by Amy Cross
Finally, she picked her way past the snow and reached the covered area, where her ice-cold bare feet – almost numb by now – fell upon muddy ground covered in soil, brick-dust and old twigs.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice echoing differently now, sounding closer. Rubbing her arms for warmth, she stepped forward cautiously, eying the shadows with suspicion. “Are you okay? I can help you, but you need to let me know where you are.”
She waited, and finally she realized she could hear sobs coming from a little further along, past the pile of old wooden pallets and a small, rusty tractor.
“Hey,” she continued, too terrified to pay attention to the warning signals her body was already sending up to her brain about the effects of the cold. “It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you.”
Getting closer to the sobbing sound, she still couldn't see exactly where it was coming from, only that it was somewhere beyond the piles of tarpaulin that seemed to have been thrown over God-knows-what and abandoned long ago. She made her way cautiously, barefoot and shivering, until she spotted a dark shape at the foot of one of the walls, and she realized that there was a hole that seemed to lead under the barn, and that seemed to be where the sobbing sound was coming from.
“Hello?” she said, stopping a few meters away. “Is someone in there?”
The sobbing continued unabated, as if whoever it was, they hadn't heard the question.
Glancing across the field for a moment, she saw streetlights in the distance and a row of dark houses. It was possible, she figured, that some kids had run out to play in the middle of the night, although in the back of her mind she was also thinking about the story her father had told her, about the girls who had died.
“Hey,” she continued, stepping closer, past a row of wooden pallets. “My name's Paula. Are you okay down there?”
The sobbing seemed to slow slightly.
Reaching the hole in the wall, Paula crouched down and peered into the darkness. She couldn't see much, but she could tell that the hole was small, barely big enough for anyone to crawl inside. She reached out with her trembling hands, but she held back at the last moment, scared to reach through in case there was a wild animal down there.
“Hello?” she said, leaning closer but still not able to see anything in the darkness. “Are you okay?”
She waited. The sobbing had stopped, but she could hear someone breathing unsteadily.
“Hello?” She leaned even closer. “Are you -”
Suddenly a girl lunged at her from the hole, her face covered in blood and thick, glistening wounds, and her eyes filled with panic. She shouted a few words in Norwegian – it sounded like “Help me” - and reached out with her frozen blue hands, digging her nails into Paula's face and then clawing at her skin. She was still shouting, as if she was desperately trying to tell her something.
Screaming, Paula fell back. She watched for a fraction of a second as the little girl reached for her again, and then she scrambled to her feet and ran along the side of the barn, desperate to get away. Rounding the far corner and reaching the road, she raced out onto the ice and slipped, slamming down hard and sliding a few feet before coming to a halt. Panicking, she noticed the flashing orange light that was suddenly all around, but it wasn't until she got to her feet and heard the loud grinding sound that she realized something was approaching.
Turning, she saw that a huge snowplow was bearing down on her, too late to stop.
***
“Jesus Christ,” her father muttered a few minutes later, as they sat in the kitchen and he examined the cuts on her legs. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I told you,” she replied, her voice tense with the effort to keep from bursting into tears, “I heard someone out there!”
“So you just wandered out wearing next-to-nothing?”
“I panicked.”
“And then you threw yourself in front of a goddamn plow?”
“I was -” Gasping with pain, she looked down and saw that he was using a swab to clean one of her wounds. “I guess I wasn't thinking straight. I slipped and fell, it was all...” Pausing, she realized that the whole thing felt like a dream now; in fact, she was starting to doubt parts of what had happened, as if maybe she'd been in a half-dream state. She didn't want to admit that, not yet, but the whole thing just seemed so implausible. Suddenly the idea of hunting for ghosts around the farm felt more real, and a little less enjoyable.
“You're lucky you managed to get out the way of that thing,” her father pointed out. “You wouldn't have won an argument with a 7,000lb snow-plow. You know that, right?”
“It barely even caught my shoulder,” she replied, moving her left arm stiffly up and down, and wincing in the process. “I think it's okay. I don't have to go to hospital, do I?”
“It's a miracle,” he muttered, setting the swab on the table, “but... No, everything seems fairly superficial. I'm just worried about the scratches on your face. You've had all your shots, but still... How did they happen again? If it was rusty nails, you might still need to get checked out.”
“It wasn't rusty nails.”
“Then what was it? And cut out the crap about a spooky little girl and a hole in the ground. Tell me the truth.”
“Have you been into the barn yet? I mean the bottom part, with the broken door?”
“Not yet,” he sighed. “Why? I told you, I'll take a look tomorrow.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but for a moment the memory of the little girl's face seemed to keep her from saying a word. A moment later, there was a knock at the door and she realized the driver of the snowplow was back. As her father went to let him in, she grabbed the blanket and quickly wrapped it around herself. She was shivering, not just because the kitchen was cold but also because she remembered the feel of the little girl's frozen hand, and the ice patterns on her terrified face.
