CHAPTER TWO: VISITORS
Lilla-My wasn't entirely sure why she was awake, but she was sure it wasn't for a good reason. Tuutikki had once told her about all the weird things that came alive during the winter – the ghosts and ghouls and spirits and wandering creatures who followed the ice wherever it went. The shrieks of snow-foxes and howls of northern gales meant nothing. They were all normal and natural and explainable, and yet…
She turned over in bed for the hundredth time, her sister Mymlan sleeping nearby and quite deaf to all the ruckus of the long night. Oh yes, hibernation came easy to people who spent so much of the warmer months not sleeping at all, out and about with beaus long into the early mornings. Not that it was any of Lilla-My's business, but she felt it was silly to spend so much time with anyone, let alone boys.
There was a rustle in the bare bushes near her window. Lilla-My sighed and sat up, cracking open the window and peering down. Two dog-eared men stared wide-eyed up at her.
"Can I help you?" she asked sarcastically.
The younger man's wet nose twitched, ears lifting: "Have you got any biscuits?"
The older man knocked him on the head with his paw: "Now ain't the time for biscuits, Karlo! Hush now, it's comin'!"
Lilla-My groaned and leaned out on her elbows: "If you two boneheads don't leave, I'll—"
A stick snapped somewhere, and the two hunters turned to look out into the woods, the dim light of the moon filtering through the bare branches and thick pines. There, slowly moving through the brush, was a tall, skeletal figure. Lilla-My's eyes went wide. The two hunters ducked further down into the bushes. The figure was a distance away, but not far enough, and it moved its head from side-to-side as if sniffing the air. Then, suddenly, it fell to all-fours and disappeared in a rush of pine needles and snow, out of sight.
"Why you didn't shoot, Karlo?" fussed the elder man. "It was right there!"
"I-I'm sorry, ukki, I just froze up!"
"Nah, nah, it's alright, it's alright. We'll catch it again, don't worry."
"What was that?" asked Lilla-My, still staring at where the figure had been.
Karlo stood and slung his rifle over his shoulder: "It's a horrible monster, little miss! It attacked somebody, and we're trying to hunt it down before it gets any closer to Muminhouse—"
The old man tugged on Karlo's ear: "Now, you keep your mouth shut. No use scarin' people wh'ain't know." He shook his head at her. "Is nothin' you lil'uns need to worry too much about. Jus' stay inside like the inspector said and mind your peas and cukes."
"Why would it be going Muminhouse?" Lilla-My insisted, leaning half out the window. "Everyone's asleep right now! It's not like they'll invite it in for tea!"
"Oh, they're not asleep anymore—" began Karlo, then he glanced at his grandpa and stuttered to a stop "—bu-but it's fine, really! Everything's good! No need to worry! Stay home! It's fine! We're on the hunt, haha!"
And with that, the two men left, rushing off on tiptoe in the direction the figure had disappeared in.
Lilla-My closed the window. Well, she was most definitely awake now. Come sunrise, perhaps she ought to go pay a visit to Muminhouse, just in case something did actually happen.
Mymlan mumbled contentedly in her sleep but did not stir.
…
Mumintroll sat in the wooden chair, chin on his arm, holding Nuuska's hand. He watched his chest rise and fall, felt his breath against the back of his ear, and though he was upset that he'd slept through Nuuska waking up, he was glad that he had at all. Mama had taken it as a sign that he was out of immediate danger and could be moved from the hard table to a more comfortable bed. It had taken some doing, but they'd managed. All was quiet in the spare room.
"You'll come back, won't you?"
"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"
Mumintroll shut his eyes firmly as they began to burn again.
The first snow had fallen around them on the bridge, melting into his fur.
"Oh, I don't know," he'd said, embarrassed. "I'm always worried something will keep you, you know?"
Nuuska had shifted his rucksack on his shoulders and smiled one of those warm, endearing smiles that made it feel like summer again.
"You worry too much."
"Yes, I know."
He'd taken Mumintroll's paws in his hands.
"I promise I'll come back, just like always. Before you've even woken up!"
