The Dead Man: Face of Evil (4 page)

It began with a sore back.

At first, Janey thought she'd twisted something the wrong way as she was lifting a box of school supplies out of the pickup truck. Matt was always telling her to lift with her knees, not her lower back, and she always ignored him.

But the ache wouldn't go away. After a week or two of ice packs, massages, and enough Advil to eat away half her stomach lining, she gave in and saw the doctor, something she absolutely hated to do. She saw it as a sign of weakness, a failure of character, and an avoidable expense. But it was the only way, short of hitting up one of her drug-dealing high school students, to get her hands on some Vicodin.

She went in for her aching back, but all the doctor wanted to talk about was some freckle he saw right above her hip. Janey found it incredibly irritating, especially when he refused to give her a prescription for painkillers until she went across the hall to see a dermatologist, an old coot with hair coming out of his ears who insisted on cutting the freckle out with what felt like a razor-edged melon baller.

But he stitched her up, gave her the Vicodin, and sent her back home.

Two days later, she got The Call. The little freckle was malignant.

It turned out that the freckle was a tiny speck of an unusually aggressive, particularly corrosive strain of skin cancer that had metastasized, wrapped itself around her lower spine, and then went straight up to her brain, where it was spreading like an oil slick.

Within just a few weeks, she was in the hospital and grim-faced doctors were telling Matt it was time to talk with Janey about her "end of life" wishes.

She had no wishes for death. All of her wishes were about life, and the future she and Matt were supposed to have together.

But now her future was measured in the steady drip of fluids into her IV, which was pumping her full of drugs that dulled her pain but fogged her thinking.

She'd long since lost the will to eat and was being nourished by a feeding tube. She pissed through a catheter and crapped into a bedpan, unable to make it to the restroom any longer.

Janey mostly slept. When she was awake, she was rarely lucid, more often dazed, incoherent, irrational, and irritable. Only occasionally would the real Janey emerge and offer him a tender smile and a look of sadness, and then she'd disappear into herself again.

Matt spent his days sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, soothing her as best he could.

There was a couch in the room that folded out into a hide-a-bed, but he'd usually fall asleep in his chair, still holding his wife's hand.

As he had now.

It was the coldness that woke him up. It was like he was holding on to an icicle.

He jerked awake to find a doctor he'd never seen before standing on the other side of her bed, looking down at Janey, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully, her chest rising and falling with her labored, rasping breathing.

The doctor had a jaunty demeanor, as if he was waiting for the Oompa-Loompas to finish their rhyme before breaking into song. He was wearing a round reflector band on his head, and an outrageously large stethoscope dangled from his neck.

"Why is she so cold?" Matt asked him.

"Perhaps because she's dead." The doctor reached into the pocket of his lab coat and then held a selection of lollipops out to Matt like a sugary bouquet. “Want a lollipop?"

"She can't be dead," Matt said, glancing at the EKG, the little light bouncing across the screen. “Her heart is still beating."

"Really?" the doctor put on his stethoscope and touched the diaphragm to her chest. “We can't have that."

The instant the stethoscope touched her flesh, the skin turned black, curling back and exposing her muscle and sinew, which rapidly rotted away, revealing her sternum and internal organs, which were riddled with yellow pus.

"No!"
Matt screamed, lunging for the doctor, but it was too late. The rot was spreading up to her lovely face, devouring it, revealing her skull, eroding the bone itself, and exposing her brain, where maggots feasted on the gelatinous lobes as one writhing, squirming, squiggly mass that spewed out of her cranial cavity and over her entire body.

Matt looked up in horror at the doctor, who unwrapped a lollipop and began sucking on it in an outrageously lewd and suggestive way.

That's when Matt noticed the doctor's orange hair, the round, red ball on the tip of his nose, and the smile painted around his lips.

He wasn't a doctor at all. He was a clown.

The clown took the sucker out of his mouth. “We are going to have so much fun together, Matt."

And that's when Matt woke up, disoriented and afraid, his heart pounding.

It took him a few long seconds to realize that he'd had a nightmare, and that he was in his cabin and not the hospital, and that Janey was long dead.

So the worst part of the nightmare was true.

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was 4:11 a.m., several hours until dawn. But he knew there was no way he could get back to sleep now. So he got up, put on his clothes, and went out into the frigid darkness to chop wood.

