The Sanatorium(20)

16





Jeremie Bisset powers up the narrow path behind Le Sommet into the forest. Instantly, his surroundings darken, the open trail giving way to a mass of dense-growing pines.

In summer, the path is a rocky trail, used by hikers to access the glacier beyond, but now it’s choked with snow. Smothered.

He tilts his head upward. Overnight, the sky has cleared. It’s now a pale, milky blue, streaked with fragmented wisps of cloud. It won’t last. The forecast for the next week is grim.

Within minutes, he finds a rhythm; a steady metronome of pole and ski. A surge of euphoria: he loves this, the uphill slog. In the winter, he tours every morning before work. Sets the alarm before dawn, follows the trail up toward Aminona.

It’s the only thing he does with any kind of regularity. Usually, he hates routine of any kind. It reminds him of the hospital. The final days with his father. Every day a grim loop of brittle regularity—ward rounds, medication, lights out.

Jeremie forces the thought away. His breath is coming hard now, fast. His hamstrings and quads are already burning.

Not an easy ascent, but that’s why he likes it. Part of him wonders if it’s psychological—the repetitive climb his way of dispelling the feeling that he’s constantly falling. Last night, again, he’d woken in the predawn under damp sheets. Grief. Work. The ongoing custody battle.

He pictures his ex’s face; the disdain clearly visible as she bundled Sebastien into the car.

Jeremie pushes the thought away, powers on.

Within minutes, he’s through the forest.

A sudden light, dazzling off the snow. The dim gloom of the forest canopy has given way to an open bowl above the tree line. No vegetation can grow here. The only thing between him and the glacier above is a wall of gray pleated limestone, its serrated undulations crusted with snow.

Jeremie stops, listens to his breath, exhalations coming in short, ragged puffs.

Sweat is trickling down his back beneath his thermals. Waiting for his breathing to settle, he looks out. He can see right down to the valley floor. Jutting cranes bisect the town, giant right angles looming over the cuboid shapes of the industrial heartland. A blocky, manmade geometry, nothing like the raw of the wilderness here.

The wind gusts, tugging at his jacket. He shivers, thinking about the impending forecast, the storm closing in.

Moving rapidly, he tears the skins from his skis, thin strips that stick to the base of the skis for ascending slopes, which he removes for skiing downhill. The special surface allows him to slide forward on the snow, but not backward.

He deftly winds up the skins, and folds them against the netting so they don’t stick together. He returns them to their bag. As he zips it shut, he stops.

A noise. Footsteps?

Jeremie pivots, scans his surroundings.

Nothing. No signs of life.

Again.

The sound is muted, indistinguishable.

Turning his head, he examines the landscape around him more slowly this time. There’s no one there. He holds his breath, ears ringing in the silence.

Another sound.

Perhaps it’s coming from above . . .

Jeremie rakes his eyes over the sheer face of rock above him.

He startles, heart racing.

The more he looks, the more the mountains above seem to be moving toward him. With a thicker covering of snow than in decades, the towering cornices and ridges of the mountains no longer look familiar, but something sinister, alien.

Jeremie drags his eyes away. He’s tired, he thinks. Four hours’ sleep—it screws with your mind.

He crouches down, pulling his boots tighter, and flicks his bindings into downhill mode. Skating forward, he reaches the trail running parallel to the forest.

With no lift system in this half of the valley, the snow is thick, untouched, an unbroken expanse of white.

As he starts to turn, adrenaline surges through him. His skis throw thick, gauzy clouds of powder into the air.

Halfway down, he slows. He can see something ahead; a glinting, a reflection in the snow that shouldn’t be there.

A piece of metal? It’s hard to tell . . .

He waits until he’s parallel with it and then stops.

A bracelet.

A smooth arc of bronzed metal. Copper.

It’s then he sees something else, stuck to some kind of material. A faded blue cotton. His breath catches in his throat, his eyes finding the button on the underside. The fabric—it’s clothing.

Jeremie clicks out of his skis, a chill moving through him.

He stumbles in the deep, powdery snow, each step burying his legs up to the knee.

When he reaches the bracelet, he kneels down. Closing his fingers around the top of the metal, he tugs. It isn’t going to come easily.

It’s wedged in, snow and ice set like cement around it. As he digs his hand into the snow, he pushes as much of it away as he can, trying to gain enough room to get his fingers around the top of the bracelet.

It won’t budge. He’ll have to go farther, loosen the snowpack around the sides as well. Pulling off his glove, he uses his fingers to scrabble, lever the snow away.

Useless.

Within seconds, his fingers are red, numb. Pulling off his rucksack, he reaches for his pocketknife. He flicks it open and starts hacking at the snow, jabbing the hard surface with the blade, hooking dense, crystalline clumps away.

Better.