Mumintroll gripped Nuuska's hand tighter—he'd done just as he'd promised, despite everything. Really, he always had, even when they were very young. Never a promise broken, never a promise made that couldn't be kept. Mumintroll sighed.
"Promise you'll be alright?" he whispered.
There was no answer but the ragged breathing against his ear.
…
The walk to Muminhouse had never been a long one, but today, it was a cold, damp eternity. Winter had always had an empty feeling to it, but it was extra unsettling to see so many fresh footprints in the snow, slowly being covered by new-fallen flakes. Apparently, the whole village had been through here yesterday while she had tried to sleep.
Lilla-My stopped as Muminhouse came into view. The river was frozen over, the bridge undercrowned with icicles, and all along the usual footpath up to the porch were curious, dark, brown spots, as if someone had been dripping hot chocolate as they came to the house. She grumbled and walked around them, hopping up on to the porch. She tried to open the door. It refused. She tried again, turning the knob as far as it would go. It… was it locked?
She knocked, and Mama hurried from the front room to let her in.
"Lilla-My!" Mama said, taking her in by the shoulder. "What on earth are you doing here? Come inside, quickly now."
"Why? Mama, what's going on? The door's locked!"
"I'll explain in a moment, dear. Come on, let's get you warmed up."
Even just entering the house, everything was somehow wrong. There was a smell, something odd that she was sure she'd noticed somewhere before, maybe in the woods or in one of the caves she'd explored, but here it stood alone, indoors, overpowering. As Mama pulled the dustcover off one of the cushioned chairs, Lilla-My saw that her fur was mottled in places, dark and unnerving. The fireplace was lit, but the fire felt heavy somehow.
"Have a seat, dear," said Mama hurriedly, pasting on her usual, patient smile. "Would you like some tea?"
Lilla-My frowned at her and eyed the bottle of peroxide beside the open sewing basket.
"I saw something weird in the woods last night," she said flatly.
Mama's face dropped, her eyes going wide. She caught herself after a moment and blinked, regaining some of her composure: "Oh? I thought you'd be asleep."
"Well, I was," Lilla-My said, shaking off her red coat and jumping to hang it up near the front door, "but I kept hearing things outside. And then these two guys came and hid in the bushes by my window, and when I looked, I saw it out there, too." She narrowed her eyes at Mama, who was wringing her paws: "They said it was coming here. Do you know what it is?"
Mama hesitated but sighed and sat down on the hearth: "No, we don't know yet. Papa's been looking through his whole library trying to figure it out, but we just don't know. What did you see? What did the men say?"
Lilla-My thought for a moment, then turned to the cabinet and pulled out the paper and crayons she'd left there in the autumn. She sat down on the floor and began to scribble.
"It was really tall," she said, "and it was walking on two legs, but then got down on four and ran off. One guy said it was a horrible monster, and the other said it was nothing to worry about, which I don't believe at all."
She tilted her head at her drawing and bit the end of her crayon. Really, there wasn't much to show—what good was a black figure against black woods? Lines and circles couldn't capture the way it moved.
Mama stared, glassy-eyed, down at the picture and slowly reached for a leather-cover book near her sewing. She flipped to a page and handed it to Lilla-My. The charcoal pencil sketch of a dark figure stared out from the paper.
"Just like that!" she said, holding the journal back out to Mama. "It had a long neck just like that, really thin like a twig, and—"
She glanced back at the page, then stared at it. She knew that writing. Fancy handwriting, curly tails on the long letters, dashed dots and curved lines.
Mama's eyes were welling up, despite her best efforts. She sniffled and looked away, and Lilla-My stood slowly.
"He's back? Already?"
Mama nodded.
"And he brought someone with him?" Lilla-My pressed, again eyeing the peroxide bottle. "Someone… someone got hurt, and he brought them back here, right?"
Mama said nothing and began to wring her paws again in her lap. Lilla-My gripped the journal tighter in both hands.
"It was someone else, right?"
