Cabin Fever

by Alex Dahl

  I hear a sound. It’s Eirik, standing right in front of me, speaking.

  ‘What?’ I whisper, my whole body feeling weak and strangely numb.

  ‘Look, I’ve managed to free the front door. It’s just after noon. I was thinking I’d get some more firewood out of the shed, and once I’ve got the fire going, I’ll try to make my way down to the car. I should have phone reception there. At least now the door is free.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. I think about the strange moments that passed between us before. I was afraid of him. But am I just disorientated and in shock? This is my husband. I’ve known him inside out for fourteen years. I smile at Eirik and he smiles back. Still, something is different about him, in the way he watches me. He places a glass of water on the table in front of me, next to the laptop, and kisses the top of my head lightly.

  ‘Kristina?’ he calls from over by the front door.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, leaning forward to see past the doorway. He pushes the door open to show me the tunnel he’s dug outside. In his right hand is the pickax. I feel another surge of fear. What have you done? I think, looking at him.

  ‘I’m getting the firewood, okay? Do you need anything?’

  ‘No. I… Actually, I wondered about something.’

  ‘What?’ He’s halfway out the door but turns back to look at me.

  ‘Did you ever meet Leah?’ I’ve spoken without properly thinking through the consequences, unusual for me – my impulse control is good. Her name hovers in the air between us. I watch Eirik very carefully. There is no reaction other than a very slight clench of his jaw.

  ‘Leah Iverson?’ He repeats her name, as though I might be referring to some other Leah than the Leah who owned this cabin, who stalked me, who killed herself, who set in motion a devastating chain of events, who insinuated that there could be some juicy stories in store about the man in front of me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Why? Did she ask about me or something? She might have been aware of who you were married to.’

  ‘No. No she didn’t.’

  ‘I knew who she was, like I said. I imagine most people would. She was pretty high profile, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Okay. Well, see you in a minute.’ Eirik holds the pickax up and waves at me, then he disappears outside.

  *

  Eirik drags the sofa with me on it closer to the hearth, as close as it will go. If I reach my hands out, the heat from the flames is so hot I have to retract them after a moment. He carries me to the bathroom and waits outside while I go, then back to the sofa.

  ‘The fire won’t go out for a long time; I’ll be back way before it does. But do you think you can manage to toss a few more logs on if it starts to die?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t even have to get up.’

  ‘I think the nearest hospital is in Notodden, they might choose to send an air ambulance.’

  I ponder this for a moment, the surreal thought of being airlifted away from Leah’s cabin. ‘The moment I have reception, I’ll call the hospital and the police.’

  ‘She’ll be buried completely by now,’ I say, and imagine what would have happened if Eirik and I hadn’t come to the cabin – she would most likely have stayed underneath the snow through the winter. She might have been found in the spring, or not at all, and eventually she’d be nothing but a few bones, scattered across the hillsides by the wind, where wild animals roam, picking up what were once parts of her and putting them back down somewhere else.

  He nods and looks stricken.

  ‘I covered her well. She, uh, they’ll remove her by tonight, I imagine. I’m going now; hopefully, I won’t be long.’

  ‘Just hurry, okay?’ I say, though in spite of the pain I am in, I hope he takes a good long while.

  71

  Supernova

  It is my hope that you’ll come to understand why I’ve done what I’ve done with Carúpano. I just wanted to set you free. I want to set you free in more ways than just one, though, and this is where Eirik comes into it. The thing is, Kristina, I’ve failed. I’ve fucked up big time. I know you’ll have been freaking out at the mention of your darling beloved husband, and at the suspicion of where this is heading. The perfect man – your golden guy in the middle of your golden world. You’d do anything to hold onto him; maybe because deep down, you know you can’t – not really.

  He’s the type that does what he wants and takes what he can, and you know it. We’re alike in that way, you and me – successful and beautiful and accomplished by most people’s standards, but fundamentally always at the mercy of some man who loves himself more than he could ever love someone else. Maybe you should ask yourself how far he’d go for you and whether he really matches your devotion. You’ve said it to me before and it always felt like a sucker punch in the gut, so now I’ll say it to you – do you think, perhaps, that you deserve better?

