Sebastian Fitzek - Splinter. Sebastian Fitzek

Marc Lucas had it all, and lost it all. He is only slowly putting his life back together after the car crash that killed his pregnant wife, when things start to go strangely wrong for him. Nothing too sinister to begin with: his credit cards stop working. But then his key no longer fits his door, and he discovers someone else working in his office. Much worse is to come: he returns home to find himself face to face with his once-dead wife, and she doesnt have a clue who he is. The next day, there is no trace of her.

Could this have anything to do with the clinic? They wanted to test their ability to remove traumatic memories from live subjects. Marc had met them, just once, but declined their experimental technology. He now fears they may have begun their tests illicitly...

Can he discover just what is happening to him before the waking nightmare he finds himself living overwhelms his sanity?

Sebastian Fitzek has worked as a journalist and author for radio and TV stations all around Europe, and is now head of programming at RTL, Berlins leading radio station. His first and subsequent novels have become huge bestsellers in Germany, and he is currently working on his fifth.

First published in the English language in Great Britain in 2011
by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Originally published in German as Splitter in 2009
by Droemer Knaur. Copyright Sebastian Fitzek, 2009
Translation copyright John Brownjohn, 2011 The moral right of Sebastian Fitzek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. The moral right of John Brownjohn to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-84887-695-8
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-270-6 Printed in Great Britain. Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26-27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ www.corvus-books.co.uk

For Clemens

What do you think?

Hm... Id call it, well... an acquired taste?

Utterly hideous, more like.

Was it a present?

No, I bought it.

Just a minute. You paid good money for that thing?

Yes.

For a baby-blue, battery-operated dolphin bedside light which you yourself think is ugly?

Hideous.

Okay, so enlighten me. If thats feminine logic, I dont get it.

Come here.

Im almost on top of you as it is.

Come closer all the same.

Dont tell me you bought it as a sex aid?

Dickhead.

Hey, whats the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?

Promise me...

What?

Promise youll always turn the light on?

I... I dont get it. Scared of the dark suddenly?

No, but...

But what?

Well, Ive been thinking how unbearable it would be if something happened to you. No, wait, dont pull away, I want to hold you tight.

What is it? Are you crying?

Look, I know it sounds a bit weird, but Id like us to make a deal.

Okay.

If one of us dies no, please hear me out the first of us to go must give the other one a sign.

By turning the light on?

So we know we arent alone. So we know were thinking of each other even if we cant see each other.

Baby, I dont know if

Ssh. Promise?

Okay.

Thank you.

Is that why its so ugly?

Hideous.

Right. Good choice from that angle. Wed never turn on that monstrosity by mistake.

So you promise?

Of course, babe.

Thank you.

Still, whats likely to happen to us?

Its either real or its a dream,
theres nothing that is in between.Twilight, Electric Light Orchestra
The end justifies the means.Proverb

TODAY

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 didnt 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. Hed 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 moments 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.

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