Maybe chances of my getting Nick out of this in one piece were slim, but I was going to do everything in my power to make it happen.
As I walked to the village, face like a thundercloud, head hunched deep into my collar, the only answer to the only question bouncing around in my head lit up like a lighthouse in the mist: Take him out. Take him out and take him down.
5
In Grimentz, it was anything but the calm before the storm.
From the parking lot below the village, it was your quintessential exodus. A gridlock of snazzy Swiss cars even before the exit to Zinal, cuz some farmer was guiding his cattle to a safe haven in the valley along the only access road. The closed Office du Tourisme’s canton flag was clattering with a restless, metallic sound against its pole. The folks brave enough to venture outside on the streets were frantically and loudly latching their hatches and fastening their fences.
The flapping of flags. The honking of car horns. The ting-a-ling-ling of cowbells and the mooing of cattle. The audial onslaught had already begun.
From higher up the slopes, the stately, harmonic tones of alpenhorns fanned downward.
I knew that the cable car terminal had been shut down for the season, but the boulangerie-patisserie’s shopwindow had been boarded up from the inside with plywood, and that was news to me. The sheet of paper on the inside of the Coop’s window with the handwritten message Fermé Temporairement was news to me.
The mountain made its power grab, and all of Grimentz’s retailers had to take it lying down.
Even the ski shop was closed, I discovered a bit down the road. Major bummer, cuz I’d seen they sold cell phones there. No iPhones, but, hey, right now I woulda settled for a Nokia. Hell, a Motorola if I had to.
My mood darkening fast, I walked on. Suddenly it came to me what was missing. The birdcages. Apparently they’d all been taken inside. There wasn’t a single one left.
Evacuated for what was drawing nigh.
I think that was when I started to get scared.
No one was on the streets by the time I’d reached H?tel du Barrage. No one to hear me call “No, no, no,” over and over again, when I saw that here, too, all the hatches had been shut. A fucking hotel. How did they even arrange this with the tourists?
I thought, There aren’t any. Schweizer Pünktlichkeit. They take care of it.
Just for the hell of it, I tried the door. Sat myself down on the porch stairs. Took my MacBook out of its protective case, flipped it open. They had Wi-Fi, but only for guests. Password protected, of course. I tried “hoteldubarrage.” Tried “Grimentz2018.” Tried “pute-de-raclette,” with and without dashes.
I tried it everywhere, in front of every dark restaurant, every vacant vacation home, every boarded-up chalet. But no go on the login.
So I banged on the H?tel du Barrage’s door. I banged as the wind whistled around the empty flower boxes and rocked the signboard above the door on its hinges, making it squeak. I banged as the clouds dropped their echoes like harbingers of the storm.
The same woman who’d brought Cécile and me our beers that night in October eventually opened the door. She didn’t look like she was happy to see me. Didn’t look like she was happy to see anybody.
“Fermé,” she muttered. Then she seemed to recognize me and her eyes became small and piglike. The door promptly closed to a mere crack.
And me, I made it clear in polite French that I only needed a minute of her time. Could I please make a call, it was an emergency, I would pay her for it.
“I don’t give a damn about your emergency!” she lashed out at me.
All I needed was the password. Just the password and ten minutes to sit on her porch.
“Get out of here! Go back to that accursed evil you brought into our midst!”
Did she take American Express?
Suddenly she turned all sly and said in an almost childlike, bullying intonation, “It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. After tonight it will all be over and done . . . with him.”
My heart nose-dived.
I wanted to ask what she meant, but just then a cry came from the clouds, loud enough to be ruled out as just an echo. I could have sworn that out of the corner of my eye I saw something tumble down from the sky. Real close. Above the rooftops across the street. The barwoman’s eyes were suddenly like saucers and mortified, and during the one sec that my attention flagged, she slammed the door—wham!—right in my face. Angry sound of bolt rammed into socket.
I pounded the wood with my fists and shouted, “Joyeux Morose, Morticia!”
As therapy it didn’t count for much, but you hadda start somewhere.
Admit it, you were losing this battle. Even if you found yourself some Wi-Fi, it wasn’t like Julia could actually do anything from all the way in New York.
Anyway, my hands were doing the jitterbug again. The urge to call Julia suddenly displaced by a deeper need—a fix only Nick could supply me with.
It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. After tonight it will all be over and done . . . with him.
What had that village witch meant by that?
On the way back, I heard the alpenhorns again, and across the fields above the village I saw a whole congregation of men and women lumbering along. Ethnic attire, hand-whittled walking sticks, and more of that stereotypical mountain shit. I wondered whether maybe they’d performed some kind of ritual on the edge of the forest to suck up to the Morose. A peace offering.
The slaughter of an innocent lamb or whatever.
When I looked closer, I saw that the man in the habit, holding a staff up front, was the same priest-slash-churchguy who’d come to our door weeks back.
When I looked closer, I saw that some of the people in the procession were crying.
What came to mind was a funeral cortege.
Yet there was no coffin. No urn.
I decided it was none of my business and went on.
At least the gridlock on the thoroughfare had dissipated. The road to the south, where it climbed toward the reservoir, had been closed since the last snowfall, and according to Nick it would stay closed all winter. I was just crossing the desolated tourist parking to reach the dirt road toward Hill House when I heard a car coming uphill at high speed.
Without signaling, it swerved onto the parking lot, burning tracks into the blacktop.
It was a Peugeot in obsidian black.
I knew this car.
You think, She’s gonna brake, you think, She sees me all right, but brake she didn’t.
Catching sight of me only as she barely missed me, and even then, it took her forty yards, smokin’ wheels, and a helluva whump to come to a standstill.
Running, I covered the distance. The door swung open and Cécile literally stumbled out.
“Sam?”