I landed in an undignified heap on the hard, wooden floor. My eyes were fixed on my brother as a piercing, shrill scream tore from my chest. My hands and feet scrambled frantically on the ground as I scrambled backwards, my back hitting against the now closed door with a thump.
Everyone in the bar had turned to stare at me, I could feel their intense gazes boring into me, judging me. Their red eyes fixed on me, glowing, flickering in the darkness. Hushed voices whispered, they mocked me, laughed at me.
“No! Magnus! Magnus, help me please!” I shrieked, my voice thick with terror, echoed around the room.
But Magnus didn’t help me, he didn’t stop Lars. The total opposite in fact, my stomach turned over, bile rose in my throat as I watched the two men, side by side as they hurried towards me. Their shadows, dark and ominous, reached out at me.
Was this some sort of trap?
My head snapped around as I felt a soft pressure on my shoulder, a gentle touch.
Green eyes peered intently into mine. beautiful green eyes, sparking emeralds set into a face so remarkable that it seemed otherworldly. It was the face of an angel. A soft glow seemed to emanate from her being. Kristina smiled at me, it was a warm smile that went some way towards calming the turmoil that I could feel surging inside myself.
“Help me, Kristina! Help me!” My words came out in a jumbled babble, barely legible.
My hands grabbed out at her, fingers tangling in the soft fabric of her sweater.
“You’re alright, Heidi. Just take some deep breaths.” Her voice was truly melodic. “Why don’t we get you out the back, into the kitchen?”
Slipping an arm around mine, she helped me to my feet. I could feel my knees still quivering, still weak but she held me steady. Looking around the room, I could see those eyes, they were still fixed on me, still glinting red. Magnus and Lars stood only a few metres away. Frozen as if held at bay by the magical protector at my side.
Kristina’s free hand turned the door handle and pushed it open. With her arm firmly around my waist, we stepped out into the passage and then through the door to the kitchen.
The artificial glare of the strip lights reflecting off the gleaming white tiled floor and off the stainless steel of the work surfaces and appliances made my eyes blink. The sterile light felt cold despite the overwhelming heat thrown out by the cookers and hobs.
Kristina walked me to a wooden table in the centre of the room and helped me down into a chair, one of the four that surrounded it.
Movement, a dark shadow crossed the corner of my vision. A cold fist gripped my heart, the air freezing in my lungs. I pushed myself backwards, shrinking into the chair as Lars and Magnus stepped into the room.
My heart clenched tighter as I felt Kristina make a move towards the door.
“No, please don’t go! Please don’t leave me!” I looked her in the eyes, I pleaded, begged with her.
Her gaze shifted to Magnus, who gave her a small nod. A breath escaped my throat as she moved back to my side, her warm hand returning to my shoulder.
“Heidi, you’re going to be alright now. Lars has come to take you home. He has been very worried about you.” Magnus’ voice was calm and gentle, I searched his face looking for anything that could give away an ulterior motive, I could find nothing. But what was he doing with Lars?
“No! No! Magnus, I can’t go back with him! He’ll lock me away again! I won’t be locked away!” My words flooded out of my mouth like a screeching, incoherent stream.
The two men glanced at each other. Magnus’ brows were drawn down tightly, furrowing his forehead.
“I know you told me that she wasn’t well, but I didn’t realise that she was this bad. You really need to get her some help.” Magnus’ voice held a deep, low urgency as he spoke to my brother
“She hasn’t been right for some time, not since Mum and Dad disappeared. She has these episodes, you see. She is convinced that someone’s holding her prisoner, keeping her locked away…”
“You are! Lars! You are locking me away! Keeping me in that basement! But I won’t go back! I’m free now!” I screamed at him, my body convulsed with a cold desperation!
“Since what happened a couple of months ago, she’s been getting worse. That’s why I brought her up here. I thought the change in scenery might do her some good.” Lars just carried on, talking over me despite my yells.
Lars’ words hadn’t really been registering with me but all of a sudden, they hit me like a charging bull.
“Mum? Dad? What’s happened to Mum and Dad?” Had I heard right, had he really said that they had disappeared? Another tangled knot of fear formed in my stomach, adding to the terror that I already felt there.
“Heidi, please, not here, not now. Don’t make me have to tell you this all over again.” Lars’ head shook slowly as his eyes moved from me to Magnus. His voice was low. Was that a tear I saw in the corner of his eye? “I don’t really know if it’s denial or if she genuinely can’t remember, but this happens every time that she gets like this. She’ll refuse to eat, deny knowing anything about Mum and Dad while living in the delusion that I’m holding her as some sort of prisoner and doing all these terrible things to her.” His voice quivered as he spoke. Blinking his eyes, a tear running down his cheek. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this.”
My mind was racing, the words I was hearing tumbled over and over in my head. Surely Magnus wasn’t going to believe Lars. A bubbling in my stomach rose up, twisting and turning inside of me.
