The Farm

by Amy Cross

  “Please God,” she whispered, as she headed after him, “let him change his mind and move us back to London. Let him see that this entire thing is ridiculous.”

  ***

  “Wow!” John Ridley said a few hours later, as he and Paula stood shivering outside the farmhouse and surveyed the vast snow-covered field that ran all the way to the distant train-line. “Don't you just think this entire thing is... wonderful? And exhilarating?”

  “Dad...”

  “Norway. The land of Vikings and ancient gods and...” He paused, as if he was struggling to come up with anything else. “The Nobel prize. Thick jumpers. Am I forgetting anything?”

  “Yes. You're forgetting your sanity.”

  “And salty meat,” he continued. “I can't wait to try the salty meat.”

  Wearing sunglasses to protect her eyes from the vast white swathes of sunlit snow, Paula couldn't deny that the sight was remarkable. It was hard to believe that thanks to selling his printing company, her father had been able to afford not only a farmhouse and a barn, but also a whole load of farming equipment and a huge field, and – so he told her – several other fields nearby. If the proposition wasn't so insane, it might actually be impressive, but she didn't want to admit that, not yet. She was still hoping that he'd realize his colossal mistake and book them both on the first flight back to London.

  “Breathe in that air,” he continued. “Forget your old London air, Paula. This is real, countryside air.”

  “It hurts to breathe in. The temperature is, like, minus a hundred.”

  “It's minus twenty-five,” he told her. “I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.”

  “Great,” she muttered, taking a cautious sniff. “I guess it's a little fresher.”

  “It's better for you. Less crap in your lungs.”

  “I liked the air in London.”

  “It was full of smog.”

  “I like smog.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I happen to like smog a lot. I was born and raised in London, remember? It's still my home and it always will be.” She sighed. “I miss the smog already. I should have brought some in a bottle.”

  “Now you're just being facetious.”

  “How the hell did you even afford all of this?” she asked, taking a step forward before almost slipping on the ice; just about managing to stay upright, she turned to him. “I mean, isn't Norway supposed to be super-expensive, even compared to Britain?” She turned and looked over at the huge barn, with its wooden door hanging by a single hinge, before turning back to her father. “No way you made enough just by selling the company, not to buy an entire goddamn farm!”

  “I got a good deal.”

  “And how did you manage that?”

  “I'm a smooth-talker, remember?”

  “You're not a smooth-talker,” she replied dourly, as her teeth continued to chatter a little, “and anyway, you don't speak a word of Norwegian. Out with it, Dad, what's wrong with this place? No offense, but why was it so cheap that you could afford it? Is it falling apart? Is it on condemned land? It's not radioactive, is it? Did someone dump nuclear waste here?”

  “Paula...”

  “Something,” she said firmly, “is wrong with it. I want to know what.”

  Forcing a faint smile, he seemed on the verge of an answer, but something was clearly holding him back. With every second that passed, it became increasingly apparent that he was hiding something.

  “Spill, Dad.”

  “It has a slight... history.”

  “Go on.”

  “Certain things made it... unattractive to local buyers.”

  “Go on.”

  “Something happened here a long, long, long time ago, that's all. Something...” He paused, as if he was trying to navigate his way through various ways of massaging the truth. “To be honest, it was something a little unpleasant, and you know what people are like. They get superstitious and then, Bob's your uncle, the market value of the place drops a little. It's crazy, really.”

  “How much did it drop?”

  “Enough.”

  “How much?”

  “About two thirds.”

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Good deal, huh?” he continued.

  “So what happened here?” she asked. “Come on, you know I'll find out anyway as soon as we get the internet up and running. Why did no-one else want to buy this place?”

  “Well, it's just... Some girls...”

  She waited for him to finish. “Some girls... what?”

  “It was a little iffy.”

  “Tell me!”

  He paused. “If you must know, three sisters were murdered here.”

  Staring at him, her eyes widened with shock.

  “But that was more than twenty years ago,” he added hurriedly, keen to keep her from panicking, “so it's all water under the bridge, and you really mustn't think that there's any reason to be scared of the place today.”

  He waited for her to reply.

  “Paula?”

  He waited again.

  “Sweetie? Can you... say something?”

  Silence.

  “Awesome,” she replied finally.

  He opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but at the last moment he held back. “Right,” he muttered, unable to hide his confusion at the sudden change in her attitude.

  “How did they die?” she asked, taking off her sunglasses to reveal eyes alight with curiosity. “Were their throats slit? Did they get their guts ripped out and hung like stockings from the trees? That would look so cool in the snow, with all the blood just dripping down!”

  “Um, no, actually. I think they died during the summer.”

  “This is amazing,” she continued, looking over at the white, wooden farmhouse. “Three girls were slaughtered here, right here at our new home? That is the first mildly interesting thing I've learned since we landed.”

  “They weren't slaughtered. They were murdered.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not quite.”

