Fog Island: A terrifying thriller set in a modern-day cult

9

There was a hard rap on the door. The room was pitch black, as usual, but she could tell instinctively that it was still night-time. The lights came on gradually and Madeleine, who was sitting up in bed, became visible. The clock on the wall read twenty past four. There was another rap, impatient and frantic.

‘Assembly in the dining room in ten minutes! Wear jeans!’

It was Bosse’s voice. Angry and harsh. Sofia thought something must have happened — an accident or emergency of some sort. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours — she had lain awake for a long time brooding about Ellis and the blog.

Elvira was also awake by that point, and she looked terrified, the blanket drawn up to her chin.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Madeleine said. ‘But we have to get dressed and run down to the dining room.’

They staggered around the room, pulling on jeans and whatever they could find in the dresser drawers.

‘Do you have any idea what it might be?’ Sofia tried again.

‘No, but Franz was up late. I probably shouldn’t have gone to bed.’

Just about everyone else was already there when they arrived in the dining room. They were lined up in their usual way, with tired, pale faces, messy hair, and anxious eyes. The dining room was cold and damp. They could hear rain pattering against the windowpanes.

Oswald was standing before them. He was wearing his usual outfit: black jeans and a T-shirt, and he had almost certainly not been to bed. But he didn’t look tired, only terribly angry.

He read the blog!

The thought hit her like the flick of a whip. It had to be. He had been surfing online; he had come across the disgusting blog and read the whole thing. She couldn’t think of any other reason he might gather them at four in the morning.

A few stragglers came through the door and Oswald stared at them in annoyance.

‘Is everyone here?’ Bosse asked.

Bosse walked around, inspecting the lines, counting and mumbling until he could declare that everyone was present except Katarina, the gardener.

‘She’s sick; she has a fever,’ he said. ‘So I didn’t wake her up.’

‘I said I wanted to speak to the entire staff,’ Oswald said. ‘So I’ll wait for her.’

He crossed his arms over his chest.

Bosse hurried off and an awkward silence followed. No one wanted to talk. Everyone stared straight ahead, avoiding each other’s eyes and, above all, trying not to stare at Oswald. The silence was cold as ice.

At last a panting Bosse returned with Katarina in tow. She looked terrible: she was sweaty, her eyes were feverish, and she was so pale that her skin took on a green tinge in the cold light. She was still wearing her nightgown and slippers.

‘I was working late tonight while the rest of you were snoozing,’ Oswald began. ‘And on my way home I peeked in here to see how the renovations are coming along. Come on, I’ll show you how it looks.’

He marched out of the dining room with the staff trailing him, and they headed down the corridor to the part of the building being renovated. The shorter staff members tried to crane their necks to see over the crowd, and there were bottlenecks at the doorways. Oswald didn’t say anything; he only walked around pointing at various boards, tools strewn about, piles of sawdust, safety glasses on the floor, and cans of paint that hadn’t even been sealed up for the night. Then he walked around, showing them the rooms. All twenty of them. There wasn’t a single finished room in sight. Sofia was flooded with relief even in the midst of her misery. It wasn’t the blog after all. Plus, she wasn’t responsible for this mess.

‘You have been working on this bloody project for three months,’ said Oswald. ‘Now I’m going to show you what happens when you make such a mess of things.’

He strode out into the courtyard and everyone followed. They were almost immediately drenched by the cold, incessant rain. Sofia snuck an anxious glance at Katarina, who was coughing behind her. Oswald led them past the small barn to a wooded area.

Anchored to the moss under a few pines was a large white tent. Oswald pulled the zipper down and showed them inside. There were sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets all in a pile, as well as several suitcases. Sofia, who had stuck close to Oswald, managed to poke her head through the opening. A heavy odour of mould and sweaty feet struck her.

‘This is where your household unit lives,’ Oswald said. ‘There is no room for them in the main building. Pleasant, isn’t it? This is how they are living, like pigs, on my property.’

He didn’t say anything for a long time. The situation was absurd, bordering on comical. The rain fell harder, trickling into Oswald’s eyes and mouth and forcing him to blink and swallow again and again. The only sound that could be heard through the roaring downpour was Katarina’s rattling cough.

Maybe he felt ridiculous, drenched as he was and with his voice drowned out by the rain, because he just shook his head and said, ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you. Not a single one of you bastards. Go back to the mainland, run home to mommy and daddy. Get a job you can handle. You don’t belong here.’

