse. She didn’t even know if or how much you could hurt yourself in this place. She thought about the baby growing in her belly.

Jake came back with a large, oiled frying pan, plates, bacon, eggs, bread and set about making a flat bed of the burning logs so he could heat the pan. ‘The freezer has shut down. We should eat this bacon while we still can. Everything is going to decompose and after a few more days we’ll be eating out of tins.’

He laid out strips of bacon on the pan. ‘Hungry?’

She pretended she was.

‘It’s like camping,’ he said.

She watched him carefully steering the pan into the flames and had to fight back tears.

They ate breakfast in silence, until he said, ‘Remember it for me. Remember the taste of bacon.’

‘Well. You were a vegetarian when I met you.’

‘Was I?’

‘I converted you.’

‘Really?’

‘Are you serious? You don’t remember that? You must remember that!’

He looked pained. ‘I seem to be forgetting so many things. I try to recall it but it’s just not there. I listen to you telling me stories about things we did together, and it’s as though you’re talking about someone else.’

‘It was a couple of months after we’d got together. We’d spent forty-eight hours in bed together at my flat. We’d only got out of bed to go as far as the toilet. It was shocking. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from each other. We’d been fucking all day and all night and snoozing in between and we’d eaten nothing. And I said: right, that’s it. I’m having a bacon sandwich, and you said, can’t, vegetarian and all that. I said too bad please yourself and I went down to the kitchen and made a bacon roll dripping with bacon fat and tomato sauce and brought it back up and you watched me eat it, and then when I’d finished it I said too bad you can’t kiss me now cos you’ll get bacon fat in your mouth. Disgusting you said, that’s disgusting; and then you kissed me. And you drew your head back and licked your lips and you said, right that’s it.’

‘I said “right that’s it”?’

‘You said right that’s it, nine years of vegetarianism and that’s an end to that, can you make me one? And I did. That’s it.’

‘Must have been a hell of a kiss.’

‘It was. A carnal kiss. You loved it.’

‘Anything else you converted me to or from?’

‘You were teetotal.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘Yes, I am about that. You really don’t remember, do you?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. There’s so much I seem to have forgotten.’

She was deeply worried about him but she said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because everything you can see or touch or hear or smell has a story attached to it; a story I can tell you. If you say bacon I can tell you a story. If you say snow I can tell you a dozen different stories. This is what we are: a collection stories that we share, in common. This is what we are to each other.’

He stared hard at her, his bloodshot eyes full of love and admiration for her. Then he stood up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to get some wood, to keep you warm. What we have here won’t last the rest of the day, let alone the night. I’ll go straight there, get the logs, and I’ll come straight back.’

He bent down to kiss her and then froze and pulled back.

‘What is it?’

‘The taste of you. It came back.’

He kissed her again and then stood up quickly. He grabbed a corner of the tarp and flicked off the few remaining logs before rolling it under his arm. Then he went out through the lobby doors and set off into the thick mist, small flakes of snow billowing about his ears.

Zoe banked up the fire with logs and waited. She did nothing but gaze into the flames. After a while she became anxious. It felt as if Jake had been gone a long time. She took the breakfast plates and the pan away to the kitchen and washed them. When she came back to the lobby it was thronged with people.

It was the same people as before, crowding the lobby all over again. They chattered excitedly. The place was packed. People were standing in line for the reception desk, waiting to register. The three receptionists were busy all over again, one on the telephone, one processing a credit card and a third frowning and struggling to hear what her grey-suited manager was trying to say above the din. The exact scene was replicated in minute detail.

There was the sneeze of air brakes from the luxury bus. Here was the man who passed her, winking suggestively as he went by. Here was the whiff of his cologne.

It was all being repeated, all over again.

Zoe heard the word ‘avalanche’ mentioned by a woman at the reception desk. She looked up and her eye was caught by the bald-headed concierge, who was waving at her, beckoning her to come across the lobby to him. ‘Madam!’ he called. ‘Madam!’

But Zoe was paralysed. She couldn’t move a muscle. The scene, played before her for a third time, began to take on a menacing appearance. Even though the people looked at ease, their animation and the enthusiasm of their chatter made her bowels churn.

The concierge in his maroon and grey livery saw that she was stuck. He smiled encouragement. Then he picked up a brown envelope and waved it at her.

Zoe shook her head.

The concierge said something to another resident and started to make his way through the throng towards her, all the time waving the envelope.

‘It’s not for me,’ Zoe said. ‘It’s not for me.’

