by Ane Riel
‘I want to talk to Mum,’ I whispered through the beginning of tears.
Dad bent down and looked me in the eye. His face was so close to mine that I could feel his beard and the brim of his cap.
His eyes hung right in front of mine like hard, black stones. They were no longer crying. They weren’t even shiny. They weren’t Dad’s eyes. They were stones.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I don’t know how long he was gone. I only know that the sun had reached the chimney on the house. There were no clouds at all. The sky was big and blue.
Pupating
The glow from the candlelight didn’t reach Jens Horder’s eyes when he showed her the pills. In his other hand he held a glass of water.
Maria saw only his hands. They were shaking.
She nodded and slowly opened her mouth. The corners of her mouth were cracked. She was thirsty and tired.
For a moment she felt his lips on her forehead.
Quivering like a butterfly.
Then he disappeared back into the darkness. She heard his footsteps down the stairs. The sound of heavy objects being dragged across the floor below. Him groaning.
Perhaps he was crying.
Then she found the notepad by her side.
And her very last bit of strength.
I THINK THAT’S IT
The Captive
The gag cut into the corners of his mouth, and Roald had to breathe deeply through his nose to keep the nausea at bay. The fact that the air in the room was so suffocating didn’t help either. He had to stay focused. He had to ignore the smell and value the oxygen which, after all, it still contained. If he didn’t concentrate, his fear of choking would overpower him. Throwing up would be the end of him. If the cold he had only recently got rid of crept up on him now and blocked his nose, that would also be the end of him. What about sneezing? Was it possible to sneeze when you had a gag pressed into the back of your mouth? Surely the sneeze would explode in his throat and choke him? He had to keep reminding himself about the oxygen. There was oxygen in the air and free passage through his nose. He breathed deeply and tried getting his pulse down. And he tried to think.
NEED HELP ALL 3, Maria had written.
You could say that again.
Roald was worried about her and the girl, but at this moment in time he was mostly concerned about Jens Horder. Exactly how far gone was he? Was he capable of murder?
And what had he meant when he said: ‘We’ll need him later?’ Then again, it gave Roald a faint hope that he wasn’t about to be killed, at least not immediately. On the other hand, Need him?
Need him for what?
Roald thought about the people of Korsted. Had anyone known about his walk to the Head? No, he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. Why on earth hadn’t he told someone, spoken to the police officer, left a note for the chef?
If he didn’t come back today, then what? When would people start to notice? At some point Short Fuse’s Lars would start to wonder why Roald hadn’t returned his dog. He would ring the pub later tonight. Perhaps even walk down there, if he could be bothered. He probably couldn’t, and his explosive wife undoubtedly had jobs that she wanted him to do. So Lars wouldn’t do anything until tomorrow, which was when he would bump into the chef, who would be back by then and who would also be wondering about Roald’s absence.
And at that point they would contact the police. Not until then. Not until tomorrow. And probably not until late in the day. To act quickly would be regarded as jumping the gun.
Roald focused on his breathing. Jens Horder would bloody well have to let him go. There had to be limits to his madness.
Nevertheless, the family was in desperate need of help. All three of them. Roald made up his mind to be as accommodating as possible. He would signal to them that he meant them no harm at all. That he was no threat.
That would probably fix it.
And that was when the penny dropped.
In the midst of all the junk and his terror and confusion over the boy, who was a girl, he hadn’t processed that Jens Horder had referred to her as Liv. Liv Horder. She was the daughter they had reported dead.
And now her father knew that he had been found out.
At that moment Jens Horder appeared in the doorway. Roald’s pulse rocketed again. Need him for what? And what would happen to him afterwards?
‘I’m going to untie you now,’ Horder said, squatting down by one of the bedposts.
The pain shot through Roald when the rope briefly tightened even more around his ankle, which was already hurting after the encounter with the silage harvester. Then the rope slackened and he felt the blood return to his foot. He moved it carefully to avoid cramping. Soon his other foot was free.
Before Horder started untying his hands he pulled out his knife and showed it to Roald. ‘Don’t try anything stupid,’ he said, placing the knife on the bed, well out of Roald’s reach.
Roald decided not to try anything stupid.
Horder’s voice was cold, but Roald could feel the heat radiating from him and see the beads of sweat on his forehead. His gaze also seemed cold and distant, and yet his eyes were swollen and red … as if he had just been crying.
The girl appeared in the doorway. Roald could see the top of her quiver of arrows behind one of her shoulders and the bow in her hand. Jens Horder looked behind and glanced at her before turning his attention back to Roald.
‘My daughter is a formidable archer. Make no mistake. I’ve ordered her to shoot you if you try anything. And believe me: she won’t miss.’
Roald believed him. All his limbs were finally free, but he stayed on his back where he was. He still couldn’t speak because of the gag. Should he try to remove it now that he could use his hands again?
Horder picked up the knife and positioned himself in front of Roald.
Roald pointed cautiously at his mouth and the scarf or whatever it was he had been made to bite on for so long. It tasted and smelled like a mixture of wool and cowshed. Horder looked as if he didn’t know whether or not to give him permission to remove it.
