Nine, Ten ... Never Sleep Again (6 page)

The sex was
amazing.
Martin had never been with anyone this
exciting. Not only was she gorgeous, especially without clothes, but her body was
so flexible they could do it in positions Martin had only dared to dream about.
It was like she was a gift from above, sent to make up for all the bad sex
Martin had to live with from his wife.

Or maybe she was sent from the devil. Either
way, Martin had the night of his life with this girl and after she left him
with a
see you next time you're in town big
boy
, Martin fell into a heavy sleep immediately.

He even dreamt about the sex and the girl and in
the dream she told him she wanted to stay here with him, that she never wanted
to leave him again.

"I think I love you," he whispered out
in the darkness, then opened his eyes and realized it was just a dream. Martin
closed his eyes again hoping to be able to go back to that warm place of utter
happiness, of complete joy that he had been in. He never wanted to leave it
again. When he was with her, he didn't think about Marie or the screaming kids.
There were no hanging breasts, there was no screaming wife yelling at him for
never taking part in anything, for him never being there when he was needed. No
there was nothing but him and … her. Him plunging into her voluptuous breasts,
licking her thighs and the silky skin on her stomach that was so flat and not
bumpy like Marie's.

Just him and
her
.
Just him and Barbara.

Martin looked at the door to the hallway of the
hotel and realized she hadn't closed it properly when she left. Secretly, he
hoped she would walk in through it again now and they would start all over
again, but the door didn't move. He closed his eyes for a second imagining her
coming back, telling him she forgot something.

"What did you forget?" he would ask.

"To fuck your brains out again," she
would answer. Then they would do it all night long. Over and over again. With
her, there would be no cases of not being able to get it up, or closing his
eyes and watching a porn-movie on the inside of the eyelids during sex. No with
Barbara he didn't have to think about other women or porn, with her it was
real. She was so real and his desire for her was very real.

Martin opened his eyes and got out of the bed
with the intention of closing the door properly. It was time to get some sleep
before he had to move on to another city tomorrow. There had been a lot of
driving in his car lately, but he didn't mind. At least he didn't have to go
home.

When he shut the door, he thought he heard a
sound behind him and turned. He smiled as he walked towards the bathroom where
the sound came from. Could it be? Could it really be? Had she come back after
all? Had she realized that she enjoyed being with Martin more than with any
other man? Did she want more sex or was she going to ask him to take her away
from here? Take her with him on his trip around Denmark and stay in hotels, and
eat in fancy restaurants. Would he do it? Would he take her?

In a heartbeat
.

"Barbara?"

She didn't answer. Martin walked closer to the
bathroom, then put his hand on the door and pushed it open. He walked in with a
wide smile, thinking he was going to find her in there dressed in sexy underwear,
maybe even some of those black stockings that he loved so much. He chuckled at
the thought of ripping them off with his teeth.

"I'm coming Barbara."

But what he found in the bathroom wasn't
Barbara, much to his surprise. A masked face stared back at him.

"Who are you?" he said with a
shivering voice. "What are you doing in my bathroom? Get out of here. I'm
trying to sleep."

Before he was able to react, the masked person
lifted the arm holding a syringe, planted it in Martin's shoulder and emptied
its contents.

"What the hell …?" he exclaimed and
looked at where the needle had gone through the skin. Seconds later, he could
no longer move his arms or legs and the last thing he saw before everything
went black, was the pink bathroom tiles coming closer and closer.

Arianna
Kosakovski pulled her
cart down the hallway, then
pulled out the key that the owner of the hotel had given her. Since there was
no sign on the door telling her not to go in, she opened the door and walked
in.

As usual, it was with a slight fear of walking
in on someone in the room. To think of the things she had seen over the years.
The most embarrassing was always when someone was having sex and forgot to put
the
do not disturb
sign out on
the handle. It happened more than once a month to her and she really hated
that. Why people always forgot, she didn't understand. It was so embarrassing
for both her and them. Arianna always knocked before entering when she knew the
guest hadn't checked out yet and so she did again when walking into room 237 at
the Hotel Bellevue in the small town of Hasle.

"Hello? Cleaning?" she said in her bad
Danish that still had a heavy Russian accent to it, even after eight years in
the country.

There was no answer so Arianna proceeded. She
grabbed the clean bed sheets from the cart and walked inside. She picked up the
guest's pants from the floor and threw them on a chair before starting to
change the bed sheets. People were so messy when they were in hotel rooms.
Always leaving their clothes on the floor and even their dirty underwear.
Arianna always wore plastic gloves when cleaning the rooms anyway, so she just
picked them up, but not without wrinkling her nose in disgust.

