Rebekka Franck - 03 - Five, Six ... Grab Your Crucifix Read online

  Chapter 19

  Julie and I got to ride in the ambulance with Dad. The paramedics had him hooked up to all kinds of things but he was still not conscious when we arrived at the hospital. Fear was growing in my stomach making me feel sick and nauseous. I remembered losing my mother a little too well and I wasn’t ready to go through this again.

  “Please don’t take Dad, God,” I mumbled again and again while we waited for any news.

  Sune and Tobias joined us soon after. They brought a bag filled with books and toys and Tobias managed to make Julie forget for a while why she was there. I wondered why we didn’t all just remain children for the rest of our lives. They knew it didn’t help anything to worry. Why did we as adults insist on torturing ourselves like this over all kinds of things, most of the times silly stuff? Life was so short. Still I couldn’t escape the anxiety. It was in all of my body, in every cell now and made me feel sick. Sune brought me water, coffee, sodas and chocolate bars that I swallowed like I was in a hurry. He held my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to put all this on you. I really didn’t.”

  “It’s not your fault. You can’t help it if you feel the way you do,” I said and stroke his cheek gently. “You’re so young. Of course you want more children.”

  He bit his lip and nodded. “I just never considered the fact that maybe you didn’t,” he said. “It was selfish of me.”

  “I’m the one who has been selfish,” I said.

  Sune lifted my hand and kissed it. “Let’s never fight again,” he said. “I really don’t like it.”

  I chuckled. “Me either. But I’m afraid it’s very often a part of grown-up life and relationships.”

  Sune looked at me with a grin. “Then let’s not be grown-ups. Let’s never ever grow up.”

  “Like Peter Pan?” I asked with a smile. Sune was so sweet.

  “Exactly. Let’s make our life and home like Neverland.”

  I laughed. Sune smiled. “Then I want to be Tinkerbelle,” I said. “At least she’s not dirty like all those boys. Plus she’s skinny and can fly.”

  “Deal,” Sune said.

  I chuckled lightly. Sune always had a way of making me feel better whenever I was down.

  “By the way I heard on the radio on my way here that another person died in the camp,” he said.

  I gasped. “The screams last night. I completely forgot about them. What happened?”

  Sune shrugged. “They said the police were investigating it, but it looks just like the first death. He was throwing up and just being really sick and then he died.”

  “Wow. That sounds horrible. Who was it this time?”

  “Some member of the church. We read his statement last night. Hans Christian Bille. Not a public figure or anyone that people know. Probably wouldn’t even have been mentioned if it wasn’t because he was the second person in two days dying at that camp. Something weird is definitely going on up here.”

  “You can say that again. But they didn’t say what they thought it was, what could have caused it?” I asked.

  He shook his head again. “I guess they don’t know.”

  “But don’t they have the autopsy from the first death?”

  Sune shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “It all sounds really weird. Could they be hiding something? They must have some theory as to what could have killed two people living in the same camp. Could they have eaten something? I hope it’s not some disease that we all could be infected with.”

  Sune smiled.

  “What? Why are you smiling?” I asked.

  “You’re worrying again. You worry way too much.”

  “Well then you tell me what you think this is,” I said slightly offended.

  He shrugged again. “Probably just the end of the world. Like Isabella Dubois said. It’s the devil trying to take over and kill us all.”

  “Well if that’s all then there’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said.

  Sune chuckled. “We just need to drive the demon out. Command it to leave,” he said and made a scary face.

  I chuckled lightly. Then I went quiet thinking about Dad again. I spotted a doctor headed in our direction. I tried to analyze his face to see if he brought good or bad news. His face was like a stone. It had to be bad news, I thought and felt a huge pinch in my stomach. Please let it be good news, I thought. Please!

  “Miss Rebekka Franck?” he asked as he approached us.

  I stood up. Julie and Tobias stopped playing. I felt Sune’s hand in mine. “Yes?”

  “Your dad is stable now. We don’t know what caused this, but he is still unconscious. His pulse is weak but he seems to be breathing on his own. He suffered a minor blood clot in his leg.”

  I exhaled deeply. “So he is going to be alright?”

  “We’re keeping him here for a couple of days just in case and to run some more tests, but yes. He’ll need some rehabilitation over the coming weeks. I’ll arrange for that. He’ll need all the support he can get from his family. He had a stroke a few years ago, right?”

  I nodded. “He fell from the stairs. That’s why he uses a cane now.”

  “Good. These kinds of attacks are tough on the body. Take good care of him and don’t let him get stressed out. If you could get him to cut down on the fat and salt in his diet it would help a great deal.”

  “I’ll try. I have actually tried for years now.”

  “You can see him in half an hour,” the doctor said. “A nurse will come and get you.”

  When the doctor left Sune put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.

  “What a scare,” he said.

  “You can say that again.” I exhaled deeply and sat in the chair.

  Julie came up and hugged me for a long time. “Is Grandpa alright?” she asked.

