The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  It felt odd lying in that cramped little space, a niche in the wall with no room for anything but a bed and a shelf of books that ran around the wall of the alcove. When the little bedside lamp was lit and the curtain drawn, it felt like a secret childhood den, cozy and exciting.

  But when he turned out the light it felt a bit claustrophobic. The heavy curtain shut out every glimmer of light, the air felt heavy and low in oxygen, and the smell, which couldn’t be anything but his brother’s body odor, suddenly was stronger and more intrusive. But the bed was wonderfully comfortable and his senses were slightly muddled by the beer. Within a couple of minutes he was asleep.

  As if in a dream he saw the beam of light from a flashlight. It didn’t hit him right in the face, but was directed discreetly at the wall. He blinked and saw a figure leaning over him. A woman’s face, shining white like a moon, smiling tenderly. The feeling of confusion and fear subsided and was replaced by a great sense of calm. It was only Mom, come to tuck him in.

  The curtain fell back into place, it was dark again, and outside he could hear amiable whispering and footsteps going away as he slid back into a sleep from which he had never really woken.

  18

  WEDNESDAY WASN’T as sunny and warm as the previous few days. Daniel spent the morning in the cabin with his paperback. By lunchtime he had finished it. He heated up one of the cans of baked beans he found in the cupboard above the stove.

  As he ate he looked out of the window. A restful mist was drifting over the valley, softening everything. He had always liked summer days like this, mild but sunless. He gazed at the rock face on the other side of the valley, with its patches of damp that looked almost human. It was odd that nature could come up with something like that. As if the valley had been populated by skinny giants who had walked right into the mountain and left these traces behind. Or like Hiroshima, where people had been burned onto walls like shadows.

  Suddenly, in the middle of a mouthful, he remembered last night’s visit. The beam of the flashlight by his bed, the woman’s face that he had sleepily confused with his mother’s. Obviously it was the nightly patrol checking that he was there. Daniel had forgotten that they came every night and had gone to bed without expecting them. He had a clear memory of having locked the door from the inside, so they obviously had their own key.

  After lunch he went to the clinic library and borrowed another crime novel by the same author. It all went smoothly. He didn’t have to give his name, just showed the book to the male librarian who said lazily, “Sure, Max, no problem.”

  “You don’t want to check the book out?” Daniel asked cautiously.

  “No need,” the librarian said with a friendly smile. “I never forget a face, or a book.”

  He returned to the cabin, saying a discreet hello to his neighbor, who was sitting half asleep by the wall of his cabin, his face gazing upward like some huge toad. He spent the rest of the afternoon with the new book and playing a few games on Max’s computer.

  He had been pleased to discover that Max had left his laptop behind, but he hadn’t managed to get an Internet connection. Instead he just found some sort of internal network for the clinic. Various links informed him of the treatments, courses, and activities offered by the clinic. There were even a few advertisements for shops and services down in the village. Hannelores Bierstube had a picture of Corinne in her puffy sleeves and laced-up bodice, with a frothing tankard of beer in each hand. Some of the pages required a password for access.

  The link From My Corner of the Valley turned out to contain the reflections of the village priest, Father Dennis, who had been photographed in full regalia in front of his church. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters was the heading of this week’s observation. Daniel read on: It struck me that these words from the Psalms could well be about Himmelstal. Where could the pastures be greener than here? Where could there be a more soothing, babbling brook?

  The priest was right, Daniel thought. He had never seen greener grass anywhere.

  I like to think of Himmelstal’s inhabitants as a little chosen flock that the Lord has shepherded into this particular valley so that we might finally find peace, Father Dennis continued.

  Daniel clicked on and found a list of that autumn’s film evenings, details of circuit-training sessions, the colorful assortment of flowers and vegetables available from the market garden, and a course on how to control impulses led by one of the clinic’s psychologists.

  He logged out of the network and checked to see if there was anything else interesting in the computer. He found a few dull sports and puzzle games and an internal e-mail program, but not much else. The computer was strangely empty. Max seemed to have purged it of any personal files.

  Daniel opened the e-mail without needing a password. There was only one message in the inbox. Under Sender it said Corinne. And the subject: Meeting?

  He hesitated for a few seconds, then closed the inbox. He went back to the soccer game he had looked at earlier and spent five minutes playing it, without much interest. Then he opened the inbox again, then the message. It was very brief.

  How about a picnic? I’ll bring something to eat. Sorry if I seemed cross and whiny last night. I was so tired. Hugs.

  Corinne

  So he had guessed right last night. There was something going on between Max and Corinne. Presumably their relationship was a secret. It could hardly be appropriate for a girl from the village to be seeing one of the clinic’s patients.

  He had been right about something else as well: Corinne had accepted him as Max without any hesitation.

  He had no objection to going on a picnic with Corinne if he was the one Corinne wanted to meet. But he wasn’t. And Max was coming back tomorrow, and Daniel had to stay at the clinic to be there when he arrived, and then leave.

