Читать книгу The Ice People 31 - The Ferryman - Margit Sandemo - Страница 9

Chapter 4

Benedikte walked through the scary old house in astonishment. She had a wait-and-see attitude. If her father, Henning, had seen her now he might have understood, for no one knew Benedikte better than he did, although he knew nothing about her exhausting dream world. But from her attitude he would have been able to grasp that this was a house with a certain ... could one say “atmosphere”?

Many of those present observed her with curiosity as she walked around. The three owners of the house were very sceptical of her presence, giving her disapproving glances and muttering about “a nosy, prying little girl”. The Martinsen couple, who were waiting impatiently to be allowed to leave, looked on in astonishment. Sveg was also sceptical and Olsen was disdainfully arrogant, while Sander Brink was disappointed.

He had heard about Benedikte and had formed a picture of her. He had been expecting an ethereal, mystical creature with great personal magnetism. Benedikte had none of these qualities. She was so tall that Olsen had to look up to speak to her and Sander looked her straight in the eyes when facing her. She was clumsily built, her face was as broad as an Eskimo’s and her features were somewhat Mongolian, but she had a friendly demeanour. She showed not the least sign of being demonic or intuitive, which he believed a psychic woman ought to be.

On the other hand, Benedikte didn’t dare look in his direction. He distracted her thoughts to a great degree. Never before had she seen such a handsome man, but she was nothing to him, she knew that painfully well. Had she been allowed to, she would have sat in a dark room and observed him as he sat in the light. Invisible to him, she would simply have sat and gazed at him for hours. Allowed herself to be saturated with the sight of him, uninhibitedly taking pleasure in looking at every single feature, absorbing every single word he said.

But right now she had other things to think about, and she didn’t want him to see her face. Sometimes you needed to hide your face, she understood that now.

She took a deep breath, trying not to think about the fact that he was studying her, and instead attempted to concentrate on the house.

The little girl was important.

Benedikte squatted in front of Sidsel and took her hands in hers. The girl was reserved but not scared.

“You heard footsteps coming from the floor above?” Benedikte asked quietly.

Sidsel nodded. The aunts strained to hear her, but Benedikte purposefully spoke much too softly for them to hear anything. She knew that they were hostile towards the girl.

“We’re sure to get to the bottom of this,” she said reassuringly – she had always had a way with children. “Naturally you can’t stay here: we’ll have to find somewhere else for you to stay. But first we have to remain here for a little while. I don’t think we’ll have to spend the night.”

She sensed the relief that flooded the little girl’s body upon hearing those words.

“Don’t be afraid,” Benedikte said. “I’ll be with you the whole time. I won’t leave your side.”

Now it was a matter of being diplomatic. And this was an area in which Benedikte felt inadequate, as she was naive and open and didn’t have a talent for life’s more intricate cunning. But the aunts were merciless, she was well aware of that. They had fought a hard battle earlier that day. The thought of having the police in their home was deeply upsetting to them, but at the same time they clearly understood that they wouldn’t be able to get compensation for a few pieces of charred furniture if they didn’t report it. But Ove and Guri Martinsen wouldn’t cooperate with them: the couple simply wouldn’t allow their daughter to stay in a house that was haunted. To which the aunts had furiously responded that ghosts had never haunted their house before, so it must have been the Martinsens themselves who had dragged the ghost in with them. They were deeply troubled by all the people who were running in and out of their home, and Benedikte was merely another one to shrug their shoulders or sneer at.

Sidsel was holding something back ...

She looked away when the topic of the noise upstairs was brought up.

Well, that would have to wait. The aunts had to be dealt with first!

Benedikte tried to forget how she must have appeared to Sander Brink and forced a smile at the three frightening women.

“Miss Martinsen,” she said to Beate, who was the youngest and possibly the most approachable of the three. “I would like to speak with all three of you afterwards, if I may. I am sure you have valuable information to give me. But first we must concentrate on Sidsel’s parents, who will soon be departing. So if you would be so kind as to go into your own rooms for the time being, I’ll take care of everything.”

