The Lost Village by Camilla Sten (ereader android .txt) 📕

“Where will you go?” Elsa asks Pastor Mattias, and her voice sounds almost like normal. “Where will you go after this?”

It’s like speaking to a statue, a quiet, forbidding monolith. But he looks at her and smiles mildly.

“Go?” he asks. “Why should I go anywhere?”

Behind her Elsa hears the steps and breaths of those who have started to throng into the cavern and push out toward the walls. Those who are watching them at a distance. Those waiting.

His voice is hardly more than an exhalation, yet still Elsa hears every word.

“I have created my Heaven on Earth,” he says. “Every one of these people sees me as their prophet. Their guide. Their master. They drink the words from my lips. I have created Silvertjärn in my own image. No, I am not going anywhere. We have many lovely years ahead, Silvertjärn and I.”

The light of the torch dances in his gray eyes.

“Down here I am God.”

 NOW

In this darkness I am blind.

With every step I take, my knee sends small streams of pain up my leg, and my back is one single aching knot. I can’t tell if it’s the lack of light or the blow to my head that’s affecting my balance, but I keep on bumping into walls, having to catch myself with grazed palms.

I hear Robert staggering behind me. He sounds like he’s doing better than me, but that isn’t saying much.

When I feel the water start to seep into my shoes I don’t realize what it is, I just take another step. It’s the splashing sound that makes me stop.

“What…” I begin, but I’m cut off by Aina’s hoarse, excited voice as it creeps over my shoulder.

“Here,” she says, and I hear her approach, hear Robert grunt as she shoves past him, her hands still fixed on Tone.

The light dazzles my sore eyes, and I blink hard, trying to get my vision to clear.

The tunnel is small and cramped. It’s a transport tunnel: behind us it’s straight, but ahead it looks like it starts to dip down into a bend. The mine itself must be further down. The water has flooded the passageway up to the bend, forming a sinkhole, some sort of underground lake. It’s impossible to see how deep it is, or how far down it goes.

When I turn to look at Aina and Tone, I see that Aina is holding an old kerosene lamp made of glass and steel. It looks basic, and the kerosene container is almost empty, but it’s more than enough for the small tunnel. In the light of the burner the dark surface of the water looks like oil, sleek and black.

I back away from the water’s edge and into Robert.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

I wish I could apologize for so much more; that I could make him understand everything I regret. But my voice is broken and faint, and “sorry” will never be enough.

The hymn seems to ooze from the passage walls, trickling down the rock with the damp. Aina hums along, then sings, her voice surprisingly sweet:

“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide…”

Her voice sounds solemn despite the high-pitched hymn. It gets multiplied by the tunnel’s cracks and nooks, fragmented and hurled back at us like thousands of soulless whispers. She is one of a choir.

“It’s over now,” she says, and she sounds on the verge of tears. “It’s over. The time for the resurrection has come.”

I stare at the water. At the faint rings on the surface rolling out toward us.

I don’t know what it is she intends to do with us, but the deepest, most primal parts of me know that she doesn’t plan to leave here with us. Whatever purpose it might serve in those rusted, meandering pathways of her brain, her intention is to kill us.

Aina fixes her eyes on me.

“He promised,” she says, equal parts hopeful and aggressive. “The pastor promised he’d come back if I waited. He said it wouldn’t be long. I didn’t want to stay up there, but he told me to. He told me to.”

She shakes her head and then mutters, despairing, to herself:

“I waited, like he told me. But it wasn’t enough.”

She puts the kerosene lamp down on the floor, lighting the tunnel from below. The light throws her into razor-sharp contrast against the wall of the mine.

I have to keep her talking; so long as she keeps talking, she won’t use the knife squeezed so tightly in her hands.

“You want the others to come back to you,” I repeat, cautiously, trying to keep up with her mutterings. My brain is working feverishly. Thoughts are trying to drag their way out of the thumping bustle that is my mind, but the blow has left it feeling swollen and foggy, and I’m finding it hard to focus.

“Yes!” she gasps. Her face seems to melt into the glare from below her. “They went underground to complete the sacrifice. We were going to be able to live in God’s grace. He said I didn’t need to see it. He said … he said…” She breaks off, and her face contorts into a grimace.

“That’s why they didn’t come back,” she whispers, a sudden vulnerability to her face, a naked anxiety. “We all had to be there to witness the sacrifice, but I wasn’t with them. It was going to be a new testament; we were going to be the new nation. All of the testaments must be sealed in blood, like Christ’s blood on the cross. It was going to purify our sins, you see. But I wasn’t there, so we weren’t all present.” Her thin, wrinkled bottom lip trembles.

I fight to try to find the words.

“It wasn’t your fault, Aina,” I say.

It’s flat and empty, a cliché. But her eyes light up. She shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “It wasn’t my fault. It was her fault. The witch’s.”

I see her grip on the knife harden.

“I tried to repay the debt,” she says, nodding to