Читать книгу The Ice People 31 - The Ferryman - Margit Sandemo - Страница 7

Chapter 2

The moon was waiting behind the clouds that were rushing across the sky, dark and tattered. Every so often its pale disc would emerge for a moment, casting its blue-green light across the house on the hill.

It was a big house, with two storeys and numerous windows that reflected the light of the moon. The house might have had a colour once, but now the pale greyish wood had started to show through the layers of paint. The tiles on the roof looked mossy, and the bottoms of the verandah posts had begun to rot. On the ground floor, a dim light could be discerned behind velvet curtains, but the upper floor seemed uninhabited, with torn curtains hanging in shreds behind the windows.

When the moon disappeared behind the clouds again, the house appeared even darker in its overwhelming gloominess. But suddenly it was as though there was a fleeting glimmer deep within the uninhabited upper floor – dim and vague, as though someone were carrying a candle obscured by a many-layered curtain of cobwebs.

Then the moon emerged again and the gleam disappeared.

But no one ever walked on the road that led into the hills, so who would have seen it? There was no one who wanted to visit this house, or meet its inhabitants, or find out why it had such a menacing reputation. It looked like a haunted house and that was exactly what it was, according to those who had been close enough to see it. People also talked about hearing screams in the night and other strange things.

Only the moon seemed to love this house.

Then daylight arrived and the moon disappeared.

Guri Martinsen loosened her collar, which had been buttoned all the way to the top, and fanned herself with her gloves. She was an ample woman of about thirty-five, flushed and glistening with perspiration. Her attire was rather impractical, as the long train of her dress dragged on the ground, and she wore her hat tipped down over her forehead, fastened with dangerously sharp hatpins.

“I just can’t take another step. I’ll go down to the riverbank and rest for a moment.”

Somewhat irritated, her husband put down the luggage. He too was suffering from the heat. “Guri, we don’t have much time. It’s late, and the aunts are expecting us.”

Guri was already on her way down to the river. “You said that it wouldn’t be far from the station. And we’ve been walking for hours now!”

“Hours,” he muttered. “You’re always exaggerating.”

But he had to admit that the journey had been longer than he remembered, though it was a long time since he had been there. Back then the railway hadn’t even existed.

“Come, Sidsel,” his wife shouted to their eight-year-old daughter.

Sidsel stepped timidly across the grass, a slender little thing with thick, light hair and a permanently apologetic look in her eyes. Her father sighed resignedly and trotted after her. “But it can’t be a long break,” he shouted. “It’s getting late and we’ll have to move on tonight.”

Sidsel placed her small hand in her father’s. “Can’t I go with you?” she whimpered miserably.

“We’ve already discussed this. Mother and Father are going on their first trip abroad. We need some time alone, you must understand. So you will be staying with your grandfather’s sisters while we’re gone. I’m sure they’re very nice, and we’ll be back soon.”

Ove Martinsen hoped that the aunts would be nice. He hadn’t seen them since he was a child and he had been a little bit afraid of them then. But that was then: they had probably mellowed with age. They were eccentric, that much he knew, and the rest of the family had no contact with them. But he and Guri had wanted to break the ice by allowing them to take care of Sidsel for a little while. Three sweet old aunts ... Of course it would be a joy for them to have a child in the house! Especially since they lived out in the country ...

Sidsel said no more about the journey. It wouldn’t do any good anyway.

Instead she started strolling along the riverbank, while her parents sat down, each on their own rock, to rest. Sidsel was small and skinny, and the baking sun didn’t bother her at all. She looked at all the pretty stones on the bank and every now and then would throw one into the water as it rushed past.

She bent down to examine something that was shimmering on the riverbed right by the shore. What in the world was that? She put her hand into the water and felt the current pulling it, but she managed to reach the object.

She held it in her hand and saw that it was just a coin with a strange pattern on it. It looked like letters. Or perhaps they were symbols? The coin was in terrible condition and probably not worth keeping. Still, she dried it on the grass and put it in her pocket. Then her mother called and she went back to her parents. They continued their laborious trudge along the country road.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Guri asked her husband.

He wasn’t quite so confident any more. “It ought to be,” he said, ill at ease. “But on the other hand, we should have arrived by now. Everything has changed so much since I came here as a child. What with the railway and ...”

“Idiot!” Guri hissed. “Go and ask those little boys over there by the sawmill.”

They had been going in the wrong direction. It took them several hours to get back on the right road – a mistake that Ove would never hear the end of.

At last they stood gazing at the house with a feeling best described as repugnance. Dusk had fallen and the moon had risen again, but tonight the wind wasn’t blowing. The moon was easily able to bathe its favourite house in its cold green light, completely unhindered.

“What a scary haunted castle!” Guri muttered. “Is that really where your aunts live?”

“This is the right address. But it’s worse than I thought it would be,” he admitted. “It must be ages since it was repaired.”

Sidsel didn’t say anything. She was trembling with fear.

