This is going to be the last thing I write about everything that’s happened. It’s been two days since they pulled me out of the chute and the storm is finally beginning to die down. The police should be here tomorrow. I’ve been writing every minute that I can. I’ve used that notebook of Erik’s, the one I found the photographs in. It seemed a pity to waste it. My head is still aching from where Dorothea hit me and everything’s been rushing to get out of it as quickly as it can. But at least they won’t be able to say I’ve left anything out, will they? I’ve told them everything, even the bits that make me sound like a complete nutcase. So whatever happens from here on is their department. We’ll soon be hundreds of miles away, back in Stockholm. Safe.
I’m sitting on my bed looking out of the window. The firs are still at the moment, covered with a thick blanket of snow that fell last night. They don’t scare me so much now. I don’t think it’s nature we really have to be afraid of but other humans.
I think I went mad there, for a while, but I can see things more clearly now. I think writing it all down has helped me straighten everything out in my head. It can’t possibly have been real, any of it. There were never any varulv. There definitely wasn’t any girl who was also a wolf. There was only the snow and the trees and an old lady’s crazy beliefs and a kind of mad waking dream that I fell into for a while because of all of the above. I guess at least I’ll have something to tell Poppy and Lars when I get back to Stockholm.
I can hear Mum next door. She’s reading Ols a bedtime story but I know that he won’t sleep well. He has nightmares. He always dreams that the wolves are coming to take him away. Dorothea kept telling him that, over and over, and he can’t stop himself believing it. Poor kid. I keep telling him that even if they were coming – even if they were real – it’s fine. All we need to do is stay indoors, because the varulv can’t get in anyway.
He says that’s what his dad thought, too, but he’d been wrong. I can’t really tell him that it wasn’t the varulv that got his dad, it was Dorothea. It was all Dorothea. Even that boarded-up cellar. Dad went down to check it out, just to make sure there weren’t any more nasty surprises lurking in the dark. It turns out that the reason she didn’t want anyone going down there was because of Erik. The inner door she boarded up led to a corridor that would take you right into the kitchen cellar and to the chute where he was rotting. I guess the smell was so bad she didn’t want to risk anyone going down there and getting a whiff.
Poor Erik. If only he’d left a few days sooner.
Dorothea’s still locked up. Dad’s tried talking to her – trust Dad – but she refuses. She does keep singing, though, which proves that it was definitely her making that weird noise. It twists through the house like ribbons of smoke but there’s nothing we can do to stop her besides taping up her mouth. I suggested that but Mum and Dad won’t do it.
There are wolves outside in the forest, too. Quite a lot of them, I think. I’ve heard them, howling as they prowl through the trees, although they stay too deep under the firs to be seen. I suppose Tomas was right about one thing after all. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.
I keep thinking about those people Erik thought were missing and wonder what really happened to them. Did any of them ever actually disappear? Or did they realize that they weren’t cut out for living in this place and leave? I’ll ask the police when they get here. But whatever they say, I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to get the truth out of Dorothea. She’s like one of those trees out there, living in a world that doesn’t meet up with ours any more. I wonder if it ever did. She’s lived up here her whole life. The snow and isolation do funny things to your head, just the same way that darkness does. Here’s what I think happened: she took one kid out into the forest, way back when the plantation was failing, when she was in love with her master and wanted to help him. Then things got better and she thought it had worked. So she ended up in a trap of her own making – she just had to keep doing it.
In some ways I’d like to think that those myths and legends are true. Not the way Dorothea believes in them, obviously. But the idea that there is a way to protect those things that the rest of us won’t really ever understand; that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it? Someone’s got to stand up for those things. Otherwise they’ll be lost and forgotten and no one will care until it’s far too late.
Maybe they’re out there now, those forest spirits. Maybe they’ll be out there long after the rest of us are all dead and gone, running through the snow until the end of the world.