The Farm Page 4

  She paused, hoping against hope that she might feel some hint of a presence, but there was nothing.

  “Please,” she whispered, “please let ghosts exist.”

  Turning, she headed across the landing and looked into the other rooms, before making her way to the one closed door she hadn't tried yet. Pushing it open, she found that it led into another bedroom that was noticeably smaller than the others. The air was even colder in there too, but she figured that was just because the door had been left shut. Heading over to the window, she looked out and saw that her father had already pulled some kind of rusty contraption out of the barn's upper level. She couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm, even though she knew he was in over his head. She'd never had him pegged as a dreamer, at least not on this level, but there he was, pursuing some random desire to run a farm and become self-sufficient.

  Despite the snow.

  Despite the language barrier.

  Despite the fact that he only had experience with desks and pens.

  “You lunatic,” she muttered, watching as he grabbed a shovel and began to dig a path away from the barn doors. “Do you have any idea how crazy you are? If Mum could see you now...”

  She paused, feeling a shiver run through her body. She'd avoided saying the word Mum for so long, it sounded strange now, coming from her lips.

  Heading back out of the room, she made her way to the top of the stairs, only to stop as she heard a faint bump from somewhere over her shoulder. Turning, she looked toward the narrow room and saw that there was something small and rectangular on the floor. She was certain it hadn't been there a moment ago, and when she went to investigate she found that it was a tattered little notebook, its pages warped as if it had been wet once but had since dried. Picking the book up, she found that some of the pages were stuck together, but she was able to peel enough apart to see lots of handwritten text. Everything was in Norwegian, of course, so she couldn't understand a word of it, but there was something strangely beautiful about the swooping handwriting.

  “Jeg... hater...” she began to read, pronouncing the words phonetically, “or varer... so... kald.”

  She had no idea what that sentence meant, of course, although she knew 'jeg' meant 'I' and she guessed that 'kald' meant 'cold'.

  “Hey.”

  Almost jumping out of her skin, she dropped the book and turned to see her father standing in the doorway.

  “Jumpy, much?” he said with a smile as she picked the book back up. “What have you got there?”

  “Nothing.” She paused. “I found it. It's mine.”

  Stepping over to her, he took the book and turned it around in his hands, before passing it back, clearly figuring that it was unimportant.

  “Great. Congratulations.”

  “I need to learn Norwegian so I can read it,” she explained, opening the book so he could see the handwriting again.

  “No,” he replied, “you need to learn Norwegian so you can go to school and interact with the people in this community, and actually build a life for yourself here. Being able to read some dusty old notebook is really just a side-benefit.”

  “Can't I be home-schooled?”

  “Ha!” he replied, patting her on the back. “You're funny.”

  “I mean it. Please? I don't want to go to some crumby Norwegian school. I don't speak the language, so -”

  “I already spoke to the teachers. You're going to have special dispensation while you catch up. I told them you're smart, plus you've been listening to those CDs I gave you a while back, haven't you?” He waited for an answer. “Haven't you?”

  “It'd be much easier if I was home-schooled,” she replied, dodging the question.

  “It wouldn't be easier for me,” he replied, turning and heading back out to the landing. “You'd drive me nuts.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I'm going to the supermarket. Wanna come? We can try some authentic Norwegian food. I've heard about this thing they do with a sheep's head.”

  “Another time.” Flicking to the next page in the notebook, she saw a line that actually seemed to make sense. “Hey, when did you say the last owners left this place? You know, the ones whose kids were horribly mutilated and murdered?”

  “I'm not certain,” he replied, turning to her, “but I think it was 1979, right after... Well, the parents moved out after the three children died. As you would.”

  “So why does this notebook have entries from January of last year?” She held the book up for him to see.

  “Beats me,” he said with a shrug. “I'm sure there's a perfectly normal explanation.”

  “But the house was sealed shut, wasn't it? You told me that.”

  “There are a million ways for some random notebook to end up in here,” she told her. “Not everything has to be some big mystery.”

  “Huh.” Looking through the book some more, she found pages filled with crude, hand-drawn maps of the local area, apparently showing a route, and after a moment she noticed a hint of red, stained into some of the pages, almost like blood. “I really need to -”

  Before she could finish, she heard her father's footsteps on the creaking stairs, and she realized he was already heading off. She waited, listening to him downstairs, and finally she heard him going outside. Making her way to the window, she watched from up-high as he walked across the yard, almost slipping on several areas of ice as he headed for the street and the supermarket they'd passed on the drive from the airport. She watched until he disappeared from view, and then she turned to look back over at the narrow room where she'd found the notebook.

  “I'm going to read this,” she said out loud, glancing back down at the pages and then turning to the front, where she saw a scribbled line of text that she figured had to be a name. “Margit Lin Tessem,” she whispered. “What's your diary doing here, Margit Lin Tessem?”

  Chapter Five

  1979

  “I told her to follow the body,” Kari replied as they hurried along the riverbank. “I thought she could at least manage that without getting into trouble!”