Was she being adequately diplomatic now? It didn’t look like it, for the three ladies retired to their rooms deeply offended, resentful of being ordered about in their very own home.

Benedikte turned to Ove and Guri Martinsen, still avoiding looking in the direction of Brink, who was standing with the other two men from the sheriff’s office.

“I’m a little confused,” she said to the couple, trying not to blush at the thought of Sander Brink. “This house seems to contain many strange things. There are at least three different elements here that don’t seem to fit together.”

Oh, if only she had been able to express herself intelligently and eloquently! But that had never been Benedikte’s style. She was a simple soul filled with many emotions.

“For one thing, there is the terrible mess in this snuff-brown parlour ...”

No, that was no way to express oneself. She quickly corrected what she had said: “This brown parlour. For another there are the footsteps upstairs. And, Sheriff, you said that outsiders had noticed a faint light up there at times. Third, there are some other things that puzzle me. I don’t understand ...”

She was suddenly lost in thought. There was something that was deeply mystifying to her, because she ought to have sensed where it was coming from but she couldn’t. It was a foreign element.

“Are you thinking about the paw mark?” asked the sheriff quietly. He wasn’t sure how to respond to this young girl. But she seemed so honest and trustworthy that he didn’t want to grunt at her.

“What?” She came to. “No, the paw ...? I am almost certain that I know what happened in the brown parlour. But I first have to verify it and to do that I will need little Sidsel. Unfortunately! But I can hold her hand the whole time, if she wishes.”

Martinsen stamped his foot and said, “But we must be going soon or we’ll be late!”

“Yes, of course,” Benedikte said. She went over and took Mrs Martinsen by the hand. “Don’t be afraid for Sidsel, nothing bad will happen to her.”

She paused, keeping Guri’s hand in hers while looking at her solemnly.

“You are struggling with an inner conflict, Mrs Martinsen, I can sense that. But it is not necessary because you yourself are responsible for much of it. You are jealous and you don’t need to be.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been saying,” Ove exclaimed excitedly. “You’re just imagining things, Guri.”

“Not just,” said Benedikte, who had let go of Guri’s hand and was now facing Ove. “I could actually sense a lot when I greeted you just now. You like girls, but only in a careless way – like many men your age. You just flirt a little with them, nothing more. You are completely loyal to your wife. So you should both go on that trip, but I think you should be more considerate of Sidsel. She needs you both. Don’t you see the fear in her eyes? You fight a lot, don’t you?”

“Goodness, what kind of girl are you?” said Ove brusquely, but then immediately grew gentler. “Yes, we’ll be sure to sort out our personal lives, but that’s not why you came here – or is it?”

“No, of course, not. I apologize,” said Benedikte, giving them a farewell nod. Then she turned to the sheriff and said: “I think I’d like to start on the upper floor. How do I get up there?”

“Yes, well, I asked the same thing, but the three sisters say you can’t get up there. That floor hasn’t been used for many years, they say.”

Little Sidsel, whose parents had now abandoned her and who therefore clung to the friendly Benedikte, looked frightened.

Benedikte turned to her. “You heard footsteps, didn’t you?”

“Goodness, yes!” whispered the girl. “I swear it’s true!”

“I believe you. But ... you haven’t told me everything, have you?”

Sidsel blushed.

Benedikte, who was very sensitive to the moods of others, led Sidsel away from the men. “What is it? You can tell me. I must know, you see.”

“No, it was so disgusting!”

“Yes, I understand. Whisper it to me, I won’t tell anyone!”

After hesitating for a long time, Sidsel cupped her hand and whispered in Benedikte’s ear: “I heard a bed creaking.”

“As though someone was living up there?”

The girl swallowed. “It was unpleasant bed sounds.”

