The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  “Take him out, then. I don’t think we require his presence any longer. He keeps saying the same thing. To be honest, I’m sick of him.”

  Gisela stood up abruptly and nodded to Daniel.

  “I’ll come with you to your room,” she whispered.

  “Well, that’s that,” Karl Fischer said once Gisela Obermann and Daniel had left. “You must make allowances for Doctor Obermann. She has a lot of ambition and works hard. I’m afraid everything has gotten to be rather too much for her recently. Does anyone have anything to add, or can we end this meeting now?”

  “On an entirely different subject,” Brian Jenkins said, waving a sheet of paper. “This list of researchers who have been invited to visit. There’s one name here, Greg Jones. Who the hell is that? I’ve never heard of him.”

  Karl Fischer ran his fingers through his short gray hair. He thought for a moment, cleared his throat, and said, “As you all know, we have a very generous anonymous benefactor who has given a great deal of money to Himmelstal. Well, that’s this Greg Jones. He would rather I didn’t say so, so I must ask you to keep it to yourselves. His fortune is based on a cosmetics company founded by his grandfather. His sister was kidnapped by a madman when she was eleven years old. The family was prepared to pay a huge sum in ransom but there was a misunderstanding and the kidnapper didn’t get his money in time. The girl was found in a rubbish bin with her throat cut. Greg Jones wants to solve the mystery of psychopathy. Thanks to his support, we might one day succeed. The least we can do is grant his wish to visit Himmelstal and show him around. Because he doesn’t want to make a fuss, he’d rather join a group visit. I’ve promised him the very greatest discretion. He is to be treated exactly the same as our other guests.”

  Brian Jenkins let out a whistle.

  “A modest billionaire. Unusual. Greg Jones isn’t his real name, is it? Fine. As long as he invests his money in Himmelstal he can call himself whatever the hell he wants.”

  With her arm in a maternal hold around his back, Gisela Obermann led Daniel off to the elevator, then through the corridors.

  “I’m having trouble persuading the others to agree with my theory,” she said. “Most of them think you’re manipulating me. And Doctor Fischer can be rather blunt at times. I hope it didn’t upset you. Am I walking too fast for you?”

  Daniel was no longer using the crutches but was still limping slightly. He missed the contact lenses. He suddenly realized what it must be like to be old, to have difficulty walking and seeing. Gisela slowed down.

  “Considering what I’ve had to put up with in this place, a few blunt words really don’t matter much,” Daniel said. “By the way, what does ‘lamb’ mean?”

  “It’s Himmelstal slang. That’s what the residents call the rest of us. People with consciences and the ability to empathize. We’re lambs. They regard us as stupid, lesser creatures, but simultaneously as rather attractive, I think. Pure, innocent. They see a sort of beauty in us. Mind you, we doctors aren’t really regarded as proper lambs. Nor are the clinic staff. Because we’re on our guard, we know too much. Real lambs are probably what’s really missing in here.”

  Daniel thought about Samantha, and something suddenly struck him.

  “There are both men and women in the valley.”

  “Mostly men,” Gisela said. “Eighty percent. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that psychopathy is more common in men, but it does tend to manifest itself in more violent acts, which makes them more liable to criminal and medical investigation. And we get most of our residents through the legal system.”

  “But there are women here as well,” Daniel pointed out. “Residents of both sexes spend their whole lives in Himmelstal, interacting freely with one another. But I haven’t seen any children so far. Not in the village, nor anywhere else in the valley. Not a single child!”

  “We want everything to be as natural as possible in Himmelstal. There’s no ban on sexual relationships. But obviously we can’t have any children here. Everyone, women and men alike, are sterilized. It’s done as soon as people arrive.”

  She said this calmly and matter-of-factly, as though she were talking about vaccinations against the flu.

  “So Max has been…”

  Gisela nodded. “Everyone has. And because you and Max share a body, that applies to you as well.”

  She’s talking about Max. Not me, Daniel said to himself. This doesn’t involve me.

