The Devil's Sanctuary (12 page)

In the two or three minutes he had been gone, the scene had changed from alarming to catastrophic. Smoke was pouring from the room as though someone were forcing it out from the inside. It had filled the room like a sort of black stuffing that stopped maybe eighteen inches above the floor.

“Are you still in there, Marko?” he yelled.

He heard a rattling cough.

Daniel pulled off his T-shirt, rushed into the bathroom, and soaked it in water. He pulled it over his head so it covered his face, then crept on all fours into the pocket of air under the smoke. Marko was howling in a language that Daniel couldn’t identify.

“This way. You have to crawl. Under the smoke,” Daniel shouted. “Can you hear me, Marko? Crawl this way. I’ve found a fire escape.”

He had no idea where he was. Between the smoke and the T-shirt he was blind. He got his bearings from Marko’s screams and coughing. Sweat was pouring off him. He felt he was close to the core of the fire.

Suddenly he felt a firm grip on his lower arm. Nails digging into his skin like talons and heavy, panicked breathing close to his face. He fought the impulse to pull free and tried to say something calm to Marko, but the wet T-shirt had stuck to his mouth and was making him feel he was suffocating. Still on all fours, he changed direction and tried to lead Marko toward the door. Christ, why was he being so slow? Instead of crawling, Marko was just lying on the floor, clinging tight to Daniel’s arm as he breathed in shallow, jagged bursts. Was he having a heart attack?

Daniel grabbed him under his arms and tried to drag him across the floor. But he couldn’t budge the huge body. How much could the giant weigh? Three hundred pounds? He put him back down, rested for a moment, then tried again. He felt his lower arms slipping about in Marko’s sweaty armpits and pulled as hard as he could. Inch by inch he dragged the inert colossus through the smoke. He had to reach the door before the fire spread and cut off his escape route.

Then he realized he was no longer sure where the door was. He tried to remember what the room had looked like before it filled with smoke, and how far he had crawled before he found Marko. It was only a small room. He decided he couldn’t possibly have gotten it wrong. If only Marko weren’t so heavy and awkward, and so slippery and wet with sweat.

Daniel struggled on like this, blind, exhausted, and poisoned by the smoke, for what felt like hours or days, or possibly no more than a few minutes. By this point he had forgotten where he was, why he was there, and whom he was dragging. He was a mindless animal.

From somewhere came the sound of male voices and heavy boots. Daniel managed to utter a hoarse cry for help. Foam extinguishers and hoses burst into life and a voice close to his ear told him to stay calm.

Afterward he couldn’t remember how he got out into the park. But suddenly he found himself sitting on a bench, breathing in the cool, clean alpine air.

“That was a close call,” one of the guards said.

“How’s Marko?” Daniel gasped.

“He’s a bit worse than you. They’ve taken him to intensive care. But he’ll be okay.”

He looked around at the nocturnal park. It was all weirdly calm.

“Aren’t you going to evacuate the building? It’s on fire,” he exclaimed in astonishment.

“The fire’s already out. It didn’t have time to spread. We have fireproof walls between the wards.”

Daniel looked up at the large care center. Most of the windows were dark. There was nothing to suggest that a fire had been raging inside a short while before.

“Marko was smoking in bed,” he said. “His mattress caught fire. Is there something wrong with the alarms? They should have gone off the moment he lit his first cigarette.”

“He must have disconnected it.”

“Is that possible?”

The guard shrugged.

“Nothing’s impossible if you’re good with your hands, as my dad always says. Where do you want to go now? Another ward, or back to the cabin? They say there won’t be any blood tests tomorrow. You’re not in a fit state for that.”

“I want to go back to the cabin. Mind you, more than anything I want to go home to Sweden.”

The guard let out a whistle.

“One step at a time. We’ll take you to the cabin.”

When they got there Daniel turned to thank the guards.

The night was clear. Below them the valley slept on in darkness.

But to his surprise the highest peak in the distance was lit up as bright as day. Its glittering, silver-white slopes hovered like some dwelling of the gods above the nocturnal alpine landscape. How was that possible?