Perhaps if Matt hadn't been in such a hurry to get out of the room, and if it wasn't so dark, he might have noticed the lollipop wrapper on the floor…

…and the maggots squirming beneath his bed.

November 19, 2010

The original lodge at Mammoth Peaks was essentially a massive log cabin with several stone chimneys. It was the only authentic building in the resort. The stores, restaurants, and condos mimicked the look of the lodge, with facades of fake stone and artificially weathered timber that might not have seemed so artificial if the real thing wasn't right next door.

Matt and Rachel were staying in the lodge, surrounded by the natural, rustic warmth of that aged timber, in a room with a huge fireplace and a bed made of carved wood that was eerily similar to the one in Matt's cabin.

Rachel didn't know that, since she'd never been in Matt's bedroom, and thought his discomfort was the lingering result of the embarrassing "mix-up" in their reservations that meant they now had to share a room.

"I am so sorry about this," Matt said. “I really did reserve two rooms."

"You don't have to keep apologizing," she said. “I honestly don't mind."

Especially since she'd dishonestly canceled the reservation herself and was relieved when the desk clerk told them the hotel was entirely booked up.

"You can take the bed," Matt said. “I'll be fine on the couch."

She stepped close to him and draped her arms around his neck. “I want to sleep with you."

Rachel could feel him stiffen up, but not in the way she would have liked. His shoulders got tight and he pulled ever so slightly away from her. She responded by pressing herself against him and giving him a deep, tender kiss.

She could feel him relax, and his hands found the small of her back. He didn't move away.

"I don't know if I am ready for this," he said.

Rachel never knew a man who wasn't ready for sex, and yet here he was, going so achingly, frustratingly slow. In a way, it was sexy, like the longest foreplay ever. But she was ready for it to end.

"All I'm asking is for you to hold me close, to let me fall asleep in your arms, and to let me wake up beside you in the morning," she said. “Does that really sound so awful?"

"No, it doesn't." He kissed her softly. “It sounds very nice."

Rachel resisted the temptation to suggest that they take a little nap right now, which was smart, since it wasn't even eleven a.m. yet.

She smiled and broke away from him.

"Let's hit the slopes," she said.

They took the lift up the peak, and then Rachel led Matt away from the crowds to her favorite spot, far from the day-trippers from King City, to a secluded, double-black-diamond run that was pure virgin powder.

Chopping wood was how Matthew Cahill got in tune with himself and the world. For Rachel, it was skiing. The mountain was her church, and skiing was her form of worship.

When she was skiing, she became one with the mountain, the snow, and the earth.

Within moments of beginning their run, she shot ahead of Matt and her rhythm of skiing became fluid and instinctive. It was almost as if she'd fallen into a trance, her body perfectly tuned to the changing terrain beneath her skis. She wasn't even aware of the motions that went into what she was doing—some unconscious part of her mind was doing that. Instead, she simply reveled in the invigorating speed, the cold air whipping at her bare cheeks.

It wasn't the same for Matt, who trailed far behind her. Skiing required his complete concentration. He was good at the sport, but he was acutely aware of each decision and move, of how fast he was going and how one mistake could send him flying smack into the trees that lined their narrow path.

The run was full of sudden drops and big air, offering Rachel the giddy sensation of flying into the sharp, blue sky, before landing again on the snow and rocketing on down the glade.

For her, catching air was pure freedom and unadulterated joy, comparable to nothing else except, perhaps, the body-quaking climax she fully expected to have with Matthew Cahill when they got back to the lodge.

For Matt, the leaps were more terrifying than exhilarating, the joy more from the relief that he'd landed safely than from the thrill of momentary flight.

But Matt marveled at Rachel's grace, how she somehow seemed connected to the landscape and yet was totally free. Her happiness, her soaring spirit, was conveyed in every natural, flowing movement that she made.

Maybe if he could let go, and stop thinking about his skiing instead of just doing it, he might experience the same wondrous freedom that she was.

Let go.

God, the idea was appealing.

What would it be like to just relax, to do something without thinking, to allow himself the risk, and perhaps the exhilaration, of making a mistake, of getting hurt?

Let go.

What was the worst that could happen?

And that's when he noticed, for the first time, just how formfitting Rachel's ski suit was and how good the form was that it fit.

She was beautiful.

How could he not have noticed that before?

And he knew she genuinely cared about him, that there was depth to her feelings beyond mere attraction.

