The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  Daniel was sitting at the same table as on his earlier visit, over in the corner. He was on his second tankard of beer, there were plenty of people in the dimly lit room, and the small glass decorations on the candelabra were shimmering yellow and red like autumn leaves. There must be someone he could get a lift from. As soon as possible, and without the clinic finding out.

  Corinne’s eyes flitted from right to left beneath her brown bangs, reminding him of jokey cards of characters with moving eyes. With a rolling gait, as if she were on a boat in a stormy sea, she made her way to Daniel’s table and seemed to be singing for him alone. In the dim light from the candles he could see her makeup: pale blue eye shadow, right up to her eyebrows, bright and sparkling like the wings of an exotic butterfly.

  Hypnotized, he held out his hand and touched her lightly on the arm. She winked at him and returned to her place bedside the accordion player.

  How well did she know Max? Could she help him get a lift if he explained the situation to her?

  After the end of the performance he sat and waited for Corinne to come over. But she disappeared into the back of the bierstube and didn’t come out again.

  When the cuckoo clock struck half past eleven everyone began to leave. Daniel walked out of the bierstube and made his way quickly through the cold rain up toward the clinic. He noted that the majority of the clientele were heading in the same direction.

  When he unlocked the door to his cabin he heard a voice in the darkness off to his left.

  “You like staying out late, don’t you?”

  Behind the glowing red eye of the cigarette he could just make out his neighbor as a large shadow, a darker part of the darkness.

  “It’s good to see you back, Marko. Are you okay?” Daniel said.

  There was no answer, so he went on. “I’ve just been down in the village to have a beer.”

  Marko was breathing heavily and loudly through his nose. He sounded more like an old dog than a human being. The projecting roof protected him from the rain that was falling, soft and invisible.

  “Do as you like,” he hissed. “I never go anywhere after dark. I don’t take any risks.”

  “That’s probably wise. Good night.”

  I wonder if he goes anywhere at all of his own volition, Daniel thought. He seems to be stuck to the wall of his cabin.

  He switched on his computer, opened the e-mails, found Corinne’s week-old message, and wrote a reply:

  I very much enjoyed your performance this evening. You made a fantastic sailor.

  Is the offer of a picnic still open? If it is, I’d love to go with you as soon as possible.

  Sorry to be so slow replying. Things have been rather complicated. I’ll explain later.

  After a moment’s hesitation over what name to sign off with, he typed:

  Max

  As soon as he had sent it a hostess walked in through the door.

  “Everything okay, Max?”

  “I’ve already explained to your colleague that I’m Max’s brother. Hasn’t anyone told you?” Daniel said irritably.

  “Not that I can remember,” the hostess said cheerily. “Do you want anything to help you sleep?”

  She opened her shoulder bag and peered down into it.

  “No thanks.”

  The computer bleeped, and when he turned back to the screen he saw he had already received a reply from Corinne.

  Daniel opened the e-mail. It was short and to the point:

  Be at the well nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

  25

  THE AIR was cool and clear and had a smell that Daniel recognized from his childhood but couldn’t identify. When the memory finally broke through he realized why the smell was so confusing. It was the smell of snow, which was completely wrong in the middle of July. The grass meadow was radiant green, full of red clover and bellflowers.

  But when he looked at the mountain with the etched figures on the other side of the valley, the one he called the Wall, he discovered that its fringe of fir trees was no longer green but white. And when his gaze wandered up above the meadow he saw that the Gravel Quarry no longer looked quite as cheerless and quarrylike as it had, seeing as its upper slopes were now sparkling with what looked like a sprinkling of sugar.

  The rain of the previous evening had fallen as snow up there. It was beautiful, and surprising.

  They were skirting the valley along a narrow path that Corinne knew. She was wearing a thick green sweater and had a hair clip above each ear. He had hardly recognized her by the well. As soon as she saw him she gave him a curt nod and started walking without saying a word. He had fallen in beside her and followed her out of the village.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Corinne glanced across the meadow.

  “That’s what we in the countryside call cows.”

  “No, not the cows. Down there,” Daniel said, pointing at something that looked like a small Greek temple.

  “That’s the leper cemetery. Haven’t you seen it before? Come on, let’s go and take a look.”

  As they got closer Daniel could see blackened, leaning crosses surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Immediately above them lay the little stone temple that he had seen from the distance. It was slightly smaller than his own alpine cabin, with pillars and some steep steps, and the rear of it seemed to have been built into the hillside. Its front was a solid wall.

  “It’s an impressive memorial. A proper little mausoleum. Whose is it?”

  “No idea. Someone rich and powerful. I suppose they got leprosy as well,” Corinne said. “The cemetery belonged to the convent. The villagers had their own cemetery down by the church. They didn’t want to get their dead mixed up with the lepers.”

  Corinne took off her sweater, laid it out on the damp steps of the mausoleum, and sat down on it. She got bread, cheese, and cider out of her rucksack. Daniel sat down on his jacket beside her.

