by Alex Dahl
I’m aware of something foreign in my mouth – a pebble, a rock, a snail, a fragment of metal? I try to spit it out but my mouth is filled with water. I push whatever it is away with my tongue, and it finally slips from my mouth. Slowly, I feel about the bottom of the pool, and my right hand seems to regain some of its movement and I realize I’m not in water at all, but on the ground. I’m so cold, colder than I’ve been in all my life, the kind of cold I know to be dangerous. Some life and movement seeps back into other parts of me. I wave the toes of my right foot and they move. I try the left but a wild pain crashes over me, like I’ve been struck by an ax. I clench the muscles in my jaw and they tighten. I try to open my eyes, but they won’t. I touch a hand to my face and the right side feels almost normal, but the left is a swollen, unfamiliar landscape of tender bumps and stinging cuts. I rub my right eye gently and after, I’m able to open it a little to look around.
I’m face-down on the ground, shrouded by a layer of fresh snow. I vaguely recall stumbling through a snowstorm, my foot catching on something, falling. The terrible reality of the afternoon returns to me – Supernova, the remote cabin, finding her note, then Leah herself. I remember the terrible gaping mouth of the gun. Leah’s one rolled-back eye, her violet lips peeled back, the meaty hole in her face.
How long have I been unconscious? It’s unlikely to be more than a few minutes, but the snow is still coming down heavily. I pull myself up and feel around for my phone, but it’s nowhere to be found; all I can make out in the meager light is the unbroken shroud of bone-white snow, except for a spray of blood above where my head landed. I turn my head slowly and now I can make out the mound I mistook for a fallen tree, I’ve clearly been unconscious for long enough for the snow to cover her again. I shudder at the thought of the two of us out here in the night, side by side in the clearing, struck still, snow falling silently onto us until we are entirely covered and one with the landscape.
There is a strange feeling in my mouth and I run my tongue around it. A tooth toward the back of my lower left jaw is missing; this must be what I spat out when coming to. In its place is a disturbing hole and fresh blood surges to its surface as I probe it with my tongue.
A searing pain tears into me, shooting up my leg when I try to flex my left foot gently. My ankle is broken, without doubt. If I hadn’t regained consciousness when I did, I don’t think I would have lasted a half hour in this cold. I’ll die out here if I can’t get back to the car, but how? I remember the long walk up to the cabin through the woods from where I parked; it took me at least fifteen minutes of brisk walking to reach it, on uneven terrain, and that was before the snowfall. There is simply no way I could make it back, not with a broken ankle, in the dark, in an unfamiliar place. I could fall again, or get impossibly lost, and either way, I’d freeze to death before morning, my body entombed in ice like Leah’s. I don’t want to die.
‘I don’t want to die,’ I whisper out loud, and even my voice hurts. I begin to cry because the pain in my foot is so intense. My mind darts to a wild animal caught in a trap and left to die. I bring my hand to the racoon trim of my parka jacket and cry even more. My head spins.
I very slowly drag myself up so I am standing on my right foot, using an upended tree trunk for support. I run my hands across my torso and over my head and find everything more or less in its usual place, with the exception of some very sore points at the left side of my skull and jaw, and quite possibly a broken rib. I can’t help but cry out loud as my fingers travel across the bruised side of my face. My fingers are so stiff with cold, their tips are numbed beyond any real sensation. With the exception of the broken ankle, I don’t think I am dangerously injured, though the state of the left side of my face is worrying. An image of Leah that last day comes to mind – how I must resemble her now, eyes bruised shut, covered in bloody scratches, terror etched on my face.
I have no choice but to try to return to the cabin. Maybe I’ll be able to find some bandages and something to splint my left leg with, and tomorrow morning I might be able to drag myself back down to the car in the daylight. Or at least find my phone and call an ambulance. I’ll light a fire and eat whatever I can find in Leah’s cupboards, then I’ll sleep. Everything will be better tomorrow; I have to believe that.