  “To start with we feared that the women would be taken advantage of. But the women here in Himmelstal can bite back. So people are allowed to pair up however they like. That’s the best way. As natural as possible. Some were couples before they even arrived. Like Hannelore and her husband at the bierstube. There are quite a lot of fleeting relationships. And some homosexual relationships as well, of course. And in all likelihood prostitution too.”

  They had reached the ward where Daniel’s room was. Gisela tapped in a code and the doors slid open for them.

  “But we don’t really know much about that, it’s all part of the residents’ private lives. Everyone gets tested for sexual infections. It’s done as soon as a resident arrives. Tests, then any necessary treatment. So here there’s no need for anyone to worry about anything. No pregnancy. No sexually transmitted diseases. A free-love paradise, I suppose.”

  They stopped at the door to Daniel’s room.

  “Well, here we are,” Gisela said, opening it for him.

  But Daniel didn’t move.

  “Hang on a moment. I know identical twins have the same DNA, but if Max was sterilized, you must be able to see that I’m not him. That can be checked, can’t it?”

  Gisela laughed.

  “Probably. That’s not really my area of expertise. But I imagine I’d have to get Doctor Fischer’s permission for such an unnecessary investigation. But everyone here knows who you are. You’re the only one who doesn’t.”

  She gestured toward the room.

  “Go and get some rest now. I hope you’ll be able to go back to your cabin soon. Until then, you can read through this.”

  She handed him a printout with an alpine mountaintop on the cover.

  “Some information about Himmelstal. We usually give it to new arrivals, and I suppose that’s how we have to regard you. And Doctor Heine was right, you need protection, Daniel. I’ll see what I can do. A piece of advice: Don’t tell the other residents that you’re Daniel. To them you’re still Max, okay? The social structure in Himmelstal is strictly hierarchical, and Max enjoyed a degree of respect.” She winked conspiratorially at him and whispered, “Just pretend to be him.”

  34

  DANIEL LAY on the bed in his care center room, reading for the tenth time through the brochure about Himmelstal he had been given by Gisela Obermann. Someone had finally picked up the box of contact lenses from the cabin for him.

  There was a knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Karl Fischer walked in and sat down on the edge of Daniel’s bed.

  “So, how’s our patient doing, then? You’re mending nicely, I hear. I’m pleased, Daniel. You are still Daniel, aren’t you? Or has another interesting personality popped up that I don’t know about?” he said scornfully, giving Daniel a gentle slap on his burned leg, making it jump with pain.

  Karl Fischer had never visited him in his room before. Except for the nurses, Daniel had only had contact with Gisela and a pale, skinny doctor who was an expert in burns.

  “Where’s Doctor Obermann?” he asked.

  Fischer didn’t reply, looking around the little room as if it were entirely new to him. His pale-blue eyes moved like little fish in a net of wrinkles and somehow seemed several decades younger than the rest of him. Then he caught sight of the brochure resting on Daniel’s chest. He picked it up, slapped it against the palm of his hand with a smile, and said, “Doctor Obermann has been stripped of responsibility for you. That was the unanimous decision at the end of our last meeting.”

  “What for?” Daniel asked in surpri
se. “I got on well with Doctor Obermann.”

  Karl Fischer laughed and slapped the brochure back on his chest. Daniel felt an intense dislike of the man.

  “I’m sure you did, Daniel. You managed to twist her round your finger wonderfully, didn’t you? But no one else believes this rubbish about a new personality, you need to understand that.”

  Daniel sat up in bed a little too abruptly. His side hurt and he had to close his eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths.

  “I haven’t said anything about a new personality,” he snapped. “I’ve simply said that I’m not Max, but his twin brother.”

  Doctor Fischer pressed his palms together like a saint, touched his fingertips to his thin lips, and gave Daniel a sly look.

  “There is no twin brother, my friend.”

  “No? So who was it who came to visit and wrote his name in the ledger in reception?”