  “A good spot for a picnic,” she said, pouring him a mug of cider. “When I first arrived in the valley I often used to come to these steps to sit and think. Now I don’t like coming here alone. But with you it’s fine.”

  She leaned against the stone pillar, closed her eyes, and breathed in the fresh air.

  Daniel looked at her. It was obvious that she knew Max, but how well, and in what way? Probably not terribly well. No one knew Max well. Had they slept together? Presumably. How would she react if he put his hand on her thigh?

  He remembered the girl in London. He had seen her once more, just before he left, at the dairy counter of a large supermarket. When she recognized him all the blood drained from her face and she had left her basket on the floor and rushed out of the shop.

  The sun was warm and the smell of snow was lingering in the air. The cows were wandering across the meadow with the high mountains in the background, like a picture on a box of Swiss chocolates. Daniel closed his eyes and listened to their bells. It was an odd sound, completely unpredictable, random and without purpose. A little clang here, another somewhere else.

  “It’s such a relaxing sound,” he said.

  “At a distance like this, maybe. But a bell like that makes a hell of a noise close up,” Corinne said. “That’s why I ring my bell so carefully when I perform. I always think of those poor cows who have that awful noise right next to their ears.”

  “It’s actually cruelty to animals,” he agreed.

  Corinne cut a slice of cheese.

  “They’re probably all stone-deaf by now,” she said.

  “Or else they’ve got appalling tinnitus.”

  She held out the knife with the slice of cheese to Daniel.

  “Try it. It comes from these cows. Himmelstal’s very own dairy. All their stuff’s very expensive, but what can you do? It’s the only dairy in the valley. No competition.”

  He popped the piece of cheese in his mouth, but before he could say how good it was she went on, almost to herself, “Oh, I get so sick of this valley sometimes.”

>   “So why are you here then?”

  She glanced quickly at him.

  “I don’t ask you why you’re here,” she said.

  “Feel free, if you want to.”

  “I don’t.”

  One of the cows had come down to the cemetery and was rubbing its horns against the iron railings, making the bell round its neck ring crazily. He had to raise his voice.

  “If you weren’t here in Himmelstal, where would you like to be?”

  “Purely hypothetically?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, then said, “In some big European city. Where I could work in a small theater and do my own thing. Put on my own plays. Direct. I trained as an actress.”

  He nodded. “I guessed.”

  He felt like adding: I’ll come with you, Corinne. I can support you until you find your theater. I’m an interpreter, I can get work anywhere.

  For a moment he saw this imaginary future before him, down to the smallest detail: He and Corinne living in some old apartment next to a park. Corinne in jeans, T-shirt, and sunglasses, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a ray of sunlight colored green by the foliage outside, with a bundle of scripts in her freckled hands.

  “You had dinner with Samantha the other evening,” Corinne said.

  Daniel started. Samantha? The woman who had been at the clinic for eight years. Daniel hadn’t seen her since that evening, and he had almost managed to persuade himself that their encounter had been a dream, particularly the latter part of it.

  “How do you know that?” he asked in astonishment.

  Corinne shrugged her shoulders and cut herself a slice of cheese. The cow had stopped scratching itself and was watching them intently over the railings and the rows of crooked little crosses. Its bell was completely mute.

  “You villagers seem to have a lot of contact with the clinic,” he went on. “Most of the bierstube’s clients are patients there, aren’t they? I recognized a lot of them last night.”

  “Really?” she said with weary irony.

  “Customers with plenty of money and not much else to spend it on.”

  “You’re absolutely right there. What are you getting at?”

  “I presume most of the businesses in the village make a living from the clinic’s patients. It’s a big clinic, after all. There are probably more people there than there are in the village itself. And some of you villagers must work at the clinic. In the kitchens, cleaning and so on.”

  “Of course. That’s obvious.”

  “The clinic management is good to you, letting you use the gym, the library, and pool. In return you’re good to them, letting them know if anyone tries to escape. And you never give lifts to anyone who wants to leave. Am I right?”

  She laughed and shook her head as she wrapped the cheese in its waxed paper.

  “I don’t actually know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re the first friendly person I’ve met here,” Daniel went on. “Everyone else has been distinctly unfriendly. No one else has been willing to help me.”

  She was sitting still with her hands on the wrapped cheese, staring at him with an expression of utter bewilderment. The cow had tired of them and had gone back to grazing the meadow.

  “Help you? With what?”

  “You think you’re talking to Max, don’t you? You know him? Do you remember the long-haired bloke with a beard who was sitting next to Max in the bierstube last week? His brother?”

  She nodded hesitantly. She looked scared.

  “I’ll explain.”

  And he did.

  She fiddled with her bracelet and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

  “Twins?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “You do believe me, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. It would explain why you’re talking so weirdly. And you are actually very different. Your manner, I mean.”

  “You have to help me get away from here, Corinne. No one else believes me. How far is it to the nearest town?”

  She laughed.

  “A long way.”

  “Have you got a car?”

  “I can’t even drive.”

  “But you must know someone with a car.”

  She gazed at him sadly.