“Well, but they were certainly willing to take in the girl,” Ove said, in an attempt to console himself.

“Well, if you can describe that tiny card they sent as an expression of wanting her,” Guri said. “The girl can come. We will, of course, have to be compensated in the form of a small payment. Full stop.”

“They’re old and probably poor,” said Ove in their defence. “But, come on, I’m sure it will be much cosier inside.”

A broken bell could be heard clanging inside the house when they pulled the cord by the entrance. After a while the door opened just an inch, but no more. There was a heavy chain inside it.

“Hello!” said Ove cheerfully to the person on the other side of the door. “We’ve come with our daughter.”

The door was reluctantly opened and they were let into an entrance hall filled with black furniture, dimly lit by an old-fashioned lamp.

“Hello, hello, dear Aunt ... um ... Gerd, it’s been so long!” said Ove.

Sidsel was staring up at a gigantic cameo brooch, and above that a pair of cold fish-like eyes. Aunt Gerd was shapeless and flabby as well as pallid, and her hair was lifeless and tousled. In the doorway stood an equally pallid but older and more scrawny-looking aunt: Agnes. And in the living room sat the chubby youngest sister, Beate, preoccupied with a game of solitaire and a box of chocolates.

“Come in,” croaked Aunt Gerd. “You’re late.”

Ove muttered something about having made a wrong turn, and after everyone had greeted one another Aunt Agnes said: “Where’s the cash, Ove? Your father was always careless with money, so it’s probably best that we have the money for her board right away, because after your vacation you’ll most likely be broke. I’ve looked into what board and lodging costs these days. And we’ll also have to include heat, wear and tear on the furniture and all the accidents and damage that are likely to occur. And our hourly wages for watching her will be 25 kroner, which is a fair price, wouldn’t you say?”

“25 kroner?” cried Guri in dismay. “But ...”

“Well we could make it 30 ...”

“No, I’m sorry, 25 is acceptable,” muttered Guri.

Their travelling funds would be as good as gone.

“Where will she sleep?” Ove wanted to know.

“We’ve chosen the brown drawing room,” said Aunt Gerd. “We don’t have any spare bedrooms and most of the furniture in the brown drawing room isn’t particularly valuable. So it will suit us best for her to have that room.”

What was best for Sidsel was clearly of no importance.

“But that doesn’t mean that she can be careless with the furniture,” Aunt Agnes chimed in. “They are family treasures and they are of great value to us.”

Indeed, there was more than enough furniture crammed into the drawing room. And if they were family treasures, then the aunts were very modest people. The room resembled a store for the kind of items antique dealers don’t expect to sell. There was furniture from various eras arranged in strange groupings, and decorative objects of little value occupied every single nook and cranny. Ove made his way among tables and chairs and whatnots and huge, painted plaster statues to a wobbly bed.

“This is where you’ll be sleeping, Sidsel,” he said encouragingly to the little girl, but her tearful face told him that they had made a terrible mistake in bringing her to his aunts’ house. He understood. He wouldn’t have wanted to stay there himself.

Guri pulled him aside for a small private conversation. She did not look happy.

“Is there really nowhere else for Sidsel to stay?”

He shook his head. “Anyway, it’s certainly too late now.”

“And we’ll have to stay the night here too,” she hissed. “And be delayed for a whole day. But at least that means the girl will have some company tonight. But we can’t stay in here. There’s not enough room for all of us.”

After much quibbling and complaining, the aunts finally agreed to let them sleep on the floor of the best parlour. But first Ove had to offer to pay for it. Because it was going to cause the aunts a lot of extra trouble, they claimed.

But the satisfied look on their faces as he handed them more of his hard-earned money indicated that they could easily be persuaded.

Sidsel stood by the window. Only the brightest stars were visible against the clear light of the moon. The only stars that could be seen of Orion were his shoulders and belt. They looked like a pair of tiny, malicious eyes and a mouth with a wry smile.

The moonlight fell across the brown drawing room, which was a very suitable name for it. The light fell on Sidsel’s bed where she lay quietly sobbing and miserable. Eight endless days and nights lay before her in this nightmare of a house, staying with her aunts who clearly loathed the sight of her. If only she had been allowed to go along with her mother and father! But they kept saying things like now they would “finally be alone,” and this was their chance to “try to patch things up between them” and other silly things.

She would run away tomorrow, that’s what she would do! It didn’t matter where she ended up, or whether she had to freeze and starve, or whether she got sunburnt or had to sleep in the forest. Anything would be better than these cold aunts and their abominable house!

Sidsel suddenly froze and peeped out over the covers. It was hard to distinguish what was what in the chaos of furniture, but she couldn’t see anything unusual. She heard something, though. Something indefinable. There were several rooms between her and the one her parents were sleeping in. It was no use whispering to them. And she didn’t dare shout, for what if there was someone else in the room?

But no, the sound she had heard hadn’t come from her room. It had come from upstairs. The sound of dragging footsteps on the floor above. Coming from the room that was empty.

