Giants of the Frost Page 24

“Yes, and we’re also here to scare the humans away, but they don’t scare, they stay. Nobody believes in us anymore.” His eyes grew serious. “We are real, and my brother and sister would love to collect your soul.”

  “What would they do with it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe just put it in the lake for always. It’s cold down there. And dark.” He crossed his hands over his chest and shivered. “You have to listen to me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  I stood there for a few quiet moments, gazing at him, half-formed questions shifting across my mind. I began to feel vague around the edges and realized I might be slipping out of the dream. “Skripi,” I said quickly, “is Vidar real?”

  With a jolt and a shudder, I felt myself collide with wakefulness. I opened my eyes in my warm bed and took a gulp of air.

  Far away, I heard a whisper.

  Everything’s real.

  I flung back the covers, dripping with sweat, and hurried to the window. I pushed the curtain aside and pressed my face against the glass. I could see nothing but moonlight and shadows, and a strange disappointment washed over me.

  My breath fogged the glass. “What if none of it’s real?” I murmured, and an empty ache for Vidar spread hollow fingers in my chest.

  I didn’t get back to sleep that night and, at first light, I headed over to the galley to make myself some breakfast. When I slipped through the door, Maryanne was searching for something in the pantry.

  “Good morning, Maryanne,” I said.

  She jumped nearly a foot in the air and shrieked. Then when she saw it was only me, her hand went over her heart. “Oh, you gave me a fright.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” I noticed that dark circles were smudged under her eyes. “Are you all right?”

  A battle between wanting to freeze me out and wanting to confide in me played out on her face. She paused for a long time, blinking rapidly: 1.8 blinks per second.

  “Maryanne? Has something happened?”

  “I heard the strangest noises last night . . .” she started, in a soft frightened voice.

  “Last night?” I remembered Skripi’s gleaming black eyes in the dark. “What noises?”

  “I’m sleeping in Magnus’s cabin at the moment,” she said. “It’s near the edge of the forest. I heard noises. He didn’t wake up. I looked out the window and I saw . . .”

  I realized I was holding my breath. “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know what it was. A twig-man. Then he dived into the bushes and was gone. It was like something out of a nightmare.”

  An icy shiver tiptoed the length of my spine. “Perhaps it was a nightmare.”

  She shook her head. “There are bad things on this island, Vicky. The forest is haunted.”

  I couldn’t conjure a single logical explanation. Maryanne and I had dreamed the same thing.

  “Vicky,” she said, her eyes growing troubled, “you didn’t see anything, did you? Or hear anything?”

  “Me? No,” I said too quickly.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Because . . . I thought I heard your voice last night, before I saw the twig-man.”

  “My voice? Don’t be silly.”

  Footsteps and voices in the rec hall alerted us to the approach of others.

  She turned away, dismissive. “Forget I spoke.”

  For an instant I was lost in a frightened stupor. I wondered if I were going insane. I wondered if I’d imagined everything, including Vidar. Somehow my body kept functioning: my heart hadn’t stopped, my head hadn’t exploded, I was able to put bread in the toaster. Maryanne returned to the pantry and normality seemed to be reinstated for the moment.

  “Victoria?”

  I turned to see Magnus standing behind me.

  “Good morning,” I said, attempting to smile.

  He didn’t respond with one of his own. “Some new transpiration sensors arrived yesterday. I want to install them in the instrument field. It’s your area of research, so if you’d like to help . . .”

  “I’d love to.” Work—that would sort me out. I could add up figures and make observations and draw conclusions and my head could be full of something other than impossible events.

  “Vicky should probably have one more day in bed,” Carsten said.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said. “I’m going crazy in my cabin.”

  “Carsten, give Victoria another physical this morning. Vicky, I’ll be heading to the clearing around nine. I’ll meet you out there.” He strode off, still without smiling at me.

  “I’ll see you directly after breakfast,” Carsten said.

