by Amy Cross
“They're not loaded,” Joe protested, “they're just... comfortable.”
“Loaded,” Marit mouthed to Anna, nodding firmly and then winking at her.
Anna opened her mouth to reply.
“There it is,” Joe said suddenly. “The Mathieson family cabin on the side of Morro mountain.”
Turning to look ahead, Anna was shocked to see that the cabin was much larger than she'd expected, with two floors and a gabled roof seat atop red wooden walls, and a porch running all the way along one side with steps leading down to the clearing. She'd been a little confused as to how six people were supposed to spend a weekend in one cabin, but now she realized the place was larger than her parents' house back in England. As the car came to a halt, she saw the cabin's front door opening and a moment later three figures stepped out and started waving.
“Don't worry,” Marit said, nudging her arm again. “You'll get to know everyone real fast. You're not still shy, are you?” She put her hands on Anna's shoulders, as if to hold her in place. “Promise me one thing, girl. This weekend, while you're here, ignore your instincts. You'll thank me later, but for now, just ignore them. They've never gotten you anywhere, they're holding you back, so ignore them completely. Promise?”
Anna opened her mouth to argue, before realizing that maybe the advice was worth heeding. “Sure,” she replied, forcing a smile. “I'll give it a try.”
***
“You, me and Marit are in this room at the top,” Jennifer Mathieson explained as she led Anna up the stairs and then pushed open the first door on the left. “You don't snore, do you?”
“Um, no,” Anna replied with a smile, struggling a little with a heavy hold-all in her arms and an even heavier backpack over her shoulders. She had to turn sideways a little to get through the doorway, and she stopped when she saw three bare wooden beds over on the far side of the room, arranged parallel to one another like in a hospital ward.
“You're in the middle,” Jennifer added.
“Thanks.” Making her way over, Anna dropped her bags onto the floor and then stood up straight, gasping as she felt a twinge of pain in her back.
“Oh,” Jennifer continued, “if it's okay, could you not leave your bags down there like that? It's just that we don't want anyone tripping over them in the night.”
“Sure,” Anna replied, “I'll -”
“Put them under the bed,” Jennifer told her, with a tone that suggested she cared a lot about the rules. “Also, there are some things we need to go over about the bathroom, but I can show you those tonight. Joe and I have to practically beg Mamma to let us use this place in the summer months, so in return we always make sure to keep it pristine. The way we see it, it's better to stay clean and tidy throughout the whole trip rather than making a mess and then having to do a big tidy on the final morning. After all, we're not children, are we?”
Anna turned to her. “Sure. I mean no, we're not.”
They stood in awkward silence for a moment, as they heard the sound of the others bumping about in the kitchen and main room downstairs. The atmosphere down there sounded happy and fun, in stark contrast to the coolness between the two girls.
“I guess I'll just get changed,” Anna said finally, “and then I'll be down.”
“Sure.”
Reaching down to her backpack, Anna felt another twinge of pain, but thankfully it passed after a couple of seconds. She pulled open the backpack's main pocket, but several bags of toiletries immediately spilled out, with one having apparently been crushed somewhere along the way between London and Oslo. The sticky remains of a deodorant bottle slopped out onto the floor, and Anna quickly realized that the contents had leaked out of the plastic bag and onto some of her clothes.
“Crap,” she whispered.
“Oh, that's gross,” Jennifer said, still watching from the doorway. “Don't forget to clean it all up.”
“I won't,” Anna replied, lifting the plastic bag as more pale green liquid ran onto her hands.
“There are paper towels in the bathroom,” Jennifer added. “You really should clean up your mess when you're done. It's like, everything runs better if each person is responsible for themselves.”
“Of course,” Anna said, feeling as if she was being treated like an idiot. “Don't worry, I'll be down in just a couple of minutes, okay? I'll change and get this cleaned up, and then I'll be right with you.”
“Sure.”
Grabbing a spare Tesco bag from the backpack, Anna began to tidy the broken bottle away, although after a moment she realized that Jennifer was still watching. Preferring not to say anything, and figuring that Jennifer would get the hint pretty quickly, Anna continued to fix the mess and then grabbed some tissues, using them to wipe some of the sticky goo from the wooden floorboards. Still Jennifer stood and watched, almost as if she felt the need to supervise.
“Those are the original boards,” Jennifer said after a moment. “They're, like, almost a hundred years old.”
“That's really cool,” Anna replied, not really knowing what else to say.
“Don't use anything too abrasive to clean them, okay?”
“I won't.”
“Mamma would freak out if they got damaged.”
“I'll be fine.”
“Old wood stains so easily, and -”
“I'll clean up,” Anna added, interrupting her. “I promise. Don't worry, this isn't the first time I've ever spilled something.”
“I can believe that.”
Anna forced a smile.
“Okay.” Jennifer paused, as if she was finally getting the message. “Well, I guess I'll leave you to it, then. Just be real careful with the wood and don't use anything stronger than, like, soap from the bathroom. No bleach. Bleach would really damage the boards, and then we'd have to get it replaced with something matching, and that'd be very expensive and obviously you probably don't want to have to pay for that, so...”
