An Unexpected Viking: Sveyn & Hollis: Part One (The Hansen Series - Sveyn & Hollis Book 1)

by Kris Tualla

  “It’s someone who keeps everything they have, whether they have a use for it or not, or whether it has value or not.” Hollis ate another cold spoonful of frosty heaven and talked around it as it melted on her tongue. “It’s a modern-day affliction, probably an American one, because we have so much stuff available to us.”

  Sveyn frowned. “This sounds like a wise thing to do.”

  Hollis laughed. “There is a limit.”

  The Viking wagged a finger at her. “In this, I think you are wrong.”

  “Hold on.” Hollis looked up the TV Guide app on her phone. “Let me show you what I mean.”

  She set the ice cream down and grabbed the TV remote. When the screen came to life, Sveyn jumped backwards, eyes huge over his bearded cheeks.

  He spun in a circle, examining the walls. “Where is the projector?”

  “This is not a moving picture, Sveyn. It’s a television.” Hollis knew why he was surprised; televisions were not common until a decade after World War II—Sveyn’s last manifestation.

  Sveyn approached the flat screen. “Where does the picture come from?”

  “It comes through a cable. But please don't ask me to explain more than that, because it’s a mystery to me, too.”

  Sveyn looked at the back of the television, handled the power cord and the cable, then squatted in front of the screen. “Is this the picture you wanted to show me?”

  “No, let me find it.” Hollis flipped through a couple of channels, but Sveyn held out his hand to stop her.

  “How are there so many pictures?”

  Hollis remembered one of the Viking’s earlier references and used it now. “Remember how you could turn a knob and get different radio signals?”

  “Yes.” His expression brightened. “This is the same, but with pictures?”

  “Yes.” Hollis landed on the channel she wanted. “This is the program I was looking for.”

  Images of a home, every room piled nearly to the ceiling with trash, clothing, furniture, and food, filled the screen while the narrator explained that Bob had begun hoarding after his wife died eight years ago.

  “This is hoarding, Sveyn.”

  Sveyn stared at the screen. When images appeared of cockroaches scurrying through rotting food in the filthy kitchen sink, he gave a loud, disgusted grunt.

  He turned to look at her from under a lowered brow. “Your man’s house is like this?”

  “In some ways. He didn’t keep trash or old food, but he had collected so many things, that we could only walk in narrow paths through the piles of boxes.” Hollis rubbed her nose, which was itching with the unpleasant recollection. “Most of them haven’t been moved for several decades.”

  Sveyn looked at the television again, his head wagging slowly in disbelief. “How do people live like this? This is worse than anything in my life.”

  “It’s a sickness.”

  His regard shot back to her. “Can you catch it?”

  “No!” Hollis smiled in spite of his obvious concern. “It’s a sickness in someone’s… soul. It’s not contagious.”

  Sveyn understood that concept. “I have learned about germs and sickness, and how some diseases are spread.”

  “Enough of that.” Hollis turned the television off.

  Sveyn remained on the floor, but he turned around to look at her. Judging by the expression on his face, some idea was banging around in his head. “I saw words on the pictures.”

  Hollis felt her face grow warm. “The captions are on. But I don’t know how to make them go away.”

  Sveyn held up one finger. “If the words are on, can the sound be off?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  If the Viking had a working circulatory system, Hollis thought he would blush now. “While you sleep, might I watch the pictures if the sound is off?”

  “You want to watch television and read the captions?” Hollis thought the idea was brilliant. “Of course!”

  Sveyn smiled. “Then I will learn more about this time and not have to ask so many questions.”

  “We’ll have to pick one channel, since you can’t push the buttons on the remote. What are you interested in?”

  That questioned stymied the man. “Everything, I think.”

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday

  September 9

  The next morning, Sveyn regaled Hollis all the way from her condo to the museum with everything he learned from his first night of television binge-watching. While she did appreciate his excitement at the relief of his nightly boredom, his burgeoning obsession was not providing the quiet pre-coffee environment with which she preferred to start her day.

  “Sveyn—”

  “So you do understand that they were right about the traditions—”

  “Sveyn—”

  “But they missed the core reason for starting those traditions in the first place.”

  “Sveyn!”

  He looked surprised. “What?”

  “Please! Will you just give me five minutes of quiet?”

  Without warning, he was gone.

  Hollis slammed on the brakes and swerved onto the road’s shoulder, skidding in the gravel.

  A cacophony of horns exploded around her, and several drivers passing her on the parkway waved a single tall finger in her direction.

  Panic thrummed through her frame. “Sveyn! Where are you?”

  Nothing.

  Hollis opened the driver’s door and jumped from the car, moving in front of the vehicle to get further from the rushing parkway traffic. “Sveyn—come back! I’m sorry!”

  Still nothing.

  “Please, please don’t be gone gone,” she whispered.

  What are you saying—that you want him stuck to you?

  Hush.

  Hollis closed her eyes and spoke the reality of her apparition aloud. “He is on a tether. He has to be less than thirty feet away. And he is always visible to me, not invisible.”

