Heather

It doesn't take years of marriage to startle when your partner suddenly talks in their sleep. Still, it hurt even more when Bergljot turned over at three, her eyes shut like a locked door, whispering in my ear.

"I killed heather."

That she immediately turned over again, facing the scrubby wall, took no turn in my fear. I was awake even before that. My head empty like a cleared chalkboard. Chalk in my hand, I was desperate to find new ideas for projects, but the void in my cerebral centre just hurt. 

I killed heather. She was lying there so cutely, her curls spread out on the pillow. Innocent. But was she really? 

I've known heater for longer than I knew my wife. She seemed to be the first person who lived here, like ever. The coast land, so juvenile in its rocky nature, untouched by human indifferences, so fresh like a well, its salty waves kept me here. Vinstad is a small village. Indeed, the smallest I could imagine. Right in Lofoten, one of the most beautiful places in Norway according to tourists. But heather is no tourist. For heather it means everything. Isolated, your thoughts your only company. I'm a tourist. And sometimes I get lost in the loneliness the untouched nature gifts me in silent moments. That's what I came for. To be inspired by the spirit of nature's purity. And the reason I stayed is heather. 

Not the flower though. Although there is a connection. The year we met she wore a pretty lilac hat. A melon, worn on her blond curls. The wind tore it down from there and left it fly over the ground.

Oh sorry, she said as I picked it up. It's my purple hat, so you can always recognize me.

Just like a heather, I told her and we both laughed.

So, it came that until today I don't know her real name. 

"Bjørn?" Bergljot calls me from the kitchen. Her face obscured from the coffee's steam. "Where have you been?" My shoes are muddy from the soggy pathway between the houses. "Was just checking the tide." 

"You want to take the boat out?" 

No, I don't.

How can she look so happy? As if nothing happened? Standing there in her beige sweater, her hair perfectly done. Whilst I run my hands over my eyes afraid of the rings I will get soon enough. How is this fair? I'm not the one to blame here.

I look into her eyes for maybe too long. "Are you alright?" 

"Sure" Do you know what you told me? Have you only got the slightest thought? 

I spend the day with writing in my notebook, structing characters and their relationship. My eyes hush over the names and there she is: Heather.

Of course, I went to check her house this morning. Empty it is, lights off and curtains drawn at her bedroom. She always does this. Even if she sleeps alone. Not necessary, I would say. There is no one here in this neighbourhood except us. 

I killed heather. Angrily, I scribble over the name. Change it to Felicia and try to continue my work. 

But my mind stays empty. 

At night, she's lying next to me again. And for the first time maybe I wish she wasn't. Her head is rested as in a beautiful trance. But her eyes flicker as if she's being frightened. 

My head is no chalkboard this time, but a black hole. It eats up all my energy, while my thoughts spiral around it. But it doesn't give me the relief to just eat them up. Instead, they linger. The face of Bergljot, how she smiled a little too broadly, with her cup in hand. Or did she even? 

The way my hands shake. What the hell happened to Heather?

It's the next morning I stand at her door again. It's the next morning I ring and wait for an answer that just won't come, again. Her curtains are still closed, her doors and windows still shut. But this is Vindstad. This is where I am unobserved. So, I am also unseen as I bump against the fragile wooden door. 

By the fifth bump it jumps open, the lock only barely in the wood. Easy. 

Her house just looks like usual, structured in its interior, but chaotic in its things lying around the room. Clothes I've seen her wearing, pressed flowers she kept collecting, her lilac hat right on top of it. Almost beautifully arranged. As if just for me to find. Bergljot?

After the hallway, the wooden door leads you directly to Heather’s small bedroom. Her doorknob has gone brown from the many times it has been touched already, in my hand it feels still familiar.

Heather’s bedroom has always been a shock of colours. Bedlinen in all possible variations scattered on the chunky white bed, makeup items lying all around the small table with her mirror and a lot of jewellery piled up in heaves. I always wondered how she could go through this chaos every morning, but I guess Heather doesn’t really have such a strict daily routine that it is necessary for her to save time when getting ready. Her remote job does not even demand some pretty looking from her, since she will not be seen by anyone. Maybe this is what your life becomes when you live that isolated. Suddenly my heartbeat quickens. I don’t want to continue thinking of this. Do not destroy the romanticism behind the everyday isolation of my tiny lofoten life.

