by Amy Cross
“Oh my God,” Elizabeth continued, kneeling down and putting a hand on Sara's shoulder. “What happened to you?”
Staring back up at her sister, Sara tried to say something, but she was trembling too much to get any words out.
“Here,” Elizabeth said, taking a handkerchief from her pocket and using it to wipe tears and mucus from Sara's face. “Can you sit up? Please? Or does it hurt too much?” Turning, she saw the men already walking away with the body, evidently thinking that their work was done for the day. “Over here!” she shouted. “We found her!”
Dybendal, having already started another cigarette, turned to look toward her, but he showed no sign that he understood the urgency of the situation.
“Get over here!” Elizabeth screamed. “Now!”
“What happened?” Kari asked, kneeling on the forest floor. “Sara, you have to tell us! Was someone here? Did they hurt you?”
Looking past her sisters, Sara seemed worried about the sound of approaching footsteps.
“It's just some men from town,” Elizabeth reassured her, reaching down and slowly lifting Sara up. “You're safe, there's nothing to worry about, you -” Pausing, she saw to her horror that some of Sara's clothes were torn, while there was a large bruise starting to form around her left eye. “My God,” she continued, pulling the little girl closer and wrapping her arms around her trembling body. “Whatever happened to you?”
“I saw him,” Sara blurted out, her voice shaking with fear.
“Who?” Elizabeth asked, sharing a concerned glance with Kari. “Who did you see, Sara? The body in the river, is that who you saw?”
Sara shook her head.
“Then who was it? Who did this to you?”
“I saw him,” the little girl whimpered again as several shocked men reached the scene, with Dybendal huffing and puffing as he tried to catch up. “He was right here. He talked to me, he... He told me things. Things I didn't want to hear, but he told me anyway.”
“Who?” Elizabeth asked. “Please, Sara, who was it?”
She waited for a moment.
“Death,” Sara said finally.
Pausing, Elizabeth pulled back a little way, so she could see her sister's scratched and tear-stained face. “What?”
“I saw Death,” Sara continued, her voice trembling with fear, “and he told me a secret.”
Chapter Six
Today
“Sagmoen,” Paula muttered, as she sat in her bare new bedroom and made another mark on a crude, hand-drawn map of the local area, “on the seventh of November...”
Taking a moment to draw a line from one of the other marks, she stared at the map for a moment. For over an hour now, she'd been painstakingly going through the old notebook, page by page, tracing the route that its owner had logged. So far, she could see that Margit Lin Tessem – whoever she was – had made her way north from Oslo, and judging by the speed with which she was covering ground each day, she seemed to have been traveling by foot. Glancing at the dark window and seeing snow blowing past outside, Paula couldn't help but wonder what would have possessed someone to make such a journey in the middle of winter.
Hearing footsteps on the creaking stairs, she looked at the door just in time to see her father heading up to his room.
“It's still freezing,” she called out.
“There's wood in the oven.”
“That's downstairs.”
“And the chimney runs right up through your room,” he replied wearily, stopping by her door. “You're going to have to start putting extra layers on while you get used to the climate here.”
“Get used to the climate?” Setting the notebook down, she wrapped her duvet around her body and climbed off the bed, making her way over to the window. “Have you seen what it's like out there? It's blowing a gale! There's a goddamn blizzard happening!”
“Temperature's minus twenty-one,” he said as he joined her. “The forecast for tomorrow is for more snow.”
“I'm shocked and surprised,” she replied, rolling her eyes.
“There's something beautiful about the whole thing, don't you think?” he continued. “A real sense of the natural world at its finest. Back in London, we used to complain about a spot of rain, but out here you really start to appreciate the awesome challenge we're facing. The natural world is so powerful, it could easily scrub us from the map if it wanted.”
“Did you finish exploring the barn?”
“The top two levels. I didn't go into the bottom section, I'll do that tomorrow.”
“And you think you can run a farm in this kind of weather?”
“No,” he replied, heading to the door, “I think I can run a farm in the spring, when the snow thaws and the weather warms up. Winter is when the farm sleeps, but under all that snow, the soil's recovering, preparing for another summer of work. It's all part of the cycle of life. You'll get used to it.”
“How bloody romantic,” she muttered. Once her father had said goodnight and gone to his room, she got back on the bed and resumed her work with the notebook. Using an app on her phone, she was translating line by line, and since she didn't feel remotely tired yet, she figured she'd just keep going for a little while longer. “Gurendal,” she whispered, reading the next line, “eighth of November...”
***
Opening her eyes suddenly, Paula sat up with a start and looked around her room. The light was still on, and she could still hear the blizzard outside the window, as wild wind blew snow through the air, but something seemed different. Checking her watch, she saw that it was almost three in the morning, and finally she realized she must have fallen asleep.
She looked down at the notebook and saw that she'd reached the entry for a town called Gro on November twelfth.
