The Mist

by Ragnar Jónasson

  ‘Not a single thing, I’m afraid,’ Einar said with a grin. ‘We’ve never got round to installing a generator. They’re just too expensive.’

  Erla had the feeling he was getting a secret kick out of teasing the city boy. She watched Leó sitting there sipping his coffee. It would have been so easy to slip a couple of her sleeping pills into his cup, so she could rest easier tonight. She regretted not having thought of it before … As it was, she doubted she would shut her eyes at all.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ Leó said, although he hadn’t finished it, ‘and for the hospitality. I’m very grateful to you both.’

  ‘No need to rush off to bed,’ said Einar. ‘Erla and I are enjoying having some company for a change.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so, but I’m fading a bit, to be honest. And it is St Thorlákur’s Mass, after all. I expect you had other plans.’ He smiled. ‘Doing the last-minute Christmas preparations and all that.’

  No plans at all, Erla thought to herself. She had long ago got everything ready, with no help from Einar, who, despite what he said, was fairly indifferent to the occasion. Most days were alike to him and he could hardly be bothered to vary his routine for Christmas, Easter, or any other high days or holidays, for that matter. They never went anywhere and it was always left to Erla to make an effort. There were times when she’d considered doing nothing at all for Christmas and waiting to see if he even noticed. If he’d say anything if she didn’t ask him to cut down a fir tree; if she just served up blood sausage on the twenty-fourth and didn’t give him any presents.

  ‘Do stay up a bit longer,’ Einar said. ‘At least finish your coffee.’

  ‘Thanks, I will,’ Leó replied, though he looked as if he’d rather be elsewhere. His gaze wandered round the room. Erla wasn’t sure if he was looking for something in particular or just trying to work out an escape route from this oppressive threesome.

  ‘How big’s this house?’ he asked abruptly, as if in a rather desperate attempt to hit on a subject to talk about.

  ‘Big? How many square metres, you mean?’ Einar asked. ‘Oh, I can’t remember. It’s not something I’ve had to think about recently. After all, it’s not as if I’m planning to sell. We mean to grow old here, Erla and I.’ He threw her a smile, but she didn’t return it.

  ‘All on the one floor, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, though we do have a small attic.’

  ‘Oh, right, a loft for storage, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, box rooms, and a little room where we put up the youngsters who come to help out on the farm, and the odd paying guest as well.’

  ‘In that case, why don’t you put me up there? I’d be less in your way.’

  ‘No, no, out of the question. There’s no radiator up there. You’ll be much more comfortable where you are now. We usually keep it private and put visitors upstairs, but you’ve been through a rough time and we’re not going to stick you upstairs in the cold. We don’t want to risk you catching a chill. It’s our duty to look after people who get caught out in storms or lost on the moors. You could have died of exposure, you do realize that? Going out like that with no proper equipment and unused to conditions in the highlands … I’m sure your friends realize they’re to blame. They should have known better and made sure everyone in the group was equipped with a compass, a map, and so on. It was extremely reckless of them.’ Einar’s voice had thickened with disapproval.

  Leó shook his head and said charitably: ‘I wouldn’t want to blame them, they’re good guys. It’s my fault, really. I should have taken more care. After all, I’m responsible for myself. Ultimately, we’re all responsible for ourselves, aren’t we?’

  ‘I certainly believe that,’ Einar said, but Erla remained tight-lipped.

  ‘Well, anyway, you’ve got a charming home, very snug,’ Leó went on.

  ‘Yes, we’re happy here,’ Einar said.

  ‘I assume you’ve got a cellar as well?’

  ‘A cellar? Oh, right, yes, a cellar. Anyone would think you wanted to buy the place!’ Einar laughed so hard at his own joke that he almost spilt coffee on his checked shirt.

  ‘Oh, ha, ha, no, it’s a bit too remote for me. No, I’m just interested. Just making conversation.’

  ‘There’s nothing of interest down there, just a freezer and food supplies, and so on,’ Erla said in a low voice, glaring at their uninvited guest.

  ‘Er, OK. I wasn’t actually planning to go down there,’ Leó replied, trying to make a joke of it.

  He looked at her searchingly, but she averted her gaze, shifting it to the window instead, where she could see the sitting room mirrored in the glass.

  ‘Did you stop by at Anna’s house on your way here?’ she asked, apropos of nothing, watching his reflection in the window.

  ‘Erla, please –’ Einar began, but she cut across him, determined to get to the bottom of this.

  ‘Did you stop by her place?’ she asked again.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t understand the question.’

  ‘Anna, our daughter. I told you she lives in the next house, twenty minutes or so down the road. You passed it on your way here, didn’t you?’ As she said it, she felt a sudden, sickening fear that something might have happened to her daughter, that this stranger might have hurt her somehow …

  ‘No, I’ve, er, already told you. I came straight here. I didn’t pass any other houses on the way.’

  Erla was now convinced that Leó was lying to them about who he was and what he was doing here. She was sure he’d come here to harm them, in one way or another.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she said fiercely. ‘I saw which direction you came from, Leó. I saw your tracks in the snow. You came past Anna’s house and, if you really were looking for help, you’d have stopped there.’

