Don't Wake Me

by Martin Krüger

  The air smelled of the persistent cold rain that had fallen outside for hours on end and was still falling now. It smelled like damp earth and death.

  One step at a time, she thought. Quietly, very quietly, not a sound.

  She could feel her heart racing as if it was trying to find an entirely new rhythm. It’s a false alarm – there’s no other explanation.

  And if it isn’t?

  Then you run. As fast as you can. Grab Paul and run.

  Please. Let this be a mistake.

  On reaching the stairs, she cursed herself for not having fetched the gun from the cellar, or at least a sharp knife from the kitchen. But those thoughts were washed away by her rising panic until there was scarcely anything left beyond a desperate urge to flee. From her basket, Bonnie watched Jasmin go past and jumped to her feet to follow her. The dog’s claws clicked quietly on the floor as a deep growl emerged from her throat.

  It was so dark that a man could have been standing at the foot of the stairs looking up at her and she still wouldn’t have been able to see him. Can you hear someone breathing down there? Or is it just your own frantic panting and the rush of blood in your ears? Jasmin groped nervously for the switch that turned on the lights down in the hallway.

  It gave a quiet click.

  Nothing.

  Was that one of the shutters swinging in front of the windows? Were those damp footprints she could see on the floorboards?

  As if crossing an invisible barrier, she placed her foot on the top step. She felt nauseous, but she gathered herself, moved slowly down the stairs and peered at the front door. Completely overwhelmed with panic by now, she reached out her hand.

  Locked.

  So it wasn’t the front door.

  That left only one alternative.

  A breath of cold air caressed her neck. She whirled around and gave a weak cry as Bonnie barked and jumped up at her. The other end of the hallway was empty too, the boards on the cellar door still firmly nailed in place, just as she had left them.

  ‘But that’s impossible . . .’ Jasmin whispered to herself. ‘I heard it.’

  She tugged at the boards and examined the nails. Solid and sturdy, as they should be, and hammered deep into the wood. The status light on the motion sensor mounted between the door and the frame was green.

  You heard it, she told herself again. You heard it, you aren’t— You didn’t imagine it. Even in her own thoughts, she was reluctant to utter the word: crazy. You aren’t crazy. You aren’t going crazy, either.

  Not even a little bit.

  She was forgetting something. Her laptop, where she’d installed the camera software. It was on the sofa in the living room, plugged into the charger.

  Jasmin sat down cross-legged beside the laptop and pulled it onto her lap. Bonnie hopped up onto the couch beside her. Jasmin stroked her thick fur; that always calmed the dog down straight away.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here with us,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’

  The laptop was still switched on, the screen half-closed, a blue glow illuminating the floor. Jasmin opened the program and studied the footage for a while. There was nothing to be seen beyond the rain and the wind sweeping through the grass and buffeting the birch trees.

  A false alarm.

  ‘Maybe it was Lenny,’ came a voice. Jasmin saw Paul looking in at her from the hallway. He was carrying a stuffed toy lioness under his arm, which she’d given to him years ago. Sinta, he’d called her – and Lenny was Paul’s invisible friend, as Jasmin knew all too well.

  Her son hadn’t spoken to him since April, hadn’t mentioned him in months. ‘Lenny,’ she replied. ‘Is he back?’

  Paul nodded. His eyes gleamed blue in the light from the laptop; his skin looked pale. Jasmin patted the space on the sofa between her and Bonnie.

  ‘Come here.’

  Paul sat down beside her.

  ‘I woke up,’ he explained, dangling his legs over the edge of the seat, ‘and I couldn’t get back to sleep again. There’s something banging against the wall.’

  ‘I know. A branch.’

  ‘It sounds like . . . I don’t know.’ Paul rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. ‘Like a person knocking. Like there’s a person out there who wants to get in.’

  She put her arms around him and hugged him tight. ‘You mentioned Lenny,’ Jasmin said softly. ‘How come?’

  ‘He just turned up again. You know he went on a long journey. But now he’s back. Isn’t it great?’