Roald faked a cough.
‘Please take it out, Dad,’ the girl pleaded anxiously over by the door, and Roald immediately coughed a little harder. Only this time he genuinely started to choke. His hands reached instinctively for the fabric, trying to pull it down. It was too tight for him to take it off. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Horder appeared to realize from the expression in Roald’s eyes that this was serious because he quickly grabbed the knot behind Roald’s head and untied it. Then he threw the scarf on to a pile next to the bed.
Roald coughed and gasped for air until he was able to breathe again with relative ease.
‘Thank you,’ he said after a while.
‘You’ll do exactly as I say, understand?’ Jens Horder said, holding the knife perilously close to one of Roald’s wrists.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I need your help. The two of us will carry a bathtub up to the first floor of the main house.’
‘A bathtub?’ It was pretty much the last thing Roald had expected to hear.
‘Yes, my wife needs a bath. Come on, get up.’
Roald was herded along a specific route across the farmyard to the bathtub, the one that Liv had tried to hide behind. It was the free-standing sort. With feet.
Only it wasn’t the kind of bathtub you would want to take a bath in. Yellow blotches and tidemarks of dark grime had settled on the enamel sides and on the bottom. A woodland snail was floating around a dried lake of spruce needles and hose clamps. Jens Horder used his shabby cap to empty the tub with a couple of sweeping movements. Afterwards, he put the cap back on.
The bathtub was as heavy as sin. Roald was ordered to walk in front, and even before he reached the steps leading up to the front door he was dripping with sweat. He understood why Jens Horder had taken off his coat and chucked it over a barrel somewhere.
&nbs
p; The archer followed them like a shadow. There was no doubt that she understood her role. She never once took her eyes off him. Roald felt conflicted at being threatened by a scruffy little kid, but the threat seemed real enough. Besides, he had already seen what her arrows could do. They were not toys.
Liv opened the door for them and was told to wait outside in the farmyard. With her bow at the ready.
Roald had already concluded that they couldn’t possibly get the bathtub through the hall and up to the first floor. Although it might be the most direct route through the house, it was piled high with stuff. However, when he entered the darkness and the stench he realized what it was that had caused Horder to sweat earlier. Things had been pushed aside and rearranged to create a slightly wider passageway. It might actually be possible to get the bathtub up to the first floor now.
It was completely absurd. She was dying up there. The woman didn’t need a bath. She needed help.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy in any sense of the word. Roald had never carried anything so heavy, but his body had apparently accepted that there was no escape and found strength in his fear.
The trickiest part was to angle the bathtub correctly so that they could get it into the bedroom, but Jens Horder had worked out exactly how it should be done. Then again, with all the things he had dragged into the house, he had by now accumulated a lot of experience in negotiating doorways.
He had made room along the bed, or at least there wasn’t as much junk as before. The bucket had gone, thank God, but the smell was still intolerable.
Roald glanced at the huge woman still lying buried by her own body and the stuff on the bed. The candle flickered on the bedside table, and he didn’t have time to catch her eye. However, he did notice that the duvet had been rearranged. It looked almost as if she had been lovingly tucked in, like when you tuck in a child.
An unemotional Jens Horder instructed him how to navigate the bathtub in. It had to be closely aligned with the bed. Why? So they could roll her into it? Roald feared that the poor woman was so big she might easily get stuck in the tub. How on earth would they ever get her out of there? He was, however, quite certain that now was not the time to voice his concerns.
Especially when he sneaked a peek at Maria’s face and saw that she was dead.
She had to be dead. You didn’t lie like that with staring eyes and your mouth half open unless you were dead.
She seemed to be smiling faintly.
He quickly looked away and caught a glimpse of a large glass of pills which looked far too empty. Had she swallowed them by choice? Or …?
‘One of the feet is caught by something in your corner. You need to move it,’ came the order from the other end of the bathtub.
Roald obediently squatted down next to the headboard to free the bathtub foot. He moved a book that was lying on the floor, along with a small, empty notebook with frayed bits of paper in the spiral binding, and then tried to pick up a woollen blanket which had half fallen off the bed and was also in the way. He had to tug hard to get the blanket out from underneath the swaddled human being, and the movement caused Maria’s left hand to suddenly appear from under the duvet. Roald froze at the sight of her open palm. A ballpoint pen was trapped in a deep fold of skin.
He glanced furtively at Jens Horder, who was standing with his back to him over by the door, then placed two fingers on Maria’s wrist. No, there was no pulse. Roald gently pushed her hand back under the duvet.
And that was when he noticed it. Something was tucked in between the mattress and the bedframe, right where the woollen blanket had been. It was a slim green file. He glanced towards the door again. Jens Horder was busy moving a big cardboard box that perched precariously on top of some other boxes and which Roald had accidentally bumped into with the bathtub.
Roald carefully pulled out the file. ‘To Liv’, it said in cursive writing on the cover. He opened it, only for a moment, but long enough to see that it contained both handwritten letters and several smaller notes, some apparently stuffed randomly into the file. A single scrap of paper from a notebook seemed to have escaped and was still trapped between the mattress and the bedframe. He could barely make out what it said because it was written with clumsy capitals on top of one another.
