I wanted to say so much, but I couldn’t. I had no idea what I had been babbling about in my half-dead delirious state. There was no doubt my parents would have chalked any mentions of the girl to over-imagination, lies, and possibly the Devil’s work.
A few days later, when my parents deemed me as normal and no longer a threat to myself, we heard news from a local woodcutter who was passing through. Greta Lund, the young daughter of one of papa’s worshippers, had been found dead at the bottom of the lake. A man had been fishing and his hook got caught on her net of hair. There was no mention of chains but I knew what I had seen. I had seen her and I had seen what had really happened to her. She had been murdered. Was it the blackened man? I didn’t know at the time. But I knew then that what I saw was real and not real all at once. I was special. And not in a fortunate way.
CHAPTER TWO
The second time this sort of thing happened to me, I was a few years older and could no longer blame my mother’s stories for giving my gift fire. She had stopped telling them many years ago. It was the first time my special sight caused loss – I no longer had that closeness with my mother.
I had started going to school in Ullapa, the closest town and would get a ride in every morning with our neighbor Arstand and his son Stäva. As you may recall, Arstand was the goat farmer who found me, along with my mother, floating in the lake when I was six. That explained why Arstand was always a bit jumpy with me, as if I was going to pop up and say “boo!” at any moment.
But he tolerated me enough to fit me in his new vehicle and take me to school. My parents were still behind the times and my father shunned motor vehicles as being unnecessary idols and symbols of gluttony. I suppose he was right, but it was still a convenient way to get around.
Stäva had ended up being my only, and, by default, closest friend. He was a bit strange and funny to look at but strange suited me just fine. He was small for his age and had ears that stuck out. Arstand called him “elefant.” It didn’t seem to bother Stäva much though. He had a sunny personality and loved to listen to me prattle on about this and that. He was also quite the adventurer and when we first started playing together we would explore the farm he lived on, climbing up into the haylofts and jumping onto the piles below or feeding the baby goats (when we weren’t chasing them around). My parents weren’t too happy that I was spending so much of my time away from home, but I suppose my mother felt she was in debt to Arstand and after a while they didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps it was a relief to them that someone else was taking care of me.
It was at Stäva’s that I was introduced to more modern conveniences, aside from the car of course. Being a goat farmer was more profitable than being a minister and they had things such as a library and a radio. The library was a great place for me to sink my teeth, especially as I had learned to read at that point, but the radio trumped all. When I was there after school, his father, mother and two younger brothers would sit around the giant radio and listen to broadcasts coming out of Stockholm. I found the news to be boring, except when it touched on the troubles in Europe, but I lived for the plays and radio shows that played after. It was then that I fell in love with acting and the theatre. I couldn’t see the show of course, and I had never seen a performance in my life as church singing didn’t count to me, but I could envision it all in my head like I was there with the actors.
“I’m going to be on the radio one day,” I remember whispering into Stäva’s funny ear. We were sitting on the braided rug in his living room, a place that smelled like a mix of manure, sour milk and home baked bread. It doesn’t sound like a winning combination but it’s funny now how that smell makes me think of home, even though it wasn’t my home. It’s not that Stäva’s parents were particularly nice to me. Like I noted, Arstand was always watching me carefully. His wife Else was a nice woman but she seemed lost in her head more often than not and spent most of her time working with the goat cheese or doting on Stäva’s younger siblings. I wasn’t a pest to them but I wasn’t loved either. Yet I still had a sense of freedom and hope in their peculiar-smelling place.
With the idea of being an actress in my head, I focused solely on that. I mentioned it once to my parents and ended up getting a belt across my thigh. It didn’t hurt. I was too angry for it to hurt. I was angry at my father for being so close-minded about his daughter’s dreams (for what were we without dreams) and at my mother for never sticking up for me. Ever since the lake incident, when she stopped with her stories, she stopped being my friend as well. It hurt more than anything, more than all the belts, more than the feeling of drowning in that ice cold lake.
So I never mentioned it to my parents again but that did me no good. I should have known they’d investigate where the sinful idea came from and when they found out I’d be listening to the radio I was banned from going to Stäva’s. They didn’t care enough to ban me from seeing him in particular, just that I couldn’t listen to the radio. My ears couldn’t be polluted by foreign ideas. They even had a talk with his parents and to keep peace as neighbors, they agreed. What was it to Stäva’s parents anyway? They didn’t care if I couldn’t listen to the radio. One less child crowding their house.
It didn’t break me, however. I merely became more resolved in my determination that I would be an actress one day. I’d find a way, somehow.
But since I wasn’t allowed to spend too much time in Stäva’s home anymore, we were left to our own devices in the great outdoors. Playing in the hay and harassing goats became tiresome by the time I was nine, so we started going on after school jaunts into the woods.
There was a part of me that was a little chicken over the tall trees and dark paths and I was forever on the lookout for a man with no face. He didn’t show up. But something else did. Something much more horrific.
It was a cool, grey day in early fall. The leaves had just gone from crisp red to the color of soggy wood as they clung helplessly to the branches.
