The man began to turn very slowly. “I’m Santa from the wintry north, ho, ho, ho. And I’ve come to collect your good, good children, Dr. Tanner.”
The voice was like a file being drawn over ice, implacably cold, each word grating its solitary way into the silence of the nursery. Despite the harsh attempt at merriment, it was the least humorous voice that Doc had ever heard.
“Face me, damn your impudence! I’ll give you a good thrashing for your-”
The words died in his throat as the figure turned fully around, now visible in the mellow light of the oil lamp.
It was like the devil’s walking parody of Father Christmas.
He was red-suited, with a thick white beard, but Doc saw that the beard was made from crystals of ice, matted together in an obscene simulacrum of the original.
The eyes were empty ivory sockets, filled with blue-tinted chips of ice, that sparkled with an evil and unnatural life that sent a chill to Doc’s heart.
“Suffer little children, ho, ho, ho. Oh, yes, little children will suffer, Dr. Tanner.”
The mouth opened, and Doc saw that the teeth were needle-tipped ice, as clear as glass. One hand reached out over each bed, the fingers of clicking bone tipped with daggers of razored ice, slicing down toward the pitifully exposed throats of Rachel and Jolyon.
Doc found that he couldn’t move and be began to weep, the tears freezing on his cheeks.
RYAN BACKED AWAY, the twisted, dried-out corpses remorselessly following him into a corner. He aimed the revolver at the nearest horror and squeezed the trigger.
Instead of a powerful explosion, the weapon barely sighed, releasing a trickle of powdery snow over Ryan’s feet.
The one-eyed man dropped the useless blaster and began to scream.
Chapter Five
The voices were familiar, but they were coming from an infinite distance away. Blurred, rising and falling, seeming to echo around the inner walls of Ryan’s skull.
“He was nearest the door.”
“But we all shared the same kind of dreadful nightmare, with cold at its heart.”
The first voice had been a man, someone that Ryan had known many years ago, someone that he thought he still knew. And the second speaker was the black woman.
“Mildred,” he tried to say, feeling his dry lips move, but not hearing any sound.
“Lie still, Ryan. It’s not time to try to move around too much. Not yet.”
“Sure thing, Mildred.”
The last thing that he wanted to do was move. Even the thought of opening his eye was impossibly repugnant to him.
He shifted a little, trying to establish how he was lying. On his back, head turned to the left, he decided. Mildred’s doing again, making sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit.
“Missing,” he said.
“What is?” It was Jak’s voice. “Blaster.” His hand had crept down to the empty holster on his hip.
“John Barrymore removed it for safety. Yours as well as ours, dear friend. He was the first to recover from this dreadful jump and he found you, lying by the partly open door, with your pistol in your hand.”
“Why?” Ryan sighed. His brain felt like it had been dragged behind a galloping horse through a mess of cactus.
J.B. answered him, his voice sounding ragged and tired. “You were waving the SIG-Sauer around like you were surrounded by enemies. But you were trying to cock it with your thumb, like it was some big old revolver.”
“It was. Llama Comanche.”
“Dark night! Must be twenty years since you carried that as your side arm.”
“Were you caught in some kind of fantasy that involved being cold, lover?”
Ryan finally risked opening his eye and waited patiently for it to recover some kind of focus. He saw that he was stretched out on the floor of a gateway chamber, lying on one of the circular metal disks. The armaglass walls were a beautiful shade of clear cerulean blue, like a summer sky in southern Utah. The others were all standing around him. The first thing that caught his eye was Krysry’s fiery red hair, then the flare of magnesium white next to it that was Jak Lauren’s head.