“What’s happened to Mum and Dad!” My voice was shrill, shaking as I screamed the words.
I felt Kristina’s hand on my shoulder, but it did little to calm me, my whole body convulsed and shuddered.
“Shall I?” Magnus spoke to Lars, my brother nodded slowly in response.
“Magnus?” I shrieked his name.
My godfather pulled up a chair opposite me and sat. Reaching over towards me he went to take my hand. I snatched it away from him with a sudden, sharp movement. Earlier I had trusted Magnus, I would have put my life in his hands. But now, seeing him sat with Lars, cold doubts were starting to creep in. Cracks appearing in that trust that I had felt towards him.
“Heidi, you’re not well. When Lars called me up earlier, he was in a panic. He said you had jumped out of a window, undressed and shouting about escaping. He asked me to help find you, he thought that you might be trying to get to Skyggespor. That’s how I came to find you on that trail. He’s been beside himself with worry. He hasn’t moved from outside the medical room since I brought you in.” Magnus’ blue eyes remained fixed on mine as he spoke.
“No! No, Magnus! He’s been holding me in the basement, kept me locked down there for months. I needed to get away, I had to escape from him.” My voice sounded as manic as my mind felt.
He had been outside my door the whole time? That conversation that I had heard between Magnus and who I had assumed to be Kristina? It had been Lars all along! All that time that I’d felt safe and free, my tormentor had only been a matter of metres away. Just on the other side of the door.
Magnus shook his head, eyes lowered. “Lars has explained it all to me. Since your parents died…” A stabbing pain surged through my chest, my body jolted as if I’d been physically struck. Magnus’s words faded into a blur, all I could hear was his last sentence going round and round again in my mind. My parents weren’t missing, they were dead?
My eyes shot to my brother, searching for anything, an answer to explain what I’d just heard.
Lars let out a slow sigh. “Heidi, they never made it home after their anniversary tour of Italy. We didn’t know what had happened, all we knew was that they got off the plane, but they never made it home. Then, a month or two ago we had a visit from the Police, they had found Dad’s body. He had been strangled. They still haven’t found Mum.”
The air left my chest with a gasp. I struggled for breath, my lungs burned for oxygen as the world spun around me. Bile once again rose up in my throat, my head turned to the side and violently vomited onto the clean, tiled floor.
“No! No! That can’t be right! It’s a lie! Lars did this! The basement!” The whirlwind in my mind spat out words that made no sense.
“Heidi,” My eyes looked up at the sound of Magnus’ voice. “you’ve had some sort of breakdown. When your parents went missing, you stopped eating, you wouldn’t see anyone. You locked yourself away in your room. When they found your father’s body, when they told us that he’d been strangled, well, you became very unwell. Lars has told me all about it. He brought you out here because he hoped that a change of scenery would do you some good.”
I couldn’t focus, the room around me swung and swayed. This couldn’t be right. “But the basement…” my small voice uttered the words.
“I understand what you believe has happened to you. But, if I’m honest, you don’t look like someone who has been kept in a basement against her will. It’s obvious to me that you haven’t been looking after yourself. Lars has told me all about the self harming. But you’re clean, your hair is washed, you don’t look like someone who has been locked away.” Magnus spoke those words slowly.
“He let me have a bath, that’s how I escaped.” I spoke the words, but they came softly, doubts had begun to creep into my mind. It couldn’t be true, could it? Surely not, I knew what had happened to me.
The two men looked at each other, an understanding expression passing between them.
Magnus turned back at me, his voice taking on an understanding tone, “Heidi, Lars is your twin brother. He’d never do anything to hurt you. You know that don’t you? He’s been worried about you. Why don’t you let him take you home so you can get some rest.”
My mind struggled, memories flashed at the edge of my subconscious. Images began to materialise before fading away. Could it really be true? Could all those months in the basement have just been in my mind? I was confused, my head swimming with things that I just didn’t understand, vague memories, answers, flickered just out of reach.
“Please don’t leave me alone with him.” My eyes widened as I stared pleadingly at my godfather.
“I’ll tell you what, why don’t I come back with you both to the cabin? Just to make sure it’s all safe.” Magnus turned to my brother as he spoke.
“I’m not sure that we should be indulging her fantasies but ok, if it helps her to feel better.”
“Is that alright with you, Heidi?” I nodded my head in response to Magnus’ question.
Magnus slid his chair back and stood. Almost robotically, I followed his example. My head felt hollow, my emotions had drained away. The earlier fear and panic had gone, gone and replaced with an empty numbness. My head swam with thoughts of Mum and Dad. I remembered Mum’s infectious laugh, Dad’s never ending love and kindness, the little presents, the chocolate bars that he would always leave for me when I was good. Were they really gone? Could it really be true, would I really never see them again?
