“He’s probably waiting for you down in the valley,” she smiled. “I’m sure he’s going to be really happy to see you.”
Julia, she told me that a coupla weeks before she flew to Switzerland, she’d suddenly felt the urge to go for a drive. An upstream drive along the Hudson, into the hills.
She parked Dad’s open Corvette Grand Sport more or less on the same spot I’d parked it two months before. At the bottom of the Panther Mile, along the yard of the last house there.
The Last House on the Left.
The Cabin in the Woods.
“I went for a walk with an old acquaintance of ours,” Julia said.
And I said, “Get out.”
That old acquaintance, it was Abigail Bernstein, of course. “She said you’d also been around. A couple of weeks before, she couldn’t remember exactly when.”
I said, “You know Auntie Bernstein died years ago?”
“Yeah,” Julia said. “I know.”
The silence hovered between us. “You didn’t keep Dr. Jingles all those years, did you? I knew there was something weird . . .”
She shook her head slowly. “Auntie Bernstein gave him to me. She said she’d found him where Huckleberry Wall used to be but that you weren’t ready to go all the way up yet. She said I should give him to you. That there was a chance you’d be needing him sometime soon.”
Julia stared to the south, up into the valley. I tried to figure out exactly what I was feeling, but it was all too much. Too painful.
“Did you go all the way up?”
“Yep.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I asked anyway, “What did you see up there? At the top of Panther Mile?”
“There were no more signs of the fire. I recognized the big maple tree Grandpa had hung the swing on—you know, the one with the old tire. And the slope we always sledded down in winter. But you know what’s weird? Behind the house, there’s that mountaintop we always thought looked like an eagle . . . remember that?”
Of course I did.
“I didn’t see it anymore,” Julia said. “It was just a mountain.”
We got ready to go down. Even though I felt I was able now, I noticed that my gaze was drawn to the Maudit again. Only the summit was visible now in the slowly shifting mist, the mountain floating in its breathless silence. The sight of it filled me with an intense, chilling pain when I thought about the prospect of the days, the months, and the years that lay ahead of me. The pain would always be there. The missing would always be there. Every time I smelled his scent in a piece of clothing, every time I saw his picture and thought about him, it would come back.
I felt like I was going to cry again and quickly looked the other way, tried to let the cold of the wind numb the feeling. That pain, I wasn’t ready for it yet. It was too much. Time erodes even the highest, sharpest mountain peaks down to rolling horizons. But the mountains had a prospect of millions of years. I only had my life.
And there was something else.
A good horror story didn’t end with death. It resonated with the echo of something worse. Something buried underneath, a layer worse than all the others.
That layer was the pernicious fear of the stilled life that would fester up here forever. Maybe, if you listened carefully, you would hear its cries from down in the valley. What if it decided to come after me? It would dwell here, lonely and frozen. A pained face floating in silence, unseen but constantly peering over the horizon. Nick’s face. The nights would be too cold. Too dark and too long.
And yet there was hope, I decided, when I’d cast a final glance over my shoulder and the rising mist had covered the mountain. Maybe I’d stay in Switzerland a while longer. Buy a birdcage somewhere in the valley. Look at the horizon. Maybe, out of the mountains, a bird would come.
When you had hope, you had faith. Then you could imagine him landing on your shoulder. Maybe he’d peck you once in a while, but I’d gladly carry the scars, because they’d be mine.
With Julia on one arm and Dr. Jingles in the other, we descended down the slope toward the valley.
This is how mountains are born.
You take two tectonic plates and twirl them into one. They twist, they crack, they raise each other up and release explosions of energy that manifest as quakes and eruptions. But they push each other higher up than ever before, higher than they could have reached on their own, even in their wildest dreams.
Their snow and their rock, their hearts and their bones—they never come undone.
May 24, 2015, ’s-Hertogenbosch–November 11, 2018, Mook
Get HEX here
Acknowledgments
Echo is my sixth novel, but it was the hardest to write.
The previous five I wrote in relative anonymity, and for a relatively small Dutch audience. Then HEX was published, the rights were sold to I-don’t-know-how-many countries, and people whom I’ve admired my entire life talked up the book. What followed were more readers than I could have ever dreamt of, promotional tours on four continents, and, of course, a major writer’s block. I hadn’t been prepared for the pitfalls of success.
I am a mountaineer who, like Nick, collects the summit as a keepsake. But as soon as I’m back down in the valley, it’s just a piece of rock that has lost its magic. My eyes dwell up to even higher, more challenging peaks in the distance. The urge to always aim higher is something I’ve felt my entire life. That’s why writing the book after HEX felt like such an impossible task.
When climbers face a difficult or lonely route, they turn to the help of mountain guides. My mountain guides in this particular matter were Herman Koch and George R. R. Martin. Their personal stories and indispensable advice helped me to find my voice again, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
Their advice, of course, was no magic. It was simple: write the best book you have in you and have fun while you’re at it. That’s what I tried to do. I’ve had fun, and I hope you love the story and its characters as much as I do.
My agents, Sally Harding in Vancouver, Ron Eckel in Toronto, and Marianne Sch?nbach from Amsterdam, form the best and most professional team I could wish for. Their warmth and wisdom are invaluable to me. Sally, the unbridled energy and understanding you showed in working on Echo are awe-inspiring, and my gratitude reaches beyond horizons.