Beyond the Frozen Horizon by Nicola Penfold

Author:Nicola Penfold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stripes Publishing
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

A noise wakes me, but as soon as I try to focus in to listen, everything goes quiet. Except the dogs in their huts, howling out to the wilderness. I persuaded Mum to go and see the sick reindeer today, but it was too late. They’d died and Rasmos had burned their bodies. He said he didn’t want the bears coming for them.

I lean over to switch on the lamp. Yellow light floods into the room and my clothes hanging over the chair make strange shadows on the floor. I need to talk to Mum about doing a load of laundry. Or find the laundry room and do it myself.

I turn to the whales on the wall, reflecting on what Mum said about whales being carbon sinks. They’re as good for the planet as thousands of acres of forest, our teacher had said.

I start to drift off when I hear a noise again.

It’s outside in the corridor. A girl’s voice, singing. The same familiar song the children play on the piano, and Ivan whistled up by the mine. Sad and sorrowful, yet beautiful too.

I can’t ignore it any longer. I have to work out who, or what, it is.

I take a deep breath and steel myself to open the door. The orange strip lighting flickers over the empty corridor, doors shut either side. Could there be someone in one of those rooms, hiding out of sight? Or is it a radio playing downstairs, in the rooms where those two mine engineers are? The window rattles behind me and I glance back into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of that face again.

There’s nothing. Only the dark silhouette of the buildings of Pyramiden, and the rocky mountains above. I’ve started leaving the curtains open. The face that night must have been my own reflection, or my mind, filling in gaps. A ghost town doesn’t mean actual ghosts, I tell myself. There are real, solid people living here, I’m bound to hear noises. Just like at home in our apartment block, there’s the thrum of air conditioning and traffic on the streets outside. One of the neighbours playing a violin and a couple who are always arguing.

The light blinks by the stairs and there’s a scuffling sound again. Are there still birds up there, late to start their migration to warmer temperatures? Even in the couple of weeks since we arrived, the temperature has plummeted right down as the days grow shorter.

There are definite footsteps now. Someone walking the floor above where Pia said I might find paint. I still haven’t been up there.

I move hesitantly towards the steps, drawn on by the singing. A draught hangs in the stairway, strangely directionless, and the stairs creak as I walk up.

I clutch the banister with my right hand, my left holding my torch full beam ahead. The top floor isn’t partitioned into rooms and corridor like the floors below, this is just one big space with a low ceiling. There’s a stale smell of old musty things, dust and bird droppings.

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