The ground is steep and uneven on the track to Kyrre’s house, but it couldn’t have taken me long to reach the place where the cry had originated – and though I found nobody there, and no immediate evidence of violence or harm, I knew it was the scene of whatever had happened. The place, not where Kyrre and Maia were, but where they should have been. Where they had been, moments before, when that shriek pierced the air. There was nothing to detain me at that place, or nothing that I could see at first glance, as I hurried along the track, but I felt sure they had gone no further. This was the place where they had stopped, for whatever reason, and it was here that they had disappeared.
There was nothing there, though. Or nothing I could see. Yet if they had stopped there, if they had gone no further, then it stood to reason that they had to be there still, and if they weren’t, then they had to have vanished. They couldn’t have just vanished into thin air – and that was what confused me, because that was impossible. That was what confused me – that, and the smell. I didn’t catch it at first, but then it was everywhere around me, strong and dark and almost overwhelming, just for a moment, so close that I felt dizzy, and I had to bend, my hands on my knees, my head down, not gasping for breath, quite, but suddenly clogged with that dark, water-and-smoke scent, like the smell you get after a doused fire, when the wood is still smouldering here and there amid the wet timber, a chill, dark scent that made me feel – I don’t know what to call it, not sad exactly, but disappointed. Disappointed at some extreme, physical level. Or dismayed – yes, that would probably be the right word. Dismayed. Dismay in the pit of my stomach and in the marrow of my bones, dismay in my throat and in that smoke taste in my mouth and nose, dismay that seemed like it would last forever, that had always been there, waiting on that path I had walked hundreds of times, going down to Kyrre’s house to sit in his kitchen and drink strong coffee while he sat opposite, working on an outboard motor and telling me stories from the old days – and though there was no evidence that something bad had happened, other than that black, smoky scent hanging on the air among the birch trees, I think that was when I first knew he was gone. I look back and I see that I knew from the first. I knew, even before I smelled that smell, or saw the spots.
I didn’t notice them at first. They only became visible when I bent down, eyes closed, trying to catch my breath and then, when I had gathered my strength and opened my eyes again, I caught sight of the first thick, black spots on the grass at my feet. Then, as I raised my head and started breathing again, I saw that they were all around me: on the grass, in the dirt, on the leaves of the trees, inky black spots that, at first sight, looked like soot or dust but, when I stretched out my hand and brushed the tip of my finger over the surface of a yellowing birch leaf, felt oily to the touch. Oily, like something live. Like the traces you find out in the woods after something has been there in the night, feeding or suckling on its prey. I pulled my hand back and looked around. The spots were everywhere, thick and black and sticky, touched with the dark, smoky scent that had forced me to stop at that turn in the path, almost halfway between our house and Kyrre’s. I stood a moment, staring, my head filling again with the smell – and then I was hurrying on, knowing it was pointless, but also knowing that I had to check, because nothing here offered an explanation for what had happened. Nothing here made any sense. I knew that Kyrre and Maia had stopped at that very spot, and that the smell and the black spots had something to do with what had happened next, but I also knew that this was ridiculous, and I ran on for several metres, like a lost dog, ran then walked then ran again, my head craning forward to see whatever I might see before it slipped away and, all at once, it was like being in the middle of a huge and elaborate conjuring trick, as if the whole world had been set up to deceive me, but I could see through it, if I could only find the right clue.