I burst into tears again at the thought of my own bed at home, and how every night I fall asleep next to my husband, drawn close into his warm embrace. But not tonight. How could I have been so stupid to come to a remote cabin by myself? Telemark is a big county, with thousands of cabins scattered across remote and mountainous terrain. Nobody can find me here.
I try to hop up the slippery path in the direction I came, but I can’t place any weight at all on my left foot, and after less than a couple of meters, I fall back down. I scream with the pain; it is unlike anything I’ve felt in all my life. I make myself get halfway back up so I’m on my hands and knees and begin to drag myself up the path. My hands claw at the slushy snow and the sharp rocks underneath, tearing at my skin, and I also have a nosebleed, making droplets of blood drip onto the snow as I inch forward. The snowstorm has momentarily eased up and the dense clouds have parted to reveal patches of inky black sky. Pinprick stars twinkle merrily and it feels as though they are taunting me – a lone, broken woman crawling on her hands and knees across snow-covered rocks, up an inaccessible forest track to an isolated cabin.
I keep going. I have to, or I die.
‘I don’t want to die,’ I whisper, over and over. I really don’t want to die, not here, like an animal, no, not at all, and the truth of that makes me want to both cry and laugh at the same time, because nothing could be a stronger sign of how far I’ve really come. How incredibly far I’ve succeeded in removing myself from the rock-bottom hell of my life as it once was, how I’ve turned trauma into triumph, building a valued life for myself with my husband who adores me. I think of my husband and my home every inch of the way.
The white porcelain Jonathan Adler vase Eirik bought for my birthday, filled with a riot of tulips. Five inches forward. The antique hand-painted silk lamps we bought in a tiny shop on a back street of Montmartre many years ago, casting our living room in a cozy, homely glow. Another five inches, the sickly taste of blood at the back of my throat. Our deep bathtub, big enough for two, the feel of the mosaic wall tiles beneath my fingertips as I soak, eyes closed, a glass of red on the shelf to my right. Ten inches forward, a wave of pain. The way it feels to be pleasantly trapped beneath my husband in bed, his skin on my skin, his hands in my hair, his voice murmuring into my ear. Five inches more.
I become aware of a strange sound, a low, animal-like grunting echoing up and down the narrow shaft of the path, slicing through the trees. It rises into a wail, then a high-pitched keening, and I realize that it is coming from me – the pain tearing through me manifested in sound. I don’t want to die, but in this moment I am convinced that I will. I have no strength left in my hands, my fingertips are raw and feelingless, my head is pounding and strangely light, like everything that normally fills the conscious mind has seeped out into the white night. What I want now is to lie down. To give my body to the earth. To be cocooned in dark silence, to feel some peace.
‘I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die,’ I try to keep whispering out loud but the words die on my lips. Come on, Kristina. Come on. I can feel a voice speaking to me inside; it’s so strong, it’s physical, like the rush of blood through my veins. In my mind, I see a girl. A young girl. She’s in the woods, like the broken woman on the snowy hillside in Telemark. She’s going to die, and she knows it. But she doesn’t. She is going to get out of there and build a beautiful life. She will leave those woods. But still, the woods won’t ever really leave her.
I inch forward. I follow the girl. She’s crashing through the forests, screaming. She doesn’t want to die. She wants to become whatever it is she’ll become, if only she lives. She wants to see her parents again. She wants to lie in the narrow bed in her childhood
room, following the slight tear in the wallpaper with her eyes in the soft darkness, just one more time. I follow her desperate sprint in between impenetrable patches of shrubbery, across clearings, across streams, alongside a dirt track, into a tiny hamlet with a single meandering mud track alongside which sit squat gray brick houses with tin roofs and black gashes for windows. She screams. People come, rubbing sleep from eyes, muttering in a foreign language.
She lives. She goes home. I open my eyes.
The cabin is there, just yards away, its middle window still lit up invitingly by the oil lamp I forgot. I drag myself over to it, then through the door, collapsing on the floor, shaking and retching. The gray slate tiles feel warm and smooth beneath my fingertips. Fresh blood rushes from my nose onto the tiles, dripping onto the dried blood stains already there. I close my eyes. I thank the girl that was me in my head for showing me how to live.
