But not today. No: today I have butterflies in my stomach and a tingle in my palms and feet, despite the events of last night.
Today we explore.
I crawl out of my sleeping bag as quietly as I can, pull on the thick sweater I’m using as a pillow, and unzip the tent door. The air out here is colder than the heavy, sleep-stale air warmed by our dozing bodies in the tent; out here it’s crisp and cool, like frosted glass.
I inhale deeply, drinking it in.
The sun has just crept up over the horizon, and the blush of dawn gives the village a pinky tint. In the light of this new day the village looks magical—playful and ethereal. Enough to make me wish I could use the cameras. It would have been nice to explore the alleyways by myself in this silence, to capture the village as I see it now, this first morning. Dormant and untouched. It’s like a living photograph, a relic of a bygone age.
The campfire is by now nothing but ash and charcoal on the cobblestones. I cast my gaze up at the derelict school façade, then on to the silhouette of the church as it soars above the roofs, its outline crisp and clean against the distant forest.
I feel a lump in my throat.
I can hear my grandmother’s voice, like an echo in my ears.
“The last time I saw my sister, Aina, she was only seventeen.”
When I was little, I used to think her tales of Silvertjärn were just that: stories like any other. It wasn’t until much later that I realized not only were they real, they were the ruins on which she had built her entire life. She was a strong woman, my grandmother, with steady hands and broad shoulders, and eyes that would latch onto whoever she was talking to, no matter who that was. As though she wanted to make sure she always got the whole truth. Nothing made Grandma as furious as lies, however minor or unintentional they might have appeared.
“We’re going to find out, Grandma,” I say quietly to myself. “You and me.”
She always looked you straight in the eye. Except, that is, for when she talked about Silvertjärn. Then she would look away, her eyes fixed on the horizon.
I was eighteen when I moved to Stockholm to train as a nurse. My sister, Aina, was twelve. At that point the Silvertjärn mine was thriving.
My family still lived in the same house I grew up in. It was a little yellow house by the river, just a few streets down from the church. All of the houses on that street were yellow, but ours was the only one with a green door. As a girl I was always so proud of that green door. It made me feel special.
I would go back and visit whenever I’d saved up enough for the train tickets. In those days people didn’t fly around willy-nilly like they do now; there were two trains to Silvertjärn a week, and if the timings weren’t convenient then you would just have to make do. The tickets weren’t cheap, either.
She had beautiful eyes, my grandma. Light-gray and mottled, like polished granite. Until the cataracts came creeping over her corneas like misty white rot, taking her sight just as the dementia would take her mind.
“What did you say?” a voice behind me asks. I jump and whip around.
It’s Max. He’s wearing his retro knitted cardigan again, one hand massaging his neck.
“God, you scared me,” I say. He smirks.
“Did you think it was the ghosts of Silvertjärn coming to chase us away?”
“Haha,” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Very funny.”
“This place is kinda spooky, though,” he says, looking around as he steps toward me. He stops next to me and looks up at the school. “You can see why people think it’s haunted.”
“Apparently,” I agree, shoving my freezing hands into the front pouch of my sweater. “Emmy got woken up when Tone went to pee in the night. She saw her through the windshield and thought it was an evil spirit or something. I’m surprised you didn’t hear anything.”
“Woah, shit,” says Max, looking surprised. “No, I slept like a log.”
I roll my eyes.
“Typical.”
Max grins and then looks around at the fallen-in roofs.
“Weird no one’s done this before,” he says. “I mean, the story has it all, and you couldn’t ask for a better setting. Don’t you ever wonder why none of those ghost-hunter programs that were so popular a few years ago did a special out here?”
“Too far,” I say. “There are plenty of supposedly haunted manors around Stockholm and Malmö.”
“I guess,” says Max.
Seeing me huddle up slightly, he puts his arms around me and gives me a rub to warm me up.
“Shall I try and rustle up some breakfast for us?” he asks. “Not meaning to boast, but my scout group voted me best campfire chef four years running.”
I snigger, gently twisting out of his arms.
“Bullshit. Like you were ever a Boy Scout.”
He grins.
“Maybe not,” he says, “but I can probably put something together. I’m not just here to be your dead weight of a backer—I can help out, too.”
“As camp chef?” I ask, and he gives a cheeky grin.
“Chef, eye candy, mother’s dream,” he says. “Whatever you need.”
As Max gets a flickering little fire going and toasts us some bread, the others emerge one by one. Emmy’s in a new T-shirt that’s almost as shabby as yesterday’s, under the same jacket Robert was wearing. I assume they’re a couple.
I’m expecting a nod, some sort of lighthearted reference to last night to clear the air, but nothing comes. Emmy hardly even looks at me. I feel a twinge of disappointment, but then again this is nothing new. She was always pretty sluggish after those wild, late-night dorm parties. She would lie