So why was he denying her the affection, the tenderness, and the intimacy that she obviously wanted?

Why was he denying himself?

They could be good together, if he could just…

Let go.

Rachel would have been gratified to know how something as simple as skiing, how just being herself, was allowing Matt to really see her, to finally appreciate all that she was offering him.

But at that moment, she was so lost in her personal reverie, her unity with the mountain, that she wasn't thinking of him at all.

Rachel didn't realize how far ahead of him she was until she heard the thunderous crack.

Matt felt it more than heard it, a deep rumble as much in the air as it was under his feet. He looked over his shoulder and saw the mountain shear apart, a massive, roiling wave of snow rushing up behind him.

Avalanche.

He looked ahead and saw Rachel looking back at him in horror.

"Go! Go!" he yelled.

She hunched down and shot forward, and so did he, trying to build up speed but knowing there was no way he could escape what was coming. He could feel the enormity of it, building in strength, chewing up snow, snapping trees, blasting cold air and ice against his back.

Rachel put everything she had into her arms, into her poles, into skiing faster than she ever had before.

There was a ravine ahead of them. If they could leap over it to the other side, they stood a chance of survival.

Matt saw what she had in mind and knew she'd make it. He glanced over his shoulder, and there it was.

The mountain.

Right in his face.

Rachel sailed over the ravine, knowing as she shot through the air that she was alive, more so in that moment that she'd ever been before.

And she knew that she would survive.

She hit the ground and turned to face what was coming, which she hoped would be the sight of Matt arcing through the air ahead of the avalanche.

But he was gone, lost in tons of cascading snow and trees and rock that spilled into the chasm with an earthshaking roar that was so loud, Rachel couldn't even hear her own scream.

February 20, 2011

If a skier manages not to be smashed against a tree, or carried over a cliff, or crushed by the weight of the snow and debris, he can survive an avalanche.

For about twenty minutes.

After that, most survivors of the initial impact and burial will die of asphyxiation.

A few lucky ones might find a pocket of air and hold on as their body temperature plummets and blood is diverted from their extremities to their vital organs.

The cruel truth, though, is that even if they manage to be rescued alive, they are still very likely to die, except in the cushy comfort of a hospital bed, a catheter and an IV shoved into them, instead of in an icy grave.

The key to surviving an avalanche is to be rescued within that first, critical half hour.

Matthew Cahill was under the ice for three months.

The facts of the case were unbelievable, so Dr. Jack Travis, the trauma specialist on call in the emergency room, chose to ignore them and deal instead with what he saw in front of him: a patient suffering from extreme hypothermia, typical of someone buried under the snow for an hour instead of months.

In all likelihood, Matt was headed right back to the morgue.

Hypothermia was a condition that Travis, having worked in the ski resort community for a decade, had plenty of experience dealing with.

Matt's body temperature on arrival was sixty-nine degrees. Travis covered him with heating blankets and put him on an epinephrine drip to elevate his blood pressure.

The patient was totally unresponsive to stimuli and his pupils didn't react to light, which indicated to Travis that Matt had suffered anoxic encephalopathy—severe and irreversible brain damage.

Travis ordered a complete metabolic panel, chest X-rays, and an MRI to see just how grim things were. But when the results came back, the doctor was stunned by what he saw.

The blood oxygen and muscle enzyme counts were normal.

The lungs were clear.

And the brain scan showed no swelling at all.

It was as if Matthew Cahill wasn't hypothermic at all, just deeply asleep.

But with the nerve response, pupil dilation, and core body temperature of a corpse.

And he was rapidly defrosting.

There really was nothing Travis could do except wonder how it was possible and wait to see what happened next.

So that's exactly what he did.

He pulled a stool up beside Matt's bed and waited, along with the leaders of nearly every department in the hospital except pediatrics and oncology.

But even those two department heads found excuses to be in the ER, having heard the news, which was already beginning to spread far beyond Mammoth Peaks.

In fact, a stooped-backed fisherman floating down the Yangtze River in a flat-bottomed wooden sampan was using his iPhone to catch up on the hash-marked tweets about "the frozen man" at the exact moment that Matthew Cahill startled everyone in the ER by taking a sharp breath and opening his eyes.

Travis bolted up and leaned over Matt, looking into the man's questioning eyes.

"You're alive," Travis said.

It was supposed to be a reassuring statement, but to Matthew Cahill, it sounded more like a question, one that he was expected to answer.