Cold Fear

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  ‘Hello,’ he said tentatively and straightened up.

  One girl let out a scream at the sound of his voice, and both of them sought refuge by their mother’s legs immediately.

  There was a noise behind Tom and before he could say another word, Bárdur had grabbed him with a roar and pulled him close.

  Bárdur stared into Tom’s eyes. His lips quivered inside the dense, red beard. ‘If you ever come in here again, I swear I’ll kill you.’

  THE FACE OF THE DEMON

  18

  FÆRINGEHAVN, WEST GREENLAND, 19 OCTOBER 2014

  The fire crackled between the four young people gathered around the campfire, wrapped up warmly in their unzipped sleeping bags. It had been Lasse’s idea to light a fire outside. At first they had wandered around trying to get a mobile signal, but only Alma had briefly got a single bar out of four close to the old dam a short walk from the town.

  It hadn’t taken them long to find wood for the fire from the trashed houses, and they built their fire on a broad concrete platform near the long wooden quay.

  Arnaq nudged a tray of sausages with her foot. They had barbecued them on sticks over the fire and toasted some rolls, but they hadn’t been able to eat all of them.

  It had stopped snowing a couple of hours after Matthew and Tupaarnaq had left, but even so a lot of snow remained. It was one of the things Arnaq had missed the most while she had been at school in Denmark: the clear, frosty air and the snow. She closed her eyes and leaned back. It was growing dark, but the snow would retain the light between the old houses in the abandoned town.

  ‘Want any more, mate?’ Lasse held up his vodka bottle and looked at Andreas.

  Andreas drained his plastic cup. ‘Yes…half and half.’

  Lasse took the cup and started pouring. ‘Thank fuck our babysitters don’t come out here in the evening as well.’

  Andreas grinned. ‘How many bottles did you manage to smuggle in?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Nice.’ Andreas looked at Arnaq. ‘This is a seriously awesome place.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s cool, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Where have they gone, the people who used to live here?’

  ‘I think they moved away in the eighties or something. I’m not sure, but I think they left when the fish ran out.’

  ‘Were they all from the Faroe Islands?’ Alma asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ Arnaq said.

  ‘It’s insane to think that they just left all their stuff behind,’ Lasse said.

  ‘It would have cost more to ship than to buy new,’ Arnaq said. ‘There are heaps of abandoned towns along Greenland’s west coast.’

  ‘Cool!’ Andreas exclaimed.

  ‘It’s a bit of a bummer that there’s no 3G here, though,’ Lasse added quickly. ‘I’m experiencing digital withdrawal.’

  ‘It’ll do you good,’ Alma said.

  ‘Screw that, you want to be online as well,’ Lasse retorted.

  ‘Right now all I want is to be warm,’ Alma said. She had pulled her thick hat so far down around her ears that only a little of her long, blonde hair could be seen at the back.

  ‘I’ll chuck some more wood on the fire,’ Andreas said, getting up.

  ‘Please can we just go inside?’ Alma pleaded. ‘It’s so dark.’

  ‘Man up,’ Lasse said. ‘There’s plenty of light here…Isn’t there, Arnaq?’

  Arnaq looked at the fire and nodded. ‘It’s fine, but if Alma is cold—’

  ‘I’ll walk you up to the house,’ Andreas said, dumping an armful of old planks on the fire. ‘Who knows, there might be some mobile coverage now.’ Embers and sparks flew out to all sides before the heat and the smoke whirled them upwards.

  ‘Easy does it,’ Arnaq said, finding a packet of cigarettes in her coat pocket.

  Alma looked up at Andreas. His reddish-blond hair glistened in the glow from the fire. Behind him the sky was dark and grey.

  He looked back at her with a bashful smile. ‘Sitting out here getting cold is silly.’

  ‘I think it’s warmer out here than inside the house,’ Arnaq said, looking at the two of them.

  ‘Well, we’re going back inside anyway,’ Andreas decided, and held out his hand to Alma.

  She nodded and got to her feet. ‘I certainly wouldn’t mind going back inside for a while.’

