White Death

Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three: Endgame (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

For Caradoc

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_0e362b1a-34e7-55ea-9d03-5334b4c87eec)

Thanks to: Sarah, Julia, Emad, Kate and Anne at HarperCollins; Caradoc, Yasmin, Linda, Louise and Elinor at A.P. Watt; Charlotte, Judy and David Starling; John Saunders and the gentlemen and players of the José Raúl Capablanca Memorial Chess Society.

PART ONE (#ulink_881b94ce-e590-5f44-b190-7b9db4532215)

Opening (#ulink_881b94ce-e590-5f44-b190-7b9db4532215)

‘Play the opening like a book.’

Rudolf Spielmann, Austrian chess player

(1883–1942)

1 (#ulink_b8c40ee8-3ac1-54e1-a99a-18bd76d21a9f)

It’s not hard to shrink a human head.

First, you make a slit up the back. (Well, first you sever the head from the body, but I guess you figured that out already.) Then, you peel the skin and hair away from the skull. Slow and careful does it: you gotta keep it all in one piece, else you’ll spend hours tryin’ to make it right again, and even then it won’t look quite the same. And it’s not like human heads grow on trees, and you can just go out and find another one. So take your time and get it right. Sorry to sound all bossy, but it’s gotta be said.

You don’t need the skull no more, least not for this process, so do what you want with it. Chuck it away (someone else’s dumpster’s better than your own, in case the cops come knockin’), or, I don’t know, put a candle in it, save it for Hallowe’en, give it to the next guy you know playin’ Hamlet, whatever.

But you still need somethin’ to keep the head’s shape, so put a wooden ball in where the skull used to be. Sew the eyelids shut; the finer the thread the better. You need delicate fingers; think piano players rather than piano movers. Close the lips and skewer ’em with little palm pins, the kind you get on dog brushes.

Then take the head over to the stove, put it in a cookin’ pot, and simmer for a couple of hours – no more, you hear, not unless you want all the hair to fall out and the skin to end up as dry and cracked as a summer riverbed. A couple of hours, and the skin’ll look and feel like dark rubber. That’s what you’re aimin’ at. Take it out the cookpot, remove the wooden ball, flip the skin inside out and scrape out all the gunk and fat on the inside. Flip it back again and sew shut the slit you made at the back to kick this whole thing off.

You don’t need the wooden ball no more today, but of course keep it close to hand if you’re plannin’ on shrinkin’ more heads any time soon.

Now you need a heap of hot stones, to shrink the head even more and sear its inside clean. Drop the stones through the neck openin’, one at a time. Make sure you keep movin’ ’em around, else you’ll leave scorch marks. When you got too many stones in there to keep rollin’ ’em around nice and easy, take ’em all back out, one by one.

The stones all gone, tip hot sand into the head. The sand gets in the places the stones can’t reach, the little crevices of the nose and ears. Attention to detail, folks. But you ain’t finished with the stones yet, no sir. You press ’em to the outside of the face: shape and seal, shape and seal. Gotta keep those features lookin’ good. Think of it like moldin’ a clay face, like you’re Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost. Love that movie.

Singe off any excess hair and cover the face in charcoal ash. This is supposed to let you harness the dead person’s spirit to your own ends; you don’t put on the ash, the soul’ll seep out and avenge the death. That’s what the old-timers say, at any rate. Not sure I believe ’em, but what the hell. Can’t do any harm, can it?

The head should be about the size of an orange by now. Hang it over a fire to harden properly, and you’re done. You can do what you want with it now.

Like I said, not hard. Not hard at all.

2 (#ulink_4560718e-7de1-520c-a13f-ada08c71a9ba)

Sunday, October 31st

Foxborough, MA