by Mark, David
She battled her way forwards, aware this was not going to be any normal storm, keeping to her left in the strengthening gusts, following the needle. She tried to concentrate, to shut out the noise as she continued, rising higher and higher for another hundred meters amidst the heather, following a rabbit path out of the scrub. The line rose upwards, climbing out onto a smooth outcrop of rock, rising higher still. Eventually the trees thinned and she left the undergrowth for space and sky, dark wet and prepared, buffeted violently by the wind. Scanning the ground, she took a line of least resistance. She emerged onto an open windblown rocky ledge high above the open road below, the dirt road caught between two sloping faces of rock rising steeply on each side. Even in a storm, she couldn’t have arrived at a better place of ambush, provided with a clear line of sight down in both directions.
Myriads of impact craters, torn apart by fat raindrops, turning the water of the puddle into the muted colors of the earth: It wasn’t the solid downpour of summer, but a cold, windblown drench of an Autumn storm. The car lurched and splashed its way farther and farther away from the homestead, the country becoming more hilly, wild and rugged; the clouds dark with more rain coming, beating upon the metal above them in curtains, driven by the incessant gusts of wind. Behind them lay the memory of Hasse Almquist. Ahead of them, the rising wet face of granite.
Ash looked up into the mirror, meeting the restless, small pig-like eyes of Sebastian Chivers. He sat with his head bent forwards, occasionally looking over his shoulder to look out of the rear window. Ash looked behind the headrest of the passenger seat towards the painting wrapped in the blanket. ‘What do you know about Hel?’
Chivers surfaced sufficiently out of his nervous state to register the question. ‘Hell?’
‘Hel of the Völva. Daniel thought it could be important.’ Ash looked at the blanket wrapping on the back seat. ‘To explain the reference to Helvegr.’
Chivers breathed in deeply, looking out of the window. He raised his hand to his mouth, his lips trembling, failing to answer the question.
‘I can’t hear you,’ Ash shouted above the screaming engine and roar of wind.
Chivers turned to look at him. He looked fragile as he nodded in acquiescence. ‘Odin appointed Hel to rule Hel. A divinity and a place.’
Ash frowned, passing a warning sign on the side of the road. It said Highwayman’s Pass, showing a slope and rocks falling.
‘Hel was a female deity, daughter of Loki. To see Hel, was to die... why ask me such stupid questions,’ he said, closing his mouth.
That told them something they didn’t know.
And Almquist was gone.
Something strange has been going on for a very, very long time...
Almquist hurt. He hurt a lot.
He was naked.
Flames flickered from torches placed in a circle around him. He could smell burned flesh where a branch had been driven deep into his eye socket and opened his good eye. He found himself hanging, arms splayed out and backwards, tied to the lower branches of an oak tree.
How did he get here?
Beneath, a deep well of water, as black as space without any stars. Out of the darkness a figure emerged, sightless. And then another one, others sensed more than seen, lurking in the darkness beyond. He tried to move his feet but couldn’t and looked down. One of the spikes had been driven so hard it had ripped through the top of his foot, puncturing the skin. He groaned in pain. Someone drew close, dressed in a black habit, hood raised high, face hidden in shadow. There was something familiar about it, the way it carried itself. The way it walked. In its hand was a spear, his spear.
The figure ran forwards, towards him, beneath him. With a single thrust he pierced him, forcing the spear deep into his body and held it there. He felt it crush a rib, ploughing deeper, ever deeper, slicing through his flesh until it reached those soft, vulnerable parts of the body that life depended on. He writhed and grunted in anguish, resisting with all his might the urge to scream. Then in a single motion the figure pulled the spear back, sharply, driving it so it ripped his flesh, exposing his wound to the elements. The pain increased, impossibly so. His head spun. He watched, helpless, as his lifeblood drained from him.
Speculation... Elin said. Was it speculation when an investigating officer had been murdered only the year before in Copenhagen?
From the darkness beyond a horn sounded once. Three times. The hooded figure retreated back into the shadows, replaced by another figure carrying a flaming branch. The figure bent low. To his dismay, he heard the crackle of fire. He strained to see the base of the tree, kindled by branches burst into flame, lighting the night air around him.
The figure stood back and looked up, his face hidden in shadow. Then it lifted one arm, removing the hood, and Hasse Almquist looked down, dismayed by the power of Stefan’s hatred. He stood in a road full of fragments of glass. Stefan... had that been why he had done what he had done?
She swung her rifle around to her front, dropping to her stomach, crawling forwards. Nearing the rim, she closed the distance to the edge where the wind whipped her face, the rain stung her eyes and the wind howled around her. She moved back, edging to her right where a small degree of shelter was offered by group of boulders, stepping out onto the smallest of them, looking for a clear line of sight. She kneeled, wrapping the sling around her lower arm. Then stretching out on top of the rock, sheltered from the worst of the wind, lining the rifle up in front of her, sling taught. She placed her eye to the scope and moved slightly from side to side, raising one knee forward, steadying her movements, easing herself into a comfortable position.