He didn’t have time to think about why he did it. Quick as lightning, he stuffed the loose scrap into the file with the other notes, then slipped the file under his shirt. He could feel his heart pounding furiously.
He continued to squat behind the bathtub for a few more seconds while he tried to calm his nerves. Then he got up and pushed the tub close to the bed, just like he had been told to. Jens Horder was still facing away from him. The knife was tucked into his belt at the back.
If only he could slip past him, but how? He looked at the woman in the bed for a moment and then he said:
‘I think your wife is trying to say something.’
Jens Horder spun around and stared at Maria. Seconds later, he was back by the headboard.
Roald stepped aside to make way for him.
‘She was trying to say something just now,’ he lied again.
Horder stroked the dead woman’s hand and moved his face close to her.
‘My darling,’ he whispered. ‘Are you still awake?’
And that was when Roald ran. He jumped past the bathtub on his way to the door. The box which Horder had struggled with was still close to the edge of the pile it was resting on, and with his newly acquired strength Roald managed to pull it down behind him. It hit the floor with a crash and something shattered. Out in the passage, he knocked down everything he could in order to block Jens Horder’s path. Some big clip frames landed cooperatively across the floor of the corridor. A standard lamp keeled over, dragging rolls of fabric with it. A flower-pot stand was knocked over and bumped down the stairs, along with engine parts and tinned food, petrol cans and toys. Something hit a crumbling sack, which responded by spewing its foul-smelling contents over the landing.
Roald made it down the stairs and out through the hall. He didn’t look back. He tore open the heavy front door, just as he had done earlier but experiencing a different fear this time. The fear of death was chasing him, as were the smell, the noises and the darkness. As soon as he was outside he slammed the door shut behind him.
The light was overwhelming, but not blinding. The sun threw itself into the farmyard from the south-west. It was on his side. And a sunbeam revealed a kneeling archer who was aiming her bow at him.
Roald ran down the steps, towards the child and the bow. ‘Don’t shoot, Liv!’ he called out. ‘I promised your mum to help you, and I’ve got something—’
He slowed his pace when the child suddenly stood up and pointed. ‘Stop!’ she screamed. ‘Go the other way around the cooker.’
Roald reacted instinctively. He screeched to a halt and took a step back to run the other way around the pile with the old cooker on the top. A second later the cooker crashed on to the path with a mighty bang.
The girl tossed aside her bow and clutched her head with both hands.
Roald’s heart was in his throat as he ran towards her. That poor child, was the only thought going through his mind. That poor, poor child.
She slumped to her knees as he came closer. And that was when he realized that she wasn’t staring at him. But at something behind him.
Inferno
Roald turned around to see what Liv was looking at. It wasn’t, as he had initially feared, Jens Horder emerging from the front door, brandishing a knife.
It was Jens Horder’s house giving up.
First the roof ridge sunk down, as if the house were taking its last breath. Then the entire building exhaled in a deafening sigh. It crumbled. Everything seemed to fall inwards – with the exception of the front door, which was flung across the farmyard.
Roald held the child in a tight grip when he saw a red glow through the first-floor window. The flames were quick to follow. Soon the ground floor was also engulf
ed in fire.
The child wept quietly but pitifully amidst the noise. Roald squatted down behind her with his arms around her sobbing body and his head on her frail shoulders. The soft feathers on the arrows tickled his throat.
‘My mum,’ he heard her say. ‘And my dad.’
‘Your mum was already dead when we got up there,’ he said, as gently as possible. ‘She died in her sleep. She didn’t feel a thing. And your dad was with her. The last thing I saw was him kissing her.’
Roald briefly considered whether he had a duty to try to rescue Jens Horder from the burning house, however small the chance, but it was an inferno of flames and smoke. No one would get out of there alive.
‘It all happened so quickly,’ he said then. ‘Your dad didn’t feel a thing either.’
‘Good,’ the girl sobbed.
Roald carefully but firmly turned her around so that she was facing him, and then lifted her to standing. He placed his hands on her shoulders.
‘You and I are going to go now,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you, but we have to leave now. The fire will spread soon.’
The girl nodded again and picked up her bow. As she stood there with the quiver of arrows on her back and the bow in her hand, she resembled a small, brave soldier.
She looked up at him. Roald didn’t know what to say next. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she was subjecting him to the most intense scrutiny he had ever experienced. She examined his eyes, searching for something. He wasn’t even aware that he was also crying until he felt the tears roll down his cheek.
Then she looked like she had come to some sort of conclusion, because she put down the bow, resolutely lifted the strap of the quiver over her head and chucked her ammunition down beside her weapon without giving it a second glance. The soldier’s acceptance that the war was over.
‘Good, then let’s—’ Roald said, but he was interrupted.
‘There are traps, so don’t follow me,’ the girl ordered him, with admirable resolve in her little voice. ‘I’ll be back in two secs. Stay here.’
