The Mist

feeling the weight of the men’s stares bearing down on her.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ Einar asked.
‘Anna?’ she croaked at last. ‘Isn’t she here yet?’
‘I thought the road was blocked?’ Leó muttered, avoiding Erla’s eye.
‘You can always get through on foot,’ Erla contradicted him sharply. ‘What’s the weather like now?’
She glanced at the window, but all she could see was the reflection of the candles.
‘Sit down, love,’ Einar said. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
Instead of obeying, she turned and went into the hall.
‘You had such a disturbed night,’ Einar called after her. ‘I thought I should let you lie in a bit. This power cut really seems to have got to you.’
‘I’m perfectly used to power cuts,’ she retorted from the hall. She opened the front door and stuck her head out into the unrelieved darkness, then took a step forward in her thick socks, hardly knowing what she was doing, and sank straight into a deep, fresh snowdrift. Icy flakes brushed against her face. She jerked back her foot, feeling the cold biting through flesh and bone. What an incredibly stupid thing to do, wading out into the snow like that.
She retreated into the hall and closed the door.
‘What on earth were you thinking, Erla?’ Einar boomed in her ear, laying a hand on her shoulder.
She was so shocked she almost lost her balance.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, concerned.
The blood was throbbing in her head again. She rubbed her temples and tried to concentrate. It was safe to say that she had got out of bed on the wrong side. She would have to pull herself together. After all, she thought with a sudden sense of relief, they had got through the night unharmed, and Leó would be leaving shortly.
Turning to her husband, she said in a falsely cheerful tone: ‘Yes, of course everything’s all right. I was just going to check on the weather and accidentally stepped in some snow. It’s very deep out there.’
‘It’s been falling all night, love. Come back in and have some coffee.’
She followed Einar into the sitting room and sat down in an armchair, waiting while he fetched her a cup, uncomfortably conscious of her wet sock. She didn’t say a word and deliberately avoided looking at Leó, who was still sitting on the sofa, facing her across the coffee table, nursing his cup and raising it to his lips from time to time.
Only when Einar came back and took the chair next to her did she find her voice. ‘Still no electricity?’ she asked her husband in a low voice.
She knew there wasn’t but had felt compelled to break the silence somehow. Anyway, there was a certain comfort in asking a question to which you already knew the answer.
‘It’ll be out all bloody Christmas, I guarantee you,’ said Einar.
‘Do you get used to this?’ Leó asked with a smile.
The room was illuminated by five candles, three on the table, two on the sideboard, the jerky shadows making the familiar surroundings appear oddly eerie. Erla felt almost as if she were trapped in a bad dream.
‘Yes, you get used to it,’ she said after a delay, then added, with an edge: ‘But you needn’t worry about that, since you’ll be leaving as soon as you’ve finished your coffee. Has Einar gone over the route with you?’
Instead of answering, Leó threw a glance at Einar, and for a while there was an embarrassed silence, as if the two men had formed an alliance from which she was excluded.
Einar cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere today.’
‘Not going anywhere? What do you mean?’
‘You saw for yourself, love: the snow’s too deep. There’s a storm out there. We can’t send the poor man out in that.’ From the way he spoke, Einar might have been talking about someone who wasn’t present, rather than about the man who was sitting right in front of them.
‘Of course he can go!’ Erla tried to stop her voice rising to a screech. ‘If Anna can get here, he must be able to leave, even if he does have a bit further to go.’
‘Your husband tells me it’s actually quite a long –’
‘And why didn’t you tell us you’d stopped off at Anna’s place first?’ Erla interrupted him. ‘Did you meet her? Hm? Did you meet her?’
‘I didn’t meet anyone on my way here, not a soul,’ Leó assured her, looking uneasy now. ‘That’s the honest truth.’
‘Why don’t you go back to bed, love?’ Einar said gently. ‘You’re tired. Leó’s spending Christmas with us, and that’s all there is to it. We can’t just throw him out in weather like this.’
Erla groaned. She felt as if the walls were closing in on her, as if she were alone in the world, with no allies. And she was worried sick about Anna. She became conscious of her quickened breathing. The desperation to speak, to convey her fears to Einar, was so intense that it almost choked her.
Leó stood up. ‘Look, I think I’ll go back to my room. I do apologize for the inconvenience. I’m really very sorry. And very grateful for your hospitality – you must know that.’
Einar nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Only when Leó had left the room did Erla calm down enough to speak. ‘Einar…’ She struggled to find the words to express her fears. ‘Einar, you know he’s lying to us.’
‘We shouldn’t always believe the worst of people, Erla.’
‘But why didn’t they mention it on the news?’
‘Perhaps they did, love. We haven’t been able to listen to the radio since the electricity went. Perhaps there’s a search party out looking for him even as we speak.’
‘You know perfectly well there isn’t. And his tracks – he came along the road, past Anna’s house. He’s lying that he stumbled on our place by chance. And … and…’ Again she felt the pressure building up in her temples, the beginnings of a splitting headache. ‘And he was snooping