As Black as Ebony Page 8

  Lumikki listened to the words in the chant that was playing—the singer had such an alluring voice, but the meaning was so sad.

  “Can we turn the music off?” she asked Sampsa.

  “Of course. What do you want to do?”

  “Sleep,” Lumikki replied without looking Sampsa in the eyes as she walked to the bed.

  Suddenly, she was so tired she couldn’t stay upright. Lumikki threw herself on the bed with her clothes on, wrapped a blanket around herself, and fell asleep instantly.

  Lumikki wasn’t immediately sure what had woken her up. She glanced next to her. Sampsa was sound asleep. Lumikki leaned up on her elbows and looked around. Sampsa had cleaned up the picnic and folded the blanket. Lumikki had been sleeping so deeply that she hadn’t heard a thing.

  Not until she looked at her phone to check the time did she realize a text message had woken her. It was 10:15 p.m. This time, the message was from the stalker.

  Come to Särkänniemi. What better place than an amusement park for us to meet? I’ll tell you everything there.

  Often, I watch you even when I can’t actually see you. I have a special place just for that. I have pictures of you. I took them secretly. In the pictures, you are so sweet and contemplative since you thought no one could see you. I hung the pictures on the walls of my secret room. Sometimes I stroke your forehead with a finger. I touch the curve of your full lower lip and think about what it would be like to kiss you.

  I also have all the newspaper articles about you. And a lot of files you don’t even know exist yet. I made a timeline of your life on one wall. So much has happened to you.

  Did you think you lost that orange mitten of yours? I have it. That and your silver pen and the button that fell off your white blouse. They are the small treasures I caress since I can’t caress you yet.

  Sometimes I come to my “Lumikki room” with candles and talk to you. I watch as the glow of the flames makes your cheeks redden in the photographs. You are so beautiful. You are the most beautiful thing I know.

  Pictures aren’t enough, though. Mementos are just substitutes.

  I want you completely, with all my senses. I want to see you, to smell you, to taste you, to touch you. I have never wanted anything or anyone this much. You are the purpose of my life and the meaning for my existence, my dear Lumikki.

  Lumikki climbed over the fence of the amusement park, hoping she wasn’t going to trip some sort of alarm. The temperature had dropped below freezing and the fence was slick. However, she managed to get to the other side without any sirens going off. Frost glittered on everything like a layer of magic dust. The otherwise empty, quiet amusement park looked eerie and threatening. The dark rides rose into the night like sleeping monsters with many arms. They were motionless, but appeared as if at any moment they could tear themselves loose of the ground and start walking. The swing carousel could have begun spinning wildly and the chains of the chairs could have snapped, sending them flying in every direction. The Magic Carpet could have taken flight and landed in the lake, sinking gurgling under the waves.

  The rides had been left to hibernate for the winter. There was no call to wake them because they would be angry.

  Lumikki had managed to slip away again without Sampsa waking up. The boy had a gift for deep sleep. This time, Lumikki had left so quickly that she hadn’t even left a note. She couldn’t risk him waking up. Lumikki had to meet this “Shadow.” She had to get answers.

  Now she was inside the amusement park, but she saw no sign of the stalker. Lumikki was tired of all this hiding.

  “I’m here!” she yelled as loud as her lungs would allow.

  The echo reverberated off the walls of the rides. No one answered.

  Come to the fun house.

  A text message again. Why was this jerk still running her around? She had already come here, put herself in danger. She was ready to meet.

  The door to the fun house was open. Lumikki called inside. There was no reply. She stepped in. A tilting floor, a rope bridge, a ball pit, and a hall of mirrors that made you look tall or short, fat or as thin as a rail. Lumikki had been here before. She could run through it quickly. Even the blackout hall and the glass labyrinth. And the slides at the end.

  Next text message.

  Good. Now you’ve been through the strange stage we call childhood. It is skewed and distorted. You can’t always trust your memories. Mirrors lie. Now it’s time for you to move on to the Tornado.