  For what it’s worth, I think you deserve everything.

  But this wasn’t about him, at least not to begin with. It was all about you. I got close to him because I wanted to get close to you, or as close as I could to actually being you. I laughed with your mother. I spent time with your best friend, and gained her trust so much that she finally felt able to release what she’d kept for herself for so long. You may not believe me when I say that with Eirik, my intentions were entirely innocent. I wanted to know if he deserved you. He doesn’t.

  You remind me of someone, he said that first night I approached him at the bar, wanting to gauge how easily he could be led astray. Easily, is your answer. The someone, of course, was you. The thing I didn’t factor in, Kristina, is that he reminded me of someone, too. It has taken me a while to figure out who it was, and I’m sure you will use all your impressive psychology credentials to arrive at the same conclusion. This is my excuse; I don’t have a better one. I just didn’t see it coming, that I’d love him. Or that my attention would be wrenched from you to him. I didn’t mean to create a situation that will no doubt bring you deep hurt. I believed him when he said that he’d never loved anyone like he loved me. He knew what to say to the fatherless little girl who lives inside of me, the girl who just wants to be taken care of. He made me feel taken care of. I believed him when he said he would leave you, and for a while, I saw myself stepping into your shoes, living your life, for real. I talked myself out of my persistent feelings of guilt by thinking that if that was truly how he felt about me, then you’d be better off without him. I suppose I felt that he and I deserved each other and that neither of us deserved you. Still, I felt bad, terrible, doing what I did, and I have no other excuse than that I love him, even now.

  72

  Kristina

  In the same moment I read her last words, the MacBook shuts down. The fire has gone out inexplicably, and the logs are still intact, only flame-licked on one side. I am shaking so hard that my fingers fumble with the matches, lighting one after another, then dropping them to the floor where they extinguish. My fingertips are still raw and sore from last night’s crawl through the snowdrifts to the cabin, but after several attempts I finally manage to relight the fire. In less than twenty-four hours my life has been left in ruins. I try to think but now it is as though my entire brain has gone blank, not just the parts I lost after Carúpano.

  Eirik has betrayed me. He’s come here with her before, how else would he have known how to silence the refrigerator or gotten past the barrier? They’ve all betrayed me: Elisabeth, my mother, everyone I love. And now, Leah is dead. Elisabeth is dead. Thank God.

  I’m still alive and Eirik is still alive and Leah and Elisabeth are both dead. If I could find a way to let it all go, if I can lock all this away somewhere inside me, I can still have everything. My home and my work and my family and my calm, controlled mind. My husband. But do I still want him? I just didn’t see it coming, that I’d love him. Leah didn’t have the faintest concept of love. And just because
she thought she loved him, it sure as hell doesn’t mean he loved her. So he bought her a few drinks, he fucked her, maybe he came here with her for a faux-romantic weekend to fuck her some more, but Eirik loves me. That much I know. And I don’t know any of the rest of it; it’s all speculation, I don’t ever have to know. I can live with blank patches.

  I want to throw the MacBook into the leaping flames, destroying Leah’s insane words. What I would give to never have come here, to never have read her words. To not have found her dead. She would just remain where she is until nothing would remain of her at all.

  I hear a sound, footsteps approaching. Eirik appears in the doorway, his face red with exertion and the biting cold. In his right hand is a thick coil of blue rope, in his left the pickax. I try to smile at my husband, because I am terrified by the look in his eyes. I want him to look at me the way he usually does, with adoration and awe. You’re my crown jewel, he always says. He loves me so deeply; he always says it and shows it in a million ways, but could it be that Leah was right, that he treats me like a queen, but a queen in a game of chess? Is his love about him and how it makes him look and feel, not about me? Could it be that she was right, that I deserve better? His eyes are empty of love now. They are distant and haunted, like he’s been pursued all the way back up the hillside. I realize again that I’m afraid of him.

