by Alex Dahl
Four days later, on the Saturday, I went to your house. I’d looked at your husband’s party’s event calendar and he was listed as attending a rally in Kristiansand that weekend. It said that there would be a gala dinner on the Saturday evening with local stakeholders and politicians, and I knew that you would be accompanying him to that, like you usually do.
On the Friday in my session, we had a moment when we were talking through some particularly difficult stuff I’d been dealing with, to do with compulsive thoughts of suicide and self-harming, when your eyes filled with tears. I asked you why you were crying, and you said you felt so moved by what I’d said and so empathetic toward me for having to deal with it. Your display of emotion, and the validation it brought, moved me so much, Kristina. It was in moments like that that I believed what we were doing in that room really had the power to heal me.
I walked out of there and straight home, not even considering hanging around Kaffebrenneriet in the hope that you’d stop in. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, tears rushing from my eyes. I felt so bad, then, for everything I’d done. For a moment, I considered calling you and confessing, laying it all bare so we could start over. But I knew it was already too late. I was in too deep. I promised myself that I would go to your house, satisfy my curiosity and then stop. I cried harder because I knew that even if I actually managed to walk away after that, there would always be these secrets between us now. I cried with confusion and jealousy, because in your diary I had read page after page about the worrying blanks in your mind, and about someone called Elisabeth, who sounded like another client, but not a single word about me.
I cried myself to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, and when I woke up it was close to midnight. I poured myself some wine and sat on the floor, letting the warm summer night into the room through the wide-open windows. I looked at your solemn face in your driving license picture and then I spent a long while reading through your journal again and looking at the strange drawings you’d made. I looked at the calculations too, and though math wasn’t my strongest subject at school; it seemed to me like they were some kind of probability equations, page after page after page of them. I had to know more, Kristina.
I arrived early in the morning, around eight. I’d planned it very carefully, as you can imagine. I wore gray sweatpants and a baseball cap, and with me I had a bucket and a mop. The bucket was filled to the brim with various cleaning products. My face was scrubbed clean and not made-up and my hair was tied into a severe ponytail that emerged from the back of the baseball hat. I felt confident that if I bumped into a neighbor, they would just assume I was there to clean one of the apartments in the building.
I prayed you hadn’t changed the locks after the incident with the bag, but the key slipped easily into the lock and I entered the communal hallway, which was much fancier than my building’s, with soaring ceilings and ornate, freshly painted stucco. I didn’t know which floor you lived on, so I crept upstairs and checked the doorbells until I found the one that read ‘E & K Moss’ on the second floor. I pressed it briefly, just to be totally sure that I wouldn’t get a nasty surprise, such as a houseguest or an angry dog, when I unlocked the door. The apartment emanated the silence of a large, abandoned space. I slipped a key into the lock, and when it didn’t work, another. This one unlocked the door with a smooth click.
I stepped inside, and couldn’t help but take a sharp, stunned breath. Your home is exquisite, Kristina. The kind of home one would expect to see in interiors magazines, not a single detail left to chance. Your expensive handbags hung proudly from a series of hooks along the wall – Gucci, Givenchy, Hermès, Louis Vuitton – and it occurred to me then that you clearly have much more money than I’d thought, that you live inside an impenetrable bubble of serious wealth. I suppose I’d thought we were on the same level in that respect – I make a very good living, and I too, own a nice apartment in a snazzy part of town. But this – this was a different level. A huge gold mirror hung above an antique table on top of which stood an incredibly beautiful porcelain vase filled with peonies. I stepped closer to it, but felt afraid to meet my own gaze in the mirror – I think I irrationally craved that the person looking back at me would be you, and didn’t want the disappointment of my own reflection.
The floor was laid with a warm, matte oakwood and I slipped my shoes off, feeling its smooth surface against my bare feet. On the wall of the corridor leading to the other rooms were several black-and-white, professionally-shot photographs, blown up big and placed in identical brushed-bronze colonial-style frames. I moved from one to the next slowly, taking in each one carefully, stopping to take pictures of them all on my phone. The picture of your niece and nephew is so beautiful. I wanted to know their names. And the one with you and Eirik on your wedding day. Everyone always says that a bride was radiant on her wedding day, but never was it more true than for you. I could have cried just looking at you, and maybe I did. He’s a handsome guy, Eirik, but from a purely physical attractiveness perspective he pales next to you. Still, he has the self-satisfied smile of a man who believes he deserves you and knows he can afford to spoil you. Does he treat you like a trophy, Kristina? Does he make you feel like just another piece on the chessboard of his life? A queen perhaps, but a piece, nonetheless.
I liked the picture of you, Trine and Elisabeth, too. Back then, I didn’t know what I know now, so I thought it was just a cute shot of three cute teenagers posing together, smiling innocently at the camera, arms flung around each other’s shoulders. You’re in the middle, of course. Now, I want to know how you can walk past that photograph every day of your life. Doesn’t looking at those young, smiling faces fill you with dread and with the images of what was to come? Or do you think of yourself as so thoroughly healed that looking at them fails to provoke any emotional response? Then why do you cry on the street in Rosenborggata? Why do you fill your diary with all those detailed nightmares of crashing through forests echoing with laughing voices and the sound of gunshots? Why do you write out all those calculations, trying to work out if the outcome could have been different?