Benedikte frowned. “You mean ... like when people make love?”

“I don’t know,” Sidsel whispered. “That might be what they’re doing. I don’t know.”

“No, of course you don’t, you’re only eight years old. But thank you, it was very good of you to tell me. And I won’t tell anyone.”

And she didn’t. Because even though Benedikte of course knew about the mysteries of erotic love, it was a world that would never be hers, she knew that too. She was created for friendship and devotion; no man would ever be sufficiently interested in her to want to go to bed with her. That was something she had accepted a long time ago. Until now it hadn’t been hard for her to do so. Until she met Sander Brink.

No, she wouldn’t mention anything about Sidsel’s experiences.

But, somewhat horrified, she pondered what this could mean: a floor that was sealed off and from where such strange sounds came?

“Is it completely impossible to get up there?” she asked, getting up from her squatting position in front of the girl and joining the men.

“Where is the staircase?”

“Behind that door there. It’s locked, of course, but now that the horrible aunts have gone, I think we’ll try to open it with a skeleton key. Olsen, that’s a job for you! It’s about time you made yourself a little useful instead of lecturing me all day.”

The young, omniscient Olsen looked offended but took some tools out of his pocket. It wasn’t long before he had managed to open the lock.

Benedikte opened the door, hoping that the aunts hadn’t heard the ear-piercing creak that came from it.They were met with a rush of dank air when the door opened. Benedikte’s face expressed disgust as she saw what was in there.

The stairwell had entirely collapsed. There were rotting beams and boards lying helter-skelter on the floor, and way up under the roof hung what was left of the stairs. They resembled huge teeth that had never been cleaned. Above them the upper hall was a gaping hole covered by strands of cobweb.

“That will be all, thank you very much!” Benedikte muttered, closing the door. “I’ve seen enough!”

Next she talked to the three sisters.

Sander Brink had taken little Sidsel out for a long walk so that she wouldn’t have to be in the house more than was necessary. But the sheriff and his assistant, Olsen, were present during Benedikte’s conversation with the shrews.

It was a battle against a wall of distrust and warped ideas. No one had the energy to talk to them one at a time, so they decided to speak to all three in a single conversation in the living room.

“This house has never been haunted,” said the tall, scrawny Agnes with dignity. “The girl has a sick imagination.”

“People say they’ve sometimes seen a light coming from the upper floor?” Sveg said in a gentle voice.

“People say a lot of nasty things about us,” said Gerd, as her cameo brooch trembled with indignation. “It would seem that three defenceless women cannot be left to live in peace. Just because we refuse to socialize with all and sundry! The stairs began collapsing twenty-five years ago. Nobody’s been up there since then. We’ve arranged everything very comfortably for ourselves down here.”

“Did you inherit this house?”

“Yes, our dear father bought it in his youth. And we have attempted to preserve it with as much reverence as we could.”

Benedikte thought there was a difference between preserving old things and not touching them at all so that they fell into decay.

Beate licked some chocolate off her fingers. “It hasn’t been easy for us. We are lonely, impoverished women who have only our savings to live on.”

The sheriff changed the subject. “We will take the girl with us later tonight when young Benedikte has examined the brown parlour for ghosts. For I think it is best for all parties that little Sidsel should no longer stay here.”

“Absolutely, we certainly aren’t interested in having such a horrible child living in our house. You claim that we can’t expect to get much compensation for all the damage that has been done to our beloved furniture!”

“Oh, I don’t know. You received a lot of money in rent from them,” Sveg said bitterly. After endless conversations, the aunts had been forced to return half of the money the Martinsens had paid them. They refused to return the rest, because they said the girl had stayed there for one night and think of all the glass and furniture that was damaged!

The conversation came to a standstill, so everyone was extremely relieved when Sander walked through the gate with Sidsel. Everyone except the aunts went out to greet them. Benedikte concealed a joyful smile at seeing Sander.

