The Girl Who Died

by Ragnar Jónasson

  Home …

  Perhaps it was putting it a bit strongly to call the attic flat in Salka’s house a home, but it was her refuge for now. She had made herself comfortable there. Although she hadn’t brought many personal items from Reykjavík, she had made feeble attempts to put her stamp on the place. Salka didn’t bother her when she was upstairs, never even knocked on the door; in fact, it was weeks since she had set foot in the attic flat. Edda would sometimes look in to ask Una a question, and from time to time they had played a game of chess together up there, but otherwise the flat was simultaneously Una’s safe haven and a symbol of her loneliness.

  As Una walked up to the front door, she became acutely aware of the quietness. The village was almost permanently wrapped in an all-encompassing hush, a stark reminder of how far they were from anywhere. And with no urban glow from a nearby town or distant lights of farms, there might as well have been no outside world. Perhaps what the few souls who chose to live here had in common was their preference for solitude. There was no sound of human activity, nothing but the faint sighing of the sea, but that didn’t count as it did nothing to fill up the silence; all it did was echo her own thoughts.

  The front door was unlocked, as usual.

  No one’s going to break in here, Salka had once remarked. It’s better to leave it unlocked so the ghosts can find their way out.

  She had smiled and Edda had asked: What ghosts? At the time, Una had been blithely unaware of the tales about the girl in the attic, and even now she only knew the barest outlines of the story. As soon as she got a chance, she wanted to find out more about the child who died. The pictures kept blurring together in her mind: the white-clad girl in the photograph and the memory of Edda in church, of her empty gaze before she collapsed on the floor.

  Una turned on the lights downstairs. She was about to continue up to the attic when she paused, changing her mind, and began to wander through Salka’s rooms, as if seeing them for the first time. Finding herself in front of the bookcase, she reached instinctively for the book in which the old photo was kept. But, at the last moment, she stopped. This wasn’t the right time.

  Instead, she went into Edda’s bedroom, switched on the light and looked around. There were her dolls, her books, everything characteristically neat and tidy. Una had been in there before, not often but occasionally to talk or play with the little girl. And now she didn’t even know if Edda was alive or dead. Feeling numb, she switched off the light, closed the door behind her and, after a moment’s hesitation, warily entered Salka’s bedroom. She had never been in there before and didn’t know why she went in now. Purely out of curiosity, perhaps. She’d never had the house completely to herself before, as Salka had always been just around the corner. It was a welcoming room, small and cosy, just like a bedroom ought to be.

  She had made up her mind to call her mother as soon as she got the chance. Maybe the lullaby in her dream was just a childhood memory and not some message from beyond the grave.

  Una breathed in the atmosphere of Salka’s room. A faint trace of her perfume lingered in the air. Contemplating her neatly made bed, she pictured herself lying down and sleeping there, just for tonight. No one could get to her there.

  Trying to push these thoughts away, she made herself take a step backwards, out of the bedroom, but underneath she knew what was wrong.

  She was afraid.

  Afraid of the night that lay ahead, afraid of being all alone in the house; all alone in the world.

  Her thoughts kept veering between these fears and her shock and bewilderment over what had happened to Edda. It had been such a horrifying sight. The little girl had always seemed so healthy and robust, had never missed a day of school, and then, out of the blue, this. Common sense told Una that it could have been a sudden illness – it must have been – and yet she felt an ominous foreboding that something else, much worse, lay behind it, though she couldn’t put her finger on what. And she didn’t want to pursue the thought any further.

  She started climbing the stairs, slowly and steadily, leaving the light burning in the hall. She couldn’t cope with darkness; not now, not when she was alone. She would have given anything to have someone there with her – Thór, preferably, though she supposed it was mere wishful thinking to imagine that he would have any interest in keeping her company. If only she had someone to hold her, to comfort her and tell her that everything would be all right.

  Upstairs she hastily turned on the light, all the lights. Then she proceeded to check the rooms, carefully peering round every corner, a habit she’d adopted after the fateful night when she heard the lullaby. She had tried hard to convince herself that she wasn’t frightened, that there was nothing to fear, but her behaviour betrayed her.

  The feeling was so strong that she wasn’t alone at night.

  Her stock of Campari was finished, but she still had a couple of unopened wine bottles left. She had taken to drinking alone in the evenings in her solitude. If she’d been in Reykjavík, her alcohol intake would have been more varied. She used to go out for the odd low-alcohol beer in the city’s pubs – proper beer was illegal in Iceland – but her preferred tipples were Campari and Martini. Here in Skálar, though, she didn’t dare buy anything stronger than red wine from the little Co-op, for fear of what people would think.

  The alcohol calmed her nerves and dulled her mind, but she wondered if it maybe had the effect of intensifying her fears at the same time. Still, the positive effects seemed to outweigh the negative ones.

  She opened the window, though all this would do was let in the silence and the chill breath from the sea. Then she uncorked the bottle and poured herself a glass. She wished she could ring her mother, though they hadn’t talked much in the intervening months. Anyway, what was she supposed to say to her? That she was afraid and lonely; that a little girl from the village had been rushed to hospital?

