Cabin Fever

by Alex Dahl

  No, she thinks, and realizes that this thought came from deep within her, as though spoken by her very core self.

  ‘No,’ she says, her voice low and trembling. ‘No. Thank you, but I’m not ready for that. Let’s do all that, but I’ll stick to iced tea.’ In the past, whenever Elisabeth has come to stay at Kristina and Eirik’s, Kristina has gone out of her way to prepare delicious non-alcoholic alternatives for her. Home-brewed iced Kusmi tea with fresh blackberries and mint leaves, or decaf espresso tonics with juicy, thick wedges of lime.

  ‘I don’t have any, I’m afraid,’ says Kristina, and retracts the offered wine, pouring it into her own glass, filling it all the way to the brim. She takes a sip from it and laughs. ‘Why don’t you take this through to the dining room and I’ll see if I can rustle up something yummy.’ Kristina hands her the tray and takes another big gulp of the wine.

  Elisabeth takes it and heads to the dining room, passing through two other huge, spotlessly clean rooms – a drawing room with heavy damask sash curtains and impressive modern art, and a library with custom-built color-coordinated shelves and a French marble fireplace with a gaping black mouth.

  She sits down where she usually sits and waits for Kristina. She’s a little different today, she noticed it when they were driving – she seems preoccupied and jittery, though she is good at summoning a calm presence. But not that good; Elisabeth has known her since they were three years old. I’ve had a tough week at work, Kristina said and this comment makes Elisabeth suddenly angry. You’ve had a tough week at work? You should try to take a walk in my shoes, golden girl. She instantly feels guilty for these thoughts; Kristina has done more for her than anyone else, and they are bound together by so much shared history. Kristina walks into the room, carrying her own wine glass and a beautiful non-alcoholic cocktail laden with fruit and ice and fresh mint.

  Elisabeth smiles at her, hoping that Kristina will eventually forgive her for what she is going to do and say in Ella Victor’s book. She also hopes that someday they will sit across from each other like this, on even terms, not as addict and her friend-slash-therapist-slash-savior, but just as friends.

  ‘Try this,’ says Kristina, placing the berry-red drink on a jade-veined marble coaster in front of her.

  67

  Supernova

  We’re coming up to a really important part. I know why Elisabeth committed suicide. It wasn’t your fault. And I know how much guilt you must feel. Elisabeth never blamed you, I know she didn’t. But I think you blame yourself and that’s why you will always be haunted by it. I worry that you will have stopped reading, that all of these revelations coming at you hard and fast will have scared you off. Somehow I think you’re still here, all ears. I wonder what will shock you the most, the truth about Carúpano and Trine and Elisabeth, or the truth about your beloved Eirik and what he’s done. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all counts soon.

  So. We’ve done your mother. We’ve done Elisabeth. We’ve talked about exposure therapy and now we’re going to take all of this to the next level.

  Okay. Carúpano. Not going to lie, this part packs a fucking punch.

  *

  Like Xavier said, the house is stunning. Built into the cliffs above the sheltered bay at the eastern fringes of Carúpano, the villa has several levels, with two separate rooftop pools. There are people everywhere, dancing, laughing, openly doing coke. One couple is clearly making love in a dark corner of the main living space. You walk through the room on Xavier’s arm and take the beer he hands you. You begin to sway to the music when you reach the dancefloor outside. You’ve never been anywhere like this before. This is what you dreamed of, all those long months dragging past during your final year of school in a safe, underwhelming suburb of Oslo. You look at Xavier. You smile. You get high.

  Occasionally, you scan the crowd for Elisabeth and Trine and spot them both on the dancefloor, moving energetically with a couple of guys, the usually reserved Trine pumping her fist in the air. You laugh and Xavier closes your mouth with his own, playfully touching the tip of his tongue against yours.