Then he realized the moonlight was lighting it up. It was like a miracle. He began to cry.

One of the guards put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

“You’re tired. Go in and get some sleep now.”

THERE WASN’T
much to pack; Max had already taken everything he owned. But he needed a change of clothing at the very least. He gathered up a few of Max’s clothes and put them in a small rucksack.

It was raining outside, the lobby was gloomy, and a fire was blazing in the open hearth. The hostess behind the reception desk looked up from her files and said, “Oh, it’s you, Max. I’m sorry. Your brother hasn’t been in touch.”

Daniel took a deep breath and looked into her eyes with a serious expression. It was time to detonate the bomb.

“My name isn’t Max. I’m his twin brother. We switched places.”

The hostess frowned. It was one of the slightly older ones, maybe forty-five but still attractive in a cool, professional way. He let the information sink in, then went on.

“We look very similar. I shaved off my beard and he put on a false beard. From the theater. It was his idea. He needed to get money so he could pay the bill. It was only supposed to take a few days, then he was going to come back. Something must have happened.”

“I see,” the hostess said with a cautious smile.

“I’m going to be leaving now,” Daniel continued. “I can’t wait any longer. I just wanted you to know about it. That you made a mistake and let the wrong person leave.”

“We did?”

He nodded.

“One moment,” the hostess said.

Her voice was neutral and her face expressed nothing but friendly professionalism. She picked up a phone, dialed a number, and waited.

The double doors to the lounge were open and Daniel could hear laughter from within.

The hostess quietly repeated what Daniel had told her to someone over the phone. Then she listened for a while without speaking.

“I understand,” she said. “Of course. Thank you.”

She hung up.

“Maybe you ought to put out an alert for him,” Daniel said.

“I doubt that will be necessary.”

“Maybe not. He could show up at any moment. But I’m going home now. I can’t wait any longer. Say hello to him for me. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

The hostess smiled and nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he went on. “I only did this to help my brother.”

“That was kind of you.”

“I just hope he comes back of his own accord.”

“Yes,” the hostess said. “Let’s hope so.”

He put the key to the cabin on the counter, as if he were checking out of a hotel.

“Would you mind helping me call for a taxi?”

“A taxi?”

“Yes. To take me to the railway station. I want to set off at once.”

She looked at the key on the counter as if it were an unpleasant and possibly dangerous insect.

“A taxi?” she repeated quietly, without touching the key.

“Yes please. Because there’s no bus from the village, is there?”

Suddenly her eyes twinkled and she laughed out loud, as if he had been telling her a joke that she had only just understood.

Without touching the phone she started writing something in a folder.

Daniel waited. The heat from the fire could be felt all the way over to where he was standing at the reception desk. An elderly couple and a teenage boy emerged from the lounge and headed over toward the elevator.

Daniel cleared his throat and the hostess looked up.

“Yes?”

She seemed surprised that he was still standing there.

“You haven’t forgotten the taxi?” Daniel said.

She smiled.

“Of course. The taxi.”

She smiled even more broadly. An oddly stiff smile. If it weren’t so ridiculous, he would have said she was afraid.

The firelight was dancing over the stuffed animal heads on the wall, making them look alive. The fox grinned maliciously and the ibex looked like a stern old man with its beard and furrowed brow.

“Well? Are you going to make the call?” he asked.

“One moment, please. Just a moment.” Her smile was wavering and she looked anxiously over Daniel’s shoulder.

A male host with graying temples was heading toward them quickly over the carpet and polished floor, as if he had been summoned by a secret signal. He exchanged a quick glance with the hostess behind the desk, then gave Daniel a stern look.

“Oh, it’s you. You came up here before, I heard. Please don’t bother the staff with your pranks.”

“He doesn’t mean any harm,” the hostess said in a conciliatory voice. “He was just having a bit of a joke.”

“But that sort of thing gets very tedious in the long run.”

“They all joke about leaving. Surely he’s allowed to do that too?”

The host shrugged.

“As long as it remains a joke. Just say if it starts to bother you.”

He irritably picked up the key from the counter and held it out to Daniel, as if it were some rubbish he had dropped, then marched quickly away.

