by Amy Cross
Pulling her further away from the mass, he tightened his grip. “I remember now,” he told her, his voice shaking with anger and fear. “I remember what I came here to do.”
“I have to give it what it wants,” she replied, trying to slip free as she became increasingly agitated. “Let go! You're hurting me!”
“I won't let you make the same mistake I made all those years ago,” he told her. “I won't let you make the same mistake so many desperate people have made over the years.”
“Let go!” she screamed, punching him in the chest before biting down hard on his hand, desperately trying to get away. “You can't stop me!” she shouted. “I want to do it!”
“No!” he said firmly, grabbing her head and forcing her to look into her eyes. “Trust me. This thing, the voice... It will drive you insane. It will force you to do things, terrible things, just so that it can share your pain and misery, so that it can feed and gloat and grow. There'll be no limit to the torture it'll put you through, and then when it has exhausted you, it'll toss you aside and find someone else.”
“Don't listen to him,” the voice told her. “He's just jealous.”
“You're just jealous!” she spat at him. “You know I'm going to succeed where you failed!”
“I'm not going to give you the chance,” he replied. “I would rather kill you than let this thing claim one more victim.”
“But -”
“For the first time in my life,” he continued, interrupting her, “I have absolute clarity. Those monsters hacked away at my brain, but the voice always grew back because this creature wouldn't let me go, it always kept a strand between us, a connection. The doctors took my thoughts, my memories, my sanity, my ability to stop myself from doing all these things...” He paused for a moment. “I don't know how the memories have returned to me, but I finally remember it all. Every damn second I spent in that hospital, every moment I've lived through since I was a child and I first came into this barn and saw this creature.”
“You don't understand,” she replied, still trying to get free. “It wants me! Not you, not anyone else. Me, and only me! I'm the one it's been waiting for!”
“That's what I believed once,” he told her. “That's what they all believed.”
“You can't stop me!” she shouted, biting his hand again. “You can't take this away from me!”
“Hurt him,” the voice whispered. “Make him bleed. I have no further use for him.”
“Maybe you're beyond help,” Lund said finally, turning and slamming her into the wall before shoving her to the ground. Picking up an old brick from the floor, he held it over her head. “I'll make this quick.”
“Let her suffer,” the voice told him. “I always knew you were the strong one, Jonah Lund. Welcome back.”
“Please,” Paula whimpered, trying to cover her sobbing face with her hands, “don't listen to it.”
Lund paused for a moment, before finally lowering the brick and dropping it to the ground. “Do you see now?” he asked. “As soon as it thought I was the better bet, it switched its allegiance to me. It doesn't care which of us it uses, just so long as it gets to feed on someone's pain.”
Staring up at him, Paula reached for her phone and held it out again, allowing her to see the creature nearby.
“I was ready to do anything,” she whispered. “I would have killed for it.”
“You still can,” the voice told her. “Everything I offered you can still be yours.”
“Don't listen to it,” Lund said firmly. “It's switching its allegiance from one of us to the other, trying to work out which of us will be stronger. All it cares about is feeding. It's been luring people into this barn for centuries, killing most of them but turning the strong ones into its slaves, and then pushing them to commit horrific acts so that it can experience their pain. You have to fight it.”
“I have secrets,” the voice continued. “Whichever of you kills the other, I will tell all my secrets and give you everything I have to give.”
Slowly getting to her feet, Paula stared in disgust at the creature. “What the hell is it?” she asked finally.
“It has had many names over the years,” Lund replied. “The most common, at least in this part of the world, is Hel.”
“Hel?” She turned to him. “I've heard that before. Hel was the old Norse god of the dead.” Shocked, she looked back over at the throbbing black mass, listening for a moment to its hypnotic heartbeat. “Are you seriously trying to tell me,” she said finally, her voice trembling with fear, “that this thing is an old Norse god?”
“What's left of one, at least,” Lund replied. “It's one of the secrets she revealed to me. Maybe she was lying, but somehow I doubt it.”
“How did it end up like this?” Paula asked. “It's just a thing hiding in a barn!”
“Everything dies,” Lund told her, watching the creature with a hint of pure anger in his eyes. “Everything deteriorates, even gods.”
“I can give you everything you want,” the voice whispered in Paula's head. “Just name it and it's yours.”
“Don't listen to it,” Lund replied, grabbing the cans he'd brought from the hospital. “I'm going to end this before I forget again. If I'd killed the damn thing the last time I was here, a lot of people would have been spared more pain.”
“What can you give me?” Paula whispered, taking a step toward the creature, while holding her phone out so she could see its vast form.
“Anything,” the voice told her.
“Anything?” There were tears in her eyes now, and she felt as if she was being lured back in. “Even... Could you bring a person back to life?”
“Anything.”
“Someone specific? Someone from my past.”
“Anything.”
“No,” Lund said suddenly, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her back before heading closer to the creature and pouring liquid onto its body from one of the cans. “You can stay or you can go, English girl, it doesn't make much difference to me, but this ends today.”