There was someone up there walking – no, tiptoeing – very, very quietly. But the floorboards creaked, giving them away.

Still, Sidsel managed to calm down again. Whoever was tiptoeing around up there couldn’t reach her.

Then came a new sound. This time she recognized it: it was one she had heard many times before coming from her parents’ bedroom. The sound of the bedstead quietly creaking, rhythmically and subdued. She had never cared for the sound, even though she didn’t know what it was. It would usually get louder after a while, whereupon she always heard a thud against the wall followed by the sound of heavy breathing.

Those sounds usually awakened vague, unpleasant feelings within her.

The creaking sounds upstairs lasted for a long time and, just like at home, they grew louder and faster – and then fell completely silent. After a while she heard the dragging footsteps again.

The sound faded away and Sidsel crept back down under the covers.

The journey there had been hard on her. She finally fell into a deep sleep.

Her dreams were restless. There were rumbling, crashing and scratching sounds everywhere.

The last dream was unusually frightening, filled with ear-splitting noises.

She woke up so abruptly that her entire body jerked. She had heard a real sound, a loud bang and a thud.

And this time it was in her room, she was certain of it!

The moon was still just as bright. Sidsel stared into space, her heart galloping and her teeth chattering. She let out a small whimper.

Something had changed, but what?

Now she saw it! Someone must have been in there, because the two chairs next to the table in the middle of the room were now facing her, as though someone had nudged them or stumbled into them. And where was the little table by the wall?

Hadn’t there been a little table over there? And wasn’t there now a fallen statue lying there instead?

Perhaps her father had been to check up on her. And had accidentally walked into the chairs ...She wasn’t entirely convinced that there had actually been a table there; perhaps it hadn’t been there at all. And the sculpture could have been lying on the floor the whole time – the whole room was a jumble of objects.

Yes, most probably her father had been there.

She let out a sigh and a little moan as though she had been out running. She carefully said the word “Father” but got no response. Well, he must have gone back to his room. Sidsel put her head down on the pillow and closed her eyes.

But she opened them again immediately. There was a scratching, rustling sound coming from the floor. She stared and stared into space, but nothing was moving there.

But then ...

Sidsel’s heart nearly stopped beating.

Her gaze fell on a gigantic pier glass decorated with grotesque ornaments that didn’t seem to belong to any particular era at all. The reflection in the mirror allowed her to see parts of the room she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.

And she saw a tall bookshelf, filled with ugly vases and conches and knick-knacks, slowly moving across the floor, gliding diagonally towards her end of the room.

Sidsel howled and jumped out of the bed, stumbled into a piece of furniture that hadn’t been standing there earlier in the evening, got up and ran through the rooms, screaming wildly, and waking the whole house.

“What on earth is it?” shouted her parents, drowsy and frightened.

Her tears came gushing forth and after they had received an almost incomprehensible explanation from the girl, they each lit a candle and entered the brown drawing room to see for themselves.

The chaos they found there was indescribable. The light of the flickering candles revealed furniture that had toppled over, ornaments that had landed on the other side of the room, broken porcelain and drawers that had been pulled out.

“Well, I never,” said Aunt Agnes, after having been rendered speechless for a while. “That’s quite impressive for an eight-year-old!”

“This isn’t Sidsel’s doing,” Ove objected. “She would never manage to move that cabinet!”

No, the aunts had to admit he was right about that.

“But who was it then?” asked Aunt Beate, looking as round as a marble in her scruffy robe. “Do you walk in your sleep, Ove?”

“No, I can assure you ...”

Sidsel sobbed. “No, it wasn’t Father. I saw the tall bookshelf with my own eyes: it moved on its own. No one was pushing it. “

“What rubbish!” said Aunt Gerd, her ample bosom trembling in indignation.

“Oh, my beautiful bookcase,” said Agnes, grieving over the abominable old monstrosity. “The glass is broken. Look! A vase has been hurled through it and destroyed the finest of the books inside! That’s going to cost you plenty, I can tell you!”

“But we ...” Guri began, but then she fell silent. It was going to be impossible for them to prove their innocence. The aunts would insist on having a scapegoat, or three. And preferably getting some money out of this as well.

As they stood there, unable to think clearly, an old mantel clock was hurled through the room and smashed into the wall with a loud bang.

“Say what you like,” said Ove, “but not even a grown man can throw that hard.”

They heard Aunt Gerd gasp. It sounded as though she was having a serious heart attack, but it must have been the shock, they assumed. With a trembling finger, her white, limp arm pointed towards the wall beside them.

Everyone stood petrified, staring at what she had just seen.

High up on the wall, perhaps half a meter from the ceiling, there was a deep imprint on the brown tapestry. The imprint was so deep that the wood panelling behind it had been dented.

It was clear for everyone to see what it was. The pawprint of a gigantic animal, with the marks of its claws and everything.

The puzzle was that no such animal existed.