  Lumikki was growing frustrated and losing hope. She wanted to put an end to this. But maybe it really was the last leg of her journey. Maybe she would get her answers once she had completed these tasks.

  The Tornado was the park’s wildest ride, a roller coaster with crazy corkscrews. Riders sped along, suspended beneath the track, sometimes upside down. The Tornado also had an enormous loop that swung all the way around.

  Next instruction.

  Climb along the track.

  This guy had to be completely out of his mind. Only a crazy person would go climbing on a roller coaster track. But this time, the crazy person was Lumikki, because she did as she was told.

  Climbing along the icy track was difficult. The metal surface was slick, making it hard to get a grip. Lumikki managed to crawl along the first few yards of flat track, but as soon as the slope increased, climbing became almost impossible. Lumikki’s strength was almost gone already. She crept along the track on her hands and knees, hanging when it twisted and turned sharply, holding on with her legs in a vise grip. Sometimes, she pulled herself up with only her arms. Lumikki clenched her teeth, unwilling to give in. She made the mistake of looking down. She was high up. Too high up. How high did the stalker want her to go? Lumikki closed her eyes and tried to breathe. The frigid wind lashed her cheeks. This was crazy. She could fall and die at any second. Suddenly, someone yelled from below.

  “Lumikki!”

  Lumikki would have recognized that voice anywhere. But she couldn’t believe her ears. She glanced down again. Yes, she had heard right. Blaze.

  “Come down from there! Carefully!”

  Suddenly, Lumikki had lost all feeling in her arms, her legs, her cheeks, and her heart. Blaze. The person she loved most in all the world. The person she trusted most in all the world, despite it all. Was Blaze . . . ? Could he be . . . ? Lumikki couldn’t think the thought through to its logical conclusion. But what other explanation could there be?

  But then she heard another voice. Almost as familiar.

  “What the hell are you doing? Come down before I call the fire department!”

  Sampsa.

  Lumikki didn’t understand anything anymore. How could Sampsa and Blaze both be here? Her strength flagged even more. Lumikki decided to start climbing down. It was even more difficult than climbing up. The metal surface tried to slip out of her hands. Lumikki wrapped her legs around the edge of the track, but they slipped too. She ended up hanging by her arms.

  Lumikki felt her grip failing.

  But Sampsa and Blaze managed to catch her. For a moment, Lumikki was in both of their embraces, both sets of arms protectively encircling her. Protecting or imprisoning. Lumikki didn’t know which anymore. She extracted herself from their arms and took a few steps back.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” she asked.

  “We could ask you the same thing,” Blaze replied confrontationally.

  “I asked first, so you answer first.” Lumikki did not avoid Blaze’s gaze.

  Blaze looked away first.

  “Okay. I was hanging around outside your apartment because I couldn’t sleep. I guess I was hoping I might catch a glimpse of you or something, maybe in the window,” Blaze admitted. “And when I saw you go out, I decided to follow you.”

  He sounded sincere. But Lumikki wasn’t sure whether she could trust anyone anymore. She shifted her gaze to Sampsa.

  “And you?”

  “I read the text you got. It didn’t wake you up right away. And when you woke
up, I pretended to be asleep and then followed you. For a while now, I’ve been feeling like you must be seeing someone else.”

  At first, Sampsa looked ashamed, but then he raised his jaw defiantly.

  “And apparently, I was right. You came here to meet him.”

  Sampsa emphasized the last word with disdain and nodded toward Blaze.

  “No, I didn’t,” Lumikki said.

  “Well then why did you come?”

  Lumikki didn’t answer. She was so confused. Was Blaze telling the truth? Was Sampsa telling the truth? Wasn’t either of them the stalker? Or could they both be together? Was this another conspiracy?

  “Whatever happened, it’s pretty clear you aren’t needed here anymore,” Blaze said to Sampsa.

  Turning to Blaze, Sampsa stepped too close to him, invading his personal space.