Raindrops splattering off her camouflage nylon hood.
She steadied herself as a gust of wind swept over her and reached out with one hand, sucking the end of her finger and held it above her head. She moved her hand to the top of the scope, rotating the horizontal dial on the top of her scope four, then the vertical dial, rotating it one click at a time until she felt she had compensated for the wind up to a range of fifty meters, then slowly, one, two three clicks more, compensating her sights against the wind coming at her out of the north-east.
She took three deep, slow breaths, feeling her weight settle into the dirt and stone. She framed her target area, taking slower, deeper breaths, calming her heartbeat; calming herself. The seconds stretched into a minute, each moment used to slow her heartbeat. Until she could say... she was ready.
She felt rather than heard something give from the ground beneath her.
Ash had been unprepared. He had seen nothing, felt everything. A pit of concern pulled at him as they neared the sheer walls of a pass, rain hammering the car and the ground, tall, drab walls of granite sloping upwards and outwards on each side of them. As he entered the pass something materialized out of the curtain of rain. He braked; something that wasn’t supposed to be there: a boulder, half the size of a car, blocking the way ahead. At each side, faces of rock climbing steeply, rising towards the tops of forested hills high above, water pouring down in rivulets between fissures in the rock, mud and stone being washed across the road.
Ash applied full pressure, turning to the side, the car skidding to a standstill. Smaller rocks falling down the slopes, the wash covered the pass in so much debris that even if the boulder hadn’t been there, it would have been impossible to pass in such a river of mud, rock and avalanche debris.
‘It must have just happened!’ He looked to the side, to where the road ran by the side of a shallow storm ditch.
Ash threw the gear into reverse and slammed his foot on the pedal, the balding tires of Ulrika’s car spinning in the mud. The car moved forwards, but also sideways.
‘You’ll only dig the tires in,’ Chivers called out from the back seat.
The car rocked slightly forwards and to the side. Ash eased off, letting the engine idle. Something made him glance in the rear view mirror, the same old red pickup truck coming into view on the road behind them. It turned sideways, blocking the
road and sealing off the entrance to the pass.
‘Fuck!’
‘What is it?’
Justin and Chivers turned simultaneously to see the truck.
‘You want to play!’ Ash yelled.
He gunned the engine and tried again, the car moving forwards in a slow, graceful slide.
‘No Ash!’ Justin screamed, eyes moving between the rock and the pickup, unsure which direction to look in.
Ash let off, tires spinning then applied more gas, the car moving again, sliding forwards and sideways. ‘Fuck, fuck... FUCK!’ Ash shouted, slamming his fist repeatedly against the wheel, revving the engine until it was screaming, wheels spinning faster, showering mud and debris out into the road, the car sinking deeper into the soft ground.
Justin looked behind him to Chivers, then back to Ash, who was cursing frantically. ‘What do we do?’ He looked back. ‘We can’t go back.’ He looked ahead into the rain and the pass ahead of them.
‘We’re trapped!’ Chivers shouted, his voice rising in panic. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘Not past that fucker!’ Ash shouted, pointing to the rock in front of them, the mud and hill of rock on each side of them.
‘I’m getting out of here.’ Chivers made a move for the door handle.
‘No,’ Justin barked. ‘We have to get past the rock. Ash – try and get around the side of the rock. We have to find something to put under the wheels...’
‘I’m trying my best...’ Ash moved the gear lever into reverse a second time, firing the engine, wheels spinning as he tried to ease the car out of the edge of the ditch. His efforts only caused the car to lean further over, what little traction they had soon lost in the spin of wet rubber.
‘Keep it in low gear,’ Justin commanded.
But it was too late, the mud was too wet, too deep. Blindly, Ash tried to reverse, then engage second, then reverse again, each effort easing the car further and further over into the ditch, until they reached the point of no return.
Ash released the clutch, the 127 lurched then died. He turned the key, looking out of the window. The engine turned without firing. He tried again. Same result. On the fourth attempt the battery began to lose its life, the engine turning over, slower and slower, lights dimming.
‘Fuck!’ Ash screamed again, slamming the steering wheel repeatedly with his clenched fist, bitter desperation in his voice.
‘Ash, I don’t like the look of this...’ Justin was looking out the back window.
‘Stay there...’ He felt it then, the transition: from being in control of one’s life, to not.
Breath, breathing; inhaling, exhaling. ping-ping-ping. Cooling motor blocks. Some loud and close; some, many, muffled. From a distance. Almquist saw a woman picking daisies next to a line of cars. New cars, empty cars. Past cars; just him, looking down at her, on their own. From a time when he had believed in himself. The dream was familiar in its presence though it never repeated itself; always different, always disturbing, deeply so. And yet, the feelings were still the same. Afterwards he would reflect: Was it a state of things that had been? Or a premonition of things to come?