  ‘I … I don’t remember seeing any other house, but then I was pretty far gone at the time. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice it.’

  ‘Did you knock on her door?’

  ‘No, I came straight here. Is there any chance you … might have misinterpreted my footprints or something?’ His gaze shifted to the window. ‘Why don’t we go out and check? Because I’m telling you the absolute truth.’

  ‘Of course he’s telling us the truth, Erla love,’ Einar said. But she could hear from his voice that she had sown a seed of doubt in his mind. ‘Why don’t we turn the radio on again. We don’t want to miss the Christmas greetings to friends and family.’

  Erla ploughed on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s far too late to go outside now, as well you know. All the tracks will have been buried under a fresh layer of snow. But there’s only one road leading here and it goes past Anna’s house, and I know … I know …’

  At that moment the electricity went.

  X

  Hulda stood on the street corner in the raw winter weather, listening to a girls’ choir vying with the wind to sing about Christmas, Christmas everywhere. The girls were all thickly wrapped up, as Hulda was herself, and seemed determined not to let the miserable weather spoil things. Hulda was carrying two shopping bags, containing a book and a record, both for Dimma. It was past 10 p.m. and the shops would soon be closing for the holiday.

  She was alone. It wasn’t how she had envisaged the evening. The plan had been to go out for a meal, then enjoy the festive atmosphere in town with Jón and Dimma, but nothing had come of it. Dimma had flatly refused to leave the house and once again locked herself in her room. Hulda and Jón had stood outside her door for a long time, trying to talk her round, arguing with her, even shouting at her, but nothing had worked. She wouldn’t hear of going out.

  ‘You go, Hulda love,’ Jón had said at last. ‘Relax, have fun. I’ll stay with Dimma. Go and buy her something nice from both of us.’

  Hulda had hesitated before eventually giving in to his encouragement. Jón could be very persuasive. Besides, she reasoned to herself, the main purpose of going into town was to get something for Dimma. She would just have to try to mak
e the best of a bad situation. This phase had to pass soon. Dimma was bound to be in a better, more cheerful frame of mind tomorrow. Back to her old happy, good-natured self.

  Hulda walked up Laugavegur high street as if in a daze, trying but failing to get into the Christmas spirit. The jostling crowds pushed and shoved, and the dismal weather got on her nerves. Perhaps what the three of them needed was to get away, maybe even go abroad, somewhere warm and sunny. It might be worth discussing with Jón whether they could afford a holiday in the New Year, since, as far as she could gather, his business was going well. Perhaps a new environment would have a positive effect on Dimma and drag her out of her current downward spiral. And perhaps Hulda and Jón should work a bit less and devote more time to their daughter.

  Hulda knew she got too engrossed in her job. But even as she acknowledged this, her thoughts returned to the missing girl, Unnur. The case she had failed to solve – so far, at least. It was almost certainly too late to save Unnur now, if it ever had been possible. But Hulda was troubled by niggling doubts about whether she had done enough. The police inspector in Selfoss had speculated about the possibility that the girl had got into a car with the wrong man and been attacked and murdered. If he was right, it meant her killer was still at large.

  Hulda breathed in the chilly winter air and, turning on her heel, set off walking rapidly back down Laugavegur.

  She had to try to get through to her daughter and help her pull herself out of this rut.

  XI

  Anna.

  Erla thought about her as she lay there in the pitch-black bedroom, worrying that her daughter might not be able to walk over tomorrow if the weather was as bad as the forecast had said. She was still wide awake but could hear Einar snoring away at her side. He was always so untroubled; so different from her.

  How could he sleep while that man was under their roof?

  Leó – if that was his real name – had invaded the sanctuary of their home, and at Christmas too. The power cut had let him off the hook for now. There had been no point pursuing the conversation after the house had been plunged into darkness. Leó had been badly shaken – she could hear it in his voice – whereas she and Einar had reacted with prompt and practised ease, confident about where they could lay hands on candles and restore a little light to the sitting room. The upshot was that they had all retired to bed early. Once Einar had dropped off, she had got out of bed, tiptoed across the room and locked the door. They hadn’t done that for years, but fortunately the key was left in the lock out of habit.

  Although she had pulled the curtains to shut out the night, she could feel the snow building up relentlessly outside. When they first retired to bed, she had lit a candle on her bedside table and pretended to read an old Agatha Christie while Einar turned his back and went to sleep. She had read the book before and her thoughts were distracted, racing around in her head, incapable of focusing on the black letters on the white page. She had let the candle burn right down until it went out with a hiss of hot wax and darkness closed in around her. For all she knew, the power might have come back on by now, but she doubted it.

  It was more likely that they would have to do without electricity for the whole of the Christmas holiday – it had happened before. But that didn’t really matter; all that really mattered was getting that man out of their house and out of their lives.

  Although she couldn’t see anything, she could hear the wind and feel the cold sneaking in through the gaps in the window frame. The roaring of the gale was loud enough to keep those unaccustomed to it awake, but not her and Einar. It was such a frequent occurrence in this godforsaken spot that they were inured to the noise. She listened, doing her best to block out the weather and attune her ears to what was happening nearer at hand, trying to hear their visitor through the thin wooden partition wall, but as far as she could tell, everything was quiet indoors.

