Anxiety eats into the soul and hollows people out from the inside. It also feeds on human time: it took Emma half an hour to put on something warm, and she needed several attempts just to lace up her boots before her clammy fingers pulled up the zip of her puffer jacket and, dripping with sweat, she opened the door, which required another eternity, or so it seemed to her.
At the moment the diazepam that she’d washed down with a gulp of tap water was having more side effects than direct ones. Emma was incredibly tired, but the iron ring around her chest would not loosen its grip.
Luckily Samson had started breathing again, although he couldn’t stay on his feet for long. So to make matters worse Emma had to make a detour to the shed, a small, grey, metal shack that stood at the back of the garden. If she wasn’t mistaken, the sledge was still hanging on the wall in there. Philipp had bought it when they moved, on the erroneous assumption that they’d use it regularly, given that they were now living so close to the Teufelsberg.
Well, maybe it was paying for itself today as transport for Samson.
Emma was breathing heavily and focusing on her path across the snowy lawn. Shuffling tentatively, like a patient attempting her first step after a major operation, she teetered forwards.
Each step was a test of courage.
The walk was so arduous, as if she were having to make it with diving cylinders on her back and wearing flippers. Her feet sank to her ankles and more than once she had to stop to regain her breath.
At least she wasn’t shivering, which may have been because her soul was already so frozen that there was no room left to feel the cold physically.
Or I’m already suffering from ‘hypothermic madness’, the name given to a psychological phenomenon whereby some people on the point of freezing to death believe they’re terribly hot. Which was why sometimes you found frozen corpses naked outside. As they died, the poor souls ripped the clothes from their bodies.
Well, if fear were a shirt, I’d be happy to take it off, Emma thought, surprised that she couldn’t smell anything out here in the garden. No snow, no earth, not even her own sweat. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction, bringing the rattling of the S-Bahn from nearby Heerstrasse station into the gardens. Although her hearing was a little better than usual, her sight was worse.
The garden seemed to get narrower with every step. It took her a while to realise that the panic was constricting her field of vision.
First of all the bushes disappeared, then the cherry and rhododendron, and in the end there was just a long, black tunnel leading straight to the shed.
Visual disorders.
Emma knew the symptoms of an oncoming panic attack: dry mouth, racing heart and a change in the perception of colour and form.
Worried that she’d never get any further if she stopped again now, Emma staggered onwards until she finally reached the shed.
She jerked open the door and grabbed blindly for the sledge which Philipp had hung neatly on the wall beside the door.
A bright-red plastic object that was light, wide and shaped like a shovel. Thank goodness it wasn’t one of those old-fashioned, heavy wooden things with runners, which Samson could very easily have fallen off.
On the way back Emma felt a little better. Her success in having found the sledge immediately imbued her with some confidence.
Her field of vision had widened again too. The bushes were in their place, although they were moving about in a most unnatural fashion. Not sideways, as if being blown by the wind, but up and down like an accordion.
Disconcerting, but nowhere near as terrifying as the footprints that Emma hadn’t noticed on the way there.
She looked at the heavy boot prints in the snow in front of her. They couldn’t be her own as they were at least three sizes too big. They were only going in one direction.
To the shed.
Emma turned back to the grey shack. She’d left its door open.
Was it moving?
Was anyone in there?
Had she maybe grabbed the sledge in the darkness and just missed a man crouching behind the lawnmower?
Emma couldn’t see anything or anyone, but the feeling lingered that she was being watched.
GET OUT!
‘Samson,’ she called, speeding up. ‘Samson, come here! My poor thing, please come!’
The suffering creature did her bidding, struggling up from the doormat where he’d been waiting for her. It sounded as if he had whooping cough.
‘Thank you, my darling. Good dog.’
She tapped on the seat of the plastic sledge and he dragged himself onto it, then slumped, sniffling.
‘Don’t worry,’ Emma said comfortingly to the dog and herself. ‘I’ll help you.’
She patted his head, gritted her teeth and pulled Samson with a rope towards the road. Unwisely, she turned back and thought she saw a shadow behind the small window in the door.
Did the curtain just move?
No, it was hanging serenely and there was no light behind it that could have cast a shadow.
And yet. Emma felt as if she were being followed by invisible eyes.
GET OUT
BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
And these eyes opened wounds, out of which all her courage seeped.
If my will to live were fluid, I’d leave a red trail behind me, she thought. Which would be practical; I’d only need to follow it to find my way back.
She took hold of the sledge rope, which had briefly slipped from her hand, and forced herself onwards again. To the vet.
Away from the dark house behind her, from which she believed she was being watched by dead eyes at the window. Waiting for her to come back.
Assuming she ever did.