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  “What's wrong now?” Jennifer asked, keeping the flame against her charred neck for a moment longer before setting it aside and grabbing Marit's hair, tilting her head back so she could look down into her face. Feeling the girl's neck, she seemed for a moment to be struggling to find a pulse, and then she placed a hand on Marit's forehead. “She's sweating a lot,” she muttered, “and her heart-rate...” She paused, before turning to Joe.

  “What?” he asked, stepping closer. “What's wrong?”

  “I think...” She paused. “Shit, I think she's having a heart attack!”

  Dropping to her knees next to the chair, Jennifer checked again for a pulse, before turning to Daniel. “What do we do? Do we let her die? Is it too soon?”

  “Help her!” Anna shouted, struggling against her chains. “You have to put her on the floor!”

  “She's not responding,” Jennifer continued, forcing Marit's left eye open and then slapping her hard on the side of the face. “Wake up!” she shouted, before slapping her again. “You're not supposed to die so fucking easily, you dumb bitch!” Letting out a grunt of frustration, she got to her feet and then tipped the chair over, sending Marit thumping to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Joe asked, clearly starting to panic.

  “What does it look like?” Jennifer asked, taking a key from her pocket and immediately starting to open the padlock holding the chains in place. “I'm going to try to keep her going, at least until Cole gets here.”

  “Who's Cole?” Anna asked, watching in horror as Marit's limp body was freed from the chains.

  Ignoring the question, Jennifer worked quickly to get Marit loose and then dragged her across the floor. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” she muttered, checking her pulse yet again. “There's nothing,” she said after a moment. “I think she's gone.”

  “You have to put her in the recovery position!” Anna shouted.

  Jennifer turned to her. “The what?”

  “This is a trick!” Joe said firmly. “They probably cooked it up between them!”

  “You have to help her!” Anna screamed.

  “She's beyond help,” Jennifer muttered, checking the girl's wrists. “There might be a very faint pulse, but she's getting weaker.” She paused, before scrambling to her feet and hurrying to the counter, where she grabbed a knife. “Get the camera and come closer,” she told Joe.

  “But why are -”

  “Just do it!”

  As Joe grabbed the camera, Jennifer knelt next to Marit.

  “I hope for your sake that this wasn't a trick,” she sneered, staring down at the girl's unconscious face, “because if it was, it was an exceptionally bad one. Still, I suppose I should make doubly certain that you're not faking it.” She turned to the camera. “She's alive. Barely, but she's still breathing. Not for long, though.” With that, she turned back to Marit and then drove the knife into her chest, before pulling it out and then stabbing her repeatedly, not only in the chest but also the neck, shoulders, belly and groin.

  “No!” Anna screamed, straining at her chains as she tried again to get free. “Stop! Please!”

  Ignoring her, Jennifer stabbed Marit a few more times before slicing the blade across the girl's neck, causing blood to erupt from the wound and spill out across the floor. Finally, satisfied that she was dead, Jennifer sat back and took a moment to catch her breath.

  “No,” Anna whimpered, staring at Marit's bloodied corpse. “You can't do this...”

  “What are you complaining about?” Jennifer asked breathlessly, getting to her feet. “She's the bitch who got you into this. If it wasn't for her, you'd be at home right now, safe and sound with your family.” She stepped over to Anna, with the knife still in her right hand. “What's your family like, anyway? What's life like for you back in England?”

  Too shocked to reply, Anna simply stared at Marit's body.

  “Hey,” Jennifer continued, pressing the blade against Anna's chin and using it to force her head up. “Look at me.”

  “Why?” Anna asked, her voice trembling with fear. “What turned you into the kind of person who can do this?”

  “I'll go get some bags,” Joe muttered, heading out of the room. “We're gonna need to bury the first one.”

