Fjallkonan #18 | 8 May 1900

IINTENDED TO KEEP WATCH AND NOT FALL BACK ASLEEP, but I dozed off all the same and didn’t wake up until ten o’clock, when the sun was already shining brightly outside. I opened the window and inhaled the refreshing spring air with its forest fragrance; with daylight’s arrival, the terror of the previous night had vanished. I could have told myself that what I’d seen in the night was all a dream, had the burned-down candle and revolver on the table not been silent witnesses. I leaned out of the window to get a better look at the surrounding landscape, and it became even clearer to me that the castle was built on a large rock, with nothing but cliffs reaching up all but one of its sides. This would have made this stronghold impenetrable in former times.

I saw that there were towers on the right and left sides of the castle. The tower to my right was in good shape, but the one to my left was dilapidated. Many of its walls are covered with cracks and its roof has collapsed. The human figure I saw the night before had come from this part of the castle.¹⁶⁸

I leaned even farther out the window and saw large rocks on the ground down below. They had probably plummeted from the surrounding cliffs. Farther out from the rocks I could see shrubbery and forest, but in the distance beyond the trees there were only bare mountains. I spotted two or three solitary farms farther away, but otherwise there was no human habitation or signs of civilization to be seen.

I sheltered my eyes from the sun with my hand so that it wouldn’t hinder my sight. Then my eyes fell upon something white in the bushes to my left. I thought it might be laundry spread out to dry and I took out my pocket telescope to get a better look. But then I saw that it was a human being! He or she was lying on their back, hands and feet stretched out, and seemed to be sleeping there in the bushes. As I hadn’t seen a living soul outside the castle since I arrived, I was glad to see another person here. I lifted up the spyglass and looked again—but then I sank down in the chair next to me, shivering with horror. I didn’t want to see more.

It was a woman—still a young girl, in fact. I saw her as if she had been right next to me. She had a pleasant face and a shapely figure. She was dead. Her head was bent backwards and was halfway sunken into the moss. Her black hair was loose, as if someone had torn at it, and her mouth and eyes were wide open—her expression reflected nothing but great fear. Her clothes had been ripped open across the breast, so that her neck and bosom were bare, and there on her throat was an open wound. Blood had flowed from it down her shoulders, drenching her clothes. She was wearing coarse white woollen garb, like the women in this country do. Her arms were stretched out, as if she had dug her hands into the moss in agony.¹⁶⁹

After a few minutes, I looked through my monocular again to make sure that I hadn’t been mistaken.

Everything was as just described.

This must be the reason for the cry of distress I had heard. But how could this horrible thing have happened? I wondered if the wolves had done it, as there are so many of them in the woods. But the Count had told me that they don’t attack humans—especially not at this time of year, when they have enough prey to catch in the forest.

Or had this girl been murdered?

Wolves would hardly have left her like that, but a murderer might have.¹⁷⁰ She was half hidden in the bushes, and there were no real roads nearby.

I grabbed my hat, put the revolver in my pocket, and made to rush out to where the body lay; there had to be some path along the rock that would lead me there.

I ran down the stairs to exit the building, but as I reached the entrance hall, I remembered that I hadn’t placed a foot outside the castle walls since my arrival here. Because I had slept so much during the day and the Count had spent so much time with me at night to improve his English, I hadn’t once been outside the castle’s enclosure.

I tried opening the gate but it was closed shut and there was no key in the lock. I looked around for the key, but it was nowhere to be found. I tried to force open the gate, but to no avail.

The entrance hall is large and there are doors leading in many different directions. I tried opening every one of them but they were all firmly locked.

As a free man, I’m not accustomed to having my movement restrained. But now I realized I was a prisoner in this castle.

Already earlier I’d wanted to roam the castle grounds, with no plan as to what I’d do outside. But now that I had seen the girl’s body, I could think of nothing else but to get to her and—if possible—try to help, call for assistance, and with the support of the authorities seek out the murderer. That is: I wanted to do what any civilized man would do in my situation. But only now did I realize what that situation actually was. I thought back on everything I had seen and heard here, and now my fate looked bleaker than ever.

Of course, I knew there had to be many other exits, but when I found another entrance hall, all of its doors were also locked.

There was no place else I could go but to return to my room, where—if anywhere within these glum walls—I felt secure. I stood there restlessly, and my face flushed with agitation, because as I thought about the Count’s behavior since my arrival, it dawned on me that he’d deliberately prevented me from getting out of the castle! Every night he had kept me up till cockcrow, so that I would sleep through most of the day, and—for courtesy’s sake—I have barely left my room until he returned. And so the time has passed, and I’ve hardly had a chance to take stock of how many days I have been here. It’s clear that the Count is quite strange. His behavior, at least, is like no one else’s. Perhaps by keeping me here he is taking advantage of my help—especially as he has seen that I am rather pliant—but I simply cannot accept being locked up like a criminal.

I looked around and saw no other exit from my room, nor from any of the other rooms I dwelled in, except down the stairs that I had ascended on the first night, or into the hallway leading through this wing of the castle. But in this hallway, too, all the doors were locked.

Next I tried going up the stairs leading to the portrait gallery. When I took hold of the handle to the big oak door, I was amazed to find it unlocked.

The sun shone in through the windows of the long gallery, and the portraits seemed to have a different aura about them than they did when I saw them at night, lit by the weak glow of a still young moon,¹⁷¹ and with the help of candlelight. Nevertheless, the images still had an effect on me. I suddenly started feeling rather sick, on the verge of breaking down. I took only a brief look at the paintings, even though it felt as if the stately portrait at the end of the hall was pulling me towards it with almost irresistible force. But I was determined not to let anything delay me until I had examined the castle as widely as I could.

On the opposite side of the gallery, two doors were standing wide open.