Dark Pines

by Will Dean

  It’s the fourth step back that’s the problem. Up until that fourth step back, I’m okay. It’s moss and granite covered with pine cones and it’s Frida growing smaller in the distance. But my fourth step lands on something quite different. I reach my boot back, my confidence growing, and place it down on something wet. I can’t get purchase. My boot’s sliding around so I look down. At first I think they’re snakes but they’re not. They’re entrails. The innards of some animal, lengths of stringy guts and intestines and membranes. No blood that I can see, just loose sausage skins filled with bile.

  I want to panic but I can’t. Frida’s bending down on one knee by Hannes now. I can see them through the web of trees. But the slippery entrails are behind me and in front of me and to my left and right. They’re everywhere and they’re sour and they look like human umbilical cords. I take another step back and have to place my hands on the ground in amongst it all to stop myself slipping. I step back again, a giant step back, and my boot hits a rock that rolls away. She doesn’t hear. I take another step back and nudge past a dead bush and look down and there’s an elk’s head right under me.

  I look down at its dull eye and its bristly fur and its severed neck. I retch and see maggots and flies and heaving masses of something going to work. I stop breathing so I don’t inhale any of it. It’s the size of a horse head. Bigger. If I smell it, I’ll pass out. I think it’s a cow elk because it doesn’t have antlers. I look up and see Frida and Hannes but they’re too far away now for me to see any detail. And it’s too dark. I step back from the elk head and my feet and my hands reach normal soil again, and that’s when my pocket shakes and my phone reminder goes off, because, silly me, tonight is laundry night.

  49

  I silence the phone and look up at Frida through half-closed eyes. She’s standing about ten trees away from me with that knife in her hand, that shiny little knife. I can’t breathe. She picks up her rifle from the ground.

  If I run, she will stalk me and kill me and then . . . I blink three times and squeeze my eyelids tight together. She’s somehow very good at all this hunting stuff. No point running. I need to do what Hannes did not do, I need to lay low. I thought he’d shot someone from his tower, but he was shot in his tower. Frida heard about one note of my alarm tone so it won’t be easy for her to find me. I see her do something to the rifle, load it I suppose, or take the safety catch off, something like that. She holds it to her hip and not to her eye.

  She’s saying something that I cannot hear. I can see she’s calling something, probably ‘who’s there’ or ‘come out’ or ‘show yourself’ but I cannot hear anything. I can sense someone’s saying something but I can’t make out words, and I can’t lip read from here, not in this murk. So I squat perfectly still. I notice slugs now. Time moves one frame at a time. I see slugs and a moose’s eye and entrails and Frida’s dyed blonde hair and her pale skin. I can’t move my head so I start to notice everything around me in minute detail and there are four or five slugs, each one as big as a lipstick, making their absurdly slow way from here to there. They are black and they shine slick with whatever they are made of. They’re like black wine gums after you’ve sucked on them for a while. And they’re so ridiculously fucking slow that they’ll never be able to leave this goddam forest.

  She starts to walk towards me. There’s nothing much between us except the dead bush I’m hiding behind. She’s looking around but she walks two, then three trees deep in my direction. She can’t see me. Can she see my tracks? No, I never stepped that close to the tower, she’s working from her memory of the noise, from the alarm. Wrench. Catapult. Bear-spray. Knife. What a fucking pile of fuck I’ve brought with me. Against a rifle only a rifle will do, and I’ve got shit. I hate being this ill-equipped. I want my truck and I want a gun.

  Stay perfectly still, Tuva. You can do this. Frida makes a turn past a birch tree, then pulls back towards me. Don’t breathe. She holds up her rifle and walks straight to me, stopping just before the elk entrails. I feel like a little kid playing hide-and-seek with the devil. I have no cover apart from a dead bush and I have no escape.

  I read her lips. ‘Stand up.’

  Slowly, I stand. I am very cold. There was never any question that I’d do exactly as she said. How could I not? She steps in the entrails and holds out one hand and pulls off my balaclava.

  ‘Tuva?’