‘But Madam!’ said the concierge as he closed in on her.

Zoe shut her eyes.

And when she opened them again, the concierge was gone, and all the other residents chattering in the lobby had gone, and the three receptionists and the English women and the bus with all its new arrivals. All had vanished.

Zoe closed her eyes once more, this time for a count of ten. When she opened them she was relieved to find the lobby still empty, still deserted. Whatever she was being shown in this repeated vision, she didn’t want it. She vented a huge sigh and, still trembling from the shock of the repeated but utterly lifelike vision, went to the window and peered outside. The mist seemed to be lifting, just a little. The snow flurries had diminished, but visibility was still low.

She returned to her place in front of the fire. Then she got up again and revisited the window. She looked out, and there she saw a slight movement.

It was difficult to see anything beyond twenty or thirty metres. The mist was drifting now, with gusts of wind opening up visibility here and there for a few brief moments. But she glimpsed a grey wolf-like shape, and again a movement that suggested something was out there.

She peered hard into the mist, wishing that Jake was back. Then there was another gust of wind, and as the mist lifted she saw the men.

There were three of them. They were assembled in a group, though one of them was in a crouched position, elbow on his knee. The wolf-like shape. He was smoking a cigarette and staring back at the hotel. They were all smoking cigarettes. As the mist billowed around them, she saw the embers of a cigarette spark as one of them inhaled; and she saw the plumes of smoke as others breathed out. They all smoked and looked back at the hotel. Not at her, exactly: they hadn’t spotted her. They were all smoking and gazing back at different aspects of the hotel.

She ducked her head. Her heart slapped like a piston inside her and her breath came short. She slithered to the floor. After a few moments she collected herself and crawled to another part of the window where there was a curtain, and from there she was able to use the crack between the curtain and the wall to observe the men.

But they barely moved, other than to lift their cigarettes to their mouths or to blow out smoke. One man threw his cigarette to the ground and stamped on it. A few moments later he produced a packet and got another cigarette, taking a light from one of the others. The third member of the group remained in a crouched position, scanning the hotel, always scanning.

She thought of Jake out there. He would be returning at any moment with the wood. They would see him. They would see him coming back with the wood.

She tried to still her heart. Think, she said to herself. Think. She had to find a way to warn him. Had to find a way that didn’t reveal to the group of men that they were there, that they were holed-up in the hotel. She had to get to Jake and warn him.

A back way out of the hotel. Though she had never used it, there had to be a back way out of the hotel. Maybe a fire exit. Or a door from the kitchen—yes, that was it. She had seen a door from the kitchen. Jake had used it to take out the garbage. She could go out of that door and make her way around the side of the hotel. From there she could get to the road. That was it; that was what she had to do.

She hunkered down and crawled beneath the windows, hugging close to the wall. When she’d cleared the windows she was able to stand upright and make her way through the restaurant with the certainty of moving unseen. From there she stepped through the swing doors of the kitchen.

It felt even colder in the kitchen. She realised she’d left her coat by the fire.

She decided to go without her coat. She crossed the tiled kitchen floor and found the rear door unlocked. Once outside, she picked her way between the rubbish bins and the garbage skips. From there it was possible to creep silently around the side of the hotel to get to the road.

But once she drew level with the road she saw that there was a vista of maybe fifteen or twenty metres, between the hotel and the building diametrically opposite the hotel, where she would be exposed. She could see the three men, immobile, still surveying the hotel,still smoking their cigarettes. It was too far to run. They would easily spot her flitting across the street.

But as she pressed her nose against the wall, trying to keep out of sight but at the same time to spy on the men, there was another flurry of mist, almost but not completely obscuring her view of them. The mist drifted before them like smoke: now they were there, now they were not. She knew that if the mist were with her, she could race across the road unseen.

She waited for her moment. It was maddening. The mist hung in the air like a prancing unicorn or a chimera, partly obscuring her view of the men, but not fully. She could see their legs, or their covered heads, as the mist broiled this way and that. Their patience was terrifying. They simply watched, waiting, smoking.

At last the mist roiled in with a new flurry of snow and Zoe put her head down and ran. She ran in the icy snow, her feet slipping; but she recovered, launching herself to the other side of the road where the men would not be able to see her.

Panting heavily she pressed her back against the wall, steam escaping from her mouth. Then she hurried towards the house where Jake had gone to fetch the wood. It took her no more than two minutes. When she reached the now depleted log pile she found the tarpaulin heaped with logs, but no sign of Jake.