Arianna changed the bed sheets and linens first,
then brought in the vacuum cleaner and cleaned the floors. When done, she
wrapped the cord up and replaced the vacuum cleaner. Outside in the hallway,
she greeted her friend Sissel who took care of the rooms on the other side.
Sissel smiled and told a dirty joke that made Arianna laugh.

"You're very sick in head, Sissel,"
she said before she went back inside room 237 carrying towels and new soap for
the bathroom. As the door closed behind her, she stopped and looked at the
pants that she had put over the back of the chair. She put down the towels and
picked up the pants again. She went through the pockets and pulled out a
crumpled up one hundred kroner bill. Arianna smiled. It was her lucky day.
Often the guests were too drunk to remember what kind of cash they had in their
pockets. Especially businessmen travelling alone, picking up women in the bar
downstairs who were often hookers. They were way too deep into what was going
on to happen to remember putting a crumpled up one hundred kroner bill in their
pocket when they left the bar with the girl. They were all thinking with their
dicks at that point and would never know it went missing. Arianna straightened
the bill out, then put it in her bra. It was Sissel who had taught Arianna how
to earn a little extra cash while cleaning the rooms without anyone knowing
about it. It was the third time today she had been able to stick a one hundred kroner
bill in her bra.

"Just enough for Marius’ new shoes,"
she mumbled happily.

Marius had needed new shoes for a long time now
and his father was too cheap to help out.

"I gave you everything, Arianna. All you
dreamt of. I married you so you could come to Denmark, I even gave you a child.
What else do you want from me?" he often asked.

He was a hopeless alcoholic and Arianna hadn't
been able to live with his abuse when he was drunk. Not when it was the boy who
had to take the beating. That was too much for her to handle. So, a couple of
months ago, she had moved out and asked for separation. The government now said
they wanted to throw her out and, for a while now, she had been living with the
fear that they would actually do it. Especially since they told her Marius
could stay here with his dad. That left Arianna with an impossible choice to
make. If Marius stayed, he would get a great education for free and grow up to
be a real Dane giving him the best possibilities to amount to something. But
she would never see him and he would be with a father who drank and beat him up
every now and then. If she took him with her back to Russia, he would grow up in
extreme poverty like Arianna had and he wouldn't get much of an education.

Arianna sighed deeply as she picked up the
towels and walked towards the bathroom. She tried hard not to think about it
since it filled her with deep sadness. She had to cling to that last straw of
hope that the government would change its mind and choose not to deport her
after all. She had appealed the decision and was now awaiting the final answer.

Arianna felt a chill run down her back as she
opened the door to the bathroom. Not because she was cold, but from the terror
that met her in there that, for the first time in a long time, made her forget
all about the possibility of deportation. Sitting in the bathtub, almost
covered in ice-cubes was the body of a man whom she guessed was the rightful
owner of the one hundred kroner bill she was now carrying in her bra.

I followed
Julie's advice
and told Peter that I was sorry. It
helped, and the next day, after breakfast, we all went to the mainland together
in his boat. Julie was talking non-stop about the ice cream and what flavor she
was going to get.

I tried hard not to think about the man with the
missing kidney. I had even stayed away from my iPad this morning and not read
the news. It was, after all, a vacation and no one expected that I would keep
myself updated constantly. The problem was just that I loved keeping myself
updated. I loved being a part of the stream of news, constantly flowing. It was
my life, it was my job and it was a big part of who I was.

Once back on the mainland, we drove to town in
Peter's Land Rover. I was looking forward to seeing the small town. The castle
on the island was nice and all, but it felt really isolated, like it was very
far away from everything.

"I say we grab that ice cream first, before
we fill up the car with groceries," Peter said.

"Yay!" Julie shrieked from the
backseat.

"Fine with me," I said. I could always
eat ice cream, even if it was still morning.

Peter drove the car through a small street with
old houses on each side, then past a small movie theater, a couple of stores
selling clothes and the grocery store that we were going back to later. He
parked the car right in front of the ice cream store. I turned my head to look
at Julie, when I spotted Hotel Kragen out the back window. I froze for a
second, thinking about the story, then pushed it out of my mind again.

"Come on. Let's go," I said.

Julie jumped out and stormed inside the shop. I
grabbed Peter's hand as we followed her inside. The smell was intoxicating. I
loved small ice cream shops like this and ordered three scoops in a cone for
both Julie and I. Peter only wanted one. Julie and I had whipped cream and
chocolate sauce on ours as well. We sat outside at the store's tables and ate
greedily, Julie and I getting it smeared all over our faces. Peter looked at me
like I was crazy. As usual, he never had anything on his face.
Always the perfectionist.

