The worst is the storm’s wailing.
There’s something irresistibly alluring about it. Time and again, Julia is compelled to exchange her warm corner on the couch for the chilly front door, peering out its window. She can barely make out the spruces through the snowstorm, not to mention the mountain ridges or the trail that leads back to the village along the brook. The chalet stands isolated at the end of a blind valley. Higher up, there’s only the reservoir, and behind it the treacherous glacier. At a quarter past eleven, she concludes that it’s impossible for Nick to be wandering out there, in this weather. She checks the locks, listens to the strange ticking sounds coming from the heaters now that she’s turned them off, and then turns out the light. If Sam is still going to come home, he’ll call and wake her up. Julia definitely wouldn’t mind.
So there couldn’t be anyone else in the house. She is alone with the wind. The downstairs is empty.
It’s just that . . . the house doesn’t feel empty.
Nonsense, of course.
All she needs to do to be sure is take a look.
Of course she doesn’t need to be sure, and certainly not to prove herself to anyone. But, like it or not, she still needs to pee.
Armed with her iPhone, Julia gets out of bed and walks silently around the wall.
There’s the stairwell. Like a pit in the wooden floor.
She has to walk all the way to the edge in order to look into it and, admittedly, she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want the only way to the bathroom to be through that dark hole. So she stays put. Listens to the ticking of the cuckoo clock coming from downstairs.
She extends her neck but can’t see further than the top stair.
You’re being ridiculous.
Julia takes a deep breath and quickly steps forward. Only when she reaches the top of the stairwell does she see it—and when her gaze latches onto what’s down there, cold air is sucked violently into her body, and with an enormous jolt, the world comes to a standstill. Her lungs swell up like balloons, ready for the scream growing inside her, but it’s as if the air is trapped, because when she puts her hands to her mouth, all you can hear is a stifled squeak.
The people in the stairwell are still there.
They’re closer now.
They’ve all raised their heads and are staring right at her. But most terrifying is that they’re staring right into her. In their faces lurks the frozen silence of insanity. The one up front, a tall, gaunt woman dressed in black, with pale, almost translucent skin, is standing fixed on the third step. She is followed closely by a fat man in a grubby white shirt. The others behind them are phantoms.
Completely paralyzed, Julia stares back. It takes a long time before she’s certain that the people in the stairwell are more than a still projection or a lifeless afterimage, but then she sees the woman’s index finger trembling and the palpitating, purple-black skin under her eyelids. Her eyes are large, fierce and concentrated, full of hate. She has the face of a psychopath who’s on the verge of screaming. If she does, her face will shatter and fall off.
Julia finally manages to breathe. The air squeezes out of her lungs in a string of short, gasping cries. Her eyes well up with tears. She feels heat behind her cheekbones and a crackling stab in her brain, like electricity. My fuses are blowing, she thinks soberly.
She runs back to bed on legs that no longer feel like legs. The springs groan as she leaps in. She sits upright, one cramped hand pulling the covers up to her waist, the other clawing her face till it hurts. Pain is good, it clears the head. When she lowers her hand, she can feel half-moons of blood on her cheek and nostril.
A stair creaks.
Her gaze is fixed on the area of the vestibule that is visible behind the supporting wall. It’s empty, but she can’t see the stairwell. She looks quickly over her shoulder, as if expecting to catch someone behind her. There is no one.
That woman. That face.
Why did she have to look at her with so much hate?
Julia unlocks her iPhone and with trembling fingers swipes to the top of the recent calls list, to Sam’s number. If she hears Sam’s voice, she won’t have to feel scared anymore. Then her nightmare will dissipate; with Sam’s voice in her ears there will be no people in the stairwell.
It takes ages before she gets a signal and the phone starts ringing. It’s a bad connection. It’s storming not only around the roof but also on the line.
Pick up. Come on, come on, come on . . .
Voicemail. She moans in dismay and tries again.
When another stair creaks, she lets out a silent scream.
He picks up after the third attempt.
“Julia!”
“Why didn’t you pick up?”
“Sorry, it’s a hairy situation here on the road. Hadda link to my Beats first. Any news?”
“I . . . no.” Not the news he was waiting for. She feels stupid. What should she say? That she fell asleep on sentry duty? That she’s afraid to be alone—that she’s afraid now that she’s not alone? She wants him to talk, for his voice to make everything all right. “Where are you?”
“On my way. You okay, sis? You sound weird.”
She listens for sounds from the stairwell but hears only silence.
“Yes,” she finally says. “It’s just this storm is driving me crazy. How long will it take you to get here?”
“Um, beats me. Get this: I’m driving behind a snowplow! Only way to go up tonight. After Bern there were no more jams, but only cuz no one’s crazy enough to go out there. There’s a weather alert for the whole west and they raised the avalanche alarm in the mountains to four, probably five tonight. Unbelievable. Some areas you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. Somewhere before Montreux, I went into a skid. Lucky there was no one next to me, cuz I slid sideways across the road, all the way to the shoulder, before I got it under control. After that it got a bit better cuz they’re spreading salt, but they can salt till the cows come home, it’s not gonna do any good. Totally awesome, all the gear these Switzers bring out to . . .”
With the phone clamped between her shoulder and ear, Julia stands up. She feels a sudden urgency to go look, while his soothing voice is yapping on and on, to make sure there’s no one there, that it’s okay to go to the bathroom. Maybe she’s acting like a child, but with her brother’s voice in her ear—
Oh, Jesus, fuck-fucking-fuckery-fuck!
The phone slips off her shoulder and clatters onto the floorboards.
The pale woman in black looms out of the stairwell, up to her waist. Once more, she’s standing there motionless, but her head and shoulders are turned and she’s staring right at Julia.
Without pausing for breath, Julia stumbles forward to pick up her phone. That means she has to crawl closer to the hole in the floor, and as she tries to not lose sight of the woman, she sees fingers clinging to the edge.
Stocky fingers; a man’s fingers.