She was afraid now that if the men did leave their station they might spot her, so she went inside the house, hoping to find Jake. As before, the door opened freely onto the dark kitchen. Dull light reflected from the old mirror above the mantelpiece. Her eyes were drawn to the cabinet-maker’s workshop, with its available coffin. She stepped towards the workshop and then turned suddenly to see Jake. He had his back to her and he was looking at the wall.

‘Jake! There are men.’

Jake turned to face her and put a finger to his lips, to hush her. Then he turned back to the wall.

She bustled over to him. ‘Three men.’

‘Are you sure?’ He seemed to be in a trance.

‘Of course!’

‘Look,’ he said, unimpressed by her report. ‘Look at the photographs.’

She gasped.

‘How long,’ Jake said, ‘how long ago was it that we were here in this house?’

‘It was only… yesterday. No. Wait, that’s right. It was yesterday.’

‘It feels to me like such a long time since we were here. Weeks. Months.’

‘No! It was only yesterday.’

Jake was still gazing at the photo frames. Where Zoe recalled the generations of families represented by formal, sepia portraits and modern, fading snapshots, there were now none. The photographs had all gone from the frames. All of the frames, whether mounted on the wall or resting on flat surfaces, were empty. It made her blood sting with cold. It made her skin prickle with heat.

‘The men, Jake! There are men watching the hotel.’

He seemed utterly unafraid. ‘Let’s go and talk to them.’

‘No! We have to get back inside the hotel!’

‘I don’t know about that.’ He still seemed to be in a daze. There was almost a slur to his words. ‘If there are men, I have to talk with them.’

Zoe slapped Jake’s face, hard. ‘I won’t let you. I won’t hear of it! You are not to go out there!’

He looked at her and smiled. Then he cupped her cheek with his hand, a tender mirroring of the mighty slap she’d given him. He turned and went out, and she followed at his heels. Outside, the mist was still so thick that visibility was back down to a few metres. He took the corner of the tarpaulin loaded with logs and began to drag it back to the hotel.

‘Leave it. We don’t need it.’

‘We have to keep you warm,’ said Jake, almost distracted. ‘We have to.’

‘We can go in by the back way. The kitchen door. If we can get across the road without them seeing us then we’ll be fine.’

The mist was thick, and Zoe prayed they could get back to the rear of the hotel without being spotted. The tarpaulin dragged noisily against the snow in a way that she thought the men must surely be able to hear. She grabbed two corners and made Jake lift it at the other two corners so that they could carry it silently.

When they came to the exposed position, the mist was thick enough to give cover, and though she couldn’t see if the men were still in position, she sensed that they were close. The tarpaulin was heavy with its load of logs and they made ungainly progress; but the distance was a short one and within a couple of minutes they were at the rear entrance of the hotel, carrying the load into the kitchen. Once inside Zoe banged the door shut and locked the security bar into place.

‘Where are they?’ Jake said.

‘Watching the front. There are three of them and they’re watching for movement.’

‘I have to go and speak with them.’

‘Please don’t do that! Please don’t!’

‘I have to.’

‘You don’t have to, Jake! We can stay here! We’re safe here! We can stay warm! We have enough food! We don’t have to do anything. Please don’t go out to them.’

He ignored her and set off through the kitchen, paced through the restaurant and out into the lobby area, all of the time with Zoe trying to pull him back by his sleeve. He went over to the fireplace and picked up the axe from where he’d been chopping wood. Then he made for the door. Zoe ran after him and flung herself between him and the thick glass doors of the lobby, crying, begging him not to go outside.

‘Don’t you see why I have to go and find out what they want? Don’t you see that? Now listen. It will be fine. You can stay here, or you can come with me. But I think you should stay here and in a minute or two I will come back and tell you what they want.’

With her hand pressed to her mouth she watched him go out, walking into the mist that had become a fog, the axe gripped in his hand and swinging at his side. He stepped into the fog and was swallowed up.

Zoe stood behind the glass doors, her eyes fixed on the point of invisibility, counting the seconds. She waited a minute, two minutes perhaps, but then she couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t bear to watch and wait. She ran out of the doors and after him, calling his name, running through the fog, until at last she saw him, standing immobile, the axe held still at his side.

She ran to him, flinging herself at him.

‘Where?’ he said. ‘Where were they?’

‘They were right here. I swear it. Right here. One was leaning against that boulder. Another had his foot up on that rock. Look! Here’s one of their cigarettes! It’s still smoking. They’re here, Jake, they’re here!’

She picked up the smoking cigarette end and showed him. The residual tobacco sparked dimly in the freezing, swirling air.

