The Killing Forest (10 page)

S
leep, pain, awake. Sleep, pain, awake. Short sequences of each state wove in and out of each other.

Camilla's head spun as she lay with her eyes closed, waiting for the pills to work. Maybe she'd dozed off, she wasn't sure, but suddenly she sensed someone standing beside the bed.

She opened her eyes to a wrinkled face staring down at her. It was the old woman from the forest.

“The wagons are rolling on the Death Trail,” she said with the same weird little-girl voice that had nearly scared Camilla to death down by the creek.

She froze, so frightened that she almost began whimpering. She stared back at the narrow mouth mumbling the same message again and again. Finally the old woman backed away, but instead of leaving, she walked over to the window and the small dent in the wall next to where Camilla had placed her large wardrobe.

Camilla realized she was holding her breath; she let it out slowly. Her heart was pounding. She stared in shock at the bowed back of the woman, then threw her comforter off to the side and, despite her pain, hopped out of the door in her short T-shirt and panties. She made it down to the kitchen and plopped onto a chair before finally moaning loudly.

Frederik must have heard her staggering around, because he came to the doorway looking very worried. “Couldn't you sleep?”

“She's up in the bedroom,” she managed to say. She hunched her shoulders. “How did she get in?”

“Who? What are you talking about?” He walked over and put his arms around her. Camilla knew that he thought she'd been dreaming.

“The old woman from the forest. She's up in our bedroom!”

“Elinor?” Frederik didn't seem all that surprised. “Oh no! Not again.”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘again'?”

“Are you cold?”

Frederik was already on his way to the living room. He came back with a blanket and covered her with it.

“What do you mean, ‘again'?” Camilla repeated. She pulled the blanket tight.

“Elinor lived here back when it was a home for girls,” he said. “Mom said she couldn't have been more than two years old when she came. Sometimes she forgets she lives in the gatekeeper's house now. She's harmless, and besides, she's part of the history of the place. It's nice when she shows up, too.”

Camilla didn't totally agree with that last part.

“I'll call Tønnesen,” he said. “He can follow her home.”

Camilla drew the blanket around her again and closed her eyes while he talked to the manager.

“She kept saying that the wagons are rolling on the Death Trail,” she said when he came back. “What does she mean?”

Frederik shrugged. “No idea, but it's what they call the path here from the house down to the girls' graves, and then on to the sacrificial oak. It's always been called that.”

“Girls' graves?” Camilla sat up in her chair, but Frederik was on his way upstairs to get Elinor.

The front door opened, and Camilla was about to call out to Tønnesen when she heard dog feet galloping over the tiles in the hallway. A second later two dog snouts were sniffing her legs.

“What in the world, whose mutt is this with my favorite dog?” she cried out. She tried to cover her legs with the blanket before the big German shepherd slobbered all over them.

“Get that dog out of here,” she heard Louise say. Someone whistled, and the dog turned and ran out of the kitchen with Dina on his tail. Her friend appeared in the doorway.

Louise looked as if she was about to say something about her face, but she held back at the last second and instead mumbled, “Jesus.” She hugged Camilla very carefully. “It's going to be a while before you run your next marathon.”

“It's not so bad, really,” she said. But her friend was right. The pressure on her eye was excruciating, and water kept running out of it.

Louise stroked her hair. “The car must have hit you at a relatively high speed. I called the hospital, and they told me that you'd been knocked several meters from the impact.”

“You've talked to them?” Camilla tried to smile, even though it felt like she was grimacing.

“Of course. I wanted to know what happened. Though I had to say it was in connection with a police investigation, otherwise they wouldn't have told me.”

“Have you reported it?” Eik asked. He'd just come back inside. He sat down on a kitchen chair. “Louise and I were out in the forest, but we couldn't find anything except tire tracks where the driver definitely floored it.”

Camilla nodded.

Frederik said something out on the stairway, then came into the kitchen with Elinor on his arm. Both Louise and Eik rose so she could sit.

But Elinor didn't want to sit down. She stood beside Camilla's chair, her lips moving as if she were talking to herself, her hands in the pockets of her loose summer jacket. She didn't look at anyone, she simply stood mumbling.

Camilla didn't know what to do. She had the strange feeling that the old woman was keeping an eye on her, and she didn't like it. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the back of the chair. Louise asked what the doctor had said before releasing her. Finally the pills began to work; her body tingled pleasantly as the pain subsided.

She tried to smile again when Tønnesen walked in and caught sight of her face. Elinor livened up, and without so much as a glance at the others she took the manager's arm and walked outside with him.

Frederik smiled in resignation, then he shook Eik's hand before giving Louise a hug. “Where's Jonas?” He looked around.