  Jennifer waited until her brother had gone upstairs, and then she knelt in front of Anna. “When I told you about my father's suicide,” she said calmly, “I missed one part of it out. When he was holding the gun on that fateful night, I was sitting with him. I think he assumed I was going to talk him out of it, but instead I did the opposite. I reminded him why he should pull the trigger, why he'd let everyone down and how he'd caused so much misery. It took an hour, maybe a little longer, for me to really get him to the point where he was willing to end everything. After all, he'd drunkenly threatened to kill himself so many times, but I needed him to go over the edge. When he finally did it, my immediate reaction was...” She paused, as if she couldn't think of the right word. “Pride,” she continued with a smile. “I was truly proud that I'd been able to talk my own father into killing himself. That was when I truly realized that I was different.”

  Again she paused, and this time there were tears of joy in her eyes.

  “There's something wrong with you,” Anna replied after a moment, staring at her with an expression of pure shock. “There's something really, really wrong with you.”

  “I wouldn't say that to the bitch with the knife,” Jennifer replied, “not if I were you. Now the only question is... Where should I hurt you next?” She paused again, before slowly starting to smile. “My... What a pretty nose you have.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “And then I drove to Hjemfjordsbakken because of a stolen car, but when I got there it turned out the homeowner had just forgotten where he parked it. And then -”

  “Ole,” Dee said suddenly, interrupting him as she counted money from the till. “Do I need to know every little thing you've done today?”

  Officer Ole Haulen stared at her for a moment. He was sitting in a corner booth at the diner, enjoying one more coffee before the long drive home, and it had never occurred to him that maybe Dee didn't want to hear a list of his day's work.

  “Well,” he said after a moment, “I mean...”

  “I'm sure you worked very hard,” she continued, checking her watch, “but we close in twenty minutes and I'd really like to have some time to myself before I lock up. You understand, don't you?”

  “I...” He paused, before looking down at his half-drunk coffee. “I suppose so.”

  “Thanks,” she replied. “It's not that I don't find your stories fascinating, it's more... I'm exhausted, and I've got a headache, and everything you tell me just goes in one ear and right out the other. Let's face it, nothing truly interesting ever happens around here, does it?”

  “Well...” He paused again, trying to think of something. “I suppose it depends on your definition of interesting.”

  “Good night, Ole,” she continued with a friendly smile. “Enjoy your journey home.”

  ***

  “Just another day,” Ole sang a little while later as he drove his patrol car along a remote road, “driving alone. Just another day being a cop in the coolest part of Norway. Just another day -”

  Hearing his phone buzzing in his pocket, he pulled to one side of the road and switched the engine off.

  “Ole Haulen,” he said as he answered. “What's going on back there?”

  “We got a call,” Astrid replied, sounding bored as usual. “Thomas Hemberg out at Darrl says he saw a bunch of college kids driving off into the wilderness a few days ago, and he swears they haven't come back yet and, well, he's worried they're up to no good.”

  “They're college kids,” Ole replied, using the rear-view mirror to check that his nosebleed had stopped. “I'd be shocked if they weren't.”

  “Well, he wants someone to go check on them,” Astrid told him.

  “Is he serious?” Ole asked with a sigh. “W
hat am I supposed to do, spend the next couple of months driving around in case I find them? The man's crazy.”

  “He asked if we could send a drone.”

  “We don't have a drone.”

  “I told him that,” she continued, “but he thinks we do and that we just keep them secret. He thinks we can send a heat-seeking drone out to the forest to look for these kids and check they're not doing anything wrong. Apparently he's convinced they're smoking marijuana and eating wild mushrooms, that sort of thing. He even suggested they might be having a sex party. You know what he's like, he lives alone and he doesn't have anything to do all day other than stick his nose into other people's business.”

  Glancing out the window, Ole saw the forest spreading off for miles in every direction.

  “So what's the plan?” he asked finally. “Seriously, what do you want me to do with this information?”

  “Can't you just poke around?”