  Lasse shrugged. ‘Whatever floats your boat,’ he said with a smile and took a big gulp of his vodka and orange. ‘Any more for you?’ he went on, now addressing Arnaq.

  She exhaled the smoke and watched her friends, who were heading back up towards the big, grey house. They were almost the same height, the two of them. She shook her head with a smile. Andreas really was a short-arse.

  ‘Any more for you?’ Lasse said again.

  ‘Eh?’ she said, taking a drag. The tip lit up.

  ‘More vodka, I mean?’

  Arnaq shook her head. ‘Not now.’ She studied Lasse. ‘Do you think they’re having sex?’

  He gave a light shrug. ‘We can go up and check if they’re shagging in a sec.’

  Arnaq flicked her cigarette butt at him.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ he exclaimed, jumping up to brush the smouldering cigarette butt off his sleeping bag.

  ‘You talk so much crap,’ Arnaq said, getting up. ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk along the quay…It’s great when it’s dark.’

  ‘That old pile of crap?’ he said, looking at her. ‘Couldn’t we fall through it?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the whole point.’

  Lasse surveyed the long wooden quay. The tall warehouses loomed even larger now the darkness had settled around them, while the snow lit up the ground and the quay.

  ‘Are you being a wuss again?’ Arnaq goaded him.

  He drained his plastic cup and shook his head. ‘Hell no.’

  Arnaq reached out her hand to him, but quickly snatched it back when they heard a violent scream in the darkness. She stared at Lasse. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up.

  Lasse’s jaw dropped and his eyes shone with fear. ‘What the—?’ he croaked, looking up at the house.

  They heard another scream across the dark plain.

  ‘It’s Alma,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Arnaq said. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  Lasse shook his head. His breath was rapid and sent clouds of steam into the air. ‘Do you think Andreas is being a dick?’

  Arnaq shook her head. ‘We’re going up there now.’

  ‘I have a torch,’ he said, rummaging around the bag with the vodka bottles and the orange juice. He found the torch and switched it on. Pointed it at Arnaq.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said, holding up her hand.

  Alma’s shrill voice could be heard in the night again.

  ‘She’s calling for help,’ Arnaq shouted. ‘Get a bloody move on!’ She started running towards the house. ‘One of them must have stepped through the floor or something.’

  Lasse, too, started running and quickly caught up with her. The light from his torch danced around the uneven white terrain in front of them. Their feet sank into the muddy holes between the mounds. The grip of the frost was only superficial—for now.

  ‘Why the hell is Alma the only one screaming?’ Lasse panted. He was nearly out of breath. His gaze jumped around between the mounds, Arnaq and the black windows in the house, which was getting closer and closer.

  19

  The darkness inside the house was solid. Arnaq and Lasse called out to their friends, but there was no reply. They hadn’t heard any more screaming as they ran the last stretch across the plain, and the silence when they stopped on the ground floor to listen out for the others was even more ominous.

  ‘What the hell do we do if something bad has happened?’ Lasse said, gripping Arnaq’s upper arm as they approached the steps leading to the first floor.

  Arnaq stopped and looked at him.

  He pointed the torch at the dusty old floorboards undernea
th them.

  ‘We can do sod-all here,’ he went on. ‘We need to call for help.’

  ‘You’ve been staring at your dead mobile all day,’ Arnaq snapped, looking up the steps. ‘We can’t contact anyone! Shit, I hope they’re having us on, the morons. Lars won’t be back until sometime tomorrow.’

  Lasse craned his neck and looked up. A scraping sound reached them.

  ‘There. Upstairs,’ Arnaq exclaimed. ‘Point the light at the steps!’

  The wood creaked under their feet as they headed upstairs. The banister was crumbling and some sections had broken off and fallen to the ground floor. They heard the scratching sound again and Arnaq took the last few steps in one long leap. She looked around the dilapidated first floor. Lasse pointed the torch down the two corridors which spread out from the landing they had reached. His breathing was quick and heavy.

  ‘Shine the light into that first room there,’ she said, pointing diagonally to her right.