  It was only when Carsten and I were safely behind the door of the sick bay, and he was shining that little torch in my eyes again, that I worked up the courage to say, “Carsten, is it possible for somebody to go crazy within a couple of months of arriving on Othinsey?”

  He laughed. “It usually happens much quicker than that.”

  “I’m serious. The isolation. Has it been known to cause psychological problems?”

  “What kind?”

  “Imagining things? Dreaming strange creatures? A feeling that everything you believed in is made of paper and pipe cleaners?”

  Carsten sat back on the edge of his desk. “Are you asking for a medical opinion? Because I’m not a doctor, and I’m certainly not a psychiatrist.”

  I shook my head. “Just an opinion, then.”

  “A lot of different people have come to this island over the years. Some of them say it’s haunted, some of them don’t. Whether or not that’s related to the isolation, I can’t tell you. But you’re certainly not the first person to worry about it.” He gave me a reassuring smile. “You’ve had a shock too. You nearly drowned, you lost consciousness. I can tell Magnus that you need a few more days in bed if you like.”

  “No, I’d rather be busy.” I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. “I’m a bit frightened.”

  “I’m sure everything will be fine. Perhaps you have been locked away in that cabin for too long.” He gave me a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “A walk in the forest might be just what you need.”

  Just what I need.

  I stood at the edge of the forest, knowing I had to go forward, but unable to take a step. I sensed something bad in there, something rotten and cold and primeval that I hadn’t sensed before. It was as though last night, calling Skripi, had opened up a gate that had been bolted tight in my mind since I arrived on Othinsey. That forest was haunted. And while this was a notion I would have scoffed at in the past, I knew it to be true with a certainty as deep as the ancient tree roots.

  But my boss was waiting, and he was already impatient with me. So I had to go in.

  Deep breath.

  One foot in front of the other, I counted my way into the trees, estimating distances between trees based on how many footsteps were needed from one to the next, converting the distances to metric, coming up with a mean, dividing it by my age, multiplying it by how many fingers Carsten had . . . And all the while, my breathing shortened, my heart hitched and sped, my shoulders pulled tighter and tighter.

  Then Magnus’s voice rang out from the clearing. “Victoria? Is that you?”

  “Yes,” I called, hurrying my footsteps. “I’m coming.”

  I arrived, flushed and breathlesss, a few moments later. As I crossed into the clearing, my anxiety wound tighter.

  Magnus glanced up irritably. “You’re late,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I managed, forcing my voice into an even line. My hands felt damp, I wiped them on my jeans. “What can I do to help?”

  “I want you to check the temperature and humidity in the moss at ground level,” he said, pushing a box of equipment toward me with his toe. “I’m going to take foliage temps in the aspen understory.”

  All this translated to me crawling around in the dirt while he worked nobly among the trees. Fine. It gave me something to focus on, to drive out the needling anxiety.

  I left Magnus sorting out his cl
imbing ropes and harness. A morning breeze moved branches and leaves, the ocean roared in the distance. I breathed deeply, forcing my shoulders to loosen, concentrating on the moss. I moved along the forest floor on hands and knees, taking samples, strip-testing them and writing down the results. A warm sunbeam shot onto my shoulder. Long minutes passed. I looked up and realized that I had arrived at the foot of the anvil-shaped rock.

  With sudden brightness, images and sounds and feelings overpowered my brain. For a moment, I wasn’t Victoria Scott, I was somebody else. Panic had crushed my lungs, horror and despair squeezed through my veins. I had been running, but now I had fallen. I turned. Silhouetted against the sun was a massive figure, any detail stolen by the bright light behind him, an axe raised above his head. He was huge, male, smelled of sweat and blood and steel. He was bellowing at unbearable volume. In the distance, dogs barked madly.

  I screamed, cowering under my arms.

  Magnus was looking down at me. “Victoria. What’s wrong?”

