Vacations from Hell

Which was a bit odd. I just figured that Gerard would be more interested in the one that seemed a little older, saner, and into his subject, but this wasn’t the case. Every time Marylou looked away, his eyes met mine with definite interest, and I would twitch a little in excitement. I didn’t mind France at all with Gerard in the picture.



“This DS…DS…” he said in response to something Marylou was saying.



“The DSM-IV,” she said.



“Yes. I would very much like to see eet. You say you have eet?”



“Sure!” Marylou was out of her seat in a shot and up the steps to our room. The moment she left, Gerard leaned across the table, coming close to my face.



“Listen to me,” he said. “Eef you want to live, eef you love your sister, follow me now.”



“What?”



But with that he grabbed my phone and ran.



Okay, so. You’re me. You’re sitting there with one of the most beautiful guys you’ve ever seen. And he asks you if you want to live. And he steals your phone. And says you have to follow.



You follow him, right? Because what else are you going to do?



Right?



Maybe not everyone would have done that. I think some people would have immediately bolted the door behind him and started screaming. If I had been like you, if you’re one of those people, this story would have turned out a lot differently.



But I went tearing down the path after him, screaming his name. Gerard was fast, and tall, with much longer legs. He quickly outpaced me. I followed him all the way down to the dirt road, where he made a sharp turn, then he headed into the trees. I followed.



Then he was gone. I was just standing in the middle of the woods.



“I am not going to hurt you,” Gerard said.



He stepped out from a tree behind me. I backed up, finally realizing that following a thief into the middle of nowhere is a really dumb move.



“Oh,” I said.



“This is important, Charlie,” he said, stepping closer. “Did you tell your sister the story? The one Henri told you. Did you repeat eet?”



This was the last thing I was expecting to hear, and probably not the kind of thing a person who plans on attacking you says.



“What?”



“You must tell me, Charlie! Did you tell her the story? About the Law of Suspects?”



“Story?” I repeated. “That stupid story Henri told me? Yes! I told her!”



This hit him like a blow. All the muscles in his face seemed to go lax and he fell back against a tree and looked up into the branches in despair. He exhaled once, very slowly, and looked back at me.



“I’m showing you something,” he said. “You will not like eet. But you need to see eet to understand what is going on.”



He pulled his messenger bag from around his shoulders. From it he removed what appeared to be some trash. Just a bundle of plastic shopping bags. He gave them a shake, and something plopped out onto the path. Something small, like a bird. A dead one.



And I remember thinking, Why the hell is he carrying around a dead bird? So my brain kept working on the problem, and eventually it decided that the thing on the path was not a bird. So that was the good news. The bad news was…



It was a hand.



Unattached to a body.



A bluish white, bloodless, dismembered hand—cut very neatly about the spot where you’d wear a watch. It was very dirty. It was a smallish hand, but maybe all hands look small when they’re…disconnected.



For a moment I felt nothing at all, then I got very giddy. I cycled through a lot of emotions, in fact. There was a high, floaty feeling in my head. I laughed. I coughed. I stumbled and went down on all fours.



“I found eet at Henri’s house,” he said, as if my reaction was exactly what he had been expecting. “Eet was ’alf-buried in the garden by the aubergines. Something dug eet up and left eet exposed. I believe this is Henri’s wife. Well, ’er hand. The rest of her…I think is also there. Now you must listen to me. Your life is depending on eet.”



I put my face against the dirt, accidentally sniffing some of it up my nose. I think I was breathing very fast. It smelled mushroomy up this close.



“Charlie,” Gerard said, “you may feel sick but this is not the time….”



“It’s not?”



I was laughing again and snorting more dirt. He hoisted me up under my arms and got me to my feet.



“Police,” I mumbled.



“We do not have time,” he said, backing me against a tree and letting me get myself balanced. “Now you must listen, and you must try to understand. We cannot help this person….”