  Lasse stepped around her and through the black doorway. ‘Oh, no…’ He slumped to his knees and clutched his head with the hand holding the torch; the light swept across the ceiling above them.

  ‘What?’ Arnaq called out. ‘What’s happening?’ She grabbed the torch from Lasse in order to light up the room. Andreas was lying on his stomach in the middle of the room. His skull had been bashed in, pushing out parts of his brain. His upper body lay in a pool of blood. ‘Andreas, Jesus Christ,’ Arnaq shrieked. She pulled at Lasse. His face was wet from snot and tears.

  ‘What the hell do we do?’ he sobbed.

  Arnaq entered the room and shone the torch around it. ‘Alma! Alma, for God’s…’ The words stuck in her throat. She threw herself onto the floor next to her friend.

  Alma stared vacantly at her without moving her head.

  ‘What happened, Alma?’ Arnaq said, putting the torch on the floor.

  Alma said nothing. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. She, too, had received a blow to the head, but not as severe as the one that had killed Andreas. Her hair was covered with blood, but there were no open fractures to her skull.

  ‘Alma, shit,’ Arnaq whispered, putting her head close to Alma’s forehead. ‘We’ll help you.’

  Alma jerked. She gasped for air, opened her eyes and looked at Arnaq. Then she shook her head very slightly. Her eyes closed again.

  Behind them the stairs started to creak. Arnaq looked towards the door. Lasse stared at her. There was a panicky expression in his eyes and he was shaking all over.

  ‘Come over here,’ Arnaq whispered.

  Lasse hurried towards her and knelt down beside her. He switched off the torch.

  Outside the house the wind was rising and the cold air swept through the broken window and into the room. The door had come off its hinges long ago.

  There was more creaking from the stairs.

  Arnaq had grabbed Alma’s hand. She could hear Lasse hyperventilating. The tears were flowing down her cheeks and she was finding it hard to breathe.

  Then she heard footsteps from the corridor. The crunching sound of shoes or boots stepping on the filthy floor. There was no light other than what penetrated from the outside.

  The sound stopped for a moment, only to return as a big, dark silhouette that loomed in the doorway. The silhouette grunted and took a step into the room.

  Arnaq switched on the torch and pointed it straight at the man. He shook his head in irritation and raised a hand in front of his face so all she could see was his short hair.

  Lasse screamed and jumped up to strike the man, but he was instantly floored by a hammer blow so powerful that it split open his skull.

  The torch slipped from Arnaq’s hand as she looked down at herself. Her face and coat were spattered with blood. The circle of light on the wall reflected back into the room where Lasse lay completely limp next to Andreas.

  Arnaq looked at her hands. So much blood. She hadn’t realised that she was screaming, but stopped in order to get her breath back and was overcome with nausea. She vomited all over herself before she managed to lean forwards.

  Alma stared emptily at her.

  Out of the corner of her eye Arnaq saw the big man pick up Lasse’s body and toss it on top of Andreas.

  ‘We need the girl,’ the man mumbled to himself, while softly swinging the heavy copper hammer he was holding in his hand.

  TUPILAK

  20

  NUUK, WEST GREENLAND, 20 OCTOBER 2014

  The sun hung low over the mountains behind the broad mouth of the fjord west of Nuuk. In less than half an hour it would be gone completely. Its dying rays cast an orange glow so strong that nothing in this last, short hour of the day could retain its own colour; even the snow on the growlers lit up in warm hues.

  Matthew sat between two beached growlers, enjoying the clean, pure air from the cold sea. Jakob’s many notes about the age, colour and breath of the ice had taught him to love it deeply. These days he could not walk past one of the big, stranded lumps of glacier ice without breathing at its icy skin and feeling it breathe back.

  He would often pop a small lump of ice into his mouth and feel how the cold drops were resurrected as they came into contact with his tongue after being trapped as ice for over a hundred thousand years.

  Jakob called the lumps of ice time machines, because the water which constituted them had last been liquid in so remote a past that Homo sapiens had been but one of many species of humans on the Earth.

