Everyone else had turned their backs on her, even those who were initially shocked and sympathetic. This proved what she had probably known all her life but hadn’t wanted to dwell on: that people’s interest in the problems of others was finite. They might feel sympathy for a while if someone had suffered a traumatic life event, but then they would expect them to deal with it and move on as if nothing had happened. She had experience of this herself – as a child, she had been hit very hard by the death of her grandfather, and initially her other relatives had found the way she grieved for him very touching. But as time passed, her tears were met with indifference or anger. ‘What a terrible show-off you are! How long are you going to keep this up?’ They whispered these things so her parents wouldn’t hear, but they didn’t seem concerned that she might still be upset. Now, twenty-five years later, she was again being accused of attention-seeking, and was even considered to be not quite right in the head. The same aunt who had hurt her with her callousness all those years ago had done it again when Berglind had bumped into her in the Kringlan Shopping Centre. She’d had to be honest when the woman enthusiastically questioned her about the haunting, and as Berglind began to walk away with Pési she had heard her aunt whisper conspiratorially to her friend: ‘She’s a queer fish – she always was, even as a child. But now it’s like she’s lost it completely. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been sectioned, or at least had the kid taken away from her.’ Berglind was desperate to turn round and give her aunt a piece of her mind, but instead she tightened her grip on her son’s hand and stalked away, her face burning and her eyes full of tears.
More goose bumps sprang up on her skin, not from remembering the old woman’s spitefulness but because of what might be lying in wait behind her, whatever had scared the cat. She tried to conjure up the faces of those who had been good to her, in the hope of raising her spirits, but she could think of so few people that it just depressed her even more. She could actually count them on the fingers of one hand: her sister, the couple next door and one supervisor at work. Her sister was on her side simply because she had to be; she hadn’t actually ever said whether she believed Berglind or not, since in her opinion that was irrelevant. If Berglind was having a hard time, she was there for her and that was the end of it. The next door neighbours and her supervisor, on the other hand, had never doubted the haunting; they’d wanted to hear all the details and to be updated on any new developments. Whatever the future held, Berglind was eternally indebted to them. It took a special sort of person to swim against the stream.
But none of these people was here right now, only this unknown horror behind her, and she had to get back inside on her own, whatever it took. She didn’t have many options; she could hardly climb through the hedge and dash across her neighbours’ garden to get back to her own house, not least because the outer door was locked and the only way in was through the gate behind her. Nor could she wait where she was for the thing to go away; the wind was picking up and her soaking wet dressing gown provided little protection against the chill. She had to turn around and walk through the garden, past the dead raven and the other thing that she didn’t want to think about. She fixed her gaze on the cat, which looked straight back at her without blinking. It opened its mouth and hissed again, abruptly but loudly. There was no reason to hang around: one, two, three, go! Berglind raised herself up slowly as the cat continued to hiss deep in its throat. Now the animal seemed even more disturbed than when she’d been crouching down; its yellow eyes stared past her, as if at something behind her. Berglind stiffened. Why the hell had she gone out into the garden? She could easily have drawn the curtains if the dead bird was bothering her so much and tried to forget the ruffled black feathers and the wide-open beak screaming silently into the grey sky. Maybe the cat was just alarmed by the remains. Maybe the raven appeared to be alive and the cat was simply threatened by its size and was therefore trying to make itself as big as possible and warn the bird off by hissing. Had humans ever had a similar skill, it had long been forgotten, replaced by other abilities that were of more use to a civilized society but were no good at moments like this. Nevertheless, Berglind did her utmost to summon up something that would grant her strength, daring or fearlessness – but without success. There was nothing for it but to empty her mind, turn around and meet what awaited her.
The cat moved suddenly, interrupting Berglind’s thoughts of escape. It pulled one of its front legs back in towards its body and appeared about to retreat into its own garden. Before it went, it looked up at Berglind and yowled piteously. Then it turned and fled, its long striped tail the last she saw of it. Now she was alone, and although the cat’s presence hadn’t exactly filled her with confidence, she’d been happier with some sort of living being nearby. Now as in her life generally, she stood alone against the unknown. Halli had grown tired of her jumpiness, and her endless speculation about solutions to the problem, though he’d tried to conceal it. He’d recently started working longer hours, even though the company had long since stopped paying overtime and projects were scarce. Since the attempted exorcism, her attempts to interest him in her theories had been less and less successful. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted her to pull herself together and stop obsessing. The more time that passed since the strange phenomena, the more distant his memory of them became, and the old, rational explan-ations began to surface again. These days Halli seemed not to remember half of what had happened before his very eyes, and the rest he put down to the house’s structure. Any ideas about moving and starting again somewhere else were dead in the water; nobody could sell their house at the moment, and there was little hope that the situation would improve any time soon. When she mentioned that they could still live with her parents or some friends until the summer, when the long hours of daylight would drive away the darkness, he looked at her as if she were either stupid or crazy. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
A surprisingly warm gust of wind blew like a breath down the front of Berglind’s collar. Instead of warming her and making her feel better, it seemed to reanimate the stench, which had become less noticeable since she’d been forced to drop her arm away from her mouth and nose. Or maybe it had still been there and she’d got used to it, but the wind had suddenly made it stronger. Again it felt as if someone was breathing down her collar but this time from behind, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The stench grew even stronger, as though a ghost was standing right behind her and emptying air from its rotten lungs down her spine. The memory of the compost heap returned once more and Berglind fought a wave of nausea. One, two, three, turn around and walk briskly into the house. One, two, three! She remained where she was.
The afternoon twilight cast a shadow over the toes of her boots which seemed to creep closer to her legs, growing larger with each passing moment. She wasn’t going to stand there until darkness engulfed the garden, was she? She would have to go and fetch Pési from preschool in a minute. Even though part of her did want to stay put until Halli came home and rescued her, she didn’t have her mobile with her, so she couldn’t ask anyone to pick Pési up for her. There was nothing else for it but to go back in. One, two, three. Her feet were like lead. She was pathetic, absolutely pathetic. If she wanted to move she was going to have to get a grip on herself. Her state of panic was just making things worse, magnifying what the psychiatrist said were the consequences of a shock that she hadn’t come to terms with; namely, the accident that had killed Magga. But then she heard a soft crunching sound behind her. A shock, even one as traumatic as Magga’s death, couldn’t conjure up noises out of nowhere. What if she really had lost it? The psychiatrist would have a field day if he knew she was starting to think he’d been right. Maybe the sick leave he’d pretty much forced on her was to blame; if she were at work she wouldn’t be standing here, terrified of something that might turn out to be nothing, in a dirty dressing gown with her hair all sticking up.