That was Peter’s fear. But Hedvig’s fear was different, deeper, vaguer. She was afraid of the Bogey Man with whom Kristin used to frighten her. And now he had suddenly assumed Old Hök’s features. Yes the Bogey Man was there in the room, just in front of her. But it never occurred to her to take Peter’s hand. Hedvig was not like that. She was alone from the beginning, alone in her fear and helpless with that complete and profound helplessness that grownups only experience in the dangers and horrors of a nightmare.
And now they heard another scream, fainter but just as dreadful. It came from all sides at once—from the stairs, from the door, from the walls themselves. Hedvig suddenly understood, the Bogey Man had come! He was taking somebody as he passed on his way. Because it was, of course, herself, Hedvig, that he really wanted. She shrank and closed her eyes. Then she looked up again, just for a second. He was no longer there above the sofa. He had climbed down—he was coming towards her! He was stretching out his claws!!
Hedvig dug her nails into the edge of the table and screamed, screamed wildly. She could not bear it. Peter also started screaming. He saw himself standing starving and naked in a big dark forest full of wolves. It is not to be wondered at then that they screamed. But that was not all. The younger children, who slept in the adjoining room, awoke in a fright and started to scream too. So the whole chorus of children’s voices joined with the mother’s groans above.
Kristin suddenly appeared in the door with a candle: “Good gracious—you dreadful children to make such a noise when the mistress is ill!”
She packed Peter and Hedvig into the green room. Oh, what a wonderful, pleasant relief it was to feel Kristin’s bony hands in your back. They undressed with feverish haste, afraid lest she should go before they had had time to pull the bedclothes over their heads.
“Dearest Kristin, please leave the light burning.”—“Nonsense, go to sleep now.”
And the light was gone.
They lay huddled up in terrible darkness like two poor little orphans. Fear kept them long awake and pursued them ever in their dreams, when at last they had fallen asleep. The night of the earth is but a passing shadow, but the night of fear in the heart is evil and long. And for many it seems as if there will be no morning.
The following day the children at Selambshof lost their mother. Both she and the newborn baby died before their father reached home. He had been kept late during a shoot at Kolsnäs.
II
The Robber’s Stronghold
The children were playing up in the big attic at Selambshof. The rain pattered against the tiles of the roof and rushed down the spouts. But inside it was dry and dusty and mysterious in the twilight among the roof-timbers and the chimney pipes. And there were heaps of things that the grownups had thrown aside, but which for that very reason were so tempting: old, worn-out things which had reached their second childhood, and just for that reason suited the children’s games so well.
It was only with great difficulty that Stellan could open the lock of the iron-bound oak chest. Triumphant, he pulled out a torn black skirt and spread it over the pram in which Hedvig lay on her back, pale and with her legs hanging over the edge. He called to Peter, who was the hearse-horse, and the melancholy procession was just about to start, when Hedvig began to sneeze because the skirt was full of red pepper.
“Can’t you pretend to be dead, you silly girl,” shouted Stellan impatiently.
And Laura bent down and giggled in the midst of the procession. Besides these two, the mourners were Herman Hermansson from Ekbacken and little Tord. But Tord did not want to take part in the game any longer, so he crept into a corner and sulked. The outlook was not very promising.
Creakily the pram began to move. They were playing “Mamma’s funeral” for the hundredth time.
The procession stopped before the church, which was the triangle under the staircase up to the ceiling. Herman, with an air of deadly earnest on his open face, stood and chimed a nail on a stove ring. But Stellan drew the black skirt over his shoulders and climbed up on a wooden box and pretended to be the clergyman. He threw his head back and laying his hands on his chest began to hold forth: “From the earth you come, and wipe your feet, and honour your father and mother and sister and brother, and don’t hang on to people’s skirts, and don’t balance yourself on your chair because you will fall, fallevall, appala, mesala, mesinka, meso, sebedi, sebede, and get away now you silly, for now you are dead.”
This long rigmarole was uttered with the utmost solemnity and did not fail to impress the listeners. Hedvig grew frightened of shamming death. She was so frightened that she felt cold shivers down her back.
