“Really,” the surgeon stammered, “we tried to overpower him, but he couldn’t be stopped. We were so dumbfounded that he had already left the clinic before we properly realized what had happened. And now he is, um . . . missing.”
Imagine: Nick in a blood-splattered OR gown, his face hanging open, staggering through the streets of Montreux like Frankenstein’s monster. Picture it: frenzied crowds running for cover. None of the above. Turned out not a single report had been made. That was the strangest thing of all. The Police Cantonale had issued a missing person alert—imagine the details of that description—but Nick, he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
“It is of utmost importance that he returns to the clinic as immediately as possible,” the surgeon said. “I hope he has bound up the incision, but the risk of infection is high, and the longer the wound stays open, the more difficult it will be for us to perform the correction with at least somewhat acceptable results.” Adding, “But that is regardless of the fact that we are completely baffled about—”
“Did anything happen when you started cutting him?”
“I don’t understand what you—”
“Something strange? Did you have a vision?”
Silence on the other end.
“Did you feel cold? Did you have the feeling you were falling? That an abyss had opened up under your feet?”
On the other end of the line, you could just hear the guy going white.
I said I had to know everything. Lives could be at stake.
After a long, shaky silence, he said, “I will be forthcoming if you give me your word you won’t talk to the media. Or I might as well wrap up my clinic. I know we don’t look good, and it appears as if we made an error administering the anesthesia. But here’s the thing: I was the one monitoring it. I’d stake my reputation on it that no errors were made.”
And I said I believed him.
The second he put the scalpel to Nick’s face, the surgeon said, he’d gotten a dizzy spell. “I was about to warn my assistant, but it happened so fast.” He said, “I saw spots before my eyes and was suddenly overcome by a very unpleasant sensation. And a smell. The sweet, sickly smell of decomposition. It brought back a memory.”
When he was eight or so, his parents had taken him on a picnic in the mountains. He’d walked up the stream, and on the bank, what had permanently traumatized his tender, innocent soul, were the partially decayed remains of an ibex, steaming in the sun and teeming with maggots. The stench of rot had caused him to barf up all his potato salad. It was that same stench the surgeon had now smelled.
“I looked up, thinking I’d see the OR, but instead of that I saw the mountain at the end of the valley, towering above me. Only it wasn’t the same mountain I remembered. This mountain was horned, like the devil. And it was wrong, you see? I don’t know how to put it in other words. What I saw was emanating something very wrong. And it wasn’t just a memory. It was so crystal clear that it seemed as if I were really there. I saw the crisp light, I heard the stream, but most of all, I smelled the stench. The sweet stench of decay.”
He wasn’t the only one who’d seen something. His anesthetist had run from the clinic right after Nick did and wasn’t answering his phone. His assistant had stayed behind but flat-out refused to talk about what had happened. At this very moment she was still sitting there, staring at her lunch, white as a sheet.
And I figured, at least no one died. No one had been snapped in two yet.
The surgeon’s voice broke in a sob. “That smell, the rot, I can’t get rid of it.” Shivering, he said, “I can still smell it now.”
Goddamn.
Almost said, It’ll smell a lot stronger before you die.
“Please.” Practically begging now, “We’ll find Monsieur Grevers, I’m sure of it, but in the meantime, please tell me what you know. Because you do know more, don’t you? I can tell by your reaction.”
I said I had my suspicions. Said that in due time I’d tell him everything, but right now the first thing I hadda do was to call the police. Call his family. The guy had no idea that I was blowing him off.
“One more thing,” he said.
What?
“When we put your friend under sedation, he was scared. Real scared. Just before he went under he started to panic, and his eyes opened wide, like he’d suddenly had an epiphany. He grabbed hold of the anesthetist and cried out, ‘Cut out my eyes. Don’t cut my face. Cut out my eyes.’ Then he slipped into unconsciousness. Now, it’s not uncommon for people to say strange things in that moment of intoxication, but in light of what happened . . . does that have any significance to you?”
“None at all,” I said, and hung up.
2
After that, chaos. My right foot switching from gas to brakes to brakes to gas. Dodging jammed cars, cursing, honking when some German in a mega BMW didn’t let you squeeze through. My finger floating over Julia’s name in my recent calls list when the phone rings again. No Caller ID.
And I said, “Bonjour?”
The Police Cantonale. Yes, I had been informed. No, I didn’t know his address in Switzerland. Didn’t he provide the clinic with it? Oh, okay, I said, somewhere on Lake Geneva in any case. No, me, I was in Denmark.
Hoping, begging that some jerk there wouldn’t run my name through the system and stumble on a questioning from two days back concerning the disappearance of one Cécile Métrailler in Grimentz. Nick’s name not linked to the case—those cops had been way too busy covering up their own mystery to pay attention to some recuperating patient on the ground floor. At this moment in time, there was no suspicion of a crime and I was simply the concerned relative, but if some jerk were to link A to B, then not only would he see right through my lies, it would be DEFCON 1. Any dick worth his salt wouldn’t believe in chance when faced with two linked, exceptionally strange cases.
The Police Cantonale were worried about Nick’s well-being. I was worried about the well-being of the Police Cantonale if they found him.
Oui, it was a bizarre story, and oui, I’d let them know as soon as I heard anything from him, and would they s’il vous pla?t do the same. Merci fucking bien.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. I called Julia. “Julia, you need to get out of there. Now.”
And Julia: “Excuse me?”
“Take a bus or hitchhike to the valley and check into a hotel. Nick is on the loose and I’m really scared that it’s for good this time.” I give her a play-by-play of the preceding events. Julia freaking out, Julia suitcasing all her stuff even before I’d reached the end of my story. Shit almighty, someone who actually did what you asked them to. Praise the Lord. I said, “I don’t know what he’s going to do or whether he’ll come to Hill House, but if he does, I want you out of there. He’s dangerous.”
And Julia said, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to go down, Sam. It’s snowing, I don’t know how long the roads will stay open.”
My stomach sank. “That wasn’t the forecast, was it?”
“All I know is what I see outside.”