  Jasmin looked at her son for a while before nodding cautiously. ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Lenny says there’s something here. Something that shouldn’t be here.’

  Jasmin felt her throat contract. ‘What – what does he mean?’

  ‘A secret. It’s a secret, he didn’t want to tell me. Not yet.’ He gave her a kiss on the cheek and slid off the sofa.

  ‘I don’t find that very funny, Paul. If it was meant to be a joke.’

  Paul waved at her. ‘It wasn’t. I’m going back to bed.’

  Jasmin blinked. Her son was gone. She jumped up and peered into the hallway, but there was no sign of him. There was no way he could have climbed the stairs so quickly! Jasmin rushed up the staircase and into his room. Paul was sleeping soundly under his astronaut duvet.

  You’re seeing phantoms more and more often, she thought.

  Then Bonnie started barking – and this time, Jasmin instantly recognised her warning tone. This time it wasn’t a game.

  She dashed back downstairs, grabbed the long carving knife from the kitchen and sprinted into the living room.

  Bonnie was standing by the French windows and staring out into the garden, her fur standing on end. She barked again.

  On the veranda, Jasmin saw large clumps of soil, with footprints pressed deep into the mud strewn over the decking. The tracks vanished into the garden. Was she imagining it, or could she see the gate swinging back and forth in the wind? It was hard to make out through the curtain of rain.

  ‘You piece of . . .’ She pulled on her boots, threw on a coat and put Bonnie on a lead. Just as far as the fence, she thought. But you aren’t going to scare me in my own back garden. I won’t allow it. Not here. This is my house.

  Jasmin opened the French windows and Bonnie dragged her outside, tugging at the lead, sniffing at the tracks and straining to go further, down the creaky wooden steps into the garden. The air was cold and the rain that instantly came pouring down on her soaked her to the skin.

  Bonnie pulled at her lead again and barked, and Jasmin followed her.

  The gate was open. Jasmin could see deep boot prints in the muddy patch directly behind the fence, which continued down the narrow woodland path and vanished into the trees beyond.

  Bonnie tugged and strained.

  Up to this fence and no further, Jasmin thought. You really shouldn’t risk it. That wouldn’t be courage – it’d be sheer madness.

  Bonnie barked, but when Jasmin looked down at her, she saw the Labrador was wagging her tail. The threat has passed, she seemed to be saying, so how about a little walk instead?

  Jasmin shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We definitely aren’t—’

  But Bonnie leapt forward abruptly, wrenching the lead out of Jasmin’s hand, and disappeared through the open gate. Jasmin swore and dashed after her, following the path into the narrow strip of woodland. The ground was sodden underfoot and smelled of rotting leaves and birch bark. An earthworm was crawling over the path, and Bonnie, who had stopped ten feet or so ahead, picked it up in her mouth. Yet instead of swallowing it, she carried it placidly in her jaws as if she wanted to take it to the edge of the forest, where she perhaps thought it belonged.

  ‘Bonnie! Here, girl!’ Jasmin got hold of the lead, but Bonnie made no attempt to follow her.

  The footprints were still there, sometimes on the path, sometimes beside it, as if the man – she guessed it was a man from the size of the tracks in the mud –
had veered back and forth between the tree trunks and the path.

  How odd. Was he drunk? Or is this a feint? An attempt to trick you?

  The roar of the waves falling ceaselessly onto the beach grew louder with every step. Bonnie pulled her onwards. The tracks were now running in a straight line – directly towards the shore.

  Then the forest was behind them. They were on a gentle, sandy incline, and beyond it lay the beach, dotted here and there with rough rocks and boulders. The pounding waves, the spray glittering in the moonlight.

  The Norwegian Sea.

  The tracks turned sharply left and continued along the beach, but Bonnie pulled Jasmin on towards the water.

  ‘Surely you don’t want to play in the sea?’ she called – but as she spoke, Bonnie made another leap forward and wrenched the lead from Jasmin’s hands again, the grip sliding through her fingers with a jerk. Bonnie ran onwards, Jasmin sprinting after her.