"Rebekka," he said. "You've got
it all over. Can't you wipe it off or something?"

"Sorry," I said, found a napkin, and
wiped it off.

"There is more. Over here," he said
and pointed.

I wiped some more and finally got it all off. I
ate the rest of the ice cream working really hard on not getting anything on my
face and, if I did, I wiped it off right away.

While Julie finished hers, I caught myself
staring at the Hotel across the road. I saw photographers outside taking
pictures of the facade and journalists with notepads next to them. Even a
camera crew from the twenty-four hour news channel TV2News was there. The journalist
was interviewing someone outside the building. Peter saw me staring at them and
I looked away.

We drove to the grocery store and walked inside.
Two women were talking behind the counter. They stopped talking and nodded when
we entered, then continued. We took a cart and started filling it. Peter found
some wine and steaks, I tried to be good and found a pack of granola.

"You know you're never gonna eat that,
Mommy," Julie said. "You always buy granola and then never eat
it."

I chuckled. "You're right. Maybe some fresh
fruit … Bananas?"

"I like bananas," Julie said and went
to get some.

I couldn't help but eavesdrop on the two women's
conversation. It was about what had happened at the Hotel.

"Terrible to wake up like that," one
of them said. "Could you imagine? Someone taking your kidney?"

"I heard he had a girlfriend with
him," the other said. "A hooker, Arne who works in the bar at the
hotel told me she was."

The first woman scoffed. "Well he put it
upon himself then didn't he? He had it coming. I heard he had a wife and
child."

"Maybe she did it," the second one
laughed. "Maybe it was the wife?"

The first one laughed as well. "You bet you
that's what I'd do if Hans ever pulled a trick like that on me."

"I bet you would."

Peter approached me with the full cart.
"Wow that was fast," I said.

We walked to the counter. The women stopped
talking. The one on the right stepped forward and took care of our groceries.
She looked at Julie and smiled.

"What a beautiful daughter you have. Are
you visiting town?" She asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"You don't live down at the hotel now do
you?" She asked, terrified.

I shook my head. "No. No. We live on
Dragonsholm. You know, down on the island in the lake."

The woman froze and stared at me. "You're
down on the island?"

I nodded. "Yes."

The woman then shook her head and started
packing our groceries with fast movements.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Peter shook his head. "Nothing but
superstition," he said. "The locals have always been afraid of the
place."

I looked at the woman again. "But
why?"

"Nothing good ever came out of that
place," the woman said.

"Gerda," the other woman said.
"You're scaring the people." She nodded in the direction of Julie as
she spoke. Gerda tilted her head and looked at Julie like she felt sorry for her.
"Such a beautiful daughter. Such a pretty face."

"Okay," Peter said and took our bags.
"I think it's about time we leave now."

In the car on our way back, I couldn't stop
thinking about what the women had said. Peter saw it on my face. "Nothing
but superstition," he said.

"I know. But … well, you know me. I really
wanted to know the story. It sounded like they knew a good story."

Peter rolled his eyes. "You're impossible.
It's nothing but rumors and old wives’ tales. An old castle like this one will
always have its share of ghost stories, like the one with the carriage that you
hear at night that is supposed to be the carriage taking the Earl's body
away."

"I think I heard it," Julie said.
"One night I heard it."

Peter looked in the rearview mirror. "Nonsense,"
he said. "It's just your mind playing tricks on you, making you think you
hear it because I told you the story. See that's how stories like this work.
You believe them and then you think you hear or see it and then you're scared.
It's all in your mind like all other superstitions."

"Do you know them?" I asked. "Do
you know the stories?"

Peter exhaled. "I know some of them, parts
of them, yes. But do you really want to scare your daughter further? I could
also go online and find some scary ghost stories to give her nightmares. Is it
really worth it?"

I shrugged and looked out the window. "No.
You're probably right. I was just curious."

"Oh come on Daddy, tell us just one of
them, please? I promise I won't get nightmares," Julie said.

"Well, all I know is that they say some
doctor once went amok back when it was a mental institution. Apparently he
killed some patients or something. Okay, not just some, but a lot of patients,
according to the story."

"How?" Julie asked. "How did he
kill them?"

"He performed operations as experiments.
One of them being him removing their organs one at a time, thinking sickness in
the organs caused them to be deranged. In the end, the patients naturally died.
That's all. Nothing but a crazy doctor. Now I think we should find something
nice to talk about. How about that ice cream, huh? It was truly
something."