48
Kristina
I drag myself into the bathroom and crawl onto a turquoise Berber rug between the bathtub and the compost toilet. Its lid is shut and I manage to pull myself up onto it. I’m shaking uncontrollably and my fingers are a strange shade of gray-blue. I blow on them repeatedly and after a while I feel some warmth return to them. I manage to slowly peel off my jeans, though the pain as I graze my left ankle is so intense it momentarily takes my breath away.
I inspect my ankle and foot in the faint light from the oil lamp on the shelf above me. The skin is unbroken, but grotesquely swollen and bruised. I very gently run my fingers across where the fracture seems to be, and even the lightest touch provokes an onslaught of pain. I open the bathroom cabinet where I discover that Leah thankfully kept an impressive supply of painkillers. There’s ibuprofen, paracetamol, codeine and, impressively, oxycodone. I take two dry – there’s no water in the tap – Leah must have a summer cistern or get it delivered in tanks for the warm season. Cabins like this one often don’t have water in the winter – the pipes would freeze. In the cupboard I also find sterile compresses and bandages. I manage to stand up for a moment, catching sight of myself in the small mirror. My face is swollen and almost unrecognizable. The skin is broken in several places, with mud and pine needles pressed into the cuts and scratches. I spit on my finger and rub the dirt away gently before sticking the compress over the entire side of my face. I hold my own gaze for a long moment, almost mesmerized by the terror in my own eyes. It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s going to be okay.
I lower myself very gently to the ground and crawl into the main living space, and when I take infinite care to not brush against anything with my ankle, the pain is just about manageable. Like I thought I remembered, there are some scraps of kindling in the wood basket by the hearth. I choose the longest and firmest pieces and press them gently in place to support my ankle in a splint, while winding the bandage tight. When I finish, the pain has softened somewhat, probably a combination of the bandage and the Oxycodone. I sit by the side of the hearth, in the exact place I imagined Leah before, singing to herself and drawing warmth into her body. I layer four logs with kindling in between and place some scraps of old newspaper into the gaps between them. When I strike a match it takes immediately, sending big flames leaping into the chimney.
I sit here for a long while, feeling warmth return to my limbs. Occasionally I look across the room through the little grid windows at the dark night beyond. All the clouds have disappeared now, leaving a huge moon hanging high in the sky. The snow has stayed on the ground and the little clearing sparkles in the moonlight. It must be getting late, though how late, I can’t tell without my phone. Nine o’clock maybe? Eirik might be back at his hotel after dinner. Maybe he’s trying to call me. My phone will ring from under a thick cloak of snow, if it even works still.
The shock and fear have given way to numbness and an almost overpowering fatigue. I decide to look for coffee. I need to think, and I don’t feel ready to lie down to sleep in this place, among Leah’s possessions. The very thought of it makes my skin prickle into goosebumps on my arm.
Once I have fully regained my warmth, I make my way over to the kitchen nook, supporting myself on bookshelves, backs of chairs and the side of the little Chinese cabinet as I go. There is instant coffee and a kettle, but I don’t understand how to make it work without electricity. I follow the cord from the little countertop refrigerator down to the floor, where it disappears into the large, humming generator, almost as big as the appliance itself. I realize there are plug holes around its sides and connect the kettle. In a cupboard I remember seeing several bottles of Imsdal bottled mineral water, and pour half of one into the kettle.
I drink my coffee black by the side of the hearth, gazing into the flames. It is utterly delicious, and for a long moment I feel a strange calm, considering the circumstances. It could be even worse, I suppose. I made it back to the cabin. I have firewood and coffee. I won’t die from these injuries. All I have to do is get through the night. But what if whoever killed Leah comes back for me? Or did Leah kill Leah? My mind is spinning. She left a suicide note saying she’d drown in the lake, and yet she ended up shot on a hillside. I take several deep breaths. Control yourself, Kristina, I say to myself. I am safer here than anywhere else in this moment, no one knows I am here. All you have to do is get through this night.
