Horror Stories from Denmark Box set Read online

  "Smell what?" Michael asked.

  "Egg," he said.

  "Egg?" Ole asked.

  "I'm hungry, boys," Peter continued. "And I'm in the mood for egg."

  All the boys nodded in agreement.

  "But where is she?" Michael asked. "We searched all the rooms upstairs and didn't find her in any of them."

  "She must be hiding up there somewhere," Peter said and pulled out his gun from the belt.

  "What do we do about him?" Ivan asked and pointed at the father, who lay curled up on the kitchen floor, crying behind the duct tape.

  Peter took one quick look at the man, pointed the gun at his head. The man stared into the gun with panic in his eyes. Then Peter fired.

  15

  ELLA JUMPED WHEN she heard the gun being fired. She looked at her younger brother Jacob who was exploring the many treasures of the attic in the same manner as Ella had the first time she had been up there. The sound didn't scare him. Probably since he didn't know what it was and maybe even didn't hear it properly due to the thunder coming from outside. Ella stared out the window under the ceiling; she could see the ocean beneath them. It was raging wild, the waves flushing further up on the shore than she had ever seen before. Some of them even licked their wooden terrace in the back.

  Ella had reacted fast. She was sleeping when she heard the front door being knocked in. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Outside her window the wind whizzed and the waves sounded like they were calling her name, telling her to wake up.

  Ella sat up feeling calm. She knew exactly what to do. She sprung for her little brother in the room next to hers. She had taken him in her arms and ran for the only place she ever felt safe.

  From up there she had heard everything. She had heard her sister scream when they came to her room, she had heard her mother and father being ordered to go downstairs. Then she had heard her sister's screams again and again as they did something to her that Ella didn't even want to imagine. Ella cried when she had heard her mother scream her heart out and then she had grabbed her younger brother and held him tight when she became quiet. Now she wished so badly for someone to scream again, but she knew none of them would ever be able to say anything anymore. Ella knew in her heart that they had all been killed.

  "Guess it's just you and me now," Ella said to Jacob who was crawling around on the old couch, causing clouds of dust to spring into the air every time he jumped on the cushion. Then he laughed before he tried to catch some of the dust and hold it in his hand. Ella watched him and smiled. "I won't let them get you. You can be certain of that," she said. "Even if I have to tear down the whole house I'll protect you from these monsters. You mark my words," she said imitating her mother's tone of voice.

  But Jacob didn't mark anything, he just laughed and jumped some more. Ella was suddenly so happy that he was too young to understand.

  Steps on the stairs underneath them. Ella froze. Then there were voices. "You two start the search by the two rooms at the end, Ivan and I will take the rooms to the right," someone said.

  Ella looked at Jacob with her eyes wide open. Then she jumped towards Jacob and put her hand over his mouth to stop his babbling. He looked up at her with eyes smiling, like he thought this was a fun new game.

  "Shh," she whispered. "They can't find us here."

  Ella held her hand tight on his mouth, desperate to find a way out. The intruders were obviously looking for them. Desperately Ella looked around her, searching, scanning the room for any kind of weapon or maybe even another way to get down. But there was only one way up and one way down, and no weapons.

  She gasped when she heard doors getting knocked in downstairs and voices, people searching the rooms.

  Then someone sang that awful song, the one Ella had heard so many times in her life, the song she loathed for as long as she could remember:

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

  All the king's horses and all the king's men

  Couldn't put Humpty together again

  Ella felt every fiber in her body seething with anger. The song always did that to her. She closed her eyes and felt her face become red; while she remembered all the times she had been humiliated in school by the very same song.

  She bit her lips trying to calm herself down. When she opened her eyes again, she saw a candlestick in front of her. It was floating in the air, spinning fast.

  Ella gasped and as she did, the candlestick fell to the ground with a bump. Ella's heart pounded in her chest. The voices had become quiet. Had they heard the bump?

  Ella whimpered and pulled back towards the window holding Jacob tight in her arms.

  16

  IVAN FOUND THE hatch leading to the attic. There was a string, a piece of rope he could pull and soon it was open. A ladder was attached to it and he easily pulled that out as well.

  He turned and looked at Peter. "After you," Ivan said grinning.

  Still with the gun in his hand, Peter climbed the stairs and Ivan followed. Michael and Ole came right behind them. They began singing the song again.

  "Is she up there?" Michael yelled while climbing the last steps.

  "She's here," Ivan answered. He was looking directly at her. She was holding a younger child in her arms while staring at them defiantly. The sight of them filled Ivan with disgust. Especially her. She was repulsive. Fat, round, almost oval just like an egg. She looked even bigger than when Ivan had seen her on that trampoline almost a year ago.

  Peter approached her, with the gun in his hand. "There you are, little girl," he said. "We've been looking for you."

  The girl held the boy even closer and backed up till her back was against the wall. Outside Ivan could hear the winds pick up and the waves crashed against the shore. Lightening struck nearby and made a huge noise and lit up the room for a second. Ivan gasped when the light fell on the girl's face. Something in her eyes made him back up a few steps. Peter laughed.

  "Scared of a little girl, are you?" he asked.

