Don't Wake Me

by Martin Krüger

  She stared down at the grave.

  ‘So he isn’t so alone,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what Paul said to me. This is the sculpture, and this is the fox, but – but how . . . ?’

  ‘Come on, Jasmin,’ she heard Henriksen say. He laid his hand heavily on her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t see how it’s possible. I found it myself, it’s been out here for days.’

  ‘What you found back then is what you buried out here,’ said Henriksen. ‘A fox, yes – but . . .’ He reached down into the grave and lifted the animal out.

  Even in the darkness, Jasmin could see the metal stud sewn into the animal’s ear. She could see its button eyes – artificial, like everything about the fox.

  ‘It’s just a toy,’ she whispered. ‘No – no, it can’t be.’

  ‘But it is, Jasmin. And this origami sculpture . . .’ He shook his head. ‘You made it yourself. Like all the others.’

  Chapter 20

  She felt the rain flowing down her cheeks, down her face, creeping under the collar of her coat. She felt it washing the soil from her hands as Henriksen gently led her back to the house. Her legs worked mechanically, as if they belonged to someone else. The fox wasn’t real. Those origami sculptures . . .

  Henriksen sat her down on the sofa in the living room. He closed the French windows, shutting out the bellowing gale and the driving rain, before picking up a blanket and placing it over her shoulders.

  ‘I just wanted to—’

  ‘Easy, now. I understand.’ He took a seat beside her, the springs of the sofa squeaking quietly, and as he looked at her with a mixture of caution and sympathy, she felt like nothing had happened – as though her bleeding fingers and her little venture out into the rain had ceased to matter.

  I’m your psychiatrist, he’d said. Maybe it was those words that had driven her out into the storm, because deep down she’d known he was telling the truth.

  ‘What have I done? Something has happened, hasn’t it? Is Jørgen here? Can I talk to him?’

  ‘What else do you remember from the night of your accident?’

  Jasmin tried to calm herself, to suppress the hysterical thoughts that were seeping through her mind like poison, but she couldn’t quite do it. Henriksen – her psychiatrist? Was that why he’d seemed so familiar? Was he lying? What was going on here?

  ‘The symbol on the back of your phone,’ she said, her voice wavering. ‘I knew I recognised it. The upside-down triangle.’

  ‘We’ll get to that in a moment, Jasmin, don’t worry. Let’s focus on the night of your accident for now.’

  Jasmin tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear. ‘The Jeep. At some point he’d had enough and he overtook me. He drove off, far too quickly given the rain, and I was on my own again. Until . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘Until he came back. He was coming straight at me. On my side of the road. I got scared – I swerved – and . . . There was a man at the edge of the road. A homeless man. I didn’t have a chance to avoid him. My car hit him head-on. I can still remember the sound of his bones breaking.’

  ‘When did all this happen? And what came next?’

  ‘It was . . . Hmm. A few months ago. And afterwards . . .’ Jasmin realised her memories of the immediate aftermath of the accident were shrouded in thick, grey fog. ‘I don’t know. I remember waking up in the hospital. Nobody believed me. It wasn’t a man, they told me, it was only an animal. A deer.’

  ‘But you never believed them. You never had any doubts that a human being lost their life that night.’

  ‘No. Never.’ Jasmin buried her face in her hands. She could smell the mud on her fingers: damp soil and decay. ‘I thought I’d be able to find answers here. I could remember the upside-down triangle. The homeless man was wearing it on his coat. I knew I’d seen it before, here on the island. And as it turned out, I was right. It was the logo of the old sanatorium. And you have the same symbol on your phone. I just can’t make sense of it all.’

  ‘You experienced a terrible trauma that night – a terrible loss. In order to deal with an experience of this kind, to repress it, the human mind sometimes constructs an alternative version of events. An alternative reality.’

  ‘But I didn’t know the homeless man,’ she said quietly. ‘So how can that be what happened?’

