Was this the way they were supposed to say goodbye?
No, dear God. Not like this. Please. Don’t let the ground swallow him!
Voices were screaming behind Martin and he felt hands on his shoulders as someone tried to pull him up. David’s hand slipped further, and now they were only holding on by their fingertips.
“NO!” Martin screamed.
“Help!” David said, half-choked as his fingers finally let go, and the hole sucked him down with a large slurping sound, along with the desk, the dresser, and the bed.
“NOOOOOO!”
Martin screamed as a set of strong hands pulled him backwards, hands he would later learn belonged to his neighbor from across the street in number six, Mr. Bjerrehus, who had been walking his dog in the street when he heard the screams coming from inside the house.
5
AFRIM BERISHA FROM number four kissed his mother at the door, then sprang for his bike when Buster, his Golden Retriever, came running for him in the yard.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he said. “You can’t come. You know they won’t let dogs inside the school.”
Buster answered with a loud bark. Afrim heard the school bell ring. He was late. There was nothing unusual about that. His school was a small school with only fifty students. One of Denmark’s smallest, they said. All were local kids living in the neighborhood or just outside of it. There had been talk of closing the school, Afrim had heard his mother say, but so far it had survived. Afrim hoped it would be closed, so he wouldn’t have to go to school ever again. He didn’t like school, and would much rather play with Buster all day and ride his bike. In that sense, Afrim was just a normal eight-year old boy.
“I’m late, buddy.”
Afrim was a neighbor to the school, yet always the last kid to arrive in the classroom.
Today, he wasn’t going to school at all.
He had pulled the bike through the yard and out on the other side of the fence when he heard tires squeal and turned his head to see Mrs. Sigumfeldt, who lived further down the street and whose boys were always bullying Afrim, just avoid being hit by Mrs. Jansen, the lady whose eyes were always foggy and who walked funny and always bumped into things and got bruises on her face.
“That was a close one,” he mumbled, as he watched Mrs. Sigumfeldt jump out of the car and Mrs. Jansen tell her how sorry she was.
The car had ended up in Mr. Bjerrehus’ hedge, and Afrim knew they would get in trouble for that. Mrs. Bjerrehus took very good care of her yard, and she liked the hedge because it kept people’s curious eyes out. What Mrs. Bjerrehus didn’t know was that Afrim could look into her yard from his room upstairs and see her as she walked around naked in her yard. He thought the world should be glad that Mrs. Bjerrehus took good care of her hedge.
Buster barked again, this time louder and much more insistent, when Afrim suddenly felt the ground rumble under his feet. Growing up in Albania, his father had known about earthquakes and told Afrim about them, and now Afrim wondered if this could be one. If this was how an earthquake felt. Only, he knew from his father that there were no earthquakes in Denmark. Denmark’s underground was all limestone. There were no mountains and, therefore, no quakes.
Afrim heard another sound and turned just in time to see a part of the school disappear into a huge hole in the ground. The building simply sank. Afrim stared at the hole it left where the school library used to be. He looked at Buster, then threw his bike on the ground and started running towards the house.
“MOOOM!”
Behind him, the street opened up and swallowed a car driving by, along with Mrs. Sigumfeldt, her kids, Mrs. Jansen and Mrs. Bjerrehus’s entire hedge.
Afrim and Buster sprang for their lives as the ground fell into the hole behind them faster than they could sprint.
They barely made it to the front door before the ground rumbled again and their yellow house came down in front of Afrim.
He shrieked.
“Mom? MOOOOM?”
The ground shook again, and Afrim fell; he grabbed onto Buster as the soil opened up underneath them and started pulling them down forcefully. Afrim held on to Buster with all his strength as they fell and fell into the deep massive darkness.
6
IN NUMBER THREE, Thomas Soe was staring at the white blank page on his screen. He wiped his sweaty palms off on his pants and sipped more coffee. He had been staring at the blank page all night, wondering when inspiration would come.
On the bed next to him lay the girl. She was whimpering and sobbing behind the gag. Thomas couldn’t focus.
“Could you be quiet for just a second!” he said to her.
The girl answered with another whimper. He looked at her. He blinked his eyes a couple of times to make sure she was real. Thomas never knew what was real and what wasn’t these days.
Stay calm, Thomas, he heard his late mother’s voice say. You’ll lose control. You’re losing touch with reality, my son.
He had thought the girl would give him the inspiration he needed, that he longed for so badly. But he had been staring at the blank page all night without being able to put down as much as a word.
The girl didn’t help much.
Maybe she needs a little motivation.
The way he remembered it, he had picked her up last night in Viborg, the closest big city to where he lived. She had been waiting for the bus on a street somewhere. She’d probably visited some friend and was on her way back home. Thomas didn’t even bother to ask. He had simply driven by her and rolled down the window, showing off one of his handsome smiles.
“Need a ride?”
The girl was no more than sixteen, he would guess. He liked them at that age. The girl had said no thank you at first, but Thomas had insisted.
“Come on. I’m going that way anyway. I promise to be nice. Come on. It’s raining. You’ll catch a cold.”
