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  “I get it,” she told him. “But still, if some girls were murdered -”

  “There's nothing to worry about,” he told her, as if he'd anticipated her next point. “This is a small town and we look after each other. The situation surrounding the Olesun girls' death was dealt with.”

  “The few reports I found said that no-one was arrested.”

  “Not officially,” he replied, “but... Everyone knows that the situation was dealt with and that the culprit poses no further danger to the people of this town. Jonah Lund is long gone.” He smiled, patting her on the back before turning to head back to the church, limping on his fake right leg. “You'll just have to get used to the fact that things are done a little differently around here. We do what's best for the town, and people trust us to make the right decisions. You're perfectly safe.”

  “But -”

  Pausing, she watched as he made his way through the snow, and she realized that she was unlikely to get any straight answers. She turned and looked back down at the three graves, and particularly at Sara's, which she now knew to be empty. Whatever else the local men might have achieved with their attempts to keep the town safe, they clearly hadn't been able to help the Olesun sisters.

  “Rest in peace,” she whispered, before turning to start the walk home. As she left the cemetery, she failed to notice that the priest was watching her from one of the church's windows.

  Chapter Seventeen

  1979

  “I can't think about it,” whispered Elena, the girls' mother, as she sat sobbing at the dining table. “It's dark now, she must be in trouble!”

  “She's probably just at a friend's house,” replied Henning, putting an arm around her. “When she gets back, we'll give her merry hell about this. That girl has always had a rebellious streak, but she's gone too far this time.”

  “She's not at a friend's house,” Elizabeth whispered to Sara as they stood in the doorway. “She doesn't have any friends. You know what Kari's like, she annoys everyone she meets!”

  “Don't worry,” Sara replied calmly, “she'll be back soon.”

  “You don't know that.”

  “I do,” Sara continued. “I mean I can feel it, deep down. Everything's going to be okay, he told -” She stopped herself before she could say any more, but she already knew she'd said too much.

  “He told you?” Elizabeth replied.

  “I just -”

  “You did talk to that man again,” she continued, crouching down so she could look her little sister in the eye. “You little liar, you told me you didn't!”

  “I'm sorry, I -”

  “Out with it,” Elizabeth added. “No more fooling around, Sara. You have to tell the truth, and all of it, right now. If you spoke to him, that means you know where he is!”

  “I can't say.”

  “Not even for Kari?”

  Sara thought about this for a moment, before shaking her head.

  “Do you want me to tell Mamma and Pappa?” Elizabeth asked. “If they find out that you're keeping secrets, you'll be in a lot of trouble, so you need to let me know what's going on.”

  “Kari's coming back soon,” Sara replied, keeping her voice low so that their parents wouldn't overhear. “He promised, and I know he wouldn't lie. Trust me!”

  “Trust you?” Elizabeth continued. “You're just a -”

  Before she could finish, they both heard a scream from outside.

  “It's her!” their mother shouted, springing up from her chair and racing to the door, with their father right behind.

  “That didn't sound like Kari,” Elizabeth said, hurrying after them. “Sara, wait inside!”

  Ignoring the order, Sara followed them all out into the darkened yard, and she immediately saw that a couple of other people were over by the barn, tending to someone down on the ground.

  “Kari!” the girls' mother screamed as she ran to help.

  As Sara caught up, she found that people were crowding around Kari, who was slumped on the grass. The little girl pushed past as many people as possible, struggling to get to the front so she could see that her sister was okay, but she stopped when she saw that Kari's arm was bloodied and covered in long, deep cuts.

  “Oh God,” their mother said suddenly, stepping back and then fainting.

  “It's okay,” Elizabeth said, kneeling next to Kari and putting a hand on her shoulder, before rolling her over, “everything -”

  Another scream rang out as they all saw the gaping, bloodied holes where Kari's eyes had once been.

  ***

  “She's resting,” Doctor Steiner said, visibly shocked as he emerged from the front room and found the rest of the family waiting in the kitchen. “There's not much more I can do. We just have to pray that she makes it through the night.”

  “The Lord is watching over us,” added Father Michael Skallen, as he sat with Elena Olesun and tried to offer her some comfort. “He won't let the poor child suffer.”

  “What happened to her?” Elena asked, her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at the doctor. “Please, you have to tell me...”

  “Her eyes are gone,” he replied uneasily, “and there's no... I mean, there's absolutely nothing that can be done to fix that. I did locate her eyeballs, they were in another part of her body, so I removed them and...” He looked down at the small, blood-stained cloth bag in his left hand. “I'll dispose of them.”

  “Is there any other damage?” Elena asked.

  He nodded.

  “Where?”

  “All over. She was subjected to a brutal assault.” He turned to the priest. “You might like to offer some extra prayers tonight, Father Skallen. The girl will need all the help she can get if-” Before he could finish, Henning Olesun came storming through from the back room, already loading his rifle.

  “Where are you going?” Elena asked.

  “Where do you think?” he replied, grabbing his coat and heading to the front door. “I'm going to find the bastard who did this and finish him off.”

