The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

the snow and conceal her. She knew her way around here; she could find her bearings so that she
didn’t run back to the farm or straight into into its arms. The problem was that the snow had
changed the landscape overnight, covered the paths, the familiar rocks and levelled out all the
contours. And the dusk everything was distorted and disfigured by the blackness. And by her own
panic.
She stopped to listen. Her heaving, rasping breathlessness rent the tranquillity; it sounded as if she
were tearing the greaseproof paper wrapped round her daughters’ packed lunches. She managed to
bring her breathing under control. All she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears and the
low gurgle of a stream. The stream! They usually followed the stream when they were picking
berries, setting traps or searching for chickens which in their heart of hearts they knew the fox had
taken. The stream led down to a gravel road, and there sooner or later a car would pass.
She no longer heard any footsteps. No twigs cracking, no crunching of snow. Perhaps she had
escaped? With her body hunched over, she moved swiftly towards the gurgling sounds.
The stream looked as though it was flowing over a white bed sheet through a depression in the
forest floor.
Sylvia trampled straight in. The water, which reached mid-ankle, soon penetrated her boots. It was
so cold that it froze her leg muscles. Then she began to run again. In the same direction as the water
flowed. She made loud splashes as she lifted her legs for long, ground-gaining strides. No tracks,
she thought triumphantly. And her pulse slowed, even though she was running.
That had to be a result of the hours she had spent on the treadmill at the fitness centre last year. She
had lost six kilos and ventured to maintain that her body was in better shape than those of most
thirty-five-year-olds. That was what he said anyway, Yngve, whom she had first met at the socalled
inspiration seminar last year. Where she had been all too inspired. My God, if only she could
turn back the clock. Back ten years. All the things she would have done differently! She wouldn’t
have married Rolf. And she wouldn’t have had an abortion. Yes, of course, it was an impossible
thought now that the twins had come into the world. But before they were born, before she had seen
Emma and Olga, it would have been possible, and she wouldn’t have been in this prison that she
had constructed around herself with such care.
She swept away the branches overhanging the stream, and from the corner of her eye she saw
something, an animal, react with a startled movement and disappear into the grey gloom of the
forest.
It went through her mind that she would have to be careful swinging her arms so that she didn’t hit
her leg with the hatchet. Minutes had passed, but it felt like an eternity since she had been standing
in the barn slaughtering chickens. She had cut off two heads and had been about to cut off a third
when she heard the barn door creak behind her. Of course she had been alarmed; she was alone and
hadn’t been aware of either footsteps or a car in the yard. The first thing she had noticed was the
strange apparatus, a thin metal loop attached to a handle. It looked like the snares they used to catch
foxes. And when the holder of this instrument began to talk, it slowly dawned on her that she was
the prey, she was the one who was going to die.
She had been told why.
And she had listened to the sick but limpid logic as the blood slowed in her veins, as if it were
already coagulating. Then she had been told how. In detail. And the loop had begun to glow, first
red then white. That was when she had swung her arm in horror, felt the recently sharpened hatchet