I let my eyes travel again across the numerous books that dominate the room. Several copies of Leah’s own novel are displayed on a shelf, I hadn’t noticed them before, in Norwegian, Swedish, English, French, Portuguese and Italian. I could choose any one of them and make my way to the windowless, cozy sleeping alcove tucked away in the corner of the room, reading until I am able to fall asleep. And tomorrow will bring light, hope and rescue – I have to believe that.
And yet, inside, I know what I crave. I try to resist, because I decided I couldn’t bear to read another word she wrote, and don’t want to know of any more ways Leah might have infiltrated my life. None of it matters now – she’s dead in the most tragic of circumstances and her misguided actions will have no further impact on my life.
What did she hope to achieve by following me around and writing about my life? I try to run through all the possible scenarios, but my brain is dull and uncooperative. It also feels impossible to spend the long night here alone, and choose not to know what she was trying to tell me. I inch across the room to the sofa and settle myself into it before opening Leah’s MacBook and opening the document. She would have been pleased to know she has my full attention now – that’s what she wanted.
49
Supernova
You’ll be familiar with exposure therapy. It may come as a surprise to you that, so am I. According to Psychiatric Times, exposure therapy is defined as, ‘any treatment that encourages the systematic confrontation of feared stimuli, which can be external, such as feared objects, activities and situations, or internal, such as feared thoughts or physical sensations’. Consider this entire account exposure therapy, Kristina.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve mentioned Carúpano. I bet it horrified you. I’m not doing this to torture you, I only want your life to be perfect. Selfishly, I suppose I need you to be perfect, and the only way you can be perfect is if you’re whole.
What we’re going to do here is to rewrite the stories you tell yourself. You see, like any good journalist, I’ve done some research and some fact-checking, and it would seem things aren’t quite how they looked at first glance. Your dissociative amnesia came as a surprise to me. A trauma therapist marred by trauma; you couldn’t make it up. A doctor of psychology dedicating her life to the extensive exploration of the inner life, and yet your own remains steeped in shadows.
I’ve been thinking about how to best do this, and came up with the idea of a ‘guided walk through the mind’ approach. Bear with me, I’ve actually done a lot of research into this. It’ll be a bit like that meditation bit in yoga; I know you like a bit of vinyasa flow, you told me yourself in your diary. See, I pay attention.
Let�
�s start off with the mental image of a large, beautiful house. It’s modern and sleek, in a good part of town. The house is your life. Your marriage is one room, your friendships another, your career a third. Your past is downstairs, and behind one of several doors is Carúpano. But you’ve nailed that door shut and plastered over it, making it indistinguishable from the smooth white walls. We’re going to open it.
*
How? And why? I can almost feel your questions, across whatever time lapse separates us. How did I know? It wasn’t that hard. It’s pretty public knowledge if you know where to look. But I know more than them. More than everyone, including you, it would seem. Why, is arguably more interesting. I want to put you back together. I believe that if we build a picture and reconstruct what happened, then the white patches in your mind will become colored in, and you’ll be able to move on. Here goes.
Your mother is a delight, isn’t she? Not sure I understand why you’re cold toward her; at least that’s how she feels. She told me herself. It was easy to get her to talk. I must say she’s a talker, unlike you. It was difficult to find my angle of approach; you can’t just turn up on someone’s doorstep and get them to divulge intimate details about their family members without rousing suspicion. You need to establish a connection over something they care about, build a sense of trust. Finding out where she lives was obviously easy; I must say I love how almost everyone in Norway’s address is listed on 1881.no, from the moderately famous to the very wealthy. Bærum, huh? I suppose I should have guessed you’d grown up somewhere fancy. You have that rich-girl privilege; that’s the thing about you I find hard to acquire as my own. As you know, I didn’t grow up like that and it’s hard to fake when you don’t know all the nuances and cues of privilege.