“Thank you so much,” her father said, shaking the driver's hand as he led him through to the kitchen. “As you can see, she's shaken but okay.”
Dressed in a huge, padded blue one-piece uniform, with sturdy boots on his feet and a face-mask covering his features, the snowplow driver seemed like something from a cheap sci-fi movie. Snow was falling from the creases in his uniform as he stopped in the doorway, and Paula could see nothing in his goggles except her own reflection. The driver began to remove his gloves, finally revealing his hands, before reaching up and slipping the mask away from his face. After taking off his goggles and pulling down his fur-lined hood, he finally showed himself.
Shocked, Paula realized that far from being the old, gnarled man she'd expected, the driver was actually young, maybe in his early twenties, with piercing blue eyes and cheekbones as high as Everest. As he reached up and ran a hand through his thick, matted black hair, he seemed to eschew a kind of effortless, but highly engaging, sense of rugged hotness that Paula couldn't help but notice.
“You're not hurt, are you?” he asked her, speaking English with a heavy accent.
She shook her head, before reaching down and adjusting the blanket, suddenly extra-keen to make sure she was properly properly covered.
“Just superficial scratches,” her father explained. “God knows how she didn't get properly hurt.”
“I don't mind admitting,” the driver continued, turning to him, “I thought the worst back there for a moment. It's very hard to see the road from up in the cab, so at first I... Well, I had flashbacks to the time I hit a moose. All that blood all over the front of my plow, it wasn't pretty. I had to wipe it all off. I was worried the same thing had happened again. Only this time with your daughter, obviously.” He reached out to shake his hand. “Hans-Sebastian, but you can call me Sebastian. Most people do. Or Hans. Or just the snowplow guy.” Once he'd shaken her father's hand, he turned to shake Paula's. “I'm very glad I didn't run you over. You wouldn't have survived if I had. You wouldn't even have stood a chance, you'd have been completely mashed up. Like the moose was that time.”
“I took a look around behind your barn,” he explained, turning back to her father, “and I didn't find anything out of the ordinary. I took a look in the hole at the bottom of the wall, but it just seemed like every other hole I've ever seen. I even got the torch out of my cab and had an extra poke down there with a stick, but there really isn't anything. I suppose there might have been a fox earlier, sometimes they try to hide during the winter.”
“It wasn't a fox,” Paula said firmly. “I saw her face, it was a little girl.”
“Well she's not there now,” Sebastian replied, glancing at her. “Only a lunatic would be outside in the middle of a blizzard like this.” He smiled. “Or someone driving a snowplow, obviously.”
“I know what I saw.”
“I'm sure you do,” he replied.
“You imagined the whole thing,” her father said firmly.
“I'm sure,” she told him, although doubts were starting to grow in her mind. “I mean, I think I am.” For a moment, she felt as if the whole thing could have been some kind of lucid waking dream, but then she remembered the scratches. Reaching up, she could feel the lines on her cheeks, and she shuddered for a moment as she remembered the little girl reaching up from the hole and digging her nails into her face. If it had been a dream, where had the scratches come from?
“Do you want some coffee?” her father asked, turning to the counter and flicking the switch on the side of the kettle. “It's just instant right now, we're still getting set up. Or tea?”
“It's fine,” Sebastian replied, “I have coffee in my cab. I don't think I'd be able to get through the night without it.”
“Must be lonely,” her father said.
“I work from sunset to sunrise,” he replied, “just plowing along. Someone has to keep the roads clear, and you get used to it after a while.” He glanced at Paula. “I'm sorry if I wake you up when I go past your window, I tend to go along this road several times on really bad nights. I've always thought it's kind of spooky.”
“The road?” she asked.
“Well, that and...”
“This place?”
He smiled again.
“Have you ever seen anything?” she asked. “When you were going past the farm, I mean.”
At this, he seemed to pause for a moment. “No, not really,” he said evasively. “I mean, nothing much. From up there in the cab of my plow, it's hard to make much out at all.”
“But you've seen something, haven't you?”
“Just kids, playing in the snow.”
“At night?”
He nodded.
“I don't think kids play here,” she replied, “especially not at night. If they do, they're not the kind of kids who leave footprints.”
“Well...” He paused. “I see a lot of strange things when I'm out plowing at night on these lonely roads. If I stopped to investigate everything that seemed a little off, I'd never get any work done.”
“But this place in particular,” Paula continued, warming to the theme. “You've seen children here? At night, when it's supposed to be abandoned?”
“Leave the man alone,” her father butted in.
“Just shadows, really,” Sebastian told her. “Maybe two of them, but maybe it was nothing, maybe it was just...”
“Foxes?” she suggested.
A wry smile crossed his lips.
“What about tea?” her father asked. “Something to eat? I feel bad just letting you go without something for your trouble. Apart from getting interrogated by my daughter, that is.”
“You can stay for a few minutes, can't you?” Paula asked Sebastian, pulling a chair out for him. “I'd really like to talk to you some more about this place.”