“He's already upstairs,” Louise said, nodding at the stairs and Markus's room. Camilla asked how their estate's manager had become the caretaker for the old crone.

“Elinor came here in 1922, back when the house was an orphanage for girls,” Frederik said. “When the orphanage was shut down, the district wanted to move Elinor to a closed institution—they didn't have anywhere else to put her. But the old manager and his wife wouldn't hear of it. They took care of her until my grandparents bought the place several years later. They let Elinor live in the gatekeeper's house. Since then it's been one of the manager's duties to take care of her, and in fact I think Tønnesen enjoys it.”

The woman must be over ninety
, Camilla thought.

Frederik offered Eik and Louise a beer. “Or would you rather have coffee?” he asked from beside the refrigerator.

They both shook their heads, and Camilla nodded when he asked if she'd like some elderberry juice. “I don't think alcohol is the best thing for you,” he said, smiling at her.

She felt better now that the pills were working, and wanted to hear more about Elinor and the history of the estate. They helped her to the sofa. “How much do you actually know about it from back then?” she asked.

“I have photos.” Frederik walked over to the bookshelves and opened a drawer below. “My parents took over the estate in 1972, from my grandparents. They'd owned it since 1954, when the orphanage was shut down. My mother was very interested in the history of the place; once in a while she scared the daylights out of us with some of the stuff she dug up. I remember having nightmares for a whole week about the big tree in the front courtyard burning.”

“Why?” Camilla asked. She'd never known her mother-in-law, Inger Sachs-Smith, who'd died shortly before she met Frederik.

“It's a warden tree,” Frederik said, as if that explained everything.

“And what the hell is that?” She sat up and looked outside.

“It's also called a fire tree,” he said. “According to superstition, the manor will burn down if you chop a limb off the tree or fell it. Mom thought that was fascinating; also the sacrificial oak.”

He told Louise and Eik about the big partly hollow oak tree in the forest. “The tree is a sacred object that appears in several of the old legends and myths from this area. The manager back then was very interested in the old tales, and he reinstated the old traditions. They became a part of the estate's history.”

Eik was looking out the window at the yard. “Isn't there something about the warden trees, that you take a chunk of the timber frame from the house and graft it onto the tree?”

“Mom said that they removed a section of bark and drilled a hole in the trunk of the tree, and it was filled with a plug from the timber frame,” Frederik said. “Then they replaced the bark and it grew back. That was a hundred and twenty years ago, and I'm sure no one has touched a limb on that tree since. As far back as I can remember, there's been a lot of respect for it and the old superstition. When I was a kid I was afraid lightning would hit it, or something else would happen, something out of our control. I really believed that all hell would break loose!” He laughed.

Camilla leaned forward when he opened the old photo album. The manor was easy to recognize, majestic and white, though without nearly so many trees and bushes as now. The forest was visible, of course, but the area around the yard was much barer.

“Is that the Death Trail?” She pointed to a path in the photo that entered the forest on the manor's gable side.

Frederik nodded. “It was called that in the old days, because they used it to haul the dying down to the sacrificial oak on wagons. The director of the orphanage revived the old tradition. Back then, a lot of the young orphans were weak. They didn't make it. They're buried down there.”

He pointed to the spot where the path vanished into the forest.

Camilla hunched her shoulders. Though all this had happened many years ago, the thought gave her the jitters.

“When a girl was dying, the director brought the wagon around, wrapped the sick girl up, and drove her down that path, past the graves, to the sacrificial oak. He made a sacrifice of the sick girl's blood so the gods would accept her when she passed away.”

“Is that the director standing there?” Louise asked. She pointed to a man at the edge of the photo standing straight as an arrow.

Frederik nodded again.

In another photo he stood surrounded by girls in identical dresses. Obviously they had been dolled up for the photographer. It all looked so pompous, but the girls did have big smiles on their faces. One of them must be Elinor, Camilla thought.

“Right when Elinor moved here, one of the small girls became very sick,” Frederik said. “The director laid her in the wagon and drove down to the sacrificial oak, where prayers were said for her. They held a vigil at her bed for several nights after that; everyone thought her time had come, but the girl didn't die. Then an influenza epidemic hit the orphanage. It went on for over a year, and many of the very young girls died. It was said to be the gods' punishment for not getting the girl.”

He smiled faintly. “That was one of Mom's favorite stories. She told it to us when we were kids, and my sister got very wrapped up in it. She pretended she was the girl who didn't die, the one everybody else shunned because she'd caused so many of the other orphans' deaths.”

Camilla could hardly imagine her sister-in-law in that scenario. When she first met Rebecca Sachs-Smith, she'd been a businesswoman with a heart of stone. She'd changed somewhat when her daughter had been kidnapped, but even then Frederik's sister didn't seem to fit the role of victim.

