Where Monsters Dwell

by Jorgen Brekke

  * * *

  Felicia Stone suddenly felt as though she’d done something stupid. The case was over, after all. Why couldn’t she simply let it drop and go home? Was there anything more to find out now?

  She took out the key ring she carried in her pocket, even though none of the keys fit a single lock on this side of the Atlantic. But on it was a lock pick that had no such geographical limitations. It fit in the lock she was now trying to pick with some difficulty. Patterson was so much better at this. She’d often thought that he could have been as good a criminal as he was a cop. For her part, it took some effort, but eventually she managed to get the lock open. She went in and looked around the room, which was exactly as she’d pictured it. And it reinforced her belief that she was on the right track. There was still something left undone; a loose thread was still left.

  * * *

  He biked slowly across Kirkegata. On the way he passed Dahle’s house. All the curtains were drawn. The kids had moved in with Gunn Brita’s parents, which might be permanent, according to the child welfare authorities. Most probably the house would be sold to cover the inevitable demands for compensation.

  There was a lot of investigative work that remained to be done after what had been the bloodiest serial killings in Norway over the past five hundred years. The Norwegian team was using a lot of resources trying to clarify the scope of Jens Dahle’s crimes. The boathouse by the cabin out on Ørland had quickly been dubbed “The Boathouse of Horror” by Vlado Taneski in Adresseavisen. In general, the press was doing its best to ignore Jon Vatten’s next to last wish that Jens Dahle not be mythologized.

  In the boathouse there was more than sufficient evidence to link Dahle to the murders of both Edvard and Hedda Vatten, as well as to that of his own wife. In addition, skin had been found from at least one other unidentified individual. So Jens Dahle could be labeled a serial killer according to every definition of the term.

  The evidence was strong enough to link him to the murder in Virginia as well. Beside the similarity between the murders and the confirmed connection between Gunn Brita Dahle and Efrahim Bond—which provided a motive for the murder—electronic evidence was found verifying Jens Dahle’s travel itinerary. By all accounts he had flown to Washington, D.C., and from there continued in a rental car. He purchased scalpels and other surgical equipment, which he couldn’t bring with him on the plane, at a medical supply company in Washington. The equipment had been ordered in advance by the Science Museum in Trondheim. Dahle was back in Norway in a little less than seventy-two hours. The original check of Dahle’s alibi had been done before anyone in the Trondheim police was aware of the Richmond murder, so they had only concentrated on the weekend of the murder in Trondheim. Dahle’s colleagues, who could not even begin to comprehend what had happened, stated in later interviews that they thought he had been on vacation. Gunn Brita Dahle’s parents stated that he had told his wife he was attending a conference.

  His alibi had certainly had its weak points, and a stronger focus on Jens Dahle early in the investigation might have revealed his lies. In that sense, his plan to divert police attention by sending them on a hunt for an insane thrill killer had been successful. The police would never know whether focusing the investigation differently might have saved Vatten’s life.

  The evidence that definitively linked Dahle to the murder in the United States appeared the day after he died. During a search of his home, the police found a copy of the Johannes Book that Dahle must have had made before he donated it to the Gunnerus Library. They also found an unopened letter in his mailbox. It was sent from the States the same day Dahle returned to Norway. The handwriting on the envelope clearly showed that he’d written it himself and mailed it to his own address. The envelope contained a small piece of human skin that had not completely dried. The police still needed to ascertain with a DNA test whether the skin came from the victim Efrahim Bond, but this was obviously Dahle’s way of keeping a souvenir of that murder. What Dahle had done with the rest of Bond’s skin remained an unsolved mystery.

  Nor did the police ever find out why the murder in the Poe Museum seemed sloppier and more disorganized than the one in the book vault, since the only person who could have answered that question was dead. Dahle’s original plan was probably to make the two murders as incomprehensible as possible. By exaggerating the effects and inserting irrational elements, like putting the head in the garbage can, he wanted to divert attention from the fact that the murders were personal.