“I promise I'll clean up,” Anna replied, before feeling a sense of relief as soon as she heard Jennifer's footsteps heading out of the room and down the stairs. “Thank God,” she muttered, glad to no longer have someone standing over her with such a matronly attitude.
There was barely more than a splash of spilled deodorant on the floor, and she was able to get most of it up with just a few quick wipes. There was still a faint dark patch left behind, but she figured that was just something that'd go away once it dried, although when she looked more closely she realized that there seemed to be something wedged between two of the floorboards. She felt pretty damn sure it hadn't come out of her backpack, but the last thing she wanted was for Jennifer to start complaining about any kind of mess so she start sorting through her stuff until she found the pair of tweezers she'd packed.
Kneeling next to the bed, she started trying to pull the item out from between the boards. The damn thing was small and white but seemingly quite firm, not paper as she'd first thought. It took a couple of tries, but she was finally able to get hold of the edge with the tweezers so she could start gently slipping it out. A moment later it came loose and she held it up.
“Huh?”
A fingernail.
Not just the edge of one, either. She'd found a complete fingernail, and as she turned it around she saw that parts of the cuticle and even the mantle were still intact, as if the whole thing had been ripped away in one go. The tip had some flakes of red paint still attached, so she figured it had probably belonged to a girl.
“Huh,” she muttered again, before leaning past the bed and dropping the fingernail into the bin. “Gross. So much for the place being kept spotless.”
She glanced down at the boards again, but fortunately there were no more body parts wedged in the gaps so she finished tidying her bag and then she started getting changed, ready to go downstairs and get to know the others. She headed to the door and pushed it shut, before slipping out of her t-shirt and bra and into something a little more comfortable. After a few more minutes, as she fi
ddled with her hair and tried to tie it back just right, she realized she was delaying going downstairs. Voices could be heard laughing and joking in the room below, but she knew that even though she couldn't imagine herself fitting in, she had to try. After all, that was one of the reasons she'd accepted the invitation in the first place. She took a deep breath, telling herself that everything would be fine, and then she headed out of the room.
In the far corner, hidden between the edges of a small crack, the lens of a tiny camera had been watching her every move.
Chapter Two
“That was the best summer ever!” Marit said with a laugh, sipping her beer through a straw as they sat on the porch at the front of the cabin, overlooking the clearing and the forest. “We had the whole lake to ourselves, it was like our own personal holiday park. I mean, we didn't exactly have any equipment with us, but me and...” She paused. “Well, me and this friend used to race each other from one shore to the other, swimming like mad bitches all the way. The whole thing was insane. I swear I lost, like, loads of weight without even trying.”
“There's a lake?” Anna asked, turning to her.
“Uh-huh,” Marit continued, her eyes wide with anticipation. “Only a huge, massive one! Seriously, we'll go down there later, maybe even after dark. The best time to go is dusk, 'cause then the sun has been warming the water all day and it's just the right temperature to go for a swim. It's pretty deep, but the currents are basically non-existent so you can just float about to your heart's content. You won't believe how peaceful it is down there. To be honest, I've always thought...” She paused again. “Well, this'll sound dumb, but when I eventually die when I'm like a hundred years old, that's where I want to be buried.”
“In a lake?” Jennifer muttered, rolling her eyes. “Well that's dumb.”
“It's not dumb,” Marit replied. “It'd be like a Viking burial.”
“Whatever.”
“I didn't bring a costume,” Anna pointed out.
“No-one did, honey,” Marit said with a smile, taking another sip of beer. “Don't be so British.”
Looking down at her glass, Anna felt certain that she'd started to blush.
“It's dumb to go too far at night,” Jennifer said sullenly, having remained pretty much silent ever since Anna had come down after getting changed. Her only contributions to the conversation had been a few peppered complaints and contradictions every so often. “What kind of person just goes out wandering through a forest in the dark? Don't you have, like, any respect for the natural world? This isn't a playground.”
“What's wrong?” Marit asked. “Worried a reindeer might jump on you?”
“There are no reindeer this far south.”
“Oh, shame,” Marit replied. “I guess you won't be getting any action, then.”
Muttering something under her breath, Jennifer got to her feet and headed inside.
“Don't worry about her,” Marit continued, “she's just a rich little Daddy's girl with major issues. I mean, I get that it's really sad how her and Joe's father killed himself a while back, but that doesn't give her the right to be stuck-up bitch for the rest of her life.”
“He killed himself?” Anna replied, shocked by the news.
Marit mimed putting a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger.
“When?” Anna asked.
Marit shrugged. “I don't remember. Last year, I think. Maybe the year before. Apparently he was a total alcoholic. It was in the news a little bit, because he was a cop, but trust me, Jennifer was a bitch long before it happened, except now she just uses his death to get sympathy. I don't even know why she comes on these trips, she blatantly hates every second she's up here. I swear, she spends the whole time whining about everything.” She took another sip. “I think maybe she just comes to keep an eye on the place and make sure none of us chip the wood or spill a drop of beer anywhere. Sometimes I think she just wants it preserved in amber so it never changes from how it was when her precious father owned the place. Sick, huh?”