  “Poke around?” he replied incredulously. “Just so you can call some old man back and tell him we snap to attention whenever he complains about something?”

  “I don't want to lie to him,” she muttered. “He might request the duty logs. You know he's the kind of guy who'd do that, and then he might see that no-one went to look, and then he'd make an official complaint and we'd all end up in trouble. If you just drive around for a bit, we can make him feel like we paid attention to his concerns.”

  “I have better things to do with my time than drive around,” Ole replied.

  “No you don't.”

  “Yeah, I do!”

  “No, really, you don't.”

  He opened his mouth to reply to her, before realizing that there was no point. “I'll drive around,” he said with another sigh, “but only for an hour. I refuse to let a man like Thomas Hemberg dictate my day.”

  “Whatever. Have a blast.”

  Once the call was over, Ole leaned back in his seat for a moment. “Crazy old man,” he muttered, “just some kind of -”

  Stopping suddenly, he realized he could hear something in the distance. He paused, convinced that it would quickly turn out to be a moose or some other kind of animal, but as the seconds ticked past he began to feel as if the sound was human. Opening the car door, he climbed out and took a few steps along the deserted, tree-lined road, before turning and looking at the forest all around.

  Somewhere far away, almost too far to be heard, someone was screaming.

  ***

  Half an hour later, Ole brought his patrol car to a stop on the side of another road, a little further to the north. As soon as he cut the engine and climbed out, he realized the scream seemed a little closer now.

  “Probably nothing,” he muttered, adjusting his cap. “Probably just... kids messing around.”

  He paused for a moment, before climbing back into the car and setting off again, trying to find the source.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Are you sure you don't want to give her a goodbye kiss?” Joe asked, holding Marit's severed head in front of Anna and letting blood drip onto the girl's trembling knees. “Not even for old time's sake? You're such a good kisser, after all.”

  Keeping her eyes tight shut, Anna tried to ignore him.

  “Fair enough,” Joe muttered, turning and dropping the head into a sack full of body parts. “Don't go complaining later, though. You were given the chance and you turned it down, so you can't bitch and moan.” He turned back to her and watched for a moment, his eyes soon drawn to the bloodied patch on her chest where her left breast had been. “I've gotta hand it to my sister,” he continued, “she sure thinks of some inventive things to do. There's poetry to her torture.”

  Opening her eyes just a little, Anna stared at him with dark, blank eyes. Nearby, the monitor was replaying footage from the night before, showing the moment when she'd tentatively gone down on him.

  “Cole's gonna be here soon,” Joe told her, “and that's when the fun really begins. Now there's a man who knows how to give the audience what they want.” He paused, before turning and pointing toward the camera. “Think of all the people who are gonna watch your final moments,” he continued. “We've been filming you ever since you got here, you know, to provide a little footage to get the juices flowing. We got footage of you at the campfire, and in the kitchen, and talking to people, and walking through the forest. We got shots of you in the shower, so everyone can see your pretty little body before anything was done to it, and obviously we got shots of you and me from last night. There's probably gonna be twenty minutes of that shit at the start of the video before we get to the real meat, so... You won't just be this depersonalized chunk of meat. The viewers will really get an idea of who you are. In a way, you're gonna be famous. Don't you just love the camera?”

  When she didn't reply, he headed over to the camera and examined it for a moment, before turning to her again.

  “The camera sure as hell loves you,” he continued. “You're a very photogenic woman, you know. The way your curves show up on the screen, the way you laugh, the way you sucked my cock last night. In another life, I reckon you could've been a movie star.” He chucked. “Well, I guess you are a movie star, in a way. People are going to be talking about you for years to come, Anna. The camera's your best friend in the whole world.”

  He waited, and finally Anna whispered something.

  “What's that?” he asked.

  Again she whispered, but again he couldn't hear.

