"Well I guess I think it is important that we keep on as usual in order to keep the youngsters calm. They're scared to death. We need to get back to normal at any cost."
Isabella nodded to his surprise. "I couldn't agree more," she said.
Hans Christian was surprised that she had even asked for his advice and he had never thought she would agree with him.
"The worst thing we can do is let panic get the best of us. So let's get back to doing what we normally do and proceed with the ceremonies that we had planned for this week. Anders might not be here anymore, but he still lives on in us. In this place we have built for his cause, for our cause."
Hans Christian scoffed at her last words. Like she had ever built anything. She was still a teenager when they had started this place and now she acted like she owned everything. Sure she was beautiful and he got why everybody adored her and listened to her every word. She was like the ice queen in Narnia he would say, but not many would probably agree with him on that. He saw her evil though even the Priest hadn't managed to do so. She had driven this church too far, he thought. She had made them do things Hans Christian didn't like. That was when the Priest had started to freeze him out. After the night, with the kid, with those green eyes, oh how he could still see them. He remembered them staring at him. It sent chills up his back just thinking about them. After that night, Hans Christian had declared that if this was the way things were going, then he wasn't in anymore. To his surprise the Priest had just accepted that and then kept him out of everything. Hans Christian hated him for that. But even more he hated her for turning the Priest against him. The man he had loved for many years. A love that was higher than any other love he had ever encountered. It was deeper, more profound. And now he was gone. Hans Christian didn't even get to say a proper goodbye.
Last night had been horrendous. Hans Christian had been the first to run for the Priest's room once he heard the initial scream. He wanted desperately to call for an ambulance, but Isabella had refused. "No ambulance can help him out of this," she had exclaimed. "We need to do it ourselves."
So they had tried to drive the demon out of the Priest's body, but with no luck. Terrified they had watched him die a slow and agonizing death. Reduced to nothing but a squealing, drooling monster bathing in his own excrement.
Just before he took his final breath Hans Christian could have sworn he saw a reflection of the Chernobyl-kid in the Priests' eye. She was looking directly at Hans Christian and pointing in his direction.
CHAPTER 9
THE ARTICLE ALMOST wrote itself, I thought when I re-read it to make sure I had gotten it all in. It was quite good. I had left out all Esther had told about the Chernobyl-kid and instead just written that one girl once disappeared from the camp and was never seen again, but that it was a rumor and that there were many rumors engulfing the sect. The portrait of the Priest was pretty standard, written based on what I could find about him in early interviews and other articles written over the years. I called Sara at the newspaper in Karrebaeksminde and had her collect everything she could find about him for me. It was an okay article but probably not much better than what all the other papers had.
Sune's pictures of the camp turned out to be excellent and as soon as I had gathered everything there was only one thing left for me to do. I called the local police to hear if there would be an investigation of the death of the Priest and if they had the autopsy ready. I spoke to the head of the police department in Vipperoed. He was nice, but couldn't tell me much.
"So far we consider the death to be natural," he said. "There is no indication that it should be otherwise."
"What about the autopsy, what does that conclude?"
The officer cleared his throat and spoke in a strange high-pitched voice. "We haven't received that yet," he said.
"Will there be any charges against the church members for not calling for an ambulance?" I asked. That was one of the things I mentioned in my article as slightly suspicious.
"I don't know yet," he said. His voice was shaking strangely. He was about to hang up when I stopped him with another question:
"Why didn't they call for help?" I asked. "What was their explanation?"
"I really have to go now," the officer said. Then he hung up. I lifted my head and looked at Sune and the kids playing the video game. It all seemed a little fishy, I thought while tapping my pen on the table. What could their excuse possibly be to not call for help right away once the Priest had fallen sick? Were they that afraid of the world outside? Were they that self-sufficient that they thought they didn't need the world surrounding them?
Sune beat Julie in a game and they all screamed, waking up Dad who had been snoring from the couch with the paper across his chest for hours. I laughed when I saw Julie's dissatisfied look. It was good for her to lose every now and then. She was good at almost anything and she needed to learn to lose without throwing a fit. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and then sat on the couch with an angry sound. I looked at my laptop, and then wrote in the last statements from the police about not pressing charges, for letting the man die without calling for help. Then I pressed 'send' and closed the lid. I smiled and walked over to Julie. I sat next to her.
"Wanna try to beat me?" I said.
She growled then looked at me. "Okay," she said and got up.
At least five games and two hours later I finally gave up. Even as hard as I tried I couldn't beat Julie. She was way too good. It gave a boost to her self-esteem and soon Tobias took over trying to beat her.
I threw myself on the couch with a sigh. Dad had begun preparing dinner, Sune helping him. I went to the kitchen and joined them in some grown-up playing. I enjoyed watching the two men I loved chopping vegetables, discussing recipes and exchanging cooking tricks and ideas. This was really an area they had in common and where I was left completely out. Instead I grabbed the paper and started reading it. Sune brought me a glass of red wine that I enjoyed while they cooked. Every now and then I lifted my head and stared at the two of them feeling like the luckiest woman on the face of this planet.