  ‘You didn’t kill a homeless man that night. No, Jasmin.’ Henriksen shook his head solemnly. ‘That night, you lost your son Paul. He was the one who died in the accident.’

  Jasmin stared at him. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. ‘But Paul wasn’t with me in the car.’

  ‘Yes, he was. It wasn’t your original plan, but he was there with you.’

  For a moment, she was back at the party on the evening of her accident. Through the windows, she could see the colourful lights decorating the lawn behind the consultant surgeon’s house. She could hear the music thumping dully through the walls and could taste the alcohol in her cocktail – could feel it clouding her mind, making her drunk.

  ‘That isn’t a good idea,’ she heard Sven Birkeland say behind her. He was pointing at her drink. She’d lost sight of him after she’d let him into the house, but he’d managed to track her down again and somehow they’d both ended up here.

  ‘Oh no? But it’s good to let your hair down once in a while. I’ll call us a taxi afterwards.’ Jasmin felt the chill from the ice cubes in her long-stemmed glass, and at that moment it felt good – felt right – to be here. ‘That patient last night—’

  ‘Shh,’ said Sven. He looked pretty good this evening, Jasmin thought, in that suit of his. He wore it casually, with no tie. ‘Let’s not talk about work.’

  ‘OK. Sure. Then let’s . . .’ She didn’t finish her sentence.

  ‘What about Paul?’ he asked.

  ‘Paul’s outside with Sophie and the Brechts’ two kids. Plus their au pair.’ Jasmin noticed Sven drawing a little nearer and she looked up at him. ‘He was meant to be at his grandparents’ house tonight but something came up, so I brought him with me. That doesn’t mean I can’t leave him on his own for a little while though, does it? I mean . . .’ Jasmin paused. Was she imagining it, or was there a twinkle in Sven’s eye? They were alone in the kitchen. The party had moved outside, the guests gathered beneath the trees on the Brechts’ extensive grounds. There was nobody around. That twinkle, his query about Paul . . . ‘But what you’re really asking is how long we’re both going to be left here undisturbed, right?’ She giggled.

  ‘Undisturbed. That sounds good.’

  Jasmin took a step towards him. Her legs felt like they were moving of their own accord. She noticed Sven’s arm suddenly holding her somehow – his hand touching her in a way it shouldn’t – and her thoughts briefly turned to the endless hours they’d spent together in theatre, under constant strain, always striving to save lives, always so close to each other. Too close to each other. And she also thought of all those evenings with Jørgen, their gruelling rows, the frustration that had crept into their everyday lives.

  When Sven kissed her, Jasmin responded. He pushed her back gently but firmly until she felt the wall behind her and he kissed her again – this time much longer and more intimately. Jasmin could feel his excitement under her wandering hand.

  ‘Don’t,’ she sighed. ‘We shouldn’t . . .’ But when he lifted his lips from hers, it was she who leaned forward insistently, kissing him again. ‘There’s a guest room up in the attic,’ she whispered, breathing heavily.

  ‘Lead the way.’

  Jasmin smiled, then pushed him towards the door and onward to the stairs . . . and everything happened the way it had to happen.

  Afterwards, Jasmin took Paul’s hand and led him back to the car. She could hear Sven’s voice somewhere behind her. You have to forget about it. We shouldn’t have done it, she thought. Jesus, what were you thinking? Are you out of your mind?

  The way she felt even scared her a little. There was shame, anger at herself and S
ven, and at the same time a secret and profound satisfaction at having done something Jørgen didn’t know about. As if she’d been waiting for the chance to pay him back for his little fling a few years ago. The realisation was unnerving.

  ‘Mummy, why are you crying?’

  ‘It’s nothing, sweetheart.’ She sat Paul down on his child seat and got into the car herself. Her hand shook as she reached for the gearstick. Then the car lurched down the drive and she was on the road.

  It started to rain.

  Jasmin wiped her cheeks.

  Things had happened. Things that couldn’t be taken back.

  OK. Calm down.