  But when he killed Gunn Brita, he shifted his MO. The murder was more organized in its execution and done in a confined space. Perhaps it was only the unexpected advantage of being able to hide the body in the vault that made him do it that way. As Felicia Stone said one evening at the hospital: Most killers are opportunists. Even the most organized serial killer can change his method if he has something to gain.

  Another theory was that while Jens Dahle had actually enjoyed killing Bond, he wanted to get the murder of his spouse over with as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Some people thought that this could be a sign that somewhere deep inside, Dahle the sociopath had some measure of human feeling. Singsaker did not share this opinion.

  The police would probably never find out what had made Jens Dahle into a monster. Despite rumors in his hometown that the fire at the Krangsås farm perhaps was not as accidental as originally believed, there was no concrete proof that he’d had an unhappy childhood or was abused in any way. None of the statements from people who had known him as a child indicated that he’d had any of the problems or behavioral issues that often mark a serial killer. He didn’t wet the bed, he didn’t torture animals, and he was never caught starting fires or committing vandalism. Once he was apparently caught shoplifting a comic book at the local co-op. That was the only criminal situation in which he’d ever been involved, and it was never reported, since the owner of the shop thought he was a nice boy. Jens Dahle never teased girls, and no one had suspected him of spying or peeping through windows in the town. He never threatened anyone, and nobody had ever seen him in a fight. The only thing the police gleaned from the interviews with people from Ørland where he grew up was that he was a quiet boy who kept mostly to himself, and often seemed lost in his own thoughts. In his youth it was well-known that Jens Dahle would rather lie around in his room reading books and comics than go to a party or spend time with girls. People his own age had seen him as a harmless, intelligent, but rather strange boy.

  * * *

  Singsaker wondered how long it would take until he could ride his bike past Dahle’s house without imagining his naked torso and the mask of human skin that had been torn off, revealing two eyes that stared into a world so different from his own—a world that had been shaped inside Dahle without anyone ever knowing.

  The sight of Jon Vatten’s house a bit farther up the street didn’t really put Singsaker in a better mood. When he turned into the back courtyard of his own building to enter his own staircase and apartment, his plan was to forget about the herring and go to bed with an open bottle of aquavit on the nightstand and some sentimental movie on the TV.

  But it didn’t work out that way.

  * * *

  Felicia panicked when she heard the key in the door. Again she got that nauseating feeling she’d done something stupid. Was it a good idea to do it this way? Could she have ruined everything before it even began? It was too late for such thoughts now. All she could do was follow her plan. She hurried into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. She had to laugh at herself as she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse. This is so dumb, she thought. What if it doesn’t work? No, it has to work. I’ve been waiting fourteen years for this.

  When she saw him come into the bedroom with a bottle of aquavit in each hand and his shirt already unbuttoned, she knew that it would be all right. She hadn’t done anything stupid; it was the only right thing to do. There was still a loose thread left in the case, and here he was, standing in front of her and
saying exactly what she had hoped.

  She got up from the bed, went over to him, and put a finger to his lips. Took the bottles out of his hands and set them down. Then she undressed him. He lay down on his back and watched as she took off her clothes. At last there was nothing to see but her black hair and white skin. She crept next to him and kissed him on the lips. From there she moved down to his shoulders and chest. She lingered a long time in the navel region before she finally reached the spot she was aiming for. He was ready to burst, and burst way too soon.

  “It was, it was…” he stammered afterward, but didn’t manage to finish.

  “You have no idea what it was,” she said. “But someday I might tell you.”

  He looked at her as she sat on the bed beside him.

  “One day I hope you will,” he said.

  “And I hope you’ve saved a little ammunition,” she said. “That was actually something I had to do. What comes next is something I want.”

  “You need to remember that I’m getting older,” he said with a smile. “But if we take our time, anything is possible.”

