A Cold Season (24 page)

He slipped out from under Cass’ hand and ran to Damon.

‘See you later, then,’ she called.

He waved over his shoulder without turning and was gone, and her heart ached for him.

The road to the moor was empty. The sound of Cass’ feet crunching through snow was loud in her ears and there was no other sound: no distant whine of traffic, no bird-song. It seemed odd not to have Ben’s footsteps at her side, wrong, as if she were even now abandoning him to strangers. But he’d be fine; he’d have a much better time than Cass. Already the cold was biting through her coat and making her shiver. Each step was an effort. It’d be easier once she reached the top; then it would be downhill all the way into Moorfoot, and she could buy hot food, find Bert. He’d surely know of an easier way back. She wouldn’t have to walk like this, with each step sinking into freezing snow.

She turned into the Broaths’ farm. This time no dog barked. There was steam, though, emerging from the vent on the wall. She didn’t stop. The rough track threatened to turn her ankles but she was careful, putting her weight slowly onto each step. Her trousers weren’t waterproof and a dark ring formed around the top of her boots.

The snow got deeper. It made Cass’ eyes ache to look at all that whiteness. The sky was a deep, innocent blue scuffed with little white clouds. Beautiful.

The snow was above her knees now. As Cass headed up the hill she took a step and finding nothing firm beneath her, sank up to her thigh. She was soaked at once, and it was punishingly cold. As she floundered it reminded her of being on holiday with Pete, trying to wade through deep surf, him laughing while the sea pulled at her thighs. It was like that, but cold; deep bone-cold. Her cheeks stung, her ears stung. Clumps of snow covered her trousers. She brushed at them. The snow smeared, then melted, gluing the fabric to her skin. The sky was mocking, clouds melting away. Soon it would be a single clean blue arc: a summer sky, a desert sky. The sun was a white hole that gave no heat, only dazzled, glinting off hills and fields.

Cass went on, each inhalation hurting the back of her throat. The slope seemed steeper than it had before, the snow deeper. She dragged her legs from the holes they made and pushed forward, sank again, leaving behind her a wide broken trail, as though something had crawled along on its belly.

That made her think of Captain. How could the old dog possibly have made it across the moor? Bert must have been crazy to take him. And yet for all the strange things he’d said to her she couldn’t think of the old man as crazy. She needed to talk to him: he knew things, even if he did get carried away with his ideas sometimes. He could tell her things.

Things about Theodore Remick.

Ben was at school with the teacher. She tried not to think about that. Ben would never have made it this far, especially if he’d been determined not to. She hadn’t had a choice. Anyway, he would be fine; it was Cass who was in trouble.

Pete would never have let himself get into this situation. It was Cass who’d messed up; she was the one who had chosen to come to Darnshaw, chasing some dream, some idyll she hadn’t even recognised. Stupid.
Stupid
.

She stared at the snow, glowered at it, dared it to give way. It felt a little more solid now. Maybe there was a path somewhere beneath her feet. But the snow was terrible, a terrible thing that didn’t want her to leave, sucked at her, wasn’t going to let her go.

Just one step. Then another. One at a time
.

When she reached the witch stones she would stop. She’d drink a little soup from the flask in her rucksack. There was bread too. Remick’s bread. She grimaced.

Cass looked up, her eyes stinging, and now she saw the witch stones, stark against the snow. At first the perspective made no sense: the stones looked like holes – black holes, leading somewhere dark – and then she saw a white circle in the centre of one and her vision cleared. They were only stones, standing against the snow and the sky, stones to keep the witches out.

Better to keep them in
, she thought. She imagined Sally in a tall black hat, stirring something in a monstrous cauldron. She almost laughed out loud. Yes, Sally the witch. She could just see that.

Cass unzipped her coat and let the cold air in. She felt
hot suddenly, welcomed the cooling draught. The stones were closer. They made the sky appear more distant, impossibly far away. When Cass reached the first one her legs were trembling. She put out a hand and touched the rough black surface with her glove.