So I ran and walked and ran all the way to Kyrre’s house – and as soon as I got there, I felt anxious. Now that I was away from the scene, I thought I must have missed something at that turn in the path, and I had to go back right away, before it was too late. There was something I hadn’t understood, something I hadn’t seen, or maybe something that I had seen that hadn’t really been there at all, and I had to retrace my steps and catch whoever or whatever was playing this trick on me, catch it out, see through it, find the real explanation. Even before I got to Kyrre’s house and looked in at the kitchen window, I could see that nobody was there, and I realised that, in my hurry, I must have tricked myself, at the turn in the path – and I started back, running now, in a panic, I suppose, and close to tears, not because I knew Kyrre had gone, but because I had been tricked, and I was upset at not knowing how. It was like being in school, doing some complicated equation and not being able to get an answer: you go over it again and again and when nothing comes this astonishing anger rises up in your blood. That was what I felt then: that same anger. I came back to the place where I had seen the spots of black ash on the grass – and at that very moment, quite unexpectedly, it started to rain. That far northern rain, the kind that comes out of nowhere and goes on for days, without stopping. Huge, cold drops, inky and black and sudden, loud on the rooftops, cold on your face and hands, chaotic out among the trees, pouring through the branches, bouncing off leaves, washing everything clean, every trace of warmth, every stain, every mark of what has been and gone over an entire summer, till nothing at all remains. I stood still, unable to move, watching as the black stains on the leaves were washed away. And I couldn’t move. I still felt angry, but I was frightened now too, because I knew that, whatever had happened to Kyrre and the huldra, it wasn’t a trick. I stood a long time, perhaps several minutes and then, when I had started to gather the resolve to make my way back to the house, I heard a sound off to the right, in the birch wood. A soft, rustling sound, like someone coming through the trees towards me. I turned. I thought it was a person – and I suppose I must have thought that it was Kyrre Opdahl, because I took several steps in the direction of the sound, scanning the gaps between the trees, expecting to see a human shape coming through the birches. I didn’t see anyone, though. I could still hear the noise – a soft, creeping sound – but there was nothing there that I could see. Or not at first. I had taken five or six steps into the birches, certainly no more, before I came to a stop and stood there, watching, listening, but I was looking for something at eye level, I was looking for a person, and it was only when I heard the sound – a soft, plaintive snuffling, like a dog trying to find its way into a hole where something is hidden – that I looked down. There, ten or maybe twelve metres away, I saw what I took for an animal. I say took for an animal, because it was crouching down, its snout reddened with blood and it had something in its mouth – hair, bone, the remains of some creature it had hunted down and killed – but I couldn’t have said what kind of animal it was. Certainly, it resembled nothing I had seen in the meadows before. Yet it was an animal, nevertheless: of that there could be no doubt. It wasn’t a person, it was an animal, and when it saw me, or maybe when it caught my scent, it looked up, its eyes dark and bright, the piece of carcass still clenched between its teeth. It looked at me – and, for a moment, it was as if it knew me. The thing looked up and made a soft, hoarse sound, and though I didn’t know what kind of animal it was, I could see its face – or, no, it wasn’t a face I saw, it was an expression. An expression of – what? Triumph? I think it was that. Triumph. It looked at me, and it made that soft, hoarse sound – and then it turned and hurried away through the long grass, moving so quickly that I could make nothing out, other than a few fleeting and possibly inaccurate details. I thought it was black, or dark brown; I think it was about the size of a large dog – though it wasn’t a dog, of that I am sure, and I am almost certain that it wasn’t native to the island, but had strayed in from elsewhere. Maybe it was an illegal pet that had escaped from one of the houses further along the coast, maybe it was something that had strayed here from the high tundra – whatever it was, all I could have said
for sure was that it wasn’t a person. I walked over to where it had been when I saw it first, and it’s strange, I wasn’t really afraid, I felt numb – maybe I was in shock – and when I reached the spot I found nothing. No bones, no matted hair, no dead creature with its throat torn open or its eyes picked out. There was nothing – not even a spot of blood. Whatever it had killed, it had carried the thing away with it – and though, at that moment, it seemed that this vision was nothing more than a coincidence, even though it didn’t even occur to me that there was any connection between this animal and what I had witnessed earlier, I felt sick with fear, all of a sudden, because I knew that something terrible had happened. I didn’t know what it was, or who it had happened to, but I suddenly became aware of myself, alone in the woods, and I felt something was watching me still: the animal, or something else, I couldn’t have said what. Something was watching me, with my scent in its nose and mouth, and at any moment, it would attack.