  He was longing to be himself again and not have to pretend to be someone else. He really wasn’t enjoying his stay here at this luxury clinic. Even though everyone, oddly enough, seemed to accept his false identity, he was still plagued by a gnawing anxiety that he was about to be discovered. And there were a number of patients here whom he didn’t like at all. What had that bloke in the dining room said? “We don’t like people who sail under false flags.”

  It would be a big relief to get away from here. But how was that going to work, in purely practical terms? Was he going to have to go through the same routine with the beard as Max had done, in order to restore his original appearance? In order, so to speak, to disguise himself as himself? What a peculiar thought. That hadn’t occurred to him until now. But Max was bound to have thought of everything.

  19

  “GOOD MORNING. Thursday again,” the blue-clad hostess said, putting a paper bag down on the floor.

  “Is that for me?” Daniel asked, still drowsy.

  The hostess laughed. It was the little dark-haired one, the one who had shined her flashlight at him the other evening.

  “It’s Thursday, Max. Laundry day. Have you got anything for us?”

  He peered in the bag. It contained a pile of clean clothes, neatly folded.

  “Have you got anything?” she repeated impatiently.

  “Your bag?” the other hostess explained when Daniel looked blank. She pointed toward the cupboard where the laundry bag was evidently kept.

  “Ah. Just a moment.”

  He took out the laundry bag full of dirty clothes and handed it to them. The little dark-haired girl felt it, checking how heavy it was. Her porcelain forehead crumpled into a frown.

  “Your sheets? Are they really in here?”

  “Of course, the sheets.”

  Daniel hurried over to the alcove, pulled the sheets off, and bundled them into the bag.

  “You’d forgotten it was Thursday, hadn’t you?” the hostess said with a smile.

  No, he most certainly hadn’t forgotten. But laundry wasn’t at the forefront of his mind.

  Once they had gone he unpacked
the clean laundry from the bag. Max’s clothes and, at the bottom, a set of freshly pressed sheets.

  As he made the bed in the cramped alcove, he found that something had fallen onto the floor when he had pulled the dirty sheets off. He picked it up and saw it was the photograph Max had shown him the night before he left. The girl with the badly beaten face. The traitor’s daughter. The victim of the Mafia. Max had evidently kept the picture under his mattress.

  Daniel lifted up the mattress to see if the threatening letter was there too. But there was nothing else.

  He put the photograph back under the mattress and finished making the bed. Typical of Max to come back on a Thursday when the clean laundry was handed out. He would get to sleep in fresh, clean sheets while Daniel had had to make do with Max’s used ones.

  He stayed inside the cabin for most of the day. Around seven o’clock he set off down the slope, past the modern glass buildings toward the old main building.

  It was overcast but still warm. The valley seemed filled with stagnant, stale air, like a room that was never aired. Isolated drops of rain fell through the air, and he could hear the sound of balls being hit over on the tennis courts.

  He went up the ornate flight of steps and over to the reception desk in the lobby.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the hostess, who was sitting at her computer.

  She turned to him with a warm smile.

  “Hello, Max. Can I help you with something?”

  “I was wondering if my brother had arrived. I was thinking I might have missed him.”

  Shrill voices drowned out his question and he had to repeat it. Through the open doors of the lounge he could see the skinny man from the swimming pool in the company of an older but very lively woman. They seemed to be playing a game.

  “Your brother?” the hostess said. “The one who visited you a few days ago?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Was he going to be coming back? I thought he’d gone home to Sweden.”

  “No, he’s been doing some traveling. He wanted to see more of Switzerland.”

  “I see. Himmelstal is beautiful but small…confined.”

  She let out a mischievous and almost embarrassed laugh, as though she’d made a joke and wasn’t sure how he would react.

  “He’s going to pay me another short visit before he goes home to Sweden,” Daniel went on. “I was just wondering if he’d arrived.”

  The old woman in the lounge burst out laughing and threw herself back in the heavily upholstered armchair while the man angrily tapped one of the game pieces on the board.

  “I haven’t seen him,” the hostess said seriously.

  “Okay, I just wanted to check.”

  Daniel went back to the cabin. The rain seemed to have changed its mind.

  He waited an hour and a half before going back to reception.

  “Sorry, Max,” the hostess said before he had time to say anything. “Your brother hasn’t arrived yet.”

  Daniel went outside. He wandered about in front of the main building, gazing down toward the road that the van had brought him up a few days before. Darkness fell. He waited until ten o’clock before returning to the cabin. Thursday, or Friday at the latest, Max had said. So it was going to be Friday.

  When the night round arrived he was sitting listening to the Dutch jazz music. And when Thursday turned into Friday it was Daniel and not Max who crept down between the clean, slightly stiff sheets.

  He waited until one o’clock the following day. Then he went over to reception.

  There was a different hostess there now. A young girl with red hair and black-framed glasses that were too big for her face. It looked like she’d borrowed them from her father.

  “Your brother? Was he coming back?”

  He had to go through it all again. His brother’s tour of the Alps, and then a last visit to Himmelstal before he went home.

