Ane Riel - Resin

Jens always tried to wake up. But he couldn’t. And he couldn’t stop them. They had already cut off her head and placed it on the bedside table. Maria looked at him with her beautiful eyes and mouthed that she loved him. Despite the smile at the corner of her mouth, she was crying, and sometimes her limbs on the bed would twitch, as if protesting at being severed. There was no blood. She was like china. Her hand kept clutching the pen when it was leaned up against the doorframe, along with the rest of her arm.

Then they cut her torso into smaller sections, and he pleaded with them not to touch her heart. ‘We’ll take good care of her,’ they kept on saying. ‘We can take better care of her than you can, Jens Horder.’

He stared at them as they transported her out of the room, one piece at a time. He was allowed to carry her head. ‘I love you,’ he whispered into her ear. Her head was heavy, horribly heavy. But the worst part was that Maria’s body began to disintegrate as they moved it downstairs. Jens was walking behind the doctor who was holding her right leg, and he could see how it was starting to crumble. The same was happening to the other parts of her body. Her heart fell out of a piece of torso and rolled down the stairs until it hit the landing, like a puffball mushroom deflating. Finally, her head disintegrated as well. Jens couldn’t hold on to her. He looked into her eyes before they disappeared between his fingers, and she was gone. Turned to dust.

‘Right, we’ll take your daughter instead,’ they said. ‘By the way, does she have any brothers or sisters?’

Yet again the intruders disappeared towards the Neck with their catch, and Jens couldn’t stop them. He kept stumbling, getting caught in something. It was as if the forces of nature had ganged up against him. They blocked his path and terrified him. The forest, the sea, the animals… they were no longer his friends.

The intruders ran on unabashed.

All he wanted to do was to stop them.

Jens always woke up bathed in sweat and tears. His waking hours, however, were also plagued by nightmares – thoughts of what had been and what might happen next. In the end, he could no longer tell the difference.

The postman was in a particularly good mood that morning. And he had to admit to having a butterfly or two in his tummy, although it wasn’t the season for that kind of thing.

He had business at the Head.

For the first time ever, the letter from M had been sent by registered post. The postman wondered sorely at this sudden upgrade in the postage but was nevertheless delighted at being given an outlet for his curiosity. Surely he could now allow himself to enquire about the sender – who might not be a Mafioso after all, however much he wanted to hang on to the thought.

He would especially like to know if ‘M’ was the same as ‘M – Inventions for Life’, which was listed as the sender on the big parcel he was also delivering to Jens Horder that day. The business had a mainland address, a place on the east coast. The postmarks on the two items were also from the east coast. Because the postman had investigated the items, of course he had. Then again, the Mafia might have contacts everywhere, which only proved that his idea hadn’t been that far-fetched after all.

The postman parked his van down by the barrier, then got out and opened the door at the back, where the parcel was ready and waiting, with the registered letter on top.

He had to hold it with both hands because it was bulky. The parcel measured seventy centimetres square or thereabouts and was barely twenty centimetres high. It was too heavy to be a lavatory seat, although that had been his first thought. He had a hunch that whatever was inside might be round. Square parcels usually had round contents.

He was particularly happy to pass the No entry sign. Well, that only applies to trespassers, he thought to himself. He was obviously free to enter, because he was bringing a registered letter. And a parcel.

He needed a signature.

And there was no way he was leaving the Head without it.

The postman took a right around the barrier and looked expectantly, albeit a little tensely, up at the house. If he was lucky, he would catch a glimpse of Maria Horder. He would love to know how she looked now.

He had managed two steps before someone called out.

‘You there!’ someone shouted behind him, and he stopped in his tracks. There was a note of aggression in the voice which he didn’t like. When he turned around, he saw Jens Horder marching towards him. ‘Where do you think you’re going? Can’t you read? I thought we had an agreement?’

The postman froze. He wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. All right, so the Fuse made a habit of similarly belligerent outbursts – not to mention when she became physical. But Jens Horder had never raised his voice to anyone, certainly no one working for the post office.

‘Of course, but…’

‘Come here,’ Horder snarled. ‘What have you got for me?’

Reluctantly, the postman stepped back behind the barrier. He had time to feel cross with himself for not starting his round a little earlier; then he might have had an opportunity to chat to the wife, just the two of them. He was dying to know what was going on at the Horder place.

‘I have a registered letter and a parcel,’ he replied. ‘They both need signing for. That’s why I—’

He stopped himself when he caught a better look at Jens Horder. Horder was carrying seven or eight large plastic bags, stuffed to the brim. The sweat was trickling from his forehead, although it wasn’t a particularly hot November day. And then there was his beard, and his clothes. It was a long time since the postman had seen Horder close up. The man looked dreadful.

‘Why haven’t you been down in your pickup, Horder? You usually are.’

‘The pickup died. It’s down on the south road. I had to leave it.’

‘Gosh. That must have been a long walk home.’

‘Give me the letter,’ Horder demanded, setting down the bags. The postman caught a glimpse of something white in one of them. He carefully put the letter and the parcel on a tree stump next to the barrier and then offered Horder his receipt book and a pen. The recipient glared suspiciously at him before signing his name with an angry scrawl.

‘By the way, who is M?’ the postman asked, in his most ingratiating voice. He had no intention of letting this opportunity slip through his fingers. ‘You regularly get letters from them. And now a parcel as well. So I’m guessing that—’

‘If that’s all, then goodbye.’ Jens Horder cut him off, handing back the receipt book and the pen. The postman had privately hoped that Horder would open the parcel there and then.

‘You don’t want help with the parcel? I have a craft knife on me…’

‘So do I,’ Jens Horder said, again with this inexplicable coldness. Then he planted his hands on his hips and stared at the postman with an expression it was difficult to interpret as anything other than menacing.

‘Well… goodbye then,’ the postman said, and walked back to his van. Jens Horder stayed put while the van reversed. As the postman drove down the road towards the Neck, he could still see Horder in his rear-view mirror. He looked like a savage. A crazy savage.

Now, the postman wasn’t by nature a judgemental man, but he had long entertained a theory that Jens Horder had done something to his mother, possibly even killed her. Perhaps he was hiding her body in the big skip? The idea would never have crossed his mind if it hadn’t been for a casual chat he had had one day with the ferry man in Sønderby, in which he had learned that Else Horder never took the ferry back to the mainland the previous Christmas. And if anyone was certain about anything, the ferry man knew his passengers. However, he had been utterly uninterested in the postman’s suspicions. In fact, absolutely no one cared.