I followed him. I had to leave my hideaway at the edge of the forest, but I made a quick dash from behind the trees to a new hideaway behind the pile with the yellow bicycle on it. From there I saw him wander along the field down to the end of our house. There were no traps around the back and I started to wonder if perhaps he knew about the traps after all.
He might see me if I followed him behind the barn, so I opted for the safe route across the farmyard instead. I could always find something to hide behind there. I was good at moving quickly and quietly, even when crawling.
He was knocking on the pantry door at the end of the house when I slipped behind the bathtub by the corner of the barn. I could hear it, and I caught a glimpse of him when he took a step back from the door. He was looking for something. The key? A moment later I heard him let himself in and saw a rabbit run outside.
I waited.
Another two rabbits followed.
Then I heard his voice. ‘Hello!’ he shouted.
And then the kitchen curtain twitched. It was dark inside, so I couldn’t see anything through the windowpane.
What if he found Mum?
If it hadn’t been for Mum lying upstairs in the bedroom, I would have gone into hiding in the container at that point. Instead I crouched on the gravel behind the bathtub, staring up at Mum’s dark window.
Then I heard an unexpected crash coming from inside the house and someone shouting. It couldn’t be Mum. It was the man shouting.
No, he was screaming.
I don’t think I thought anything at all. I just sat there, unable to move. Perhaps my tears couldn’t move either, because I wanted to cry but I somehow couldn’t. I couldn’t make the tears come. And I couldn’t make Carl come either. He didn’t come. And neither did Dad.
And the man was still inside the house with Mum.
Any minute now he would come out of the back door. I had no idea what to do when that happened.
After a while – I don’t know how long because it felt like a minute and an hour at the same time – the front door opened. I was so taken aback that I jumped. I hadn’t expected to see him there. I had to turn slightly to get a better view. Afterwards, I wondered whether I did it on purpose. Moving, I mean.
Whatever it was, he spotted me. I’ll never forget it. ‘Oi, you!’ he called out. It was the first time in ages that someone other than Dad had spoken to me.
Perhaps I should have grabbed an arrow and fired my bow from behind the bathtub. I could have shot him through the heart, I’m sure of it. He was standing at the top of the steps, it would have been easy peasy.
But deep down I didn’t want to. When your own heart is beating so loud you can hear it, you don’t want to aim at anything. Especially not another heart.
So I did something else. I ran.
I picked a safe route along the barn, then dashed in a semicircle to the right towards the place in the forest I had come from. He would never catch me in the thicket and I had a head start. But although I knew that he couldn’t catch me, I felt all mixed up and I didn’t run as fast as I could have.
It felt as if my heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest. And, at the same time, it was as if someone was beating it from the outside. As if someone were trying to bash it back inside me. Or bash me back? Perhaps it was Carl.
I stopped and looked for the man once I was some way towards the forest. He was running towards me and seemed to have chosen the safe route around the pile with the cooker on it. He shouted something, but I couldn’t hear what it was.
All I could think about was that he was making a beeline for me – and that very soon he would reach the silage harvester.
I wanted to run on, but I couldn’t.
The next moment I saw the man being knocked over and yanked violently up into the air, so that he ended up dangling from the harvester.
Head down.
Just like in Sherwood Forest, I thought.
His foot was caught in a noose. The other was kicking wildly out into the air, and his arms were flailing, as if he was trying to touch the ground, which was just out of his reach. The dog lead he had had around his neck fell off and settled underneath him, while he spun on his own axis.
He looked a bit like a fish on a line.
‘Get me down from here!’ he shouted.
I didn’t know what to do.
I waited for a long time. He continued to shout, and I continued to stand there. Stock-still. I could do that.
Eventually he stopped thrashing his arms about and the anger left his voice. He just hung there, rotating slowly like the violin over the wood-burning stove used to do. And the Christmas tree in the ceiling, if you nudged it a bit.
He kept on talking to me, and I kept on not replying.
‘Please help me get down.’
‘I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk to you.’
‘You can’t leave me hanging here.’
Like that.
I didn’t budge.
‘I spoke to the woman in the bedroom. Are you two related? She asked me to help you.’
At that point I may have twitched ever so slightly.
‘Help us?’ I said after a while. I could see that he couldn’t hear me, so I walked a little closer.
‘Help us?’ I asked him again.
He nodded, which actually looked quite funny because he was upside down and turning around. He started rotating gently the other way.
When he was face to face with me again he narrowed his eyes.
‘Are you a girl?’ he asked me.
I nodded.
‘Did you shoot the dog?’ he said then, and my heart crept all the way up into my mouth. I tried nodding and shaking my head at the same time.
‘Yes, but it wasn’t me who—’
And it was at that moment that Dad appeared in the farmyard. He looked at us. Then he set down all his plastic bags and walked slowly towards us, using the safe route along the workshop. I saw his head glide across the piles, and in between I could also see his whole body. He carried on staring, but I couldn’t tell whether he was staring at me.
A man was hanging upside down between us. Perhaps he was staring at him.
Dad told me to make space in the white room. I had to clear a passage to the bed Dad usually slept in, the one where my granny was killed. Dad had already moved the heaviest things.
I did as I was told without knowing why. But I was scared. Scared about what would happen to the man, and scared about what would happen to us.
Just as I had pushed the last bag blocking the way aside, the man appeared in the door. The room was dim, and he had the midday sun in his back, so I couldn’t see him clearly at first. But I could see that it was him because he was bigger than Dad and, when he took a step forwards, I could also see that he had something tied around his face. It looked like a big sausage made from cloth had been squashed into his mouth.
He didn’t make a sound.
I didn’t make a sound.
Then I noticed that Dad was standing behind him. He told the man to lie down on the bed. I pressed my back against a box as he came closer. He looked at me, and I looked away.
When he turned towards the bed I saw that his hands were tied behind his back. I could also see the knife in Dad’s hand. It was the same knife which had once cut into my baby sister.
Something in me wanted the man to have evil eyes. But his eyes weren’t evil, not now, and not when he had been dangling from the harvester. I couldn’t help thinking about the dog and the trap, and how the man had wept when he saw his dog. Evil eyes don’t cry, do they?