Cass allowed her knees to give way. She sat at the base of the stone and leaned back, closed her eyes, felt the cold air pinch her cheeks. The rucksack dug into her spine. She opened her eyes to see the valley, Darnshaw’s white roofs almost indistinguishable from the fields. Only the church stood free and clear and black. Cass was above it now, and it felt like freedom.

She looked around at the witch stones, at the hillside on which she rested. Not a hundred yards away a white shape looked back.

There was a snowman on the hill, white against white. It was lumpy and misshapen, sinking in on itself, troglodytic. The only reason she had seen it was the blue striped scarf tied about its neck. It had no eyes, and yet it seemed to stare.

Cass’ breath froze in her throat. She rubbed her face, making her eyes sting, but when she looked up, the white shape was still there and now she could see another was sitting next to it, and beyond that, another, this one sunk so far in on itself it had almost collapsed. It looked a little like a hunched old man.

She took a deep breath, and another. Her heart punched out a too-quick rhythm. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘
Don’t
.’

It was worse once the words were out into the air: like an accusation.

Cass pushed herself up. The stone rasped on her coat and made her jump. The world was still, empty, except for the white figures. She couldn’t stay here and look at them. Had to go on, find some other place to rest.

Or she could go closer.

She didn’t want to approach them. She recognised the scarf. The last time she’d seen it, Remick was wrapping it around the neck of the snowman her son had built. Now it was here. Of course anyone could have taken it. Or it could be someone else’s; it might just look like his. And it was only a snowman.

Remick, standing bare-chested in the snow, welcoming it. Urging it to fall
.

Cass walked towards the snowmen. Her limbs felt uncertain, though the ground felt solid beneath her feet. They were built in a half-circle, looking towards the stones. Cass stood in front of the first of them. She looked over her shoulder, though there had been no sight nor sound of anyone else for hours, and the witch stones looked back.

The figure wearing Remick’s scarf did have a face, after all: three hollows were gouged out: two empty eyes and a screaming mouth. Cass reached out and touched it. The snow was hard, packed tight. She looked at the others.

She took a deep breath and prodded at the snowman’s head. It rocked a little on the body, but it didn’t fall. Then she spread her fingers and prised away the snow, and chunks fell away, revealing what lay beneath, and Cass’ mouth opened, silent but screaming. Her lungs continued to seize the air, dragged it in and pushed it out, but she could not move—

Then her hand reached out, but stopped short of touching the thing that lay beneath the snow: pink, peeling flesh, ragged and torn.

Cass’ breath came in gasps. She looked at the other figures, back to the one in front of her. Her mind asked,
How many?
and she found she couldn’t answer; she could not comprehend the shapes. She could only see the thing in front of her face.

The witch stones. Someone might be hiding there. Someone had done this; they might be waiting for her at the witch stones. They could be watching her even now.

Cass spun around. The stones were tall, black shapes, implacable. Someone could have been hiding behind them, but somehow Cass knew they were not. There was nothing watching but the stones themselves.

She pulled the glove from her hand, balled the fabric in her fingers and used it to knock more snow from the figure in front of her. What she could see was a scalp, with white hair clinging to it – no, grey hair. The skin was grey too, but in parts it was pink and in others white.

The breath in Cass’ throat made a low whistling. The scalp was tender, defenceless, taken by the snow. There was nothing to protect it. Cass reached out and caught herself as she was about to stroke it. She recognised it, of course she did: the last time she had seen it, it had been standing under a dim light in a narrow hallway and she had refused to look after its dog. That was the last thing it had asked her, and she had refused. Now here it was, that scalp, exposed and laid bare.

Cass let out a long, deep breath and it sounded like a sob.

The old man had given up. He had fallen to his knees here, and the snow had taken him. It had covered him like rust or mould, taken him to itself, its heart. He had made it this far and no more; such a little distance. Poor, poor Bert.

Cass squeezed her eyes closed, but no tears came. It was too late for tears. He had asked for her help and she had refused him. He had died here alone.

Then someone came along and pressed snow against him and made hollows for a face and wrapped a nice warm scarf around his neck
.

Cass made an inarticulate sound, looked about, but found the hillside empty. Saddleworth Moor: where bodies were buried and lost, and people go and don’t come back.

