No way was there a hut up there.
Nothing in Nick’s manuscript, nothing in Nick’s stories, had indicated there was a hut up there. Nothing that you knew about that ghost mountain made it even remotely likely there was a hut up there.
Beyond Grimentz, the mountains were still.
“All right, thank you for calling back,” I said. “One last question. The valley here is full of screaming. Should I want to send someone up as a sacrifice, do I direct the offering to the Catholic God or preferably to a more primitive deity like Huitzilopochtli?”
He hung up.
“Sorry, but you Switzers have no sense of humor.” Slipping the phone back into my pocket, I said, “Come on. We’re going to pay someone a visit.”
Cécile jolted up and said, “What? Who?”
“I know someone in the village who’s also an outsider. And anyway, she’s been shirking her duties for about three weeks now, so she owes us an explanation.”
“No, Sam! We can’t go out now, you know what my mamie said about the Morose . . .”
“But aren’t you curious?” I asked. “Don’t you wanna know what that ceremony was all about? That old lady doing her Via Dolorosa?”
Cécile looked at me like she was again balancing on the verge of a meltdown. I squeezed her shoulder and said, “The last one to trek into that valley was Nick, remember?” Flashing my best Sam Avery smile, I said, “This is our only chance to find out anything. And the Morose, it hasn’t started yet. Your mamie said it would sound like the valley is ‘bewailing the death of the world.’ The only thing I’ve heard crying up to now is a little bit of wind.”
Total BS, but it seemed to ease her anyway and she sighed. “Of course I’m curious too. Sorry, I’m just out of my wits. Yes, I predicted they wouldn’t fly out, but if they really did send that woman out into the storm, then it’s a ritual of life and death. That freaks me out.” Her eyes dark, she said, “How do you do it?”
How did I do what?
“Your act. Your jokes. Your always being hyper, always on the ball.”
I laughed. “Sweetheart,” I said, “sugarplum,” I said, “sleeping downstairs is the person I love more than anyone in the whole wide world, and that mountain inside him is sucking up his soul. You think I’m not scared? I’m scared as fuck. Yeah, I’m scared of what’s out there, I’m scared of what’s about to happen tonight, but what scares me the most is that soon nothing will be left of him. And I still have to tell him the most important things of our relationship.”
And that was the truth. Cold, honest, bulletproof.
“My act,” I said, “is all I got.”
Cécile gently squeezed my hand. “Thank you. That makes me feel much better.”
9
According to the leather-bound instruction folder, Maria Zufferey-Silva de Souza lived in an elegant chalet in the upper part of the village. Even the ten yards between it and where you parked your Focus seemed too far to walk. Even the few steps descending from the street to the front door seemed a bridge too far, in the building storm.
Ten yards, and from the chimney, you saw wisps of smoke being immediately swallowed up by the white of the snow. You saw the valley through a haze of maybe a hundred swirling shapes that rendered the landscape unrecognizable and made your senses go haywire. A mere ten yards, but the sounds you heard coming out of the mountains could make you go insane. Each blitz by the wind more vengeful than the last. Every bellowing roar an octave higher. It prickled your scalp. It made you look up with constant certainty that there was someone right behind you, someone or something, a hovering, open mouth.
We rang the bell and waited. Just when you thought no one was coming, the door opened and a hot, yellow glow spread over the gray and white of the outside world. Maria wearing a purple fleece cardigan, she eyed us, startled. “My god, what are you doing out?”
“Madame Zufferey-Silva de Souza.” I smiled, spreading my arms. Don’t lecture me on South European mothers. Don’t ask, but a sense of decorum makes all the difference in the world. “Storm chasing, of course. This is Cécile Métrailler, a friend of mine. We actually wanted to ask for your help.”
Maria’s gaze drifted briefly to Cécile but quickly shifted back to me. “If it’s about the cleaning, I’m sorry I didn’t come. I have arthritis, and when it gets colder my hands start acting up.” From inside the house, voices came blaring from the radio. “I’ll tell Mr. and Mrs.—”
“It’s not about the cleaning, Maria. I know you stopped coming because you’re afraid of Nick. Honestly, with the Morose coming, we’re also starting to feel a bit afraid.”
She went pale. “So you know about that.”
“Well, it wasn’t in any of the Office du Tourisme’s flyers, but yes. This morning there was this whole hoo-ha ceremony with alpenhorns and whatnot, and just now, right before it started snowing, we saw a woman walk into the mountains. All the way up there.” Swinging my arm in a dramatic gesture, I said, “Precisely where Nick climbed the mountain last summer.”
Maria covered her mouth with her hands. “So it’s true. He was there . . .”
“You can say that again. That’s why we want to know what you can tell us about—”
A shrill, maniacal wailing came down from the snow, so close that all three of us ducked. So close that it was real, that it penetrated into the fabric of our reality and left a screaming blot in it.
Maria, she practically dragged us into the hall. Slammed the door shut, bolted it. “Come inside quickly. You have to know . . .”
“Right, and that creepy screaming from the clouds.” Shaking the snow out of my hair, I said, “Why don’t you tell us about that too.”
Echoes, Maria said, after she’d poured us some strong herbal mountain infusion. When the Morose heralded the oncoming of winter, you could hear them tumbling down on this side of the Gougra. The night was full of them. Lost wanderers who couldn’t be saved but didn’t die either.
She’d thought about us, that morning. To warn us. Give us instructions to get us through the night. Us, strangers in Grimentz, immigrants, like she had also once been. But that husband of hers, Monsieur Pascal Zufferey, he’d forbidden her to have anything to do with us. Pascal, at this hour in the village hotel, setting up a night of festivities for initiates. Playing folk songs on his Schwyzer?rgeli. Villagers bombarding you with a wall of artificial sound as they guzzled themselves senseless on Cardinal draft. If you’ve ever been to a Swiss Bierstube during a L?ndlerfest, you’d know why Maria would rather spend the whole scream-filled night binge-watching Netflix.
“I’m totally hooked on Scandinavian crime,” she said.
That, and fado.