My godfather and my brother walked out of the kitchen, silently I began to follow them. I felt a soft, warm touch of Kristina’s hand brush mine. I looked into her face, mouthing the words ‘help me!’ as I passed her and stepped out into the passage behind the two men.
I don’t really remember very much of the journey back to Grandfather’s, at most it’s a blur now. I know Magnus fetched me an old pair of boots from the boot room, that I sat in the front seat of Lars’ car on the way back to the cabin and that Magnus followed behind. I have vague recollection of my brother trying to make small talk, but I was in such a daze that very little registered with me.
Surely everything that had happened couldn’t have all been in my head, some sort of delusion. The basement, those dark creatures and their evil red eyes, the Shadow Beast. They were real, they had to be. When Magnus saw the cabin, the evidence, he would have to believe me. Lars wouldn’t be able to manipulate his way out of that.
I can remember the cars pulling up outside the cabin. As we got out of the cars, I walked over to where Magnus was standing.
“You’ve got to believe me, Magnus. Please believe me.” I pleaded with him.
“We’ll see, Heidi. Come on, let’s get you inside.” His voice sounded calm, patient.
“The cabin is bare, you’ll see. There’s no way that we could have been staying here. Look in the basement, then you’ll see everything.” I was becoming sure of myself. More confident as I spoke. I knew that I was right, I knew what my brother had put me through and now Magnus would see it too.
Walking alongside Magnus, I followed my brother up the path to the cabin door. Our feet crunching on the snowy ground.
Fiddling with the key in the lock for a moment, Lars twisted the door handle and pushed it open.
“This is nice, Lars. You’ve done a good job with the old place.” Magnus patted my brother on the shoulder.
No, this wasn’t right, this couldn’t be right! The old cabin was empty, we’d cleared it, there shouldn’t be anything here. But there was! A small television sat atop a coffee table, facing an old but comfortable looking sofa, pushed against the wall. Other knickknacks were scattered around the room. Photos over the fireplace, a coat stand, hanging on which was my pink ski jacket.
No! I’d only been here a few hours ago and it had been empty, the room had been bare.
Magnus looked down at me, his lips drawn tightly, brows furrowed. “Why don’t you go and get some sleep? You’ve had a difficult day.”
“No!” My heart skipped sharply, a cold flutter in my chest at Magnus’ suggestion. “I’m not going back down there!”
Confusion passed across Magnus’s face. “Down where, Heidi?”
“The basement! I’m not going down into the basement!” My voice came out shrill and rushed. I wasn’t going to be locked down there again!
“It’s all part of this delusion of hers.” Lars’ eyes shifted from Magnus to me. “You can sleep in your bedroom, just like you always do. No one is going down into that basement.”
“I don’t have a bedroom!”
Lars took a deep, slow breath before continuing, “Of course you do. Don’t you remember, we brought all of your favourite things from home and set up the room together? We made it just how you wanted it.”
No, no, that wasn’t right. I scrabbled around in my mind, searching for anything that might make sense of what Lars was saying. Those memories, ever elusive, was there something there? Something that I just couldn’t grasp? No! I’d never had a bedroom here, not since Grandfather had passed away.
“No, Lars! You drugged me and locked me away!”
My body was racked with tremors as the words tumbled from my mouth.
I felt Magnus’s arm encircle my waist.
“Why don’t I take you to your bedroom, you can show me what you’ve done with it. We’ll let Lars have a sit down for a moment.”
With his arm gently wrapped around me, we walked together towards the first bedroom, the door was hanging open.
“This looks nice, Heidi.” His voice was deep and resonant as we stepped foot into the bedroom.
I shook my head as I took in the surroundings. Thin, pink curtains hung drawn in front of the window. The bed was unmade, a tangled heap of sheets and duvet, the pillows pushed up against the headboard. Piled on top of the pillows was a pink, silk night dress. At the foot of the bed was an untidy heap, a discarded pair of blue jeans, a black sweater, underwear and a white towel. Pinned to the wall were a handful of drawings, a unicorn, a fairy. These things, they were my things. But how? What were they doing here?
Absently, Magnus began to straighten the sheets and duvet, fluffing up the pillows.
“This is nice, isn’t it? You’ve done an excellent job here.” He spoke absently, while fussing over my bed. Folding my nightdress.
“You get yourself off to sleep. I’m going to have a little chat with your brother before getting back to Skyggespor. I’ll see if I can get some proper help for you. But please, just for me, can you stop hurting yourself and make sure that you eat properly?” Placing a soft kiss on my forehead, Magnus turned. I watched him as he stepped out of my bedroom, closing the door behind himself with a loud click.
I collapsed backwards onto my bed. Grabbing the warm duvet, I rolled into it, wrapping it tightly around myself. My entire being felt as if it had been hollowed out.