The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

  There was a faint smell of something burned. Like the site of a house fire a week after the event. There was another strange smell too. Oh, what was it? It wouldn’t come to me . . .

  “Lindland,” said Geir, coming to a halt in front of us. “What are you doing here?”

  “My job,” I said. “Only I got attacked in the woods.”

  He smiled.

  “Their job,” he said.

  He looked at the guy with the scraggy beard.

  “You can take those off him now.”

  The guy nodded and released the cuffs.

  I rubbed my wrists, absorbing everything I saw around me while trying not to look too inquisitive.

  Was it gunpowder I could smell? Old-fashioned gunpowder?

  Gjertsen, who until then had been typing something on his phone, looked up at us again, put the phone back in his pocket and came over.

  “Thought you were arts and culture these days,” he said.

  “I am,” I said, brushing some pine needles and bits from my trouser legs. “I’m doing a piece on a band. Kvitekrist. I heard they might be here.”

  Both Geir and Gjertsen grinned.

  “Who told you that?” Gjertsen said.

  “I’ve got my sources,” I said.

  “How much do you know?”

  I shrugged.

  A forensics officer in a white bunny suit came out of the tent. Two others, side by side, were inching along the fringe of the woods, heads down, eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. A bit farther away were the remains of a bonfire. The logs were charred, but not completely consumed. Around the bonfire, stones had been laid out in what seemed to be a pattern. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it could be a pentagram.

  “Well, we can’t have you hanging about here,” said Gjertsen. “I’ll get someone to take you back.”

  He went toward the forensics officer outside the tent.

  I looked at Geir.

  “Are they still here?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The bodies.”

  “Mm,” he said.

  “Can I see them?”

  “You must be out of your mind. Of course you can’t. It’s bad enough you just being here.”

  “Photos, then?”

  “You know enough to write your piece,” he said.

  I desperately wanted to see them: devil worshippers, ritual triple killing, he’d never seen anything like it, he’d said.

  Over by the trees, one of the forensics guys bent down and picked up an object. It looked like a book, black or else burned.

  The other one held out a transparent evidence bag and he dropped whatever it was into it.

  “Is it the drummer who’s not here?” I said.

  Geir glanced at me before he managed to hide his surprise.

  “No comment,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I never said anything.”

  “OK. But if it is him, I know someone who knows him quite well. I spoke to him only yesterday, as a matter of fact. Before this, of course.”

  “You’re not the only one who knows people, Lindland,” he said.

  “Who’s to say you know who I know? And the person I’m talking about knows a great deal. I doubt he’s going to talk to you after today, though.”

  “How would you know?” Geir said.

  “I’ll find him before you lot, just watch!” I said, and laughed.

  Geir took a black vape out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. A mist rose up and clouded his face.

  He put it back in his pocket.

  “You’re just going to see them, OK?” he said. “And you’re not going to write a word about what you see. Because if you do, you’ll never get anything out of me ever again.”

  “Understood,” I said, and felt an immediate stab of pleasure in my chest.

  I followed him over to the tent, where we stopped in front of Gjertsen.

  “Lindland’s coming in,” Geir said.

  “Come off it,” said Gjertsen. “You know he can’t. They’ll crucify you.”

  “He may be able to help us with something. And he won’t be reporting what he sees.”

  “Can we trust you?” said Gjertsen, looking straight at me.

  “I can give you my word,” I said.

  “Is that worth anything?”

  What was this?

  The little twerp.

  I got the urge to tell him something about men with tiny dicks, but I was there at their mercy, so I kept it to myself and offered him my best smile instead.

  “I’ve never broken a promise to you lot,” I said. “And you did get your hands on Heksa thanks to me. It cost me my job, in case you’ve forgotten? Of course you can trust me.”

  “All right,” said Gjertsen. “But he’s your responsibility, Geir.”

  As if to underline the fact, he walked away from us.

  “Steel yourself when you go in,” said Geir. “It’s a damn gruesome sight, I can tell you. So don’t puke or anything. OK?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I said.

  “And not a word about what you see, in the paper or anywhere else.”

  “So you keep saying,” I said. “Can we go in now?”

  He drew the tent opening aside and I stepped in behind him. The light in there was glaring, almost white, it made the grass look oddly artificial. In the middle were what I supposed were the bodies, covered by a tarp, likewise white. A forensics officer was combing the ground; he was on his knees and didn’t look up when we came in. Another person, who I took to be the pathologist, was sitting on a folding stool typing on his phone, surrounded by boxes and cases of various kinds.

  “Are you ready for this?” said Geir, crouching down at the tarp and looking up at me.

  I nodded.

  He pulled the tarp away and drew himself upright.

  Oh, Christ.