Then he marched back into the main building.

The whole staff stood there, at a loss, terrified and soaking wet.

Bosse broke the silence: ‘Assembly in the dining room!’

*

Back inside, a small group congregated in one corner, whispering to each other: Bosse, Madeleine, and Benny and Sten, who were two peas in a pod. The pair could often be spotted riding around the property on their motorcycles or sitting in the booth at the front gate. They were large and obstinate but quite dull; they matched her idea of a typical guard perfectly. At first she thought they were cut out for the job, but now she wondered if it was such a good idea for them to be involved in decision-making.

She considered joining the little group to prove that she cared, but decided to hold off. She wanted to avoid taking responsibility for the renovation project at all costs.

Bosse hopped up onto a chair.

‘Now we’re going to shift into high gear,’ he said. ‘We’ll show Franz we’re a team. Everyone must pitch in and work on the renovation until it’s complete. No exceptions. Those of you who take care of the guests will just have to make sure that they have food and stuff. But otherwise we’ll work until it’s done.’

Her hope of sneaking back to her warm bed was immediately extinguished. This didn’t look good. At all.

Bosse divided them into groups that were to work on different parts of the renovation. She ended up in the painting group along with Elvira.

And so began the craziest, most chaotic and sleepless period in her life thus far. Days and nights flowed together into the sort of mishmash that can only arise from a large group of people who have no plan or idea what to do. They sawed, swept, polished, sandpapered, and painted. Bosse and his new henchmen ran around trying to make everyone move faster by shouting things like ‘Faster!’ and ‘You have fifteen minutes to finish that!’ and since all these commands were perfectly meaningless, no one listened.

They slept for a few hours each night; sometimes not even that much. After several sleepless nights, staff were dozing off here and there and had to be shaken into consciousness to get going again.

Sofia tried to stay awake as best she could. She painted and painted. Her hands, arms, legs, feet, and hair were covered in white paint.

What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing here?

The thought returned to her daily, but she kept painting with Elvira. They became friends there among the cans, brushes, and turpentine. They shared water bottles and gum. They kept watch for each other when one slipped into the storage room to take a nap on the hard floor behind the shelves, when they simply couldn’t manage any longer. If someone in the leader group, as they called Bosse’s gang, headed for the storage room, all the person keeping watch could do was rush over and distract them. She would cough three times to wake the sleeper, to give her time to rub the sleep from her eyes. That was all it took — it was impossible to sleep deeply on the ice-cold floor. The three coughs broke through slumber like it was the first thin layer of ice on a pond; the alert brought the sleeper to her feet and she would dart out of the storeroom and go right back to painting.

Each time it seemed they were done, something else popped up. The wrong colour paint somewhere; baseboards that weren’t high enough; mismatched furniture. And every time something went wrong, the group experienced new, greater levels of hysteria and frenzy.

She was swallowed by exhaustion; it got worse each day. Her eyelids were leaden and the brush felt huge in her hand.

But she gritted her teeth and kept painting.

Then one day, all of a sudden, they were finished.

They looked at each other in wonder, dumbfounded, almost positive that it couldn’t be true. There had to be something else that needed fixing. But after several checks, the leader group determined that the job was done.

They hadn’t seen Oswald a single time since that horrible night in the rain, but now he had to be called to inspect their work.

He made them wait for two days. They spent the time cleaning and polishing, moving furniture back and forth, burnishing door handles. They didn’t dare leave the floor out of fear that he might suddenly show up.

When he arrived, he walked around the rooms three times.

He didn’t utter a word. At last he nodded.

The nightmare was over.

*

Oswald allowed them to celebrate with a party in the dining room. Food, wine, music, and dancing — it was like stepping into a new world. He attended the party too. He spoke with the staff, joking, laughing, and back-slapping.

When he caught sight of Sofia, he made a sort of apology.

‘I know you’re new here,’ he said. ‘But sometimes it’s necessary to take off the kid gloves. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Of course!’ she said cheerfully, hoping he wouldn’t notice the white paint she hadn’t been able to get out of her hair.

But his fingers took hold of a matted clump near her cheek, then slid down her face to the tip of her chin.

‘Look how hard you’ve been working! Sofia, I’m so glad to have you here.’

A jolt zinged from her cheek to her groin. She tried to keep a poker face and shrugged. But he noticed. He gave her a meaningful smile and raised his eyebrows before moving on.