  He watches me from the doorway with those cold eyes.

  ‘Hey you,’ I say, shrinking back into the sofa, making myself look vulnerable, which of course I am. He doesn’t answer. ‘Is something wrong? Did you manage to reach the car?’

  Eirik nods. He places the pickax on the floor in the vestibule and takes a few steps toward me, leaving lumps of tightly packed snow from his shoes in his wake. He’s still holding the rope and I recognize it vaguely as one he keeps in the boot, coiled inside the spare tire, in case of an emergency. In case of an emergency.

  I swallow hard. ‘What’s happened?’ I ask, careful to keep my voice soft and calm. It’s like the Eirik I know and love isn’t really here, that this man standing in front of me is a stranger, living a separate narrative playing out inside his head. I have to connect with him, to bring him back around to this moment with me. ‘Eirik. Did you get reception on the phone?’

  He gives a faint nod, a brief flick of the head, but it’s as if the movement isn’t in response to my question but rather in response to whatever is happening in his mind. Eirik stops a couple of steps away from where I’m lying on the sofa, my splintered and aching leg propped up high. He is clutching the coil of rope so tightly his knuckles have turned white. He stares at me and I’m shocked to see tears pooling in his eyes; in all these years, I’ve never seen Eirik cry.

  ‘You haven’t called anyone, have you?’ I whisper.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you please talk to me and tell me what is happening for you in this moment?’

  ‘I—’ He begins to speak but interrupts himself. He stares at the floor and at the rope, sending tears flowing down his face. ‘I didn’t want to have to do this,’ says Eirik.

  ‘Do what, honey?’

  ‘Get rid of you.’

  73

  Leah, two days before

  He was the only one, out of all of the men, she’d brought to this cabin. The only one she’d wanted to. Inviting him here was the same as inviting him into the inner chambers of her heart, she knew that. She hadn’t seen it coming, and what started as a way of getting closer to Kristina, or closer to being Kristina, perhaps, had turned into something else entirely. It had brought so much joy but also remorse and heartache.

  But now, seeing him at the door, face cast in shadows and hair whipped up on the fierce wind chasing down the hillsides to the clearing, she feels none of the feelings that caught her by surprise. She feels fear. She should have known that he might have come for her here – he’s the only one that could. Except…

  We need to talk, he says.

  No, she says.

  You always say no.

  There’s nothing more to talk about.

  He pushes past her into the tiny vestibule and in the faint glow from the oil lamps in the next room.

  I’m sorry for Friday.

  Sorry?

  Yes.

  You screamed at me. You threatened me to abort our baby.

  Leah… I’m sorry.

  Fuck you. You’ll be pleased to know that there’s no baby anymore. You’ll have it your way.

  Her face is deathly pale and her hair is stuck to her skull in greasy strings.

  What… what have you done? And what happened to your face?

  What have I done? She screams the words, and they burst from her empty insides with such force he actually takes a step back. What have you done, you mean? Everyone is going to hear about this. I’ll make sure they all know about the promises you made, the way you said you love me, how you lied to your wife night after night, how you got me pregnant and then threatened me to get rid of the baby we made, how you said you’d ruin my life if I didn’t. No, wait, you said you’d hunt me down and fucking kill me like an animal if I didn’t. Well, I bet you’re pleased now. But let me be very clear with you – you’re going down, you fucking asshole!

  Wait, wait, baby, listen to me, I came here because I was so worried about you. I wanted us to talk more, better, properly, I can’t live with what I said to you the last time I saw you. I was confused and upset and what happened should never have happened, Leah please listen to me, please, please.

  But she’s already outside, running fast down the hill. And Eirik’s behind her.

  74

  Kristina

  ‘Get up,’ says Eirik. His eyes are wild, far away in the recesses of his own mind. I need to find out what he sees there, or I am never going to get out of here alive.