“Bloody hell,” she whispered, breathing out and seeing a cloud forming in the air. Reaching across the bed, she put a hand on the section of wall in the corner where the chimney ran up through the house, but there was no heat at all. “Why don't they have central heating in this place?” she continued, shivering in the cold.
With the duvet still wrapped around her body, she climbed off the bed and headed to the window. Outside, snow was still falling, but there was a faint, flashing orange light over by the road, and a moment later a large snowplow drove past, pushing snow to one side as it made its slow, grinding progress through the night.
“That must be the loneliest job in the whole world,” Paula muttered.
Feeling a little bad for the poor snowplow guy, she made her way out onto the dark landing. She could hear her father snoring, so she figured there was no point asking him to go downstairs and get the wood-burning oven back up and running. Turning, she fumbled for the light-switch but, not finding it, she decided to make her way down in the dark. Feeling around carefully for the top of the bannister, she located the stairs, which creaked with each step as she headed down to the kitchen.
“Cold,” she whispered as she set her bare foot on the top step. “So... very... cold...”
A couple of minutes later, still in the dark having not managed to find any of the light-switches, she knelt in front of the wood-burner and opened the door. Grabbing some of the logs her father had brought in, she immediately realized the problem: they were damp, and when she put her hand inside the chamber she felt more logs inside. He'd obviously started a fire, but it had quickly gone out again, leaving the house to freeze.
“Me big man,” she muttered, rearranging the logs in the wood-burner's chamber, “me not even know how to start fire. How me expect to run whole farm?”
Sighing, she looked around for some matches, finally finding them on the nearby table. Grabbing some old pieces of newspaper, she scrunched them up and them placed them in strategic points under the logs, before striking a match and then starting a small fire. Blowing gently on the flames, she figured she had to at least try coaxing a fire into existence, and she vaguely remembered something from an old Bear Grylls documentary about leaving a gap under t
he wood, in order to feed the flames.
A moment later, she heard a distant creak, as if someone was on the stairs.
“It's me,” she called out with a faint sigh. “I'm just trying to make an actual fire. You know, one that lasts more than five minutes.”
Hearing no response, she rolled her eyes and blew gently on the fire again, since the flames from the burning newspaper were already starting to die down and the damp logs were showing no sign that they might catch light. She knew the whole thing was hopeless, but she wasn't quite ready to give up just yet.
In the distance, the stairs creaked again, this time lower down, closer to the kitchen.
“It's not working very well,” she called out, as her teeth chattered slightly. “Tomorrow, we need to find dry logs and some kind of accelerator, okay? Something to keep the goddamn thing going. And we really, really need the internet up and running, if you can manage that.” Blowing into her hands, she waited for a reply. “Okay, Dad?”
Silence.
And then, finally, another faint creak, this time coming from around the corner in the kitchen.
“What are you, sleepwalking?” she asked with disdain. “We need the internet so we can look stuff up. Like how to start a fire with wet logs, for one thing.”
She waited again.
Silence.
“I'm freezing my ass off here,” she muttered, before hearing yet another creaking floorboard, this time coming from the next room, just around the corner. “I can hear you, you know. We should also get a couple of standalone electric heaters, just for emergencies. You know, practical things that maybe you should already have thought about. Things we didn't need back in our safe, warm, comfortable house in London.”
She waited again for a response, but even though her father seemed to be in the next room, he apparently wasn't in the mood for talking.
“Are you actually sleepwalking?” she asked, blowing on the fire again before getting to her feet and, with the duvet still wrapped around her shoulders, shuffling to the doorway. Looking through into the dark dining room, she found to her surprise that there was no sign of anyone. She reached around, hoping to find one of the elusive light-switches, with no luck.
She paused, puzzled.
“Dad?” she called out.
Silence.
“Dad?” she said again, a little more cautiously this time.
She waited.
The only sound came from outside, as a particularly strong flurry of wind blew snow at the window so hard, it seemed almost as if the glass panes might shatter.
“Must just be the wind,” she muttered, figuring that the old house might creak under such a strong assault. Hearing a whistling sound over her shoulder, she looked back at the wood-burning oven and realized that a gust of wind had blown down the chimney and into the chamber, extinguishing the attempted fire once and for all.
Sighing again, she closed the door on the front of the oven. There was no way she was going to get a fire started, not that night, not with wet logs and just a few matches.
Shuffling back through to the dining room, she made her way toward the kitchen, but at the last moment she stopped as she realized something felt wrong. It was as if, suddenly, the cold air in the room was becoming colder, and the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up as she felt the whole world around her starting to buzz with a faint but persistent vibration. It was a sensation she'd never felt before, but as she slowly turned and looked back across the dark room she was certain that something was nearby, something that was staring at her.
“Hello?” she whispered.
For a moment, she actually felt as if she might see something, or receive some kind of reply. Her eyes darted about, watching all the shadows, waiting for some hint of a presence. A few seconds later, she heard a faint creaking sound from above, but when she looked up she realized that it was coming from her father's bedroom, and in the distance she could just about make out the sound of him still snoring.
