Chapter 5
Sander
Cold and darkness close around him as soon as the door to the living room slams shut, and Sander stomps a few steps into the hallway before he falters at the foot of the wooden staircase leading upward.
He lifts his phone to let the sorry beam of its flashlight illuminate the way up, but it isn’t much use. The narrow ray of light barely penetrates the darkness, revealing water-stained walls and a staircase that creaks under his weight with every step. Sander clenches his teeth and goes up anyway.
“Henrik?” His voice creates a weird echo as if he were in a cave rather than a house. “Very funny, you asshole. Come out and—”
The floorboards upstairs creak in response, a slow, deliberate sound that puts him on edge.
But it has to be Henrik; no one else in their right mind would camp up there.
There’s no serial killer lurking in the darkness, and certainly no ghost. Niillas is just in on this shit, and his other defensemen are probably having the time of their lives watching Sander squirm.
Why else would Niillas stay in the living room and let Sander wander away on his own?
These absolute fuckers!
Sander reaches the landing and pauses, anger coursing through him, and phone raised like a shield.
The ceilings here are lower than in the rooms downstairs, and the decay is omnipresent.
Henrik must’ve outright lied about anybody trying to rent this shithole.
The roof must be in worse shape than Sander thought.
He can feel a cold draft, and it’s absolutely freezing up here, wet and slippery.
Under no circumstances would a vagrant decide to camp in this place.
God, he hopes Henrik catches the cold of a lifetime for this stunt.
“Okay, you got me,” Sander calls out, forcing some lightness into his voice. “I’m properly spooked. You can come out now.”
Nothing.
The silence is absolute and oppressive, and Sander’s heartbeat drums in his ears. Why is it so quiet? Shouldn’t Henrik make a sound? Any sound? Shouldn’t Sander at least be able to hear Niillas moving around downstairs?
Damn, this is creepy, but he has to see this through.
Sander takes a look into the first room.
The door is slightly ajar, and the small chamber behind is cramped with old wooden furniture.
No one’s inside. Okay. Next room. Sander walks further down the corridor, sidestepping a huge wet spot where the floorboards look rotten and swollen with severe water damage.
Everything is damp and decaying up here, making even moving around downright dangerous.
This is stupid. No one’s here. The sound of footsteps must’ve come from an animal, because Sander can’t imagine that Henrik has the guts to spend more than five minutes in this desolate place, even if Lars is with him to hold his hand.
He should go back downstairs where Niillas is probably sitting by the fire, laughing his ass off about Sander’s paranoia.
He turns to retreat and immediately whirls around again, pulse kicking up.
There’s movement at the end of the hallway.
“Henrik?!”
A pale figure appears in the doorway of the furthest room, barely visible in the light of Sander’s phone. His relief is immediate and sharp.
“There you are, you bastard. Do you have any idea how—”
The words die in his throat.
This isn’t Henrik.
The figure is small, delicate, wearing what looks like a long white dress that moves without any breeze. Her face is turned toward him, but long dark hair hides her features.
“Who—”
The figure tilts her head, and Sander catches a glimpse of dark eye sockets and skin that looks translucent as ice.
“So pretty,” she murmurs, her voice carrying the sound of winter wind through bare branches. “So warm.”
Adrenaline floods Sander’s system, primal and overwhelming, and he takes a step backward without thinking.
His heel catches on a loose floorboard, making him stumble, and with a splintering crack, the wood gives in beneath him.
Suddenly, he’s down on one knee, his right leg trapped in a gap in the floor.
“Ow!”
Pain shoots through his shin as splintered wood bites into his flesh, and Sander gasps. His phone slips from his hand, clattering across the floor before coming to rest against the far wall, its light now barely a pale glimmer in the darkness.
“Shit!”
Sander tries to pull free, but the floor is slippery and the broken boards have him trapped. Jagged edges bite through his jeans, and he knows he’s bleeding.
“Niillas?”
The white apparition at the end of the hallway moves, and the temperature plummets. Sander’s breath condensates, and frost begins to form on the walls around him. It’s like walking into an ice rink on a balmy summer day—shocking and wrong.
“Come to me, beautiful one,” the figure whispers, and she’s closer now, drifting toward him like a cloth floating in a current.
She’s shrouded in a faint glow, a young woman, maybe Sander’s age, with long dark hair that moves like it’s underwater.
Her dress is white and flowing, reminding Sander of period dramas. The perfect Halloween costume.