Mama shut her eyes and shook her head gently. The fireplace crackled and popped. Lilla-My shut the journal and pushed it into Mama's paws before racing up the stairs. She threw open the door of one room, her room during the springtime, and found it empty. She hardly glanced in through the office door, where Muminpapa sat forlorn with books scattered about. It was the third room, the one with blue curtains over the window and old trunks stacked in the corner, that she found Mumintroll sitting beside a bed with what could only be expected to be a corpse under the covers.
Mumintroll lifted his head from where he'd laid it against Nuuska's arm, deep circles under his eyes and the same rusty stain in his fur as Mama.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, just as surprised as Mama had been.
Lilla-My did not answer. She slowly clambered up the foot of the bed and crouched on the corner of the mattress, staring. Mumintroll waited.
"He looks awful," she finally said.
"Yes," said Mumintroll.
"Is he dead?"
"No."
But he was as good as dead, she thought. His face was blank, ashen, thoughtless. There was no amused smirk to greet her, no twinkle of chaos in his eyes, no patient hum as he pondered something silly like why dragonflies were shaped the way they were. No, all that could be gone forever.
Papa looked in around the doorframe and quietly came to stand beside them.
"Any luck, Papa?" Mumintroll asked hopefully.
Papa shook his head, a paw on Lilla-My's back: "Nothing. Of all the ghosts, goblins, and ghouls, there's nothing that looks even a bit like it. I could have sworn I'd heard of something similar before, but… oh, it's no use."
Lilla-My looked down at Mumintroll's paw holding tightly to Nuuska's hand—scratched, bruised, a few fingernails missing. And that was just his hand.
"I saw it," she said flatly, "last night, outside our house. You don't think it'll try to eat my sister, do you?"
Mumintroll and Papa exchanged a worried glance.
"I think," said Papa, "it was very dangerous for you to come here by yourself. Is Mymlan still asleep?"
"Yeah."
"Then I'm sure she'll be alright. Why don't you stay with us here until… well, until this is all over? I know Mama would love to have some company, maybe to take her mind off of things."
…
The three of them ate in silence over the newly-scrubbed dining table. As far as meals go, onion-and-lentil soup was not the most filling, but none of them were very hungry to begin with. A gale was picking up outside, stirring the top layer of fresh snow and shifting the dunes into new, traitorous shapes. Despite being only four in the afternoon, the sky was dark as night, and the sleepiness of the family's interrupted hibernation fought desperately to reclaim its usual territory.
Mumintroll had not come down to eat, refusing to leave Nuuska's side for even a moment, and Mama, Papa, and Lilla-My listened to the creaking of the house with a sense of dread that kept their heads down. There wasn't much to say anyway.
As Lilla-My finished, movement in the window caught her eye.
"What was that?"
"What was what, dear?" asked Mama.
"In the window, did you see it?"
Mama and Papa exchanged looks, and he leaned to look through the open archways on either side—the kitchen door, the porch door, and the front door were all bolted.
"It's very windy out there," he said non-chalantly, though his voice trembled. "It could have been anything. Perhaps we should close the curtains, hm?"
Lilla-My slid off of her chair and took hold of the thick, green curtains, peering out the window again.
"Is that—" she squinted "—is that a hat?"
Mama stood quickly and took the curtains herself, shutting them: "I don't want to know! It doesn't matter if it is, leave it there!"
"But—but how did it get there?" Lilla-My asked. "It couldn't have blown all this way, right?"
Mama nervously continued to eat without answering, and Papa stared at his spoon hovering just over the bowl. Lilla-My peeked through the curtains. Yes, it was a hat. More specifically, it was a very familiar pointed hat sitting perfectly upright in the snow as if it had been placed there, perfectly within sight of the window. She could easily scurry out to get it—stupid as it was, she knew it was one of Nuuska's few important possessions, and he would be upset about losing it. But it was too perfect, wasn't it? It was too easy, too obvious.
"Come away from the window, My," said Papa. "If it's still there in the morning, we'll get it then."
