She called out to her husband again. There was no answer.
She took stock of the situation: the phone wasn’t working, there was a power cut, and with every second Leó was drawing closer.
Why couldn’t he just disappear? Why couldn’t she wake up? Surely this nightmare had to end soon.
It was hard to see anything indoors now that the blizzard had blotted out the last remaining daylight, and she knew from experience that it could take days for the power to be restored. Was she seriously going to have to cower in here for all that time, until Leó had given up and gone? And where, oh, where was Einar?
‘Einar!’ she shouted again: ‘Einar!’ so loudly that she knew her call would carry through the whole house, breaking the sinister silence, piercing the darkness. She waited, straining her ears, for a reply.
‘Einar!’ she shrieked again.
She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor at the end of the passage, where the darkness was absolute. There were no windows nearby; here she could sit in a corner, secure in the knowledge that no one could creep up behind her. She felt weak with fatigue.
There was no sound.
Her thoughts flew to Anna again. There was her old room, the door closed as usual. Unlike the attic room, it was never rented out to travellers. Anna’s room was left untouched. It had been her private refuge until she went away to boarding school. Later, she had moved back to the countryside, not to her old room, but to the neighbouring farmhouse. Erla had been so glad to have her daughter back, even though it was a bit of a trek between the two houses.
She couldn’t see out of any windows from where she was sitting, but she could hear the roaring and whistling of the wind, and sense the storm raging outside, battering the house. Einar had always found weather like this exhilarating and used to remark how cosy it was to listen to the noise of the gale, knowing that they were safe inside, able to watch the elements doing battle from the comfort of home. But then he was a child of nature and belonged to this wild, desolate landscape. She supposed that was the main difference between them.
Where in God’s name was he? Should she call again? Maybe he couldn’t hear her because he had gone to see if she was hiding in the barn.
She couldn’t summon the courage to break the silence again. With every passing second, the chances increased that Leó would have given up and gone away, leaving her in peace.
Curse the power cut. How incredibly unlucky could they get? But what else could she expect? It happened far too often in winter, generally during a storm like this one. Of course, they shouldn’t put up with it, but they had little influence and repairing the power lines to restore electricity to a couple of scattered farms like theirs was never a priority. Anna’s power must be out too; it had to be. She hated the thought of her daughter sitting alone in the dark.
Then there was that business with the phone. That was peculiar. The phone usually worked, whatever happened. Had Einar been right to suspect Leó of tampering with it?
Her shivering subsided a little, but her clothes were wet and clammy with the melting snow and her paralysing fear showed no sign of shifting.
She sat there in the silent house, trying to block out the noise of the gale outside, listening to hear whether Leó had reached the door and was trying to get in.
Oh God, oh God … If he got in, would she be able to spot him in time, in the gathering gloom? She wasn’t sure.
Instinct told her to stay pressed into her corner and wait until the whole thing had blown over.
She closed her eyes again, which wasn’t the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances, but she simply had to try to concentrate on something else, to get her rising panic under control. She made herself think about Anna and Einar. Imagined that it was Christmas Eve and the three of them were here together: she, Einar and Anna. No one else. And that they had finally opened their presents.
She waited and waited, how long for she didn’t know, praying that her wish would come true, but nothing happened.
The urge became too much for her. ‘Einar!’ she shouted, and listened for his answer. There was no reply but the howling of the wind. ‘Einar! Where are you?’
She pushed herself to her feet. It was no good; she would have to search for him, starting indoors. She didn’t dare risk going outside, not yet. She wanted to let the storm die down and give Leó time to give up and go away once he’d realized that he was locked out of the house. But her mind kept presenting her with horrifying images. Einar might be lying out there in the snow, injured. And she had been too much of a gutless coward to go and look for him. Maybe … But with the weather like this and Leó lying in wait, it would be crazy to venture outdoors. She stood in the corner, paralysed with fear and indecision, until finally, slowly, she took a step forwards.
It was then that she heard the knocking.
The sound seemed to reverberate around the house, drowning out the gusts of wind, as if the storm had suddenly died down, so strong was the effect on her.
Her nightmare was coming true.
Or could she have misheard? It was so hard to tell what was imaginary and what was real.
Though her eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom, she put a hand to the wall to steady herself and felt her way along the passage. She had to get closer to the front door to be able to hear properly. She so desperately wanted it to be Einar out there.
She almost jumped out of her skin when the knocking started up again. A series of heavy blows. To Erla, the message was clear: You’re not safe anywhere.
She stood quite still, and time seemed to stand still with her.
A succession of foolishly inconsequential thoughts ran through her head. So much for Christmas Eve this year. No hangikjöt on the table, no carols on the radio, no presents. And no Christmas books. Usually, the thing she looked forward to most was opening the parcel containing her new novel and reading it late into the night by candlelight. The thought briefly cheered her and she almost, for a moment, managed to forget how remote a dream it was, even though she was in her own home, where she had always been safe, until now.