  “I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “I’m worried I might have missed him. I’ve been out for a bit, so maybe our paths have crossed somewhere.”

  “I’ll check the register.”

  She pulled out the large green book that Daniel had written his own details in a few days before.

  “Hmm. Daniel Brant. Arrived at six twenty p.m. on July fifth. Left at five fifty a.m. on July seventh. He hasn’t signed in again. So, sorry. Was he supposed to be coming today?”

  “Yes, today at the latest.”

  Before she closed the ledger Daniel caught sight of his signature, and beneath it, next to the departure date, another signature, also his name. But he hadn’t written that one. Max had done that, to confirm his departure. Daniel would never have believed that anyone could write so much like him.

  The girl tapped at the computer, then shook her head apologetically.

  “We’ve had no notification of any visitors to see you, either today or any other day. And no one has turned up spontaneously at the gate. Maybe you misunderstood? Was he really going to come back?”

  “Yes! Definitely!”

  “Hmm,” the girl said. “Maybe he… Well, I was on duty here the morning he left, and he looked a bit nervous. He seemed to be in a hurry to get away. Had you had an argument?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Hmm,” she repeated, frowning in a way that made her look older than she was. “You know, some people don’t like it here. They want to get away as quickly as they can. I got a feeling your brother was like that.”

  “But he said he was going to come back. Thursday, or Friday at the latest,” Daniel protested angrily.

  “Maybe he didn’t dare say otherwise. I mean, he might not have wanted to upset you. Maybe he was ashamed about not staying longer.”

  “If he does turn up, would you mind telling him I’m in the cabin?”

  “Of course.”

  Daniel had been in the cabin for twenty minutes or so when a cell phone started to ring. An elegant little tune that could have been the soundtrack to a film of flower buds opening.

  So Max had left his phone behind! Daniel tried to work out where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be somewhere behind the front door.

  He found the phone in one of the many pockets of Max’s fishing jacket, hung up on a hook.

  The moment he pulled it out it stopped ringing. Daniel was left standing with the phone in his hand.

  Max had taken Daniel’s phone with him when he left. Presumably so he could make expensive international calls that would be charged to Daniel’s account.

  Daniel dialed his own cell number. He had a number of questions for his brother, and he would have called earlier if only he had known there was a phone in the cabin.

  As he expected, there was no answer. After a number of rings, a recorded female voice informed him that the number he had called did not exist. He dialed the number again, slowly and carefully, with the same result. So Max was in a country that couldn’t be reached through this operator.

  He looked at the phone’s screen to see which network Max used. He hadn’t taken much notice when he dialed the number. Now he saw that the background picture was a snow-covered mountaintop against a clear blue sky. In one corner was the time, the battery level, and the strength of the signal. And in the place where the name of the network usually stood, there was just the name “Himmelstal” against the blue sky, in bright white lettering, as if it, like the mountaintop immediately below, was reflecting strong sunlight. Surprised, he stared at the screen as it slowly faded and went dark.

  He almost dropped the phone on the floor with shock when it started to buzz and quiver like a large insect in his hand. The screen lit up again and the letters of the word “Himmelstal” pulsed in time with the vibrations. A moment later it began to ring.

  With a sweaty finger Daniel pressed the button to answer the call and put the phone to his ear.

  “Yes?” he managed to say. “Is that you? Where are you?”

  “Hello Max,” a woman’s voice said. “This is r
eception.”

  “Oh. Has he arrived?”

  “No. But I’ve got a message from Doctor Obermann. She’d like to see you today at four thirty.”

  Gisela Obermann. Max’s psychiatrist. Max had mentioned her, Daniel remembered.

  “Four thirty,” he said slowly. “Sorry. I can’t make it then.”

  He could hear how ridiculous it sounded. A mental patient with a full schedule.

  “What time would you like to suggest?”

  “I’d rather not come at all,” he said as politely as he could. “I don’t feel motivated. Doctor Obermann knows how I feel.”

  There was silence on the line.

  Daniel held his breath. “You just have to say no,” Max had said. But could he rely on that? Maybe it wasn’t anywhere near as straightforward as that? Maybe they’d come and get him by force, and shove a suppository up his ass if he protested?

  “Would you like me to pass that on to Doctor Obermann?” the girl asked.

  “Yes please. That would be very kind.”

  “Call Doctor Obermann if you change your mind. I’m sure she could find a time that would suit you.”

  “Of course. What’s her number?” Daniel asked politely.

  “You’ve got her number,” the receptionist said, and hung up.

  Daniel opened the phone’s address book. There were loads of names. Most of them just first names. Some had both first and surnames. Others just surnames, with the title “Dr.” in front of them. “Dr. Obermann” was there. He didn’t know who any of the others were. Except for one: “Corinne.”

  20

  AT QUARTER TO FIVE on Sunday afternoon there was a knock at the door. Daniel pulled aside the curtain of the alcove and sat up in bed, but before he had time to stand up the little dark-haired hostess was standing in the doorway with one of the male hosts.