  After a while, you edge towards the edge of the crowd, time for a break. Xavier takes your hand and leads you through the main space, down a flight of stairs, then another, along a long corridor, to a bedroom. The crowd is thinning, some must have left, some might have retreated to the bedrooms on the lower levels. The heavy bass throbs through the house like a pulse. You don’t need me to tell you what happens next. When you emerge from the bedroom, your hair messy and your eyeliner dragging sweetly upwards at the corners of your eyes from laughing so much, you seamlessly rejoin the others on the dancefloor and they pretend like you’d been there all along. Elisabeth and Trine are red-faced from all the dancing, beads of sweat running down the sides of their faces glinting in the white light of a high, full moon.

  Let me show you somewhere special, says Xavier. Come. The three of you walk behind Xavier and one of the other guys who’d danced with Elisabeth and Trine, away from the house, away from the beach, into the jungle on a narrow track. Perhaps he senses a change in atmosphere, a charged current of beginning fear, because Xavier turns around and smiles widely, pointing up at the hillside, clearly visible now after a sharp turn. Up there, nestled in verdant forest, is a wrought-iron gazebo. It’s beautiful, like something out of a fairytale. You step inside and settle in a circle on the floor, around a large round mirrored table. The other man, Xavier’s friend, plays tinny hip-hop music on his phone. You look out over the gently rippling Caribbean, then back at Xavier. You can’t stop smiling. The other man pulls a little Ziploc bag from his pocket and cuts five long lines of coke on the table clearly intended for this purpose.

  Puro, he says, and winks at you.

  Muy puro, adds Xavier.

  After another hour in the gazebo, laughing and chatting, Trine grows quiet and visibly tired, and Elisabeth whispers straight into your ear.

  We need to get going. It’s the middle of the night, she says. Our hostel might not even let us in.

  Soon, says Xavier, when you nuzzle his neck and ask him if he can take you to Carúpano.

  The three of you confer quickly in Norwegian and agree that you need to be a little more forceful with Xavier, it really is time to go.

  Let’s play a game first, says Xavier’s friend. He’s a scrawny guy with a blandly handsome face, and although he’s quite a bit older than the rest of them, Trine had seemed quite taken with him on the dancefloor, though nothing seems to have happened between them. Xavier pulls you down gently next to him on the dirt floor and you let yourself be drawn close. Xavier laughs and pokes you playfully in the soft hollow between your breasts, so you laugh, too. But then the man pulls out a gun and places it on the stone slab with a loud clang.

  Let’s go, says Elisabeth and stands up, but you tug gently at the hem of her dress and she sits back down.

  None of you have ever seen a gun before. And why would you have? Naïve, spoilt, sheltered little girls from average families in the richest and safest country in the world usually haven’t and never will. Later, much later, you’ll be asked to identify the weapon. They’ll show you image after image of handguns; small ones, big ones, black, bronze, silver, guns with wooden details, guns with silencers and guns without. You won’t be able to take more than a single glance at them without starting to sweat and shake. Which one? They’ll ask, and you’ll close your eyes and shake your head lightly. Your mind will be blank, entirely empty, like the still surface of a lake.

  The man, who will never resurface after this night, and whose name you’ll never recover, removes something from the back pocket of his low-slung, mud-splattered jeans and holds his palm out for you to see. The bullet glints in the incandescent light of the full moon. A single golden cylinder, an object of beauty, like an amulet. He flicks the hand holding the gun, and the weapon splits open to reveal the chamber with six empty holes. You can’t help a sharp, audible intake of breath at the sight.

  Hey, chill out
, Xavier says. He’ll go first.

  The man slots the bullet into the chamber and stares at you all in turn with small, strangely burning eyes, buried in the folds of heavy eyelids. He spins the barrel dramatically and it hurtles around its axis until it suddenly stops with a soft ‘click’. Then he hands the gun to you, the ringleader. (Yes, you were the ringleader, Kristina, even though you might have claimed it was Elisabeth. It was always you, the others revered your natural authority, your calm, centered way of being.)

  No, says the man. She chooses.