  The first mouthful of wine was always the best; she took a big gulp and savoured the feeling as the alcohol filtered into her bloodstream. Then, finally, she took off her coat and her party clothes, got into her nightie and stole back downstairs to borrow a book from Salka’s library.

  Once again, it was as if the volume containing the old photograph were calling out to her, but she resisted the temptation and went instead to the other end of the shelf, eventually selecting a dog-eared whodunnit called Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie. Then, clutching the paperback like a talisman, she went back upstairs and climbed into bed with the book and her glass – making sure the bottle was within reach.

  It was hard to concentrate on the story, but she did her best and the alcohol gradually had the desired effect. As she felt the drowsiness stealing over her, she hoped she would drop off soon, though she wasn’t going to turn off the light.

  She had no intention of sleeping in the dark, tonight of all nights.

  But the instant her eyes closed she became uncomfortably aware of the noises in the old house: the creaking of the timbers, the hissing of the radiators, even her own breathing, which grew louder and louder until it destroyed any chance of sleep. She opened her eyes again and darted a quick look around, sensing another presence in the room.

  Of course, there was nobody there.

  The temperature was getting uncomfortably chilly, so she got out of bed, went into the other room and closed the window. Then she crawled back into bed, pulled up the duvet and tucked it tightly around herself to keep in the warmth. Finding that she was still wide awake, she picked up the paperback and her glass and made another attempt to read herself to sleep with the help of Agatha Christie and the wine. The book got off to a good start. Although it had been written more than half a century ago, it had stood the test of time. This was a house with a history, all right, with old books on the shelves and the spirit of the past in every corner.

  It was hard to concentrate on the printed page as her thoughts kept returning to Edda and Salka. She was worried sick about the little girl and her heart went out to Salka. S
he pictured her driving through the night, jolting over the rough roads with her daughter’s limp body in her arms. Had Inga got hold of the doctor in Thórshöfn or would they have to drive on for hours through the night to the nearest hospital? Una tried to send them kind thoughts. Perhaps she should have prayed for them, but it wasn’t her style.

  Her mind circled round again to her own plight. She was filled with dread at the thought that she might have to spend Christmas all alone in this big house. Her mother was planning to go abroad for the holidays with her husband, as Una had learned the last time they spoke on the phone. It didn’t really surprise her. She and her mother had always spent Christmas together, but now at last her mother had a chance to celebrate in a warmer climate, without having to feel guilty about Una. It was ironic, then, that Una should feel a greater need than ever to return to her mother’s warm embrace at this time of year, but, with her mother away, there was nothing in Reykjavík for her now.

  After a long while she felt herself growing drowsy again. The tension left her body, the words on the page blurred together and her eyelids drooped.

  III

  Una woke up shivering. She was freezing. She must have kicked off her duvet in her sleep again but, even so, it was peculiarly cold in her room. Bracing herself, she got out of bed and checked the window in her bedroom, then the one in the sitting room, but both were firmly latched. Had there been a further drop in temperature outside?

  The lights were still on and she meant to keep them that way. She glanced around, without really knowing why, then hurried back into bed and burrowed under her duvet as if hiding from something. She tried to get back to sleep, but her heart was still beating unnaturally fast.

  IV

  Una opened her eyes. She had been sound asleep with her head under the duvet. This time, she was sure she had been woken by the sound of the piano, by the faint notes of a tune she didn’t recognize. Closing her eyes again, she concentrated on listening.

  To say she was sick with terror would be an understatement.

  She couldn’t hear anything. But, just like the time she had been woken by the lullaby, the music had sounded uncannily real. So real that she kept expecting the sound to start up again any minute, convinced that someone was playing the old piano downstairs in the dining room, in the middle of the night, when Una was, or should have been, alone in the house.

  Surely Salka couldn’t have come home already? She felt the cold sweat prickling her skin. She couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t make herself move, unless it was to flee outside into the darkness, away from the house and the village of Skálar for good. But the only option was to confront her fears, confront these horrible nightmares, by going downstairs to the dining room and reassuring herself once and for all that there was nobody there.

  Salka had often practised in the evenings when Una was in the attic, so Una knew how well the sound carried between the floors; in that respect, her dream had been plausible. But she hadn’t recognized the melody. As far as she could remember, it had been a simple tune of the kind a child might play. Perhaps it was something that Edda had played during one of her piano lessons with her mother.

  Una emerged from under the duvet, climbed out of bed and braced herself with a deep breath.

  There’s nothing to be afraid of, she told herself, first in her head, then aloud.

  ‘There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of.’

  V

  She opened the door to the landing, which was brightly lit, like the rest of the house. She had deliberately left all the lights blazing when she went to bed, something she would never have dreamt of doing if Salka had been home.

  She walked downstairs, forcing herself to take it slowly, into the hall, then paused and waited for a few seconds, straining her ears. Against her common sense, she was half-expecting to hear something, a voice singing, the tinkling of the piano, that would freeze her blood. It was cold downstairs but for some reason not as cold as up in the attic. She stood there, shivering slightly, hearing nothing in the silent house apart from the ever-present creaking of the timbers, but even that was muted tonight as there was hardly any wind.