She was still feeling drained from the lack of sleep and couldn’t quite let herself sink into the joyful mood. She kept thinking about how her dorm room was empty and she could sneak off, pull out her laptop, and send an email home. Make contact after two weeks of silence.

The party music was loud, throbbing. The sounds of renovation, blows of the hammer and the whine of the circular saw were still echoing through her head. She decided to make herself invisible and sneak out the front door.

That’s where she ran into him.

He must have been coming from outside, because he brought with him a gust of cold autumn wind and the scent of leather from his jacket. His eyes were just as she recalled, happy and lively. The wind had blown his hair back, making it look like a funny toupee. His mouth was half open, revealing the gap between his front teeth.

‘God, I’m so glad you’re here!’ he said, taking her hands. Suddenly she wasn’t tired in the least.

A few weeks have passed since I found the book.

A thought has been with me ever since.

It’s insane and dizzying, but genius.

I’ve been snooping for more evidence hidden away by my idiotic mother — she thinks she’s so clever.

At the moment she’s sitting at the kitchen table, gazing out the window. Grumpy and grim. Her jaw is clenched as if she has taken a vow of eternal silence. I sit down on the chair across from her.

‘I hate you more than anyone else ever could,’ I say.

She doesn’t say ‘Oh, no!’ or ‘You can’t say that!’ or anything a normal mother would have said.

She just sits there staring, stiff and silent as a dead fish. And it’s all her fault — especially the fact that we’re sitting here in a fucking summer cottage, poor and insignificant. All because she had to have a quickie with the count. And yet, to my great chagrin, I see myself in her as she sits there.

We are strong, bull-headed, stubborn. There is not a pitiful bone in our bodies.

Not like that cowardly bastard who fled the island for some stupid place in France.

No, I know that I take after her, and that makes me hate her even more.

‘I wrote to him,’ I say, holding the letter up for her to see. Close enough for her to read the name on the envelope. At last her eyes go cloudy with worry and she opens her mouth to say something.

But I’m already on my way out of the cottage.

When I turn around on the lawn, I see that she has stood up and come to the window.

Go ahead and stare, I think. Stare all you want — but it’s too late.

10

The fog took hold of the island in early October, and by mid-month it had an iron grip on the place. It crept in at night and each morning it was so thick that Sofia couldn’t see the outbuildings from the window in her dormitory. The brightly coloured leaves had faded and the landscape had turned shades of golden-brown. It was steadily growing colder. Normally she would have felt a little gloomy thanks to all the fog. But not now — she spent almost all her time thinking about Benjamin. It was as if the fog transformed the island into a fairy-tale world with infinite curtains a person could pass through and discover fresh views.

Benjamin showed up in the library every day. She never knew when he would appear, so she remained in a state of constant expectation and excitement. He always had a good excuse to visit. Oswald had instructed him to help with all the purchasing. But most of the time he came by with trivial questions and errands. He had that eager way about him as if he were always on the go. He could fill an entire room with his energy just by stepping across the threshold. He would forget to remove his boots, tramping around and leaving marks on the rugs without noticing. His body was always in motion — he walked around looking out of windows, picking up objects, putting them down again — even as he spoke with her. But when he sat down in front of her he became perfectly still. He could move in and out of these states, from wound up to absolutely relaxed, in an instant.

She had a constant internal dialogue about whether it was right to start a new relationship so soon after the disaster with Ellis; her brain went back and forth, over and over. This nervous droning was like background music as she worked. But when Benjamin entered the room, the voices stopped. And then it started up again until Sunday, when he showed her the cave.

It was their day off and the whole island was blanketed in a thick fog. Everything was wet: the trees, the bushes, and the earth, which smelled like mushrooms and decaying leaves. He showed her a new path through the woods; they had to climb over huge, moss-covered stones to move forward.

From the top of the highest boulder, they got a glimpse of the grey, foamy sea between the trees. It was windy out there, but not in the woods.

Sofia stayed on the boulder for a while as Benjamin climbed down.

‘Here it is!’ she heard Benjamin’s voice from below.

She slid down from the rock and saw that he had found a patch of chanterelles in the moss.

‘This is my secret chanterelle spot. Come on, let’s pick them.’

He had brought a backpack, and they gently placed the small mushrooms inside.

‘I’ll show you something you’ve never seen by the outlook point,’ he said.

‘How do you know the island so well?’

‘We had a summer cottage here when I was little.’

‘Is it still here?’

