Splinter

1

Marc Lucas hesitated. The one uninjured finger of his broken hand hovered over the brass button of the antiquated doorbell for a long time before he pulled himself together and pressed it.

He didn’t know what time it was. The horrors of the last few hours had robbed him of his sense of time as well. Out here in the middle of the forest, though, time seemed unimportant anyway.

The chill November wind and the sleet showers of the last few hours had subsided a little, and even the moon was only intermittently visible through rents in the clouds. It was the sole light source on a night that seemed as cold as it was dark. There was no indication that the ivy-covered, two-storeyed, timber-built house was occupied. Neither did the disproportionately large chimney jutting from the gabled roof appeared to be in use, nor could Marc smell the characteristic scent of burning logs that had woken him in the house that morning – shortly after eleven, when they had brought him to the professor for the first time. He’d been feeling ill even at that stage, dangerously ill, but his condition had dramatically worsened since then.

A few hours ago his outward symptoms had been scarcely detectable. Now, blood was dripping on to his dirty trainers from his mouth and nose, his fractured ribs grated together at every breath, and his right arm hung limp at his side like an ill-fitting appendage.

Marc pressed the brass button once more, again without hearing a bell, buzzer or chime. He stepped back and looked up at the balcony. Beyond it lay the bedroom, which by day afforded a breathtaking view of the little forest lake whose surface at windless moments resembled a sheet of window glass – a smooth, dark pane that would shatter into a thousand fragments as soon someone tossed a stone into it.

The bedroom remained in darkness. Even the dog, whose name he had forgotten, failed to bark, and there were none of the other sounds that usually emanate from a house whose occupants have been roused from sleep in the middle of the night. No bare feet padding down the stairs, no slippers shuffling across the floorboards while their owner nervously clears his throat and tries to smooth his tousled hair with both hands and a modicum of spit.

Yet Marc was unsurprised, even for an instant, when the door suddenly opened as if by magic. Far too many inexplicable things had happened to him in the last few days for him to waste even a moment’s thought on why the psychiatrist should be confronting him fully dressed in a suit and neatly knotted tie, as if he made a point of holding his consultations in the middle of the night. Perhaps he really had been working in the recesses of his little house – perusing old case notes or studying one of the thick tomes on neuropsychology, schizophrenia, brainwashing or multiple personalities that lay strewn around, although it was years since he had practised as anything but an occasional consultant.

Marc didn’t wonder, either, why the light from the room with the fireplace was reaching him only now. Reflected by a mirror over the chest of drawers, it seemed to adorn the professor with a momentary halo. Then the old man stepped back and the effect vanished.

Marc sighed. Wearily, he leant his uninjured shoulder against the doorpost and raised his shattered hand.

‘Please,’ he implored. ‘You’ve got to tell me.’

His tongue impinged on some loose front teeth as he spoke. He coughed, dislodging a little drop of blood from his nose.

‘I don’t know what’s been happening to me.’

The psychiatrist nodded slowly, as if he found it hard to move his head. Most people would have recoiled at the sight of Marc and slammed the door in alarm, or at least summoned medical assistance. But Professor Niclas Haberland did nothing of the kind. He merely stepped aside and said, in a low, melancholy voice: ‘I’m sorry, you’re too late. I can’t help you.’

Marc nodded. He’d expected this reply and was prepared for it.

‘I’m afraid you’ve no choice,’ he said, taking the automatic from his torn leather jacket.