  In an instant, everything returned to normal. There was no mad axe-wielding man, only neat slim Magnus wielding a digital thermometer and wearing a safety helmet.

  “I thought I saw . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My heart was racing and my throat was dry.

  Magnus drew down his eyebrows. “What’s all this about, Victoria?” His voice was suspicious.

  I could feel my lower lip tremble, but I was damned well not going to cry in front of Magnus again. “I’m sorry, Magnus,” I gasped. “I thought . . .”

  “Is this some kind of plot? Are you accusing me of something?”

  I was genuinely bewildered. “Accusing you?”

  “It would be your word against mine and I didn’t touch you, and I have a number of people at the station who would attest that you have been pursuing me.”

  I sat back on the mossy ground, completely disoriented by the searing moment of terror. “What are you saying?” I spluttered.

  “Girls like you don’t get far,” he said.

  “Girls like me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You think they heard you screaming back at the station? Is that it?”

  “No, I screamed because I thought I saw—” A noise in the forest behind me made me whip my head around and shriek. A petrel took to the sky.

  “Victoria?” Magnus said, his voice growing concerned. My terrified face finally broke through his self-justifying rhetoric. “Are you sick?” He reached out to touch my shoulder and I flinched away, scrambled back against the rock.

  “I have to go back to the station,” I gasped, hurrying to my feet. “I can’t stay out here.”

  “Wait, wait,” Magnus said, and this time he grabbed my arm firmly and held me still. “Is this the first time you’ve been out here since you fell in the lake?”

  I nodded.

  “I think you’re having a panic attack, Victoria. I want you to breathe very deeply into your hands. Five times.”

  “I need to get—”

  “Breathe!” he ordered. “Come on . . . one . . . two . . .”

  I did as I was told. I focused on Magnus’s eyes and breathed into my hands. The dizziness receded. Magnus was right—it was the first time I’d been out here since the incident. I’d been flat on my back in bed for a long time, too. Perhaps it was just a garden-variety panic attack.

  “I had a hallucination,” I said through my hands. “It terrified me.”

  “Hallucinations can sometimes happen if you’re sleep-deprived. Have you been sleeping properly?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said.

  “I think you’d better have the rest of the weekend off, start work again on Monday.” He released me and I dropped my hands. “You shouldn’t have come out if you weren’t feeling right.”

  “I was feeling right. Until I came out.”

  “I want you to tell Carsten what happened, get him to check you over again.” Then he added grudgingly, “We can always send you home if you think you need some time off.”

  That sounded like the best sense I had ever heard. Home. London. Mum. My own bed. No more twig-men and haunted forests.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve upset your plans,” I said.

  He waved away my apology, and produced no apology of his own for accusing me of a false sexual harassment claim. “I’ll walk you to the station. We can finish in here another time.”

  The thought of returning to the site filled me with horror, but I told myself to be calm and that things might be very different after the weekend.

  I was right.

  It rained all weekend and I stayed in my cabin. Gunnar brought me food and five-years-out-of-date trashy magazines from the rec hall and offered to keep me company. I told him I needed some time alone to think. I turned Magnus’s idea of going home over and over in my mind until I became obsessive about it. This meant I slept incredibly poorly on Sunday night, waking and dozing, never sure where I was or what time it was, plagued by awful dreams about dogs pursuing me, about the forest reaching out to grasp me, about bright-hot blades and big hairy men. When I opened my eyes in the grey dawn, they felt gritty and sore.

  I dressed and slipped outside to head to the galley for breakfast. Before I had placed even one foot on the cement slab, I saw it perched on my doorstep.

  A wooden carving of a wolf.

  And scratched into its jaw was his name. Vidar.

  Twenty

  I was heading for the trees, my dread of the forest suddenly vaporized, when Magnus rounded the corner and saw me.

  “Victoria? You’re well then?”

