The Sanatorium(2)

And this project had been the nail in the coffin. They’d had it all: online trolls, e-mails, letters to the office. Planning objections.

They came for him first. Rumors began circulating on local blogs and social media that the business was struggling. Then they’d started on Lucas. Similar stories, stories he could easily dismiss, but one in particular stuck.

It bothered Daniel, more than he cared to admit.

Talk of bribes. Corruption.

Daniel had tried to speak to Lucas about it, but his friend had shut the conversation down. The thought nags at him, an itch, like so many things on this project, but he forces it away. He has to ignore it. Focus on the result. This hotel will cement his reputation. Lucas’s drive and his compulsion for detail have propelled Daniel to a spectacularly ambitious design, an end point he hadn’t thought possible.

He reaches the car. The windscreen is thick with fresh snow; too much for the wipers. It will need scraping off.

But as he reaches into his pocket for his key, he notices something.

A bracelet, lying beside the front tire.

Daniel bends down, picks it up. It’s thin, and made of copper. He twists it between his fingers, noticing a row of numbers engraved on the interior . . . a date?

He frowns. It has to belong to someone who’d been up there today, surely? Otherwise it would already be covered in snow.

But what were they doing so close to his car?

Images of the protesters flicker through his mind, their angry, jeering faces.

Could it be them?

Daniel makes himself take a long, deep breath, but as he pushes the bracelet into his pocket, he catches a glimpse of something: a movement behind the ridge of snow that’s built up against the wall of the car park.

A hazy profile.

His heart races, his palms sweaty around his key fob. Pushing down hard on the fob to open the boot, he freezes as he looks up.

A figure, standing in front of him, positioned between him and his car.

Daniel stares, briefly paralyzed, his brain frantically trying to process what he’s seeing—how could someone have moved so quickly toward him without him noticing?

The figure is dressed in black. Something is covering their face.

It resembles a gas mask; the same basic form, but it’s missing the filter at the front. Instead, there’s a thick rubber hose running from mouth to nose. A connector. The hose is black, ribbed; it quivers as the figure shifts from foot to foot.

The effect is horrifying. Monstrous. Something scraped from the darkest depths of the unconscious mind.

Think, he tells himself, think. His mind starts churning through possibilities, ways to make this something innocuous, benign. It’s a prank, that’s all: one of the protesters, trying to scare him.

Then the figure steps toward him. A precise, controlled movement.

All Daniel can see is the lurid, magnified close-up of the black rubber stretched across the face. The thick ribbed lines of the hose. Then he hears the breathing; a strange, wet sucking sound coming from the mask. Liquid exhalations.

His heart is pounding against his rib cage.

“What is this?” Daniel says, hearing the fear in his voice. A tremble he tries to stamp out. “Who are you? What are you trying to do?” A drip slowly trickles down his face. Snow melting against the heat of his skin, or sweat? He can’t tell.

Come on, he tells himself. Get control of yourself. It’s some stupid prick, messing around.

Just walk past and get into your car.

It’s then, from this angle, that he notices another car. A car that wasn’t there when he arrived. A black pickup. A Nissan.

Come on, Daniel. Move.

But his body is frozen, refusing to obey. All he can do is listen to the strange breathing sound coming from the mask. It’s louder now, faster, more labored.

A soft sucking noise and then a high-pitched whistle.

Over and over.

The figure lurches closer, with something in hand. A knife? Daniel can’t make it out—the thick glove is concealing it.

Move, move.

He manages to propel himself forward, one step, then two, but fear makes his muscles seize. He stumbles in the snow, right foot sliding out from under him.

By the time he straightens it’s too late: the gloved hand clamps over his mouth. Daniel can smell the stale mustiness of the glove but also the mask—the curious burnt-plasticky odor of rubber, laced with something else.

Something familiar.

But before his brain can make the connection, something pierces his thigh. A single, sharp pain. His thoughts scatter; then his mind goes quiet.

A quiet that, within seconds, tips over into nothingness.



Press Release—Under Embargo until Midnight March 5, 2018

Le Sommet

Hauts de Plumachit

CransMontana 3963

Valais

Switzerland

5-STAR HOTEL SET TO OPEN IN THE SWISS RESORT OF CRANSMONTANA

Located on a sunny mountain plateau above CransMontana, high in the Swiss Alps, Le Sommet is the brainchild of Swiss property developer Lucas Caron.

After eight years of extensive planning and construction, one of the town’s oldest sanatoriums is set to reopen as a luxury hotel.

The main building was designed in the late nineteenth century by Caron’s great-grandfather Pierre. It became renowned worldwide as a center for treating tuberculosis before the advent of antibiotics forced its diversification.