The fragile verandah creaked as everyone stood on it to greet one another.

“Don’t touch that verandah post,” Sveg advised Olsen with foreboding. “One wrong move and we’ll all be buried in the ruins.”

Benedikte looked up and realized he was right.

“Do you know, I feel sorry for those three old ladies,” she said in a low voice. “Imagine living all alone in a haunted house like this.”

“Feel sorry for them?” the sheriff gave a subdued snort. “They’ll be fine. They’re about as stingy as can be. They haggle over the price of everything and cheat to get things for free, I’ve heard. And they adore this house. They are so terribly attached to this place, their childhood home, the dear home of their mother and father, and so on. No, I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them!”

By the time they had finished their supper, which had consisted of a pallid dish that tasted of nothing – and paid dearly for it – night had fallen and the sheriff explained to the sulking ladies that they should retire, because Benedikte was now going to try to find out what was going on in the brown parlour.

She offered to help with the dishes first, but they unanimously refused to accept. The kitchen was one of the sacred rooms in the house, which no intruders were ever allowed to enter.

Aunt Agnes gave the sheriff a stern look. “And if anything else should be broken in our beautiful parlour, it will be your responsibility to compensate us for it!”

It seemed as though all three sisters were almost wishing it would happen. That was how truly attached they were to their family treasures.

If only Benedikte could get to the bottom of what was nagging at her subconscious! There was more to this place than met the eye. Something that was hiding. Something that didn’t belong here. And yet was of the utmost significance.

At the door to the brown parlour Sidsel grew contrary.

“No, I don’t want to go into that parlour!”

“You can sit just inside the door,” Benedikte reassured her. “And ...”

At last she was forced to look Sander in the eye. Her eyelids fluttered. “And perhaps Sander will sit with you?”

If he was disappointed at being reduced to the role of a nanny, he didn’t show it. He just gave Benedikte one of his irresistible smiles and pulled Sidsel to him. “Of course! Come, we’ll just sit quietly over here and if anything happens we’ll run away, won’t we?”

Sidsel nodded energetically without saying a word.

The parlour had been tidied up since they were last in there, and all the pieces of furniture had been put back in their original, random places. Olsen had done it while being ordered around by the three agitated ladies. He had been deeply hurt and offended at having to perform such a task.

The only evidence left was the mark on the wall – and of course a few broken windowpanes and that sort of thing. The sheriff stood looking up at the mark, shaking his head pensively.

“I doubt I’d want to meet the owner of that paw,” he said to Benedikte.

“But don’t you know where it comes from?” she asked in surprise. “I thought everyone did.”

The sheriff gave her a bitter look. “I’m not psychic.”

Benedikte was about to answer that you could figure it out using simple logic, but when she saw the puzzled looks on the faces of Sander Brink and Olsen as they waited for her to answer, she decided not to say anything. She didn’t want them to doubt their own intelligence.

Sidsel was shaking all over as she sat on Sander’s lap. Benedikte felt terribly sorry for her, but it was absolutely necessary for her to be there.

Benedikte did not look at Sander but she felt his presence in every cell of her body. His overwhelming charisma almost paralysed her and she half wished he hadn’t been there. She couldn’t concentrate as well as she wanted.

She had asked for a candle with a protective screen with which to light the room: she didn’t want to risk setting the whole room on fire with all that rubbish in it. The frightful appearance of the horrendous chamber now became even more obvious. A densely furnished room can often look cosy, but this one seemed cold and bare.

Benedikte, the sheriff and Olsen were sitting farther inside the room where they could see it all. She shouted to the two sitting by the door, “Be sure to speak up immediately if you see anything out of the ordinary!”

“Is it all right to speak aloud?”

“Yes, that doesn’t matter.”

They remained silent and waited. The minutes passed, the house was quiet. The sisters had clearly settled down for the night.

Sidsel gasped.

Then the sheriff saw Benedikte almost imperceptibly turn her head and listen, as though she sensed something in the room.