Maybe Henrik has convinced his new girlfriend to dress up as a ghostly white lady?
“Who—who are you?”
Sander’s teeth are chattering, the cold seeping through Niillas’ flannel shirt as if Sander were standing outside on the coldest winter’s day.
The girl smiles at him with horrible blue lips.
“Marta,” she says, as if that explains everything. “Come. Come with me. We need to hide.”
“Hei, Marta.” Sander struggles again with the floorboards, but his movements are becoming sluggish as the cold spreads through his body. “Who are you hiding from?”
She kneels down beside him, or more like flows into a position resembling a crouch, cold radiating from her skin.
“The thing in the woods.”
Horror crawls up Sander’s spine as he gets a closer look at her face. Her skull looks like it’s been caved in at the side as if something extremely heavy crashed against her head. This isn’t make-up. Sander feels like he might be sick.
“You’ve seen it, too.”
He did. Oh god. He did.
“What did you see?” Sander asks through chattering teeth. He needs to keep talking. “When?”
“Karo barked at it. My poor Karo.” Her translucent fingers hover over Sander’s face, not quite touching but close enough that he can feel the deadly chill radiating off her skin. “Come with me. We have to hide.”
“From what, Marta?”
She leans closer.
“The troll.”
“What?”
“Karo barked at it.” Her lips twist into a dreadful smile. “Your hair. It’s the same color as his fur.”
Her cold is making him dizzy, his vision blurring at the edges.
He can feel himself shutting down, his body trying to preserve what warmth it has left.
But he forces himself to keep talking, some survival instinct telling him that as long as he can keep her focused on conversation, she might not drag him to whichever horrible place she came from.
“My—my friend is still downstairs. We can’t leave him behind.”
Sander just hopes he’s protecting Niillas from the thing outside—the troll, the girl called it—and not condemning him to die by Marta’s hands.
“No.” Marta’s face twists, and frost creeps up Sander’s sleeve. “He’s one of them.”
“He’s what?”
Her hand is in his hair, her touch spreading a numbness in its wake.
“He’s different. Not like us.” Marta’s ghostly voice takes on an agitated edge. “He can’t hide with us. You can. We can be cold together.”
“I can’t—I have to—”
“Shh. It only hurts for a little while.”
Drowsiness overwhelms him. He can barely feel his trapped leg anymore, can barely feel anything except the devastating cold that’s turning his blood to slush in his veins.
Is this how he dies? Frozen to death in an abandoned farmhouse by a ghost who’s going to kill Niillas next?
The thought pisses him off enough to summon one last surge of defiance.
“No,” he hisses through numb lips. “I won’t—I won’t come with you.”
A roar shakes the entire house, furious and definitely not human. Marta jerks back, her ethereal form flickering.
“What—”
Something crashes downstairs, and then there’re thundering steps. A growl fills the air, low and threatening, and Marta recoils.
Is this Niillas, or has the terrible shape from the woods found its way inside and is coming for them?
Sander twists desperately in his trapped position, straining to see through the darkness, expecting—hoping—to find Niillas with his bright flashlight, ready to make some dry comment about Sander getting himself into trouble.
Instead, a large shadow fills the landing.
No flashlight beam cutting through the darkness.
God, please—
“Sander.” Niillas’ voice is deep and rough, as if he were doing a Batman impression and managing not to sound completely ridiculous. “Don’t try to move. I’m coming.”
The shadow is fast and graceful, avoiding wet spots and weak boards as if Niillas can see them in the darkness. How can he make out anything up here?
“Get away from him, jábme.”
It’s definitely Niillas’ voice. Sander could’ve wept with relief.
“No,” the ghost pleads. “He belongs to me now.”
“You’re mistaken. He’s mine.”
Marta hisses, recoiling further into the darkness at the end of the hall. Frost still radiates from her, but it’s weaker now, as if Niillas’ presence is somehow driving her back.
Dropping to his knees unceremoniously beside him, Niillas inspects the floorboards.
But even through the haze of bone-deep cold and warm relief, Sander notices something’s off.
Niillas’ hands are large and pointy like claws as they reach for the broken floorboards, and he rips the wood to shreds with no evident effort, freeing Sander in a heartbeat.
And when he pulls Sander against his chest, he brings with him blessed warmth.
Sander must be hallucinating.
“Does your leg hurt?” Niillas asks, his voice is gentler now that he’s focused on Sander, though still carrying that strange roughness.