  Ivan laughed to show he wasn't.

  "Let's bring them downstairs," Peter said to Michael and Ole who right away threw themselves at the girl and the boy. They pulled the boy away from his sister and tied up the girl's arms and legs, before they dragged her downstairs pulling her by her hair.

  What alarmed Ivan at that point was the fact that the girl never screamed.

  They brought both children to the kitchen and put them on the kitchen table, swiping the remains of their older sister onto the floor first. The girl took one glance at her parents and her sister, but hardly blinked. Ivan found it both frightening and fascinating.

  Michael grabbed the baseball bat and knocked her on the head with it. "Knock, knock," he said. "Time to crack the egg ..."

  The girl didn't even look at him. Ivan studied her as she kept biting her lip.

  "Look, her face is turning red," Ole said.

  Michael swung the bat and hit her in the face. She hardly moved. Peter hit her with the gun, but still no reaction. Ivan's heart was pounding. This girl captivated him. He was going to look forward to killing her. He would definitely find a way to make her scream. Oh what a pleasure it was going to be to find what triggered her fear. Maybe she didn't react to the blows because the fat somehow protected her, maybe she didn't even feel it? Ivan wondered while sharpening the blades on the glove in the kitchen. Maybe she was mentally disabled somehow and that was why she didn't react to seeing her family brutally murdered. But there had to be something, some way to make her display fear, to give her that look in her eyes, which Ivan craved so desperately to see again.

  Michael hit her in the face again with the baseball bat. Still no reaction. The girl simply stared ahead, avoiding even looking at them. It was mesmerizing.

  Even Peter seemed to be struck by it. He kept hitting on the top of her head with the gun, while yelling at her.

  "You're gonna die, bitch. Do you hear me? I'm gonna kill you, slowly, painfully an
d rip your internal organs out one by one. We're going to rip your chest open like we did to your sister, then you'll bleed to death, but only slowly, while we start pulling the fingers of your little brother here."

  That was when something finally happened. A reaction from the girl. Like an owl she turned her head and stared at Peter. Then a window blew open while lightening struck outside so close it made all of them cover their ears.

  17

  ELLA HAD NEVER cared much about her parents or her sister, even if she had never wanted this to happen to any of them. But she couldn't focus on her sadness right now. It was all about staying alive and protecting her younger brother. She was hoping he didn't see his mother on the floor in the pool of blood, but she knew he had. She heard him whimper several times since they entered the kitchen. Ella wanted to take him in her arms and protect him from this awful sight that naturally had to be devastating for him.

  They were keeping them apart and she couldn't see his face, but now she heard his small voice speak for the first time.

  "Mommy?"

  Ella swallowed hard, while the men answered in laughter and mockery. "Mommy's dead, little boy."

  Ella tried all she could to stay calm even when the intruders hit her with their bats and guns, not that it bothered her much, since she had never been able to feel pain, something the doctor didn't have an explanation for either.

  "Ella is apparently among a tiny number of people in the world known to have congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, or CIPA, a rare genetic disorder that makes her unable to feel pain," was all he could say. "Just keep an extra eye on her on the playground, since she will be fearless, and make sure her food isn't too hot because she'll gulp it down even if it's burning."

  Those were the instructions that Ella's mother had gotten and since then learned to live with. The good part was that Ella never cried when she hurt herself nor did she whimper over small things. The bad part was that they never knew if something was wrong with her, if she hurt herself they wouldn't know until they saw the blood.

  Right now Ella was glad she didn't feel pain; it seemed to be scaring the men that she hardly reacted to their blows. It was her plan to not react to their songs, to their words or them hitting her. Just like she learned to ignore the kids in school who bullied her, she was going to ignore these intruders, thinking it would make them leave her alone, like the teachers told her the kids would if she only ignored them long enough. Only that moment hadn't arrived yet.

  But it was her only weapon, she thought. And it had worked so far. Until they mentioned her brother and threatened to hurt him as well. That was when she could ignore them no longer. Now she stared into the mask of one of the intruders, the one holding the gun, the one who told her he was going to hurt Jacob. She felt the rage rise inside of her, just as she felt it before when the kids bullied her in school. The intruder didn't seem intimidated by her look, so she forced the window to blow open. She had done that a million times to her mother when she got angry with her. It wasn't hard. All she had to do was to picture it happen, and it did. Then she pictured a lightning strike in the yard and it did. All the intruders gasped and held their hands to their ears. Then Ella giggled. They had no idea who they were messing with, she thought to herself. She had never used her powers much, since she was afraid to be locked up in a research facility somewhere for the rest of her life, and she was slightly afraid that she might accidentally kill one of her classmates, so she only done these small things to her mother or practiced it when alone.

  One of the intruders sprang for the window and closed it, shutting out the strong winds. Ella grinned. The intruders became quiet. They stared at her like they didn't know what to do. It amused her and she laughed again.

  "Shut up," the one with the gun yelled. "Shut the FUCK up!"

  He lifted the gun and walked towards Ella, pointing it at her, but she just looked at it and giggled again.

  "What's wrong with you?" he asked. "I swear to God I will kill you if you keep laughing."

