Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

Under a pew, Michael saw the torn covers of a prayer book, but when he tried to retrieve them, he found they were frozen in place. He took a shot of that-too arty? he wondered-then slipped the camera back under his parka and, pulling his gloves back on, walked toward the altar. He thought he heard a scratching sound- could there still be rats? — and stopped. So did the noise. An old leather volume, its title obliterated by time, rested on the trestle table. He took another step, and the sound became clearer. It was coming from behind the altar, where he saw a door, with a black iron bolt thrown across it. Perhaps, he thought, that was where the preacher had once lived. Or maybe it had been a storage space for whatever valuable objects-chalices, candlesticks, Bibles-the church had once contained.

He rounded the trestle table, and suddenly he heard a sound that stopped him dead in his tracks.

He went closer, and it came again, more distinctly. It was a voice-a woman's voice!

“Open the door! Please, I can't stand it! Open the door, Sinclair!”

Sinclair? Michael pulled off a glove again so that he could manipulate the lock and bolt, and through the wood he could hear the woman, breathing heavily, nearly sobbing.

“I can't be alone! Don't leave me here!”

He threw the rusty bolt and pried open the creaking door.

What he saw left him dumbfounded. A woman-a young woman, loosely wrapped in a long orange down coat-staggered backwards, her face white with fear. She had long brown hair that fell around her face, and green eyes that, even in this dim light, offered a penetrating gaze. She backed up between a wooden table, with a bottle of wine on it, and a cast-iron stove that gave off a dull glow. Shredded prayer books and jagged pieces of wood were heaped in a corner.

They stood speechless, staring at each other. Michael's mind was reeling-he knew this woman. He knew her! He had first seen those eyes at the bottom of the sea. He had first seen that ivory clasp, now peeking up on her breast, beneath a slab of milky ice. Sleeping Beauty.

But she wasn't sleeping, and she wasn't dead.

She was alive-breathing hard, and haltingly.

Michael's mind went into a kind of shock. The woman was there, right before him, cowering only a few feet away, but he could not accept the evidence of his own eyes. That woman, who'd been frozen stiff, was moving and sensate. His thoughts went off in a dozen directions, searching for some reasonable explanation, but came rushing right back again empty-handed. What explanation could there possibly be-suspended animation? a vivid hallucination that he would awaken from at any second? Nothing he could think of could possibly account for the terrified young woman now standing, feebly, a few feet away.

Raising his bare hand to calm her, he noticed a tiny tremor in his own fingers. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

She appeared unconvinced, cringing against the wall, beside the window.

Slowly, without taking his eyes away from her, he pulled his glove back onto his already numb hand. What else should he say? What should he do? “My name is Michael… Michael Wilde.”

The sound of his own voice was oddly reassuring to him.

But not, it appeared, to her. She didn't answer, her eyes flitting around the room as if assessing any chance of escape.

“I've come from Point Adelie.” This, he surmised, probably meant nothing to her. “The research station.” Would that make any sense, either? “The place where you were. Before… this place.” Though he knew she spoke English-and with an English accent, no less-he wasn't sure if his words were making any impression at all. “Can you tell me

… who you are?”

She licked her lips, and nervously brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Eleanor,” she said, in a soft but agitated tone. “Eleanor Ames.”

Eleanor Ames. He said the name to himself several times, as if trying to anchor it in reality that way.

“And you're from… England?” he ventured.

“Yes.”

Placing a hand on his chest, he said, “I'm from America.” The whole thing was becoming so absurd he could almost laugh-he felt like he was reading from a bad sci-fi script. Next he should pull out a ray gun, or she should demand to be taken to his leader. He wondered for a second if he was on the brink of losing his wits.

“Well, it's nice to meet you, Eleanor Ames,” he said, again nearly laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all.

And damned if she didn't gently subside, in a quick curtsy.

Quickly, he let his eyes sweep the room. The iron bedstead was covered with a dirty old blanket, and there were a couple of the bottles, the ones from the sunken chest, nestled underneath it.

“Where is your friend?”

She didn't answer. But he could see a fast calculation going on behind her eyes.

“I believe you called him Sinclair?”

“He's gone,” she said. “He's… abandoned me.”

Michael didn't believe that for a minute; he could tell that she was, for whatever reason, covering for him. Whoever, and whatever, this woman would truly turn out to be, her expression and voice betrayed all the palpably human emotions; nothing too mysterious was going on there. And as for the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of this Sinclair person, it paled in comparison to all the other questions thick in the air. How had she become imprisoned in a glacier? And when? How had she escaped from the block of ice in the lab? Or found her way here, to Stromviken?

Or-and this was the biggest, most inconceivable, question of all, the one that rendered all the others incidental-how had she actually come back to life?

If there was a polite way of asking any of them, Michael sure as hell didn't know what it was.

A bag of dog kibble was propped against the wall. He'd start simple, with an easy one. “So this Sinclair,” he said, “he's got the sled dogs with him?”

Again, another quick calculation, before she must have realized there was nothing to gain from further lies. Her shoulders slumped. “Yes.”

There was an awkward pause. He could see now that her eyes were red-rimmed, and her lips were cracked. She licked them. His eyes went to the open bottle on the table. He knew what was in it.

But did she know that he knew?

When he looked at her again, he could see that she did. Her eyes were downcast, as if in shame, and a hectic flush rose into her cheeks.

“You can't stay here,” he said. “A storm is coming. It will be here soon.”

He could see that she was lost, and confused. What was her relationship to Sinclair? He had, after all, locked her in this room and gone off God knows where. Was he her lover? Her husband? Was he the only person in the living world that she knew? Was he the only person in the world that she could know? Michael wasn't even sure what questions to ponder. All he did know was that he couldn't leave her there, in the freezing church. He had to find a way to get her to leave with him, right away.

“We can come back for Sinclair later,” Michael suggested. “We won't abandon him. But why don't you come with us now?”

At the mention of the word “us,” he saw her eyes grow wide and glance through the open doorway into the empty church. Who else, she was clearly wondering, was about to intrude upon her?

“I have a friend with me,” Michael explained. “We can take you back to the station.”

“I can't,” she said.

Michael could guess what she was thinking-or at least some of it. “But we can take care of you there.”

“No, I won't leave,” she said, though her voice faltered and even her expression seemed to change. It was as if the protest alone had drained the last of her energy. She moved away from the window and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands supporting her on either side. A rising wind rattled the shutters, and a draft made the fire in the grate glow brighter.