When they'd finished eating, they washed their plates and set them to dry. Mama and Papa said goodnight to Lilla-My at their door, and she'd made as if she were going to where Mumintroll and Nuuska were, before turning back down the stairs. Peeking through the curtains again, she had to squint, but she could see it. The hat. It was right there, just at the bottom of the porch steps now, shifting slightly in the wind. If she was quick, she could grab it and be back inside before anyone noticed, even that stupid monster, wherever it was hiding.
Warily, Lilla-My unlocked the porch door and put her head out. Nothing moved suddenly, no creature lunged. She stepped out and shut the door as quietly as she could. The hat sat waiting, falling on to its side and threatening to blow away. The snow swirled about, and the night was peaceful. Hearing and seeing nothing, she took a breath and darted for the hat.
Just as she grabbed it, something grabbed her. It pinned her down in the snow, one large, spindly hand spanning half the length of her body, as whatever it was connected to slowly emerged from the snow beside her. The hand picked her up, enclosing around her arms and turning her to face the sky.
" ," hissed a voice. " ?"
She couldn't see its face, not in the dark, but its eyes seemed to glow, reflecting the firelight from within Muminhouse, black pupils boring into hers with such raw hunger that she shivered.
" ," it said, and its breath was hot and stinking of rot. " ."
Lilla-My bit her lips closed and shook her head defiantly. Its claws tightened around her, squeezing until she could feel her bones crackle, but still, she made no noise. With a palpable disappointment, the creature loosened its grip. It held her closer to its face as it spoke.
" ."
It took a deep, rattling breath, and let loose a blood-curdling scream into the frigid night. It was long, desperate, and painfully familiar, hitched with tears and broken by whimpers and gasps.
Lilla-My felt the world turn over as she was pushed down into the snow, kicking and wriggling. A clawed finger brushed closer to her face, and she immediately turned her head and bit it as hard as she could. The finger cracked, the creature's stolen scream ignited into its own, and Lilla-My scrambled out of its grip, burrowing away.
"Y O U !" roared the creature somewhere behind her, tearing into the ground to search for her. " !"
She found the half-buried cellar window and pushed it open, falling hard on to the stone floor with a little flurry of snow. She hurried up the steep stairs to the kitchen and locked the porch door before collapsing down to sit against the wall and catch her breath. Her mouth tasted like ash, and her chest burned, but she'd made it. She'd made it, just as she'd expected to.
Footsteps hurried down the stairs, and she realized she was still clutching the hat. She shoved it under the china cabinet to the side just as a head poked carefully around the archway.
"Lilla-My?" asked Papa, worried. "What was that? Did you see it?"
She nodded, and he came around to look out the window.
"I don't see anything out there now."
"It's there," Lilla-My whispered, still out of breath. "In the snow. It sounded like him."
He looked down at her, at her clothes, damp and disheveled, and she looked away, avoiding his gaze.
He sighed, "Are you alright? You're not hurt, are you?"
"No," she lied.
"Are you sure?"
She wanted to say that she was fine, she wasn't hurt, not at all, why would he think she was, but instead, her throat went tight, and she could say nothing. Papa hesitated but reached out to touch her arm, and she stood up to latch on to his chest, burying her face in his fur. He put his arms around her and held her gently.
"Don't tell anybody," she sobbed, muffled.
"I won't tell a soul," Papa promised.
…
The gray midwinter dawn had barely broken when the city doctor pushed out of the front door of the police station, trudging miserably but deliberately through the snow. The police officer came after her, still wrapping her scarf.
"Now, hold on there, doc!" she said. "It's still dark! We should wait until—"
"Until what?" the doctor groaned. "Until the sun comes up? It's January, friend. The sun will rise when the Buubul stops stomping."
The police officer sighed, glancing back at the nice warm interior of the station before shutting the door and trotting to catch up. The doctor was a thin, short-legged creature with a toque the color of cat vomit pulled over her ears.
"Well, we should at least wait until it's a bit brighter," said the police officer. "As it is, my torch won't last the walk to the pub, much less to Muminhouse."
"It's already near lunchtime," said the doctor sternly, "and if what the inspector said was true, then our patient might already have infection, and if we wait any longer, it'll be your head!"