  Ella stopped. Still smiling she imagined the gun turning burning hot. She looked straight at the masked face and listened to his flesh sizzling as the metal burned its way through it. The intruder screamed and dropped the gun.

  "Arrrgh!"

  He stared at his hand and yelled at the others. "Do something you fuckers! Don't just stand there and watch!"

  One of them found a small container and went to fill it with water. As he opened the tap, the faucet blew off and water splashed all over him. Under the sink a water pipe broke and water flushed out underneath it.

  Ella giggled and smiled while the man with the gun jumped around holding his hand and the others fought to stop the water.

  18

  IVAN WATCHED THE scene with shock. His friends were fighting the water; Peter had burned his hand somehow on the gun and was now soaking it in the water splashing into the air from the broken faucet. It seemed like a scene from a movie all of a sudden, a crazy movie. The worst part was the girl sitting on the table, giggling. It left Ivan with an eerie feeling, a sense that she was somehow responsible for all these things happening at once. But how could she? He had watched it happen and she had been sitting on the table all this time. Her hands and legs tied up. She couldn't even move.

  Ivan stared at the fat girl, and then remembered the reaction he had seen in her face, the drastic change of expression on her face when Peter had talked about her baby-brother. That was it, Ivan thought. The boy was her weak spot.

  So to make her stop laughing he walked over and grabbed the boy in his arms. It worked like a charm. The girl froze. The smile disappeared immediately. Suddenly the PH-lamp fell from the ceiling and crashed onto the floor next to Ivan, giving a small flash of light as it hit the floor. Ivan felt it barely touch his shoulder on the way down. Then he gasped. All the cupboards hanging on the wall opened and plates started falling out, rolling onto the floor, some of them exploding in mid-air sounding like when they went skeet-shooting. Ivan ducked his head and moved away while plates and dishes, cups and vases came at him, some even flying over his head.

  Ivan stared at the girl; her eyes were now black, with small flames of anger inside of them. Her cheeks had turned red. She was breathing heavily.

  "Kill the boy," Peter said from the faucet. "KILL HIM!"

  Ivan nodded. It was the only thing to do. He was apparently the only one she cared about, so to make her suffer, he had to die. Ivan swallowed hard and stared at the baby. Even if he had known all along that it would eventually come to this, he still somehow hoped that he wouldn't have to be the one to kill the baby. He looked at Peter. His face was strained in pain and anger. He was snorting and fuming. Ivan nodded again, and then went for the glove on the counter, that he had sharpened only a few minutes ago. Then he stared at the gun at the floor. It would be easier with a gun, he thought, but it seemed to have melted its way through the kitchen floor and become one with it. It was of no use. Ivan sighed and picked up the glove. The boy on his arm reached out for it playfully and instinctively he pulled it away so he wouldn't hurt himself. But then he paused. Now why not? He thought to himself. Why not let the boy play a little with the blades?

  Ivan smiled and looked at the girl. Her eyes followed his every move. Then he gave the boy the glove.

  19

  ELLA WATCHED AS her baby brother held the glove between his hands and started touching the sharp blades. He cut himself and blood was running down his arm now. He cried a little, but didn't give up the exciting shiny blades. Instead he leaned over and put one in his mouth.

  Ella grunted and tried to move her body to get down from the table. But someone pulled her back and held her to force her to watch. It was the guy who burnt his hand. She could smell the burned flesh.

  When Jacob cut his mouth accidentally and the blood started running out of his mouth down his chin and landed on his Winnie the Pooh pajama shirt, Ella couldn't control herself anymore. Finally she let go. Not knowing the strength of
her own powers she yanked it all and let it loose.

  So be it if we all die.

  She closed her eyes and called the storm closer, luring it, telling it it was needed, that its strength was desired. As she heard the winds come even closer, she forced it to blow open all the windows in the house, and then she talked to the clouds and told them to throw a lightning strike onto the house. It shook like an earthquake hit. Lamps fell from the ceiling, more water pipes broke, the wooden planks in the floors bent and nails flew across the air, hit one of the intruders in the forehead and pinned him to the wall behind him, killing him instantly.

  Another lightning bolt struck the house and it caught on fire, the curtains were soon aflame, licking the roof while ceiling panels fell on the intruder's heads. Every one of them panicked. As they sprang for the doors Ella jumped down from the table and reached out with her mind, she looked at the intruders, fighting their way to get to the doors first, throwing their masks, pulling each other's shoulders. Then she paused and took in a deep breath.

  CLICK.

  All the doors slammed shut and locked. The main entrance door, the two kitchen doors even the door leading to the terrace in the back. All were locked. The windows slammed shut as well.

  Ella heard the intruders scream. They pulled and fought to open the doors, trying to kick them down, but with Ella's strength she had reinforced them, and it was easy to keep them strong enough to hold a couple of boys.

  Ella focused on the duct tape on her legs and arms and soon felt it stretch and melt away, freeing her from its grasp. Then she walked to her brother and took the glove from his hands and threw it on the floor, melting it with her mind. Jacob was bleeding from his tongue and lip. She wiped the blood off with a paper towel while listening to the intruders whimper and cry for her to spare them, to let them go.