“Oh, I know all about defense mechanisms, girl,” I said, “but that pulling and twisting, you gotta stop doing that. Your lips are way too fabulous for that.”
She sob-smiled. “I considered therapy. But what do I say to a psychologist?” Nodding at Nick, nodding at what was going on outside, she said, “I have to face my fears. That’s why I decided to come. As long as we haven’t solved this, I can’t let it go. So let’s start with what you said. Let’s wrap his face in bandages.”
“Give me a break. When this is over, we all need therapy. Are you sure you’re okay, Cécile?”
Another smile as she retreated into the bathroom to throw the bloodied tissue away. “Really, I already feel better.”
Didn’t buy it. She was being evasive. Hadn’t given me her full story, either. But what could I do? Nick was the bigger of my concerns.
So we went up to the bed. I put my hands around Nick’s head, lifting it off the pillow. In sleep, it was way heavier than I would have thought possible. Nick’s hair was sticky and sweaty. That aside, it was like lifting a frozen leg of ham out of a freezer.
With the fingers of her good hand, Cécile stuffed the gauze behind his neck. Big eyes scintillating in the duskiness. Reached over the pillow, between my arms. Missed what she was aiming for.
Nick’s hand slid off his stomach and fell onto the mattress.
Cécile and I froze.
Nick’s breathing remained calm. Rumbling. But his hand . . . What it dropped onto the white sheet, what it had apparently been grasping all along, was a pointy piece of rock.
Nick’s relic. His fetish. The Maudit’s summit.
What came to mind was the centurion’s spearhead, the one that pierced the side of Jesus Christ. The same spearhead that was said to have been in the possession of several bloodthirsty Roman emperors. Later, stolen by Persian armies. Later still, by the Nazis. A relic like that, it’s just a thing. We decide to imbue it with significance, but all the same, it left behind a trail of blood.
If you knew anything about voodoo, if you knew anything about magical artifacts, you knew that simply throwing them away was no more than postponing the inevitable. That’s why I carefully lowered Nick’s head, took the rock off the mattress, and put it away inside the nightstand.
We’ll worry about that later.
Cécile and I exchanged looks. “Come on, let’s do it.”
So I lifted his head from the pillow again and she started to swaddle, a tad clumsily with only a hand and a half, but it went pretty well until, halfway, Nick’s mouth already covered, the muscles behind his face suddenly tightened and he said, “Did you forget to strap it?”
Cécile moaned and her hands jerked. I stood paralyzed, with Nick’s head in my hands. The only sounds the wind bashing against the chalet and my heart thumping in places I didn’t know was possible.
Nick’s eyes remained shut. What he’d said was in English, not Dutch. Not his mother tongue. Mumbled, muffled, but still comprehensible, he muttered, “Jesus.”
And me: “Shh. Go to sleep.”
I felt his shoulders flexing as if he shrugged, and he said, “Oh well, it’s gone. Nothing you can do about it now. Focus, man, we’ve still got a long way to go.”
That was it. Whatever delusional dialogue he was hallucinating on, it was over now. He sank back into sleep. Cécile rushed forward and wrapped the last bands around his face. Clipped the fastener in place. I carefully lowered his head onto the pillow. Glad it was out of my hands.
My mummy, motionless on his tomb.
His nose sticking out of the gauze like an island.
It didn’t feel right.
What it needed was a black, half-moon arc. What it needed was crossed edges for cupid cheeks. Didn’t have a Sharpie, but there was a ballpoint in Nick’s pencil case.
“Why are you doing that?” Cécile asked.
“For good luck.”
“A smiley mouth. That’s fucking creepy.”
I examined the results. “Yeah, okay. You’re right . . .”
“Wait, I have something else.” Cécile was gone before I could say anything, into the hall, up the stairs. Me alone with Dr. Jekyll. Sleeping. Smileying. Thinking, This way you’ll always know it’s me and never mistake me for someone else. When I smile, you don’t have to be scared of me, okay?
Cécile came back with two bright orange rubber earplugs. “I always have these with me, to help me sleep in a strange bed,” she said. “But I doubt if there’ll be much sleeping tonight anyway . . .”
Quick thinking. I squeezed them flat and gently eased them into Nick’s ears. Call it overkill, but I took his wireless Beats from his nightstand, switched them on, and carefully lowered the leather cushions onto his ears.
“Noise cancellation,” I said.
Cécile nodded. “Do you think it’s a good idea to close the shutters?”
I nodded. As she opened the terrace door and I shivered from the cold wind that swept into the bedroom, I jumped at the chance. I bowed over Nick, slithered my hand into his sweatpants pocket, and found his phone. I mean, me and no iPhone—can’t believe I’d survived this long. The screen lit up, everything around me suddenly darker cuz Cécile had unhooked the panels and shut them. 2:26. louise grevers, 3 missed calls. mom and dad home, 5 missed calls. All right already; keep your hats on. But, sorry, my turn now. I pried out the SIM holder with a safety pin, chucked Nick’s card out, took mine out my pants pocket and inserted it. Doubled focus to keep my fingers from trembling. Swipe—passcode—unlock—waiting.
“Sam, come here a minute,” I heard coming from outside.
“Wait, give me a sec.”
Swisscom. 4G. A second later: ploink, julia avery, 36 missed calls. Swipe, and I called her back. My call skipping mountains and oceans in nanoseconds, bouncing off satellites, straight to voicemail.
“Sam,” in the doorway.
And I shout, “What!” Opened WhatsApp. Entered my details—Come the fuck on—verified my number—How long does this have to take?
And Cécile said, “I think I see someone. Someone’s going up the mountain.”
8
“In Japan,” I said, peering through binoculars, “in times of famine, they took the oldest members of the family to mountaintops or faraway forests and left them there to die.” Focusing between rushing gray-white patches, I said, “The Inuit would leave them behind on the ice.”
There. Hundreds of yards up, right on the boundary where the storm clouds swallowed up the snow-covered slopes above the village.
“In America they call it ‘granny dumping’ and it generally happens in nursing homes.” Adjusting the view from blurred to sharp, I said, “Did you know that the numbers spike in the week before Christmas? That’s when American families start to get hungry and don’t feel like going on weekend visits anymore.”
And Cécile said, “You talk too much.”