Ane Riel - Resin

The trip up the stairs was a nightmare. One of those where you try to run but can only move forwards in slow motion. Perhaps the dust was hampering him. The heavy air. The stench. Roald’s lungs were screaming for fresh air, but he had to go upstairs. He didn’t want to suffocate in this place, but neither, as a decent human being, could he walk away.

The boy might be up there and in need of his help.

When he reached the first-floor corridor, he saw a light flicker from the nearest room. From where the sound was coming. A couple of rabbits pressed themselves against some long iron girders as he passed them to reach the door.

Roald had never seen a human being that big before. She was lying on a bed. That is to say, Roald presumed that she was lying on a bed. He could barely see the bed for notepads, books, paper plates, foil trays, knitting, wax candles, matches, paper cups, filthy towels, holey blankets, food scraps, mouse droppings – please let them be mouse droppings, he prayed. And body, body, body.

The air was intolerable, but the stench coming from her was unbearable. An unmistakable smell of urine and excrement. And rot. Roald fought to quell his nausea.

She was holding an umbrella in her right hand. She was slamming its handle against the headboard, and he realized that was how she had made the knocking sound. When she saw him standing in the doorway she let go of the umbrella and allowed her enormous arm to fall on to some knitting with what looked like extreme fatigue.

On a bedside table, on top of piles of books and papers, a wax candle sputtered in a holder. Roald’s joy at finding a source of light was quickly replaced by horror at the state of the room it was illuminating.

Mostly, however, at the woman lying in front of him.

She was in a terrible state.

‘Maria Horder?’ he asked, in a voice he no longer recognized as his own. Perhaps it was the dust.

She nodded slowly.

‘I… you, I… what are…?’ Roald found himself unable to think straight. ‘I’m Roald Jensen from the pub in Korsted,’ he managed to say, eventually.

The woman’s features seemed tiny in the massive face, but he had no doubt that she was attempting a friendly smile. Nor was he in any doubt that she was crying, even though he could only just make out her eyes in the black holes. Her skin looked grey in the guttering candlelight and a grotesque shadow from her nose settled across one cheek like a small, trembling animal.

‘You need help,’ he stated.

She nodded again.

‘I’ll go and get someone. But where’s your husband… Where is Jens Horder?’ His brain was starting to work again.

She reached for a notepad with her left hand, pushed aside the novel lying on her stomach and started writing something. He saw Madame Bovary slide into a foil tray.

Roald stepped forward to read her note; that is to say, he stepped across a lot of things to get close enough.

COMING SOON, NEED MEDICINE, DOCTOR, she had written. It was clearly a great effort for her to write. That it used not to be, he could tell from the many loose sheets lying scattered everywhere. Some were covered in a beautiful curved handwriting, others were not quite so elegant. Her handwriting now was bordering on a child’s scribbles.

‘Yes, I’ll be quick…’

SAVE LIV, she wrote, and stared at him with pleading eyes.

He nodded, wondering if she had trouble spelling. Did she want him to save her life ?

‘I promise, I’ll… I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be careful not to knock over the candle…’

She gestured to indicate it was very important that she gave him more information before he left. Her exhaustion was plain to see. It struck him that she might not have had anything to drink for a long time.

WATCH OUT FOR TRAPS.

He nodded. Oh, yes.

‘Would you like me to fetch you some water before I go?’ he asked anxiously. He caught a glimpse of a hand-drawn sketch of two children on the wall behind her.

She shook her head and wrote again. She added a FIRST… after SAVE LIV. A whining sound came from her lungs.

NEED HELP ALL 3.

Roald couldn’t take the stench any more. He had to get out before he threw up. He had a horrible realization of what was in the bucket standing beside the bed. There were sheets of toilet paper and rolled-up towels next to it.

He didn’t dare open his mouth to speak, but he nodded, then turned towards the door. It was only compassion that stopped him from vomiting before he was back in the living room, and then he did it as quietly as possible – into a cardboard box whose contents were unknown.

All three? Did she mean that the boy was theirs? And whose life should he save first?

Roald reached the front door and pulled it open so hard that it slammed into the wall. He had never needed fresh air as badly as he did now. He stepped outside and drew the light into his soul and the November sky deep into his lungs.

He spotted it purely by chance, the top of what looked like a quiver; a small collection of neat feathers moving for a brief second behind a bathtub over by the barn. Roald narrowed his eyes.

‘Oi, you!’ he yelled. ‘You over by the bathtub, I saw you.’ The next moment a child ran as if the devil were at its heels from the bathtub and along the barn in a semicircle towards the forest and the end of the wooden building from where Roald himself had come. The quiver bounced up and down the back of the brown-and-orange sweater.

Roald recognized the boy from the pub kitchen.

From the top step he could see that there was a more direct route across the farmyard. If he ran past the silage harvester, he might be able to catch up with the child.

SOMEONE WAS HERE

YOU WILL GET HELP, LIV

I LOVE YOU BOTH

SO MUCH

They had started when he burned his mother’s body behind the barn. Jens Horder’s nightmares.

First he dreamt that Else came back with a schoolteacher, a police officer and a doctor and took Liv away. He was busy mucking out the barn and didn’t notice anything until it was too late. He had time to see them get into a big car parked in the farmyard and drive off so fast that dust rose from the gravel road like thick fog. Jens ran into the dust, and when he came out of it he had reached the start of the Neck – but the land itself was gone. The sea had overwhelmed the Neck, and he could do nothing but watch as the car disappeared into the sunshine on the main island.

Jens woke up the moment he ran out into the sea and felt the water fill his lungs.

And the nightmares grew more complex.

They came back: his mother, the doctors, the teachers, the police. Over time, they morphed into anonymous people, random faces he had seen somewhere. What they had in common was that they all wanted to rob him of everything that mattered to him.

In one dream he was out by the Christmas trees and, when he came back, they had taken everything: Liv, Maria, the animals, the buildings, his things. It was all gone. He saw some people running away, and he chased after them, but nothing could stop them. He kept tripping over grassy knolls, roots and trees, which shot up everywhere in front of him, while the others met with no obstacles. They never stumbled. They increased their lead and always made it to the main island. When he finally reached the Neck, it was cut off by the sea every time. He was all alone on a deserted island.

In one of the really bad dreams they turned up in white coats, wanting to take Maria. They were there, in her room, when Jens returned from a night-time visit to Korsted; they were standing around her with saws and scalpels, pointing big lights at her. They were going to take her with them, they said, so that they could help her. But she was far too big and heavy to get out of the door, so they were forced to cut her up into smaller pieces. Once they had got her out of the house and far away from Jens, they would help her, they kept assuring him.