Stäva was walking ahead of me as he did, leaves crunching beneath him. He was two years older and only lately did he start to grow into his age. He often walked ahead, pretending he was a woodland hunter, or perhaps a wily prince, and kept me behind him. I didn’t mind the protection, even if it was from an 11-year old.
I also didn’t mind when he stopped on our walk at one point and took my hand in his. It was the first time I remember feeling the difference between us. He was a boy and I was a girl and that little thrill shot up my arm, the same feelings I imagined when I had listened to the more romantic parts of the radio shows.
I suppose I was so awed by the simple gesture of hand holding that I didn’t hear the howl first. Suddenly Stäva’s grasp tightened on mine and his bright eyes searched the greying woods.
“What is it?” I asked, not used to seeing panic on his face.
“Did you hear that?”
I tensed up and listened.
I heard it. A howl, like a wolf or a wild dog. It came from our left and seemed to fill the trees like a blanket.
I looked back at him with frightened eyes.
“We should head back,” he said.
I nodded but just as we turned on the path I heard a child’s cry mixed in with the canine’s.
I stopped and pulled hard on Stäva’s hand as he tried to keep walking.
“Listen!” I whispered hoarsely.
“We can’t be out here with wolves!” he yelled back, struggling to keep his voice down. All Swedish children were likely to have been told tales of vicious wolves in the wild woods. I had heard mine from my mother. But the human sounds made this story different.
“There’s a girl out there!” I told him as I heard another whimper coming from the same direction. I wasn’t actually sure if it was a girl or not, but they were young like us and needed our help.
“I don’t hear anything, come on,” Stäva said pulling at me again.
“No!” I yelled and ripped my hand out of his sweaty grip. “Listen again, you can hear it.”
/> The wolf howled first. Then fierce, drooling growls swarmed us. And finally, the child’s cry.
“Daddy” I could hear the child yell.
But Stäva was immune.
“I don’t hear anyone but wolves. We have to get out of here.”
“You go!” I said and then I turned around and took off at a gallop into the darkening trees, toward the horrendous sound of snapping jaws.
I was aware of Stäva yelling behind me and perhaps for a bit he may have given chase. I certainly don’t blame him for letting me go, or if it was a case of him not being able to catch up. He was older but I was the same height as him and my legs were born to run. Within a few minutes of tireless scampering through the birch trees and overgrown roots and berry patches, I was alone.
Alone and cursing myself with the only bad words I knew.
I waited with my hands on my knees, my socks splattered with mud, breathing heavily. I had lost the path at some point, so it didn’t help that I was lost along with being completely alone.
Another howl and another human cry.
Of course I wasn’t completely alone.
“You’re an idiot, Pippa,” I said aloud, hoping maybe Stäva would hear me. Hoping the wolves wouldn’t. Just what was I thinking? I was tall but I was still nine and my survival skills consisted of picking berries and throwing stones. I was hardly a candidate for a rescue mission. And Stäva had never heard the child crying. Perhaps it was all in my head.
But now. There it was again.
“Someone help me!” the child cried and now I was certain it was a girl younger than me.
My fingers and toes ached with the cold that was steadily encroaching. Autumn in Sweden wasn’t very kind. It would be blissfully warm one day and then a frozen wasteland the next. Being in the dark woods overnight could possibly kill me. Yet the fact remained that I had chosen to come out here and with that lay my fate. Knowing was better than not knowing, even if I wound up dead.
I know such thoughts don’t make a lot of sense when you take into account how young I was. But there was a part of me that didn’t fear things the way I should have. Though I was still afraid, the concept of death was one that never had much weight with me. It had nothing to do with my father and his religious ways, instead it was a matter of having experienced death before. I knew I died in some way when I found the girl in the lake. I don’t know how I came back to life but I know that even though she was dead she still protected me. I felt safe knowing I could walk away from such a thing.
It was foolish of me to think that. I was young and, as I said to myself, an idiot. But that’s the way it was. I’m sure you might think it noble that I would risk death to save a stranger, but I don’t know if that’s how I saw it. It was more a matter of something I had to do, than something I should do.
So even though every part of my body was cold and screaming for me to yell for Stäva, to at least try and find my way back before the real darkness set in, I didn’t. I walked toward the noises like some child martyr, creeping silently as I could through the rough and dying foliage.
The darkness was dropping quickly and the forest began to take more ominous shapes. As the white bark of the birch gave way into rock and pine, my eyes played tricks on me. I saw shadows, shapes and faces everywhere I looked. It took all my nerve to keep it together and walk on.
Finally I came to a small clearing where the dying twilight penetrated enough for me to see.
I’ll never forget it and I would pray every night that I could.
In the clearing, trampling down the long, wild grass were three dogs. I say dogs because they didn’t look as sleek and lupine as wolves. They were bulkier, sloppier, and lacked any grace I would associate with them. Even while killing, wolves can look elegant. This was plain revolting.
The dogs were pulling at a young girl, maybe a few years younger than I. She had long brown hair that swung around her head as it lay limply to the side. One crocodile-toothed dog had one of her tiny feet in its mouth. Another had a hand and another the arm, teeth chomped down at the tender inside of the elbow.