  Her make-up is perfect and she looks appalled to see me, like a mother who’s just noticed her child hiding in a cupboard watching her having sex.

  ‘What on earth are you doing all the way out here?’

  I point to my ears and shake my head.

  She nods like she understands. She comes closer to me, her rifle down at her hip again now, and speaks slowly and clearly so I can read her lips.

  ‘Why are you here, Tuva?’

  ‘I knew Hannes was Medusa. Nobody would believe me. I came after him.’

  She raises her eyebrows and shakes her head like she’s listening to her daughter tell her all about a horror movie she’s watched with friends.

  ‘Come on, let’s get to open ground, it’s not good to be this deep in the woods after dark.’

  She holds my hand, my actual hand, and leads me towards her dead husband. Just shoot me now. In a way I just want to get out of this place and that’s how she’s going to do it so just fucking get on with it. I let go of her hand and look at Hannes. He’s dead and his eyes are open and his skin is already turning grey.

  Frida passes me a compact thermos like we’re out on some kind of Boy-Scout camping trip and I shake my head. She reaches down and unhooks the loop of rope from Hannes’s shoulder. She has to heave his arm up by the elbow to pull it free.

  ‘I’ll need to tie you up just while I finish. I’m not going to hurt you, Tuva, so I don’t want you to worry yourself. I just need to finish what I’m doing and clean up, and I don’t want you running off and getting lost out here. Hold out your hands for me.’

  I do it and she ties a knot that I don’t recognise around my left wrist and pulls me gently towards a Scots pine tree. It’s one of the pines bordering the clearing and it’s the broadest tree around. She pushes my body to face the trunk as if I’m about to embrace it. She pulls the length of rope around its girth and ties the loose end to my right hand. I’m tied to the tree like I’m hugging it, my face and breasts squashed tight into its unyielding bark.

  She comes to stand near me and I can smell her lily-of-the-valley perfume.

  ‘Wait here a few minutes and I’ll finish up. Then we can go home.’

  I see her knife now in her hand. But it’s not a knife at all, it’s a silver teaspoon like the one from the fancy silk-lined set we used back at the house that time. Frida’s wielding a silver teaspoon.

  ‘Wait,’ I say, because, fuck, I can’t let her do this. ‘Did you? In the ’90s?’

  She touches the tip of the teaspoon.

  I remember her making a quenelle of cream with a spoon back in her kitchen. A perfect quenelle. ‘I’m pretty scared out here, can you just talk to me.’

  She smiles and puts the spoon back inside the little zip-up pocket on her jacket sleeve. That’s where the coffee residue came from. Not Holmqvist. Not Hannes. Her.

  ‘I know this was all an accident, Frida,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell the police this was a shooting accident, that’s all. You haven’t touched his eyes, so I’ll tell them that this was all a mistake.’

  ‘This wasn’t a mistake, Tuva,’ I read on her lips. ‘But you’re sweet for saying that.’

  I look up through the branches of the pine and I can’t see sky and I can’t find Dad. I realise she was the one in the grey hut. It wasn’t Hannes coming back, it was her. She’s been hiding her rifle inside that deer carcass.

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  It’s still drizzling. She pulls strands of my hair, sodden strands, away from my face and places them on the top of my head where they belong.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why all thi
s, Frida?’

  I see a bird fly overhead. Maybe it’s an owl and maybe it’s hooting, and if it is I’d never know. The owl doesn’t care. To that old owl, all this is irrelevant; it’s just something down below that’ll be over soon.

  ‘Why do I need to clean up?’ she asks. ‘Because I have to, don’t you see? These so-called men have ruined some very sacred things and they’ve reduced themselves to vermin. Less than vermin. So I have to clean it all up because someone has to.’

  Her hand’s cold on my scalp.

  ‘What did they do to deserve all this? What have you done?’

  ‘What didn’t they do,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘They’ve spoilt and tainted the most important things in this life, Tuva, that’s what they’ve done. They were privileged enough to find good women and get married and have their own sweet families. That’s quite something. They were lucky. Well, my daddy made sure he was true his whole life, but these men failed. They ruined everything. They chased after whores and sluts and pigs when their wives were back home waiting for them. There’s no going back once that’s happened so I had to clean it all up.’

