Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

“Not much to see here,” he muttered after they had scanned the empty bookshelves along the walls and opened the drawers of a large desk beneath the dirty window. The drawers turned out to be as empty as the shelves, apart from one ancient pencil. It had been sharpened with a knife, and there was no rubber on the end.

“Look at this, though,” said Thóra. “It looks like there were books on these shelves not that long ago.” She pointed to the dust. It was thick at the edges but thinner toward the back of the shelves, the difference barely perceptible.

Matthew went over to examine them. “I agree. Do you suppose Birna took the books? Maybe they were valuable.”

Thóra shrugged. “I doubt it. She didn’t mention any books in her notes, although I guess she wouldn’t have if she planned to steal them. The previous owners must have taken them. Jónas said they told him they’d remove all the contents.”

They went farther inside the house, where they found two adjoining living rooms with old-fashioned furniture: a tatty three-piece suite that would have been stylish in its day, an imposing sideboard, and a mahogany dining set with a faded embroidered cloth on the table. There were small side tables with no ornaments. Two paintings hung on the walls, one of a ship and the other showing Snæfellsnes glacier. Both were too filthy to read the artist’s name. The sideboard was empty, as was the cabinet.

“I dare you to throw yourself on to the sofa,” said Matthew, pointing at the dusty upholstery. The vague outline of a flower pattern was visible through the dirt. “I really want to see the cloud it would send up.”

“No, thanks,” Thóra said. “You do it. I’ll give you a hundred krónur.”

Matthew stroked her arm. “I could think of a better reward than hard cash.”

Thóra smiled. “We could come to some arrangement.” Then she looked back at the sofa and wrinkled her nose. “But I think you should give it a miss; I’m not sure the dust would settle before evening and we might not find our way back out. Come on, let’s check the kitchen.”

The kitchen was not as spartan as the other rooms, but it was just as antiquated, with modest oiled-wood cupboards and a small, shallow sink. Compared with a modern kitchen, the work surface was not large, but there was much more floor space than Thóra was accustomed to. Wooden spoons and a steel fish slice hung from hooks on the wall, and a tin coffeepot stood on the stove.

“Weird that they left so much personal stuff,” Thóra said, looking around.

Matthew opened one of the kitchen cupboards and found an assortment of cups and glasses. “Isn’t it one of those boring chores, though? Always getting put off until later, and then it never gets done. Maybe the householders died and didn’t have any use for it, and the heirs must have already had enough coffeepots and furniture, so couldn’t be bothered to—” He stopped short and pointed at a cardboard box on one of the kitchen chairs. “Look, what’s that?”

The box was full of items wrapped in newspaper. Beside it lay a pile of magazines. Thóra picked one up to see the date. “It’s from this May. The previous owners have been here packing up quite recently. And what’s this?” she continued, pointing at a thermos flask that had been obscured by the box. “This isn’t old.” She lifted the flask and shook it. Liquid splashed around inside and Thóra unscrewed the lid. She took a cautious sniff. “Coffee,” she said. “This must have been left by Elín and Börkur, or by whoever they sent to remove all this stuff.” She put the flask down again.

“Who are these former owners, Elín and Börkur? Did they live here?” asked Matthew.

“They’re the brother and sister who inherited the land. Middle-aged. Whether they lived here I don’t know, but I doubt it, considering how old all this stuff is.” Thóra looked around the kitchen. “They were fifty at most. This stuff is much older, so they couldn’t have been brought up here.”

“But why suddenly clear the place now?” wondered Matthew. “The property must have been sold several years ago. Surely the new part of the hotel wasn’t built in a couple of months.”

“No, you’re right. I suppose they were spurred on by Jónas’s plan to build an annex to this farmhouse, although it fell through later.” Thóra opened the kitchen drawers one after another and peered inside. Nothing in them caught her eye.

They finished inspecting the lower floor without finding anything else. The storeroom contained items that had obviously spent decades on the shelves, along with a few new cardboard boxes. They opened a couple of the boxes and assumed that the others also contained ornaments that had been cleared from the living rooms and the dusty old books from the shelves. Thóra left Matthew to check the downstairs toilet, and his expression when he returned suggested that she hadn’t missed much.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said, his face pale as he headed for the stairs. A muffled creak was heard from the floor above. It was followed by what sounded like a low groan.

“Did you hear that?” whispered Thóra. Mathew nodded. In a louder voice she called out in the direction of the landing. “Hello! Is someone there?” Sheer silence greeted them from above.

“It’s probably just the boards rotting away.” Matthew appeared nonchalant while Thóra knew her face was ashen. This house was eerie in a way that she could not pinpoint. Who leaves their home in such a rush that they can’t take the time to box up their belongings? This was a bad place and she could not suppress the feeling that the former inhabitants had wanted so badly to depart the premises that their stuff had not mattered.

Before heading upstairs they peeked through a door leading down to the basement, but because there was no light inside, Thóra decided it was not imperative for them to go down there and they went up instead. The house was creepy enough as it was and Thóra had no longing to enter its underbelly. She would rather move on to the second story where the groan had originated. On the landing they found five doors, all closed. The first one Matthew tried turned out to be locked. Gripping the handle of the next, he suddenly stopped. “Take a quick look at the drawing and tell me which one is the bathroom.”

After checking Birna’s diary, Thóra proposed they examine the room marked “Kristín?”

“I think that interested Birna most,” Thóra said, pointing out the door.

“I’ll never forgive you if you’re playing a trick on me and this is another bathroom,” he said before he opened it.

“You’ll see,” Thóra said, and pushed open the door the moment he turned the handle. She made sure that he did not notice that her eyes were closed while the door swung inward. If there was something awful behind it she did not want to see it. When he did not yell out she opened them and acted natural.

They walked into a child’s bedroom, presumably a little girl’s. At the head of a white-painted bed sat a scruffy teddy bear with one eye missing. It was covered in light brown fur, apart from the chest, which was made from gray material. Its limbs were attached by black steel buttons at the shoulders and hips, and Thóra was moved to see how the faded red ribbon around its neck had yielded to gravity and now dangled down to the middle of its chest. A tatty doll sat beside the teddy bear, its painted eyes staring at the wall opposite the bed.

“There’s something really weird about this,” said Thóra, disturbed.

“Yes,” answered Matthew. “Someone clearly left in a hurry. Look.” He went up to a shelf where a few dusty books were arranged. Beneath the shelf was a white-painted desk and a sheet of paper with a half-finished drawing on it. Crayons were spread across the desk. He picked up the drawing to examine it more closely. The corners were curled, and a layer of gray dust covered the surface. He blew on it, sending up a cloud that he batted away. Then he handed the drawing to Thóra. “The child didn’t even have time to finish her drawing.”