Anna paused, not really sure how to respond.
“Then again,” Marit muttered, staring down into her glass, “I guess we're all screwed up in the head, aren't we? Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.”
Spotting movement nearby, Anna turned and saw that Joe and the other two guys, Daniel and Christian, were coming back from the forest with bundles of wood. She knew she shouldn't stare, but all three of them were shirtless and Daniel and Christian, at least, had lithe, muscular physiques that she'd never really seen before in real life.
“Ooh,” Marit said with a smile, “the big strong men are back from chopping down trees. I love how they head straight out there to take their shirts off in a group and get all hot and sweaty. There's something vaguely homoerotic about the whole thing, like one day they'll just surrender to their urges and start getting dirty. I usually volunteer to go with them, but apparently it's a guy thing and we ladies should just put our feet up and relax.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine by me. It's not like I enjoy cutting down a bunch of trees.”
Anna turned away but, as the guys got closer, Marit leaned on the edge of the porch, making a point of watching them.
“Hey boys,” she said, grinning at each of them in turn, “do you want to flex your muscles for us?”
She waited for a reply, but they ignored her.
“You were making a hell of a racket out there,” Jennifer said as she came back out from the kitchen. “I hope you didn't wake up poor Karen.”
“Leave it out,” Daniel said darkly, clearly not amused. He dropped several logs into the box next to the steps and cast a disapproving look at her, before heading around to the rear of the cabin while muttering something under his breath in Norwegian.
“I was just thinking about Karen,” Jennifer continued with a mischievous grin. “That's all.”
“Who's Karen?” Anna asked.
Marit turned to her. “Huh? Oh, no-one, don't worry about it.” She turned to Jennifer. “Don't be a dick.”
Jennifer smiled.
“Some people are just idiots,” Marit continued, before tossing her straw aside and draining the last of her beer straight from the glass. “It's just some stupid superstitious garbage, that's all. It's the kind of thing idiots talk about. But hey, Anna, do you want to come see something amazingly cool? Of course you do.”
With that, she got to her feet and reached out to grab Anna's hand. Figuring that she should try to get more into the spirit of the place, Anna let herself be hauled up and led across the porch and then down the steps, heading toward the forest while Marit went on and on about all the great things they were going to do over the course of the weekend.
Nearby, Joe and Christian were taking some more bags and cases from one of the cars.
***
“There's not another house around for miles,” Marit explained a few minutes later, as they made their way between the trees. “Isn't that insane? I don't know what it's like in London these days, but in Oslo you can never get away from other people and they're always up in your face, like they have no concept of personal space. Seriously, try walking along the sidewalk in Oslo and see how many people just walk into you like they expect you to vanish into thin air. Out here it's the opposite problem, you'd be really screwed if you actually needed to find another living soul.”
Hurrying ahead, she turned with her arms outstretched, as if she was enjoying the freedom.
“Hello!” she shouted suddenly, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Is anyone out there?”
She waited, but the only response was silence.
“Hello!” she shouted again, before turning to Anna. “You try.”
“I'm fine.”
“Go on. Are you so shy, you can't even call out in the middle of nowhere?”
“I...” Pausing, Anna realized this was another example of her needing to fight her instincts and come out of her shell a little. Cupping her hands, she tried not to feel nervous. “Hello?�
�� she shouted. “Hello!”
“So what's wrong?” Marit continued, walking backward so she could keep her eyes fixed on Anna. “Are you still thinking about that Max guy?”
“No!”
“Liar.” She bumped into a tree and turned, stumbling a little as she started to walk the right way again. “I've been able to see it in your eyes ever since we picked you up at the airport earlier, you're pining real hard for that useless idiot. Tell me, did the customs guys go through all that emotional baggage you brought with you? Did you have to declare it?”
“I'm fine,” Anna replied. “Can we talk about -”
“I mean Jesus,” Marit continued, interrupting her, “any guy who dumps someone as great as you deserves zero respect. I saw some of the photos you posted online when you were with him, though. He didn't look like a great catch. Kinda stringy and weak. Break-ups suck, but there's one very easy way to get over it. You need to tear the band-aid straight off, and that means moving on, and that means -”
“I just came to relax,” Anna told her, knowing exactly what Marit was suggesting.
“And I'm sure Christian or Daniel would be only too happy to help with that,” Marit continued. “I mean, Christian's technically dating Jennifer, but she's a major-league bitch to him so I wouldn't worry too much. Besides, she's cheated on him loads of times in the past so it's not like she has a moral leg to stand on. Daniel can be a little intense, and he'll probably spend most of his time off by himself, plus I've kind of had my eye on him for a while, but I'm a generous girl so feel free to jump on his bones if you get the chance. The way I see it, we're all free to -”
“I found a fingernail,” Anna replied suddenly, hoping against hope that she'd be able to distract her friend.
Marit opened her mouth to reply, before frowning. “Say what, honey?”
“I found a fingernail,” Anna continued. “A whole one, wedged between the floorboards in our room. I didn't mean to, but I did.”
