It wasn't only the sight of the inhumanly transformed saint which was making her anxious to be out of the churchyard. All the memorials were changed too: the stone crosses had become huge spiky jewels of marble and ice, no longer remotely like crosses; the statues of angels looked as if they were struggling to emerge from snowy chrysalids and reveal quite another form. She found one statue especially disturbing, a figure which seemed frozen in the act of fleeing or helplessly trudging towards the gap in the hedge. Beneath the frost its body was black as a priest's uniform, though its head and its outstretched supplicating hands were wads of white. She had no time to examine it more closely, not when Johnny and his father were heading for the open door of the church. "Don't go in there," she cried.
"Can't I just see if the crib's lit up?"
"It won't be, Johnny." She would have said anything to prevent him from stepping into the lightless interior, because now she was close enough to the doorway to sense how cold it was in there: colder than death, she thought, colder than any church should be. She wanted to believe that she was only imagining movements beyond the stained glass, pale movements at least as large as the window, but she couldn't deny the sight of footprints leading from the church door to the unfamiliar life-size figure near the hedge. She was close to a panic which would either blot out her thoughts or render them unbearably clearer — so close that she had no idea what she would say if Ben wanted to know where she was taking the children in such a hurry. But as she wrenched at the gate to break it loose from the ice which had glued it shut he reached past her and heaved it open for her, causing it to scream.
Church Road curved downhill on both sides of her. It used to look as if it was embracing the haphazard streets, gathering them into an untidy bundle, but now she had the unpleasant notion that it was imprisoning the houses within its perimeter while the cold overtook them. How could the Christmassy prospect of the snowbound lamplit streets affect her that way? Perhaps she was reacting to the stillness which reminded her of a held breath larger than the snowscape, or to the streetlamps which resembled vegetation from another world, or to the sight of all the windows blinded by cataracts of ice. She felt as though the cold was about to overwhelm her, freezing her where she stood, but she mustn't let it do so. She clutched the children's hands with hands so numb they were indistinguishable from her gloves, and ushered the children across the road. "Nearly there," she would have murmured if she hadn't feared that even a whisper would be audible to Ben as he closed the gate.
As soon as she ventured into Hill Lane, the narrow street closed in. The houses seemed to lean towards her and the children beneath the weight of snow on the roofs. Since the buildings at the top of the lane had no gardens, she was close enough to see into any of the downstairs front rooms whose curtains weren't shut tight. Even where the rooms were lit and, in two instances, where the curtains were fully open as well, she could distinguish very little through the carapaces of frost except Christmas decorations hanging immobile against the glass. At least there were people in the rooms, for she glimpsed movements, however slow and pale they seemed — so slow that they reminded her of larvae stirring in their sleep. It was Ben's fault that she was thinking such things, his fault that the further she advanced down the lane, the more she felt as if the presence she had seemed to sense in the forest was behind the houses too.
She quickened her pace as much as she dared once she reached the curve in the lane and saw Kate's house a few hundred yards ahead, where the draped front gardens began. Even the sight of the house made her nervous. Of course, she
was anticipating how Ben might react when he realised she was leaving the children with the Wests. She forced herself not to run down the slope with them, because they might fall on the frozen snow. Let Ben think he had no reason to give chase.
As she passed the curve she glanced back. He was halfway down the first stretch of the lane, strolling between the crystallised lamps and smiling to himself as he surveyed the vista of iced houses. Before he could catch her eye she steered the children out of sight, though she faltered for a moment as she noticed a figure at a bedroom window just ahead of her. The blanched face and hands were pressed against the whitened glass as if they were glued to it, and they seemed swollen out of proportion to the dim shape of the body. "Hurry," she said, tugging at the children, and ran with them to the Wests' gate.
She was first beneath the arch of roses, which had sprouted new translucent thorns. She stumbled along the path, her feet aching as if she was hammering them with ice, her nostrils stinging painfully with every breath, and leaned on the doorbell as the children waited by the arch. Their faces were so blue with cold that she pressed the bell again at once. She heard the ringing shrill through the rooms, but there was no other sound from the house.