“I...” He paused, seemingly tempted, before checking his watch. “Another time, maybe. The kommune will be on my back if I don't get all the roads cleared on time. If you ever need anything else, though, just let me know some time. But please, don't do it by jumping out in front of the snowplow. There are other ways to get my attention.”
“So the children you saw -”
“Paula,” her father said firmly, “let the man get back to work!”
“Can I ask just one thing?” Sebastian continued. “You two... I mean...” He paused. “Please don't be offended, but when I heard someone had bought this farm, I assumed... I mean, I didn't think... Is it just the two of you?”
Still wrapped in her blanket, Paula nodded.
“Seriously?” Sebastian asked.
“My father's insane,” she told him, “and I'm just waiting for him to give up so we can go home.”
“Paula just hasn't bought into the dream yet,” her father added, patting her on the shoulder. “She will.”
“It's not a dream,” she sighed. “It's a nightmare. We can't run a farm.”
“Of course you can,” Sebastian told her, with a smile. “You just have to get your hands dirty, that's all. You can do anything, if you put your mind to it.”
As her father led their guest back to the door and showed him out, she sat silently in the kitchen, replaying the events of the night over and over. She didn't want to admit that she might have dreamed the whole thing with the little girl, since she thought that made her seem weak-minded, but at the same time she was starting to think that the idea of ghosts suddenly wasn't so appealing after all, not now that she was doubting her own sanity. Hearing the front door swing shut, she looked over to see her father returning to the kitchen.
“I'm sorry,” she told him.
“It's okay. Come on, we should both get some sleep. We have to be up early for that appointment at school.”
“But you heard what he said, right? About seeing children in the yard sometimes?”
“I'm don't think he was quite sure about that.”
“But Dad -”
“Paula, can we please drop it? You're starting to sound really obsessed, and that's not healthy. There are no ghosts, not here and not anywhere.”
She opened her mouth to argue with him, but finally she realized there was no point. She knew why he didn't want to accept the possibility, and she figured she couldn't change his mind, not yet.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Fine. Whatever.”
A few minutes later, after making her way up to her room, Paula looked out the window and saw the flashing orange lights on Sebastian's plow. She watched as the vehicle sat next to the barn for a few minutes, and just as she was starting to wonder why he didn't get going again, she spotted him walking through a patch of moonlight and she realized he'd gone back to check the hole one more time. Climbing up into the cab, he finally started to slowly drive away, clearing the road and sending a huge cloud of snow up to one side. She kept watching until he'd disappeared into the distance, and then a little longer as his plow's flashing lights vanished from sight, and she couldn't help wondering how he managed to stay sane, spending night after night out there all alone on the empty country roads. Then again, she figured some people were just solitary by nature and could handle that kind of situation better. Sebastian seemed like that kind of person.
Climbing into bed and shivering a little, waiting to get warm, she realized there was no way she'd be able to get to sleep. All she could do was think about the frozen little girl in the hole, and about the sensation of fingernails digging through her flesh, and about the feeling that something had been trying to get her to go into the barn.
Chapter Thirteen
1979
“No!” Kari screamed, lunging for the door before feeling a pair of arms around her waist, pulling her back down and slamming her face-first against the shed's muddy floor.
“Come on,” said a male voice above her, “don't make a fuss.”
She opened her mouth to call for help, but a large, dirty hand was quickly clamped over her face, reducing her scream to a muffled sob. As
the hand pressed harder, it tilted her head back, and she saw a dark shape leaning over her. Behind her back, her wrists were bound with thick rope, and he'd done the same to her ankles.
“You shouldn't have come here,” the voice continued, “is what you shouldn't have done. Why did you come, anyway? I didn't want anyone up here, I made damn sure not to attract any attention. I like being alone!”
She tried to tell him to go to hell, to tell him that he was on her father's property, but she didn't get the chance; he turned her around and pushed her down against the floor, while climbing onto her and sitting on her chest.
“You're pretty,” he continued, leaning closer. “Really pretty, but... I suppose you know that already. I'm sure all the boys come to you with flowers, pawing at your dress...”
As soon as she saw his face, Kari froze in terror. A large chunk was missing from one side of his head, as if someone had sliced off a good third and then crudely sewn the wound shut with thick, rusty stitches that looked to have turned the surrounding flesh red raw. Worse than that, though, was the look in the man's eyes: heavy and dark and ringed, they seemed to bulge out slightly from his head, as if the pressure within was too much, an effect that was made worse by his broad, unhinged grin.
“Do you want to know my name?” he asked, leaning even close, until foul-smelling saliva dripped from his lips onto her face. “I know lots of secrets. Maybe I can tell you some if you promise to be good. Can you do that? Can you be good?”
With his hand still clamped firmly over her face, all she could manage was a faint whimper.
“They call me Death,” he continued. “I know you might find that hard to believe, but it's true.”
Sobbing, she tried to cry for help, but he pushed down harder against her face in response.