  She stood there for a moment longer, staring at the door to the dining room, then shook her head and smiled at her own folly. How ridiculous to drag herself out of bed and come all the way downstairs just because of some nightmare.

  Finding her courage, she put out her hand and opened the door, only to reel back in shock.

  There was somebody in there.

  A split second later she realized that it was her own reflection in the dining-room window, against the backdrop woven from the black night outside.

  Still breathless and trembling from her reaction, she peered round the corner and saw the piano.

  There was nobody there.

  Of course there was nobody there.

  But the piano was open.

  Had it been open when she came home?

  Surely Salka usually closed it?

  Or did she …?

  Una wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember.

  Feeling the cold clutching at her shrinking flesh, she dragged her eyes away from the piano and flinched again at the sight of her ghostly reflection in the glass.

  Whirling round, she fled back upstairs to the attic.

  VI

  Christmas Eve was a bleak, lonely affair. It hadn’t snowed, but then no one had expected it to.

  News had finally come through from the hospital, though Una had probably been the last to hear it. Edda had died. The doctors could find no explanation for what had happened. She had been fit and healthy, and the only clue they had to go on was that her face had turned yellow, which seemed to indicate liver failure, as Una had suspected.

  She had heard the news the day before from Gudrún at the Co-op, where she had gone to find out what was happening, since Salka still hadn’t returned. Una hadn’t shed any tears when Gudrún told her. She had just stumbled out of the shop, dazed with shock. The moment when Edda had collapsed in church kept playing over and over in her mind.

  Desperately sorry though she felt for Salka, Una dreaded seeing her again. What could she possibly say to her? But perhaps she would be spared the ordeal as she doubted Salka would come back to the village. How would she be able to face living in the house after what had happened? Una was finding it hard enough herself. It was clear now that she would be spending Christmas alone there, and she didn’t know how much longer she could cope with the solitude. Last night she had slept in her bedroom in the attic, with all the lights on. Although she had slept only fitfully, the nightmare hadn’t returned.

  The little girl in the white dress had left her in peace.

  For the first time in many years, Una listened to the Christmas service on the radio at six o’clock. It seemed fitting somehow to hear something religious after what had happened, and, if the house was haunted, she told herself it wouldn’t hurt to have God on her side. Besides, she had longed for the comforting babble of human voices; she’d had the radio on all day to drown out the silence, the eerie incidental noises in the house and the intrusive images of the two little girls who had died.

  She hadn’t cooked herself anything special for dinner as she wasn’t in the mood to celebrate all on her own. Edda’s death had cast a pall over the day. To make herself eat something, she had put some frozen chicken in the oven – at least it made a change from fish – and seasoned it with whatever she had to hand, then fried some potatoes to accompany it. Her mother would have told her off for this meal; when she was a child they’d always had a delicious gammon for Christmas dinner – until everything changed – but even after that her mother made an effort to cook something out of the ordinary, as long as it wasn’t gammon.

  The chicken had tasted all right, if a bit dry, but the last bottle of wine had made up for that. Once this one was gone, she would be completely out of booze. She would have to get hold of some more. She had been intending to stock up, within reason, of course, when sh
e went to the shop the day before, but after Gudrún had broken the news about Edda, Una had felt it would be unseemly. She missed living in Reykjavík, where it was easier to be anonymous; where people couldn’t watch your every move.

  It was past eight o’clock and the bottle was half empty when Una gave in to the urge to ring Thór. She sat beside the phone for a long time, the radio’s Christmas programme playing in the background. Then she selected the first digit of the phone number at the farm and turned the dial, before losing her nerve and hanging up again. What would he think? What would Hjördís think? The problem was that there was only one phone on the farm and the chances were that Hjördís would answer.

  But Una had no alternative.

  She couldn’t cope with being alone, not this evening. Not this bloody evening – Christmas Eve, the worst evening of the year. Her mother should have known that, though of course she couldn’t have foreseen the terrible tragedy in the church; but even in ordinary circumstances she should have realized that Una would want to come home and spend the twenty-fourth with her. But now Una was completely isolated, without even Salka and Edda for companionship. And she was afraid, so very afraid.

  She had to talk to someone, or better still meet someone, but there weren’t many to choose from in this godforsaken spot. It didn’t even cross her mind to get in touch with Kolbeinn and Inga, and Guffi and his wife were out of the question. Gudrún and Gunnar would no doubt welcome her, but she had no particular desire to talk to them. They wouldn’t listen to her, as they weren’t really interested in hearing about her life; all they would want to talk about was Skálar, about the past, the church, the boat, the bloody fish … As for Hjördís, she remained an enigma. Una hadn’t felt any interest in trying to get past her offputting manner.

  She picked up the telephone receiver again, waited for the tone, then dialled with an unsteady hand and waited, telling herself it was actually, possibly, a question of life or death.