  She drove on and the night enveloped her. The woods drew closer to the sides of the road, and soon they were alone in their small car – she and Paul.

  Pull yourself together.

  Lights appeared in the rear-view mirror.

  Was that Sven? Was he following her? Or was it someone else? She turned off the road, deliberately taking a detour, but whoever was behind her took the same route.

  They were following her.

  The Jeep’s headlights were on full beam, blindingly bright in the rear-view mirror. Nervously, Jasmin fumbled for her phone as the Jeep accelerated and overtook her.

  She didn’t recognise it.

  Jasmin opened the window a crack. Fresh, cool air blew into her face. It was invigorating, exactly what she needed just now.

  You’ll be home soon. As for Jørgen . . . Think, Jasmin. You need to think about how you’re going to handle this.

  Jasmin glanced down at her phone only to realise there were no bars left on the display. No reception. We must be too deep in the forest.

  When she looked up again, the blinding headlights had returned. This time there could be no doubt about it: the driver had come back for her.

  And all of a sudden, she saw a dark shadow on the road. A deer with shaggy fur: bulky, enormous.

  With a shriek, Jasmin flung the steering wheel to one side.

  Too late.

  The car started to skid.

  She heard a dull thud as her car smashed into the creature; she heard snapping, cracking, the scream of the shock absorbers, and then the bonnet was doused in blood and the windscreen shattered as an object shot out from the inside of the car.

  The Jeep pulled up beside her, tyres screeching on the wet asphalt. Jasmin felt blood flowing down her forehead, dripping onto her lips.

  ‘Jasmin!’ she heard a voice scream. It sounded familiar somehow, but the shock had wiped all rational thoughts from her mind and she was unable to recognise the person who had got out of the Jeep. In that moment there was nothing but shock, making her heart race. ‘Jasmin, what . . . ?’

  Then silence. Even the footsteps died away.

  ‘Oh God, no! Jasmin, what . . . What have you . . . ?’

  Jasmin tried to turn her head towards the window, but a terrible pain shot through her body. Please, don’t let me die . . . More and more blood flowed down her nose, her cheeks.

  ‘Paul,’ she heard the man’s voice calling. ‘Paul! Shit, come on!’

  In the distance, sirens approached, flashing blue lights.

  Then endless darkness enfolded her.

  Chapter 21

  Paul is dead. He’s been dead for so long now.

  That thought – the memory echoing through her mind . . .

  ‘How do you know? How do you know he was in the car that night?’ Jasmin felt as though the ground was breaking open beneath her feet and all that lay below her was a bottomless void that threatened to swallow her up.

  ‘You told me so yourself.’ Henriksen tapped the folder he’d put on the coffee table. ‘We’ve been at this point so many times before, Jasmin. We keep going in circles, and that’s a great, great shame.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’d been drinking that night. A lot. You’d had a fling with your colleague Sven Birkeland. You were driving much too fast, consumed as you were with fear and shame over what had happened. And in your emotional turmoil, you saw the Jeep driven by your husband Jørgen – who’d come looking for you because he was too worried about you to stay at home – and you mistook it for someone pursuing you, attacking you. Deep down in your guilt-stricken subconscious, you were scared of how he’d react. Your car skidded in the rain and collided with a deer that was crossing the road. And in the accident, Jasmin, you were badly injured and you lost your five-year-old son. Paul. The boy you’d nurtured and cherished more than anything in the world, ever since you lost your second child in a miscarriage.’

  Jasmin shook her head. ‘No, no, that’s not what happened, it was different, it—’

  ‘Jasmin, what year is it?’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s 2013. Paul was born in 2007. He turns six this year. The accident was in the spring, a few months ago. Jørgen and I lost our second baby over two years ago.’