‘Well, maybe they were here, but they’re not here now.’

Jake put the axe under his arm and cupped his hands again like a megaphone. ‘Show yourselves!’ he bellowed into the fog. ‘Show yourselves!’ But his cry had no carriage, no timbre in the freezing mist, and it crashed back to earth. He weighed the handle of his axe again in his hand and took a few steps forwards. The glacial breeze flicked at his hair and the mist went billowing.

‘Don’t step out of sight!’ Zoe shouted to him.

But he moved a few metres forwards and to the left, scanning the smoky mist, finding nothing, moving across and almost out of her range of vision, mist coiling around him. Zoe turned to look back at the hotel. A face loomed at her, centimetres from her cheek. The mouth was partially covered by a scarf. Eyes peered from deep sockets. The breath from the gash-like mouth above the scarf congealed on her cheek.

She screamed.

She came round in front of the fire in the hotel lobby. Jake supported her neck and was trying to get her to drink the water that was spilling down her chin. She sat up, looked to right and left, still in the grip of her fear, ready to bolt.

‘You passed out,’ said Jake.

‘I saw one of them.’

‘You screamed and you passed out.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘No.’

‘He was close enough to touch me. I could have reached out and touched him.’

‘There was no one there, my love.’

‘I saw him.’

‘I don’t know what you saw. You were certainly frightened. When you’re frightened you can see or hear anything. There’s no one there. I had a good look around. There’s no one.’

She shivered. Her teeth chattered again.

‘You’re cold. I’m going to build up the fire again for you.’

She pulled the duvet around her and he drew a second one over her knees. She was shivering violently. Jake went to work straight away, splitting miraculously thin kindling with the axe, all of which he grouped amid the ashes of the fire. He lit the thin spills and expertly assembled a pyramid of larger splints around the burning wood. It all burned fast. Soon the fire was roaring and throwing out welcome heat.

‘Aren’t you cold, Jake?’

He didn’t answer. He continued to build up the fire.

After a while her shivering subsided. She told Jake she needed the toilet but in fact she had an overwhelming desire to check her pregnancy status again. She was terrified that the shock to her system might make her lose her baby. She had hidden her supply of tester kits in places all round the hotel. There were some behind the reception desk, so, wrapped in her duvet, she went and collected one and took it into the toilet, locking the door behind her.

She unwrapped the stick, took down her pants and held the stick under her and urinated on it. She waited. Two thin but clear blue lines appeared. She knew it was too early to tell if the shock of fainting and falling had made her lose the baby, and that she would have to test again and again, but for now she was reassured.

This baby will be fine, she told herself. This baby will be fine.

She disposed of the stick, pulled up her pants and her jeans and went to wash her hands in the sink. The tap made a dyspeptic wheeze, but no water flowed. She tried another sink, turning on both taps, but without result. The water supply had stopped, or frozen. She could hear the airlock singing in the pipes from the opened tap. She put her ear to the mouth of the tap. The air in the pipe sounded so much like music, she had to strain her powers of listening to convince herself that it wasn’t music she could hear coming out of the taps. And then after all she became certain that it was not an airlock she could hear but music after all, faint music being carried through the pipes. The music was orchestral, rising and falling; and then it was just the sound of an airlock again.

She opened the door of the bathroom and walked straight into Jake.

‘Oh?’

‘You okay? You were gone a long time.’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes. Everything.’

He eyed her strangely. ‘Let’s get you back by the fire.’

Jake put his arm around her and tried to stroke some warmth into her as he led her back to the fireplace. He made a bed for her there and banked up the fire, complaining about how rapidly the logs burned before they had to be replenished. Zoe huddled as near to the fire as she could without actually setting her duvet aflame.

She told him about the water. ‘Maybe it’s frozen.’

‘Maybe the generators in the village have just stopped pumping it. Don’t worry about it. We’ll drink red wine.’

Jake was already drinking red wine. No matter how much he downed, he didn’t seem to get drunk. Zoe was not so sure. Previously she had happily joined him in sampling the best bottles, but now she was much more cautious. Too many strange things were happening and she wanted to keep a straight head. Plus there was her baby to think about, even in this world.

She hid her anxiety. When Jake was at her side she made a determined effort to keep things light; but when he went away for a few minutes, perhaps to fetch another bottle of wine, she got up and went to the glass doors of the reception, trying to peer through the mist, looking for movement.