“I can bring your mother back,” the voice whispered. “All you have to do is give me what I want in return.”
“It made similar promises to me,” Lund replied, pouring more liquid onto the creature. “When I was a boy, it told me it could put my family back together. The whole thing turned out to be an illusion, and I ended up losing my mind. I became a monster, and then I ended up at that hospital. I should be dead, but somehow I survived and now I have one final chance to end this madness.”
“But if -” Stepping forward, Paula watched for a moment as Lund emptied the last can and then tossed it aside.
“I'll give you both whatever you want,” the voice continued, with a hint of desperation now. “Anything. Making a deal is your only option. You can't kill me.”
“If I can't kill you,” Lund replied, igniting the cigarette lighter, “then why are you begging me to stop?”
Just as Paula was about to step forward, she heard a slow, pained growl in the back of her mind, and a moment later the growl became a kind of anguished cry for help.
“You should get out of here now,” Lund said firmly, while still staring at the creature. Slowly, the vast mass seemed to shift slightly, and finally a large slit opened, revealing a kind of dark, gummy space within, almost like an eye. After staring into the slit for a moment, Lund finally leaned forward and set the flame against the creature's body, and the liquid ignited immediately, bursting into an inferno that lit the interior of the barn with a flash of light.
Stepping back, Paula heard a scream in her head, as if the creature was reaching out and filling her mind was its agony. She put her hands over her ears, but that only made things worse. Taking some more steps back, she could barely even bring herself to watch as Lund, silhouetted against the flames, stood calmly.
“Run!” she shouted to him, even though she could barely hear her own voice over the scream in her mind. “We have to get out of here! We have to -”
She opened her mouth to call out again, but the heat was too strong and she had to step back, while the scream became louder and louder in her head, threatening to overwhelm her every thought. She turned and began to stumble toward the door, but a moment later there was a loud thumping sound from the back of the barn and the whole place seemed to shake. A shockwave of heat and fire burst out from the creature, blasting Paula off her feet and sending her slamming into one of the concrete posts that supported the ceiling. Falling to the floor, she felt a sharp pain in her side and when she tried to get up, she realized something was wrong with her chest, making it different for her to breathe. She turned and looked back toward the creature, but all she saw was the white-hot inferno that was rapidly filling the entire barn.
In her mind, the creature was still screaming, drowning out all her thoughts, all her emotions, all her instincts. All Paula could do was stare into the fire as it began to engulf her.
“Please,” she whispered.
Turning away, Paula felt the scream in her own head reaching a crescendo, shaking her skull with so much force that she felt she might die. As it built and built, she opened her mouth to cry out, but finally she felt her skull starting to crack as the scream continued to shake her body apart. She let out a pained gasp as blood began to fill her mouth, and a moment later she felt another crack starting to open up, running from just behind her left ear, over the top of her skull and then down onto her forehead, while the scream became louder and louder.
And then, suddenly, it was gone.
She waited for a moment, feeling a sharp pain in her head, but when she looked back into the fire she realized that she couldn't hear anything else from the creature, and that the scream was over.
With blood still flooding into her mouth, and with smoke starting to fill her lungs, Paula scrambled to her feet and began to hurry to the door. The pain in her head was intense, but sheer adrenalin pushed her to keep going until finally she stumbled out of the barn. Hearing a creaking sound, she glanced back and realized that the entire building seemed to be tilting slightly, so she turned and ran out into the snow until, unable to run any further, she fell and sank into the snow. As she pulled herself up, she heard a crashing sound, and she turned just in time to see the barn starting to collapse as the flames spread, sending massive, burning timbers down into the snow.
Trying to take a deep breath, she felt hot fluid in her head. The pain was starting to creep through her entire body, and although she knew she had to get to her feet and find help, all she could manage was to turn onto her back and look up at the stars, before the pain dragged her down into darkness. Blood was flowing from her mouth, her nose, her ears, even her eyes, and as she lost consciousness, the last thing she heard was the sudden silence that filled her mind, as if every thought had finally been chased away.
The scream was gone, but she could still hear its echo.
Epilogue
Three months later
“It wasn't that bad,” Paula said, setting the dirty dishes down by the sink. “I'd like to see you try to make something so complicated for dinner. There were, like, three pans on the go at once. Plus, I'm getting better all the time. Hell, maybe one day I'll actually cook something that tastes good.”
“Or you could just let me order take-away,” her father replied, trying to get up from his seat at the kitchen table before, wincing at the pain, thinking better of it and sitting back down. “Look at us, we're a couple of invalids.”
“Yep,” she muttered, checking her watch and seeing that it was almost 9pm. “I can tell you, a punctured lung isn't much fun. Neither is a fractured skull.”
“So maybe we should leave this tractor thing,” he continued. “Tomorrow morning, I'll -”
“No,” she replied, turning to him, “I want to learn to drive it.”