  My breath feels cold and empty. One breast and one cheek is crushed so hard into this damn tree trunk I feel like I’m growing into it. Frida swats away mosquitoes as they try to feast on my neck.

  She looks up to the sky and pushes her palm over my mouth and then she looks back to me. Is it a plane? I can’t see anything up there and I can’t hear anything. But something’s up there. I know it.

  ‘Helicopters won’t find us down here, sweetie,’ she whispers. ‘Can’t land a helicopter in Utgard forest, the canopy is too dense.’

  She pulls her hand away.

  ‘You sure you don’t want some hot chocolate? I didn’t bring much, just enough for one person really,’ she snorts like this is funny. ‘But I’ll split what I have with you. It’s getting cold out here and winter’s creeping up on us again like it does every year.’

  I don’t want hot chocolate. I want my hearing aids. My whole world right now is this crazy bitch. I can’t see much other than her face and I can’t feel much other than her hand. I can’t hear her. All I can do is read her lips.

  ‘Why did you have to take their eyes?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, they’re not really eyes any more, not once they’ve seen those things, Tuva. Not really. You and I have eyes but those so-called men had, well, I don’t know what to call them, but they’re not eyes. Those things saw sluts and prostitutes and hard core pornography, so I took them out. Those rotten bits aren’t human any more once they’ve seen all that depravity, all that disgusting depravity, while their wives were at home caring for the children and looking after the house.’

  ‘You kept them in your freezer.’

  Frida scratches her eyelid. She must have waterproof mascara on today because her make-up’s still in place.

  ‘I had a pause from all this,’ she says. ‘Between ’94 and last year, I didn’t need to be cleaning up so much. That was quite a relief, to be honest. Once that cathouse shut down, things got a little better. More clean. Hannes was still not what he should have been, he wasn’t the gentleman he was destined to be, but he was better for a while. So every time it all got too much for me, I’d walk over to the hut and open the freezer and look into the eyes – or whatever they are – of those so-called men, those home wreckers, and I’d let off some steam. Those things in that freezer calmed me down no end. I’d stand there and look at them one pair at a time, one so-called man at a time, and I wouldn’t feel the need to clean up so much. They were all sorted out and clean and ordered and safe in my freezer. It was a good thing, having them so close by.’

  She looks over at her husband and unzips the pocket on her jacket sleeve.

  ‘Speaking of which. If you’ll excuse me a moment, this shouldn’t take long.’

  She takes the spoon in her right hand and moves towards Hannes.

  50

  ‘Frida, wait.’

  I’m strapped so tight to this damn tree that I’m rooted to the spot just like it is. I can turn my head a little but I can’t look directly behind me to where Frida is, and I hate that. My senses are being stolen one by one. She might be talking right now. She might be pointing her deer-carcass rifle at the back of my head and I’d never even know it. She might have changed her mind and run away and I’d never know that either.

  But she’s back. She’s at the side of my face.

  ‘What is it, Tuva?’ her lips say.

  ‘Please don’t do this. We’re friends. Don’t do this.’

  She smiles at me and checks the ropes on my wrists.

  ‘Are these chaffing? You want me to loosen them a little bit for you?’

  I nod and smile but my lips are trembling now. I’m cold and she is too close to my face.

  ‘I’ll do it soon, right after I’ve finished up.’

  ‘Wait,’ I say again. I cannot let her do this to him. ‘Wait, my hearing aids.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Can you change my batteries for me? I have two more spares. Then I’ll be able to listen to you better and we can talk properly.’

  ‘Your key fob?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say looking down to my jacket pocket. ‘In there. It’ll just take a minute.’

  Her eyes widen and she shakes her head.

  I frown at her but the frown’s covered by her handkerchief, now wet with rain and sweat.

  ‘I check his phone,’ she says.

  What?