And she saw it. Or if not movement, then in the form of more dark grey shapes. The mist billowed and drifted and she saw them again. The men. But now they were six. All in the same place as before. All gazing steadily back at the hotel, and smoking, smoking, smoking.

‘Come quickly,’ she said to Jake when he returned with a bottle of fine Bordeaux. ‘But keep out of sight.’

He came up behind her, holding her, looking over her shoulder. She pointed a finger at the vague outline of the six men, all of them waiting like crows or patient birds of prey, watching the hotel.

‘What is it?’

‘Six of them. Now there are six.’

‘Where?’

‘Surely you can see them, Jake! Surely you can see their shape in the mist!’

‘I don’t see anything. Where are you looking?’

‘There! And there! And there!’

Jake squinted into the mist. He shook his head minimally. He creased his forehead.

‘Jake, tell me you can see six grey shapes! Just over there!’

Jake turned her to face him. ‘I think you’ve been hallucinating stuff.’

‘Look! Look! That’s not a hallucination! They are all smoking cigarettes, staring back at us! You’ve seen the cigarette ends—that’s where they’re coming from!’

‘I’ve seen the fag-ends, my darling, but I can’t see anything or anyone. There’s nothing there. Look, I’ll go outside and check if it’ll make you feel any better.’

‘Don’t you dare go out there!’

‘Okay, okay, be calm. We’ll stay here.’

Jake settled her by the fire again but not without her darting looks across her shoulder at the mist—and the grey figures she perceived outside. He sat with her, holding her cold hands, watching her, searching her face for external signs of internal distress.

Then he said, ‘Do we still have two blue lines?’

‘What?’

He nodded.

‘You know?’

‘Of course I know.’

She vented a huge sigh and hugged her midriff.

‘Did you think,’ he said, ‘you could keep that a secret from me? In this place, where nothing else is happening but you and me?’ He was smiling.

‘You’re not angry?’

‘Never. I was just waiting for you to tell me yourself that you were carrying our baby.’ He looked at her with eyes full of anger and pity and desperate love. He took her hand and kissed it. It was a while before they spoke.

‘How did you know?’

‘I think you’ve got about a gross of those kits hidden in the room alone.’

‘Right. Maybe I wanted you to find them. I’ve been testing several times a day. Sometimes hourly. I want it to change. And I don’t want it to change. Would you have been happy, if it had been before? Before all this?’

‘Given how I feel now? Yes I would. It would have been ecstasy.’

‘And now?’

‘I’ve been watching you carefully, knowing that you’re carrying our baby. I don’t mind telling you I’ve been worried.’

‘About the baby?’

‘Yes. And about the mother. You get cold; I don’t. You get hungry; I don’t. You get frightened by everything; I don’t.’

She flicked an involuntary glance towards the glass doors. ‘You mean to say you’re not afraid? Not afraid of what’s out there?’

He shook his head, no.

‘That can’t be true,’ she said. ‘I saw you take the axe with you when you went outside.’

‘That was to reassure you, not me.’

‘Why aren’t you afraid, Jake? This place terrifies me.

I want to know what’s going to happen to us; to our baby.’

‘I can’t explain why I’m not scared. I only know that my job is to look after you.’

‘What’s going to happen to our baby? What’s going to happen?’

Jake sighed. It was the sigh of one who has no answer. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then changed his mind. Then he framed his lips into an O as if about to try again. But he was interrupted. Zoe’s mobile phone rang.

It was ringing from her coat pocket, which she was wearing under her duvet. She almost ripped it from her pocket.

Jake took it from her. ‘Let me answer it.’

He pressed the answer button and held the cellphone to his ear. He remained expressionless. He said nothing. Then he clicked off the phone and handed it back to her.

‘Who was it? What did they say?’

‘Same as before.’

‘Did the voice say la zone? Is that what it said? The zone?’

‘It was hard to make out, but I don’t think he said la zone at all. He said laissez sonner. Which means let it ring. Laissez sonner. Then it went dead.’

‘He wants me to let it ring?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Why would he say that? Laissez sonner. Why would he tell you to let it ring?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Jake checked the battery level. ‘There’s not much charge left in this. But I think we should put it aside and if it rings, we just leave it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what he said.’

‘But how do you know that’s a good thing? How do you know that it’s not someone who wants to harm us? Maybe by answering it we’re keeping him away. Have you thought of that?’

‘No one is going to harm us.’

‘You can’t say that. You don’t know!’

‘We’re in a place beyond harm.’

Zoe clasped her belly. ‘I wish I could believe that. But I don’t. Who is calling us? Who are those men out there?’