  Karl Fischer winked secretively with one eye.

  “That was your older brother, wasn’t it?”

  Daniel groaned in despair.

  “Max gave you the wrong date of birth. I don’t know why, but he did. But the staff must have noticed how similar we are. Someone must have noticed that we’re twins!”

  Karl Fischer shrugged his shoulders and idly inspected one of his fingernails.

  “Don’t ask me. I never saw your brother. As I understand it, you’ve both got dark hair. But you’re the one who’s my patient; your brother doesn’t interest me. He’s gone, and I’m going to be very restrictive when it comes to future visitors for you. It only seems to give you peculiar ideas. You’ve ended up here at Himmelstal for very good reasons, and you’re going to be here for the rest of your life. The sooner you accept that, the better you’ll feel.”

  Daniel gasped and grabbed hold of the bed as if Doctor Fischer were trying to shove him into a deep pit.

  “I want a proper telephone,” he said. He tried to keep his voice steady. “I want to call Sweden.”

  He didn’t know whom he wanted to call, he didn’t really have any friends. Someone who could confirm that he was who he said he was. The school where he worked? There would be no one there during the summer. The population registry?

  Doctor Fischer tapped the brochure.

  “Residents don’t have access to external phone lines,” he said drily.

  “I’d like to talk to Doctor Obermann.”

  Daniel wished he could stop shaking. He didn’t want to break down in front of Doctor Fischer. In front of Doctor Obermann, maybe, but not Doctor Fischer.

  Fischer smiled tolerantly.

  “From now on you’re my responsibility. You won’t be seeing Doctor Obermann again. You’ll be staying here for another week. If your injuries carry on healing well and you don’t come up with any more nonsense, you’ll be allowed to move back to your cabin. But I don’t want to hear any more rubbish about twins,” he added in a sharp tone of voice. “Nothing like that.”

  He leaned across Daniel’s injured side and whispered close to his face. His breath smelled of ozone, like the air immediately after a thunderstorm.

  “The next time you go into Zone Two, you’ll be moved downstairs. Is that understood?”

  Daniel didn’t understand. But he thought it best to nod.

  PART 3

  35

  A LAMB among wolves, Daniel thought as he stood in front of the care center with the park laid out before him.

  July was turning to August. The grass on the slopes was still improbably green, but there was something in the air that told him that autumn was on its way.

  He had been desperate to get out of his room, but now that he was standing here, healed and discharged, he felt as if he had been banished and wanted to go back inside. The short walk to the cabins at the top of the hill suddenly felt like a long and dangerous hike.

  He turned toward the care center, and saw the blue sky and racing clouds mirrored in its glass façade.

  Then he took a deep breath, grasped the shoulder straps of his rucksack tight—as if it were carrying him and not the other way round—and headed quickly through the park, without looking around, and on up the slope. As on previous occasions, he encountered people on their way to the pool, tennis courts, or cafeteria. But he no longer thought they looked like tourists at a luxury hotel. He now knew that every single person he met who wasn’t dressed in a pale-blue uniform was a predator in human guise. Ravenous beasts longing to set their teeth into a real lamb.

  He had intended to walk calmly but couldn’t help running the last fifty feet to the cabin. His neighbor Marko was nowhere in sight, for which he was grateful.

  With his hand trembling, he unlocked the door. He went straight over to the alcove containing the bed and drew back the curtain. No one there. No one in the bathroom either. The cabin looked the same as when he had left it. He locked the door firmly from the inside, then sank onto one of the wooden armchairs, panting as if he had been on a march. He was safe. For the time being.

  Daniel spent the next few days like a prisoner in his cabin. The cans of baked beans kept him fed, and he drank tap water. He kept the door locked and let the patrols use their own key to open it when they checked on him every morning and evening. The smiling hosts who, according to the information brochure, “should be regarded primarily as staff, at your disposal.” But who, for “safety reasons,” were equipped with Tasers and always went round in pairs. (That was true, Daniel had never seen any host or hostess alone outside the clinic buildings. But he hadn’t seen any sign of the Tasers. He presumed they kept them under their pale-blue jackets.)

