That’s how he murdered all those people in Amsterdam.
Cécile’s words, they seemed to have been branded into my brain by my all too recent electroconvulsive therapy session. And yet they were blown away by a roaring coming from downstairs, so inhuman that I’ll have to get back to you on whether it boiled or froze my blood. Again, a thundering crash. Breaking glass, the buzz of fuses blowing. A shrill cry. The bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt of the stun gun. Quick footsteps.
Then, nothing.
What came up was a stiffening wind, so cold it made you shiver into a stupor.
What came up was the screaming of the Morose.
The echoes. They had gotten in.
Oh Jesus, what had Nick done? What had Cécile done?
Moaning, I got up. Almost fell over again straightaway. My whole body cramp city. It was like someone was wringing the juice out of all my muscles simultaneously.
I stumbled to the stairwell. Lowered my feet into it, leaning on the edges. Searching for the steps. The cold wrapping itself around them.
Down there, down in the hallway, lay legs.
I screamed, “Nick!”
The wind wailed. Gusts of snow sped through the hall. The outside door was open.
I almost fell down the stairs, reached the landing.
Nick was lying on one elbow, jerking all over, his face red and wet with sweat, and completely distressed, he cried, “Sam! Sam, help me! Help me, please!”
Nick. It was him, all the way. Not the Maudit.
And I didn’t dare go to him.
It had been so awful he said, so cold he said, the pressure behind his face had gotten so bad he thought he’d never wake up again. And I just stood there under the stairwell, looking down at him. Raised my head to the polar wind billowing inside through the cave-black hole of the door to extinguish the heat rising up behind it. My yearning, my dependence, my addiction gone in a flash of the eye. Me, totally cold turkeyed by what I suddenly thought him capable of.
Asked if he was okay. If he was wounded. Asked where Cécile was, and Nick, he raised his hands to his scars and said, “Cécile?” His gaze fixed on the wet blotch on my jeans, he said, “What happened?” His face one twitch, one cramp, he said, “My whole body hurts.”
I told him he’d been Tasered. That she must have literally Tasered the Maudit out of his head—for now. It’s true, I said, Cécile was here and she wanted to kill him. One syringe was broken in a puddle on the tiles, the other had landed on the doormat and was still full of juice.
Whatever had happened, her plan had failed.
Nick, he looked past me, and I saw him go white. His knees knocking, his voice choked, he said, “What’s going on out there?”
Yanked out of my apathy, I limped through that hall like I was stumbling through a wind tunnel toward a walk-in freezer. My breath clouding in the cold air, I wanted to reach outside to pull the front door shut, but I halted. Outside was hell. I have no other word for it. The wind a living, evil power that was tugging on my sweat-soaked shirt and sending uncontrollable shivers through my body. Ice crystals flew out of the dark and lashed my face, sparkling in the glow of the chalet’s light. Massive volumes of snow had rendered the landscape unrecognizable. A choir of tormented voices was shrieking their lungs out from within the storm. They bewailed the death of the world. They screamed with the full pathos of human life.
The echoes were falling from the sky, and vaguely I noticed that it was already fogging up my brain, but what you were looking at was the footprints in the snow. A drunken trail swerving down the stairs to the right. Not to the Peugeot. Not to the village. But around the chalet, in the direction of Castle Rock. Moiry. The reservoir.
I roared, “Cécile!”
My voice didn’t stand a chance as the night forced itself on me from all sides, dying scream by dying scream.
I shut the door and stumbled back into the hall. Cécile’s sneakers, they were gone. In this weather, their thin leather would protect her feet from freezing for no more than ten minutes.
Nick in the meantime had lugged himself to his feet. He’d pulled a scarf off the coatrack and wrapped it around his face. “Is that the Morose?” he asked. “Is that what her grandmother told you about?”
Yes.
“Did Cécile go outside?”
Er, yes.
“If we don’t go after her, she’ll die out there.”
And I said, “Did you hear me? She wanted to kill you.”
Nick’s face turned distant. “Can you really blame her?”
I looked at him.
Thinking, And you will also find out what it’s like to fall. To fall . . . and to fall . . . and to fall . . . and to fall.
The boyfriend is blind, because the boyfriend is out of range.
I walked past him, and damned if I didn’t go faint, so close to him. Damned if I didn’t go all dizzy. Then I reached the living room and turned the radio back on. Said it had to stay on till this whole shitstorm had died down. Said this is your auditory eclipse. Nick, he seemed to somehow understand and didn’t ask questions.
My lips trembling, I said, “You’re right.” Slowly, making a calculated consideration, I said, “We can’t just leave Cécile to her fate. It’s not her fault.”
“Exactly! We should—”
“Not we,” I said. “I’m going alone. I don’t want you outside as long as the Morose is going on. If you go out there and that mountain zaps you away, I’ll be nowhere.”
“But . . . I don’t want you to go out into the storm all alone, Sam. With all that’s going on. What if her traces are snowed over? I don’t want you to get lost.”
Honestly, I couldn’t wait to get lost.
I said, “Listen.” Forcing my quavering voice not to break, I said, “I haven’t lost much time yet. I’ll put on your headphones. I’m stronger than Cécile and I can still catch up with her. But if I don’t go now, she’s going to become her own ghost story, and with what’s luring you up the mountain out there, it’s totally not a good place for you right now.”
Nick’s eyes dimmed and the worry I read in them was sincere. But he nodded slowly. “Okay, I understand. To be honest, I’m not so sure I’d get far anyway. My body has never felt this tired.”
“Oh, right. That’s on us. We drugged you.”
He faltered for just a second.
I got ready to go as fast as I could. There, in the hall, reduced to a thousand thoughts you tried to block out of your head with all your might. Sweatpants, scarf, heavy coat, crisscrossed fleece gloves from the owner couple’s drawer. Nick to the rescue with his La Sportiva mountain boots in one hand and his Beats in the other. The La Sportivas at least two sizes too big, but at least they’d keep out the snow.
“I have your iPhone,” I said, launching its Spotify. “Don’t ask; long story.” Nick’s account, first thing to attack your ears: fucking Spandau Ballet.
I clicked randomly on something else and said, “Stay inside.” Walking to the front door, I said, “Don’t follow me. Even if I don’t come back right away. Go searching for me only once the storm is over. Promise me, Nick.”