‘You’re feverish. Come on; keep warm.’ He threw another couple of logs on the fire. ‘Damn these logs! They don’t last five minutes!’

Jake got up and set Zoe’s mobile phone on the recep tion desk. Then he sat down beside her again, and they watched the phone, from that short distance, as if it might perform an act of combustion, like indoor fireworks.

It didn’t ring.

Her teeth were chattering again. She was feverish, but it was a cold fever; she just couldn’t get warm. Jake piled her with covers and stoked the fire and while his back was turned she looked over at the window.

There it was again, a face. A scarf masking the lower half. Darting eyes, the hint of red lips above the scarf. The eyes were like pinpoints of fire, grains of light; those half-hidden lips were moving, forming unheard words.

She was on the point of warning Jake when the window itself shattered, and glass crystals rained into the room. The pressure within the lobby escaped into the dark and a wind from outside roared and shrieked, driving a blast of cold air around the room, gusting at the fire, threatening to blow out the flames. The wind shrieked and the mist roiled in at the broken window like wraiths liberated, baleful, mischievous, searching.

Jake leapt to his feet and grabbed a mattress. He dragged it to the window, ramming it hard into the aperture, stuffing it until it filled the hole, muffling the shrieking wind.

She was shivering now, too violently to speak, to tell him what she had seen at the window before the glass blew in.

He said, ‘I’m going to get you some cognac.’

Even though she knew he was only gone for perhaps a minute, two minutes at most, in that time she saw the light outside fading, incrementally, as if visibility were being shut down by precise mathematical commands. In those few moments the logs on the fire flared, burned, split, fell apart and died down.

Jake returned with the cognac. Before he gave it to her he lit two candles and set them nearby. Then he poured a glass of cognac apiece. She sipped it. He did too, but complained it tasted of nothing. ‘According to the price list we could never afford this. You’re going to have to remember it for me.’

‘What happened to the window, Jake?’

‘Remember it for me.’

‘How can I remember cognac?’

‘Approximate.’

She took a sip. ‘Our first kiss. You were a little drunk.’

He savoured more of the cognac, without taking his eyes from her. ‘I love you, Zoe. Never abandon something so deep.’

‘What?’

‘What’s what?’

‘What you just said to me. Never abandon something so deep.’

‘I said that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t remember. It’s getting so I can’t remember what I said to you two seconds ago. Look at the fire. I feel like I only put those logs on a few minutes ago and they’ve burned down.’

‘You did.’

‘And look at the candles.’ He nodded at the yellow, flickering flame. The candle was burning fast, so fast it was possible to see the candle shrinking as the molten wax rolled back from the burning wick.

‘What’s happening, Jake?’

‘Time seems to have… Our precious time will… I don’t know, my darling, I can’t even think to the end of a sentence. Isn’t that funny?’

‘I’m very frightened.’

He turned away from her and threw some more logs on the fire. They flared quickly. Twilight had already turned to darkness outside. She lay back on her bed and felt herself dozing. So exhausted was she that she gave in to it.

She was awoken by what she took to be a wolf howling in the mountains. The air was freezing on her cheeks and a stiff breeze lifted her hair. The animal’s howl came again: a sustained ululation travelling clear, mournful, melancholy and yet oddly sweet in the cold night air. She sat up to look out of the window and to her astonishment the window was gone.

Not only was the window gone, but so too had the glass doors. Two complete walls of the hotel had been removed while she slept. She cast about her, trying to make sense of it.

Two walls still sheltered her as before, but only two walls; the fire burned brightly in one of them, the logs sparking merrily, flames flaring and twisting in the grate. But the entire south side of the hotel, along with the eastern wall, had gone, though the roof above her remained. Now she looked out directly onto the slope of the mountain, with its terrifying expanse of gleaming moonlit-white, like the wing or shoulder of a primordial spirit of nature.

Jake was in the act of lighting another candle. He smiled at her. A breeze chased around the sheltered quarter and he held his hand across the flame to stop it from guttering. Even as it guttered she could see the flame was burning down fast—faster than a candle should burn, faster than was sensible.

Another howl came back across the open eastern expanse of snow, within which she could no longer see any shape or form of the village. But in the darkness for a moment she thought she could see the twin red points of the animal’s eyes reflecting back at her; then she saw more tiny red embers. One of the embers flared briefly and died down. Then another. She realised it was not eyes, but the lighted cigarettes of the smoking men. They had moved nearer to the open walls of the hotel. Two of them had dropped to a crouch, their fingers grazing the snow in front of them. One was pointing at the fireplace. The others cast glances at the ceiling.

