“Take that mask off!”
She belted it out, her voice a squeal that pierced my head. Suddenly my head was full of echoes. They bounced against my skull, thin and mysterious, as if in my imagination I’d heard someone scream in the mist on a glacier. But was it really imagination? Because I could see it now too: shreds of turbulent, rushing snow, high walls of merciless ice, and a mouth of darkness opening out under my feet. The wind rising out from the depths was icy cold.
And the wind was carrying something.
The glass covering Freud’s framed words cracked.
I felt it happen, my consciousness turning inward, the window in my mind opening up like an eye, from behind which I couldn’t do anything but powerlessly watch as the mountain stared at her.
It saw her.
Disoriented, I realized that I had gotten up and that my chair had fallen back against the bookcase with a dull thud. I couldn’t say a word, had absolutely no control of my movements. It was as if my suffocating panic was holding me prisoner behind that window. I could rap against the glass for all I was worth, but no one could hear me.
“Nick, go away.” The fear in her voice was now unmistakable. “We’re through for today. Please get out of here.”
“Are you sure you want to see it, Dr. Stein?” the Maudit said, as it slowly walked around the desk, unwrapping the bandages from my face. “Do you really mean it?”
“Nick, go away!”
“Because I can show it to you. I can show it to you. But it’s cold behind the mask. Cold. So cold that not a single person can survive there for long. So, are you sure?”
But all of a sudden Claire didn’t want to see it anymore. She now wanted only one thing: to flee, till she was far away from the dominant shadow that was spreading over her.
But her chair didn’t roll back any further than the window, and behind it, a fatal forty-foot drop onto rock-hard concrete.
The mist in my head became impenetrable, and the last thing I saw was that it was leaning over Claire and peeling away the last strip of gauze.
Claire screamed.
After that, all I can remember is the image of Augustin’s tumbling helmet, falling and falling and falling, a red dot that kept getting smaller, and the worst thing about it was that the falling never stopped.
7
(Home, evening)
That happened this morning. When I came to myself again, it was late afternoon, and I was shocked to discover that I was home in the cellar, with the summit of the Maudit clenched in my right hand. I dropped it like a burning coal. The stone fell on the cellar floor and bounced off into a dark corner. In a panic, I touched my cheeks, as if I’d walked through a cobweb. The bandages were in place. Thank God. At some point during my blackout I must have put them back on.
Sam had gone to the UvA, and I found a text on my phone saying that he wanted to go over to Fazila’s after that to binge a bunch of stuff on Netflix, so thankfully I didn’t need to cook up an explanation for why I was in such a state. Because it took ages for my panic to subside. Eventually, the worst ebbed away, but the despair and the guilt remained. Even now, after having spent the entire evening writing everything down in an attempt to make sense of my whirling thoughts.
For fuck’s sake, what have I done? What damage did I inflict in Claire Stein’s office?
No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember what happened after it stood in front of her and took off the bandages. The hiatus in my memory is elusive and awful. There is no doubt things went badly off the rails, but how bad? How bad? I’m sitting here in my Pages document’s pale light, staring blindly at the wall and trembling like a stray dog in a thunderstorm, because Augustin’s tumbling helmet isn’t the only thing I remember when I try putting the pieces back together. Every time Claire pops into my head, I think of the ibex doe.
About how she bellowed when I threw that boulder down.
“I’m not a violent person,” I keep whispering. “I wouldn’t harm a fly. I’m not a violent person.”
But who am I kidding? It has happened before, and if I don’t do anything about it, it will happen again. Because it’s getting worse. It’s getting worse, that much I know for certain by now.
My iPhone is next to me on my desk, with Claire’s private number open on the screen. “Call me if you need me,” she’d said after our first session. “Day or night. If you feel the need, call me.”
I can’t count the number of times I almost did, tonight. But I’m too scared. I’m scared of what’s waiting for me on the other end of the line. Afraid of hearing the ringing go on and on when she doesn’t pick up. I imagine Claire lying in a pool of drying blood while her cell phone rings in her purse, and on the wall, behind shattered glass, Freud’s words remain silent: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” I try with all my might to dispel the image from my mind, but I can’t.
It’s now 1:26 a.m. Too late to call, even though Claire said any time. My nerves are crying out for it, but I can’t do it. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I think. When I came to, my clothes were drenched with sweat, but they didn’t have blood on them. Maybe my fantasy is running wild. Suppose I did imagine the whole thing, I don’t want Claire to think that I’m crazy. That my file would have “FEIGNS SCHIZOPHRENIA” written all over it. All caps. Big circle around it.
No, it’ll have to wait till morning. But I doubt if I’ll call her then.
A neutral email. Yes, that I can do. Just ask at what time the next session is scheduled. You can deduce from her answer . . . what, actually? That she’s still alive I wrote a couple of times, but I deleted it. Of course she’s alive; don’t get yourself all worked up. You’re being ridiculous. Just wait for her reply.
If she replies, of course.
One time, the screen lit up by itself. I jumped so hard I almost screamed. It was just before eleven, and it was Sam. It’s cats and dogs out there and he said he’d rather spend the night at Fazila’s than have to bike home in the rain. I think I managed to make my voice sound neutral, despite his asking a couple of times if I was okay. He’s worried, sure. But he also needs his own space to cope. I get it.
Sam must never find out what happened today.
Anyway, I sat and wrote all evening, faster and faster, as if the act of writing would exorcise it out of me. But my writing failed to deliver the answers I was looking for. I’m tired and I’m afraid. I can hear the hail battering the roof incessantly. And then I can’t help but wonder what it’s like up there in the valley right now. In the valley above Grimentz. Season is over, the first storms of fall are battering the mountains. People have stopped coming, and at the foot of the Maudit only the wind is howling. The echoes of the storm sound just like screams from a crevasse.
Can a mountain be haunted?