  He kept the curtains drawn so that the cabin was in a permanent state of semidarkness. Whenever he peered cautiously through them, he saw Marko glued to the outside wall of his cabin each evening. Why was he in Himmelstal?

  His neighbor spent most of the day inside, but sometime around seven o’clock his shuffling steps could be heard out on the porch, then a thud as he slumped down. Then he would sit there all evening. Whenever Daniel got up in the night to go to the bathroom, he would nudge the curtain aside and see him sitting there, staring out into the darkness like a large, motionless nocturnal animal. During the day, when he wasn’t there, you could make out a darker patch on the wall where he usually sat.

  What did Marko see while he was sitting there? Because even if it was dark and most people were presumably asleep, the clinic grounds weren’t entirely deserted at night. According to the rules, you had to be in your room at twelve o’clock at night and eight o’clock in the morning so you could be checked by the patrol. “What you do in between is up to you,” Max had said.

  And, oddly enough, this appeared to be true. The time around half past eleven was always unsettled, with people hurrying through the park and up the hill to get to their cabins and rooms. When everyone was in his or her place, a period of strange calm and quiet descended, only broken by the hum of the approaching electric cart and the hostesses’ knocks and cheery cries in the neighboring cabins.

  Then, after another half hour of quiet, the grounds seemed to come to life again. More subdued than during the day. Cabin doors opening slowly, voices whispering in the darkness, shadows scuttling across the lawn. Occasionally you could hear discreet knocks on the doors of other cabins, and once, to his horror, his own door. “Psst!” someone hissed, like a big insect, then slowly and quietly tried the door handle several times. Daniel lay still behind the curtain, hardly daring to breathe. There was an irritated snort followed by silence outside.

  Daniel hadn’t noticed this nocturnal activity before because he had slept so soundly. But now he often lay awake long into the small hours, fretting and worrying, and if he did nod off, his sleep was fragile as glass and he would be wide awake at the slightest sound.

  One night he got up and lifted the mattress to take out the photograph Max had shown him the night before he left. He was sure it was the same battered woman as in Gisela’s pictures, and that the pictures must have been taken at the same
time.

  But it was no longer there. He removed the whole mattress. The picture was gone. The clinic staff must have found and removed it.

  When he returned from the ward he had four e-mails waiting for him on the computer. One from Father Dennis and three from Corinne. He didn’t open them. Max’s cell phone rang several times, but he didn’t answer it.

  One rainy afternoon, when he had been shut inside the cabin for five days, the cell phone rang so persistently that he had to get it out and look at the screen. If it was one of the doctors or staff, he would answer it.

  He just missed the call but saw it was from Corinne, and that he had eleven missed calls from her. Just as he was about to switch the phone off altogether, she called again. He pressed the button to answer it, and said, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Don’t hang up,” Corinne said. “You don’t have to be scared of me. Do you hear me? You don’t have to be scared of me.”

  She was talking calmly and firmly, as though she were talking to a child. He could see her before him. Her animated brown eyes, the sharp tilt of her jaw. So much had happened over the past few weeks that he had almost forgotten that face, but hearing her voice brought it all back to him. He experienced a momentary glow of recognition. Then he said, “I’m hanging up now.”

  “No, wait. You have to listen to me. It’s important. I’ve spoken to Gisela Obermann. I know what’s happened to you. It’s good that you’re suspicious. It’s good that you’re staying indoors. It’s the right thing to do. But if you isolate yourself completely you’ll go mad. And at some point you’re going to have to go out and get food.”

  He said nothing. She was right. His cabin was like a besieged town, and his food supply had almost run out.

  “You should avoid the others,” she went on. “But don’t hide yourself away. Do you understand? You mustn’t show any fear. They can smell your fear through the walls of the cabin. Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.