‘It’s the men!’ she told Jake. ‘They’re just outside.’ ‘Where?’ he said.

‘There! Look at the lights! The tiny lights.’

He looked casually out into the darkness, scanning the wax-like wastes of unforgiving snow. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see them. I’ll go and speak with them.’ But something in his voice betrayed the fact that he couldn’t see them at all, that he was simply humouring her.

‘No!’ she cried in horror. ‘You must never do that. Stay here. Stay.’

‘That’s right. You stay here,’ he said soothingly, his voice oddly tranquil, no more than a murmur. ‘Stay here.’

He got up and walked out of their sheltered corner. This time he didn’t even take the axe. She hauled herself to her feet to watch, almost hyperventilating as Jake walked across the snow towards the men. He seemed no more than a silhouette creeping in the snow. He drew within a few metres of the men before he squatted down on his haunches.

The men began talking and making animated gestures with their hands. She couldn’t hear any of it. Though she strained to catch what they were saying, their talk was obliterated by the wind buffeting at the remaining walls of the hotel. There was also something amiss with the way in which Jake engaged with the men. He was not looking at them. He was not even facing them. He talked, and nodded or shook his head occasionally as if in some kind of negotiation, but it was as if they were in different worlds; and as if he couldn’t see them, nor they him.

This curious negotiation went on for a long time, during which the candles burned down to their stumps and the fire died.

When Jake came back, he looked grave. He didn’t answer any of her questions. He stoked the fire again and banked up the logs.

‘What did the men say?’ she demanded.

‘The important thing,’ he said, pulling the pile of duvets closer around her, ‘is to keep you warm.’

‘Do you know what they want?’

‘Who?’

‘The men! Did they say what they want?’

‘Yes, they did. But it’s hard for me to remember. Very hard.’ He poured her another glass of cognac and refused to answer any more questions until she’d drunk it. Exasperated and exhausted, she gulped it and lay back again. Her weariness outweighed her fear, and she felt herself dozing again.

When she woke this time, the remaining walls and the ceiling of the hotel had been removed, along with the entire hotel lobby. There was still a fire, but it burned merrily on the snow itself, without the surround of the brick chimney or the mantelpiece or even the hearth. Jake was loading logs from a diminished pile onto the fire and they were burning supernaturally quickly.

‘All the candles are gone,’ he said with a sheepish grin, like a man trying to make light of a difficult situation.

She sat up immediately and looked for signs of the men—telltale burning embers in the dark, movement of any kind. There was none. She looked up at the open sky. The stars were locked in a frozen cascade, twinkling in their billion-fold, an army of semi-immortal deities. She gasped, her breath congealing in the icy air.

Then there was that howl again, followed by three crisp barks, and as she looked across the snow she saw a dog running towards them. Jake scrambled to his feet. ‘It’s Sadie!’ he cried. ‘She’s come back!’

The dog bulleted towards Jake and he ran to meet her. Sadie leapt up to greet him, tail thrashing, whimpering, licking his face. They rolled together in the snow. ‘It’s Sadie,’ Jake called to Zoe. ‘Can you believe she came back?’

Zoe watched as the dog’s enthusiasm quietened. Jake sat on the snow as she snuffled in his ear. It almost seemed to Zoe that the two of them were having a conversation. Sadie stretched her neck and pointed her moist snout at the moon as Jake scratched her between the ears. She snuffled in his ear again.

He stopped stroking her and became still.

The dog snuffled in his ear a third time. Jake’s head fell forwards. He became still, his hand placed flat on Sadie’s flank. They stayed that way for some time and Zoe thought something must be wrong, but after a while Jake became reanimated, stroking the dog’s flank and tickling the sweet spot behind her ears. Eventually he got up and led the dog over to Zoe.

Sadie came and flung herself flat on the snow next to Zoe. But when she looked up at Jake, his face was wet with tears.

‘What is it?’

He shook his head, then lowered himself beside Zoe and hugged her and kissed her neck.

‘Jake?’

‘Sadie explained it all to me.’

‘It?’

‘Yes. She told me everything.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Well, she’s a dog and of course she can’t explain everything but somehow she made me understand some things. And I’m going to tell you, but it’s going to make me cry, my darling.’

She held his face in her hands. Fat tears, snow-reflecting crystals, were already streaking his face. Sadie, wagging her tail, shuffled up to him and licked away his tears. He laughed, stroking her.

‘You see, we cheated death.’