  “It wouldn’t work. I wish I could help you. Believe me. But only the doctors can get you out of here. The doctors make the decisions.”

  “Do they make decisions for you as well?”

  She bit her lip and said nothing.

  He leaned closer and repeated his question: “Do the doctors make decisions for you as well, Corinne?”

  She lowered her head and said quietly, “For me as well. They decide everything.”

  Daniel wanted to object, but before he could say anything the clear air was shredded by a terrible howl. It came from up by the trees and was so concentrated, raw, and terrified that it could hardly have been made by a human being.

  26

  “WHAT WAS THAT?” Corinne whispered.

  A cow would seem the most logical answer, but the pale-brown cows on the meadow didn’t seem to be missing one of their number, and were still grazing, entirely unconcerned. (Which might have been proof of Corinne’s theory that they were stone-deaf.)

  Then there was another howl, this time more shrill.

  “It’s human,” Daniel declared, standing up. “There must have been an accident.”

  He looked off toward the trees and felt Corinne’s hand on his.

  “Don’t go,” she said firmly. “I’ll call for help. Just don’t go up there.”

  She dug about frantically in her bag and pulled out her cell phone.

  “Don’t go,” she repeated as she dialed a number, then pressed the phone to her ear, all the while clinging on to Daniel with her other hand.

  The man—Daniel could tell that it was definitely a man—was roaring nonstop from inside the forest now.

  He freed himself from her hand and started to run up the hillside.

  It took a few seconds for his eyes to acclimatize to the shift from the sunlight of the meadow to the gloom of the fir forest. At first he could only see one of the two men, standing with his legs wide apart and his cowboy hat pressed down firmly over his forehead. Daniel recognized him as Tom, the crazy wood-carver.

  It took him another few seconds before he saw the second man, who was tied to a tree trunk, completely naked. His skinny and very hairy body might almost have blurred into the bark of the tree had it not been for the dark-red blood that was flowing freely down his torso and legs from several wounds.

  The scene looked like a prehistoric display of primitive religious worship and human sacrifice. It was appalling, and unreal.

  “And now to mark the eighth block of wood,” Tom intoned solemnly, slowly moving his knife toward the fettered man’s stomach.

  He tickled him gently with the point of the knife as he studied the upturned, howling face, then withdrew the knife once more.

  “Why are you screaming? I haven’t touched you yet.”

  The bound man looked down quickly at his stomach, then with a burst of laughter Tom cut him just below the navel. The man’s body stiffened in a fresh howl that sounded dry and cracked, like a broken instrument.

  Daniel stood there transfixed. Neither of the men seemed to have noticed him.

  The cows were very close. Daniel couldn’t see them, but the hard, metallic clang of their bells merged with the man’s screams. It was like a terrible dream.

  “You took fourteen pieces of wood, didn’t you?” Tom cried. “Fourteen, wasn’t it? Or was it more?”

  He’s utterly mad, Daniel thought. Who had Corinne called? Was there a policeman in the village? Probably not. And there was no point expecting any help from the lethargic, withdrawn villagers. Had she called the clinic? The man was losing blood fast. And at any moment Tom was capable of dispensing the blow that would finish him off instantly.

  The cow
bells and screaming drowned out the sound of Daniel’s footsteps as he crept around behind the men, under cover of the trees, stopping behind a dense fir close to Tom. He inadvertently knocked one of the branches, making it swing. Tom spun round, landing with both legs bent like a frog. He stared intently at the swaying branch. Daniel stood absolutely still.

  Through a gap in the foliage he could see Tom get closer, then hold out his hand to grab the branch. Any second now his hiding place would be revealed. He felt like he was about to pass out.

  But Tom’s mind followed its own path. He seemed more interested in the swaying branch itself than what had made it move.

  “Fir twigs,” he said thoughtfully, tugging gently at the branch. “Of course. I think I’ll cut out your innards and stuff you full of fir twigs.”

  For a moment Daniel thought Tom was talking to him, that he had seen him after all. Just as he was about to raise his hand to ward off the knife, Tom suddenly let go of the branch and turned back toward the man tied to the tree.

  “Yes, that’s what I’ll do,” he declared firmly, as though he had just had a brilliant idea. “Shit, yes. Fir twigs. That’ll look great.”

  Tom went on chattering in a ceaseless torrent while Daniel watched him through the foliage. He noted that Tom’s grip on the knife got looser the more animated he became, until it flew out of his hand in the middle of one particularly expansive gesture.

  Daniel estimated the distance between Tom and the knife on the ground. Tom moved with the agility of a young person, lithe and quick, but his gray hair and the creases on his face suggested he was in his sixties, and he didn’t look especially strong. How long would it be before he picked up the knife again? A few seconds, maybe. Then it would be too late to save the bound man. And possibly too late to save himself as well.

  Daniel stepped out between the branches and in a few quick strides was behind Tom. Tom had no time to notice anything and was still chattering and gesticulating when Daniel put his left arm round his neck and wrestled him to the ground. His hat flew off and his long gray hair whipped at Daniel’s face, surprisingly soft, gentle as lamb’s wool.