  Hollis opened her eyes and turned in a slow circle. He could be behind the boulders in the median. Or behind the trees on the other side. Or—

  “Woman, make up your mind!”

  Startled, Hollis twisted around to face a scowling Sveyn, towering over her. “You frightened me! Why did you do that?”

  “You asked for quiet,” he growled. “I gave you quiet.”

  “By disappearing?” She felt unnervingly close to tears, but had no idea why. “Couldn’t you just stop talking instead?”

  When Sveyn folded his arms over his chest, the muscles underneath his shirt strained against his sleeves. Hollis was awkwardly distracted by the disappointing realization that she would never feel their strength.

  “I could.” Sveyn waited until she looked him in the eyes before he spoke again. “But I chose not to.”

  Hollis’s hands were shaking and her pulse thudded. “Did you hear me say I was sorry?”

  “I did.” He shifted his stance. “And I accept.”

  The lump in her throat thickened. “Thank you.”

  “And I—I suppose I am sorry as well.” Hollis thought he cleared his throat. “I reacted to your unkindness in a childish manner.”

  Though she bristled inwardly at her actions being labeled as unkind, Hollis wisely did not comment. “I accept as well.”

  Sveyn nodded and walked to the passenger’s door. He slipped through it into the seat.

  Hollis waited for a line of cars to pass, using the time to recompose herself, and then opened the driver’s door and reclaimed her spot.

  “You thought I had left you forever,” Sveyn said as he stared forward through the windshield.

  “Yes. I was afraid you had.” One tear rolled down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away.

  “And you do not wish for me to move on.” This was not a question, either.

  Another tear followed the first one’s damp path, and met the same fate. “No. I don’t think I do.”

  Sveyn faced her then. “Why not?”

  “I don
’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  Hollis could no longer deny what she felt when the Viking apparition disappeared. “I want you to stay because… I have felt so alone since Matt left.”

  She raised a hand to stop Sveyn from speaking. “I know that what we had together through all those years wasn’t good enough, as much as I tried to convince myself that it was. But at least it was something. Someone.”

  Sveyn nodded his understanding. “Someday I will tell you my story. But not today. You will be late.”

  Startled again, Hollis looked at the clock on the dashboard. “Oh, crap.”

  She put her foot on the break, shifted the still-running car into drive, and floored the gas pedal. The rumble and ping of flying gravel announced her urgency as the car rocked crazily back onto the pavement.

  “How will I explain being late?” she grumbled. “Say that I had an argument with the apparition that has attached himself to me?”

  Sveyn snorted. “I did not attach myself. I have no control over that part.”

  Hollis felt inexplicably stung again. “Can I send you away then? Do you want me to?”

  “No you cannot.” Sveyn paused, seeming to ponder his next words. “And no, I do not want you to.”

  Hollis pressed her own bruise. “Even though I’m unkind?”

  “You are not unkind in your character.” One corner of Sveyn’s mouth lifted. “But in the future, I will remember not to provoke you before you have had your coffee.”

  In the future? Hollis relaxed a little. “How long do you believe you’ll be with me?” It was a risky question, but one that needed asking.

  Sveyn stroked his short beard. “I usually start to feel my tether dissolve before I move.”

  “What does your tether feel like now?”

  “Like a steel cable.”

  Hollis could not stifle her smile. “Good.”

  Sveyn smiled a little as well. “Yes. It is very good.”

  *****

  Hollis donned the protective gear necessary to enter the Kensington home safely. The gloves and mask were particularly important, and the goggles made her feel more secure.

  “We don’t know what sort of contaminants we might encounter,” she explained to Sveyn as she gathered her supplies. “There could be plague germs in there for all we know. Some of that stuff is ancient.”

  She zipped her duffle bag closed. “The Hanta virus is more likely. It’s spread by rodent droppings, and God knows there’s an abundance of those throughout the house.”

  Now clothed literally scalp-to-toe in a fibrous suit, with her sleeves were tucked into her latex gloves, Hollis entered the house and walked through the living room.

  This room was the first to be emptied—and theoretically the last to be filled. Now the room held stacks of color-coded plastic storage bins for the items they were keeping, plus four large trash containers, empty and waiting for discarded bags, packing paper, and boxes.

  Stevie followed her to the second bedroom, as did Sveyn, and the three museum interns carrying storage bins.

  “What are we looking for?” Stevie asked.

  “Anything interesting.”

  Hollis opened the first box she encountered. “We take each piece out one by one, and evaluate which pile it goes in—props, types, or objects—and add it to that bin.”

  “What do those words mean?” Sveyn asked.

  Hollis lifted a book from the box, examining the spine while she answered him. “Props are common objects, like the Norse coins, and go in the bins with white tops. Type pieces are unique, but we can’t attribute them to a particular historical person. Those go in the black ones.”

  Stevie rolled her eyes. “We all know that, Hollis. Why the lecture?”

  Crappity craps-a-lot.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking out loud.” Hollis shot a warning glance at Sveyn, who had the decency to appear contrite. “I am always told that I talk to myself more than the average person.”

  “Yes, you do. But it’s because you live alone,” Stevie stated with authority. “You need to get back on that dating site and see who your next encounter will be with. Or else you’ll end up living alone with only feral cats to talk to.”