“According to Mom, this sad story ended with the poor girl drowning herself in the fjord. Mom was serious when she claimed that you could see the girl once in a while, walking around the house or standing out in the yard, dripping wet, as if she'd just walked out of the water.”

The quiet in the room was intense for a moment.

“Quite a place you've settled into,” Louise said. She smiled at her friend, now lying on the sofa with the blanket over her.

T
hey sat for a while, no one saying a word, absorbing the history of the place.

“Can we find the spot where the girls are buried?” Eik asked. He stood up. “The dogs need to get out, and who knows, I might be lucky enough to meet the girl who didn't die. You want to come?”

He held his hand out to Louise.

“What about food?” she asked them. “I can drive into Roskilde and do some shopping. Will it be too late if we take a walk first?”

It was almost eight.

“We'll take care of dinner while you're gone,” Frederik said. “I'll get the boys to make a salad, and I'll light the grill.”

He found a map and spread it out. “The Death Trail enters the forest here, but the part of the trail close to our house is overgrown with weeds and bushes. It's probably easier for you to find the graves from the sacrificial oak.”

He picked up a red felt pen and marked the route for them on the map. He drew a circle. “There's a clearing here. The Asatro's bonfire site is in the middle, but if you walk behind the tree you'll find the Death Trail. Just follow it to the graves. It'll take about ten minutes.”

“Sounds good,” Louise said. “We'll find it.”

Eik stood outside with the two dogs, who were jumping around when she came out. Louise smiled when the retired police dog rocketed off, as if he'd completely forgotten that one of his back legs didn't work. The German shepherd was as friendly as he could be now that he was out of the office, which he considered his territory to guard. He hadn't growled or bared his teeth at Camilla, Frederik, or Markus, and it had been love at first sight with Jonas and Dina.

They strolled toward the old oak. Louise enjoyed holding Eik's warm hand, the way he held her fingers and stroked her hand with his thumb. The peaceful forest, the sunlight and sound of the dogs running ahead, all so beautiful and quiet. Once in a while they stopped and kissed, and she rested her chin against his leather jacket as he held her. Louise wanted to melt away into the moment.

It wasn't difficult to find the sacrificial oak or the narrow path. Louise let go of Eik's hand and leaned her head back to take a good look at the old oak. The trunk was so large that they couldn't have reached around it even if Camilla and Frederik had come along.

“If you've got any aches or pains, you should crawl into the hole,” Eik said. He pointed to the trunk. “These old trees can heal you, and they also say that the old hollow trees can improve a woman's fertility if she's having trouble getting pregnant.”

“I'm not getting into any tree,” she said. She started toward the path. “Where'd you hear about that?”

He let go of her hand when they reached the path. “Those things interested me when I was a kid.”

Why did that not surprise her?

Eik held a limb back, but twigs caught and pulled at Camilla's hair as she fought through the underbrush covering the two wheel ruts of the trail.

“Let me lead the way,” he said. He tromped through to make a path.

The dogs were already far ahead. The thick underbrush closed behind them, as if they had been swallowed.

Suddenly a clearing appeared. A gnarled tree stood in the middle, its crown spread out like a toadstool. The sun was hidden behind the forest, but the evening light cast a red sheen over everything. A low hedge grew on all four sides around the tree, making it look as if it were in the middle of a playing field.

The identical graves lay behind the unkempt hedge. They were spaced two to three meters apart. Simple and chilling. Louise froze; she felt as if she'd stepped into a world where time stood still. She began walking slowly toward Eik, who had crouched down at the first gravestone.

“Ellen Sofie Mathilde Jensen,” Eik read. “Born 1908, died 1920. Twelve years old, she was.”

Louise walked down the row of graves, reading the names and dates chiseled into the gravestones. All the girls were very young when they died, none of them over sixteen. The hairs on her arms rose, and she shook her head at herself. Then she heard Dina whining eagerly, and Charlie barked. She was familiar enough with police dogs to know that he was marking territory, and she was about to ask Eik to call him when Dina also began barking. Annoyed now, she walked over. The German shepherd was digging, growling to warn Dina away.

“Eik, damn it!” She'd already pulled a dog leash out of her pocket to hold the deaf Labrador.

“What did he find?” Eik asked. He'd taken the other way around the graves.

“I don't know, but I do know that there are forty-two hundred-year-old corpses here, so if that's what he's after, there's more than enough for him.” Louise grabbed Dina while Eik ordered Charlie to stay. “Is he hurt so bad that you can't take him to a graveyard without him flipping out?”

“Of course not. He was a Grade One dog; only the best reach that level.” Eik sounded insulted. He was about to say more, but then he stopped. “What the hell!”

He dropped to his knees and began scraping the compact soil aside.