  “I’m . . .” For a moment I was completely bewildered. I had come to associate Vidar with being alone on the island. Magnus’s presence seemed like a mundane aberration; the moment in the cinema when somebody accidentally switches on the houselights. “I’m much better, thanks,” I managed.

  “Obviously. Off for a walk in the forest?”

  “Um. No,” I said. Then added, “I thought I saw a cat.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. There are no cats on Othinsey.”

  I laughed nervously, wondering how I was going to escape from Magnus to find Vidar. “Trick of the light,” I said.

  “Just as long as you don’t have another hallucination like Thursday’s,” he said, without a trace of pity. “I’ll walk you to the galley. I need to talk to you about today’s tasks.”

  “Today?” I said, following him. How could it be possible that today I had to do anything other than look for Vidar?

  “The boreal research unit at Oslo University have asked us for preliminary transpiration and flux figures from our instrument field. I thought you could do the calculations and submit them.”

  At another time, that task would have been a dream: all day tucked away in a quiet corner with tables and figures and formulae. Today, it seemed like a form of torture.

  Magnus walked ahead of me. I lagged back, glanced longingly over my shoulder.

  “Are you coming, Victoria?” he called.

  “Yes, yes, coming,” I said absently. I figured if I could rush through the job, Magnus might let me wander off at lunchtime.

  My mind was everywhere but on the task. Magnus explained the process in excruciating detail, then left me alone for a few hours to do the sums and fill out the online forms. By lunchtime I still hadn’t finished. Magnus brought a sandwich to my desk, looked over my shoulder at the form I was about to submit and shrieked in horror.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, nearly knocking the plate off the desk.

  “What formula did you use for these?” he asked.

  I showed him, he went pale. “Please tell me you haven’t sent these.”

  “I’ve sent about three-quarters of them,” I said.

  “Victoria, it’s the wrong formula. What were you thinking? That’s not even the right table.”

  I looked at where he was indicating on my calculation sheet, and felt myself grow warm and squirmy with embarrassment. I had been so unfo
cused, I had made the kind of error a slow-witted undergraduate makes in a first-year exam. “Magnus, I’m so sorry. I mustn’t have been concentrating.”

  “I’ll phone them,” he said, his voice brusque. “I’ll tell them our trainee is having a few problems with her math today.” He turned to pick up the phone. The conversation that ensued was in Norwegian, but I was in no doubt from the tone of his voice that I was being described in the toadiest of terms to a very eminent climatology professor. I started recalculating, wondering when I was going to be able to get away from all this petty rubbish and out into the forest to find Vidar.

  Time crawled. The drizzly afternoon darkened. I fixed the calculations, found myself caught up with Carsten going down the stairs, was dragged to the rec hall by Gunnar for dinner, then finally . . . finally . . .

  I got away.

  I slipped into my cabin to tidy my hair, grabbed some blankets, then headed off quietly into the forest.

  Smells enveloped me: pine needles, damp earth, sea salt, rotting foliage. I can’t explain it, but the horror of the forest had dwindled to nothing, as though Vidar’s presence neutralized all fear, all danger. I followed the path to his old campsite and was dismayed to find it empty.

  I stopped, turned a full circle. Branches dripped, the drizzle intensified, emptiness tapped a finger on my heart.

  Then I smelled smoke.

  “Vidar?” I called, following the scent. “It’s me, Victoria.” I hurried through the trees, soon seeing the glow of a fire through shadowy branches.

  Vidar was sitting on a log next to the fire, his head bent so that his long hair fell forward to hide his face. Two large animal skins had been strung above him to protect his camp from the rain. He looked up, pushing his hair behind his ear, and gave me a guarded smile. My heart filled with air. I know him, I know him. The feeling was so intense that it hurt me.

  “Hello, Victoria.”

  “Hello, Vidar.” I moved nearer. He was wearing the strange clothes again. “That’s a weird outfit.”

  “Not where I come from.”

  I sat next to him, dropping the blankets at our feet. “Where do you come from?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Asking questions already?”