  “She's just a child,” her older sister Elizabeth muttered. “What the hell were you thinking leaving her alone?”

  “It's not my fault!”

  “Then where is she?” Elizabeth asked, stopping at the river's bend and looking around for a moment. “Sara!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “Sara, if you can hear us, shout back!” She waited for a moment. “Sara!”

  “It's not my fault,” Kari said again, with tears in her eyes. “Do you... Do you think she's okay? I mean, she has to be okay, doesn't she? God, it's just like her to get me into trouble like this!”

  “She didn't sound okay,” Elizabeth continued, heading along the riverbank with Kari keeping pace just behind. “People don't scream if they're okay.”

  “Yes, but Sara's a little coward. She probably just got startled by a frog or something.”

  “You don't really think that.”

  “Well what else could it be?”

  “I don't want to think about that,” Elizabeth replied, glancing down at the river. “I don't get how much further it could have drifted. Something isn't right here.”

  “It's not my fault,” Kari said yet again.

  “Stop saying that over and over. No-one cares whose fault it is right now, only -” Stopping suddenly, she saw a shape in the water up ahead, drifting along with the current. “Is that it?”

  “Sara!” Kari shouted, hurrying ahead. “Where the hell are you, you little idiot?”

  Making her way along the riverbank until she reached the human corpse floating in the river, Elizabeth stared for a moment, utterly shocked by the sight but also fascinated. Finally, realizing that she had to do something, she looked around until she spotted a long branch on the ground and, picking it up, she used it to nudge the body and try to steer it toward land.

  “What are you doing?” Kari asked cautiously.

  “I'm bringing it to the shore so we can take
a closer look and stop it floating any further. You know, maybe that's something you could have done earlier, instead of leaving Sara behind.” She struggled for a moment to steer the body, before finally managing to get the end of the branch hooked through part of the dead man's clothing.

  “I don't want to see it,” Kari said nervously.

  “Then look away.”

  Turning, Kari looked around at the tall pine trees for a moment. “Sara!” she shouted, her voice betraying an increasing sense of desperation. “Do you think she just went home? Maybe she got scared? You know what she's like, she can be really dumb sometimes, so she probably just decided she wanted to go and play somewhere. She's totally selfish sometimes, even for an eight-year-old.”

  “Then why did she scream?”

  “To get me into trouble. She's probably watching us right now, laughing.”

  “She's a kid,” Elizabeth pointed out as she used the branch to pull the body to the side of the river, finally wedging it against a mud-bank. “She's not out to get you, for God's sake.” Dropping the branch, she clambered down and took a closer look at the corpse, and as she moved around to the other side she let out a gasp as she saw its bloated, discolored face.

  “Who is it?” Kari asked.

  “I don't know,” Elizabeth replied, taking a series of deep breaths in a bid to stay calm. “He's wearing some kind of uniform, though. It's a little bit like Mamma's from the hospital. Maybe that's where this guy works.”

  “There's no hospital around here, though, is there?”

  “Only that leper place. Maybe that's where he's from.”

  “So...” Kari paused. “So maybe he just got drunk and fell in, and drowned?”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “It's possible,” Kari stammered. “You know what people are like, sometimes they drink too much and then they end up doing stupid things. For all you know, he had a heart attack and just fell into the water, and there's really nothing more suspicious than that.”

  “Sure,” Elizabeth replied, “but then how did he end up with his throat cut?”

  Kari paused again. “His... throat?”

  “From ear to ear,” Elizabeth continued, crouching down to take a closer look. “Come and see for yourself if you don't believe me. The flesh is really torn in places, as if something rough was used.”

  Kari shook her head.

  “He's been in the water for a while, too,” Elizabeth added. “He must have been to look like this. Maybe he was dumped somewhere and when it rained yesterday, he came loose and started to drift.” Taking another stick from the forest floor, she used one end to gently poke the dead man's shoulder, although she pulled back as soon as she felt the skin burst beneath his shirt, as if it was even more rotten than it appeared.

  “This is gross,” Kari said, taking a step back.

  “It's actually quite interesting,” Elizabeth continued, before turning to her sister. “And sad, obviously. It's very sad too. But it's interesting to think about.” Getting to her feet, she looked toward the trees, before cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting: “Sara! Where are you?”

  “You've got mud on your dress,” Kari pointed out.

  “So?” She stepped away from the body for a moment and waited for some hint of their younger sister's presence. “You shouldn't have left her out here. She's too young.”

  “I'm sorry,” Kari continued, “but I thought it was the best thing.”

  “You should have stayed to watch the body, and sent her back.”

  “It's not my fault that she's a little idiot who can't follow simple instructions.”

  Stepping forward, Elizabeth looked around, still hoping to see Sara running toward them. “You were supposed to look after her.”

  “She's okay, though,” Kari continued. “I mean, she has to be. She's stupid, but she's not that stupid. She was only supposed to keep track of the body so we could find it again when I came back with help. If she'd followed my instructions, she'd be right here.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth replied, “but -”

  Stopping suddenly, she listened to the sound of the forest.

  “Did you hear something?” she asked.

