Dan swallows dryly and shakes his head. “I didn’t call the shots. We were a group. We worked together.”
Birgit smiles. “Then why are you the one standing here? And don’t tell me it’s fate; I don’t believe in that.”
“I don’t either. It was my own choice. I came back to talk with you.”
“Yes, my son told me.”
Another step towards him. The way she walks looks strange, not just because of the way she seems to be moving without the help of her feet, but also due to the way she isn’t facing him straight on; her body is turned very slightly to the left, giving her an off-balance look. There’s something ominous about it, something threatening, yet Dan can’t place what it is.
“So,” she says, showing him her palm. “Here’s your chance. Say what you came to say.”
Dan breathes in. “I need your help. I know you do voodoo. I know you were there when the first person came back to life—the girl at Esther’s place.”
Birgit is in the middle of taking another step, but she stops. Her expression darkens slightly. “And how would you know that, pray tell?”
“I was there,” Dan says. “Some hours after you’d left. I saw your son’s pouch, the one he’s carrying around his neck. And I recognized it when I saw him from the window.”
Birgit is silent for several long seconds. “You’re even more perceptive than I thought.”
“I just put the pieces together,” Dan says. “I figured Dennis wasn’t the one doing the ritual, so it must have been you.”
Birgit takes another step. “I was helping the girl.”
“I know. She died in an accident somehow, and you wanted to bring her back to life. Normal life. You had good intentions, but it went off the rails somehow.”
“That wasn’t my doing,” Birgit says, and the tone of her voice changes, showing real emotion for the first time.
“I didn’t come to blame you for anything,” Dan goes on. “I don’t care about all of that. I don’t even care about you killing Holger.”
“How amicable of you.”
“I just want you to try and reverse this curse, or whatever it is.”
Birgit takes another step. She’s halfway through the tunnel now, slowly closing the distance between them. “You’re a wise boy, but you speak of things you have no knowledge of. Don’t you think I would have reversed it if that was within my power?”
“We have to try,” Dan says. “It’s the only way it’ll ever end.”
Birgit shakes her head. “There’s only one way it will end, and that end has already started.”
As she steps closer, she comes into the light of one of the roof lamps, and for a moment the reflection catches both her eyes, making them flash with menace.
Finally, it strikes Dan what the reason is for the slightly turned way Birgit is walking: she’s holding her right arm close to her side, keeping the hand discretely out of view.
“What’s in your hand?” Dan says, hearing his mouth talk without his permission. “Is that a knife? Are you going to kill me with it like you killed Holger?”
Birgit stops dead in her track.
She stares him right in the face, and Dan stares back at her. Without breaking eye contact, Birgit lets her hand drift out, revealing a shining bronze-colored blade of what looks more like an Iron-Age dagger than a knife.
“That was my intention, yes,” she says.
“You can kill me,” Dan says, feeling a sudden and unexpected rush of something forceful streaming up through his chest. It’s all he can do to keep it back, yet it still shines through in his voice. “But it won’t solve anything. You’ll still be living in a world about to be taken over by the dead. You will live in constant fear and your son will know nothing but paranoia and death.”
Birgit tilts her head slightly, revealing her white teeth in a sneer. “What would you know about death?”
Whatever has built in Dan suddenly breaks loose. He surprises even himself in taking a step forward. “What do I know? I’ve lost my entire family! I’ve lost everyone I love! They’re all dead because of what you started, so go ahead: kill me too! If you want to keep making chaos instead of trying to fix it, then just go ahead!”
Birgit looks like she’s about to step back but manages to hold firm at the last second. Then, as the echo of Dan’s voice dies out in the tunnel, her expression turns from surprise to stone.
And Dan knows at that moment he will die.
He knows it like he knows the sun will rise tomorrow.
As Birgit steps forward, raising the dagger, time slows down and Dan closes his eyes. The faces of his family once more glide across his inner vision, and he thinks very clearly and calmly: I will see you in a moment.
There’s no fear. No pain.
Only a bright light from above enrobing him.
TWENTY-ONE
Breaking open the wall turns out a whole lot harder than Iver imagined.
He’s been working on it for hours, using different tactics and tools. First, he tried simply smashing his way through the wall using Agnete’s metal candlestick, and while getting through the initial layer of wallpaper and plaster was easy enough, it turned out to be bricks on the inside, and there was no way he would get through that way by hammering it.
Instead he began scratching at the joints using the other end of the candlestick. It was tedious work, but he did seem to make progress; the mortar would slowly crumble and fall away as dust.
The problem was, it took him over an hour to get only one brick loose. When he finally was able to pull it out, the door had started to make that awful cracking sound more and more
