The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (3 page)

“I know,” he says. “Can you blame them for not believing you? Or me? Or my father?”

He knows I don’t. If someone came to me with the same story, I’d have shipped them off to the loony bin. And maybe that’s where I belong.

“We can make them listen,” he says. “We can show them the truth.”

“How?” I demand. “Get video of whales acting weird? That won’t change a thing. At best, people will just argue about the cause. Probably blame pollution. Or navy sonar. You know Occam’s razor, right?”

“Lex parsimoniae,” he says. “I was a history professor, remember? The simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation.”

“That’s how most people think, Willem. We’re not going to be able to change that with a video.”

“You forgot the second part of Occam’s razor,” he says. “The simplest explanation is usually correct, until new evidence proves it false.”

I roll my eyes. “Video is
not
new evidence.”

“We’re going to get a sample,” he says. “A parasite.”

I react as though he’s just slapped me in the face. After a few moments of shocked silence, I say, “
What?
”

“If we can collect a parasite, maybe let it infect a rat, show how it spreads and controls mammals, someone might take us seriously.”

“You’re insane,” I say.

Willem gets to his feet, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling. “You know what’s coming as much as we do! How can we not try?”

I don’t have a good answer for this. I understand what he’s saying, but if I could go back in time and tell myself, “Hey, if you set foot on the
Sentinel
, you’re going to be shipwrecked on an island populated by Viking zombies that will eat your friends, unleash a parasitic plague on the planet, and generally fuck up your life,” I would. My reasoning is entirely selfish, and I’m okay with that.

“I have nightmares,” I confess. “They start out simple. Like I’m brushing my teeth. But then my eyes are white and full of little white worms. Sometimes I claw my eyes out. Sometimes I try to wash it away with soap. In one dream, I jumped out the window. But each dream ends the same—I wake up screaming.”

After a moment of staring at the floor, Willem says, “I have similar dreams. But they end differently.”

“How?” I ask.

“With you,” he says.

“Please don’t say I save you or something ridiculous like that,” I say. “It won’t matter. You can’t guilt me into coming.”

He smiles, but it’s sad. “You don’t save me,” he says. “You kill me. In a strange way, I guess that means you are saving me. From becoming one of them. A Draugr.”

“That’s screwed up,” I say.

He laughs gently. “I know. But you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

I don’t answer. Can’t. Who would want to confess something like that?

“That’s not really why we want you here,” he says. “You were an investigator. It’s what you do. You understand collecting evidence, proving things to a court. My father is a whaler, and I’m a professor. We’re kind of out of our element here.”

I step toward the door. “You’re fast learners.”

“Do you know the ships?” he asks quickly, stopping me before I leave the room.

I turn back slowly, asking, “
What
ships?”

A
fter saying that he thought it better if his father explained, Willem leads me through the bowels of the ship. We’re on the second deck, which is the lowest deck on the ship and mostly below the waterline. In rough or even choppy water, the portal in “my” room might be submerged. Fourteen crew quarters large enough to hold two people each line the hall at the core of the ship, seven to each side, each with its own small head—bathroom, to the nonseafaring. The quarters are sandwiched between the engine room at the ship’s bow and the propeller at the ship’s aft, which means that it’s loud as hell down here when the ship is under way.

We follow the hallway until we reach a stairwell leading up. We take the stairs past the main deck and onto deck one. I follow Willem around a corner to another staircase that takes us to deck two. Why the second deck at the bottom of the ship and deck two are identified so similarly, I’ll never know. Most people chalk it up to the strange habits of captains or ship designers, but I think they’re just being lazy. When we follow two more staircases to reach the bridge, I know we’re on a sizable ship, which begs the question, What ship are we on?

Willem pauses at the door to the bridge and looks back at me. “The
Bliksem
was insured,” he explains. “And since the whaling
industry has gone belly-up…” He shrugs. “We picked up the
Ra
—the ship—with money left to spare.”

Before I can comment on his cheesy “belly-up” pun, he opens the door. “C’mon.”

The bridge is laid out a lot like the bridge of the
Sentinel
. In fact, where I am now is about where I was standing when the C4 that sank both ships exploded. The people who died from the concussive force of the blast or flying metal shrapnel or who drowned as the ship sank got off easy compared to Jenny and Peach, who escaped the bridge with me. I wouldn’t wish their fates on anyone. Yet here stands Willem, ready to buy a ticket for a chance to win that unholy lottery.