His eyes darted away a little too quickly.

‘No, we had to sell it. Mom left us when I was twelve. Dad died in a car accident soon after that. Now it’s just me and my sister.’

‘I’m sorry, I mean, I didn’t know . . .’

‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago.’

‘Why did your mom leave?’

‘It’s hard to say. One day she was just gone. I couldn’t help but blame myself a little bit, though. It was like, I wondered what I had done wrong.’

He seemed to have sunk into himself; he looked smaller.

‘But you always seem so happy!’

She could tell right away how wrong it sounded, as if he had renounced his right to happiness.

He stood up and slung the backpack over his shoulders.

‘Well, what can you do? The future is what’s important. And I have my ViaTerra family, of course.’

The outlook point was windy. The fog had lifted from the sea, but the sky was still grey. Waves crashed in hard enough to make foam fly from the rocks.

‘That’s Devil’s Rock,’ Benjamin said, pointing. ‘Have you heard about it?’

‘Yes, Björk — the guy who runs the ferry — told me the whole story. Do you really believe all that?’

‘Sure, some of it. Once when I was younger, it was foggy and I thought I saw the Countess on the Rock. It was scary as hell. Someone was standing out there, dressed all in black. And then she vanished into the fog. It was like she dissolved.’

‘I saw someone there when I first came to the island. But it looked like a regular person. At least I think it did.’

‘We used to jump off Devil’s Rock when I was little,’ he said. ‘But then there was an accident. One guy who jumped died. The current dragged him out to sea.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘A little, he was a few years older than me. But I remember how scared we were when we found out. His mom worked at the manor. A doctor lived there back then. I don’t remember him, but I do remember his daughter, Lily. She was older than us too. Pretty girl — she had long red hair and she was thin as a rail. We used to spy on her when she was sunbathing. But she died in a fire in the barn. It all happened around the same time. It was awful.’

‘Maybe it’s true, then, about the curse on the manor?’

‘No, I don’t believe in ghosts like that. But I do believe some souls have trouble finding peace. That they can stick around, sort of.’

She looked out at the cliff and could almost see a figure there.

‘Ooh, now you’re scaring me.’

He laughed and put his arm around her shoulders.

‘Let’s climb down the rocks,’ he said, looking at her rubber boots with concern. ‘Be careful so you don’t slip.’

They cautiously made their way down the steep rock face. Sofia did lose her footing a few times, but managed to steady herself and tried to keep up with Benjamin.

They came to a small grassy slope between the boulders, and he stopped there. They were directly underneath Devil’s Rock, and the cliff hung over them like a huge ceiling. The waves crashed, roaring and splashing. Benjamin pointed up at the ledge. At first she couldn’t tell what he was pointing at, but then she saw a big dark spot among all the rocks. It could have been a black rock, but she realized it was a hole.

He came over to her and took her lightly by the shoulders.

‘You have to swear not to tell anyone about the cave. Promise?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good, let’s go in.’

The cave was about four metres deep and one and a half metres in height. It was cool and damp inside, but the floor was dry. She had the strange sensation as she gazed out at the waves, as if she were in a house floating above the sea.

Benjamin emptied his backpack. Some kindling, a frying pan, and matches, as well as some cheese, bread, and fruit he’d begged from the kitchen. They got a fire going and grilled chanterelle sandwiches over the fire. They had to eat with their fingers — he’d forgotten cutlery. They chatted nonstop, then sat quietly for a while and gazed out at the sea and the sky, which still hadn’t cleared. Then the fire died out and the cave grew chilly.

‘Now we’re going to eat dinner in the village,’ he said. ‘We’re going to Fritjof’s. It’s crab season, and theirs is the best.’

It was starting to get dark, so they went to the village by the road.

For a while, they didn’t say anything as they walked. She could hardly make out his face in the dim twilight, but she got the sense that he was brooding about something. His arm had been around her, but he let it slide off her shoulders. She was just about to ask what was on his mind when they arrived at the pub.

Inside, in the warm light, he seemed normal again. He laughed at her cold, blue fingers and warmed them for her. He joked with the waitress and ordered so much crab and so many sides that there was hardly room on the table. His hair glowed in the light from the candle; it almost looked like it had caught fire.

She asked about the renovations and their lack of sleep, what he thought of it all.

‘We wouldn’t have completed the renovations if Franz hadn’t put his foot down,’ he said firmly.

‘So you’re a fanatical follower?’