The fact that he was only twenty-four helped seal the deal, along with the fact that he was a famous writer, a poet who had written a work at the age of only eighteen that had everyone talking about him. The newspapers called him the artist of the century and said his poems were explosive and that they were renewing the genre of poetry by adding the horror, and having blood dripping from every line and word. It’s like the entire book is burning between your hands, one reviewer wrote.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” the girl had asked.
“You got me,” Thomas had said, smiling again. “Don’t tell anyone.”
The fact that he was a celebrity had made her change her mind instantaneously. He could tell by the look in her eyes and her sudden giggle.
“You’re that writer, aren’t you? That poet?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“You wrote those poems that everyone is talking about…where you pretend to be molesting your girlfriend. We read some of them in class. I loved them. The way you declare your love for her and describe your pain by imagining you hurt her. Because she hurt you, right? The axe is a metaphor for your anger.”
“If you say so.”
“My teacher told us that. I’m not really good with the whole analyzing-a-poem thing. But with yours, I could really identify with the pain. I could relate.”
“That’s splendid. You’re getting wet.”
The girl giggled again, then made her final decision. She ran to the door and got in the passenger seat. Thomas smiled and drove off, thinking, finally, he would be able to write again.
But he was wrong. Even though he had tied her down like he believed he had done to his ex-girlfriend six years ago, and even though he had beat her up in anger and hurt, feeling the frustration of being rejected all over again, he hadn’t been able to write a word yet. Not one single word.
And it was all her fault.
Maybe she needed to hurt a little more. Seeing her in pain made him feel better. With Rikke, his ex-girlfriend, he had written the poems first, while she was still in pain. And then he had killed her. First, he had imagin
ed what it would be like to kill her with her father’s axe; he had imagined every little detail of how it would be and written it down in his poems. Then, he read them to her. He read every poem, every word of it out loud and watched how her eyes pleaded for him to let her go.
Then he had killed her. It had been a thing of beauty. Like fireworks in his mind. The girl he had known since they were nine year’s old. The girl he had dated for three years before she tore his heart to pieces. Before he responded by chopping her into pieces. At least he thought he had. He wasn’t sure. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t sure about anything lately. He had a way of getting lost in his daydreams. He could imagine the strangest things simply while walking down the street. Suddenly, people’s faces passing him would turn bloody and arms and limbs would fall off. Then he would blink his eyes and everything would turn back to normal. And it could happen out of the blue. Thomas could be talking to someone, then start imagining that he stabbed the person with a knife, cut him or her open, and watched the blood spurt out. Then, a second later, it would be gone and the person was still talking.
Once his ex-girlfriend went missing, the police had, of course, asked questions afterwards. Who could blame them after the poems were published? But no one in their right mind believed that the most famous poet in the country could really be a killer. A little disturbed, maybe, but he was an artist. Artists were allowed to be quirky, even a little mad. They had to be. And there was never a body. Only a missing person’s report. Her own father ended up taking the fall when they found the bloody axe in his garage with his fingerprints on it and the DNA that determined that the blood belonged to Rikke. Thomas wasn’t sure if he had dreamt it, but he thought he remembered placing the axe back in the garage. It could have been a dream. It might have been. He would never know. But he thought Rikke would be happy that her dad finally got what he deserved for treating Rikke like he did, the drunk.
“It was all for you, my love,” he whispered out in the darkness of his room with the heavy curtains pulled to keep the world out. He had bought the house on the quiet street outside of Viborg to get some peace for his writing. And to get away from people and his many strange images.
Thomas looked at the girl on the bed. She seemed to be real. He couldn’t remember her name. But it didn’t matter. He slapped her across the face. The girl cried. Thomas slapped her again. She was definitely real. But, then again, maybe not. He had been tricked before. It was right after Rikke had broken up with him, telling him she was now with Jon, a super pumped guy who worked out at her gym. That was when the many visions started. It began with him imagining all the things he would like to do to Rikke. Once she was gone, he started seeing many other bloody girls in his house. Some would fall out of his closet when he opened it, others would be in his bathtub when he went in the bathroom, soaking in bloody water. He never knew if they were really there or not. Sometimes, he remembered hurting them; other times, he didn’t.
The girl whimpered again, and Thomas stared at her. Blood was running from her nose. Thomas wiped it off and smelled the napkin afterwards. Then he slapped her again. He still wasn’t sure if she was real or if he had imagined picking her up. The girl tried to scream.
This first Monday in October got off to a bad start for many of the people in the small neighborhood on Blegevej, but only few had it as awful as this girl.
7
MALENE PEDERSEN WAS screaming behind her gag, but nothing but muffled sounds came out into the dark room.
He’s crazy. I gotta get out of here somehow before he kills me.
The man she knew as the famous poet had that look in his eyes again. Those black eyes were flooding with fury. He was biting his lip while watching her between slaps. When he stopped biting himself, his teeth left a mark. Malene’s body was hurting from all the beating.
