Cécile’s name had almost passed my lips, but the sound died even before it had been born. There she was, panting, sniffing, sucking in too much air with each breath. Busy filling a syringe out of an ampoule. Her cast hand trembling so fiercely that the colorless liquid in the ampoule was sloshing around and she had to triple-try piercing the needle into it. On the bed, spread out on a towel, next to her wide-open Anna Field weekend bag, a second needle and a second ampoule and an opened pack.
And I’m no medicine man, but I sure as hell knew this wasn’t an insulin injection. No cortisone shot.
She wasn’t prepping this for herself.
I said, “Cécile?”
That was enough to make her jump with a yelp. She turned around, pulled the needle out of the ampoule, liquid spattering everywhere.
“Sam! I . . .”
“What are you doing?”
Her eyes wide. Her look one big neon confession. Suddenly, you understood it all. The whole charade. The whole reason for her being here. Cécile hadn’t come to Grimentz to help Nick and me out of a fix . . . but to help herself.
And granted, what I next did, I did without thinking. I just wanted to overpower her. Yank the syringe out of her hands. I strode toward her, and Cécile saw me coming. Too late, I saw that she was feeling around inside her sling, that she’d taken something out of it. When I grabbed her right wrist and pulled it away, she pressed her cast hand and its small surprise against my midriff.
And bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt—
And I went down.
And I screamed.
And the pain!
There was no blackout. No sense of time passing. No discontinuity. Only the most abominable pain ever. My muscles cramped up. For a second or so my heart seemed to stop. The attic’s beams drifted toward me. Maybe the whole thing lasted just five seconds, but if that’s true, they were the longest five seconds of my life. With Cécile bowing over me, a sensation like actual lightning was bolting right through my body. I literally saw stars, stars and comets in a kaleidoscope of colors.
Then it was over. Cécile, her voice, I heard her say, “Stay down.” The voice somewhere far above me, she said, “I don’t want to have to do it again, but I swear, if you get up you’re going to go down again.”
Get up? Who said anything about getting up? The only thing I wanted to do was moan, roll over the floor, spew out my whole repertoire of creative expletives.
Granted, not one of my finest moments.
When I finally opened my eyes, I saw that Cécile’s face was plastered over with a sickening sheen. She was holding a stun gun in her hand. She’d Tasered me.
And I’d peed myself.
More than anything else, that totally pissed me off.
“Cécile . . . Bitch!” Tears in my eyes, my T-shirt soaked with sweat. “What the fuck!”
“It would have been better for you not to know,” Cécile said, behind the needle and the ampoule. Sticking the former into the latter, she said, “If he could simply have died of an overdose.”
And me lying there, my muscles burning as if I’d deadlifted the shit out of them.
“You can’t see it, huh?” Cécile said. Drawing in the liquid, she said, “No you can’t see it. There’s a huge Sam-shaped blind spot in the way you look at the world.” Said, “The boyfriend is blind, because the boyfriend is out of range.”
And I yelled, “Blind to what?”
“He’s a parasite, Sam!” Squirting air bubbles out of the needle, eyes possessed, she said, “Once he’s touched you, once he’s cursed you, he gets into your head and never leaves. He makes you fall.”
And I said, “Fall?”
On TV, some guy in front of a map full of tightly packed lines, saying the storm had brought almost the entire Alps to a standstill. That much snow, he said, was unusual. And so early in the season.
Through the stairwell, through the cracks in the floor, the stereo yodeling its heart out. Deeper still into the chalet, where Nick should be, what you heard coming from there was nothing.
And Cécile said, “Oh, you have no idea.” She laid the filled syringe on the towel and picked up the empty one. Took the second ampoule and said, “Did you really think I cut myself as a defense mechanism? That I bruise myself to prevent a panic attack?”
She let out a high-pitched, thin, scornful laugh and I thought, She’s gone totally nuts. She is complètement coucou.
I tried to struggle up, but in two steps she was on me, brandishing the stun gun, and said, “Lie down! I meant what I said!”
And me twitching, me in the fetal position, arms raised to shield my body. “Okay, okay! Go away! Don’t! Get that fucking thing away from me!”
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being tasered, then you know why, the second time around, suspects always surrender to the cops.
“You really don’t get it, huh?” she said. Back to her lethal cocktail, she said, “The only reason I hurt myself is because that’s how I can prevent him from making me fall.”
And me: “Cécile, what’s in that needle?”
“Dr. Genet wrote in his suicide note that he had to know if it would ever stop. If the falling would ever stop.” Her voice rising to a shriek, “I heard him hit the ground, Sam! I heard him hit the ground! I won’t let that happen to me!”
And me: “Oh god, what is in that needle?”
And the guy on TV, producing all these snowfall charts from since the birth of Methuselah.
And downstairs, greatest yodel hits.
And Cécile, squirt, she said, “That’s how he murdered Dr. Genet. That’s how he murdered all those people in Amsterdam.”
What the fuck was she talking about?
“Are you so blind?” She said, “Those people in the AMC, Sam! Your boyfriend is a mass murderer!”
My ears rattled. “Cécile, where did you . . . How the hell did he . . . Do you even hear what you’re saying?” I stammered, “Nick would never . . .”
Me, so flabbergasted that I could only speak in mosaic.
Cécile took both syringes in her right hand and said, “It’s regrettable, and it’s unjust.” With the stun gun in her left, “I know that Nick didn’t choose to be like this. But there’s no other way out now.” Step, step, on the cracking floorboards, the black widow, she circled around me and said, “Just one more person has to die. One more death to prevent worse from happening.”
And at that moment a dark rumbling sound rolled up through the stairwell, literally rocking the chalet to its foundations.
Nick.
The music stopped.
Cécile’s eyes were bulging. Her whole body shivering. Quiet, halfway between the stairwell and me. Downstairs, the wind was wailing. Outside, the Morose was screaming.
And I shouted, “Nick! Nick, look out! She’s got a—”
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.
And it was like I’d been kicked by a mule into an electric fence.
And as I was rolling on the floor, as I was moaning with pain, Cécile started descending the stairwell.
13
Your boyfriend is a mass murderer.
Something awful was going on downstairs, but all I could think was, Those people in the AMC, Sam.
Are you so blind?
Once he’s touched you, once he’s cursed you, he gets into your head and never leaves. He makes you fall.