  She’s seen it. So did you, though a few seconds later. Driftwood, she thought, but her subconscious intervened with an urgent warning: Driftwood doesn’t look like that in the moonlight.

  What you’re looking at is skin.

  Pale human skin.

  It was a dead body, washed up from the sea. The water seemed to be reaching for the man’s dark hair, lapping at his sunken cheeks, his long, tattered grey trench coat.

  The soles of his shoes were completely smooth.

  Jasmin stared at the corpse, stared at its face, and her legs threatened to give way. While Bonnie sniffed at the man’s dark woollen jumper, Jasmin gasped for breath.

  ‘This is impossible,’ she heard herself say. ‘You can’t be here – not here!’

  The driving rain ran down the collar of her coat, over her forehead, her cheeks; it clouded her vision. You must be mistaken, you must be . . .

  She managed to grab the end of Bonnie’s lead before slipping over and falling headlong onto the hard sand. It stuck to her clothes as she clambered back to her feet and dragged Bonnie away from the body.

  ‘That’s enough!’ she cried. ‘Leave it alone!’

  Under the light of the moon, Jasmin ventured another look at the corpse’s bloated face. The man’s eyes were open; they were blue, ice-blue, as if they’d absorbed the chill from the waves that had washed him ashore. Part of his nose was missing, part of his top lip was gone – picked away by crabs, no doubt. His skin was pale and waxy and she could make out the blue lines of his veins beneath it.

  But those eyes.

  Jasmin hauled Bonnie away from the corpse with all her strength and started to run, back to the path, back up to the house, the rain growing ever more intense, the wind howling after her as if trying to chase her – to mock her, even.

  She’d recognised the body.

  By God, she’d recognised it.

  Jasmin sprinted across the veranda, slammed the French windows and locked them, sobbing, trembling, beside herself with horror.

  Impossible, impossible. The words rattled through her panicking mind, and yet she could still feel his ice-blue eyes staring at her, as if he was lying right there on the floor and steadily gazing up at her.

  That night, when the Jeep had forced her off the road, it wasn’t a deer that died. An animal, they’d told her. But that wasn’t the truth.

  Something here feels very wrong. Something about this place doesn’t add up. Something connected to your memory – and to the dead body out there.

  Jasmin realised she’d been right the whole time: she had run over a man that night. He looked at you, and that look – that look – you saw it again just now on the beach.

  It was reproachful.

  Accusatory.

  The homeless man she’d killed that night had finally returned after all.

  He’d turned up – been washed up on the beach – right here on Minsøy, though she didn’t understand how.

  He’d found her.

  Chapter 9

  The hissing of the rain woke Jasmin up early the next morning, and when she opened her eyes, the light falling through the curtains was grey and murky. Drops pattered against the window, sounding like bony fingers tapping and drumming on the glass. Jasmin shivered. Her memories of last night’s events felt like they were etched deep into her bones.

  Her pillow was wet. She’d been crying in her sleep.

  And why wouldn’t she? It was like she’d stumbled into a bad dream. The dead man on the beach. None of this was possible, and yet she’d seen him.

  Are you going crazy?

  Or is there something else going on here?

  And isn’t this exactly what you came for? Didn’t you want to understand? So why are you lying in bed feeling sorry for yourself?

  Jasmin clambered groggily to her feet and stretched. An unfastened shutter was banging against the outside wall, and whenever it stopped, the silence was broken by the branches of a tree scraping against the plaster on the north end of the house. She walked to the window to look at it. That bloody thing, she thought. You need to find a long enough saw. Maybe there’s one in the village. Or maybe you can reach it from up here.

  The garden was shrouded in mist, making it hard to see the beach, but through gaps in the fog she could see silhouettes moving around down there.

  Jasmin gave a start. Your footprints! You’re standing here daydreaming, and all the while your tracks are still out there, running from the house down to the beach and back!

  If anyone found the body . . .

  ‘Paul,’ she called as she hurried over to her son’s room. She found him sitting on the floor, building a spaceship out of Lego under Bonnie’s watchful eye. ‘I just need to pop out for a bit. Down to the beach. You stay here, OK? No going outside, not even into the garden.’

