This didn’t sound good, but he asked nonetheless. ‘What?’
‘The first person from the group to die, Védís…’ Dagný didn’t finish her sentence, instead handing Freyr yet another sheet of paper that appeared to be the preface to an autopsy report. ‘She lived here in Ísafjörður, so I was able to find out how she died. As you can see, she died three years ago in an accident in her garden.’ Dagný licked her dry lips. ‘She fell onto some open garden shears, with the result that the major artery in her neck was cut, along with her oesophagus. Don’t ask me how it’s possible to be so unlucky, but it’s all described in the report and no one disputed that it was an accident.’
‘Stranger things have happened.’ The coffee was too cold for Freyr to risk another sip, but he took one anyway. ‘Did you know this woman?’
‘Not exactly, but I remember her. She was very unusual; she sometimes held séances at her home. But that’s irrelevant.’ Dagný grimaced slightly. ‘I wanted to draw your attention to something else – the date of the accident.’
Freyr looked for it in the summary. He had to read the date twice to be sure, though he’d seen this same numerical sequence more often than he could count. His mouth dry, he muttered: ‘It’s the day that Benni disappeared.’
‘And there’s this, too.’ Dagný pointed to the line above the date of death. ‘She lived in the same house as you do now. She died in your garden, in other words.’ She looked at him even more intensely. ‘Coincidence?’
Chapter 15
Putti seemed to realize that the night and the terrors it held were just around the corner. He was lying next to Katrín as she sat with her legs stretched out on a folded wool blanket alongside Líf and Garðar, staring into the darkness surrounding the house. Her entire body still hurt but she’d got used to the pain, and besides, her headache was gone, so relatively speaking she felt quite well. From time to time the dog became unusually alert, lifting his head off his short forelegs and baring his teeth for no reason. Nothing in particular appeared to provoke this reaction, and there was no way of getting him to calm down again until he realized there was nothing there. Under normal circumstances, the babbling of the stream and the lapping of the incoming tide would have been soothing, but now it was as if they harboured other, more threatening sounds. Now someone could sneak up behind the house, slink along it and inch their way silently to where the three of them were sitting without their ever being aware of it. Yet they found it preferable to sitting inside, waiting for the dead undergrowth outside to rustle and the floorboards to creak.
‘Let me watch it one more time.’ Líf reached over Katrín, trying to get the camera from Garðar. ‘Please.’
‘Not a chance.’ Garðar checked to see whether his jacket pocket was zipped up so Líf couldn’t get at it. ‘You won’t see any more than what we’ve already seen, and the battery’s running low.’
‘Why do we need the camera battery?’ Katrín’s voice was calm. It was as if she’d decided simply to accept the situation and whatever might occur. She didn’t know how long this odd serenity would last, but she was going to enjoy it while she could. Yet it bothered her a little that the reason her fear had abandoned her was probably because she’d accepted the inevitable: the child would do to them whatever it had done to the house’s previous owner; they would vanish off the face of the earth and no one would know their fate. ‘I’m not going to take any photos.’
Garðar scowled at her. ‘Of course not. But what if we find another memory card? There might be something on it that could help us. We still have two boxes to go through.’
‘There’s nothing on any memory card that could help us. If the last owner had known anything useful, don’t you think he would have saved himself?’ Katrín squinted and tried, unsuccessfully, to make out the flimsy washing lines she knew were there somewhere in the twilight.
‘Don’t be so negative.’ Líf shifted slightly away from Katrín but then appeared to regret it and moved back to the same spot. She bumped into Putti, who looked up in irritation and shook his head, making his ears flap, and yawned widely before letting his head fall back down. He didn’t close his shiny dark eyes, but stared from beneath his wispy eyebrows at the checked pattern on the rug. ‘I can’t cope with you being pessimistic on top of everything else. We’ve got enough to worry about.’
‘I’m not being negative.’ Katrín felt a little muscle cramp and stretched her sore legs. She had no idea whether the cold made the cramps worse, but her legs felt chilly despite her protective trousers. ‘I’m just realistic. We all heard it; he experienced exactly the same things as we have, except he was alone. I reckon he was here at the same time of year, even. I saw snow in some of the shots.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It can snow here in August.’ Garðar stretched his neck, obviously feeling stiff himself. ‘We should be careful about comparing our situation to his. As you said yourself, there are three of us, whereas he was by himself.’ Katrín held her tongue, though she longed to laugh out loud. They could certainly sleep in shifts, but otherwise they didn’t appear to be in any better a position than the poor man who’d lost his life in this place, alone and abandoned. From the clips they had ascertained that his phone had also died without warning. He, like them, had seen a boy who seemed to stand there with his head bowed, within reach, but who disappeared when approached. The two crosses had turned up inside the house without explanation and Katrín could still feel the heaviness she’d felt in her chest when she saw them appear on the camera’s little screen, the shaky voice of the man narrating their discovery. He didn’t appear to understand what was happening any more than they did. Her discomfort wasn’t eased when some shells appeared in another clip. But it was the last shot that had struck her most. Then even her fear had gone away, and a peculiar calm came over her. The man sounded defeated. He spoke so softly that it was difficult to distinguish his words, especially because he yawned constantly, clearly very tired. However, they understood that he was saying his final goodbyes to various people, none of whose names they recognized. The man seemed to have accepted his fate. He wouldn’t make it back to town. At least not alive.
They’d watched the video over and over again in the hope of hearing or understanding what the man was saying, draining the battery, though that hardly mattered. The man had then used the camera like a Dictaphone; it wasn’t possible to see anything in the darkness surrounding him and talking was all he could do. His voice trembling, he said that he didn’t have a torch, since it had disappeared, and that he felt as if something were about to happen. There was an unbearable stench in the house and he constantly came across wet footprints, not his own, on the floor. The air was charged with something repulsive, something alive, and it was after him, though he didn’t know what he’d done to deserve it. Then he suddenly fell silent. At that moment another individual appeared for a second, but too briefly to get a clear glimpse of him, there being virtually no light. In fact it was no more than a black shadow against a slightly lighter background. They tried to play the video slowly, stop it and view it almost frame by frame, but their attempts were in vain; they could never hit the right moment. Nevertheless, none of them was in any doubt that it was the boy. Equally, none of them was willing to speak up and say that he weirdly appeared to be a similar age to what he was now, three years later. Meanwhile, they could hear the man gasping for breath. Then he began to speak again, but the video clip ended in mid-sentence. Either the camera had gone dead for a moment or something else, something worse, had happened. Then, although he whispered the words frantically, they had no trouble understanding him: ‘He’s coming. He’s coming. Oh God, oh God, he’s…’ This was the final recording on the memory card.