Patrol Officer Hasse Almquist walked the line dreading what he would find, feet crunching on glass. He saw the car ahead, the one that the truck hit first and the detective had been found wanting on Judgement Day. The detective for whom no lucky break or cerebral insight had ever born the fruit of true discovery, nor the stamina to drive forward through the fog of lethargy and into the light. He looked over to Stefan, climbing off his motorcycle. He walked forwards, slowly, his feet crunching in glass towards the truck lying on its side. It had created a swathe of wreckage, a wake of broken plastic, twisted metal and smashed glass.
Something wasn’t right... the blowing of cold air, moving.
Almquist opened his eyes.
He blinked once, twice, registering the cold. He shivered. He looked up at a bullethole in the windscreen, rain blowing on to it, into it. Through it.
There. A bird perched on a branch, tail twitching, fighting to stay upright in the rain, branch dancing in a hard wind, all fading to some place he no longer cared about. He felt the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He cleaned his teeth with his tongue, moving his hand slowly up to his head, blood coating his fingers in warm stickiness. He moved his hand downwards, to where it ran over his cheeks, cooling him in the wind, filling his temporary confined world with insight. And loss, a momentary opening in lumbering clouds coasting on invisible rails, a little sunshine filtering through to caress weary face. He turned towards it, fighting the resistance of pain, like a dried paintbrush dipped in a pot of liquid gold.
We think we are in control. But we are not.
They ran past the lines of trashed cars, people crying, moaning; some screaming. Chaos, all around. The first car they passed was a heap of twisted metal. The smell of petroleum and hot metal mingled with burnt rubber and blood; always blood. And glass, everywhere fragments of glass. Almquist stepped up to the passenger side first. What he saw made him sick. It was on the road, mingling with the oil. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, looking to his colleague. He was standing by another car, looking inside, shaking his head. The car had been ripped into two pieces. Of the front part, there wasn’t much left of the passenger, he could already see that from ten paces away. He prepared himself and walked over to the driver’s side.
He was still alive.
‘Is it bad?’ The driver breathed, in pain, eyes desperate for answers Almquist knew wouldn’t come.
The steering wheel had smashed into him, his midriff an indescribable mess. His arms were trapped, and he couldn’t turn his head. What could he tell him? I’m sorry sir, but it looks seriously bad. Almquist was calm. He crouched down next to him. Then he reached forwards, through the broken safety glass of the window and took his hand. ‘The ambulance will be here soon,’ he said with a reticent voice.
But the ambulance didn’t come soon. Not on that particular day. That day there was a strike. Emergency calls only. Except there was only a quarter of the staff for emergencies on that day. There had been another accident. They went to that one first. No one had told them a truck had turned over at full speed, mowing down thirteen cars as if they were nothing more substantial than just empty beer cans. Four people had already died who could have been saved.
Almquist looked up, nodding to Stefan who had walked to the next car, moving ahead. He knew he ought to join him, be there for the others. But there was the blood and the carnage to think of. That was when he noticed he was holding the hand of a dead man. And still, he spoke to him. ‘It will be all right,’ he said.
Here lies Hasse Almquist. He had it in him, but his timing could have been better, blinded by the absence of ambition.
The explosion threw him to the ground without care or thought, consuming the dog looking for a lost master, Stefan, the lady and most of the remaining survivors.
And his dignity.
Fabian heard the car approach from the north. She had moved position, away from the area of the landslide. She placed her eye to the scope, seeing the open wounds in the ground below torn by a large boulder, debris littering the road, the rain beating down upon her. Cursing deeper than she had ever cursed before she concentrated, searching, focusing.
The car came into sight, skidding, unable to continue. The engine rose in a frenzied pitch, sliding in the mud, forward, then backwards, close to the side of the road. Within, she registered the open mouths in silent anguish, returning her attention to wheels spinning, the vehicle, the men inside, the wheels and the mud, the wind and the rain. An old pickup emerged from nowhere, blocking their retreat.
She swung her rifle across, traversing in an arc. She steadied her scope, the car now leaning over, wheels spinning desperately in reverse, sending a shower of water, mud and gravel into the side of the road. A rear door opened. She placed her finger on the trigger, muscles tensing, forcing herself to breathe, to relax. She swung the scope a little to
her right, her heart missed a beat. She took position, releasing her breath, slowly.
Then it happened.
Ash felt rather than heard it. A sound he recognized, but couldn’t comprehend as he happened to look in Justin’s direction.
Justin opened his door to get out, climbing out into the cold and rain. He was standing, turning to look around for anything he could use to help their situation. Ash sensed his discomfort, looking ahead to the red pickup. He frowned, seeing two shadows, remembering they had nearly lost their lives the day Ulrika was taken. It didn’t feel good, seeing how they were trapped, knowing Justin was vulnerable but feeling powerless in that moment to prevent anything. His premonition became an urgent need to get him safely back inside. He needed to warn Justin and turned to see what he was doing. Justin must have read the look on his face, caught between moving away and seeing Ash had something to say, when his head spun suddenly to the side. Something exited the side of his left temple, his skin and hair exploding outwards in a spurt of blood, followed by the sound of a bullet penetrating and passing through human flesh. Justin’s legs folded, crumpling, his head hitting the edge of the open rear door with a sickening, dull thud, lifeless eyes staring into eternity.