Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

Five minutes. She would give him just five minutes. She wanted to get back and she was dying for a piss. An odd thought struck her, nothing to do with the beach or being made to wait alone in the freezing fog. She felt suddenly sad that she had not learned more about the geology of this area and other parts of Snæfellsnes. For example, how was Kirkjufell, the mountain that fascinated her, formed? It stood alone in the sea on the northern shore of the peninsula, and she knew enough geology to tell that it was not volcanic. She wished she had taken more interest in her studies when she was at school. When she got back home, she was going to look it up, just as she had planned to do the first time she had seen the mountain.

Birna jumped as the noise of the birds got louder again, raucous cries from farther up the cliff she was leaning against. She took two steps away from the wall of rock. She shuddered, gripped by a feeling of unease, not for the first time. There was something about this place. Not just the obvious, those weirdos who worked at the hotel and claimed to be spiritual assistants to the guests. The guests too. All nutcases, but not quite as bad as the staff. No, there was something else wrong here. Something that had slowly but surely intensified, making its presence known on her first inspection and beginning with goose bumps on her upper arms when she saw the skeletons of the mice. It had now transformed into a persistent unease that Birna found difficult to identify. It wasn’t the rubbish about ghosts that scared her—she was pretty sure the hotel staff made those stories up, although only God knew why.

Birna tried to smile as she recalled the behavior of Eiríkur, the resort’s aura expert, when she had arrived a week before. He had grasped her upper arm and whispered that her aura was black. She should watch out. Death was after her. She frowned at the memory of his foul breath.

Five minutes had passed. He’d be getting a piece of her mind for this. She could have been working: there was a lot to do and her time was precious. If she had not received the text message, she would have spent this time working on the plans for the new building, and maybe she’d have reached a conclusion by now. It was supposed to stand by itself, a short way from the main building. For some reason she had still not been able to decide on the exact location. There was something about the place she had chosen that disturbed her. That wasn’t quite it: there was something about the spot that struck her, something that did not quite fit, although she had no idea what it was. She had asked several of the hotel employees whether they could see anything odd about that patch of land, but in vain. Most of them had answered the question with a more obvious one: “Why don’t you choose another place if this one disturbs you? There’s plenty of land here.” But they didn’t understand her. They understood the relative configurations of the constellations. Birna, on the other hand, understood the relative configurations of buildings. This was the location; any other was out of the question.

The birds’ squawking intensified again, but Birna was too deep in thought to notice properly. She threaded her way carefully along the rocks toward the gravel path above the beach. Suddenly she stopped in her tracks and listened. She could hear crunching in the pebbles behind her. She began to turn, looking forward to venting the anger that had been building up inside her since she got there. About fucking time.

Birna did not manage to turn around completely. Even over the noise of the birds on the cliff she clearly heard the rock swishing through the still sea air toward her head, and caught a glimpse of it as it struck her forehead with terrible force. She did not see anything more in this life, but she felt many things. In a vague and dreamlike state, she felt herself being dragged along the rough terrain. She felt the goose bumps that the cold fog brought out on her bare flesh as her clothes were removed, and she felt nauseous as she tasted the ferrous tang of blood in her mouth. Her socks were pulled off and she felt a terrible pain on the soles of her feet. What was happening? It was all like a dream. A voice she knew well was ringing in her ears, but given what was happening, that couldn’t be right. Birna tried to speak, but couldn’t produce the words. A strange groan came out of her throat, but she had not groaned. How very strange all this was.

Before everything turned black, it occurred to her that she would never read about the origin of Mount Kirkjufell. Oddly enough, this hurt the worst of all.

The same pair of gulls that Birna had watched plunging into the sea for food were waiting farther along the beach, watching what was done to her through the mist. Patiently they waited for calm to return. The beach and the sea look after their own. No one here has to starve.

I can’t understand what’s become of Birna,” muttered Jónas, reaching for a floral-patterned cup containing the elixir whose praises he had just been singing to Thóra. This was a special brew of tea from local herbs that, according to Jónas, cured all manner of ailments and ills. Thóra had accepted a cup and taken a sip, and judging from the taste, the tea must have been exceptionally wholesome.

“I would have liked the two of you to meet,” he added, after taking a mouthful and placing the cup down carefully on the saucer. There was something quite ridiculous about this, for the cup and saucer were so oddly delicate, bone china with a slender handle that looked even smaller in Jónas’s big hands. He was far from delicately built—big-boned without being fat, weather-beaten and with an air of one who would rather swig strong coffee from a mug onboard a trawler than sip undrinkable herbal tea from a ladylike cup following a yoga class.

Thóra smiled and made herself comfortable in her chair. They were in Jónas’s office at the hotel, and her back ached after driving up west. The Friday traffic had been heavy, and it didn’t help that she had had to drive her children to their father’s house in Gardabær on her way out of town. The traffic had crawled along as if every single resident of the capital were on exactly the same route. Although this was not officially his weekend to have the children, Hannes had offered to swap because he would be abroad at a medical conference the following weekend. Consequently Thóra had decided to take Jónas up on his offer and spend the weekend at the New Age spa hotel on Snæfellsnes. She was going to use the opportunity to relax, have a massage and unwind, as Jónas had suggested, but the main purpose of her trip was of course to dissuade him from claiming compensation for the supposed haunting. Thóra wanted to end the conversation as quickly as possible and go to her room for a nap.

“She’ll turn up,” Thóra said, just for the sake of saying something. She knew nothing about the architect; the woman could easily be a raving alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon and would not be seen for weeks.

Jónas huffed. “It’s not like her. We were meant to go over the draft plans for the new building this morning.” He flicked through some papers on his desk, clearly annoyed with the architect.

“Couldn’t she just have popped back to Reykjavík to fetch something?” Thóra asked, hoping he would stop talking about this woman. The ache in her back was beginning to spread to her shoulders.

Jónas shook his head. “Her car’s outside.” He slammed down both hands on the edge of the desk. “Anyway. You’re here at least.” He smiled. “I’m dying to tell you about the ghost, but that will have to wait until we have more time.” Glancing at his watch, he stood up. “I have to do my rounds. I make it a rule to talk to my staff at the end of every day. I have a better sense of the operations and the situation if I know about any problems from the very start. That makes it easier to intervene.”