She moved quietly inside. Katrín stood behind, keeping the wall open, making sure that their exit remained accessible.
She leaned up against a door at the end of the room, leading into the stiftamtmaður’s private office, and listened. Two sitting rooms for one man, on a floor which was completely set aside for him alone. The excess was despicable.
Everything was quiet. She carefully grabbed the doorknob and risked taking a look inside. The private office was considerably more lived-in. Papers and documents covered the tables, the ashtrays were full, filthy glasses and an unclean plate were left to the side. By the doors was a dirty pair of boots. The golden baroque grandfather clock showed a quarter past four. She was dying to go through the papers. Without a doubt they were about Loftkastalinn and all of them, every details of their lives. She unplugged the audioskull to better take in the stillness.
The door to the bedroom was halfway shut. The room was fit for a king, after all housing the holder of his power, but it was so excessively decorated that it would normally have driven Garún to a rage. But she did not pay it any attention. The only thing she saw was the man lying at the end of a wide bed, large enough for five people. He was fully dressed, but his chest fell and rose with the calming rhythm of deep sleep.
Not a sound was heard as she walked up to the lying man. Stood over him. Watched him sleeping.
Frederik Ditlev Trampe. Hrímland’s appointed stiftamtmaður. Count Trampe. Appointed by King Jörundur and the wielder of his earthly powers.
The jawbone was like frozen steel in her hand. This was the moment. This was the spark which would bring down the Crown colonial government.
She held the bone over him like a sacrificial dagger. She wanted to wake him up. Drag him out of there. Change history. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to make him understand what he and those like him had done to her.
But he did not deserve understanding.
Only suffering.
She stabbed him in the chest with the bone, using all the force she could muster. The bone slid effortlessly through flesh and bone, like a sharp dagger. He jumped awake, opening his eyes with a startled look – but he did not scream.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
She smiled and broke the bone in the wound.
That was when the screaming started.
* * *
She was supposed to be escaping. The guards would be here in a moment. But she could not move. She could not stop watching. She’d never felt so good. About herself, about life, about the order of the world in its entirety.
Everything was just as it was supposed to be. Justice could be attained, or at least, the only justice that truly mattered. Justice which demanded blood, which required hatred to fuel it. Which boiled and seethed and burned. Justice with a blood sacrifice, with a baptism in fire.
Trampe rolled down to the floor. He was on all fours, like a beast. She’d never heard a man scream like that. As if he never needed to draw in breath. Or – he did not draw in breath. He wasn’t truly screaming.
Not with his lungs.
Unnatural waves moved through his flesh. Up the back, down his thighs, the calves. Dark blotches of blood grew on his clothes. Like a photograph slowly coming to light.
Church bells sounded in the distance. Rapid, as if a lunatic was ringing in the Mass.
He arched and twisted, then turned and slammed himself down on his back. Twitched and slammed himself down again and again, as if he had something on his back and was trying to kill it.
No, those weren’t church bells. Something else. Alarms.
A geyser of blood erupted from his bowels. Frantic tendrils sprouted rapidly, swinging back and forth. Smelling. Sensing.
He arched his head unnaturally far back. His face was locked in a silent scream, the jaw open as far as it could go. She saw something crawl from his mouth. Something with eyes and teeth. He kept on flailing his arms the entire time, battling invisible spirits. It was rather funny, in fact. The flesh ran off him like overcooked meat off a bone.
He was dead. Worse than dead. It was over. She had to go – now.
But she could not bring herself to look away.
She was so happy.
* * *
It was seconds, minutes or hours later that the trance broke. She was hit in the temple with the stock of a rifle and fell limp to the ground. More beating followed, in her stomach, back, her head. Iron locked itself around her hands and muddy boots pushed her head against the carpet. Drops of blood were leaking into it. From her. She thought.
Trampe would not stop screaming. No matter how completely ruined and unrecognisable his body became. He screamed after the jaw fell off him, after the skull collapsed into itself and was sucked into the torso.
A black sack covered her vision and she was pulled to her feet.
She could not stop smiling. They dragged her down, outside. The screams of Trampe could be heard just as clearly as inside the bedroom. Resounding in her head, along with the bells. And some other sound, which she could not quite recognise.
It sounded like laughter.
Þrjátíu og sjö
Darkness is the only constant in the world. The only thing which is not fleeting. It was before everything else, and will remain after everything vanishes. Darkness is eternal.
Even in bright daylight, in a well-lit home, darkness is there. You simply cannot see it for all the light. It is misleading, interfering. But it’s there, behind everything.
Waiting.
* * *
It was not pain which awoke her. Not the swelling and the wounds. But her guilt. Guilt reaches deeper than any cut. It pierces your soul. Dissects you alive.
She told herself Katrín might have got away. There was a chance.