“Is anyone here?” she asked, looking around the room again, filled with the sense that there was something she was missing, something right in front of her. “Come on, give me a hint.”
She waited.
Nothing.
The sense of a presence, however, was still growing, becoming almost unbearable. She knew she was being watched, but the room seemed empty.
Taking a few cautious steps forward, she looked around, but the only thing she could see moving was her own breath, as each exhalation briefly filled the air before fading away. She turned, watching the darkness, keeping an eye on the shadows, convinced that something was nearby, until finally she felt her heart skip a beat as she saw a small, pale shape pressed against the window from outside.
A hand.
Holding her breath, she waited to realize that she was wrong.
And waited.
After a moment, she took a step to one side, figuring that a different angle would reveal the 'hand' to be something else.
It was still a hand.
As her heart began pounding in her chest, she took another step.
Still a hand.
Most of the window was covered in frost, but in the bottom left corner of the window by the far corner, there was definitely a hand-shape. Feeling her heart starting to go into overdrive, she forced herself to take a step forward. Having always, always wanted to see some kind of ghost, she knew she owed it to herself to stop being a coward and to actually take a closer look.
“It can't hurt you,” she whispered, trying to give herself a little more courage, “it can't do anything.”
She kept expecting the hand to be an illusion, to find as she edged closer that it was a weirdly-shaped leaf or an unusual reflection, but in fact the reverse happened: the closer she got, the more she realized that it was a small, child-sized hand pressed against the glass, with snow still blowing around in the moonlight outside. As she reached the window, Paula slowly knelt on the bare wooden floor and looked more closely at the hand. She kept telling herself that it was just an imprint, that there was no-one actually out there, that it was just a pattern made of ice crystals, but as she leaned closer...
Slowly, she realized that not only could she see her own dark reflection in the windowpane, but she could also see another face, even darker than hers, staring back with large, black holes where its eyes should be.
Suddenly the hand pulled back, leaving a faint impression on the glass, and the face was gone.
Chapter Seven
1979
“I've examined her thoroughly,” Doctor Steiner said quietly as he slipped off a pair of gloves and dropped them into the trash, “and I'm confident that none of her injuries are anything more than superficial. Your parents are sitting with her now.”
“And what about -” Pausing for a moment, Elizabeth seemed reluctant to ask the next question, as tears welled in her eyes. The wood-burning stove was alight in the corner of the dining room, casting a warm, flickering light across her face as she struggled to get the words out. “Did you check... I mean, did you...”
“There's nothing to suggest that anything of that nature was done to her,” he continued. “I performed a cursory examination and determined that there's no need to do anything more invasive. She's already been through more than enough.”
“Thank God,” Elizabeth whispered, looking down at the tissue in her hands. She'd been crying on and off ever since they got home, always using the same tissue, which was now drying in places and falling apart.
“So what did happen?” Kari asked. “Where did all those scratches come from?”
“From these,” the doctor replied, holding up a small thorn. “She caused the scratches herself when she tried to hide in the bushes next to the river. I know that might seem unlikely, but I pulled more than thirty of the damn things out of her skin. The bruise around her eye was caused when she fell.”
“But she said there was someone there,” Kari continued. “She said...” Glancing at Elizabeth
, she saw the hint of worry in her sister's expression. “She told us she met someone by the river. She said Death was there.”
At this, the doctor raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“It's what she said,” Kari added. “If you don't believe me, go and ask her yourself!”
“You'd need a psychologist to deal with all of that,” the doctor replied as he closed his briefcase. “I've checked her over physically and she's fine, but when it comes to the mind... Well, that's a whole different area of medicine, at least if you believe all the new techniques people are coming out with these days.” He paused for a moment. “If you ask me, the best thing is to just not dwell on it. Let her rest for tonight, but in the morning you need to get her out of bed and try to make her follow her normal routine. In my experience, it's not good to let the mind get too bogged down. Put her to work, something like that. She doesn't need some new-fangled psychiatrist rooting around in her thoughts, she just needs something to help get her mind off it. She'll be fine.”
“Get her mind off it?” Elizabeth replied incredulously. “What are you talking about? She just went through a traumatic experience!”
“Exactly,” he said, turning and heading to the door, “which is why you need to help her move on, make her see that the world is still turning. Don't let her be one of those people who wallow in their own misfortune. There's nothing wrong with Sara that can't be cured by sunshine and good character. And a dash of good old-fashioned maturity.”
“We need to look for the man she said she met.”
“She probably imagined the whole thing,” he added, glancing back at her. “Seriously, seeing a body in the river just spooked her. There was no other man out there.”
“But -”
“There was no-one.” He paused again. “Don't go spreading silly rumors, girls. You'll only scare people. Try to be a little more grown-up than that.”