I see workstations—radar, sonar, communications—all the stuff you need to pilot a ship this size. The long line of oversize windows provides a view of Nuuk Bay, full of islands that dull the brunt of the Arctic Ocean’s wrath. But I don’t see a single person. “Do you have a crew, or am I it?”

“There are eight of us,” he says, but then he corrects himself. “Seven, if we’re not counting you.”

“We’re not,” I say.

“I’m in here,” Jakob calls out.

I follow his voice to port, where I find a chart room off the back of the bridge. A long table dominates the space. It’s covered with maps of the North Atlantic, rulers, protractors, and compasses for course plotting. All very old-school, and exactly what I’d expect from an old Viking like Jakob.

“I’m surprised you’re not sailing by the stars,” I say.

He looks up at the sound of my voice and smiles so wide I can’t help but return it.

“Raven!” he says and then rushes around the table to give me a bear hug. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling more like yourself.”

I’m not sure if that’s a compliment, but I let it slide, partly because if I let the air out of my lungs, he’s liable to snap my ribs. When he puts me down, I see they’ve actually got a laptop at the back of the room. So not entirely a Middle Ages operation. But still suicidal.

I decide to let Jakob down quick. “I can’t come with you.”

His smile wavers for only a moment. “But you must.”

“I’m sorry, Jakob, you—”

Willem interrupts. “Tell her about the ships.”

Right
, I think,
the ships
.

“If we’re talking about a party ship in the Caribbean with a conga line of Chippendale dancers, sign me up. Otherwise, I’m heading home.”

“Raven,” Jakob says, sounding serious.

“Please stop calling me that,” I say. The nickname came about because of my black hair and black clothing, and the black hooded cloak I wore when I’d first met Willem and Jakob. The raven has been the Olavson family crest going back to the Norse, so Jakob saw my appearance as a good omen. But the raven was also one of Odin’s pets, a creature called Muninn, later revealed to be Áshildr, a sixteen-year-old girl, an Olavson ancestor, and host to a Draugr Queen parasite capable of controlling the others. If not for the strong will of Torstein, Áshildr’s father-turned-Draugr, she would have killed them all. So I’m not the biggest fan of the name.

Jakob waves off my request. “The strength of the Olavson crest is why we stand here today. The name is an honor.”

It’s a fight I can’t win, so I drop it. “Get to the ships, so I can leave.”

With a sigh, Jakob takes a seat and clasps his hands over his belly. “You know about the whales?”

“God. Yes,” I say, getting exasperated. “We’ve been over this.”

“Well, the ocean’s mammals aren’t the only things disappearing,” he says. Seeing he’s caught my attention already, he continues. “There have been an increasing number of ships lost at sea. No Maydays or distress beacons. No wreckage. They leave port and never return.”

“How come I haven’t seen this on the news?” I ask.

“The ships are from all over the world,” he says.

“The only people putting the pieces together are online conspiracy theorists,” Willem adds.

“We’ve tracked down news reports of twenty-three missing ships from around the world whose course took them through the North Atlantic.”

“Twenty-three isn’t that many,” I say.

“These waters haven’t been this dangerous to sail since World War Two,” he says. “The ocean might as well be teeming with U-boats!”

“And yet you two are prepared to charge headlong like blind tap-dancing monkeys into a lion’s den.”

Jakob looks confused. “Blind tap-dancing monkeys?”

“Forget it,” I say. “The point is, you’re both idiots. And I want nothing to do with it.”

“Jane,” Willem says in a pleading voice, his hand resting on my shoulder.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt his touch. I
like
his touch. But right now it only serves to exacerbate my annoyance. I shrug away. “Look, I get why you’re doing this. You feel some kind of ancestral responsibility. It was your ancestors who inadvertently set
this plague loose, wiped out the original Norse settlements. And in a way, it was us who let that same plague escape the island. But it’s not just some mindless plague. It’s a parasite. An intelligent parasite. With a will of its own. It would have happened eventually, with or without the Sons of Olav. It’s not your fault. It’s not your responsibility.”

