The Nightmare

20

The darkness of night is giving way to morning, even in the forest. Penelope and Björn move back toward the beach together but angle farther south, away from the house where the party had been. Away from their pursuer.

As far from their pursuer as they possibly can go.

Spotting another house between the trees, they start to run again. It’s about half a kilometer away, maybe even a little less. They hear the roar of a helicopter overhead somewhere but the sound fades as it moves on.

Björn looks dizzy; Penelope fears he won’t be able to keep running much longer. His bare feet are raw.

A branch breaks behind them. Perhaps underneath a human boot.

Penelope begins to run as fast as she can through the forest.

As the trees thin out more, she can see the house again. It’s just one hundred meters away. Lights in the window reflect on the red paint of a parked Ford.

A hare leaps up and jumps away over moss and twigs.

Panting and terrified, Penelope and Björn run up the gravel driveway and clamber up the stairs to the house. They spring inside.

“Hello? We need help!” Penelope screams.

The house is warm from yesterday’s sunshine. Björn, bare-chested and white with cold, is limping and leaves tracks of blood on the floor as he limps in. Penelope hurries from room to room, but the house is empty. The people who live here probably attended last night’s party and are sleeping it off at the neighbors’, Penelope realizes. She goes to the window and, hiding behind the curtains, peers outside. There’s no movement in the forest or over the lawn. Perhaps the man has lost their trail. Perhaps he’s still waiting at the other house. She returns to the hallway where Björn sits on the floor examining the open wounds on his feet.

“We have to find you a pair of shoes.”

He looks up at her as if he no longer understands human speech.

“It’s not over. You have to find something to put on your feet.”

Björn slowly begins to rummage in the closet and pulls out beach shoes, rubber boots, and old bags.

Penelope creeps past the windows in search of a phone. She looks on the hall table, in the briefcase by the sofa, in the bowl on the coffee table, and among the keys and papers on the kitchen counter.

She hears something outside. She freezes to listen.

Maybe it was nothing.

The first rays of the morning sun shine through the windows.

Crouching low, she hurries into the large bedroom, pulls open dresser drawers. Tucked among the underwear, she finds a framed photograph, a studio portrait of a man, a wife, and two teenage daughters. All the other drawers are empty. Penelope yanks opens the closet and pulls out a black hoodie for herself and an oversized sweater for Björn.

She hears the faucet run in the kitchen and hurries there. Björn is leaning over the sink, cupping handfuls of water. He’s found a pair of worn-out sneakers a few sizes too large.

This is crazy, Penelope thinks. There must be people all around here; we have to find someone who can help us.

Penelope hands Björn the sweater when someone knocks on the door. Björn smiles, surprised, and pulls it on while mumbling something about their luck turning. Penelope wipes her hair back from her face, and is almost at the door when she sees the silhouette through the frosted glass.

She stops abruptly and observes the shadowy form in the windowpane. Her hand no longer reaches out to open the door. She knows that stance; that head and shoulders. That’s the man in black.

All the air rushes from her lungs. She backs toward the kitchen slowly, her body tense and ready to run. Staring at the glass pane, she can see the blurred outline of a face-a face with a small chin. She feels dizzy, stumbles backward over bags and boots, and reaches to steady herself against the wall.

She finds Björn next to her, holding a carving knife with a wide blade. His cheeks are pale and his mouth is half open. He’s staring at the pane of glass, too. Penelope backs into a table as the door handle slowly turns down. Suddenly she races into the bathroom, blasts on the water, and yells loudly, “Come in! Door’s open!”

Björn jumps and his pulse pounds in his head. He holds the knife out in front, ready to attack, when he sees the door handle ease back up. Their pursuer has let go. The silhouette disappears. A few seconds later, they hear footsteps crunching on the gravel path around the house. Björn looks stiffly to the right. Penelope emerges from the bathroom and Björn points to the window in the TV room. They move away into the kitchen as the man crosses the wooden deck. The footsteps reach the veranda door. Penelope tries to put herself in the killer’s head. Are the angle and the light enough to show the shoes tossed out of the closet and Björn’s bloody footprints? The wooden deck creaks again near the back stairs. Björn and Penelope creep along the floor and then roll right next to the wall underneath the window. They try to lie still and breathe silently. They can hear that the man has reached the kitchen window, can hear his hands touch the windowsill. They realize he’s peering inside.

In the reflection of the window in the oven door, Penelope can see him look from side to side. If he stares at the oven, she thinks, he’ll see them too.

The face in the window disappears and they hear steps on the wooden deck yet again. This time, the steps are continuing along the paved path toward the front of the house. As the front door is opened, Björn dashes to the kitchen. He quietly sets the knife on the counter as he turns the key in the lock, pushes the door open, and rushes out.

Penelope follows at his heels. They’re running through the garden in the cool morning air, across the lawn, past the compost pile and into the forest. Fear forces Penelope to keep up her stride as it lashes the panic in her chest. She ducks underneath thick branches and leaps over low bushes and rocks. Soon she hears Björn’s panting beside her. And behind them, she senses their pursuer: a man attached to them like a dark shadow.

He’s following them to kill them.

She remembers a book she read. A woman from Rwanda was telling how she’d managed to survive the genocide by hiding in the woods and running every day. She ran the entire time the killings were going on. Her former friends and neighbors were hunting her with machetes. We imitated the antelopes, she’d written. We who survived in the jungle lived by imitating the flight of the antelopes from their hunters. We ran in unexpected ways, split apart and kept changing directions to confuse our pursuers.

Penelope knows that she and Björn should be smarter. They’re running without a plan, which will help their pursuer but not them. She and Björn are not clever. They want to go home, they want to find help, they want to contact the police. Their pursuer knows all this. He understands them and knows they want to find safety in the company of other humans or find a way to reach the mainland.

Penelope snags her shorts on a branch and rips a hole in them. She staggers a few steps but keeps going. She feels the pain as a burning loop around her leg.

They must not stop. She tastes blood in her mouth. Björn stumbles through a thicket. They have to circle a muddy, water-filled gap left by an uprooted tree.

In her flight next to Björn, a memory springs up unbidden. She had been as frightened then as she is now. It was in Darfur. She remembers the look in people’s eyes. Some eyes showed people so traumatized they could not go on. Others refused to give up the fight and kept going. What should have been children came to Kubbum one night. They held loaded guns. She would never forget the fear she felt that night.