WATCH OUT FOR TRAPS.
He nodded. Oh, yes.
‘Would you like me to fetch you some water before I go?’ he asked anxiously. He caught a glimpse of a hand-drawn sketch of two children on the wall behind her.
She shook her head and wrote again. She added a FIRST… after SAVE LIV. A whining sound came from her lungs.
NEED HELP ALL 3.
Roald couldn’t take the stench any more. He had to get out before he threw up. He had a horrible realization of what was in the bucket standing beside the bed. There were sheets of toilet paper and rolled-up towels next to it.
He didn’t dare open his mouth to speak, but he nodded, then turned towards the door. It was only compassion that stopped him from vomiting before he was back in the living room, and then he did it as quietly as possible – into a cardboard box whose contents were unknown.
All three? Did she mean that the boy was theirs? And whose life should he save first?
Roald reached the front door and pulled it open so hard that it slammed into the wall. He had never needed fresh air as badly as he did now. He stepped outside and drew the light into his soul and the November sky deep into his lungs.
He spotted it purely by chance, the top of what looked like a quiver; a small collection of neat feathers moving for a brief second behind a bathtub over by the barn. Roald narrowed his eyes.
‘Oi, you!’ he yelled. ‘You over by the bathtub, I saw you.’ The next moment a child ran as if the devil were at its heels from the bathtub and along the barn in a semicircle towards the forest and the end of the wooden building from where Roald himself had come. The quiver bounced up and down the back of the brown-and-orange sweater.
Roald recognized the boy from the pub kitchen.
From the top step he could see that there was a more direct route across the farmyard. If he ran past the silage harvester, he might be able to catch up with the child.
SOMEONE WAS HERE
YOU WILL GET HELP, LIV
I LOVE YOU BOTH
SO MUCH
Nightmares
They had started when he burned his mother’s body behind the barn. Jens Horder’s nightmares.
First he dreamt that Else came back with a schoolteacher, a police officer and a doctor and took Liv away. He was busy mucking out the barn and didn’t notice anything until it was too late. He had time to see them get into a big car parked in the farmyard and drive off so fast that dust rose from the gravel road like thick fog. Jens ran into the dust, and when he came out of it he had reached the start of the Neck – but the land itself was gone. The sea had overwhelmed the Neck, and he could do nothing but watch as the car disappeared into the sunshine on the main island.
Jens woke up the moment he ran out into the sea and felt the water fill his lungs.
And the nightmares grew more complex.
They came back: his mother, the doctors, the teachers, the police. Over time, they morphed into anonymous people, random faces he had seen somewhere. What they had in common was that they all wanted to rob him of everything that mattered to him.
In one dream he was out by the Christmas trees and, when he came back, they had taken everything: Liv, Maria, the animals, the buildings, his things. It was all gone. He saw some people running away, and he chased after them, but nothing could stop them. He kept tripping over grassy knolls, roots and trees, which shot up everywhere in front of him, while the others met with no obstacles. They never stumbled. They increased their lead and always made it to the main island. When he finally reached the Neck, it was cut off by the sea every time. He was all alone on a deserted island.
In one of the really bad dreams they turned up in white coats, wanting to take Maria. They were there, in her room, when Jens returned from a night-time visit to Korsted; they were standing around her with saws and scalpels, pointing big lights at her. They were going to take her with them, they said, so that they could help her. But she was far too big and heavy to get out of the door, so they were forced to cut her up into smaller pieces. Once they had got her out of the house and far away from Jens, they would help her, they kept assuring him.
Jens always tried to wake up. But he couldn’t. And he couldn’t stop them. They had already cut off her head and placed it on the bedside table. Maria looked at him with her beautiful eyes and mouthed that she loved him. Despite the smile at the corner of her mouth, she was crying, and sometimes her limbs on the bed would twitch, as if protesting at being severed. There was no blood. She was like china. Her hand kept clutching the pen when it was leaned up against the doorframe, along with the rest of her arm.
Then they cut her torso into smaller sections, and he pleaded with them not to touch her heart. ‘We’ll take good care of her,’ they kept on saying. ‘We can take better care of her than you can, Jens Horder.’
He stared at them as they transported her out of the room, one piece at a time. He was allowed to carry her head. ‘I love you,’ he whispered into her ear. Her head was heavy, horribly heavy. But the worst part was that Maria’s body began to disintegrate as they moved it downstairs. Jens was walking behind the doctor who was holding her right leg, and he could see how it was starting to crumble. The same was happening to the other parts of her body. Her heart fell out of a piece of torso and rolled down the stairs until it hit the landing, like a puffball mushroom deflating. Finally, her head disintegrated as well. Jens couldn’t hold on to her. He looked into her eyes before they disappeared between his fingers, and she was gone. Turned to dust.
‘Right, we’ll take your daughter instead,’ they said. ‘By the way, does she have any brothers or sisters?’
Yet again the intruders disappeared towards the Neck with their catch, and Jens couldn’t stop them. He kept stumbling, getting caught in something. It was as if the forces of nature had ganged up against him. They blocked his path and terrified him. The forest, the sea, the animals… they were no longer his friends.
The intruders ran on unabashed.
All he wanted to do was to stop them.
Jens always woke up bathed in sweat and tears. His waking hours, however, were also plagued by nightmares – thoughts of what had been and what might happen next. In the end, he could no longer tell the difference.
The Postman
The postman was in a particularly good mood that morning. And he had to admit to having a butterfly or two in his tummy, although it wasn’t the season for that kind of thing.
He had business at the Head.
For the first time ever, the letter from M had been sent by registered post. The postman wondered sorely at this sudden upgrade in the postage but was nevertheless delighted at being given an outlet for his curiosity. Surely he could now allow himself to enquire about the sender – who might not be a Mafioso after all, however much he wanted to hang on to the thought.
He would especially like to know if ‘M’ was the same as ‘M – Inventions for Life’, which was listed as the sender on the big parcel he was also delivering to Jens Horder that day. The business had a mainland address, a place on the east coast. The postmarks on the two items were also from the east coast. Because the postman had investigated the items, of course he had. Then again, the Mafia might have contacts everywhere, which only proved that his idea hadn’t been that far-fetched after all.
The postman parked his van down by the barrier, then got out and opened the door at the back, where the parcel was ready and waiting, with the registered letter on top.