The hostess smiled at Daniel. She didn’t seem scared anymore.

“A taxi, that was it, wasn’t it?” she said breezily, straightening her back and raising her hand to salute him. “Of course, sir. Right away.”

She burst out laughing at her little performance.

Then she calmly went back to work on her files.

DANIEL WAS
astonished at the reaction of the staff, to put it mildly. At first he had felt relieved that the hostess didn’t seem to be taking the matter too seriously. He had imagined that he would be called in to see the clinic’s management, where he would be interrogated and then given a severe reprimand. The hostess’s nonchalant behavior and her unwillingness to help him arrange transport was so bizarre there it could only mean one thing: She didn’t believe him.

He had only himself to blame. He had spent a week doing his best to fool her, and he was forced to conclude that he had succeeded only too well.

Now at least he had told them what was going on, and it wasn’t his problem if they chose to believe him or not. He wasn’t going to spend another minute at this clinic. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be put through any more “tests.” Himmelstal might be a luxury clinic in some respects, but their patient safety measures were atrocious. It was probably an oversight that he and Marko had been left without staff overnight on a locked ward, and sheer bad luck that the fire occurred just then, but even so. That sort of thing simply shouldn’t be allowed to happen at a clinic. And clearly Marko shouldn’t have been able to disconnect the fire alarm.

He still hadn’t received an apology from the staff, and he wasn’t planning to hang around waiting for one. If no one was willing to help him arrange transport from the clinic, he’d have to ask someone in the village instead.

On his way down through the park he met a man carrying a tennis racket in a case. He smiled warmly at Daniel and called, “Do you fancy a game?”

“I’m afraid not,” Daniel replied. “It would have been nice, but I’m on my way out of here.”

“Aren’t we all? Until then we just have to make the best of it, don’t we?”

Daniel nodded and carried on down the hillside.

Down in the village he stopped by the well and looked hesitantly at the cobbled streets that radiated out from the little square. Where should he go? Hannelores Bierstube was the only place he had been to up to now, and that wasn’t open at this time of day. He saw a small shop and decided to try there.

The array of goods on offer in the shop was decidedly eclectic. There were shelves of groceries and cosmetics and DVDs, and there was a rack of clothes. A broad-shouldered man was standing idly in one corner. He showed no interest in Daniel, but he was evidently the salesperson.

“Excuse me,” Daniel said. “I need to get to the nearest town. I understand that there’s no public transport. But do you think I could get a lift with someone? I’d pay, naturally.”

The assistant adjusted a pile of T-shirts and slowly turned to face Daniel. He stood with his legs apart and his strong arms folded and chewed his gum for a while before saying, “Are you going to buy anything?”

There was something familiar about him, but Daniel couldn’t pinpoint where he’d seen him before. At the bierstube, probably.

“Buy anything? No, but—”

“This is a shop. If you’re not planning to buy anything, I suggest you leave,” the assistant said, pointing at the door.

His shirtsleeve slid up slightly, revealing a tattoo on his lower arm. At that moment Daniel remembered where he had seen him before: He was the man who had been lifting weights in the gym at the clinic. A patient doing vocational rehab in the village shop? Unless the villagers had access to the clinic gym, of course.

Daniel walked out.

It had stopped raining, but the sky was still dark. The streets were empty. He followed the main road out of the village and carried on, hood up, with a firm grasp on the straps of the rucksack.

Veils of fog hung like wet rags over the valley. He could hear the sound of an engine in the distance and saw a car approaching along the wider road on the other side of the valley. Obviously that was where he should be if he wanted to get a lift. But the river was blocking his way, and he hadn’t noticed a bridge so far. The only bridge he could recall seeing was the one he had crossed when he first arrived at the clinic, and that lay a long way off to the east. He’d have to go back at least a couple of miles, and he didn’t feel like doing that. There had to be another bridge at some point.

The rain started to fall again, light but persistent. Leafy thickets of deciduous trees were now lining the right-hand side of the road. A tractor and trailer emerged from a turning into one of these small groves. Both the tractor and trailer were tiny, the sort that are normally used in parks and residential areas. The trailer was heavily laden with roughly chopped chunks of wood.