I wasn’t conscious, then, of how I came to be running. I don’t recall making the decision – if I had thought about it, I would have known it was the wrong thing to do because, as I crashed away through the trees like a startled deer, I felt something ebb from my mind, and then everything was dark, not black, but dim, as if seen through smoked glass, and then I was running blind, in utter panic, unable to think, and unable to stop myself. I ran through the trees and back along the path towards the house and, all the way, I was terrified something would appear at the gate, or halfway up the garden path, and swallow me up, in one bright, triumphant movement. In fact, I was convinced that it would come, and I knew I was running straight into its arms, and still I couldn’t stop running. I didn’t see anything until I reached the gate, and then I saw the door – it was open, and that shocked me, because I had no memory of that, and I thought that whatever was pursuing me was waiting there, inside the house now, the stink of it in the hallway, or on the stairs, but even then I didn’t stop running. I didn’t stop, in fact, until I was inside and, clawing desperately at the latch, managed to push the door shut behind me – and then I collapsed on the floor, everything going white, and then dark, and then, as I understood finally that I was safe, as I realised that I had escaped, there was nothing.
It’s nine o’clock. I have been working since early this morning, drawing a new map of the path that runs from our house to Kyrre’s, a map that is almost infinitely detailed: every tree, every rock, every patch of wildflowers marked out, the way the objects are marked out at a crime scene, everything doused in possibility, every shadow, every scuff in the grass, every fallen twig laden with a significance that has yet to be seen. It’s ten years, now, since that day, and I am still trying to find some factual basis for what I saw, because, when I look back, I don’t believe that what I am telling is completely true. How could it be? What happened that day was impossible. It doesn’t matter that I remember it all just as clearly – just as factually – as I remember everything else: what happened out there, on the empty path, remains an impossibility and there is nothing I can tell myself that will change that.
I was ill for a long time after my vision of that day. Mother found me in the hallway, right at the foot of the stairs, and she saw that something was terribly wrong. I wasn’t unconscious, but I didn’t respond when she asked me what had happened, so she didn’t know that Kyrre and the girl were gone. All she knew was that I was very ill, so she got me out of my wet clothes and half carried me upstairs to bed. I don’t remember any of this – I don’t remember anything that happened for a long time after that morning – but this is what she told me when I was well, and I have no reason to doubt her. She told me that I ran a high fever that night, and she couldn’t get me to eat. I was shivering, and I couldn’t talk for a long time, but I did drink, when she brought me water, which she took as a good sign. I also slept off and on, and that was better still. Mother has always believed in the healing power of sleep. There have been times when she’s slept for twenty-four hours, thirty-six hours, or even longer. Dreams mend us, she says. Without dreams, we would all be insane. At the high point, when things were at their worst, she said, she sat with me while I slept and she noticed that my eyes were moving, which meant that I was dreaming, and though I struggled in my sleep and sometimes cried out, she let me sleep on. Dreams are the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, she says. The only difference between the mad and the sane is that the mad do not dream well enough.
No doubt she is right and, whatever else is true, she brought me through the madness of the next several days alone and unassisted – but, to this day, there is no story I can tell myself that will make sense of what I saw. I can tell myself other things about what happened that summer; I can make certain statements about what I know to be true, in the ordinary way of things, but these are mere facts, and though any story conveys, or claims to convey, a factual history, what I can tell myself, what I can say is factually true, is really neither here nor there. I can say that Martin Crosbie’s body was never found; I can say that, when his car disappeared, everyone assumed he had left the island – everyone, that is, who had any interest in the matter. I can say that Ryvold never returned to Kvaløya, though he did write and, later, sometime during the following spring, as I recall, he sent Mother the manuscript of a book he had written, a book that was later published, not only in Norway, but in several other territories. It was a book about the old stories, of course, though it was also a series of personal memories and reflections, and I read it carefully for what it might reveal about his mind but, though he touched upon art and the Narcissus story, and though he included a long section about his time in the north, he didn’t mention Mother once. I was surprised, at the time, but I was glad he left her out of his story. There were too many stories about Mother and not one of them – not even Frank Verne’s – was true.