They were tearing the girl apart and it took me a second to realize one of her legs was missing, ripped off somewhere underneath her bloodied skirt.
I froze, unable to move, to speak, to breathe. I don’t even know how I existed in that moment except to say that I saw it all.
The dogs never looked at me, they just continued to pull and tear until the one dog ripped the hand away at the wrist. With a wet, red tear she slumped unevenly to the ground as the remaining dogs played tug of war from opposite sides.
Then she lifted her head up and looked at me.
She was still alive. Her face was white as snow, her eyes pink and puffy.
“Why did he leave me?” she cried out, her voice barely heard above the dog’s snarls, their sick, chomping jaws.
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t say anything. I was foolish. Helpless. Useless.
The girl kept her dark eyes on mine, almost oblivious to the horror which was happening.
“Why did he tell me to go?” she asked, expecting an answer from me. I could only shake my head slowly from side to side, not even sure if what I was watching was real, though I knew it was.
The dog at her foot gave a throaty growl and took a large bite near her knee. With one sickening solid chomp it tore it off. Not cleanly. It was messy, bloody, a gruesome mix of bone and stringy tendons.
The girl finally stopped looking at me. She closed her mouth. She closed her eyes.
In my head I heard her.
Go Pippa, run now!
I couldn’t explain how she was able to get inside me but she was. I didn’t waste any time either. The spell-like haze I was under lifted and pure panic filled my able joints.
I took off into the woods like a shot, not looking behind me once. Her cries had stopped but the snarls of the monsters carried on and followed me until I was coming out of the woods just outside of Stäva’s place. I ran until the warm lights of his house welcomed me home and I told his worried family what had happened. I left the part about the girl talking to me in case they didn’t believe it, but I told them everything else. At least Stäva could attest for the dogs being out there.
In my hysterical state I was driven home and sent to my bed with a strong cup of vodka and tea that mama made me drink in a few gulps. My parents were worried about me, how could they not when I saw what I did. But from the glances I caught between them, I knew they were worried about more than dogs. I just didn’t know what.
That had happened on a Friday, so I didn’t get a chance to see Stäva and his family until the weekend was over. I had spent my days inside, my mother terrified of another dog or wolf attack. When I finally got into Arstand’s car on Monday morning, he told me that a few hunters had scoured the woods over the last few days. They found evidence of wild dogs in the area, perhaps a pack that had been tormenting chickens the next town over and they found traces of girl’s clothing. But the clothing had been decaying and out in the woods for many, many years. Whatever the dogs were fighting over wasn’t a young girl.
But I knew what I saw. The fact that there had been clothing found only gave me the proof I needed. The girl I saw wasn’t alive, just as the girl in the lake wasn’t either. She was probably a victim of neglect. You see, in the old days when families had sick children or were unable to care for them, they would take them out to the woods and let them be eaten by wild animals. That practice had stopped a long time ago, but I believed I saw the remains of it. One last cry for help…directed at me.
I thought about that for many years to come. Thankfully nothing that terrible haunted me in the years following. I never saw any more wild dogs or girls in the garden or men of shadows. I concentrated on my acting now that I was taking part in the program at school (somewhat secretly) and tried to forge my way forward the best I could.
Only on some days would I stop and wonder, why me? Why did they choose me when they could have any
one else?
I still don’t really know.
CHAPTER THREE
When I said that nothing that terrible haunted me, I meant it. I was still haunted but by less terrible things.
There was the time I saw twin boys appear behind me when I was walking home from Stäva’s. They never said anything, they just stood there with their pale faces and stared at me. It made me uneasy, to put it mildly, and they followed me down the road. It was only near my house that they ceased to exist, literally shimmering away like the air above hot pavement.
Another time I was serving detention after English Language class. I can’t remember what for but I was a particularly rambunctious student and had a hard time sitting still. To my teacher we were alone however I was very much aware of an older boy in the corner of the room. At first he tried to get my attention by calling my name over and over again. The teacher never noticed so I had to assume he was a spirit of some kind. It helped that his eyes were bright purple with no pupils to mar the blank slate. Very unnatural.
When I continued to ignore him, he worked his way up to spitballs, flinging them in my hair. It was curious because the spitballs were real and stayed in my hair until I found some of them later that night. Finally, the boy gave up and left the room, a trail of shiny blood following him out the door. I watched my teacher carefully to see if he saw anything at all. He only shivered as the boy passed him by and didn’t even bat an eye when the door opened and the bloody nuisance stepped out.
Little incidents like this happened all the time and I went on ignoring them. I didn’t know what they wanted but when I was in public, it was wrong to ask them. Small town mentality existed back then and I did not want to be branded as the minister’s crazy daughter.
At any rate, I had the theatre to keep me company. I joined the tiny drama club with the aim of putting on A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream by the year end. With my perseverance I won the role of Helena and wouldn’t you know it but Stäva got the part of Demetrius. We were sixteen now and he had grown into quite the handsome young man, something I had never noticed until I was in the play with him. Surely I had noticed the way some of the girls my age would drool over him, but to me he was always the boy next door, the goat boy, my closest and dearest friend.