  “I’d like to remind you that Lumikki is my girlfriend,” Sampsa said.

  “Who kissed me only a couple of days ago.”

  Sampsa looked to Lumikki as if asking her to deny this.

  Again, Lumikki didn’t reply, but her eyes said enough. Sampsa shoved Blaze.

  “Get out of our life!” he snapped. “You already left her once. You missed your chance.”

  Blaze gave a crooked smile and pushed Sampsa back gently, almost playfully.

  “True love doesn’t care about things like that. Lumikki and I belong together. It’s fate.”

  “You talk pretty big considering you weren’t man enough to stand by Lumikki’s side,” Sampsa spat.

  “Oh, so now we’re going to see who the real man is?”

  Suddenly, Blaze and Sampsa were wrestling each other. Both growled curses even as they shouted at each other that Lumikki really loved them. Dead tired, Lumikki watched the display, once again as if through glass. She didn’t cheer either on or wish that either would lose. The fight just looked stupid. Juvenile.

  “I can’t handle this right now,” Lumikki sighed. “You two can stay here and beat each other to a bloody pulp for all I care. I’m leaving. And don’t bother following me.”

  Then Lumikki took off running without a backward glance. She wanted to feel her exhausted muscles strained even further. She wanted the frozen air to torture her lungs. Lumikki wanted something, anything that would clear the fog of uncertainty from her mind.

  Could a person go crazy without knowing it? Or was that the normal way of going crazy? What if she really had lost her grip on reality, if she had just imagined it all? What if the letters had never existed? Or the text messages? Or the stalker?

  What if it had all just been in Lumikki’s head?

  Lumikki jumped against the fence, grabbed it with her fingers and the tips of her shoes, and climbed over. She continued running. As she reached the main road that ran along the shore of the lake, someone shouted after her.

  “Hey, baby! The party’s just getting started!”

  A group of middle-aged men, apparently just leaving a Christmas party at the marina. Their elf hats and red noses suggested as much, anyway. Lumikki just kept on running. She would have liked to run away from everything, away from her life, away from the madness that her days had turned into.

  She still didn’t have any answers. She still didn’t know who was stalking her.

  When Lumikki opened her apartment door, she felt like collapsing on the floor and crying. How much could a person endure? How much did she have to carry on her own? Where was the point after which a person just broke?

  Lumikki was in such a state of confusion and distress that she realized too late there was a smell that didn’t belong. By the time she noticed, her hands were already twisted behind her back in a tight grip, a leather glove was shoved in her mouth, and her sleeve was pulled up.

  Lumikki’s last awareness was of the sharp point of a needle pressing against her bare arm and something being injected into her vein.

  Then the world was replaced by blackness.

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, EARLY MORNING

  The shadow hovered sometimes closer and sometimes farther off. Its silhouette was indistinct and shifting. She couldn’t quite make out its shape.

  Lumikki tried to focus. Everything was so blurry. Her head ached and her arms and legs felt heavy like in a nightmare. Her eyelids wanted desperately to fall back shut. She forced them open.

  Lumikki was lying on her back. She moved her left hand away from her body and it struck an obstacle. The same thing happened with her right. And both legs. She managed to lift one of her hands up far enough to discover a barrier there too. Strange. She could still see up and to the sides. Or she would have been able to if everything weren’t so cloudy. Cloudy eyes, cloudy thoughts, neither of which she could seem to focus.

  “And it wasn’t long before she opened her eyes.”

  The voice came from above Lumikki. It came from the shadow that moved. Lumikki had the vague realization that the voice was familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “I knew you would be stronger than the princess in the story. No poison could affect you for very long. You’re a fighter. You’ve been fighting your entire life. You’ve fought against me valiantly too. You didn’t show your fear. You didn’t tell anyone.”

  The fog began to clear a little from Lumikki’s head. Finally, she realized what was blocking the slow, labored movements of her arms and legs. She was in a casket. In the glass coffin from the play.