After Ryvold left, the suitors gradually fell away – and Mother finally became the recluse that those stories had always described her as being. She is still painting, and the man from Fløgstad’s travels up and down the country with her pictures, stopping off on the way at his sister’s house in Mo I Rana, and even though the work has grown darker – as some critics see it, though what I see is quite the opposite of darkness – it continues to sell. Meanwhile, I decided what to do with myself. It took some time, but I knew, after that summer of drowning, that I belonged to this place, and I have no intention of leaving, or of ever becoming distracted from the work I have chosen. I can happily say that I never received any more gifts from Kate Thompson, though I also have to confess that I find myself thinking about her from time to time. It struck me as odd, to begin with, that it was Kate I thought about, not Arild Frederiksen, but then, I never met Arild Frederiksen and, other than a character in a book, he has never existed for me.
It was some time before Mother accepted that Kyrre Opdahl had just disappeared off the face of the earth. To begin with, when I was still ill, she had wondered why he didn’t answer the phone, and I think she even walked down to his cottage on the shore to see if he was there. Then, when it was obvious that he was missing, she seems to have told herself that he’d gone off to visit a friend. Maybe he’d gone to Narvik again, or up north somewhere. It wasn’t a very likely explanation, but she was preoccupied with me and I think she didn’t want anything else on her plate. As far as I know, she didn’t even register that Maia had also disappeared. She probably just assumed that the strange girl had gone away – she had been something of a vagrant, after all – and she was probably glad of it for, though she never did understand why, she quickly came to understand that Maia’s presence in our house had been one of the main causes of what she later referred to as my crisis. She didn’t say breakdown, though that would have been the conclusion anyone else would have come to, had they been present to observe my condition over the next several weeks. But there was nobody else. At no point during my illness, even on that first day, when she found me, mute and helpless with panic at the foot of our stair
s – at no point whatsoever did Mother think of calling a doctor. Instead, she nursed me herself, day by day, till I was well enough to speak. And even then, when the slow process of recovery began, she didn’t ask me about what had happened. She didn’t want to know what I had seen – or, if she did, she didn’t allow herself to ask the questions that must have been in her mind. Later, when I was able to get up and go about my normal business, I remember being shocked by that. How could she stop herself from asking those questions? Was it because she was afraid to reawaken the terror she had seen in my face? Or was it just her usual discretion? I couldn’t say. All I know is that I wouldn’t have been able to tell her anything, if she had given in to her curiosity. There was no story, no explanation that I could offer, whether to her or to myself – or none, at least, that made any sense in the plain light of day. Still, I was always aware of a gap – a dark, clean tear – in the fabric of the world, which I expected first Mother and then everyone else to notice at any moment. And maybe that was why I said nothing, because that gap seemed so obvious. I didn’t say anything about what I had seen – or rather, what I hadn’t seen at all, but surmised from events and clues that were lost in the rain or too preposterous to repeat. Besides, even before the rain, what evidence of actual mischief had there been? A few spots of dust or grease, a cry that could have been an animal or a bird, and a solitary teenager’s sense that something was wrong. I don’t remember making a conscious decision to keep back what I knew – though, in retrospect, it isn’t so surprising. In fact, I don’t think I decided anything at all. I was waiting, I suppose, for that tear in the universe to become visible enough to betray itself and maybe part of me was waiting for someone to find real proof – a body, say, or some sign of violence out in the woods – but at the back of my mind, even then, I knew there would never be conclusive proof of anything. What had happened belonged to Kyrre’s world, the world of stories and fatal magic, and any attempt to tell what had happened in that world would only convince people that the old man had turned my head with his nonsense. I would be an object of scorn or pity, a hysterical girl who’d come upon a kill-site in the birch woods and panicked. Sometimes, I even told myself that I was exactly that – because what had happened, what I had almost but not quite witnessed, was impossible, and there had to be some other explanation that I was unaware of, something that would reconcile the world I knew with the world that Kyrre had always believed was out there, and that I had always believed was nothing more than a story.
A Summer of Drowning Page 30