But nothing could be taken for granted any more, and on some level she knew that, after this, nothing would ever be the same again. The only question now was how this evening, this night, would end.
More heavy thuds on the door. She moved closer to the source, as if in a trance; aware of the danger but unable to stop herself.
She craned her head round the corner into the hall and her heart gave such a sickening lurch that she forgot to breathe when she saw the shadow of a face pressed against the coloured glass of the window beside the front door.
She recoiled so fast she almost fell over backwards.
It was him, that bastard; it was him.
But of course it was him; she already knew that. Who else could it be? And yet she had been hoping, against her better judgement, that it was Einar. That Leó had gone away.
There was no mistaking it, even though the coloured glass blurred his outline; she was certain it was Leó.
‘I know you’re in there, Erla, I know you are.’ At last he spoke – or perhaps she just hadn’t been able to hear him until now.
‘The door was unlocked before and now you’ve locked it, so I know you’re there!’ he shouted. ‘Let me in – we need to talk. There’s … something’s happened …’ He broke off, then resumed: ‘I need to know …’
No, she thought, I need to know – I need to know where Einar is.
But she didn’t want to answer. If she did, it would only confirm that she was there, in the house. And for all she knew, he was perfectly capable of breaking the glass panel and reaching in to unlock the door.
He started banging thunderously again, first on the door, then on the window.
Steeling herself, she took a step into the hall, feeling her heart pounding in her chest. She was in uncharted territory. She had to answer. It felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience, as if someone else had
taken the decision for her.
‘What do you want from me?’ she called in a high, thin voice. ‘What is it you want? This is my house. I don’t have to let you in.’
‘Are you going to leave me to die of cold out here?’
‘It … that … that has nothing to do with me,’ she quavered, feeling her courage ebbing away.
He banged on the door so violently that Erla quailed.
‘You have to let me in, Erla.’
‘You don’t get to tell me what to do.’
There was silence.
‘Where’s Einar?’ she called.
No reply.
‘I’ll open the door if you tell me where Einar is,’ she said at last, though she had no intention of keeping her side of the bargain. For all she cared, the bastard could freeze to death on the doorstep. She wasn’t letting him anywhere near her.
The answer was so long in coming that she started to wonder if he was still out there. She felt a crazy hope that he’d gone, she didn’t care where. Gone, never to return. Or that he had been nothing but a figment of her imagination all along …
As if the situation wasn’t bad enough already, the darkness had really got her spooked. Normally, power cuts didn’t have this effect on her, but now she couldn’t bear it; she would have to find a candle. Yes, that was it … There were candles on the dining table. But even as she turned, she heard his voice again.
‘I’ll tell you where he is if you open the door.’
A prickle of fear ran down her spine.
She tried to work out what this meant. Did he know where Einar was? Or was he lying? Had he done something to him – locked him in somewhere, perhaps? Or was Einar still outside looking for her, in the cold and snow?
Facts and conjecture spun in her head until she felt dizzy, no longer sure what was true, disorientated in the gloom, terrified of the man standing outside the door, of the sudden lull, the calm before the storm …
Then her head cleared a little. She began inching her way towards the sitting room, acting as if Leó wasn’t there. She had to get a grip on the situation. Of course he wasn’t going anywhere. Sooner or later, he would break into the house. There was no one to help her; she would have to fend for herself.
Feeling the edge of the dining table, she fumbled over the surface until she found a candle. Matches. Where were the matches? Generally, Einar kept some in his pocket, a habit from back when he used to smoke. But he wasn’t here. And, anyway, he’d given the box to Leó, hadn’t he? She remembered now.
She had to think fast. There was no sound from Leó at the moment and again this fact sent a stab of cold fear through her. Think, she told herself. Both the doors were definitely locked, which meant he couldn’t get in without making a noise.
Wait a minute – hadn’t she seen a box of matches in the kitchen? Above the fridge? She made her way in there, reached up to the shelf and groped along it. For a moment she was afraid she’d been wrong. But no, there was the box. Hurriedly, she pulled out a match and tried to strike it, but her hands were shaking so badly that it wouldn’t light.
Erla tried again, the match rasped and flared, and she raised the small, bright flame carefully, trying to steady her hand, to the candle. Light, at last.
The sight stirred up a fleeting memory of the old days, when Anna was small and the electricity supply had been even more capricious. Family evenings by candlelight had seemed delightful then. More often than not, the three of them had sat down to play cards together – whist had been a favourite – but Einar hadn’t always been in the mood, so mother and daughter used to play together by the soft radiance. That’s what Anna’s childhood had been like, a perpetual struggle with the elements, but then she had gone away to school and Erla had clung to the hope that Anna would break free from the fetters of the past. The relentless hard graft had to end with her and Einar. Erla was determined that their daughter should settle in a town, where life would be that bit easier. But then Anna had announced, out of the blue, that she was moving home to the countryside, still single, still far too young, to take over the neighbouring tenant farm, which also belonged to them. No one had dreamt that anyone would ever move back here, but Anna had wanted to renovate the house and land to prevent it from falling into decay. The house had been a favourite haunt when she was a child and she’d made up her mind that this was where she wanted to live. She would worry about finding a husband and starting a family later. ‘It’ll happen when it happens,’ she had said.