  “But now your struggle is over,” the shadow’s voice continued. “You don’t have to fight anymore. You can give in now and be mine.”

  Lumikki tried to sit up. She felt as if her veins had been poured full of black lead. Her head banged against the glass top of the coffin. She struggled, managed to lift up her hands, and tried to push the cover off.

  It should have been easy. She knew that. She had done it time and time again in rehearsal. Now the cover didn’t budge.

  “Poor little Lumikki. Sometimes life surprises us. Everything doesn’t go the way we thought. Sometimes you can’t get out of a glass coffin so easily. You see, this isn’t a play. This isn’t a fairy tale. This is real. And in reality, of course, the coffin’s lid is screwed shut.”

  Lumikki tried to make her fumbling mind recognize the voice. It was so familiar. She should have known. She should have been able to think of the name.

  The name was so familiar.

  She had said it so many times.

  She just couldn’t find it in the haze that shrouded her brain. But she knew the voice wasn’t lying now. The lid really was screwed shut.

  “What may surprise you to learn is that a glass coffin screwed shut is completely airtight. So you should be saving your breath. The oxygen won’t last forever. And I’m sure you’d rather stay conscious while I’m telling you everything I know about you.”

  Lumikki lay back down. Relax, she ordered herself. Only breathe as much as you have to. Stay calm. Otherwise you’re never going to survive this.

  You’re never going to survive this.

  Terror crept along Lumikki’s neck as she heard the words echo in her mind. They could easily be true.

  “I’m sure you’ve read all of my letters, so you’re well acquainted with how much I know about you. I’ve been studying you for quite some time. I’ve followed you and watched you, guarded you and protected you, spied on you and followed your steps. I’ve done this because when I met you, a feeling came to me that you and I are the same. There is a darkness that lives in us.”

  Lumikki felt like vomiting. She wasn’t sure whether the nausea was a result of the words or whatever he’d drugged her with. She tried to breathe more evenly. To bring her heart rate closer to resting.

  “You may have balked at all my talk of blood and killing. I’ve seen your expressions once or twice when you were reading my letters. You looked shocked and afraid. Needlessly. I never would have written those things to you if I didn’t know you are a killer too. Actually, of the two of us, only you are a killer. I just enjoy the idea of killing. I
suppose it’s unavoidable that eventually I’ll carry out my fantasy. That hasn’t happened yet though. If you had been stupider and told someone about my letters and messages, I would have carried out my threats. It would have given me a reason and a justification. What is your reason and justification, my love? Just the desire to kill? An innate evil? Not to worry, though. Either option is just as stimulating for me.”

  The shadow circled the glass coffin like a predator his prey. Considering how to strike and at what opening. Would he sink his teeth first into the thigh or the arm or the throat?

  “I don’t know whether you’re just a good actor or if you really don’t remember. I suppose that your memories must have begun coming back when you read my letters. Your bloody hands. How you killed your sister, Rosa.”

  Lumikki’s pulse shot up to panic levels. Could this shadow really know something like that? Could it be true? Had she really killed her sister?

  “Oh my dear Lumikki, how pale you look. Perhaps you didn’t remember. How you plunged the sharp knife into your sister’s stomach and stood coldly watching as she bled out. You didn’t call the babysitter to help. By the time she arrived, it was already too late. I’ve read all of the police reports.”

  Lumikki’s clouded thoughts and senses completely lost their hold on the present, but the shadow’s words suddenly made the past snap into focus. Closing her eyes, she was three years old.

  Lumikki was three and Rosa was six. Mom and Dad were away somewhere, probably at the theater, and their babysitter was a bored teenage girl from next door, Jennika. That night, Jennika and her boyfriend were having a fight, which she was thrashing out on the phone, repeatedly calling the boy, her own friends, and the boy’s friends. All Lumikki and Rosa got to eat for dinner was some barely reheated leftover pancakes and strawberry jam.

  “So why do you get to suck face with whoever you want but I’m a whore if I just talk to a guy?” Jennika snapped angrily into the phone.