See, I get all agitated putting all of this on the page. It isn’t easy, that’s for sure. My mind is like a storm. I didn’t know then what I know now. I didn’t yet know what you’d been through or how much what happened to those three young girls would take from all of you. But even now, when I know everything, more than you, I still want to know how you can bear to look at all that innocence, every single day.
Are you ready to go back, further back, all the way back? Shall we go back to Carúpano? Yes, Kristina, I know. I know all about Carúpano.
39
Kristina
I pause, gauging whether I can actually handle this. I have naturally encountered a lot of people with serious mental health challenges over the years and have always been of the school that believes that even the most extreme manifestations of dissociation and emotional disturbance can be countered and healed with long-term psychotherapy. To be witnessed and tolerated in their most challenging incarnations can bring the broken pieces inside someone back together in the most miraculous ways; I’ve seen it over and over. In others, and in myself. I thought I saw it in Leah Iverson, too, but now I am forced to consider whether the healing I believed I saw was in fact just misguided preoccupation with me. I’m afraid of her now, of what she wants from me, and almost hope that she is dead – at least that way I never have to see her again.
It’s obvious that these are the words of an extremely damaged individual. To break into the home of your therapist and steal her diary and take pictures of her personal photographs, and repeatedly follow her around – you’d have to suffer highly compromised mental faculties. What else could she have done? I’m not only furious, but afraid – I can only imagine how dangerous this might get if certain elements of the past become subject to the interpretation of a disturbed person such as Leah Iverson.
I suddenly understand Anton’s rage and feelings of powerlessness.
I tell myself that nothing she did or claims to know about me can hurt me, but I need to find out what she’s playing at. And then I am going to return to my life and my husband and my work and all of this will fade away into a shocking, unsavory episode. But where is she?
I return to the document. There are over eighteen thousand words, over seventy pages. I don’t want to know what more she wrote, or why; I just want to know where Leah is so I can leave all this behind. Wherever she is, she is clearly in need of psychiatric intervention, and I will make sure to get back in touch with her GP when I get back to Oslo to recommend exactly that.
I certainly won’t let her invade my life any further. I will take this experience to my own therapy and attempt to learn from it. I will move on. Eirik will win the election. We’ll get our baby. All of this will eventually feel distant and impotent. I have to believe that.
*
I look around Leah’s cabin again and this time it doesn’t feel like a comforting cocoon, but cramped and claustrophobic, rather. She’d clearly come here to write this stuff, all these weird and disturbing things about me, and fantasized about me reading her words. The space itself feels sullied, as though I’d stumbled upon the sinister lair of a twisted criminal.
I need to leave; coming here was clearly not a good idea. The sky is blustery and dark gray now and the snow is falling more heavily, not instantly melting as it touches the windowpanes, but settling in clusters across them, like iced spiderwebs. I bet the heavy clouds hide a most magnificent evening sky, far away from the glare of lights from the big city, and I wish I could see the stars when they appear, that they would light up the way back down to the car. I think about Leah’s mentions of supernovae, especially the obliteration of the larger, brighter star by a little dwarf star stealing its matter, prompting them both to explode, as she described. Why did she choose it as the title for this strange and disturbing account? I close my eyes and imagine those thermonuclear explosions, the white heat, the rainbow fires of destruction shredding the blackness when stars collide.
I check my phone. No reception, unsurprisingly. It’s just past 5 p.m. and I still have a headache from all the wine yesterday. My stomach growls with hunger, but I’ve left the cookies in the car.
I peer out of the window at the flurries of snow churning on the darkening air like static on an old television. I am dreading the walk back to the car through the woods. What if Leah comes back and I bump into her on the forest track? I realize I am afraid of coming face to face with her now. She lured me here and could come back at any time. She is clearly unhinged, and has not only extensively lied to me, but also stalked me in my personal time. She even had a restraining order out against her for assault. I need to get out of here right now. I choke the flame on the oil lamp, steeping the vaulted room in a deep twilight, a chill spreading through my bones.
I use the torch to get back to the front door without bumping into anything, pausing for a quick moment to listen before I step back outside – a visceral fear is taking hold of me but I have to find a way to control it and get myself safely back to the car. I place the phone on the floor for a second and shove my feet back into my boots, which I’d graciously left by the door like a polite guest, and the torch beam falls on something high up on the wall that I hadn’t noticed before.
It’s a long glass cabinet designed for a hunting rifle; its door is open, the weapon is gone. Enough, Kristina, enough. I hear the voice inside me as clearly as though it were spoken out loud. I grab the door handle and pull the door open toward me, but as I do, I can’t help but unleash a scream of sheer shock – my hand comes back wet with something thick, sticky and cold, and even before I manage to direct the torch beam straight into my right palm, I know that it’s blood.