You’ll come to me
, Remick had said. Somehow that gave her comfort now.
You’ll come to me
.

The scarf was Remick’s. She knew it was his; he had wrapped it around the neck of her son’s snowman and laughed with him.
Daddy. I want him to be my daddy
.

What kind of a man was she? Did she even know? She only knew her flesh crawled at the memory of his touch. And this man, this man was looking after her child.

Sally
. Ben was with Sally. And someone had taken the scarf. Anyone could have taken it.

‘Bert,’ Cass whispered, ‘I’m so sorry.’

She knew she shouldn’t touch, but she reached out and swept more snow away. She needed to see the old man’s face. There were the lines that creased his forehead,
the round bulge of a nose, broken veins still written on his skin. And here was something hard, under her fingers. She drew back. Something black was jutting from his face. She cleared the snow from it and found a stone, thrust into the socket where his eye should be. And another. Stones for eyes, and his mouth – she started to uncover his mouth and her finger slipped inside. She bent and peered closer: a cylindrical rod was poking out. She pinched it between her fingers and pulled, but it was jammed against his teeth. She tried easing it, and at last it shifted and came free: a short metal post, a crossbar and a curve. A cross of confusion.

‘Christ.’ Cass threw it down, the blasphemous shape sinking into the snow. ‘Bert, I’m sorry.’ She shouldn’t have let the old man leave. She had known it at the time. But she had done nothing.

She turned to the figure next to Bert, not looking at the smaller one that had collapsed. She went to the other and put out her hand and, feeling as though she were in a dream, pushed. Snow fell from the figure like heavy snowflakes, making a sound as it fell:
ploomf
. A nice sound, like the end of winter.

Cass shook her head. Her mind was coming loose.

She pushed again and more snow broke and fell and hair emerged. It was dark, still shiny. Cass knew that hair. She fell onto the snow and her knees sank in and she put her arms around the figure and pulled it towards her. She wailed, and the sound was both close and a long way away, but she couldn’t stop it, didn’t try. She stroked the hair, hugged tighter. Lumps of impacted snow fell
away and Cass saw a yellow jumper covered with little bobbles, the sort of jumper a little girl might like to play with until Mummy got tired of it and told her to stop. More hair. Cass stroked and it came away in her fingers. She made an inarticulate sound and shook her hand but still the hair clung and Cass retched and twisted and vomited sourness onto the snow.

‘Oh God,’ she said, then quieter, ‘Oh
God
.’ It was Lucy –
had
been Lucy, this thing under the snow. Cass brushed smears from her friend’s grey, ruined face. Lucy had come to help her – she had tried to help, and now she had stones for eyes;
oh God, she had stones for eyes
. Cass cleared her friend’s face. Her only friend, perhaps. Lucy’s mouth had no metal inside; her mouth was broken. Fragments of teeth surrounded a black rock that had been thrust into it. Her lips stretched around it in a scream. Saliva had dripped and frozen in smooth icicles. Cass brushed at them and they snapped, dragging at the skin beneath, skin that Lucy would have cleansed and toned and moisturised to stay looking young, and now here she was grey and broken, and Cass raised her head to the sky and shook it, denying this thing.

The sky was silent, changeless.

Cass turned to look at the small figure by her friend’s side, let herself fall back onto the snow and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not Jess, no.
Not Jess
.’

She looked back at what had been Lucy. The black stones were an abomination in her face. Cass owed it to her to see what might have happened to her daughter. She couldn’t do this; couldn’t
not
do this. She crawled to the
small shape and brushed at it with bare hands, wishing the snow would fall from it at once so that she would see and know and not have to go on with this possibility coursing through her veins like poison. She waited for Jessica’s hair to appear, the stones that were her eyes, the scream that was her mouth.

She eased the snow away, little by little, gently. It was more respectful that way.

Black fur beneath her fingers.

Cass cried out and started to claw at the snow, prising it away in chunks, revealing Captain’s jaws, his sharp white teeth. His tongue protruded. His fur was dense and matted. As she pushed at his frozen body she felt something smooth and rounded and whipped her hands away. Small pink fragments clung to her fingers and melted on her skin. She wiped them on the snow.