  “No,” she continued as he made his way outside, “please, stay! I don't want -”

  Ignoring his wife, Henning slammed the door.

  “Did he...” Elena turned back to the doctor. “What I mean is, was Kari... Did he hurt her in that way?”

  “Please don't ask me for specifics,” Doctor Steiner replied. “I shall prepare a report for the police, but I don't see there's any need for the family to know exactly what happened. Let's just say that she's going to need a lot of help if she's to recover. In some respects, she might not be herself again and -” Glancing at Elizabeth and Sara, he paused for a moment before turning back to the other adults. “Perhaps we shouldn't talk about these things while young ears are listening.”

  “Get out of here,” Elena said, turning to the children. “Go on! Go to your rooms!”

  “But Mamma -” Elizabeth began, her voice trembling with fear.

  “Go!” she shouted.

  “Come on,” Elizabeth continued, taking Sara by the hand and leading her to the hallway, and then up the creaking stairs.

  “I told you she'd come back,” Sara whimpered, her eyes filled with tears. “He promised he'd send her back to us.” She waited for a reply, but she felt as if in some way Elizabeth blamed her for what had happened. “At least she's alive,” she added finally, as they reached the door to her bedroom. “That's what's important, isn't it? She -”

  Hearing a muffled scream from downstairs, she stopped and looked back across the landing.

  “Doctor Steiner's going to take care of her,” Elizabeth said, shepherding Sara into one of the rooms.

  “Why's she screaming?” Sara asked.

  “I think she just woke up for a moment. It'll take some time for her to come to terms with what's happened to her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means...” Shutting the door, she led Sara to the bed and sat her down. Taking a seat next to her, she paused for a moment, her whole body trembling
with shock and rage.

  Sara watched her for a moment, waiting for her to say something, but finally realizing that something seemed very wrong. She felt as if everyone was very upset, and slowly she was starting to understand that it might be her fault that the man in the shed had been able to do such horrible things to Kari without anyone stopping him.

  “Are you mad at me?” she whispered.

  At first, Elizabeth didn't seem to have even heard her. She simply sat and stared straight ahead, as if she was playing certain images through her mind over and over again.

  “Are you?” Sara asked, with tears in her eyes. “Please don't be mad at me. It's not really my fault!”

  Slowly, Elizabeth turned to her. “Her life is never going to be okay. Despite everything people say, telling each other that Kari can overcome things... That's all a lie. She can't overcome it. She can stumble along, she can pretend, but we all know it's true.”

  “I didn't do anything! I didn't know it was her when I...” Pausing, she realized that when she was up at the barn, the dark shape on the floor must have been Kari.

  “She's never going to be able to see again,” Elizabeth pointed out, “and there are other things she won't be able to do too. That man, your new friend...” She paused, as if she was trying to decide how much to tell her little sister. “I'm not going to shield you from the truth, not anymore. You need to know what's happened, so you can decide for yourself whether you're going to tell me where to find this man.” She paused again. “It's not just her eyes that he took. He cut other parts of her, Sara. He mutilated her in ways that mean she'll never be able to... do things that people usually do when they get older. She won't be able to have children, for example. And that's sad, isn't it?”

  Sara thought about it for a moment, before nodding.

  “And you want the man who did this to be brought to justice, don't you?”

  Sara nodded again.

  “So to help that happen fast, and to make sure that no-one else suffers the same way as Kari, you need to tell me right now where to find him.”

  Sara thought about this latest idea, but finally she shook her head.

  “Sara -”

  “He told me,” she replied, her voice filled with frustration. “He said everything would be okay eventually, and he told me that even when people die, it's not always a terrible thing, because then they go to heaven and they get to be happy forever.”

  “Oh God,” Elizabeth said with a sigh, “are you really so foolish?”

  “He told me you wouldn't understand!”

  “Sara, I'm trying to talk to you as an adult. You're eight years old, but you have to listen to me -”

  “I am, but you're not listening to me!”

  “For God's sake,” Elizabeth muttered, getting to her feet and heading to the door, “I can't talk to you right now. If you're not going to do the right thing for Kari and the rest of us, I don't think I can stand to be around you.”

  “But Elizabeth -”

  “Think about it,” she replied, stopping as she reached the landing and turning back to look at her. Downstairs, Kari could be heard still sobbing. “Think about what your actions have already achieved. One of your sisters is down there with life-changing injuries, and the man responsible is still out there, and no-one knows who might be next. Unless you're going to do the right thing and tell us everything you know, you might as well go to...” She paused, as if she was trying to decide whether to finish the sentence. “You might as well go to hell.”

  “Please,” Sara whimpered, “try to understand...”

  “This is your fault,” Elizabeth told her, “and I swear to God, Sara, I don't think I can ever forgive you for it. Not ever.” Heading to her room, she slammed the door shut.

  “It's not my fault,” Sara sobbed. “He promised me everything was going to be okay...”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Today

  “So if ghosts are real,” John said, struggling to lift the large metallic tube from the floor of the shed's upper level, “why, after thousands of years, does no-one have even a shred of proof?”

  “Can we just drop it?” Paula replied, grabbing the other end of the tube and helping him.