  “What was that, honey?” he continued, stepping over to her and leaning in. “Did you -”

  Suddenly she lunged at him, biting down hard on his ear. He pulled away, tearing a chunk of flesh off in the process, before instinctively lashing out and punching her, knocking her chair back until it slammed down against the floor.

  “What the hell was that?” he shouted, stepping back and clutching the side of his face as blood dribbled down onto his neck. “Jesus Christ, woman!” Grabbing a pair of scissors from the bench, he stormed back over to her and sliced one of the blades into her thigh, causing her to cry out. “Do you really think that was a smart move?” he asked, leaning closer to her. “Go on, do it again. Bite me, bitch, and see what I do next.” He waited, watching as she whimpered with pain, and then finally he twisted the blade before pulling the scissors back and throwing them angrily across the room.

  Fresh blood trickled down the inside of Anna's thigh.

  “The more you fight back,” he said after a moment, “the more the people watching this video are gonna get off on what they're seeing. That was Cole's only complaint about Karen Lund, really. He said her spirit was broken too easily, that she started begging for death way too soon. We edited that part out, of course, but you could still see it in her eyes, she'd given up. Whereas you, you're fighting all the way, and that's what people want to see. Your video's gonna be ten times as popular as hers once it hits the dark web. Hell, it's gonna be fucking brilliant.”

  He paused, before suddenly reaching a hand toward her face.

  She flinched, and he laughed as he pulled his hand away.

  “Classic,” he continued. “You know what? I reckon there's still a hell of a lot to come from you.”

  Hearing someone racing down the stairs, he turned just in time to see Christian reaching the doorway with a frantic expression in his eyes.

  “Cop!” he stammered, clearly on the verge of panicking. “Put a gag over the bitch's mouth! There's a fucking cop outside!”

  ***

  “An acting retreat?” Officer Ole Haulen replied with a frown, as he looked up at the windows of the cabin. “All the way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “It's the perfect place, really,” Jennifer replied, forcing a smile as she tried to act natural. “A few of us just wanted to flee the city for a few days so we could get some space and practice our skills. We kind of wanted to run away from the hustle of the city. We thought we were far enough that no-one would be bothered by us, but obviously we were wrong. I do apologize
if we've disturbed anyone, we'll be much quieter from now on.”

  “Huh,” Ole muttered, as Daniel, Joe and an increasingly concerned-looking Christian emerged from the front door and stopped on the porch. “And the scream I heard -”

  “That was me,” Jennifer told him. “We were role-playing, and one of the guys bet me that I couldn't do a really convincing scream. I think his idea was that I couldn't truly let go of my inhibitions and just let rip, but I proved him wrong.” She paused, watching Ole's face carefully, before turning to Joe. “Isn't that right?”

  “What?” Joe replied, his face drained of color.

  “You bet me I couldn't scream properly,” she said firmly. “Remember?”

  He stared at her blankly for a moment, before turning to Ole. “Yes. That's what happened.”

  “Sounds... fun,” Ole replied, making his way past the porch and around to the side of the cabin, still looking up at the windows. “I, uh...” He stopped for a moment, biting his bottom lip, before turning back to Jennifer. “You know, this is going to sound crazy, but I feel like I've seen this place before. Not that I've actually been out here, but I've seen photos of it somewhere.”

  “I can't imagine where,” Jennifer said calmly. “It's very private. Very out of the way.”

  “I've still seen it,” he muttered. “Damn, I just can't work out where. Maybe in some paperwork, something like that? It's a beautiful place, though. Looks quite old, if you don't mind me saying that.”

  “Not at all,” Jennifer replied, following him around the side and then to the smaller clearing at the back. “The cabin has been in my family for generations. We're all very proud of it, actually. My father -” She paused for a moment, wondering quite how much to say. “My father, Leonard Westengen, really improved the place,” she added cautiously, watching Ole's face carefully for any hint of recognition. “He brought it up to date, added some rooms, sorted out the amenities. Most of it he did himself, too, although obviously he needed a little help now and then.”