  “You know what I mean.” Stepping toward the farmhouse, she stared up at the windows before turning back to her father. “Okay,” she told him. “At least I have something to look into while I wait for you to admit this is a huge mistake. I need all the details. I need to know their names, I need to know exactly where they died, which rooms, and how it happened, and who did it, and how much blood there was, and whether they were tortured, and whether there were witnesses, and a million other things! How old were they? Where were their parents at the time?”

  “Paula -”

  “For my investigation.”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “I'm gonna look into it,” she continued. “You know I'm into ghosts and stuff like that. Were the murders unsolved? Please say they were unsolved.”

  “They were solved. I think so, anyway. The deaths were linked to the activities of a killer who operated in the area at the time.”

  “They have serial killers in Norway?” she asked. “That's kind of cool. Why didn't you tell me all this stuff sooner? I might have actually enjoyed the flight! Instead you kept going on about the outdoors and skiing and all that crap!”

  “Well -”

  “I'm going to go check inside,” she continued, hurrying past him and tramping through the snow as she headed toward the house, “but tonight you have to tell me everything you know, okay? And you have to get the internet fixed as soon as possible, 'cause I need to do some online research. If three girls were really murdered here, there have to be ghosts! It's, like, the only logical thing!”

  “And that's good, is it?”

  “It's awesome,” she said, making her way across the patch of grass between the barn and the farmhouse. Stopping, she looked up at the windows, and she couldn't help but imagine strange specters and ghostly presences drifting through the rooms. Having seen almost every horror film ever made, she was fully-versed on all the latest theories
about ghosts, and the chance to put some of those theories to the test was too good to pass up.

  “Ghosts are real,” she whispered, “and I'm going to prove it.”

  “I'm going to poke around!” her father called out. “I want to see what we've got here!”

  Ignoring him, Paula made her way onto the wooden porch and then through the door, heading into the farmhouse. She still hated the idea of moving to a Norwegian farm, but at least now she'd found something to fill her time. She knew her father would give up and move them back to London fairly soon, so she figured she just had to ride it out. Stopping in the hallway, she looked around at the bare wooden walls and tried to imagine three little girls being horribly butchered in such a place.

  “Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”

  She waited.

  Silence.

  “I'll find you,” she whispered. “If you're here, I'll make you show yourselves somehow.”

  Chapter Three

  1979

  Sara had no idea how long she'd been following the slowly-drifting body, but she figured it must have been at least two hours. The walking wasn't a problem, though; the problem was that she didn't much like the idea of a dead person in the river, and she was starting to worry that maybe Kari would never ever come back for her.

  Since the body was floating along so slowly, she found herself regularly getting too far ahead and having to stop for a little while so that it'd catch up. Reaching the river's next bend, she turned and saw that the body was bumping along past a patch of mud, but of course it refused to get stuck, which would be by far the most convenient thing. Instead, it simply continued to drift, finally reaching Sara and then floating on past.

  “Just stop,” she muttered, trying not to let her frustration bubble over. “You were stuck before, why can't you get stuck again?”

  Turning, she looked back the way she'd come. Late afternoon sunlight was filtering through the tall pines, leaving long shadows that seemed to reach down the hill toward the river like scores of shaded fingers. Apart from the distant rustle of the treetops, the only sound came from Sara herself as she sighed, before she realized that she should probably check to see if anyone was coming back for her.

  “Kari!” she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth for extra volume. “I'm over here! Kari!”

  She waited, hoping against hope for a response.

  Silence.

  “What's taking you so long?” she whined, figuring that the run back to the farm shouldn't have taken any longer than thirty minutes.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she suddenly panicked as she realized she could no longer see the body, but when she ran to the river's next bend she saw to her relief that all was in order, and that the corpse was just bumping along with the current as usual.

  “This stinks,” she muttered, resuming her walk. “I bet -”

  Stopping suddenly, she saw something dark on the riverbank up ahead, with flies buzzing around what appeared to be the corpse of a small animal. Taking a few cautious steps forward, she peered at the remains and saw sections of bone sticking out from a mass of torn flesh and fur. Edging even closer, she gasped as she realized that the fur was dark brown and that the corpse had most likely belonged to a baby deer; its head was poking out to one side, with a dead, beady black eye staring toward the river. Sara looked around, but there was no sign of any other deer, so she stepped closer and scrunched her nose as she saw that flies were crawling all over the carcass, no doubt laying their horrible little eggs that would eventually turn into maggots.

  “Gross,” she whispered, before turning to watch as the dead man floated on past. For a moment, she realized that the parts of him she couldn't see – his face, his torso, most of the front of his body and the bits under his clothes – were probably even more disgusting than the deer, especially since he'd been in the water for a while. Still, she was more certain than ever that his white clothes were exactly like the kind of uniform her mother wore to work at the hospital in Oslo.