Erla remembered that conversation so well. It was the first time she had ever truly lost her temper with her daughter. She had berated her for her decision to move back home, and been furious with herself for never having said anything to Einar, never having suggested in all seriousness that they should move. Anna’s response had left her stunned. It had come home to her then that her daughter really wanted to live there, that she genuinely loved the district, the moors, the sheep, the weather, all of it. Just like Einar. A chip off the old block … Whereas she herself couldn’t be more different from her daughter. She had never raised the subject with Anna again.
Erla snapped out of her thoughts to find herself still standing there in the kitchen, her eyes dwelling on the flickering flame. Leó had started banging on the door again. He obviously wasn’t going to give up, but it seemed he wasn’t about to break in – not yet, anyway. And she had no intention of ever letting him in herself.
At least she could see her surroundings now. She held up the candle, looking around the kitchen, then went into the sitting room. There was nobody there. Of course there wasn’t; she would have noticed if there had been. And nothing appeared to have been disturbed either; everything was in its place, where it ought to be … But no, that wasn’t true. They should have been sitting at the dinner table, the family, eating smoked lamb. That’s how it should have been.
Where on earth was Einar? Could he be up in the attic? Could he be lying there injured from a fight with Leó? She went cold at the thought.
She was aware of the relentless hammering on the door in the background, but ignored it. All she could think about was going upstairs and finding out if Einar was there. But her legs felt heavy and her fear was growing with every minute.
One step at a time, with a terrible, dragging reluctance, she climbed the stairs; the racket Leó was making reached her like an echo from another world.
She was more conscious now of her own heartbeat booming in her ears than of any external noises.
As soon as she made it up on to the landing, she saw that the door to the guestroom was open. Immediately, instinct warned her that something dreadful had happened there and her first impulse was to run away, downstairs, out of the house – anything to avoid having to face up to the truth.
She stood stock still, aware that time was running out. If Leó had hurt Einar in some way, she had to know. She needed time to react and work out an escape plan.
She took the last few steps to the doorway, keeping her head down, not daring to look into the room, not quite yet. Then she held the candle aloft so it would illuminate the whole space, closed her eyes, feeling herself break out in a sweat, and opened them again.
The shock was so horrible that for a moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Then, from deep within her subconscious, a thought broke through to the surface: freedom.
She was free at last.
At long last she could leave this place, throw off the crushing weight of her loneliness, move to a larger community, meet people, make friends, see more of her family; no longer be a prisoner in her own home for months on end …
Then the sickness and the shame took over and she was appalled by her involuntary reaction.
There on the floor lay her husband, the love of her life, deathly still, surrounded by a dark, spreading stain.
XXIV
Erla tried to scream, but her throat wouldn’t produce any sound. Afraid she was going to throw up, she crouched down and drew a deep, shuddering breath, closi
ng her eyes, trying to steady herself. Maybe she was seeing things; maybe there was nothing there: no body, no blood. She forced herself to look up, only to start retching again at the sight.
Next moment the fear took over as the reality sank in that she was alone, alone, and that Leó must have murdered Einar – there could be no other explanation.
The man who was standing outside the house, demanding to be let in, was a cold-blooded killer.
Her life was in danger. It must be. She had a sudden mad impulse to break out through the dormer window but knew it wouldn’t work. The window was small, the roof steep, and she was bound to be swept off by the wind. Besides, he was out there. She had to think fast if she was going to get out of this alive. Feeling a wet splash on her hand, she realized she was crying.
There was no time to mourn Einar now – that would have to wait. She had to save her own life first. But the flow of tears wouldn’t be stemmed.
She pressed her fingers to the neck of the motionless body to make quite sure that Einar was no longer breathing. No, there was no question: he was dead. The blood had told her as much, but it had been her last hope. Of course, it was futile anyway, because even if he had still been showing faint signs of life, help was impossibly far away and they were completely cut off from the outside world.
Erla straightened up and hurried out of the room and down the stairs, clutching the candlestick, not wanting to risk being plunged into darkness again. It could only be a matter of time before Leó broke his way in. She wondered why he hadn’t already done so. Did he want to win her trust, to save himself a struggle? He had already killed a man, so there was no reason to believe he would spare her.
Yet fear had given her a sudden burst of adrenaline and she walked towards the front door with a sure tread. There was no sound from outside, but she had to know if he was still there: ‘What do you want from me?’ she called, her voice hard and unwavering now.
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