  She put on her coat and boots and stepped out into the pouring rain. Her footprints had washed away, to her relief. The path behind the house had transformed into a dark-brown, muddy soup.

  But what about the beach?

  She had to see for herself.

  Jasmin ran headlong down the path, sending mud and rainwater spraying outwards every time she lifted her feet. The wind buffeted the tops of the poplars and birches, and at one point a branch crashed down right in front of her.

  At the edge of the forest, she stopped.

  She wasn’t alone.

  A man in a blue raincoat with the word Police on its back was walking down the beach. His hand was held to his ear; he was on the phone.

  Jasmin’s heart started to race.

  A policeman. What had Sandvik said his name was? Boeckermann, that was it. Arne Boeckermann, the only policeman on the island. And here he was, on the scene. He’d already found the body. Jasmin squinted; yes, the corpse was still there, close to the spot where she’d found it.

  ‘Shit,’ she said quietly. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  If Boeckermann already knew about the body, that meant he would be looking for possible tracks to follow. And that meant he might find her footprints.

  What were you doing out here in the middle of the night?

  And why did you run away in such a panic?

  Why didn’t you notify anyone as soon as you got back to your house, like you were supposed to?

  ‘Shit, fucking shit,’ Jasmin whispered. She retreated a few steps into the woods, hoping the rain had hidden her from Boeckermann’s inquisitive gaze.

  You need to think very carefully about what to do next. Should you go down to the beach and confess everything? Tell him you were the first person to find the body, and that you recognised it too?

  That a homeless man who you ran over hundreds of miles away and possibly killed has suddenly turned up here, of all places? Washed up onto the beach with mud in his hair, drowned, dead as a doornail?

  Nobody will believe you.

  They’ll all think you’re completely insane.

  So what now?

  Think, Jasmin. Goddamn it, think!

  Her every instinct screamed at her to flee.

  S
o she fled. Jasmin sprinted up the narrow path back to the garden, slammed the gate and rushed back up to the house. Her boots were covered in mud and seemed welded to her feet – it took what felt like an eternity to pull them off again.

  ‘Paul? Bonnie?’ she called. She was standing in the living room, which was as she had left it, her laptop on the sofa, one of the colourful cushions on the floor. The green light on the camera flashed at her insistently until she reached up and switched it off.

  ‘Paul?’

  It was Bonnie who came bounding into the room, giving an exuberant bark. ‘Where is he, girl?’

  Of course the dog didn’t answer; she merely wagged her tail even more enthusiastically – though perhaps that was just as meaningful a reply as far as Bonnie was concerned. From upstairs came a loud clatter that made Jasmin jump. It didn’t sound like it came from the first floor. It sounded like . . .

  She headed up the stairs, the old spruce steps creaking under her feet. Somewhere out there she could hear the shutter clapping against the side of the house again; perhaps somewhere out there the island constable had stumbled across her footprints too.

  Jasmin suddenly felt overwhelmingly giddy, so much so that she had to reach her hand out to the wood-panelled wall and lean on it, closing her eyes and breathing slowly.

  More clattering. It was much closer this time. Nervously, Jasmin entered Paul’s room and saw that the ceiling hatch leading up to the attic was open and the ladder was lowered.

  ‘Paul?’ she called again, peering upwards. The rectangular opening at the top of the ladder was dark and the air emanating from it smelled old and stale, full of dusty, cobwebbed memories.

  Bonnie nudged her hand with her nose, as if urging her to go up.

  Jasmin put her foot on the bottom rung. ‘Paul? If you’re up there . . .’ The ladder creaked alarmingly. It was nothing more than a set of thin wooden rungs mounted on two long beams, and God knew how long it had been since they’d last taken any weight. Jasmin dimly remembered Jørgen going up there to clean the attic and store away a few boxes; for her own part, she’d only been up there once or twice.

  Why had Paul opened the hatch? And more than that – how had he managed it? Halfway up the ladder, Jasmin took another look around the room. The bed, she thought, that’s how he did it. He climbed up on the bed, even though he knows perfectly well he isn’t allowed.