  * * *

  An hour later they were sitting in bed watching a rerun of Grey’s Anatomy. They were still naked. She rested her head on his shoulder, and her long black hair covered his chest like a cape. She sighed with satisfaction. Sometime in the future she would describe the hour that had just passed as weightless, and explain that afterward gravity had taken on a new form. What he remembered best was that it was the first time it felt like the wound in his head was completely healed.

  “I hate doctor shows,” she said cheerfully.

  “Me too,” he said, “but in a good way.”

  “Morris gave me two weeks off.”

  “Great, then you can come with me to Oslo. I have to go to a christening, and you really ought to see more of the country than just Trondheim.”

  “That sounds nice. But I like Trondheim. I like the rain and the cold.”

  “How much do you like it?” he said, feeling a butterfly awaken in his stomach.

  “Maybe,” she said, “I like it as much as you hope I do.”

  31

  Ørland, 1555

  The priest sat in his house and looked down over the meadow outside. A little girl came walking along the path that led up to his dwelling. It was little Mari, who had lost her parents to the plague. That was the week before the bodies of Lady Inger and her daughter were brought back from the shipwreck on the way to Bergen. Johannes the priest had presided at both families’ funerals. The one for Lady Inger and her family was resplendent, with oak caskets and family crests in a packed Ørland church. The one for Mari’s parents was modest, outdoors. Mari had wept at the burial. The priest had invited her over so that he could see what he could do for her.

  Now he sat reading his diary. He had made it himself from calfskin, and the pages at the back were made of the skin he had brought with him from Bergen, where he had encountered the beard-cutter for the last time. Nothing provided a better writing surface than this parchment. As he read he kept glancing out the open window. Mari was coming closer on the path. She was so skinny, that girl.

  His eyes shifted back to the pages of the book. The last pages he had dedicated to them, to the blood and the entrails. Next to the book, on the table in front of him, lay the bundle of skin wrapped around the knives.

  What he had written inside this bundle were his worst thoughts. The thoughts from which he couldn’t manage to free himself. They dealt with the way he had taken their lives, how he had flayed the skin off them, how he had sliced into them, and then what was concealed within.

  But that was all they were. Just thoughts and nothing else. He had never laid a hand on any of them. Ever since the archbishop had sent him out here to Fosen he had been a good priest, first Catholic and then Lutheran. It hadn’t cost him as much to convert as he had thought. At some point he realized that religion was not the most important thing. Human beings were more important. He discovered that despite what had happened to him in life, he liked people. He wasn’t like the beard-cutter, whose life he had spared that time in Bergen. He had merely knocked him unconscious and taken his knives. The knives and the old skin from the German witch. He had used the skin to make the last pages in this book, and on it he had written his darkest thoughts. Because he did have dark thoughts, there was no use denying it. But by writing them down he had kept them away from the rest of the world. He had found a place to hide the devil that lived inside him. And after that, he was not a bad priest.

  Now he wrote one last sentence in the middle of the book, far from those dark pages. It was a sentence that a lucky monkey had once put on paper in Alexandria, at least if one were to believe his great teacher from Padua. When he was done writing, he picked up the bundle, which was also made from the witch’s skin. It not only contained the gruesome fantasy about a vivisection, but it served to protect the beard-cutter’s knives. The fantasy was harmless as long as he left it where it was, and he had actually saved some lives with these knives over the years. The last time was when a landowner down by the sea went berserk with an ax and slew five people on his farm. Four others had also been injured, but Johannes the priest managed to save their lives with most of their limbs intact. The five who died were buried at the old grave site out by the chapel. They were the last ones to be buried there, for soon after the superintendent in Nidaros decided that the grave site would no longer be used. The grisly murders were now forgotten. Only the survivors remembered what had happened, and they recalled how Johannes the priest had saved their lives, but not all of their limbs, with his knives and needles.