Daniel waved down the tractor and said, “I’m on my way to the nearest town. Could you take me part of the way?”

The man driving the tractor had a thin beard, graying shoulder-length hair, and a large cowboy hat on his head. Daniel had spoken to him in German, but the reply came in American English.

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m not a patient, if that’s what you think,” Daniel said irritably.

The man in the tractor eyed him suspiciously.

“Okay,” he said after a while.

Now Daniel thought he understood the reason for the man’s reluctance. There was only space for one person in the little tractor; there was no passenger seat.

The man gestured impatiently toward the trailer load of wood.

Daniel walked round, clambered up, and stood at the back, holding tight to a metal pole. The trailer jerked and set off.

After a while the road curved and started to head upward. Daniel recognized their surroundings. This was where he and Max had gone fishing. Through the fir trees he could hear the rapids, fierce and foaming in this section of the valley. The road grew steeper and more uneven, the trailer shook, and it was only with a great effort that he managed to hold on.

He heard the sound of cowbells as they drove past sloping meadows with pale brown cows standing still and grazing in the rain. They were high up the slope now, close to the Gravel Quarry. Fir trees rose up around them through the fog, taller, thinner, more elegantly continental than their Swedish cousins.

Then the tractor stopped.

They were in front of a house that was architecturally very similar to those down in the village: shuttered windows, a balcony with an ornate balustrade, scalloped barge boards. But this house was painted shocking pink, the details picked out in lime green, bright yellow, and purple, apart from the shutters, which were painted in a black and white zebra pattern. On the railing around the veranda was a large hand-painted sign with the words “Tom’s Place.”

The man in the cowboy hat climbed down from the tractor. Daniel jumped down onto the ground and looked round as he tried to flex his fingers, which had gone stiff from clinging to the metal pole.

Opposite the house was a little sawmill, and in the yard there were stacks of timber, spreading an aromatic smell of fresh wood. On the veranda were grotesque sculptures carved from misshapen logs and tree stumps.

The man went up the steps and into the house. Was he going to get the keys to some larger vehicle? Or phone someone? Daniel waited a moment, but when the man didn’t reappear he went in after him.

He found himself in what looked like a living room that had been gradually transformed into a workshop. Among the dirty upholstered chairs was a carpentry bench, and the threadbare Persian rugs were covered with sawdust and wood shavings.

There were more of the bizarre sculptures in here, and at the far end of the room was a collection of stumps that were presumably intended to become sculptures in the future. The fog and the surrounding fir trees made the room as gloomy as if it were evening. It was cool inside, and there was a smell of old cigarette smoke.

“Did you have something to sell me?” the man in the cowboy hat asked. He was sitting in an armchair whose stuffing was spilling out of the shabby fabric like moss from cracks in a rock face.

Daniel shook his head, confused. “I just want a lift.”

The man snorted and took his hat off. Under it he was wearing a multicolored headband woven from some sort of wool, with little tassels dangling off it. He kept his dirty suede jacket and cowboy boots on. He leaned over, lit the floor lamp, and began picking at a half-finished sculpture with a knife.

“You’ve made some lovely things,” Daniel said.

He waited for a moment, then, when he got no response, he went on. “Do you know anyone who could drive me to a bus or train station? Obviously I’m willing to pay.”

The man was evidently too absorbed in his work to reply. Daniel waited in silence. Once the critical moment had passed, the man looked up and pulled a face.

“You’re crazy. So fucking crazy. I’ve always known that,” he suddenly said in a voice that managed to express both derision and sympathy.

Daniel gulped.

“You’re probably getting me mixed up with my brother. I can see why. We’re twins. You might have met him in the village, perhaps? Max?”

The man snorted again and went on with his carving.

“I’ve been visiting him at the clinic down there, and now it’s time to leave,” Daniel continued.