  She looked back down at the dead deer, and suddenly she realized she could smell something strange. Edging closer, she leaned down, waving away the flies as she got her first proper sniff of death. She knew she should be horrified, of course, but she found the whole process of decomposition to be strangely fascinating, and there was a part of her that actually wanted to take the dead deer home and put it somewhere she could keep an eye on it, so she could note all the different stages as the animal rotted. Still, she was aware that other people thought she was strange, and the last thing she wanted was to give them any more ammunition. She already felt as if, compared to Elizabeth and Kari, she was regarded as the 'weird' member of the family.

  Stepping over the deer, she waved more flies away, before glancing at the river and seeing that the corpse was getting ahead again.

  “Hey!” she shouted, running to catch up. “Wait for me! Why are you so -”

  Hearing a noise nearby, she turned, momentarily hopeful that her sister had finally arrived with help. As she looked around, however, she realized there was no-one in sight, even though she'd definitely heard footsteps for a few seconds, trampling through the undergrowth.

  Slowly, she felt a chilly sensation rising through her body, as the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up. On and off since being left alone, she'd been getting a strong sensation of being watched, and now that sensation was stronger than ever.

  “Hello?” she said cautiously.

  Silence.

  “Kari?” she continued, taking a step forward before thinking better of it and stopping. “Mamma? Pappa?”

  Silence.

  “My name's Sara Olesun,” she said, figuring that if there was someone nearby, it had to be someone she knew. After all, not many strangers ever came to the area near her parents' farm. “I live at the Bondalen farm near the Oslo road, I...”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Silence.

  And then suddenly the sound of a twig snapping behind her.

  Turning, she expected to see a figure, but there was still no-one around, even though...

  “Hello?” she said again, suddenly aware that the sunlight seemed to have dimmed slightly, making everything seem a shade darker. “I know someone's here,” she continued, watching the nearby trees, convinced that she'd see movement at any moment. “I'm friendly. If you want to come out, it's okay. If you're lost, maybe I can help.”

  She waited.

  After a moment, she heard the treetops rustling again, and as she looked up she realized she could hear wings beating again. Still, there was no sign of the eagle – or whatever it was – that she'd been hearing intermittently for the past few hours.

  “Are you following me?” she whispered, still staring up before suddenly realizing that she'd forgotten all about the body in the river.

  Looking at the water, she saw that the body was gone again. She hurried along the riverbank, but there was still no sign of the corpse when she got to the next turn so she ran on, starting to panic at the thought that maybe Kari would come back soon and be angry at her for losing the corpse. Fortunately, when she reached the next turn, she saw that the body was still floating along, not going any faster or slower than before, just bobbing gently with the current.

  “I wish you'd slow down,” she muttered, before turning to look back along the path. There was still no sign of anyone, but she figured maybe someone had simply been passing through and hadn't wanted to talk. After all, there were a few quiet, solitary people living in the area, and she knew that some of them preferred not to say hello unless they were really backed into a corner. Some people, she'd worked out, were just strange and liked to keep themselves to themselves forever and ever.

  Sighing, she turned to follow the body again, only to find that someone was standing right behind her. Looking up at the man's face, her eyes widened in horror.

  Later, people claimed to have heard Sara Olesun's scream from as far away as the town of Widmo, several
miles to the south.

  Chapter Four

  Today

  “Awesome sauce,” Paula muttered, standing at the top of the stairs and looking around at the various doors, some of which were open and some of which were closed. “Plenty of room for ghosts.”

  She paused for a moment, listening to the silence. A few seconds later, she heard a faint banging outside. Hurrying to the window, she looked out and saw her father opening the huge wooden doors at the top of the barn, which was split into three distinct levels. Figuring that he was busy exploring rusty old farming equipment, she turned and looked back across the landing for a moment. The house was still cold, and her father seemed to have forgotten his promise to get one of the wood-burning stoves up and running, so Paula could see her breath every time she exhaled.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  Nothing.

  Not even a hint of a presence.

  “Is anyone here?” she continued, daring to speak a little more loudly. “My name is Paula Ridley and if there's anyone here from the spirit world, I'd love the chance to meet you.”

  She waited.

  Suddenly she felt a little stupid, as if she needed to try a more subtle approach. Taking her phone from her pocket, she brought up the ghost-hunting app she'd downloaded a few minutes earlier, and then raised the phone. The app was overlaying various readings on the screen as the camera tracked across the landing, although Paula was starting to think that she'd wasted forty-nine krone.

  “Don't be afraid to let me know you're here,” she continued, making her way to one of the doors and looking into a large, wooden-walled room with a few of her father's items already stacked in the corner. She gave the app another chance, before sticking her phone back into her pocket. “I'm cool with ghosts and stuff. Maybe keep out of my father's way, but I for one would welcome the chance to commune with anyone who's around. I could be the first person in the world who proves beyond doubt that ghosts exist.”