She was hauling at the door-knocker when she realised it was frozen to its metal plate. The edge of the door was glittering dully, outlined by ice. Could the door be frozen shut? Even if it was, surely Terry would be able to open it if only he would come to it, and where else could the Wests be except in the house? "Keep ringing the bell, Johnny," she said, glancing nervously at the shadow which was swelling downhill towards the curve in the lane, and ran to the front window.
Between the orange curtains was a gap as wide as her hand. Through the luxuriant frost on the window she could just distinguish a group of figures beneath the light in the centre of the room. They could only be some or all of the Wests; why weren't they responding to the bell? She rubbed at the frost with her gloved palms, she scratched at it with her padded fingernails, but neither action cleared the glass. As Ben's shadow came dancing over the snow, she dragged her keys clumsily out of her pocket to scrape away the frost.
The screech of metal on glass formed a discord with the shrilling of the doorbell, which Johnny hadn't ceased for a moment to press. She had to grit her teeth until they ached while she continued with her task. Her wrist was tiring before she'd managed to clear a crosshatching on the glass, still whitish enough to blur the room. She rubbed the patch of glass vigorously with her knuckles. She was desperate to see, and then desperate not to believe what she was seeing. But now the ragged patch in the midst of the frost was too clear, and she could only stand where she was, paralysed by the sight beyond the window.
The room she had visited that afternoon was practically unrecognisable. A thick pelt of frost covered the furniture, the carpet, the books on the shelves. Under the light, whose lampshade icicles had transformed into a chandelier, Kate and Terry and the children were kneeling in the space between the chairs. Whether they had done so to pray or to huddle together more closely, she couldn't tell; she had a horrible impression that they had been trying to form some kind of structure with their bodies, or that something had arranged their bodies into a grotesque symmetry. She wanted to believe they weren't her friends and their children at all, or even human. Though their clothes were just identifiable beneath the coating of frost, she couldn't see their faces. Their bunched heads were visible only as a blur within the object which surmounted their shoulders — a globe composed of countless spines of ice.
Ellen might have stood there until the sight and the cold froze her mind entirely if Johnny hadn't tired of ringing the doorbell. The abrupt silence sounded like a shrill echo. "Is anyone coming?" he demanded.
She'd been convinced that nothing could be more terrible than the spectacle beyond the window, but now she realised there was a worse possibility: that he and Margaret might see it. With an effort which made her feel so sick and dizzy she had to grasp the icy windowsill, she turned and smiled unsteadily at him. "Nobody's there. Never mind."
"But you said we could stay with them. Can't we wait a bit and see if they come back?"
The thought of the occupants of the room rising up to greet Ellen and the children, shambling crabwise under the weight of their new translucent head, almost choked off her words. "It's too cold for waiting," she said, and her voice jerked louder as she saw Ben in the shadow of the arch. "Let's get home."
When she pushed Johnny he moved away from the house, dolefully but readily enough. For a moment she thought Margaret was going to be more reluctant — an expression which showed she knew something was wrong had tweaked her mouth — but then, bless her, she walked ahead of Ellen without speaking. Ben had stepped forwards. While the children sidled round him he stared hard at Ellen. Had he overheard Johnny's plea? He seemed only to be scrutinising her emotions, discovering the horror she was fighting to conceal. What he read in her eyes sent him striding to the house to peer through the peephole she'd created.
If he let the children suspect the truth ... She no longer knew what he was capable of. She was taking hold of the children to hurry them away when he turned from the window. He looked apologetic but not even slightly distressed. "Ready to come home?" he said.
She wanted to believe he was controlling himself as she was, for the children's sake, but wasn't he too convincingly unconcerned? What had his expression been when he saw the contents of the room? Her mind felt as if it was shrinking, refusing to accept anything further, contracting around the only plan of action it was able to produce — that she should go back to the Sterling house, because the car was there. "Do as your father says," she said for Ben to hear, and was pushing them under the arch, towards the slope to Church Road, when she saw the figure she had noticed earlier at the upstairs window. Its face and hands were huge now, and she could see that they were frozen to the pane.