The man had slid off the armchair and was now kneeling beside the lump of wood. Squinting, he looked at it from various angles, holding it away from him, then bringing it closer. The whole while his lips kept moving, but the sound they were making was so faint and unclear that Daniel had to take a few steps closer to hear what he was saying: “So fucking crazy, so fucking crazy, so fucking crazy…”

Daniel pulled back. While he tried to think of something suitable to say, he looked at the strange sculptures. He was simultaneously impressed and unsettled by them. Facial features had been drawn out of the contours of the wood with such skill that they seemed to have been there from the start and merely revealed rather than created.

Some of them had exaggeratedly coarse features, others looked like embryos, curled up with their eyes closed, with flat noses and pawlike hands. Over by the door stood an old man, the size of a five-year-old child, but there was something slack and retarded about him. His eyelids were heavy and his jaw jutted out to form a bowl that was evidently used as an ashtray.

Daniel cleared his throat.

“Your name’s Tom?”

The question was superfluous. The name was all over the place. It had been carved into every sculpture in capital letters and had been burned onto all the tools hanging above the workbench. It was also etched into the wooden base of the floor lamp, Daniel realized. It was repeated time after time, from the floor and up toward the bulb itself, like runes on a magic staff. Most striking, however, were the bright pink capital letters spray painted across the back of the old sofa.
TOM.
Every object in the room seemed to have been marked with the name. As if the man were worried about someone stealing them from him. Or as if he were himself unsure of his name and needed to be reminded of it constantly.

“Okay, Tom. My name’s Daniel.”

He held his hand out toward the man.

Tom looked at his hand as if it were a leaf or a cloud or something else that you notice without actually reacting to it.

“Completely fucking crazy,” he muttered and went on with his carving.

“Really lovely things.” Daniel let his hand drop and nodded at the room. “You’re an artist?”

“I work with wood,” the man said through clenched teeth.

“So I see.”

Daniel realized he couldn’t expect much help from this weirdo. It had been a mistake to get a lift with him. He ought to get away from here as quickly as possible. He was a fair way from the village, but he could use the river to help him get his bearings. He just had to follow it down to the floor of the valley.

He picked up the rucksack from where he had left it on the floor, brushed off the sawdust, and put it on.

“It was good to see your work, Tom. Now I need to get back down into the valley and see if I can find someone else to give me a lift. You don’t happen to know where the nearest railway station is?”

Tom looked up. He stared at Daniel with friendly interest, then said, “You’re really not doing so well, are you?”

“Well, okay, I guess. The fact is—”

“You’d feel much better if you were made of wood. Then I could have made something nice out of you. Your chin.”

“My chin?” Daniel said, taken aback.

“It’s wrong. It sticks out to the left. No, hang on. It starts too early. Way too early.”

Tom screwed up his eyes and held the knife out toward Daniel, taking measurements. He started to make complicated movements in the air with the knife, as if he were carving an imaginary sculpture.

Daniel gave his chin a quick rub and coughed lightly.

“Like I said, it was good to see everything, Tom. Really great stuff. Well, take care.”

He had just left the room when Tom roared with sudden intensity: “Are you the one who’s been stealing my wood?”

Daniel turned round in surprise.

“What did you say?”

“There’s some wood missing from my store down by the rapids. Was it you who took it?”

In a sudden flashback Daniel saw the stack of wood down by the rapids where he and Max had gone fishing. The spray-painted letters
T O M
. He’d assumed that was an abbreviation of something. Max had said it was okay to take some of it: “I know the farmer.”

So this was the farmer. A paranoid old hippie who had taken a few LSD trips too many and had ended up in a cottage in the Swiss Alps.

There had been hundreds of pieces of wood in that cache. Daniel had taken five or six. Did Tom count every single one?

“I haven’t touched your wood, Tom,” he said, trying to make his voice as firm and believable as he could.

“I’ll cut the throat of anyone who touches my wood,” Tom declared matter-of-factly, drawing the knife in front of his own throat. “All the wood in the valley is mine. I’ve got the sole rights to work the forest. If you need wood, you have to buy it from me.”

“Of course,” Daniel said emphatically. “Of course. I’ll remember that.”

Tom seemed satisfied. He went over to an old-fashioned record player in the corner and put an album on. A moment later two loudspeakers roared into life and Jimi Hendrix filled the room with his deep, vibrating electric guitar.