‘We did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does that mean we’re safe?’

‘We were always safe. But we cheated death, and because we couldn’t let each other go we found some extra time.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. We found some extra time. The dream of the present moment was interrupted for us. We’re watching all of this through the seams between life and death.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Our love. It gave us extra time. It cheated death.’

‘But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it? Isn’t that a good thing, Jake?’

‘Yes. Yes it is.’

There came from somewhere in the mountains a tiny shivering sound, faint and distant, at that moment almost indiscernible, but though they didn’t know it yet, they both surely heard it.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No. I don’t think I like what you’re saying.’

‘Because you know what’s coming?’

‘No.’

‘Yes. It’s because you know what’s coming. Listen to that.’

A steady, rhythmic rattle, like crushed ice shaken in a cocktail glass, or perhaps like the wheezing of an old steam train climbing a gradient, sounded out of the far distance.

‘What’s that, Jake?’

‘You know what it is.’

‘No. I don’t. I don’t want to know.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s all good. It’s all good.’

‘How can it be good?’

‘I’m keeping you here. I thought I was keeping you warm, but I’ve been keeping you here. Our love. Keeping us.’

‘We’ll be all right here. We’ve done fine so far. The baby.’

‘No. It’s already passing. We cheated death, but just for a little while.’

The rhythmic rattle, a kind of hissing in the sharp, cold air, was drawing closer. And then she recognised the sound.

‘You’re abandoning me, Jake? You’re leaving me here?’

‘Listen to me. Everything we are we have built from every thing we have done together. If we drank a glass of wine and we said it tasted like this or that, then that’s how it tasted. One has to help remember it for the other.’

The sound was growing now and was accompanied by a kind of drumming in the earth, under the snow. The drumming was the sound of hooves and the rattle was the shiver of harness bells.

‘No. Please don’t leave me here.’

‘Everything, our whole lives, has been a series of delights and griefs that are gone for ever; gone unless we remember them for each other.’

The shiver of the harness bells was louder now, and the great black horse they adorned appeared out of the dark, its vast sweating flanks gleaming, its breath rising and billowing in the freezing air, its huge red plume, red like wine caught in a jewelled cup or like blood in a silver chalice, shaking before it and cutting a swathe through the brittle air.

‘You can’t abandon me on the snow! You’re not going to. You’re not.’

‘I’m top banana today, my darlin’ girl, and there’s only a seat for one of us.’

‘No. I’m not having it, Jake.’

‘All you have to do is refuse to forget.’

She grabbed at his lapels and hung on to him with a ferocious grip. ‘This is not going to happen.’

‘You know how to do that, don’t you, Zoe? You know how to refuse to forget?’ He floated his index finger over her gripping arms and touched her lightly in the middle of her forehead. ‘You just keep this eye open. And you’ll see me everywhere. Just everywhere.’

He pulled away from her.

The giant black horse and sledge approached at pace, taking a track that curved away from them both. Jake turned and started taking long, purposeful strides towards the horse, aiming to intercept its path.

‘Jake!’ she screamed and scrambled to her feet, stunned, incredulous to see him walking away from her.

But it didn’t stop him. He proceeded on his steady determined way across the snow. Already the horse was slowing as it made the slope. Jake had already covered a few paces before Zoe set off after him, running. But she had no strength. Jake was heading to intercept the horse, but even though he was only walking steadily towards it and she was running, it was Zoe who was falling back. She ran faster, but the irrational distance between them only increased instead of shortened. She fell and got up again, running, slipping on the snow, her feet going from under her.

For a moment it seemed that Jake might not catch the horse; but then as he approached the animal and the awe-inspiring vapours rising from its flanks, it seemed to slow deliberately, to break its trot to a brisk walk; and in that break Jake marched up to the sledge, finding a step up onto the footboard, and from there he scrambled into the safe pocket of the black leather upholstery. The horse tossed its head and recovered its trot again, picking up speed as it found a flat track.

Still Zoe ran after them, screaming at Jake, trying to make pace. For a moment she even drew abreast of the giant sledge, reaching as she ran, but the footboard seemed to climb away from her as she scrambled alongside, and the door to the carriage loomed above her outstretched fingers. The sledge seemed to swell in size until the footboard was well out of reach, or until she was impossibly small. She fell on her knees in the snow, crying after Jake.

Sadie, keeping pace with the sledge, stopped and stole a look back at her. Then the dog bulleted across the snow to follow her master, quickly catching up with the sledge before both it and the horse disappeared into the swirling darkness.