Sune grabbed a glass of wine of his own and when he was done chopping onions he approached me. He sat on the chair in front of me.
"So are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked while sipping his wine.
My eyes left the paper and locked with his. "My dad is right there!?" I whispered surprised.
Sune shook his head. "No, that wasn't what I meant." He paused to laugh. "I meant the autopsy. Aren't you curious as to what killed him?"
"The Priest?"
"You know anyone else that died within the last twenty-four hours?" he asked grinning.
I paused and stared at him ignoring his remark. "Is the internet connection good enough for that up here?"
"I should think so," he said. "Otherwise I have ways to make it better."
"The police said they hadn't received it yet. But I would love to read the statements made by the other church members. I would like to read their explanation to why they didn't call for help."
"That's easy to find," Sune said and sipped some wine. "I bet they don't protect their systems very well out here in the country. Don't think they get many cyber-attacks."
"Then by all means go ahead," I said.
CHAPTER 10
HANS CHRISTIAN WAS tired of meetings and discussions. All day long they had been talking about how they should proceed without the Priest. Even when Isabella left the camp for three hours to go whoever knows where, they continued the meetings, discussing how they could keep it all up. In his honor, they kept saying. They treated him like had he been the messiah himself.
Hans Christian had at one point believed that he was Jesus who had come back to get all of them. Maybe the Priest had even believed it himself. But then he started telling people that he was the reincarnation of the prophet Isaiah. Hans Christian had never cared what he thought he was; to him he was a god. He was the most beautiful human being to have set his foot on t
his forsaken earth. Back when it had only been Hans Christian and him, Hans Christian had adored everything about him. Every word he spoke, every gesture, everything he did could only come straight from God.
Hans Christian had worshipped the Priest. He had kissed his hand, he had let him drive out demons by beating him, he had let him tell him how he was supposed to live right, to be righteous. The Priest had explained to Hans Christian that he was and always would be a sinner and that he deserved to be punished for that. He had told him that he was evil, that within all humans lived evil demons that made us sin towards God. He had also explained to him how they needed to be driven, commanded out before anyone could be truly set free. Even if it was painful to the flesh, even if it meant suffering for hours on the cold stone floor while repenting for your sin, bleeding from the wounds the whip left on your back. Jesus had bled for us; it was only fair that we bled for him.
All that Hans Christian had accepted but when it came to the youngsters in the camp he disagreed with the Priest on many things. He didn't think they were evil, when Hans Christian looked into their eyes he saw no malice like the Priest did. He saw young people barely out of childhood who had been hurt, some of them gruesomely. Some of them had been misled, they had done stuff they never should have done, but they were not evil in Hans Christian's eyes. They needed guidance and direction and they needed all the love the disciples could give them. They needed someone who understood them for once in their lives. These were troubled kids with many problems; they didn't need to be told that they had evil living inside of them. On that subject Hans Christian had disagreed with the Priest and he had protested when he thought the Priest went too far with them. He had told him straight up that it was not right to punish them like that. But the Priest didn't want to listen. He had a new apprentice now, Isabella, and she had new ideas, that the Priest wanted to try out. She was the one who had led the cleansing ceremony that night in 1998 when ... Well after that it was like everything went in the wrong direction.
Hans Christian sighed and sat heavily on his bed. It had gotten dark outside of his room. He wanted desperately to sleep but he felt bad inside. He felt bad because his best friend and great love had died the night before and he had watched it happen without doing anything. He felt a huge load of guilt. What if they had called for that ambulance? What if they, for once, had asked for help from the world outside? Could he have been saved?
Hans Christian sighed again and put his head on the pillow. He closed his eyes gently and soon pictures of the Priest flickered before him. So many wonderful years they had had together building this church. Hans Christian had thought about leaving many times throughout the years and now he was thinking about it again. But where would he go? This was his home and had been for almost thirty years. He had helped built this camp, it was his and the thought of leaving it all in the hands of that woman was appalling to him. But without the Priest then what was the point? Leaving the church wasn't an easy thing to do. Hans Christian would lose everything. His only friends and family, he wouldn't have a job anymore and he would certainly miss the youngsters with whom he had worked for many, many years. A lot of the grown-ups in the camp making the decisions today were someone that he had recruited and taken care of when they were just young teenagers in trouble. Now they were like his family.
No one ever left “The Way” once they came here. Neither would he. It was his family and he had to take the good with the bad. Just like a regular family. Plus he was an old man by now. There wasn't anything for him out there in the world. He would only be miserable.
Hans Christian exhaled deeply thinking how he would try and improve the conditions for the youngsters from now on. He would fight Isabella who obviously didn't care much about them. They were scared to death now the Priest was gone. They knew how Isabella looked upon them.
Hans Christian looked at the starry sky outside his window one last time before he finally dozed off.