40
Leah, days before
She can’t stop shaking at the sight of him hammering on the cabin’s door. Light snow is falling, settling in his hair. He’s shouting her name, sending bursts of frozen air from his mouth. She watches from the window, and he suddenly realizes she’s standing there. He stops knocking and shouting and holds her gaze. She turns her face so that the swollen, injured skin is clearly visible. He looks down at the ground, somber and sorry.
Hours later, when she’s finally managed to get rid of him and the bright sky has faded to a dark ocean blue, she decides to go home. She finds her way easily enough back down to the car; the path is lit up by the moon and the walk through the woods soothes her after the stressful afternoon. She still feels wounded, somehow, by the way he screamed at her. But out here, she feels like a part of everything, unlike in her life among other people. She sits in the driver’s seat and rubs her hands together hard a few times, breathing icy steam into the cold, dark space, then she starts the engine. Several lamps flash on the dashboard and when she tries to inch back in reverse, a terrible crunching sound makes her realize something is really wrong with the car. She puts it in park and leaves the engine idling while stepping outside to take a look. All four tires are slashed.
She walks briskly back up to the cabin, but when she’s almost at the first clearing, her foot catches on something and Leah comes crashing to the ground. For a long moment, she lies still, waiting for pain to crash over her, but it doesn’t happen, only mild discomfort and the shock of actually falling over. When she sits back up, she feels a deep twinge to the left of her abdomen; she must have pulled a muscle trying to catch her fall. As she starts walking again, she feels a trickle of blood run down the side of her face and realizes the fall has opened a cut that was already there. She also feels a couple of achy spots on her legs and hips; she’ll have even more bruises. She has no choice but to stay another day and tomorrow she can walk to the spot in the valley by the lake, where her phone usually picks up reception and call for help.
The afternoon is deepening into evening when she returns to Supernova, overcome by an almost feverish energy, like she has been every night since she got to Bekkebu, and the act of writing to Kristina instantly transports her away from her own circumstances. The day slips away as she delves deeper into her narrative; the shock of Anton hammering on the door, the slashed tires, the fall.
*
It’s past midnight when she goes to the bathroom and runs a bath. There is a second door that runs from the corner of the bathroom to a more recent bedroom wing extension, and Leah goes through to her bedroom and lies down on the freshly made bed while she waits for the bathwater to fill the tub from the little cistern outside. After next week, the cabin won’t have hot water again until the spring and Leah will have to heat big cauldrons of melted snow over the fire to take a bath.
In the bath, she closes her eyes and breathes the rising steam deep into her. She runs a natural sponge across her bruised collarbone, across her suddenly much-larger breasts, over the tight drum of her stomach, avoiding the tender points and the little cuts and grazes. She’ll run disinfectant over the wounds, then sink into bed, hoping for a restful night and more clarity tomorrow. Maybe she will wake up to the sound of Kristina knocking on the door; she still can’t help but hope it might happen. Since she started writing Supernova, the connection between them seems even stronger, like an umbilical cord of sheer energy.
She feels her eyelids growing heavy and the side of her face is throbbing; it’s time to get up and go to bed. As she steps from the bathtub onto the bathmat, she has the strange sensation of a sharp twinge from within her womb. She feels woozy and holds onto the side of the bath for support. A dark drop of blood splashes onto the bath mat. Then another.
41
Kristina
It is the most disgusting, terrifying sensation and I instinctively wipe my hand down the front of my jeans, streaking them maroon. I shine the beam onto the door and its handle, and both are streaked with dried blood. The handle has significantly more blood on it, and some has dripped onto the floor below. There are also several patches of it on the floor, almost indistinguishable against the slate floor tiles, and I didn’t notice it i
n the meager light of the little vestibule when I arrived – you’d have to direct the beam of a torch straight at it. There seems to be a trail leading to the bathroom. I step inside the bathroom and, shining the torch around, I spot another few small drops alongside the sink. There’s a bio compost toilet I am familiar with from other trips to similar cabins. There’s a bloody fingerprint on its closed lid and I shudder at the sight of it. There is also another door in the far corner of the room, impossible to see from where I stood before in the doorway of the vestibule.
I open it and realize that the cabin has been extended and is bigger than I thought. There is a pine-clad corridor with a door on either side and a floor-to-ceiling window at its end, with sweeping valley views. I shine the light onto the door on the left, which is ajar. I push it open with my foot to reveal a small but cozy bedroom with a built-in triple bunk, presumably for visiting children. I climb onto the bottom bunk and shine the light into the middle and top bunks in turn, but they are empty and neatly made up. There is a cupboard, also empty, and there are no signs of bloodstains anywhere in this room.
I go back out into the corridor and shine the light onto the second door, the one on the right. There is a rusty smudge on its door handle and I cover my hand with my sweater sleeve before grabbing it. The door doesn’t open easily, I have to lean against it to get it to budge inwards into the room, as if something is blocking it on the other side. Is she in there, dead? I pause for a brief moment, but find that I am strangely freed from fear or hesitation in this moment and know that it’s because I am high on the adrenaline surging through my veins.
The door gives enough for me to squeeze through and as I send the torch light around the room to get my bearings, I can’t suppress a cry – it is as though the sound is torn from my insides and will now remain an eternal echo in the room.