How had she gotten herself into this? How could she have been so stupid to get into a car with this guy? Wasn’t this what her mother had always warned her about? How could she have been so stupid? Stupid!
Malene sobbed, feeling sorry for herself, while the poet stared at her and kept talking to her like she was someone else.
“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you have to hurt me like that?”
Malene didn’t understand. She tried to talk, but couldn’t because of the gag. What did he want from her? He hadn’t raped her as she thought he would. What was he going to do to her? She had been asking herself that question all night, while waiting for him to make his move. Was there any way she could get out of here alive? She didn’t even know where she was. As soon as she had gotten into the car last night, he had slammed his fist into her face and she hadn’t seen anything until she opened her eyes and found herself tied to this bed. He had beaten her, then sat by the computer staring at the blank page for hours. That scared her even more than the beating. His silence. The staring at the screen. He hadn’t even written anything. Not a word.
“Why did you do it, you bitch!?” He now yelled at her and punched her in the stomach.
It blew the air out of Malene and she gasped behind the gag. She moaned in pain and cried heavily. Who could have thought that the country’s most highly regarded writer was this insane?
Please, stop this. Please, someone stop this. Oh, God. Please. Don’t let him hit me again. Don’t let him kill me. I have so much to live for. I want to go home to my family. I want to see my mom again. I want to hold my baby brother. Please, do something. I don’t care what it is. Just do something.
“I’m gonna teach you to never cheat on anyone again!” he yelled, then slammed his fist into her face once again.
Malene cried in pain. But as she was almost about to give up all hope, she felt something. The poet had tied her hands to the bed with a piece of rope, and now it seemed that she was able to move them a little more. She looked at the poet while he was yelling at her, telling her what a liar she was, what a cheating bitch, she was. A whore! Meanwhile, Malene was able to twist and squirm her wrists just enough to feel the rope loosen. The poet didn’t seem to notice, and soon her arms were free. She was free. Quicker than he was able to react, she sat up and swung her fist into his face. He fell backwards from the blow, and Malene untied the belt that he had used to hold her feet together. While removing the gag, she jumped off the bed and started running, but the poet managed to grab her leg and pull her down. She screamed and landed face down on the wooden floor. She kicked him in the face, and he yelled and let go of her leg. Malene climbed to her knees, her body aching from the beating, and reached out for the door handle. She managed to open it and rush out into the kitchen, where suddenly she was grabbed around the waist and lifted into the air. She struggled and screamed. The poet laughed and threw her against the counter, knocking the air out of her. Then he laughed and picked her up again. She kicked him in the stomach, and he bent over with a moan. Then he dropped her to the floor. She got up and tried to run, but he kicked her in the back, and she flew across the floor and landed head first into the stove.
Please, God, let me get out of here before he kills me. Please, help me!
In the distance, the ground underneath the entire neighborhood was moaning, some called it weeping. But Malene never heard it. All she heard was the poet’s scream as he grabbed her hair and pulled till her head slammed into the counter and she could taste blood.
He laughed again, and she could tell that he enjoyed it, the sick bastard. Malene moaned and blinked her eyes to better focus. Just as she was about to lose all hope again, just as the poet grabbed her by the hair and was about to hit her once again, the ground beneath them—oh the horror—opened up and they were sucked into its infinite obscurity.
Just as Malene thought the day couldn’t get any worse, it did.
8
“SO, WHERE TO?”
The taxi driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror as I got inside his car.
“The train station. My train leaves in half an hour.”
“The train station it is,??
? the taxi-driver said, and turned the car around in the small street.
I rolled the window down and waved to my friend, Lone, who was standing in the doorway of her house on Blegevej, number fourteen. She was still in her bathrobe. I had spent the weekend at her house while Sune took care of the kids alone back in Karrebaeksminde. I had missed them all like crazy. William had turned a year and a half, and it was the first time I had been away from him this long.
I couldn’t wait to get back. Two days with my friend crying over her life was more than enough. I love Lone, that’s not it; I just really looked forward to seeing my family again. It had been a depressing weekend. My friend was so devastated. I felt bad for her. Her husband had left a week ago, telling her he was fed up with everything, and using the d-word.
Divorce.
I hated that word. But nevertheless, it kept showing up more and more often in my circle of friends. It was just that time in our lives when people split up, I guess. We knew it when we got married, didn’t we? That half of us would end up in divorce. Those were just the statistics, the coldhearted facts. In my friend Lone’s case, there wasn’t anything left to save, the way I saw it. They had both given up. She was a nurse and had slept with one of the doctors while on conference in Germany a couple of weeks ago. So, in that sense, I didn’t feel sorry for her, but it was still a horrible thing when it came to this. Once she told him about her little escapade, her husband also admitted to having slept with some woman from his office, so I guess it’s true that it takes two to divorce.
“So, you were just visiting?” the driver asked, trying to make small talk.
“Yeah. I have an old friend from high school living here. I live in Karrebaeksminde. It’s been awhile since we last saw each other.”
“That’s nice,” he said. “That you keep in touch.”
“Yeah, I guess it is kind of neat.”
“And rare these days,” he said.