  Oh, fucking hell.

  The three lads were lying on their stomachs, their heads wrenched back, facing the wrong way, it was like they were looking down their noses at their asses. All the skin on their bodies had been stripped off, leaving a bloody mess of flesh and tendons, with veins and arteries exposed here and there. But from the neck up, the skin had been left. It was as if they were wearing masks. Where their throats were supposed to be there were just gaping holes. The fingernails were still attached to their fibrous-looking digits. And the tops of their heads had been taken off.

  They didn’t look like humans.

  They looked like someone had tried to construct humans but hadn’t quite managed it.

  “Seen enough?” said Geir.

  I nodded and he covered them up again.

  “Do you understand now?” he said as we stepped outside.

  “Who could have done a thing like that?” I said. “I mean, how did he manage? It must have taken days! And he must have been strong too.”

  Geir got his vape out again.

  “I don’t get how you can be so calm,” I said. “You’ve got a triple murder and a deranged killer on the loose. Here, in this town.”

  “Deranged is about the right word,” he said.

  “Best of luck, is all I can say,” I said. “And thanks for the gander.”

  “What d’you reckon?” said Geir.

  I shrugged.

  “Not my job, fortunately,” I said. “But whoever it was must have been completely out of it on something. Something that gave them superhuman powers to boot.”

  “The way the heads have been yanked back, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Two could do that,” he said. “But as far as we can make out, there was only one other person here.”

  “Maybe you should poke about in cowboy and Indian circles,” I said.
“What with them being scalped like that!”

  “Try putting that in your write-up,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  The three young police officers who’d been posted at the waterworks must have been told I was coming, since all they did when I came back from the woods was nod.

  I stopped behind the big administration building, lit a cig and switched my mobile on to call a taxi.

  Turid had phoned forty-seven times.

  Forty-seven!

  Something must have happened.

  Maybe she’d forgotten her key and couldn’t get in because Ole was asleep?

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t help her, not now, I had to get down to the paper and get the piece written, double fucking quick.

  I couldn’t be bothered faffing about with the app, but called the taxi company the old-fashioned way before switching my phone off again.

  Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in the back of a cab watching the houses sail past outside, many with lights on in the windows now, the day beginning to start. There were people in the streets too, not on their way home, but on their way to work, cyclists with their helmets on, their lights flashing hysterically, buses with their cargoes of labor. The sky was dark blue and completely clear, the sun on its way up above the Fanafjell, and on the other side, above Askøy, the new star was still there.

  It had all gone better than I could have hoped.

  What a story I’d got my hands on.

  A satanist death metal band, or at least most of one, massacred in the most gruesome manner. A killer on the loose.

  And no one knew about it yet!

  I wouldn’t have minded knocking on the door of her hotel room for a quickie, only time was too short, I couldn’t afford to lose it.

  When the taxi pulled up outside the newspaper building, I gave the driver a small tip. He’d kept his mouth shut all the way, and this, this was my day.

  At last it had come.

  TURID

  In the darkness among the trees I saw nothing at first. I stood still for a minute to allow my eyes to adjust, and to listen out for Kenneth.

  There wasn’t a sound.

  He must have been way ahead of me.

  How could he run here?

  I’d have given anything to be able to run after him, hurtle through the undergrowth flat out, catch up with him and take him back with me.

  But all I could do was plod. And even then my chest tightened.

  Gently does it, Turid, you old slowpoke.

  Gently does it.

  Take your time.

  Nothing’s happened yet.

  He’s not going to die, you’ll find him, he’s going to be all right.

  Breathe easy.

  Think easy.

  The forest floor was so dry it crackled underfoot. I could hardly see the outlines of the tree trunks, but went slowly among them with my hand out in front of me so as not to walk into the branches that kept suddenly appearing from the murk.

  After twenty meters or so the ground got steeper and I halted.

  This was hopeless. He’d be long gone by now. And I’d no way of knowing what direction he’d taken either.

  But I couldn’t lose a patient.

  There’d be a gigantic search. And all because of me being so stupid.

  What was Berit going to say?

  He could have stopped and sat down somewhere.

  It was as if the ears had to get used to the quiet the same way the eyes had to get used to the dark, I thought, because now suddenly I could hear all sorts of little rustling noises all around me.

  “Kenneth!” I said out loud into the darkness, then held my breath for a second.

  Nothing.

  I decided to keep going for a bit. At least then I’d have done what I could.

  “KENNETH!” I called out.

  Nothing.

  But he never listened to anyone, he was too stupid for that, more stupid than a dog he was, so why should he answer me now?

