‘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.