  “Come on,” he continued, “you always love talking about ghosts. Lately, anyway. I'm genuinely interested.”

  “I've gone off the topic,” she muttered, as they carried the tube out of the shadows and into a patch of sunlight by the shed door, where the laid it down. “What is this thing, anyway?”

  “No idea,” he told her, still a little out of breath as he took a step back. “I don't know what half this stuff is. The estate agent included a basic inventory, but there's so much other equipment, and I can't work out where to begin. Most of it's probably from the seventies, so I guess I can throw it out, but...” He paused, eying Paula with a hint of suspicion. “So what's wrong? Why are you suddenly not interested in talking about ghosts?”

  She stared down at the metal tube. “It's not so much fun when they're real,” she whispered.

  “What's that? Stop with all the mumbling.”

  “Nothing,” she sighed, looking back toward the farmhouse and feeling a shudder at the thought of what might be in there. Seeing the windows above the front door, she imagined something standing there calmly, watching her every move.

  “I went to the diner, by the way,” he told her. “I swear, I felt like it was an interview. There was a priest, and a doctor, and all these big-wigs from the local town, and they were asking me questions about my life and about why we came here. The whole thing was friendly enough, but they're not very good at making people feel welcome.”

  Instead of answering, Paula kept watching the house, waiting for even the faintest hint of movement in one of the windows.

  “I'm going to see what this thing does,” her father continued, heading to a large, ominous-looking device with several blades on the side, before stopping and taking some keys from his pocket. “Make yourself useful, Paula,” he added, tossing the keys at her. “Go round the back of the shed and take a look in the storage room. You can't miss the door, it's red. If there are some wrenches in there, and there should be, bring them through, yeah?”

  “Sure,” she replied, making her way out into the yard, although she couldn't stop staring at the farmhouse.

  “And Paula?”

  She turned to him.

  “Try to be a little more enthusiastic, okay?” He started examining the blades on the machine. “Success if 50% luck and 50% attitude.”

  Without even bothering to reply, she made her way along the length of the barn, taking care not to slip on the icy path her father had shoveled clear earlier in the morning. Snow was still falling heavily, and as she reached the head of the barn and made her way around, she couldn't help but notice that the road was mostly free of snow. A faint smile crossed her lips as she thought of Sebastian's snowplow rumbling past in the dead of night, with his heated cab and his radio blasting and his flask of coffee. She figured he was probably fast asleep by now, ready for another shift in the evening.

  When she got to the other side of the shed, she made her way past the spot where she'd had the encounter with the frozen girl, and finally she spotted a small, rotting red door set into the barn's white wall. The lock was old and rusty, and it took a moment before she found the right key; even then, the door seemed to have twisted and warped in its frame, so she had to really pull on the damn thing before she managed to get it open. Taking a step back, she peered inside and saw a small, shelf-lined room with a few rusty old pieces of metal shoved to one side. Not the most inspiring sight in the world.

  And then she heard someone laughing.

  Turning, she looked across toward the snowy field, half-expecting to see some local children playing.

  She waited, but the only movement came from the snow that continued to drift down.

  Telling herself not to dwell, she stepped into the storeroom and started examining the items on the shelv
es. Most of them were just random-looking pieces of rusty metal, with thick cobwebs having built up over the years. Finding a piece of faded yellow newspaper, she picked it up and saw, beneath some text she didn't understand, a photo of a plump-looking man smiling as he held up what appeared to be a trophy of some sort. Checking the date, she saw that the paper was from 1979. She set it back down and made her way to the far end of the storeroom, but there was no sign of any wrenches.

  “Dead-end,” she muttered to herself, turning to leave before spotting something etched into the concrete floor.

  Stepping closer, she leaned down and saw that three names had been written in the concrete, probably back when it was first laid: Sara, Kari and Elizabeth. The first two names were written in the same large, loopy writing, while Elizabeth was clearly a little different. It was hard to imagine those three little girls playing at the farm all those years ago, and she felt a shiver pass through her chest at the thought of them happily running around the place before the night in May 1979 when their lives had come to a brutal and violent end. Leaning down, she ran a finger through the ridges of the name Sara and realized that it had most likely been made using a fingertip, long ago.

  “Hey,” she whispered, “did you -”

  Suddenly she heard a loud banging sound from outside, followed by a cry of pain. She froze, staring at the door, telling herself that she was hearing things again.

  “Paula!” her father shouted, his voice sounding tense. “Hurry!”

  “Shit!” she said, realizing that he'd been the one screaming.

  Scrambling out of the storeroom and not even bothering to lock the door, she raced around the side of the barn. She slipped on the ice at one point, landing hard on her shoulder and slithering across the ice, but she quickly picked herself up and ran around to the front of the barn.

  “Dad!” she shouted, as she reached the main door. “Dad, what -”

  Stopping suddenly, she saw blood.

  Blood everywhere.

  Her father was on the floor, trying to get to his feet as he clutched his left arm. One entire side of his body was covered in blood, and he let out a pained groan as he turned and then dropped down onto the concrete.