  Slightly farther on I came to a path leading off up the slope to the left, doubling back to the right, then continuing left again. The moon paled the ground, the trees not nearly as dense now, and the going became easier, even if thick tree roots here and there meant I had to watch out. They looked like serpents in the moonlight.

  I paused every twenty meters or so, my hand on a tree trunk for support as I listened. Little rustling noises in the undergrowth, the murmur of night in the depths of the woods, but no footsteps, no hurtling madman, no demented howling.

  Eventually I emerged onto a small, treeless plateau where I turned round and looked back at the illuminated buildings below, the little roads that ran between them. The woods stretched darkly towards the prison, which was perhaps a kilometer away, an island of light in the darkness.

  I could pack the job in, it occurred to me. I dreaded coming in every day, so there was no sense in clinging to it. Especially not after tonight.

  When I turned back round, I saw that it wasn’t the moon that was shining above the trees, it was a planet.

  As a child, I’d thought it was the Star of Bethlehem. We all did.

  Oh God, if only I could go back. To Mum and Dad and little Tore.

  The baby on the rug in the living room, his smile as I bent down to pick him up and then pulled a face at him.

  Those cheeky little eyes of his.

  The softness of his skin!

  The reminiscence felt so real as I forged ahead, and for a few moments the new baby was so very near to me and filled me with a sense of infinite goodness that streamed through my being.

  Jostein once said that was what heroin did. It gave you the same feeling of being protected and cared for that you had when you were little.

  Mum and Dad. The duvet snug around my body, a grown-up getting to their feet, smiling and saying goodnight before turning out the light. Good and warm and safe.

  I looked up at the Star of Bethlehem again and stopped.

  “Dear God in Heaven,” I said. “Please let this end well. Let me find Kenneth. Let Ole be all right.”

  Five more minutes, I told myself. Then I’ll go back and raise the alarm.

  Sølve would be wondering where I’d got to soon.

  If he wasn’t asleep.

  “KENNETH! KENNETH! COME BACK!” I called out, pressing on.

  I suppose mostly it was for my own sake. So I could say I’d done all I could.

  On the other side of the plateau the trees rose up like a wall, but beyond them the ground sloped away again, the trees were farther apart, and the ground was carpeted with heather. There was no path anymore, but the walking was easier.

  And then I saw a light. Between the trees, maybe a hundred meters farther on.

  It looked like it came from a fire.

  Kenneth would be drawn to it. If he saw it, he’d go there.

  But who would have lit a fire in the woods?

  Kids drinking in secret, perhaps.

  They wouldn’t care that open fires were prohibited.

  I went diagonally down the shallow slope, my feet swishing through the heather. At the bottom, two enormous trees lay toppled on the ground, while behind them the woods grew dense again.

  The fire seemed just as far away as before. Maybe it was because I was no longer seeing it from above. And then, as I zigzagged my way between the tall, dark spruce, the opposite seemed to be true and it appeared to be a lot closer than I’d thought.

  There, in a small boggy-looking clearing among the trees.

  All I could see was its glow. Not a sound came from anywhere.

  Surely no one would leave a fire burning in the woods?

  Maybe they were asleep.

  Yes, that’d be it.

  And Kenneth, of course, wasn’t there.
Why would he have been?

  It was as if during the last few minutes I’d forgotten what I was actually doing. How desperate a situation I was in.

  And how far I’d walked!

  I looked at the time.

  I hadn’t been away more than twenty minutes.

  Could just as well go over and have a look.

  I walked forward following a narrow stream that had almost dried up to a trickle, in places quite hidden beneath the branches of the spruce that grew on both sides.

  Somewhere close by, there was a sound. I froze, and abruptly it stopped.

  It had sounded like someone coming through the undergrowth.

  “Hello?” I said, the feeblest croak. “Is anyone there?”

  And then, an eerie clicking noise sounded out harshly through the trees.

  There was a reply, the same sound from a different place.

  I was so terrified I couldn’t move.

  Then, above my head, as loud as a human cry, came a birdlike squawk.

  KRUUAAA!

  My heart thumped in my chest, for as I tipped my head back and looked up, a great shadow came gliding from out of the tree where I stood, sailing through the air above the dell, dissolving into the darkness on the other side of the stream.

  The clicking sounded again, only now it was so very close by.

  I wanted to scream.

  But if I did, they’d come for me.

  Petrified, my whole body trembling, I stood and peered into the darkness from where the sound had come.

  That bird, that great bird, had been covered in scales.

  I couldn’t see anything.

  Nothing in the clearing in front of me.

  And everything was quiet again.

  Not a sound, not a movement.

  It was as if an enormous wave had come crashing down on me, only then to retreat again as quickly as it had come.

  I had to get away.

  But I was too frightened to move.

  Cautiously, I started toward the little clearing again.