  She lay there absolutely still, hardly breathing, alert to the faintest sound.

  Lay on her back with her eyes wide open, staring blindly at the ceiling.

  Sometimes, when she was going through one of her bad patches, she lay like this half the night or more, wondering if their life would have been better if they’d moved to Reykjavík; if Einar could have cut his damned umbilical cord and sold the farm, escaping the ancestral yoke. And sometimes, very occasionally, she let herself wonder if life would have been better if she’d never met Einar at all … But the answer to that was more complicated, because without Einar there would have been no Anna. It was pointless brooding like this, but she did it anyway, the prisoner of her own memories, or rather the prisoner of her own mind.

  There was another candle in the drawer of the bedside table. Erla reached for it now, groping for the matches in the darkness. She couldn’t go on like this; she had to have a little light. She sat up in bed but, of course, Einar didn’t stir. He slept the sleep of the carefree, of the self-contained. Erla struck a match, held it to the wick until it caught, then listened. Since there was no question of going to sleep, she resolved to wait it out.

  But the tiredness was there underneath; however wide awake she was now, there was always a risk she might doze off. In an attempt to stave off drowsiness, she started thinking about her relatives in Reykjavík. She had little contact with them nowadays. Really, she was stuck in this marriage for the simple reason that she had nowhere else to turn. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she ever left and moved back to the city. In spite of everything, she had put down roots here.

  She emerged from this familiar train of thought to find herself still sitting up in bed. Closing her eyes, she listened to the silence indoors. Slowly, she became aware of the low humming of the house, which seemed to grow more insistent with every moment that passed. Then there was the rhythmic ticking of the alarm clock, so shockingly loud in the quietness, and seeming louder every minute. The roaring of the wind, the humming in the walls, the ticking of the clock, they all merged together until the noise grew unbearable, like a searing pain in her ears. She opened her eyes wide, trying to shake off the feeling.

  And then she heard something.

  Something real this time.

  There was no mistaking it: somebody was moving around in the house.

  Of course, there was only one person it could be. She heard the squeaking of a door, the muffled creaking of the floorboards. It was impossible to creep around noiselessly in this old house, but Leó was trying to do just that, and would probably have got away with it if Erla had been out for the count, like Einar.

  Where was the bastard going?

  She heard squeaking again, another door. Don’t overreact, she told herself. He’s probably just going to the toilet. But she could have sworn the noise came from the attic. Had he gone upstairs? For a moment she seriously considered tiptoeing out of their room and sneaking up on him to give him a shock. But she didn’t have the guts. Although she knew the house like the back of her hand, had done her best to learn to recognize all its idiosyncratic noises and could find her way around it even with the lights off, this time the cause of her fear was a flesh-and-blood person. The last thing she wanted was to risk encountering him in the dark.

  What she ought to do was wake Einar, but she hesitated, unsure how he would react. Besides, he might make a noise as he stirred, and there was a risk that would scare Leó back into his room.

  Getting out of bed, she padded over to the door and listened, then turned the handle with infinite care to ensure that it was locked without making a betraying rattle. It was, of course. The certainty brought a rush of relief. She was safe in here.

  All was quiet again. She couldn’t hear anything to indicate that Leó was still moving around or to help her pinpoint his whereabouts, but in spite of that she was certain he’d left his room and hadn’t yet returned to it. She stood motionless in the chilly bedroom, the shadows moving and dancing in the flickering candlelight, waiting. Every now and then she glanced back at the bed, where Einar was sleeping as if
he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Then she heard it again. She pressed her ear to the door and, yes, she recognized that succession of creaks: Leó was descending the stairs from the attic; she was sure of it now. So she’d been right. His footsteps approached stealthily along the passage and her heart missed a beat. She didn’t know how long he had been snooping around the house but, as far as she was concerned, things had gone far enough. Without another thought, she walked softly over to the bed. As she did so, she heard more noises, the squeaking of a door, footsteps. She gave Einar a shove but he didn’t immediately stir.

  ‘Einar, Einar,’ she whispered frantically, her breathing fast and shallow. ‘You’ve got to wake up. Right now. Wake up!’

  His eyes flicked open.

  ‘It’s Leó. I can hear him, Einar, I can hear him!’

  Einar blinked, confused, and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Get up!’ she hissed. ‘Quietly.’

  Obediently, he pushed back the covers and got out of bed. ‘What’s the matter, love?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘Why did you wake me?’

  ‘You’ve got to stop him,’ she hissed. ‘It’s Leó! He’s prowling around the house – in the middle of the night!’

  Einar went over to the door and took hold of the handle. ‘It’s locked,’ he whispered, surprised. ‘What the hell? Why’s it locked?’

  ‘I locked it. Because of him.’ She went over to join her husband and softly turned the key so he could open it. He looked out into the passage, with Erla peering over his shoulder. There was nothing to see but darkness.

  ‘Pass me the candle,’ he said, gesturing back at the bedside table.

  Erla did as he asked. Einar looked out of the door again, then ventured into the passage. She waited on tenterhooks in the bedroom.