There were three heavy, hollow booming sounds. Perhaps the office door started squeaking again, perhaps not. Ellen was too far into dreamworld to be able to distinguish between dream and reality.
It was an unpleasant dream she had been having. It gradually sneaked up on her. A dream or a sense that she wasn’t alone – in a place where she should have been alone. Ellen brushed off the dream, turned over and went back to sleep.
But the thing that happened on the third night really did wake her up ...
Chapter 2
During the day they were paid a visit by the new director, Steen, who was accompanied by Mr Nicolaysen, the previous owner. Steen, a bloodshot social climber who suffered from a threatening heart condition and had only one interest in life – money – listened somewhat perplexedly to Mrs Sinclair’s account of the restoration of the inn’s old wing and the reason why the door remained untouched. But he thought the idea of having a locked room would make good publicity for the inn.
“Spice it up with a tear-jerking romantic story,” he said to Mrs Sinclair. “Foreigners love that sort of thing.”
But Nicolaysen was upset. “You don’t know what you’re saying! We can’t put the guests’ lives at risk like that! Miss Knutsen here simply cannot stay in that wing. Move her at once!”
Ellen reassured him that she was fine, and that she didn’t wish to burden Mrs Sinclair now, when there were no other rooms vacant. Furthermore, she had absolutely no intention of opening that door; she didn’t even wish to enter that part of the hallway.
With some hesitation Nicolaysen finally gave in. He was a stressed, middle-aged man with nicotine-stained fingers and quivering eyelids. His hair consisted of a small coronet of an indeterminate colour around his shiny bald head. Since he also owned a small chemical factory in the village, he had ended up neglecting the inn to such an extent that he had been forced to sell it. He hadn’t wanted to, but the conscientious villagers had started to object to the respectable old inn falling into disrepair.
So Steen had purchased it a year ago and had immediately started out by giving the façade of the building and the guest rooms a facelift. It was now time for the smaller rooms and the oldest part of the inn to be restored.
Steen was merely passing through and would soon be on his way east. Nicolaysen returned to his factory. And the day continued with its usual routine and plenty of problems.
And then the night came. The night when Ellen began to understand much of what was inside her that had been concealed or vague; when her future was relentlessly determined, and her life changed its course and began to follow a new and exciting path.
Ellen didn’t know what the time was when she awoke, but the summer night seemed to have passed through its darkest phase. A dim grey light filled the room, erasing the colours from her new work outfit – the simple folk costume that hung on the door of the wardrobe. She thought she had heard the creaking of a door, and then she remembered something similar from the previous night. Who could be walking around in the inn at that time of night? Everyone had gone home when she had locked up and turned off all the lights for the night.
All at once Ellen started and was wide awake. She sat up in bed and strained to hear something other than the pounding of her heart. There was someone up here! Careful footsteps could be heard making their way along the hall floor.
“Who’s there?” she called anxiously.
No one answered. The footsteps continued past her door and made their way towards the staircase.
Towards the staircase?
Where had they come from then? And what door was it that had creaked so loudly? On the day that the manager had shown her around the inn, Ellen had noticed that all the old doors to the small rooms were well oiled.
But at the end of the hallway? ... Oh, no! it couldn’t be!
What nonsense!
The house was quiet now. Whoever had been walking around had gone down to the floor below. But Ellen couldn’t seem to settle down. The fear, the nauseating, deep-seated sense of fear that she had experienced once in her childhood had now returned. It wasn’t an ordinary fear. It penetrated so deeply and was so upsetting that Ellen didn’t know how she would endure it. It was as though a tremendous sense of loneliness and despair was being forced upon her, actually causing her physical pain.
Oh, no, not again, she pleaded, I don’t want to go through that again.
She sat there for a long time, listening, taking deep breaths and suffering this painful sense of despair in her chest. Ellen was in fact courageous and sensible – well, fairly sensible – but on that occasion many years ago she had crossed the threshold to the senseless, and she was getting alarmingly close to crossing it again, she feared. That stupid story that the lady in the general store had told her returned to her now, and she tried to recall what the lady had said.
But she never got far in her thoughts. She could hear slow, soft footsteps again, now at the bottom of the stairs.
I’m going to scream now, she thought. She glanced at the window. Perhaps she could slither through that? But she knew that below it lay a heap of stones that were one day to become a rock garden, and that the drop would be much too great.
She noiselessly slid out of bed and pulled on her sweater and trousers over the exquisite nightgown. She quickly put on a pair of socks and her shoes. Her heart was pounding wildly and her hands fumbled nervously with a sock that was inside out. But meeting a prowling stranger clad in a flowery see-through nightgown was completely out of the question for her. She had to get out of this house, one way or another.
Easy ... easy now! There must be a rational explanation for this. Anyone could be walking around in the inn now. A carpenter who’s forgotten his equipment, or someone who accidentally fell asleep in one of the rooms and needed to use the bathroom ... Calm down! Don’t worry about this unnatural, stifling sense of fear within you; it means nothing, there is nothing wrong, everything is as it should be, calm down! Ellen took a deep breath.
She felt more confident now that she was wearing proper clothes. That way she wasn’t quite as exposed as before. As the steps started to approach her door she stood motionless in the middle of the room, struggling to control her agitated breathing.
Had I been truly courageous now, she thought, I would have looked through the keyhole in order to convince myself that it’s only a carpenter or Mrs Sinclair who’s out there.
But I’m not that courageous.
The footsteps passed her door and then stopped ...
I’m going to die now, thought Ellen in the vast silence that had arisen.
The inn sign creaked in the wind. There was a faint rushing noise coming from the river and the forest. But inside the old house everything was silent, as though it were lying in wait.
Whoever it is, he or she knows of my existence now, she thought. I can sense it. Impressions are pouring down on me. Fear, wonderment, anxiety, hope ...
But are the feelings that are about to stifle me theirs, or my own? Or a mixture? But you can’t feel other people’s feelings ...
Oh God, I refuse to experience the same thing that happened before! I don’t want to lose my senses like some fleeing, screaming little bundle of nerves! I won’t!
But I’m right in the middle of it again!
Whatever it was that was outside was still standing there, a little distance from her door, she knew that much. The footsteps had ceased so suddenly.
But then she heard them again. Ellen grabbed hold of the two cold iron bars at the foot of her bed. The sounds moved closer to the door.
And stopped.
Ellen was as tense and quivering as a steel spring. What if the creature out there is looking through the keyhole? I don’t dare look out