  No, they’ll be at Matt’s house.

  “Enough about that. Let’s see what we can find.” Hollis opened the cover of the antiquated volume and turned the flyleaf page. What she saw made her heartbeat stutter. “No. Freaking. Way.”

  “What?” Stevie wound her way around the piles of boxes. “What did you find?”

  Hollis held out the book. “What do you see?”

  Stevie’s jaw dropped and her eyes rounded impossibly behind the goggles. “No! Freaking! Way!” She began to bounce. “Could it be real?”

  Hollis stared at the title page of Mansfield Park and the neatly penned signature: Jane Austen. “We’ll need to compare this to her actual signature, but based on what else we’ve found in this house, it very well could be authentic.”

  “Are volumes two and three there?”

  Hollis reached down and picked them up. “They are.” She flipped the covers open. “But they aren’t signed.”

  “I’ll put them all in the objects bin. The blue one.” Stevie winked at Hollis and accepted the trio of books with care. “Clearly this one can be attributed to Jane specifically.”

  “Yes it can.” Hollis grinned behind her mask. “We’re certainly off to a great start.”

  *****

  When the crew took a break for lunch, they removed and disposed of their single-use protective gear so as not to contaminate their food. When they finished eating they put on a new set of coveralls, gloves, and masks.

  “Three more hours, and then we head back,” Hollis announced. “If Kensington did not attach a description for the items you find, be sure to write something out and place it in the bin with the item.”

  While the group walked single-file back into the house, Sveyn fell in step beside her. “There is something in there that you should see.”

  Hollis let the others go ahead so her whispered question would not be heard. “Is it in the room we are working on?”

  Sveyn shook his head. “No. The next one. The big one.”

  “I can’t. It’ll have to wait.”

  “It is important.”

  Hollis shook her head. “And how would I explain why I dug out that particular piece? How I knew it was even there?”

  Sveyn features twisted. “I see.”

  “We have to be methodical. It’s an important part of the process. Noting what is packed with an item helps us identify and date it.”

  The Viking nodded, his expression somber.

  Curiosity about what Sveyn found clawed at her more than any cats could, feral or not, but Hollis knew she was right. “We’ll come back. You can show me then.”

  By the end of the day, the crew of five had two bins of props, three bins of type pieces, and one glorious bin of objects.

  The box containing the three Jane Austen volumes also held bound books signed by Arthur Conan Doyle, two of the Brontë sisters—Charlotte and Anne—and one battered Charles Dickens tome.

  The box stacked under it held a Rudyard Kipling and a Mary Shelley, along with several books which Hollis had never heard of. The possibility that something they encountered was a rare and valuable find always got her jazzed up.

  Holding a second edition copy of her Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus while Sveyn looked on over her shoulder gave Hollis the heebie-jeebies. He claimed he had not yet died, but he obviously was not really alive.

  Sort of like the monster.

  “That’s it for today.” Hollis said loudly and tucked the book in the blue bin. “Let’s pack up.”

  *****

  Miranda was ecstatic. “Jane Austen? Really?”

  “We have to compare signatures, but—”

  Before Hollis could finish the sentence, Miranda was searching the internet for images of Jane Austen’s signature.<
br />
  “Here.” Miranda swiveled the screen so Hollis could see the image. “Does it match?”

  Hollis opened the book, and held it next to the screen. Jane’s signature from her will was an almost perfect twin—just different enough to allow for the variables every signature has each time it’s signed.

  Miranda got dreamy-eyed and took the book from Hollis. “This should be our first post online. And we should contact JASNA to let them know these books are here.”

  “JASNA?” Sveyn whispered.

  “The Jane Austen Society of North America.” Realizing she had spoken out loud to answer Sveyn’s question once again, she quickly added, “—local members will be thrilled.”

  “We should have a Regency tea!” Stevie suggested. “As a fund-raiser!”

  “I love it. And fundraising is the curator’s job.” Miranda handed the book back to Hollis with a twinkle in her eye. “Let’s check the other signatures.”

  Arthur Conan Doyle was a match, as were Rudyard Kipling and Anne Brontë.

  Charles Dickens’ scribbled flourishes were probably original, considering the bill of sale was from the same establishment as the rest of the books. Purchase dates on the receipts ranged from nineteen-twenty-eight to nineteen thirty-one.

  Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë, however, would require further verification.

  Miranda switched off her computer screen and leaned back in her chair, a beatific smile easing her features. “You’ve had quite a day, Hollis. I’m sure you’re pleased.”

  “Yep. This has been one of our best days since we started. And we have a good idea right now about the veracity of what we found.”

  “This is the first day that I’m actually thrilled to be working on the hoard,” Stevie admitted. “I mean, the other stuff is interesting, but that’s Jane-freaking-Austen right there.”

  Miranda laughed. “Was there anything else important?”

  “A few things, I think. I’ll know more after I research them.”

  Miranda herded the two women toward her office door. “When are you planning to go back to the house?”

  Hollis looked at Sveyn. The intense look on his face made the decision for her. “Tomorrow.”