The police officer grumbled and shone her electric torchlight at the tall mounds of snow around them. How she wished she had a firearm! Even if there hadn't only been one for the entire station to share, she knew her aim was pretty poor, and she'd just as likely shoot her escortee as the predator lurking around. The doctor glanced aside at her with annoyance.
"Chatter your teeth any harder and you'll crack them," she said.
"What? I-I'm not—"
Snow fell from a nearby tree, and the both of them leapt and clung to each other. Nothing else moved. After a full minute, the doctor and police officer pushed each other away, cleared their throats, and kept walking.
"You know," said the doctor a little more calmly, looking up at the hazy sky, "I've heard a lot about this place. Lots of people say it's the most peaceful place they've ever been."
"Usually, it is," said the police officer morosely. "Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of witches and whatnot that come through, and we've had our share of natural disasters, but… still, somehow, this is absolutely the calmest town I've ever lived in."
"Out of how many?"
"Three or four, depending on what you count as 'lived in'."
"And have you ever seen something like this happen?"
The police officer fell silent, watching the beam of her light on the path in front of them: "No. Not like this. I'm telling you, it's… it's strange. Even just looking at the campsite where it happened, it's like… it's like someone turned into an animal, teeth and claws and all. Sure, I still think it's a person, but even I can't deny it looked like an animal was there."
A branch broke in the forest nearby, and the police officer quickly shone her light into the trees. Nothing moved. They continued on.
"I'm not sure what would be worse," said the doctor. "A person or an animal. At least an animal attack could be out of instinct, or because it has rabies, or any number of logical things. With people…"
"…with people, there's never really a good reason."
They fell silent again, no sound but the crunch of snow beneath their booted feet. The ground under the snow sloped upward into gentle hills, and the stovepipe peak of Muminhouse became visible as they hiked the first crest. It was as they were about to head down the hill again, away from the forest, that they heard sobbing. It was high, child-like, and pained.
"Hello?" asked the police officer, shining her dimming light into the trees. "Is someone in there? A-are you alright?"
The sobbing continued. The police officer huffed nervously and began toward the noise. The doctor stayed close behind: "Are you hurt? I'm a doctor, I can help if you are."
There was no reply. The sobbing slowly quieted as they approached, until there was nothing, no sound at all. The police officer listened, sure that someone must still be there, when her torch finally began to fail. The bulb flickered and clinked, and she smacked it, trying to get it to work again, and as the beam strengthened, the steaming, tongueless, toothy maw of a beast fell upon her face.
Snarls and screams went out into the budding violet daylight.
…
Mama peeked through the window before answering the wild beating at the door. As she opened it, a stranger with a weasel-ish face and dark hair stumbled in, wide-eyed, silent, and spattered with blood. Mama shut the door quickly and locked it.
"What's happened, dear?" she asked, feeling ill, reaching out to help the stranger up from where she'd collapsed on to the stairs. "Are you alright?"
"It's real," breathed the stranger shakily. She did not look away from the front door. "They're real."
Mama carefully held her up as they walked to the cushioned chair by the fire: "There, there, you're safe now, there's no need to worry. Papa! Papa, come quickly!"
Papa hurried down the stairs and stopped short at the sight of them: "What is it? What's happened?"
"That woman," said the stranger. "The policewoman—"
There was a thump at the door. All three fell silent, staring, and jumped as there was a second thump.
" ," came a weak voice. " … ."
The stranger clung to Mama's arm, shaking her head: "Don't. It's not her. It's not her."
" … ."
A paw thumped against the window, just visible through the crack in the curtain. It left a dark print on the glass as it trailed down. Then, as if angry at being ignored, it beat hard and limply at the window.
" !" the voice roared, dropping into something hoarse and deep and certainly not the police officer. " !"
Papa and Mama shrank back toward the fire as the paw fell away from view. The knob of the front door shook, turning fruitlessly. Scratching at the wood. Uneven footsteps in the snow. Shaking of the porch doorknob. And then silence.
Mama patted the doctor's paw comfortingly, though she herself was shivering: "It's alright, dear. It's alright now. You're safe. We're safe now."