My god, what have we set in motion?
So this morning I came to myself on the slopes above Grimentz. Downhill, three men in overalls were gesturing around a cow that was lying on her side in the mud. At first I thought she was calving, but it’s not the time of year. Then I saw she was entangled in barbed wire. Along the entire length of the lower field was a torn-down fence. Trampled, muddy grass, cow pies. A herd had been grazing here. And it had clearly broken out.
The oldest of the three men saw me. Started pointing. Expression changed, became enraged. He shouted something and raised his pinky and index finger at me. Checked Wikipedia: the horned hand gesture is still commonly used by the old mountain folk to ward off the devil.
The youngest of the men took a few steps in my direction, revealing the sorry state of the cow’s hindquarters. Her skin was completely stripped off. She must have forced her way through the barbed wire. Some of the herd had apparently managed to tear themselves loose and pave the way for the rest, because from far below, in the village, came the soft tingle of their bells. One cow was dead halfway down the slope.
I stared in disbelief. Was this my doing???
Then I forgot all about the cows, dead or alive, because the farmer’s son raised a double-barreled shotgun. All my muscles went limp. Still, I managed to raise my arms and demonstratively stroll to the side of the field to show I meant no harm. Before I got to the edge of the woods, I lost my restraint and made a run for it. Almost tripped and fell when I heard the shot. It resonated over the slopes, but this bullet wasn’t meant for me.
So here I am now. What kind of monster have I become? Those cattle farmers sensed it in me. Dr. Claire and Cécile sensed it in me. Even my parents sensed it, back in that early stage. It scared the hell out of them. And rightly so.
Because I know what it’s capable of.
I still haven’t heard from Claire.
And I’m very much afraid I never will.
I can’t count on Sam to help me anymore. Have to take things into my own hands before it’s too late. That place’s poison is spreading through my veins. I have to make use of the moments I still have, but I sense them becoming fewer. If only I knew what to do!
2
October 29
Ramses is gone.
It’s been dark for hours, and there’s no point in looking for him anymore. S. is worried sick. I am too, to be honest.
S. says the last time he saw him was this morning, when he fed him. But Ramses never strays far from the chalet and never stays out for long. So far, he’s been pretty much unmoved by his vacation in Switzerland, and in the evenings he even curls up and purrs in his permanent spot in front of the fireplace, though he always keeps one ear perked in my direction, constantly on the alert for me. He, too, senses the Maudit, and he doesn’t like it one bit—hasn’t since his flip, back home in Ams. But the thing is that R. is a city cat. This valley’s boundless space is very un-Ramses-like. It turns him into a scaredy-cat. So, yes, it freaks me out that he hasn’t come home yet.
We called him, rattled with his munchies. Nothing. S. walked all the way up the road and shined his phone’s flashlight. Wanted to go with him, but he said no, stay home. Sounded resentful. Does he think it’s my fault Ramses is gone?
Maybe it is.
S. wasn’t gone for long. He was pale when he came back, and all jumpy. Said he hadn’t seen a thing.
3
October 30
Found him. A fucking leghold trap! Asshole motherfuckers. Who would do such a thing? That trap had been put there deliberately.
Sam came home with him in the early hours. All teared up. Ramses a messy tangle in his arms, meowing pitifully, with fearful eyes. When I saw the iron chain dangling from Sam’s arms, I immediately got the picture. He laid the cat carefully on the carpet so the under-floor heating could warm him up. Ramses twitched his tail and meowed again. It was his right forepaw. The trap it got caught in was made of dark, rusty iron and constructed particularly for small game. The jaws had sharp teeth, which had bitten deep into his flesh. Tufts of white fur were stuck to it. Ramses must have struggled to break free. Poor, poor cat! While Sam dried him off with a dish towel, I scratched his little head, and for the first time in weeks, he submitted to it without protesting.
S. said he’d found him somewhere past the bridge, in the tall grass by the road. I wondered whether the trap could have been set by poachers, for hunting rabbits or something, but Sam said no, there had been cat food on the iron plate. Ramses could have just as easily stuck his head in and got his neck broken.
“Assholes!” I shouted.
And there was more: Sam found three other traps, all containing cat food and teeming with ants. He sprung them with a branch and said they were so powerful that each of them had snapped the branch in two.
“They want to frighten us off,” I said. “They’re using the cat to get at us. Cowards.”
But S. shook his head. “I don’t think so. “I think they were really trying to get Ramses.”
I asked how so, and then he told me what he’d heard from Maria, our cleaning lady with the pretty name: that they’re not too fond of cats around here. Not Maria personally, but the whole village. Apparently she’d advised him not to let the cat out. When I asked what it was all about, Sam gazed at me—did I really not get it?
“Remember the bird he almost tore to pieces? What you call the death birds? The birds hanging all over the place like talismans on their front doors?”
I was about to say something, but my mouth plopped shut.
Anyway, took R. to a vet in Sièrre, who removed the trap. He was lucky, she said. His paw wasn’t broken, but it was gashed almost to the bone, and badly swollen. There’s damage to the muscles, but with a bit of luck Ramses will be as good as new within a couple of weeks, the doc said. She gave him painkillers and antibiotics and bandaged his paw. He seems to be a bit better. Since we brought him home and let him out of his travel carrier, he’s been eyeing us and the world with his trademark fuck-off gaze, but he has been eating heartily, and right now he’s sleeping by the fireplace.
But that word talisman keeps haunting me.
According to S., Maria said alpine choughs bring good fortune. They’re said to carry the souls of ancestors, which is why the townsfolk in Grimentz keep them in or around their homes. A nice tradition, with obvious similarities to that other, more sinister legend, the one Augustin recounted: that they are death birds who free the souls of fallen climbers by pecking their eyes out.
A supernatural interpretation of a morbid, but perfectly natural phenomenon, I would have concluded before this whole business. But none of this is natural.
I can still see Augustin in the depths of the crevasse, rolling over on the ice bridge and reaching for me with frozen hands . . .
I don’t want to revisit that memory. Let’s just say the birds had gotten to him.