  ‘I can’t,’ I whisper.

  He comes over to me and yanks me hard by the arm. ‘I said get up!’ I move slowly, pulling myself up to an awkward standing position, placing all my weight on my right leg and holding on to the low table in front of me, avoiding his eyes.

  ‘Eirik—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Eirik pulls something from his pocket, some kind of little book, and flicks through it before throwing it onto the table in front of me. It’s my diary, the orange leather-bound one that was in my Neverfull bag that Leah stole.

  ‘You know, I meant what I said. I really didn’t want to have to do this. Can you even begin to fucking imagine what the last few days have been like for me?’

  ‘For you?’ I scream it out loud, without thinking, and for a long moment, Eirik and I stand staring furiously at each other. I need to defuse the situation here or I’ll end up dead like Leah. Dead like Elisabeth. ‘Eirik, wait. Listen to me. We need to talk, not get all crazy with each other. A lot has happened here. But first, we need to focus on getting out of here. We need to get home.’

  ‘Home!’ Eirik begins to laugh incredulously. ‘What, you think we’re going to leave here and go home like nothing happened?’

  ‘Eirik, please help me home. I’m in so much pain.’

  ‘Soon you won’t be.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘Write.’ Eirik fishes a Montblanc pen from his jacket pocket and slams it onto the table in front of me.

  ‘Write what?’

  ‘A note.’

  I can’t stand up for a moment longer and sink back down onto the sofa, my leg hurting beyond anything I’ve ever felt before, wave after wave of crashing pain, my heart hollering in my chest. I can’t stop the tears that begin to flow, and don’t try to wipe them away; I just keep my eyes trained on my hands folded in my lap. I hear a huge crash and when I look up I realize Eirik has smashed a chair against the timber wall, splintering both the chair and the wall with the force. He lets out a wild cry and bursts into tears. I have never seen Eirik, or anyone for that matter, like this before. He’s muttering to himself, his eyes roaming the room as if trying to find a cue to his next move.

  �
��What the fuck?’ he screams suddenly and scrambles past where I’m sitting. He climbs onto a chair and reaches for Elisabeth’s painting on the wall. ‘What the fuck,’ he says again, over and over. ‘How—’

  ‘Eirik,’ I say, keeping my voice low, ‘You and I have both been the victims of a very twisted individual. Leah Iverson—’

  ‘Shut up!’ he screams at the top of his lungs. ‘I don’t understand! I don’t understand…’

  ‘Listen to me,’ I say. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re in shock. We need to get out of here. Eirik, please. Think about the elections. Think about our home. Think about our baby. The baby we’re going to have. You and me. When we get out of here. We just need to get out of here.’ He falls silent and sinks down on the floor in front of me, crying quietly now. It’s several minutes before he speaks again, and when he does, his voice is strangely controlled.

  ‘I can’t bear it any longer, I’ll never get over what happened. Venezuela. Then Elisabeth committed suicide. And then my client, Leah Iverson, committed suicide, too, not even two months later. I love you, Eirik. Please find a way to move on without me,’ says my husband in that strange, low voice.

  ‘What—’

  ‘Write it,’ he hisses. ‘Write what I just said. Along those lines. In your own words.’ He picks the pen off the table again and throws it at me. ‘I didn’t want to have to do this, Kristina,’ he whispers, burying his face in his hands. ‘When you told me on Friday that she was your client, my world just fell to pieces. It had never occurred to me, not for a moment. But it was pretty obvious that you genuinely had no idea about what had happened, or about the pregnancy. It meant nothing, I swear on my life, it meant nothing at all, and I made it really fucking clear to her that I wanted her to get rid of it. I think she lived in some crazy fantasy world where she thought I’d leave you for her and we’d shack up together and play happy families. She threatened me and said she would tell you, and everyone else, the truth about me. Then she just disappeared. I assumed she’d come here, so I drove here but when I got here, the sleazy ex’s car was parked next to hers so I went straight back home.’