  Henriksen shook his head once more. ‘Seven, not two. Do you remember that? I expect some part of your subconscious mind has already grasped the truth. You lost your second child back in 2011 – not two years ago, but seven. It’s now 2018. After your accident you spent over three years in a coma, followed by many months in a secure institution because you simply couldn’t accept the truth. Paul wouldn’t be five now, he’d already be ten years old – but in reality, he never lived to see his sixth birthday. Your family and your husband have done all they could to try to get through to you, but it was always in vain. You see, in your condition, something keeps resetting your conscious mind back to the moment of the accident. You’ve created an imaginary world in which Paul is alive, in which he even came with you to Minsøy. You’ve done everything you can to immerse yourself in that world. The pictures he drew here – you drew them. You bought food for him, laid out his things in his room. Your husband still loves you, but you have to understand that it’s getting harder and harder to keep you in touch with reality. It’s placing a tremendous burden on the people around you. Especially Jørgen.’

  Jasmin felt tears running down her cheeks. What Henriksen had told her had to be a lie, and yet in a hidden chamber at the back of her mind, she understood he was right. It was a space she’d carefully locked up and hurled the key far out to sea, but it was still there.

  ‘But the sanatorium on the island, the fire. Yrsen’s painting. All the things that happened back then, that they were trying to cover up. The symbol—’

  ‘All those things happened. There really was a psychiatric institution here, but that doesn’t alter the truth. The symbol is the logo of Nordic Health Invest, a company operating a chain of exclusive private clinics across Scandinavia. Gabriela Yrsen really did live out here until she died of old age two years ago, but the woman who introduced herself to you by that name was someone completely different. It was none other than Solveig Moen, the medical director of the hospital where you were a patient. We had to incorporate the real history of the island into our project, and I’d hoped that building certain distinctive aspects of Minsøy’s past into our little scenario would help jog your memory. So I asked Solveig to help me. What took place here was an unprecedented field trial – a kind of shock therapy designed to confront you with the truth once and for all. A unique experiment that we embarked upon with the agreement of your husband and the financial support of your parents. An experiment that might one day have won us the recognition of our entire profession. Everything you experienced here was based on things you’re familiar with from your own past. You’ve been following a trail of memory, and we’d hoped you would manage to decipher the truth all on your own. We’d hoped your psyche would finally be able to adjust to the facts if you were confronted with them in a radical way.’

  Jasmin tried to fit together the pieces of the puzzle, one by one. ‘So the body on the beach wasn’t real? If nobody died on the night of my accident—’

  ‘In some iterations of your repressed memories, you invented a victim of the accident – a passer-by on the side of the road �
� whose identity varied, but who over time bore an increasing resemblance to Sven Birkeland. It was a way for your subconscious mind to deal with your suppressed guilt over your affair and your alcohol consumption. The dead body we confronted you with here was a direct reference to that. You didn’t recognise it for what it was – a prop, a doll. On many occasions during your treatment, you would picture a dead body or something similar that would throw your subconscious into an alarmed state, prompting it to conjure up a fantasy or a scenario like this one in which Paul gets kidnapped. We’ve been through this so often already, and I’d been hoping so fervently that this time would be different. I’d been hoping you’d understand, Jasmin.’

  ‘But Yrsen’s face! Larsen – his house burning down . . .’

  ‘You spent many, many months undergoing therapy in a secure institution, Jasmin. There were times when you tried to escape, to run away – sometimes because you thought Paul had been kidnapped back then too. You developed certain violent tendencies, which we observed once again here on the island. You started a fire at the hospital. Forty-five other patients were injured in the blaze and some were disfigured. Fortunately nobody lost their life.’

  Jasmin threw her hand up to her mouth and bit her knuckle. Forty-five. The forty-five graves in the cemetery.

  ‘And the fire at Johann Larsen’s house was also started by none other than you, Jasmin. Do you remember? Instead of sleeping that night, you left your house, took a jerrican of petrol out of your car, which you’d brought over with you on the ferry, and started the fire. We know because we were watching you. We recorded the whole thing.’

  Jasmin remembered the scrap of cloth in her coat pocket. The shard of glass. But no, he must be lying. This couldn’t be the truth she’d been searching for all this time.