Ane Riel - Resin

He grabbed the door handle. The door was locked and he knocked a few times, without expecting an answer. Then he took a step back and looked about him. It was here, the key. Somewhere. There was always a key. On a nail behind something. Under a flower pot. A stone. Or placed on top of a beam.

It turned out to be under the flower pot.

The door didn’t open without a struggle. The hinges needed oiling and squealed hideously. Roald let out a startled gasp when some kind of furry animal passed him in the doorway, brushing his leg. He followed it with his eyes as it bounced out into the grass and breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that it wasn’t a giant rat but just a rabbit.

A tame rabbit? Should he try to catch it, in case it turned out to be someone’s pet? He didn’t have time to make up his mind before the rabbit vanished among the grass and the junk and he lost sight of it. That decided it.

The air inside was more oppressive than any air in any house he had ever set foot in.

And yet it was nothing compared to the smell. The stench. It materialized in his nose as an intolerable mixture of dust, mould, decay and solvents and… he feared… urine, excrement. He opened the door fully so that he could stand it. Now that a little daylight was entering the room, he was better able to see what it concealed. There was every imaginable kind of tinned food stacked randomly or in boxes. Some were still held together by shrink-wrapped plastic. And there were packets of cereal, crispbread, bags of bread, crackers. He didn’t need to check the best-before date to know that they were way past it. Pretty much all the bread he could see through the packaging was green from mould. He picked up his stockroom gloves, but dropped them immediately as mouse droppings rolled from them, scattering on to the bubble wrap like dry rain.

The light switch clicked impotently when he flicked it, and the naked lightbulb over the door remained unlit. When he discovered the chest freezer along one wall he knew where the worst of the smell was coming from. There was no light glowing in the small indicator lamp on the side of the freezer, but he had no doubts that it contained food, because there was a terrible stench of rotting meat.

Roald breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to check whether he was right because the chest freezer was buried under things, including an enormous old television that must weigh a ton. The dust on the television was thick, and he didn’t want to think about how long the freezer had been turned off.

Again, he wondered whether he should leave. He ought to hurry back to Korsted and get hold of the police officer and the vet. The vet could see not only to the animals in the barn but also to dead Ida. Roald no longer had the strength to deal with the dog in the trap himself. Someone else would have to take over. He discovered that he was no longer holding the arrow. He must have put it down outside, by the flower pot.

It beggared belief. No one could possibly live like this, and yet someone must come here. The boy, for instance, since his recent swag was locked inside this room.

But who had fired the arrow?

And where were Jens Horder and his wife? There was no one here to tend to the animals, and the house seemed completely dark and closed up, as if it had been abandoned long ago. But they couldn’t have moved, or the postman would know.

And that was when Roald remembered a call he had once had at the pub. It had been during the herring course of their New Year’s Day’s lunch, so he hadn’t paid much attention and he might not have been entirely sober. But someone had asked about Jens Horder, and possibly also about his mother. Roald could remember nothing more than that.

A second door led into the house, probably to a kitchen. He wasn’t sure if he had the courage to open it. No, he decided that it was time to call in the professionals. There were limits to what he, as one man, should stick his nose into, although he had come no closer to understanding the mystery of the boy in the last half-hour.

But he might as well knock on the front door on his way back. He was pretty sure there would be no answer, so it was mostly so he could tell himself he had at least tried that too. Tried. Half-heartedly.

He turned to leave, and it wasn’t until then that he heard them. The sounds. He had been so busy breathing and coping with the stench while trying to think clearly at same time that his hearing must have gone into hibernation. But now he heard them. All around him something was creeping and scratching and munching. A particularly loud packet of cornflakes was moving slightly on the shelf in front of him.

Roald stared at it. Now he could also hear faint squeaking. Rats? The thought that the house might be riddled with rats made him jumpy. Mice, he could handle, or a mouse. But rats, hell no.

He took another step towards the external door but was stopped by a sudden, troubling thought. What if someone was in there? Roald had once had a friend who had never forgiven himself for ignoring the silence from the flat next door to his and the junk mail piling up outside. He had also blocked out the stench to begin with. After all, people were entitled to their privacy, that had been his friend’s thinking. They found the old man three weeks too late. On the living-room floor. He seemed to have died as he crawled towards the telephone.

Was Jens Horder lying in there dead? Or his wife? Was there even anybody in there? And what was the boy’s part in all of this? Who was he? Where did he fit in?

Roald rubbed his chin. He decided to steel himself. Or at least call out from where he was standing.

So he did.

A standard ‘Hello?’

And he noticed that all the noises stopped for a moment, only to return, somewhat tentatively.

And he called out again. ‘Hello, is anyone there? Hellooooo?’

He sounded more at ease than he felt.

By his third ‘Hello’, the noises had grown used to him. A dark shadow slipped past a tin on a shelf. A small, dark shadow, thank God. As long as they were just mice, it was OK. A small mouse… preferably a shrew.

Which wasn’t a mouse at all, according to the plumber.

‘Helloooo…?’

But some kind of mole.

There was no response except from the animals. So he might as well leave, mightn’t he? Or should he just check inside the kitchen?

The two rabbits that slipped out this time did nothing to calm his nerves. He felt as if they had been lying in wait behind the kitchen door. They dashed past him, out through the pantry, into the light and across the field. Roald closed the door behind him without quite knowing why. Was he scared of letting too much out of a home he had no right to enter? Too many pets.

It had said No trespassing on the sign down by the barrier. But, for pity’s sake, he had just lost a dog in a horrible way near this property, and his floral oilcloth was in the pantry. That definitely gave him cause to enter. He was entitled to know what was going on.

Or did it say No entry ? Suddenly, he had doubts.

There wasn’t much light in the kitchen because the faded brown curtains in front of the window overlooking the farmyard were closed. Even so, a little of the daylight pierced the fabric and cast a strange golden glow into the room. The smell was just as foul as in the pantry, and Roald had to pinch his nose. There was also a fridge, containing God knows what. He had no desire to investigate it further, especially after he had tried the light switch just inside the door and discovered that there was no working light in the kitchen either.

Again, it was almost impossible for him to move about because of boxes, and stuff, and all kinds of rubbish. It was impossible to reach the door at the far end of the kitchen, which was blocked by a big crate of engine parts. Roald guessed the door led to the hallway. It fitted with the location of the front door.