  ‘He doesn’t think I know much about these things but I check it all the time. Had my coping strategies up till now, but no way I was letting him leave me here all on my own, no way.’

  ‘Change my batteries,’ I say. ‘Please.’

  ‘No point,’ she says, a vague smile on her face. ‘No need.’

  My tongue stiffens in my mouth. I don’t want her hand or her fucking handkerchief anywhere near me. I almost choke on her lily-of-the-valley scent as it fills the damp air. I can’t speak. I’m tight up against what seems like the biggest tree in the world with a psychopath patting my forehead.

  ‘Excuse me,’ her lips say. ‘I’ll be just a jiffy.’

  She walks away. I pull and strain at the ropes and manage to move about a centimetre around the tree but it’s too tight. I turn my head hard until it feels like my neck will snap but I can’t see her. I don’t want to see her but I hate not knowing where she is. Is she taking his eyes? There’s no noise, no squelching. But then I realise I have no aids so of course there’s no noise. There’s a tick crawling down the tree and it’s at my nose level. I pull back, pushing with my pelvis and tensing my arms but I can’t get far enough away from the bark. She’s behind me somewhere but I don’t know how close. And this tick’s arching with its back legs and its fat rear end. It looks too big this close up. I don’t see it jump but now it’s on my cheek. I can’t feel it but I know. I peer down as if trying to see the tip of my nose but it’s not there or else it’s dropped off. Then it moves. I strain and scream and look down and see it on my lower eyelid. I blink manically, thrashing my head from side to side.

  Frida’s back. She’s next to me.

  ‘Tick. My eye. Get it off.’

  She holds my head firmly and says something but I can’t hear it or read it. She has her fingers at my left eye and I feel a light pinch. And then she’s stroking my cheek. My eyes are watering but I can just about read her lips.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she says. ‘Just a deer tick. I took it off and it’s gone, Tuva. But if you scream like that again I will shoot you.’

  I don’t fucking care. Shoot me.

  ‘You’re lucky it wasn’t a moose tick.’

  I scan the bark for other insects and then look back to her.

  ‘Moose ticks see your eyes and they think they’re moose nostrils,’ she says. ‘We used to have them real bad up in Norrland when I was a girl. They see your eyes and they think they’re big old nostrils and they want to lay their eggs in there. Nice and m
oist. So they spray at your eyes, they spray their eggs right at them. And it doesn’t feel so bad, I mean, sure, it hurts, but you wash them and you think they’re gone. But they’re barbed. They are not gone. Those little eggs are designed so they’ll stick inside those warm nostrils even when the moose is sneezing and hollering. So they cling to your eyes and that’s where the eggs grow and then one day they hatch.’

  ‘You’re fucking crazy.’

  She shuts her eyes and shakes her head.

  ‘Don’t use that language, Tuva. You’re a writer so there’s no need to resort to cussing. You’re better than that.’ She disappears behind me again.

  The woods are grey. The moon is shining through brighter now, but I’m faced with the curve of a tree and I can’t turn, I can only look left and right and straight up and that’s it. Each time I try to squeeze my hands to slip the ropes they seem to tighten up like nooses. Every now and then, cones fall from the trees. I can’t hear them, but I can feel them if they’re falling from the upper branches of this tree, and I can see them if they’re falling from other trees close by. I can see eyes, too. I can see pairs of eyes twinkling up in the trees and down on the ground. Nothing close or big. And the slugs are still shining like gemstones.

  Frida comes back.

  ‘I’m almost done here, then we can go home.’

  I see her hand and want to scream. She’s holding a little transparent freezer bag with a bright green plastic clip. The contents are hidden in her palm, but I can see a drop of blood in the bottom corner of the bag.

  I hang my head low and let my chin fall to my chest. I give up. This is not where I’m supposed to be, not by a long shot. I want to scratch my ears and my neck and my wrists. They’re covered in red bumps and bites and it feels like the mosquitoes are coming back, coming back to the raised bumps for more like they can’t believe their luck. I think about that tick, the one that got inside me. How deep will it go? Is it alive? Is its head still alive?