Even from a distance Sander also noticed her reaction.

Everyone except Sidsel froze in anticipation. But nothing happened. The sheriff relaxed and took out his pipe and filled it.

At that very moment it was ripped out of his hand and hurled across the room. With a bang it hit the wall. Fragments of the pipe flew about the room.

At the same instant, the heavy mirror on the console table was lifted up in the air and crashed to the floor.

“Benedikte!” Sander shouted, “It’s a poltergeist!”

“Yes, it certainly is!” she shouted above all the noise. “Get the girl out of here now! We don’t need to see any more.”

But before they managed to get out they saw a table being turned upside down, and then everyone realized what had left the mark on the wall.

Sidsel was crying, and Benedikte asked Olsen to take her straight to the local inn so that she could sleep the night there. Yes, she would prefer that he returned as soon as he had taken care of it.

Inside the parlour they heard something else zip through the air and crash into the wall.“It’s a poltergeist,” Sveg said pensively. “I’ve read about this but have no idea what it really is. I believe ‘geist’ means ghost, doesn’t it?”

“Ghost or spirit,” Sander answered. “But a poltergeist isn’t a ghost, it’s a physical phenomenon. A force.”

They looked at Benedikte, puzzled, as she listened to the racket coming from inside the room in bewilderment.

All three of them went closer to the door.

“What an idiot I’ve been,” the sheriff said, “I didn’t notice that the table legs had lions’ feet.”

“Well, it wasn’t easy to see in that crammed room,” said Benedikte absentmindedly.

The table, which at the moment was standing by the door, was circular with a central pillar from which extended three legs ending in feet in the shape of lions’ paws with claws. They considered the distance up to the mark on the wall.

“Not a bad jump for a lion,” Sveg said. “Do you really believe that the table flew up there?”

“That’s nothing for a poltergeist,” Sander said. “But what is it that worries you so much, Benedikte?”

She guided them to a more peaceful area of the room. “I don’t quite understand this. You see, poltergeists are usually associated with an uncommonly strong tension. There are few people in this world that can trigger enormous tension of the kind to be found in this room. That’s when the phenomenon of the poltergeist comes into play.”

“That’s it, then!” Sander said as he looked at Benedikte with interested, sparkling eyes. “Little Sidsel!”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. But as you can see, even though she isn’t here any more the racket is continuing. You see, I’ve always sensed that there is an alien force here – and I’m not referring to the poltergeist.”

“Never mind about that. How do we stop this horror?”

“As it didn’t stop when Sidsel left we have to look for the source. It must be in here.”

“It’s best to protect oneself,” the sheriff said, pulling his jacket over his head. “But the phenomenon started last night, didn’t it?”

“Yes, I don’t think the aunts would have tolerated having their family treasures completely destroyed,” Sander said. “So it would seem that it must have something to do with the girl. By the way, she forgot her little jacket, it’s lying on a chair.”

“Her jacket?” Benedikte said with watchful eagerness. “We’ve got to get it out! Ouch!”

A chair had been hurled at her leg and it stung. Sander quickly grabbed the jacket.

“Come, let’s go out to the verandah,” he said.

They followed him. Behind them there was a sudden and complete silence.

“Well, that explains it! It was the jacket.”

“So the racket will continue, then, no matter where we go with that jacket, won’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so. It was the room that contained such strong tension. I don’t know why and it’s insignificant now,” she said. “What’s important is that it was the jacket that triggered the tension.”

They walked out onto the wobbly verandah and sat down on the steps that led to the abandoned garden. The twilight of the summer evening was bewitching, it was hard to discern what was what. But Sveg had brought one of the lanterns and they studied the jacket under its light.

“An ordinary little child’s jacket,” Sander said. “Of good quality and fairly new, I should think.”

Sensibly, he began searching the pockets, first one and then the other. His hand stopped. Then he pulled something out.

