Tobias passed the blanket to Rakel and turned off his flashlight. This made the safe room seem completely dark, but they had no other choice. They had to conserve the flashlight’s batteries, and their eyes quickly adjusted. Tobias didn’t know for how long they’d been held prisoner in the underground room, but he estimated four to five days. He had opened the hatch and peered inside. He had whispered the name Rakel, the name of the girl he’d just met, the Christian girl behind the fence, the girl in need of help, when someone had come up behind him and pushed him down inside. He had felt frightened and stupid, and he had hurt himself. He had fallen a long way, past a ladder, into a black hole where he’d ended up on a hard concrete floor. Fortunately, he’d landed not on his head or his arms but on his side, and he believed that this had cushioned his fall, because he wasn’t in too much pain, only a bit in one hip and one leg.
“Should we try the hatch again?” Rakel said in a soft voice through the darkness; he could barely make her out, although she was not sitting far away from him.
“I don’t think there’s any point,” Tobias said.
He didn’t want to come across as defeatist, but they’d made several attempts, most recently a few hours ago. He had climbed up the ladder and pressed his shoulder against the wooden hatch, but it wouldn’t budge; it had been locked from the outside again, and having the lock pick was no use with the lock on the other side.
Fortunately, they had food. And blankets. And a flashlight. They had decided to conserve the batteries because they hadn’t found any spares. They were in a safe room. Rakel had explained it all to him. She’d been down here several times. This was where they normally locked up naughty children. The ones who refused to do as they were told. Normally they didn’t have to sit there very long, depending on the offense. As far as Tobias had gathered, there were lots of different punishments on this farm. Being banned from talking for one week was one of them. Hence the notes Rakel had written and stuck through the fence. She was able to talk—she hadn’t lost her voice, which was what he had first assumed—and then he wondered if she was being difficult on purpose like Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. No, Rakel could talk, all right, and after someone pushed him down into the safe room where she was, she talked almost nonstop. Tobias liked hearing her voice. She was unlike any other girl he’d ever met and nothing like the ones at school, who mostly giggled or said silly things. Rakel spoke properly, almost like an adult. And she knew where everything in the safe room was. There was food in the boxes and large canisters of water and gasoline and clothes. Everything you might need, although they had yet to find more batteries, but they surely had to be there somewhere.
Tobias had been inside a safe room before; they had one at his school, and it had formed part of a drill. The Home Guard would sound the alarm, and everyone had to walk in single file and pretend that war had broken out. The safe room at his school contained nothing but old PE mats and hockey sticks—not like this one, which was fully equipped. He’d been scared for the first few days, but the feeling was subsiding. After all, nothing bad had happened so far, and they’d been there for a long time. They will let you out again, Rakel had said. They let you out in the end. Sometimes it just takes time. He was more worried about his brother. Torben would be upset when he came home and found Tobias missing. Tobias had written him a note, at least he’d done that, and hidden it inside the mattress on his bed, the one with the zipper, which was their secret hiding place. “I’m going to spy on the Christian girls, I will be back soon,” he had written. He hoped it would reassure Torben a bit.
“I don’t think God exists anymore,” Rakel said, fumbling for his hand.
Tobias had held a girl’s hand before, but this was different. Rakel liked holding his hand, and he liked holding hers. Her fingers were soft and warm, and when she sat close to him, he could also sense the heat from her body. It was almost cozy; he wouldn’t have minded the two of them sitting like this for a long time. That is, if they weren’t trapped underground.
“I don’t believe in God either,” Tobias said, and not for the first time.
They had discussed this at length. It seemed important to Rakel. Talking about God. Sometimes he felt that she spoke mostly to herself, but he tried to reply to the best of his ability.
“If there really is a God, he wouldn’t let people do horrible, disgusting things, don’t you agree?”
Rakel moved a little closer and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. They would do this from time to time.
Everything will be fine. We’re together.
“When do you think they’ll let us out? What’s the longest anyone has ever sat here?”
“I’m not sure,” Rakel said. “There was a girl named Sara, and she was here for two weeks, I believe, but she wasn’t here when I arrived.”
“What did she do?”
“They said she tried to run away.”
“Like you?”
“Yes.”
The room was colder now. Perhaps it was evening outside, maybe that would account for it. Tobias took a corner of the blanket and draped it around his shoulder. Rakel moved even closer and put the blanket all around him. They sat quietly for a while, close to each other under the blanket, holding hands tightly. Rakel rested her head on his shoulder, and after a while he could hear her breathing deepen. She was dozing now. Tobias sat very still, so as not to wake her, and closed his eyes. Soon he, too, was asleep. Not soundly, like at home in his bed, just napping. He didn’t realize that he’d been sound asleep until he heard a loud noise. He woke with a start and saw that the hatch above them was in the process of being opened.
At last, he thought as the beam from a flashlight shone down the ladder.
Tobias Iversen roused the girl with the fine freckles and got up from the floor.