  Matthew picked up a stone and placed it on top of the notebook that was resting on his thigh. It was the book he was writing for Emily. He hadn’t got very far with it yet; he wrote solely to feel that she had lived. She would have been about one year old, if he and Tine hadn’t been in that car crash. One year old. Perhaps she would have started to walk by now, even learned to say a few words.

  A chunk of ice broke off a growler close to him and the sound made him look up. He moved the stone and closed the notebook. He had left his mobile at home so he could think without distraction. His editor was nagging him for another story about the dead men in Ittoqqortoormiit, but Matthew had written himself into a dead end and needed to talk to Ottesen in order to find a way out. There was something about Nukannguaq’s insistence that demons and pills were mixed up with everything that could be the key to unlocking it all.

  He found his cigarettes and lit one. The smoke wrapped itself around his face. As soon as Arnaq came back, he would ask her if she would like to go with him to Ittoqqortoormiit to look for their father. Even if he turned out to be the crazed killer that Briggs had warned him against tracking down, he would like to see him with his own eyes before passing the information about him on to anyone else.

  Matthew threw aside his cigarette and rubbed his eyes. His fingers gave off an acrid smell of smoke. He looked down at the stones, then picked up the discarded cigarette and returned it to the packet so as not to litter. He got up and started walking back over the dry mounds and pieces of rock which led away from the shore. He had arranged to meet Tupaarnaq at the Katuaq Art Centre, where he could also pick up some takeaway food. He didn’t know what she had been doing all day, but neither did he care; she was back in Nuuk and that was all that mattered.

  It took Matthew twenty-five minutes to walk from Ørneøen to Katuaq, but he had only got as far as the corner of the dilapidated Block 1 when he spotted Tupaarnaq waving to him outside the Nuuk Centre. He waved back and smiled, but soon realised that she wasn’t waving because she was pleased to see him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she declared in a loud voice when he was still some distance away from her.

  He checked his watch. ‘We’re not due to meet for another fifteen minutes?’

  ‘I know,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the city centre. ‘But we’ve got to head over to Else’s right away.’

  ‘Why? What about our food?’

  ‘That’ll have to wait,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘Lars couldn’t find them when he went to pick them up…your sister
and her friends.’

  ‘In Færingehavn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So they’re not back yet?’

  ‘No, they’re not, but…’ She hesitated and looked away. ‘We’ll talk about it once we get to Else’s…You and I can head out there tomorrow at first light.’

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ he demanded. His fingers had instantly started rubbing the missing wedding ring. ‘What do you know?’

  She looked him firmly in the eye. ‘There’s blood out there…A lot of blood.’

  Matthew’s heart plummeted. He knew he should have brought Arnaq back when he and Tupaarnaq went to see them. They should have brought all four of them back to Nuuk.

  ‘We’re also the last people to see them,’ Tupaarnaq continued. ‘So the police want to talk to us as soon as possible.’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘That’ll have to wait.’ He looked at Tupaarnaq. ‘Could we go now? This evening?’

  The corners of her mouth moved downwards as she scanned the sky. There was little light left and within the hour it would be completely dark. ‘Only if we drive slowly,’ she said. ‘But we could do it.’

  ‘Right then, if you fetch your rifle, I’ll run home to get my mobile and the keys for the boat, okay?’

  Tupaarnaq nodded slowly. ‘What about Else? She’s scared and waiting for us.’

  ‘Shit…Yes…We’ll meet at her flat before we go. Then she’ll know we’ve gone.’

  21

  Matthew and Tupaarnaq walked together to the steps behind the blue community hall. Tupaarnaq turned right up towards Radiofjeldet and the low housing blocks where Else lived, while Matthew made a beeline for the grey and yellow apartment block that housed his flat.

  He glanced up at the sky, where a few stars were already twinkling although it was only early evening.

  The glass door to his stairwell was ajar, as it often was. The man who lived on the first floor had a small black cat, and although he wasn’t supposed to, he would often wedge open the front door so the cat could run in and out.