“Look at this! What is it?”

“A big coin!” said Sveg. “No, there’s a hole at the edge ...”

Benedikte held out her hand to touch it. Frightened, she pulled it back.

“It burnt me,” she whispered.

They looked at her quizzically. Sander held up the object as Sveg shone the light of the lantern on it.

“It looks like a kind of medallion,” Sander said. “Or an amulet.”He turned it over. “Here’s a pattern ... what does it mean?”

Both he and the sheriff started.

“Haven’t I seen that pattern before?” Sveg said ominously.

“Yes, they are the same symbols as the ones that were carved into the dead man’s back!” Sander answered.

“So there seems to be a connection here! Between the discovery of the dead body and the haunting that’s been going on in this awful house.”

“No,” said Benedikte. “The fact that the amulet got into the house was just a coincidence. The question is where Sidsel found it.”

“You’re right,” said Sander, and Benedikte reflected on what a fantastic feeling it was that she was sitting right there next to him as he discussed the matter with her as though she were someone who could be relied on! And that it didn’t mean anything that she was hopelessly ugly and clumsy.

“We must get hold of Sidsel.”

“She’ll be asleep by now,” the sheriff objected. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

“Yes,” Benedikte nodded in agreement. “And I would like to take a closer look at another ghostly phenomenon.”

“And what is that?”

“The footsteps on the floor above us.”

She stopped herself. She couldn’t tell these men what Sidsel said she had heard.

“You’re right,” the sheriff said as he got up. “What do you think is up there?”

“I don’t know. I only know that this house has an unusually gloomy atmosphere.”

“I could have told you that myself and I’m no expert on the topic. But how do you intend to get up there? Fly?”

“No, she doesn’t need to do that,” Sander interposed. “I saw the house from the outside while it was still light. There is a randomly placed window next to the kitchen and on the first floor there is another one that is similar, diagonally above the first. I think there must be another staircase.”

“If that staircase is in the same condition as this one, I won’t be climbing it,” said the sheriff.

Benedikte recalled the nasty stairwell and shuddered. “No. You must stay down here and keep the aunts at bay. And should I need your help ...”

“But you can’t possibly go up there alone. Are you mad, girl? Sander here will accompany you while I keep an eye on the shrews.”

“No,” Benedikte began passionately. She didn’t want him there, for what if she were to discover something ... indecent? But what sort of indecency could there possibly be on an empty floor? She finally gave in. She suddenly realized she didn’t feel like going up there alone.

“But should you need my help, give me a shout,” said Sheriff Sveg. “Even though I’m not very good at arresting ghosts.”

Benedikte looked at him, trembling. She couldn’t help thinking that the whole thing was getting slightly too complicated for her dazed senses.

It didn’t help that Sander misinterpreted her insecurity and placed his hand on her shoulder in order to console her. That sort of thing came naturally to him. He had grown up in a family in which physical contact, hugs and kisses and light caresses, were part of the daily routine. Benedikte hadn’t. Back home at Linden Avenue, everyone was deeply attached to one another but they seldom expressed it except in the form of warm and sincere glances or through acts of kindness. They didn’t touch one another very often, only on special occasions when they were saying farewell or expressing gratitude.

That was why Sander’s touch totally stunned her, and she was unable to distinguish between level-headed thoughts and high-flying romantic dreams.

He touched me! His hand rested on my shoulder and back, I can still feel it through my dress, like a warm, heartfelt expression of love on my body. He put his arm around me! He likes me, he must!

Or perhaps not? Perhaps he just feels sorry for me. Yes, that’s probably it. But the memory of his hand on my shoulder is one that no one can ever take from me. It will remain with me always.

She tried to stop her heart from pounding so hard, but how was she to do that?

Benedikte had fallen hopelessly in love with a man whom hundreds of girls fantasized about and who could choose any girl he wanted.

She had fallen into a miserable trap. And her starting point couldn’t have been worse.