  Kari shook her head.

  “I thought... Never mind,” Elizabeth replied, turning to her. “We have to get help. It'll be dark soon, we have to find Sara before then.”

  ***

  A couple of hours later, the two sisters stood and watched as three local men struggled to get the sloppy, waterlogged body onto a stretcher. The job was made harder by the fact that parts of the body had begun to rot, causing pieces of skin to start sloughing away from the bone, and eventually the whole corpse just seemed to come apart. Finally they got the body onto the stretcher in half a dozen separate chunks.

  “That is so disgusting,” Kari said, barely able to look but unable to turn away for too long.

  “It's just science,” Elizabeth said calmly, watching as a sheet was placed over the corpse. “It's natural.”

  “It's not natural, it's disgusting!”

  “They can be the same thing. Death's never pretty.” Turning, she look up the hill and saw several more men walking between the trees, looking for anything that might give a clue as to what had happened to the dead man. Frowning, she turned to the police inspector, Dybendal, who so far seemed more interested in his cigarettes than in the case at hand. “You're looking in the wrong place.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, raising a dubious eyebrow as he took a drag on his latest cigarette.

  “Just because this is where we found him, that doesn't mean this is where he was killed,” she pointed out. “You need to go back against the current of the river and work out where he was dumped. That's where you might find some kind of clue.

  “Huh.” He took another drag, clearly unimpressed by her suggestion. “How old are you, exactly?”

  “Eighteen, Sir.”

  “Eighteen. Well, I'm forty-eight, and I've been doing this kind of thing for quite a while, so I think I'll stick to my way, alright? Now instead of bothering me, why don't you run along home and see if your parents need help with a few chores?”

  “My sister can show you where they first found the body,” Elizabeth continued. “It really shouldn't be that hard to -”

  “Alright, alright,” he replied, waving his hand at her dismissively as he blew smoke in her general direction, “hint taken, now get lost.” Dropping the cigarette, he used the heel of his shoe to stamp it out before glancing at her with a smile. “Don't want you contaminating the crime scene, do we?”

  “We still need to find our sister,” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “Then go and find her. She's obviously not here, is she?” He smiled. “I mean, I'm pretty sure we'd have noticed her by now.”

  “What if something has happened to her? We heard a scream!”

  “You don't know it was her, though. Could have been anyone, probably just some local kids messing about.”

  “She might be in danger!”

  He sighed. “How long's it been since you last saw her?”

  “Kari saw her about four hours ago.”

  “Four hours?” He sniffed dismissively. “That's nothing. You know what kids are like, they're always running off. If she's not back by nightfall, let me know.”

  “But by nightfall it'll be too -”

  “I've got a job to do,” he added, pushing past her and heading between the trees, as the stretcher was carried past. “Resources are stretched,” he called back to them, “and we have an unofficial rule of one investigation at a time round these parts. A body in the river has higher priority than a missing girl any day.” With that, he began to make his way up the steep incline toward the trees, although he was clearly struggling with the unexpected exercise.

  “We have to find Sara,” Elizabeth whispered, looking both ways along the path that led along the riverbank. “Where would she have gone? What could have made her run off like this?”

  “
Maybe she was scared?” Kari suggested.

  “In which case she'd either have stayed here to wait for us, or she'd have come back home along the path we took. Either way, we'd have come across her by now.”

  “Then -”

  “Something's happened,” Elizabeth continued, with a sense of panic starting to rise through her chest. “This isn't like her.” She turned to Kari. “We have to split up. You go back the way we came, I'll go on ahead.”

  “We should stay together.”

  “We need to cover more ground.”

  “What if Mamma and Pappa -”

  “We need to find her,” Elizabeth said firmly. “It'll get cold at night, and dark. If she's still out here then, she might get sick.”

  “But I don't...” Kari paused, not wanting to admit that she was scared. “I mean, maybe we should work together, just in case. You know?”

  Sighing, Elizabeth realized that there was no way she was going to be able to organize things her preferred way. “Come with me, then,” she said, turning and starting to make her way along the path. “We'll go as far as the fork half a mile along, and if we don't find her by then, we'll turn back. She wouldn't have gone any further than that.”

  “I'm going to kill her when we find her,” Kari continued, as she followed her sister. “I gave her specific instructions and she -”

  “Stop!” Elizabeth said suddenly, holding a hand out. “Do you hear that?”

  Stopping, Kari listened, but all she heard was the sound of men talking in the distance, and leaves being trampled underfoot, and... Suddenly, she realized that she could hear something else: a kind of low, whimpering sob, coming from the tall grass just a few meters away from the path. Somehow, deep down, she instantly knew that it was her little sister.

  “Sara?” Elizabeth called out, hurrying toward the source of the sound. “Sara, are you -”

  Pulling some of the grass aside, she gasped as she saw Sara curled up in a ball, as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible while tears streamed down her terrified face. Her whole body was trembling, and there were scratches all over her flesh, deep scratches that had spilled enough blood to dribble down in thick red lines that eventually dripped onto the leaves and mud.