CHAPTER 11
AFTER DINNER SUNE started working on the computer while I helped the kids get to bed. When I returned downstairs Dad was slowly dozing off on the couch in front of the TV. Sune had poured the rest of the red wine into our glasses and his magical fingers were working on the keyboard.
I grabbed a chair next to his and took my glass from the table. He was concentrating and I had worked with him long enough to know that I had to keep quiet. He would speak once he was ready.
"Ha!" he exclaimed not long after.
"That was fast," I said and leaned forward. I looked at the screen and had to admit that I understood absolutely nothing of all the letters and numbers in front of me.
Sune grabbed his wine and sipped it. "It was almost too easy," he said. After putting the glass down his fingers danced yet again across the keyboard and soon after he turned the screen for me to look at.
I grabbed the laptop and pulled it closer. He had found the police report made this morning with all the statements taken from the church members present when the Priest died. I scrolled while skimming them. All stated they had been asleep when the screaming woke them up. I stopped at Isabella Dubois' statement.
"If you click here you can hear the recorded audio from the interview," Sune said and moved the mouse over an icon. Then he pushed the button and a voice filled the room. The voice of an officer telling us the date, case number and who he was interviewing. First he asked her a couple of questions about her name and status and so on. Then he asked her to describe what happened.
"I was petrified. I remember the screams penetrating my dreams and waking me up with a start. My heart was pounding. At first I thought it had been nothing but a dream, but soon I realized that the screams were still there and now they were even worse. They were coming from the building across from mine. I put on a bathrobe and ran across the courtyard thinking that it might have been one of the youngsters who had hurt himself somehow or maybe he was having a bad dream. But I knew deep inside that this kind of screaming don't come from just an ordinary nightmare."
"How do you know that?" the officer questioning her asked.
"You just know. These were screams of deep pain. These weren't screams of this earth."
"What do you mean by that?" the officer asked.
"I have heard my share of people whose souls were screaming from beyond the grave."
"Like dead people?"
"No. Yes. People who are possessed. These were screams like that. Coming from a devil trying to take over a poor soul," Isabella said.
"So what you're telling me is you thought Anders Granlund might have been possessed by a devil, is that it?"
"Not might have been. He was. I have seen it so many times before and this was the strongest one I have yet met. That was why we couldn't drive it out of him. We weren't powerful enough. It took him with it to the pit of hell. And you know what happens when you can't expel a demon?"
"No, I don't," the officer said.
"It comes back to get you. If you let it win it will come back after you. It happened to the Priest once before in '98. There was a demon he couldn't drive out and it came back to get him. Bigger and stronger than ever. The Priest knew it would. He has told us for years that this was bound to happen. We all thought we would be able to drive it out once that happened though. But I guess we aren't as strong as we thought."
"So let me just get this straight. You're telling me, that you thought Anders Granlund was possessed by some demon that had come back to get revenge?" the officer said.
Isabella Dubois sighed annoyed. "Why am I even trying?" she exclaimed. "No one ever cares to listen anyway. You simply don't want to understand, you don't want to see the evil that has taken a stronghold of this land, of this area. It will take over and kill everybody if you don't stop it. Don't you understand the importance of spreading the word about this?"
The officer was silent. I imagined that he was shaking his head or maybe just staring at Isabella Dubois in disbelief. I knew I would have.
She exhaled ann
oyed. "Let's just get this over with," she said in a harsh irritated voice. "I can't help people who don’t want to be helped. But don't say I didn't warn you."
"Please explain to me what you saw once you entered the building where the screaming came from," the officer said. His voice sounded heavily burdened and slightly resigned.
Isabella Dubois sighed. "I saw people standing in the room."
"Who did you see and where were they at the time you entered?"
"It's hard to remember. I don't think I remember everybody who was there. I wasn't exactly looking at them; the screaming was going right through my bones. My focus was on the person it was coming from.
"Try anyway," the officer said.
Isabella sighed again. "Alright. I guess I saw Mette Grithfeldt, she was standing on the left next to Soren Sejr, Hans Christian Bille and Mogens Wammen."
I found my notepad and started scribbling the names down. Sune was drinking his wine. Isabella Dubois continued:
"In the center of the room I saw Peter Hansen standing with Camilla Morsoe." Isabella paused. "Yes I guess that's about it. Others came running to the room after I had arrived but I can't remember who they were. I was focused on helping Anders."
"Okay," the officer said. "What were they doing in the room?"
"Well they were paralyzed. They were all staring at Anders who was lying on the floor, curled up in a strange position. He was screaming and throwing up; blood was coming out of his eyes and ears. His hair ... he tore it off in huge clumps. It was horrible to watch and there was nothing we could do to help him. Excrement came out of him everywhere and it smelled nasty in the room. The worst part was the pain I sensed he was feeling. It was like something was eating him from the inside. Like the demon was killing him slowly from the inside, shutting down one organ at a time. In his hand he was clutching his crucifix. It was covered in blood coming from his mouth."