Louise tied Dina to a tree. “What did he find?” she yelled, running over to him.

“A body.”

Charlie had dug a small trench, and now he lay beside it and looked at them attentively.

Eik's voice was dark—the warmth that she had heard before had vanished. Carefully he pushed a bit more of the dirt aside. “This is no child's hand,” he said, “and it hasn't been here a hundred years.”

Louise felt a chill. Eik had uncovered a pale white hand. From the swollen tissue and waxy film over the skin, she knew it was utterly impossible that it been buried since the early 1900s.

Her heart hammered as she squatted beside him. Eik scraped a bit more earth away to reveal the arm. The corpse wasn't fresh; several places showed only bone and sinew.

She looked at the gravestone. “Klara Sofie Erna Hermansen. Born 1916, died 1918.”

They sat there for a moment. Louise leaned against Eik's knee as she studied the skin left on the upper arm. She was about to stand up when he grabbed her and pointed. He swiped more of the dirt away, and she saw that some of the fingers were intact. A gold ring, much too big, adorned one of them.

“Female?” he guessed. He stood and wiped his hands on his pants. “Or a teenager. Not a grown man, anyway.”

“It's hard to say,” Louise answered as she rose up from her knees. “It may have been lying here a long time. The clothes are almost rotted away.”

Dark scraps of material were scattered around the ground, as if a sleeve had slowly deteriorated.

“My guess is five, maybe ten years,” Eik said. He walked off to smoke a cigarette, while Louise found Frederik's number on her phone. “The grave is shallow.”

“I don't think it's a grave,” she said. She measured the distance from the body to the top of the ground. “Someone has tried to hide a body.”

“Couldn't you find it?” Frederik asked when Louise called.

“We found it, all right,” Louise said. She didn't know how to begin. “We found a body out here that's not from the girls' orphanage.”

After several seconds Frederik asked, “What do you mean?”

“It looks like someone has been buried on top of one of the old graves.”

She told him about Charlie sniffing it out. “The body is about half a meter down, far enough so the animals haven't dug it up.”

“Couldn't it be an animal?”

She could hear he was shaken. “No, it's human, no doubt about that.” She said the Roskilde Police would definitely want to speak with him.

“I'd better come right now,” he said.

Louise heard gravel crunching; he was already on his way. “Can you make sure the police have someplace to enter the forest? And there's no reason to tell Jonas and Markus about this until tomorrow morning, let's not get them all excited tonight.”

Frederik agreed, and he promised to have Tønnesen take down the chain blocking the road.

“Tell the police to drive in at the forest parking lot and I'll meet them. But won't they want to wait until tomorrow, when they can see?”

“They'll definitely come immediately,” Louise said, nodding at Eik, who was signaling to her that he'd call Mid- and West Zealand Police in Roskilde. Meanwhile she explained to Frederik that a team of technicians would come in addition to the police, even though it was already getting dark.

“They'll probably have the Emergency Management Agency put a tent over the grave, then they'll set up floodlights,” Louise said, adding that of course a forensic pathologist would be there to look at the body before it was carefully dug up and taken in to be examined.

Ten minutes later Frederik trotted out of the forest. He stopped for a moment to get his bearings in the near-darkness of the summer night, then hurried over to them.

Louise tried to stop him in time, but he got close enough to see the arm sticking out of the ground.

“My God!” He stared at the ground, his hand over his mouth. He shook his head. “How could something like this happen?”

He seemed uncertain of where to go. “Who would do something like this? Hiding a body in our forest?”

He backed off a bit, still staring at the arm in the ground.

You'd be surprised at the things people can do
, Louise thought, but she didn't say it. He was shaken up enough already.

“That's probably one of the things the police will ask you,” she said. “Is the forest open to the public?”

Frederik nodded. Finally he tore his eyes away. “It's a private forest, and we have
NO VEHICLES ALLOWED
signs up, but we've just seen that some people ignore them.”

Eik's phone rang. He nodded crisply at Frederik. “They'll be here soon. You'll show them the way?” He walked off to take the call.

When Frederik left, Eik came back and put his arm around Louise's shoulder. “We better take the dogs back, so they don't cause so much commotion when the police arrive.”

She'd untied Dina from the tree and was now holding her leash, but it seemed as if the yellow Lab had lost interest in the corpse. Charlie still lay where Eik had left him. The big German shepherd didn't budge, even though Dina egged him on to play.

Louise shook herself. In a few minutes the evening quiet of the forest would be transformed into a crime scene, and all the relevant investigations would begin. More people would show up, and the floodlights would blaze coldly down onto the old graves of the girls. She thought about the boy hiding somewhere out there. Maybe he'd left the area, but if not, the lights might flush him out. Or frighten him to death.