Jakob’s face turns a few shades of red darker. “Jane, it’s our responsibility simply because we know and no one else does.”

I read between the lines. He’s saying it’s
my
responsibility. I lean forward, planting my hands on the table. “I know that, Jakob. While you two have been at the docks playing Popeye the Sailor Man, I’ve been telling everyone who will listen. I’ve destroyed my life and any chance of a future outside of jail. And I really don’t need
you
reminding me about that.”

“What would your father think?” Jakob says.

Somewhere deep in my mind, a countdown commences. I’m about to go nuclear on Jakob. Bringing the Colonel into this argument is a low blow. I haven’t even been able to return to the States to say good-bye at his grave. Jakob should have known better than to pick at that fresh scab.

It takes all of my effort to walk away, and I’m sure Willem is calling after me. But I’m not really hearing him. I yank open the bridge door and step out into the frigid October air. The sun is low on the horizon, casting the distant islands and line of docks in a striking orange glow. But I hardly notice as I storm down the exterior steps to the main deck. I don’t see a ramp bridging the ship and dock, so I head for the rail.

A large man turns at my approach. His eyes go wide when he sees me. It’s Malik. He’s talking to me. By the look on his face, he’s probably apologizing, even though he had every reason to want my head bashed in. Rather than listen to his apology, I climb the rail
and hop onto the dock. When he looks over the rail at me, I flip him the bird and say, “Fuck off.”

I’m not only the queen of bad first impressions. I’m the dark overlord of even worse second impressions, mostly because the first could be chalked up to alcohol consumption. This one’s all me.

Not that it matters. Malik, like the rest of them, will be just another dead seaman at the bottom of the ocean soon enough.

“Idiots,” I mutter as I charge up the dock, my feet stomping over the old wooden beams. “Stupid Viking macho idiots.” I don’t look back as I walk away, not because I don’t care, but because I might change my mind. I’m sure they’re standing there, watching me leave like a bunch of pitiful sad puppies. The thought is too much, and I can’t help but look back.

There are no puppy-dog eyes beckoning me back. No one is watching. Part of me is grateful—it means I can go without an extra layer of guilt—but part of me is hurt by how easily they let me go. It’s a stupid girlie thing to do. The Colonel would call it “acting nancy,” but I am a girl.

I’m about to turn forward again when I catch the bright white name stenciled on the back of the jet-black ship.
Raven.
I shake my head.
Are they inviting ironic deaths?
“Idiots,” I say again, and then start the two-mile walk back to my apartment.

M
y apartment is a two-room gem on the tenth floor of the second Jagtvej tower. Together, the twelve-story buildings are the tallest in the country, which means I nearly have the best view in Greenland. While the people on the two floors above have slightly higher elevation, it’s really the people on the other side of the building—the ocean side—who got the best view. The view from my side is all mountain. Beautiful, but stark and unmoving. When the sunset reflects off the snowy peaks, it’s quite striking, but I’d prefer a view of the ocean, especially now that I’m wondering if Willem and Jakob really did set sail without me.

I haven’t changed my mind. Hell, I’m eating a freshly nuked Hungry-Man dinner—Salisbury steak, though how much cow is really in this thing is debatable—with slippered feet propped up on the cardboard box serving as my coffee table.

I’ve only been here for two months and haven’t bothered properly furnishing the place. My bedroom has a mattress on the floor and stacks of cardboard boxes for shelves. The kitchenette has a frying pan, a single pot, and a few utensils for cooking, left behind by the previous tenant. But I mostly use the microwave for cooking or order out. The flat-screen TV is my nicest possession, but I didn’t buy it. I found it in the trash and fixed it by replacing a five-dollar fuse. I’ve used it primarily for watching
Star Trek
reruns and movies.
The reruns play on TV quite frequently, but the DVDs are pirated copies from a guy on the third floor.

It’s not that I’m a spendthrift or have bad taste—I just don’t think I’ll be staying here long, whether I’m allowed to head home to the States or carted off in the paddy wagon. That’s not entirely true. I’ve toyed with the idea of staying, mostly because of Willem, but I’m not sure what, if anything, is really between us. And after the way I’ve acted these past few months, I’m not sure he’d want there to be anything between us, except maybe the Atlantic Ocean. Which is likely now the case.