  You hold the weapon entirely still in your hands. You’d have felt power, trepidation, fear, exhilaration. A heavy silence settles over all of you. Did you try, in those moments, to work out the probability of a bullet burying itself in your brain if you were to raise the gun to your head and pull the trigger? It was one of the most moving things I discovered about you, back when I was discovering everything about you – your meticulous penciled probability calculations. You turn the gun over in your hand, its dangerous body cool against your sweaty palm. You hand it to Xavier.

  You go, you whisper, taking in his handsome face as his expression goes from suspenseful to shocked, then quietly impressed. He takes the gun from you, slowly, and laughs softly under his breath. You can see a thick vein pulsate on his neck. You can still taste him in your mouth. Never was anyone more alive than Xavier in those moments (your own words, again). You glance around and your eyes meet Elisabeth and Trine’s terrified ones. They are both enraptured and horrified. You raise an eyebrow and Xavier takes it as his cue. With his right hand he lifts the handgun and presses its mouth to the soft hollow at his temple. He places his left hand in yours, his gaze not leaving yours for a second. Then he smiles slowly, that same smile he gave you when he first looked at you in the car, a smile that seems to wash his face in light, making a tough-looking guy look soft and easy to love. He raises an eyebrow almost imperceptively and everyone holds their breath. You give the faintest nod and Xavier pulls the trigger.

  A soft click. A collective whoosh of released air from five pairs of lungs. Laughter. The sharp sting of tears in the corners of your eyes, quickly dismissed. Xavier’s tongue probing your mouth, the cheers of the others, another round of cocaine.

  Just one more time, says Xavier. Come on, ladies, seems only fair. Elisabeth wants to leave. Trine is too tired, too high, to protest.

  Yes, you say. Just one more. Then you take us home.

  Xavier nods. The other man picks the gun up off the dirt floor where Xavier dropped it after the first roulette. He flicks the barrel open and shows it to the four of you, as if to prove the bullet is still there. Then he spins it, and it turns rapidly around itself with a soft whirr that merges with the murmur of the waves far below you, until it audibly clicks into place.

  You choose again, says Xavier, placing the gun back in your hands. Did you ever feel more alive than in that moment, Kristina? I doubt it. Do you think you ever will again? I’ll never know why you chose her. A crystal-clear demonstration of the hierarchy in your trio, perhaps. An attempt of showing off to Xavier. After all, you could have handed the gun to the second man, a random stranger. But you don’t. You hand it to Trine.

  It’s not even real, you whisper. It’s just a game.

  Trine emerges from her coke-haze to find her eyes locked on yours. She can’t quite decipher your words. Elisabeth says something. Let’s go, probably. Trine tries to do as she’s told, to lift the gun, but she’s started to shake uncontrollably, the sound of her teeth chattering audible to the others.

  Stop, says Elisabeth and tries to stand up, but Xavier gently and firmly pulls her back down.

  Come on, ladies. We have to finish what we started. Last round. You laugh, but your voice sounds hollow and strange.

  If you want to play this game, you should go next, says Elisabeth. Everyone falls silent. A long moment unfolds between you.

  You’re right, you say. You reach for the gun, which lies nestled in the space between Trine’s jittery, trembling knees.

  No, whispers Trine. You chose me. But you hold it.

  You glance at Elisabeth, then at Xavier, their faces are unreadable. Suddenly none of it seems funny or exciting and you fight the urge to just get up and bolt into the clutch of the jungle, merely inches away. Finally, you look at Trine. She has stopped shaking and appears strangely calm. You can make out the beat of her pulse on her throat. A slight smile plays on her pink, full lips and she gives a little nod as your hand closes around the gun.

  Another collective intake of breath. Metal and moonlight. You struggle to lift the weapon to Trine’s temple, it feels impossibly heavy, and you press it very hard against her temple to stop your hand from trembling violently. A wince. Then, another little nod.

  68

  Kristina

  ‘Kristina? Honey, what’s happening? Kristina, what the fuck? What’s going on… what are you doing? I don’t understand? What are you reading?’

  I needed to stay composed. I needed to keep this from my husband, but I have entirely lost control of myself. I am racked with sobs, waves of grief shooting to the surface like molten chunks of lava erupting from a volcano.