  I smiled and kissed her. “He’ll be fine. But he needs to stay here a couple of days and we need to do a little more work around the house, so Grandpa doesn’t get so tired and worn out, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’ll start doing the dishes and bring out the trash.” Then she jumped down from my lap and went back to play with Tobias. Just like that. It was that easy when you were a child. I on the other hand felt ripped apart on the inside, devastated. Was this my fault? Had I let him do too much work? Well that part was about to change. That was certain. I would start cooking and cleaning some more, or hire help to do the cleaning so we didn’t have to worry about it. I was going to make sure of that as soon as we got back from this awful place. Suddenly I had no desire to stay here for the rest of my vacation. I wanted to go home. This place was horrible and had too many bad memories already. But Dad had to stay, the doctor had told us. That meant we had to stay too. Until he was better and ready to be transported the long way home. It was after all a long drive. I sighed and held Sune’s hand. Some vacation, I thought. I was the one who was supposed to relax and not get stressed out. Now I felt more stressed than ever.

  Chapter 20

  Mette Grithfeldt was scared. She had always been a worrisome and anxious type, but right now she was more afraid than ever. She was walking in circles in her room at the camp where she had lived for twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years in this room, at this camp where nothing changed and everything stayed the same. Suddenly her entire life had drastically changed within only two days. Her world had literally turned upside down. She was losing it, she thought to herself walking on the hard tiles. Finally her parents were right. They always told her she was crazy and tried several times to have her locked up in an institution, forcing her to leave “The Way” and the man she loved so dearly. Now she felt like she was about to give in and just go crazy once and for all. She paced the floors all night and morning ever since the police had talked to her and taken her statement after the second death in two days at the camp which she had witnessed.

  Both of the deaths were devastating to her. First her great love of
twenty-seven years had died before her very eyes without her being able to do anything, then her good friend Hans Christian. With him it wasn’t so much that he had faded away in front of her that had scared her, no it was what he had done in his dying moments. He had looked at her. Just before life finally disappeared from his eyes, they had looked at her. Then he lifted his finger and pointed at her and his last words had been for her. She could still hear them over and over again in her mind, no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t escape them.

  “… you … you,” he said. What was that supposed to mean? That he had a message for her from beyond the grave, from the pit of hell? Did the devil want to tell her that she was next? Was it time to pay for all of her sins?

  Mette Grithfeldt grabbed a book from her dresser and stroked it gently. She turned and looked at the picture of the Priest on the back. He was smiling at her like he used to do when they were together. She recalled the stolen looks during meetings or in the dining hall, stolen kisses in the corridors, passionate sex in his chambers when everyone else were asleep. This was the book he had written just before Mette met him. He had handed it to her and whispered in her ear that this contained all the answers, that she should read it every day, meditate on the words, let them linger in her soul and change herself from the inside out. She had done exactly that and he had been right. The book had changed her life, her way of thinking, her way of looking at the world, at her own life and who she really was. The book had taught her to be a servant, to be obedient and it had saved her life.

  See, Mette Grithfeldt was a mess before she met the Priest. At eighteen she ran away from home and met the wrong people who introduced her to drugs and parties. She had sex with so many different partners she couldn’t even recall all of their faces. Just to get more drugs. Her father had looked for her, even put up a reward to anyone who could help find her. But Mette didn’t want to go back to the mansion in Hellerup, north of Copenhagen where she had lived with her parents, where she grew up just waiting for the day when she would be old enough to get out of there. She hated that place and she loathed her parents and all their money and rich high-society friends. Yes, her dad was a very significant figure in the country, even friends with the Queen with whom he played secret card-games every third month along with other important people Mette never knew because it had to be all so secret. Oh how she loathed her parents and all they stood for. Buying people, exploiting people to make more money, to get more power. They had decided everything in her life. They had put her in the most expensive private school money could buy, they had bought her a horse to give her a healthy interest to attend to after school, they had hired a private teacher to teach her table manners and how to address people properly, how to speak like a lady to a gentleman and even to royalty since they expected her to be accepted as part of that circle and hang out with the two princes who were close to her in age. They found the right friends for her; they even made a plan for her education and career to keep on the family business. They had done all the right things a wealthy family would do for their child, they had just made one big mistake.

  They never asked Mette what she wanted.

  So on her eighteenth birthday Mette packed a backpack with clothes and some money she had hidden and left the oceanfront mansion on Hambros Allé after dark without looking back. She had taken the S-train into Copenhagen and laughed all the way enjoying her first time using public transportation like normal people did. In Copenhagen she had exited the train on the Central Station in the center of the city and never felt more alive. She had taken the exit towards Vesterbro and as soon as she stepped out on the street someone had approached her. A guy who had asked her if she was looking to have some fun.

  “As a matter of fact I am. It is my birthday and I want to celebrate,” she answered and then she followed him to an apartment not far away where he knew some fun people who ‘would love to party with a nice girl like her.’