  Mari was so close now that he could hear her footsteps. He had good news for her in these different times. He had already found her a place on one of the farms in the parish, where, for a certain fee, they had promised to take her in. He didn’t have much to offer in the way of payment, nothing but the knives and the book he had spent the last half of his life writing. He wasn’t afraid to give these items away. The people at the farm couldn’t read. He had made them promise not to sell them before he died, and if they were ever sold, the knives and the book must always stay together. Future owners would have to swear to this, too. The farmer had agreed to this peculiar request.

  He lay the bundle down behind him on the bed as Mari entered the room.

  How he longed to rid himself of these devilish thoughts once and for all. He was approaching old age now, and he wanted to spend it in peace.

  AFTERWORD

  Everything of importance in this novel was made up, and it goes without saying that all the characters are fictitious. Yet the story does contain the names of several historical figures who were real enough in their day. Some of them even play an active role in the plot of the novel. I’m thinking primarily of Broder Lysholm Knudtzon and Alessandro Benedetti. But even though these individuals were once alive, they appear here exclusively as characters in a novel, with traits borrowed from a time long past. This applies especially to Master Alessandro.

  The real Alessandro Benedetti (1445–1525), also known as Alexander Benedictus, lived and worked in Padua. We know that he, like Master Alessandro in the novel, traveled extensively throughout the Mediterranean region, and that he collected books. Whether he was a friend of the renowned book printer Manutius who worked in Venice, however, is somewhat less certain. Alessandro was best known for having written the work Historia Corporis Humani, in which he describes how a surgeon can transplant skin from a person’s arm to his nose. He learned the method from the Branca family of doctors, who performed the procedure in Sicily as early as the fifteenth century.

  In 1497 Alessandro wrote down some fundamental guidelines for the design of an anatomical theater: It must have an auditorium that ensured good viewing for all, a well-lit table in the center; good ventilation; and guards to prevent undesirables from entering. We don’t know whether Alessandro really managed to build an anatomical theater, but if he did, he certainly wouldn’t hav
e done so in his own yard. But we do know that such theaters were erected in several locations during the sixteenth century. At first they were temporary buildings of wood, like that in the master’s yard. Near the end of the century, permanent buildings were constructed at a number of universities. This was done first in Italy, and then the rest of Europe followed suit.

  Alessandro’s own career as an anatomist is not well documented. We do not know how many dissections he performed, or what methods he used. The fictional Master Alessandro is thus based equally on the somewhat later and far more famous anatomist Vesalius (1514–64), about whom we know conclusively that he personally performed many dissections. The cemetery called the Graveyard of the Innocents, which in the story lies outside the city walls of Padua, was actually located in Paris, where the Belgian Vesalius studied and first began his anatomical investigations. He described how in the dark of night he would fetch remnants of corpses from this and similar cemeteries around the French capital. When he later went to Padua and began to work at the university there, Vesalius found the freedom he needed to become the greatest anatomist of his time.

  It is also Vesalius who is known for having revised much of the teachings of the Greek physician Galen (ca. A.D. 130–200). As mentioned in the novel, Galen didn’t dissect human beings, but animals. Yet most of his knowledge was in reality based on the work of earlier Greek anatomists, primarily that of the famous and infamous Herophilos (4th century B.C.). It is said that condemned prisoners were delivered to him so that he could dissect them alive.

  The most famous work of Vesalius is the anatomical atlas De humani corporis fabrica (1543).

  With regard to Broder Lysholm Knudtzon (1788–1864), it is true that he was born into a family of merchants in Trondheim, and that he was more interested in culture and science than in the business of trading. It is also true that he was a close friend of Lord Byron, and that he collected Byron’s books in particular. At his death he left his book collection to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences. The collection is today part of the Parchment Division of the University Library in Trondheim, also called the Gunnerus Library. Unfortunately, Knudtzon burned many of his letters. It is said that he did an especially thorough job of burning those from Lord Byron. Did Broder Lysholm Knudtzon ever go out to Fosen, taking with him a book that he thought to be cursed? That is doubtful.