“But -”
“You're the one who brought us to the farm in the first place,” she pointed out, “and -”
Stopping suddenly, she looked up at the ceiling. She'd heard a faint creak, and a moment later came another. This time, however, she felt no fear. In the three months since the barn burned down, there had been no strange events in the house at all, and she'd come to realize that sometimes old wooden houses really did just settle as the temperature changed. Glancing over at the stairs, she waited, just in case she heard a hint of footsteps, but finally she allowed herself a faint smile as she realized that those days were over.
Checking her watch again, she saw she was running late. She grabbed a tupperware box and headed to the stove, before scooping some of the bolognese out of the pot.
“You're not going out again, are you?” her father asked.
“It's not a school night.”
“But wouldn't you rather stay in? Or do something more...” He paused, as if he was starting to sense the minefield he was entering by lecturing his teenage daughter.
“Normal?”
“You've made a few friends at school, haven't you? Maybe you could go to a party or something. The kind of thing kids your age usually do.”
“Another time.” Sealing the lid of the tupperware box, she checked her watched again. “I'm getting picked up soon,” she added, heading to the front door and grabbing her coat. “And remember, tomorrow is tractor day. I swear to God, I'm going to learn how to drive that thing.”
“We could always sell up and move on.”
Stopping, she looked back at him, barely able to believe what she'd just heard. For a moment, staring at her father, she realized that even though he was out of hospital now, he still had a long way to go before he was back to full strength. She remembered how he'd been when they first arrived in Norway, how enthusiastic and determined to succeed; now he was sitting crumpled at the kitchen table, and she could tell that his interest in the farm was starting to wane. Just as she'd predicted all that time ago, he was ready to give up.
Tough.
She wasn't going to let him, not after everything she'd been through.
“Jeg,” she said cautiously, struggling a little to remember the words and pronunciation, “har allerede begynt til... snakke Norske.”
He stared at her. “Huh?”
“I've already begun to speak Norwegian,” she explained. “A little, anyway. I'm learning pretty fast, especially now I've accepted we're sticking around.” She checked her watch again. “Face it, you've sunk enough money into this farm, you can't afford to turn around and give up, so we're just going to have to make it work. Anyway, it's not so bad.”
“But the barn -”
“Will be rebuilt,” she replied. “The insurance company's covering that part.”
“But -”
“No more excuses,” she continued. “We're doing this. It's insane, it's the last thing I ever saw myself getting involved with, but you brought us out here and I've already started getting used to it. So you need to focus on getting better, I need to focus on learning to drive the tractor, and together we need to focus on making a go of the whole thing.” She checked her watch yet again. “I'm going to be late. Try to get some sleep tonight, okay?”
Pushing the door open, she looked out at the yard and saw that only light snow was falling.
“So are you ever going to tell me what really happened to the barn?” her father asked suddenly. “I mean, I'm glad the insurance company believed the whole random arsonist story, but I know you, Paula, and I know when you're keeping something from me. While I was in the hospital -”
“Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?”
“What do you think happened?”
“You seem less jumpy. Around the house, I mean. You don't seem so fixated on ghosts anymore.”
As if on cue, there was another faint creak from above.
“I was fixated on ghosts,�
�� she told him, “because I wanted to know whether or not they were real. Now I know the answer. Case closed.”
“That's good. At least now you understand that there's no such thing.”
“I really have to go,” she replied, staring at the burned timbers that were just about visible against the night sky, where the barn had once stood. “And about the barn... I just need to work through a few nightmares first. I'll tell you the truth some other time.”
“Nightmares?”
“See you in the morning,” she added, grabbing the tupperware box and then stepping outside, before pushing the door shut. “Don't let the bedbugs bite!”
Taking a moment to finish closing her coat, she took a deep breath. The yard was full of snow, as usual, but she was starting to get used to the infernal stuff, and to the low temperatures too. Making her way down the steps, she began to make her way along the path she'd shoveled clear earlier in the evening, and as she headed over to the street she saw the familiar flashing orange light of the snowplow parked next to the mailbox. Allowing herself a faint smile, she reached the plow and climbed up into the cab, where Sebastian was waiting with the heater already blowing warm air.
“I brought food,” she told him, setting the tupperware box on the dashboard. “I mean, if you're hungry...”
“I might well be,” he replied, wincing slightly as he felt a sliver of pain in his shoulder.
“You okay?”
He nodded. “I finally found a new place to stop for my breaks. I figured the parking lot of the old diner didn't really hold much appeal these days, especially with the Oslo police still up there, combing through the wreckage. They took Father Skallen away this morning for questioning. Seems like the little cabal of bosses is being shut down. Maybe the area can finally start functioning normally.”
“So where do you stop for your breaks now?” she asked, pulling the door shut.
“I'll show you. It's kind of pretty, it overlooks the frozen lake and not many people go up there, but...” Pausing, he allowed himself a faint smile. “Are you sure you want to come with me tonight while I work? I mean, it's not the most exciting thing in the world, just pushing snow out of the way until the sun comes up. Two hours one way, then a half hour break, then two hours back the other way, another two hour break... You get the idea. I can think of about a million other things that'd be more fun. I'm getting paid for this, but why the hell do you want to come?”