Though her hands wanted to clench, she managed to steer the children away from the sight. "We'll go along Market Street," she said in a voice as tightened as her mind. If she kept quiet and did her best to seem as unconcerned as Ben appeared to be, if she managed not to wonder what they might be passing as they walked between the silent blinded houses, perhaps her fears would remain formless, a darkness surrounding the spark of her consciousness.
The family was on the slope which wandered down to the main road, Johnny holding hands with her and Ben while Margaret held tight to Ellen's other hand, when Johnny cried out. "Hey!" he shouted.
Ellen thought his father had caused him to cry out until she saw Ben's puzzled glance at him. Margaret was the first to realise that he was shouting at the stillness of the town. She gripped Ellen's hand as though she was securing herself, and launched her own cry. "Wake up!" she yelled.
Her shout seemed to disappear as swiftly as her white breath. There was no response, no sound or movement within the intricate icy shells which covered every window. "Don't," Ellen whispered, jerking the children's hands, feeling too much like a terrified child herself. The stillness appalled her, the sense that the four of them were alone in Stargrave, but even worse was the possibility that the shouts might awaken some other response. "Save your breath," she said, though the words made her inexplicably nervous. At least now they were at the main road — the route to the car.
It showed her more of the deadened landscape, the deserted square, the darkened shops sealed by ice, the tangles of footprints like a memorial to the townsfolk, preserving the pattern of a dance in which they had participated unaware. But it led to the bridge and out onto the moors, out to the world beyond. She mustn't let herself start wondering if there was life beyond the moors which were pale as the moon. Whatever had happened to Stargrave and its people, surely it couldn't have overtaken the world. There would be time for her to attempt to comprehend what had happened when she had taken the family somewhere safe.
She wouldn't leave Ben behind if she could persuade him into the car. Surely he wouldn't stay in the dead town, and surely even in his present mental state he wouldn't try to prevent her from taking the children away from Stargrave. Nothing could, she told herself — certainly not the stillness, even if it felt like an icy presence which seemed to lean closer as she and Ben led the children past the first of the outlying cottages. It felt as if the dead town was rising up and looming over her, waiting for her to look up and see its vast new face. There was nothing to see, and she wouldn't be forced to look, though not looking made her feel as though the enormous silent presence was herding her and the family towards the track to the forest. She needn't be afraid of the forest when they would reach the car first. She forced her numb indeterminate hands to grasp the children's hands more firmly as she came to the beginning of the track.
The car looked like a shell dwarfed by the forest — like a snow sculpture less convincing than the figures behind the house. It would take minutes to clear the windscreen and the windows. She would never be able to conceal her intentions from Ben, and she had to believe that there was no need, that however calm he was managing to seem, they were united in distress. "We've got to start the car," she said.
He was gazing up the track, and his face remained blank as he spoke. "Give it a try," he said in a tone which could mean anything.
"You and the children clear the glass while I start the engine." She relinquished Johnny's hand so as to grope in her pocket for her keys. Her finger and thumb felt impossibly distant from each other and from her as she used them to lift out the keys. She couldn't help remembering how Ben had taken the keys from her handbag, but that mustn't matter now; only driving mattered. She ran to the car and scraped the lock of the driver's door clear of snow, and succeeded in fumbling the key into the slot. Her gloved hand was so clumsy that she twisted the key too hard, then let go of it for fear it would snap. She could feel that the lock was frozen. "Come in the house while I fetch some hot water," she said, quickly enough to keep her shivering out of her voice.
She was talking to Ben as well as to the children, but he stayed by the car. She ran up the slippery path to the front door, where the key skittered over the lock until she managed to control her panic. She pinched the key between her finger and thumb, which felt like a rag doll's, and slid it shakily into the lock.