Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

And they did. They took away the old stones of the palace and built new paths with them. They tore out all the weeds and brambles and raked up the dead leaves. The fruit trees were given good care so that instead of small, hard apples, they had big ripe ones. The people of Merodale had enough food at last.

And they were never again troubled by the ghost. Except, now and then, when the wind blows cold off the mountains, some people say they hear a tiny, lonely voice calling, “I’m five! I am five!”

Whiteout by Kenneth Gavrell

When I was halfway up the top lift, the snow began to come in light flurries. I thought I might make it down before it really started, but by the time I pushed back the safety bar, it was coming thick enough to warm any sentimentalist’s heart on Christmas Eve and to freeze any intermediate skier’s on an icy mountain top. The LIFT SKI TIPS sign could only be read when it was too late. I hoped no people were standing at the bottom of the lift exit because I’d hit them as soon as I saw them.

There were five or six people all right, but they were standing well back from the exit. There are no dummies at the top of the mountain. I joined them at the edge and peered down through the kind of snowfall that looks like a heavy fog. Whiteout. I wouldn’t be able to see a damned thing till I got below the snow line. Two young hotshots with jeans and curly locks let out a whoop and pushed off like downhill racers. The rest looked more tentative. They started down slowly, angling among the ghostly pine trees. The snow had already covered the yellow ice patches which had been clearly visible in the noonday sun. I slipped my pole straps over my wrists and started down too.

Thick snowflakes beat against my goggles and the wind howled in my ears. Those two kids must know the mountain very well. For a skier like me, it was a question of keeping the speed down and skiing entirely with the legs. You couldn’t see the configuration of the terrain, only feel it when you hit it; your knees had to be your shock absorbers. You couldn’t be too low on your skis.

I descended the steep slope, swinging around each tree as it suddenly loomed in front of me, and finally came out on the Meadow, a long, wide, almost treeless area that would take me a good distance toward the midway lift. The Meadow was all big moguls. I couldn’t see anyone through the veil of white. I swung down through the giant hills, the snow powdering from my chattering skis, and discovered that the old legs still had enough left even for conditions like these. That was gratifying.

Near the bottom, the Meadow leveled off and smoothed out, and I stood up on the skis to relax my muscles a minute. That’s when I saw something low, grey, and bulky through the white veil just ahead. A rock. There was no time to avoid it and I hit it straight on and went over the tips in the worst kind of fall. I sailed across it into a bone-cracking collision with the icy snow, head first. The bindings gave, or I might have been missing a leg or two.

My mouth and nose were full of snow, my goggles were banged back into my hair, and my right hand hurt like hell where I’d fallen on it. But otherwise I was in reparable condition. I lay for a few seconds, breathing heavily in the thin cold air, and then pushed myself warily to my feet. Everything hurt. I looked back at the rock, but now it didn’t look like a rock.

I backed up a bit, dragging my loose skis by the safety straps, to see what it was.

Under a thin layer of snow lay the hunched body of a man. Something about his absolute and final immobility told me he was dead.

When I bent over to examine him more closely, I found bullet wounds — three of them, in a tight pattern in the lower chest. His face had the calmness of contented sleep — eyes closed, skin still warm. He was about thirty-five, goodlooking, and judging from his outfit, well-heeled. He looked like a man without any problems, except that he had been shot to death.

Five minutes later I finally got my skis, boots, poles, and goggles straightened out and was starting down the slope once more. There didn’t seem to be anybody else left up on the mountain. I reached the spot where the trail cut off to the left through some scattered trees toward the midway lift. Here there was a smooth icy stretch I remembered from earlier in the day, and I schussed it. Suddenly a stationary figure materialized out of the white just in front of me. I pulled up. It was a woman, resting. She regarded me curiously through her yellow goggles.

“There’s a body back there in the snow.” I spoke loudly because of the wind.

“What?” she said.

I pointed back toward the Meadow. “A man — shot.”

“Are you crazy?” She lifted her goggles. She was young, pretty, brunette, a ski bunny type, even to the powder blue outfit that showed off her curves.