  ‘Babe,’ he says and sits down next to where I am crumpled on the floor by the sofa. He reaches out to take the laptop from my hands, but I’m clutching it tight. ‘What’s happening? Why are you on the floor?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, trying to come up with some kind of explanation for this meltdown. Eirik has never seen me like this in all the years we’ve been together – I pride myself on having found the perfect balance between showing emotions and controlling them.

  ‘Whose laptop is that?’ asks Eirik and when our eyes meet, I notice something cold in the way he’s looking at me.

  ‘It’s mine,’ I say.

  ‘Yours is at home. On the kitchen table. I used it to find your iPhone before I left – they’re synced.’

  ‘This is my work laptop. I… I’m feeling so overwhelmed because I just read through my patient notes for Leah Iverson. It’s just so sad, what happened to her. I think I just needed to cry it out.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kristina.’

  ‘No.’ Eirik reaches for the laptop again, more forcefully this time, but I wrench it away from him and try to move away, but he’s so much stronger than me, and the movement brings another crash of pain and I cry even harder. ‘Eirik, you’re hurting me. Please. Let go.’ When I speak calmly and slowly to him, he snaps back into himself, realizing what a strange thing it is to do, to try to wrestle your badly injured wife to read her professional notes.

  ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, Krissy. Just, I guess I felt suddenly irrationally suspicious of you when you said it was your laptop when your laptop is definitely at home.’

  ‘You know I have two.’ Thank God everyone seems to have the same MacBook.

  ‘Yes. Look. I’m sorry. You look… Terrible. Can I do anything? Shall I make you a coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Eirik goes over to the kitchen nook and I place the laptop on the table. I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t bought my lie about it being my work laptop and insisting on seeing it. I watch him make the coffee and we sit in silence, the air filled with the loud whine from the kettle as the water gets closer and closer to boiling, and the groan of the refrigerator too. Eirik kicks the side of the refrigerator and it instantly stops. The kettle boils and snaps off. It’s totally quiet except for the sound of Eirik stirring milk into my coffee, the spoon scraping against the porcelain mug. He looks up and realizes I’m staring at him. When our eyes meet, I suddenly grasp hold of a vague sensation I had moments ago – there was something about the way he nudged Leah’s refrigerator and knew how to make it stop. Something familiar.

  69

  Kristina

  Eirik hands me the coffee. I blow on it, sending ripples onto its surface.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Eirik, and again, I cat
ch sight of something cool in the way he is looking at me, as though he is trying to analyze my thoughts. I remind myself that he can’t and focus on making my face soft and relaxed. I feel uncomfortable holding his gaze, it suddenly feels like the gaze of a stranger. I glance around the room, careful to avoid Elisabeth’s picture – I don’t want Eirik to notice it. I’m wondering how he got through the barrier from the main road to the private track leading to the parking space for Bekkebu; I locked it behind me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say and wince exaggeratedly. ‘I’m in quite a bit of pain.’ This is true. But also, I’m afraid. For the first time in my life, I’m afraid of my husband.

  70

  Kristina

  Eirik returns to the digging, and for a long while I just sit in silence, staring at the timber walls, at Elisabeth’s picture, at the laptop on the table in front of me. I know that what Leah wrote is true. I already know what happened; Elisabeth told me before she died, but I don’t remember it. I don’t want to remember, that’s the truth. I can build the images Leah describes in my mind, like any reader could, but still it is as though they are being constructed by her descriptions, rather than drawn from my own memories. I don’t have any memories of my own from those moments, the last of Trine Rickard’s life. Until now, because Leah unleashed them.

  The thing she said about the single bullet glinting in the moonlight like something beautiful. I can see it. The feeling of the gun’s barrel, snug in my hand, so heavy. I can feel it. The sound it made, tearing the night to shreds. I can hear it. The moments after, when I opened my eyes. There was nothing there. I saw nothing at all. A black hole, a white patch, a cloak of nothingness.