  After that everything went very wrong for Mette Grithfeldt. The people in the apartment were nice enough once she got there. They offered her drinks and they played nice loud music. After an hour or so Mette felt very dizzy from the drinks and put her head down on the pillow on the couch and fell into a deep heavy sleep. When she woke up, she had no idea where she was.

  Later someone told her it was Hungary.

  Chapter 21

  It was tough for all of us to see my dad in the hospital bed. He was still unconscious and breathing through tubes. I cried and put my head on his chest, listening to his weak heartbeat and his heavy breathing. Julie had tears in her eyes when she hugged his hand tightly. Then she hugged me.

  “He’ll be fine, Mom,” she said. “I just know he will.”

  Somehow that felt really reassuring coming from her yet disturbing that she was suddenly so grown-up trying to calm me down when it was supposed to be the other way around.

  We were told by a nurse that Dad needed rest and we could come back later in the afternoon. We decided to drive back to Arnakke and find a decent place to eat lunch. The hospital was in Holbaek, the closest big city to Arnakke and it took fifteen minutes to get back to the small town by the fjord. We found a small inn located on a small hill with great views over Isefjorden. It was spectacular for such a small local place. The interior wasn’t much to brag about, though. It was very old, had low ceilings and doors and it hadn’t been renovated in many years. It was clearly a place where the locals hung out drinking beers. The heavy snow had driven more than usual to go there, the owner told us while she wiped a table clean so we could sit there.

  “People drive each other crazy being buried in the snow like this on a Saturday,” she said. “Then the men come here, to get out of the house. They cross snow and icy winds just to get away. It’s either that or listen to the old wife all day. That’s the way it has always been. Snow is great for business.” She burst into huge laughter. “Who would have thought that, huh?”

  We smiled and sat down at the table. Three guys stared at us from the pool table in the corner. They still wore hats to warm their ears. They were talking and drinking beer while shooting pool. At the bar I saw one woman sitting alone and two men sitting not far from her without uttering a word to one another. Four elderly men were sitting next to us still wearing their big winter jackets like they were leaving in a minute. A couple of younger guys entered just as we sat down, dusting off snow from their shoulders and taking off their jackets and hanging them on a rack on the wall. They had red noses and cheeks from the cold wind and had probably walked there from their houses. The owner who called herself Yvonne handed us menus.

  “I’ll be back to take your orders in a minute,” she said and left us.

  “I want a burger,” Julie said.

  “Me too,” Tobias followed. “And fries.”

  I was about to argue that they might want to choose something a little healthier but stopped myself. This was not the time. This was the time to enjoy each other and be thankful that we were all still alive.

  “I think I’ll have the lunch-platter with fish and open faced sandwiches on rye-bread,” I said and looked at Sune.

  “I’m hungry. I think I’ll grab a steak with fries.”

  Yvonne came back and we gave her our orders.

  “Great choices,” she said with a huge smile.

  “Let’s have a couple of beers with that,” I said. “And sodas for the kids.”

  “Sure.”

  Sune looked at me and smiled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You just read my mind. That was exactly what I wanted,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said and looked at Julie. I really needed a beer to calm my nerves down. I craved a cigarette to go with it but resisted the desire.

  “So all the locals hang out here?” I asked when Yvonne brought us the food.

  She shrugged. “Well the ones who drink beer, that is.”

  I chuckled. “Of course. So what is the word about the two people who have died at the ca
mp?”

  “I assume you mean what has happened at the Ranters‘ camp?”

  “The Ranters?”

  “That’s what we call them around here. Because they like to run around naked like the Ranters did in sixteen-something in England or something. I don’t know the exact story, but some people have seen them run around naked up there in the woods, so they got the name from that.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What else do they do?”

  Yvonne shrugged. “Who knows? Worship that Priest guy like he is some kind of God himself and then have sex with him. That’s what I have heard.”

  I was startled. I hadn’t heard the part about nakedness and sex before. That was new and a little disturbing to me. “So what are people saying about the two men who have died?”

  Yvonne sniffled. “That they had it coming, I guess. They all have. Running around in there acting like crazy doing stuff to each other. Driving out devils, screaming like only crazy people do. If you ask me they attract evil by doing all that stuff. If sin is a problem that only leads to hell like the pastor of our church - who by the way often comes in here - says, then they are in serious ankle-deep shit, if you want to know my opinion.”

  I drank some of my beer while wondering. “What kind of stuff are they doing to each other?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know much. Just what people are telling me. But I guess God finally found out what they are doing and now he’s wiping them out. About time, if you ask me.”

  “So you think it is some kind of divine punishment?” Sune asked.

  “If there is a God, then them dying certainly proves it to me. We don’t need people like that around here.”

  “Does anyone have any idea how they died?” I asked.

  “No. But I might have,” she said with a chuckle.

  Sune and I both looked up at the big woman with the wild curly hair in front of us.

  “You do?” Sune asked.

  “Sure. Either God finished them off by letting them rot up from the inside - or the devil did and God didn’t give a damn.”