Apart from Heather’s hell of a chaos, the room seems empty. Heather does not have such a big house. A corridor, a bedroom. A bathroom and a kitchen. The bathroom is empty, as I expected, the kitchen is unexpectedly clean. No cups with coffee leftovers resting on the sill, the dishwasher actually empty, streaks of some cleaning on the table. Somebody went through this kitchen. Was it Bergljot? But when should she have done this?

Theoretically, there is only moment in which she could have actually killed Heather. It was three days ago that she went for a run along the beach, something she usually never does. But I was too occupied with ideas for new writing to even care. My head was consisting of opening lines only, it was not possible to even think for a second. But yes, I think Bergljot wore no sport clothes, but some jacket with a hood. But did she go over to Heather to kill her then? How? And where is Heather now? Thrown into the sea? Oh hell.

Bergljot didn’t run for that long. Or did she?

Something next tothe sink alerts me as I see it. It’s a book, thick and bound in a shiny cover. Heather, the title says. A heather plant is actually on the cover, only that it looks kinda dead. Fake blood is smeared on its leaves, the purple head looks almost rotten on that foil. The author’s name is even more disturbing. It’s Bjørn Havegote. Who’s nobody less than myself.

I’ve started writing when I was ten. In middle school I, instead of doodling in boring lessons, made small stories on the corners of my papers. Wrote about a guy named bear, who would just do anything to get the heart of the one princess who just refused to talk to him. Kind of diabolical thinking about this now.

I published a selection of short stories when I turned 26, it came out a few days after my birthday and I celebrated a second time. But for my first novel I decided I needed a change of place. And somewhere on this way I must have met Bergljot. I guess. Otherwise how should I have married her?

Never ever have I written something about heather. From the size of the book it must be a novel. Never ever have I managed to write a whole novel yet.

My hands tremble as I try to open the cover. There is my name again. Then I see the first page, covered all over in letters.

“It doesn't take years of marriage to startle when your partner suddenly talks in their sleeps. Still, it hurt even more when Bergljot turned over at three, her eyes shut like a locked door, whispering in my ear.”

With a heavy sound the book falls on the ground. I run faster than I knew I could, my feet almost slipping twice on the grass. Rain is falling over Norway, coming as if out of buckets.

At home, Bergljot has prepared tea. “You’re all wet, darling.” She tries to help me out of the jacket, but we both realize at the same time that I don’t wear one.

“Where have you been?”

“Oh, I just heard something.” I answer, but then I decide to try something. “I think it was just heather.”

Her face doesn’t change at all. “Oh, yeah. I think I haven’t seen her in a long time. Wanna have tea?”

We sit down in the living room. Apparently, Bergljot also prepared the fireplace, since the wood is already cracking in the small oven.

“What do you want to listen to?” She holds up two covers, from which I directly pick Tracy Chapman.

“Good pick, now try my tea, while we can read together.”

She holds up her book and my heart stutters as I see the cover. It’s the heather book that has my name on it.

“Where did you get this from?”

“The book?” How can she be so unknowing. “I don’t know. It must be in here for a few years. Haven’t brought any new books in here, right?”

“Yeah, right.” But maybe not.

“So, tell me.”, she asks. “What is your writing about?”

I sip the tea, which is still hot, only to save a bit of time. It tastes of cinnamon and hot water. She probably used the same tea bag for the third time now.

“I don’t know yet.”

“But you must know something. You’re thinking about that for months now. What about the characters for example?”

Does she have to start with that?

“I’m still thinking about them. There is a woman.”

“Is she like me?”

“Maybe a little.” She is like Heather, I would actually say.

“A little only?” she asks over Tracy Chapman. “So, what is it of me that she has? That she is beautiful? That she is smart and academic? Or that she keeps you up at night?”

Did she say that for real? My ears appear to be ringing.

“The last one.” I say to test her.

“I’m sorry for the last nights, I think I might have babbled a bit in my sleep. Do you remember what I said?”

“What you said?”

She looks confused now. “Didn’t I say something?”

What do I answer to this?

Nothing. I feed her silence.

“You know what?” she asks now. I don’t answer her again.

“I’ve read that book of yours.”

“That’s not my book.”

“Liar, there is your name on it.”

“I haven’t written it.”

“Oh yes, you have. Who else know about the secrets of our beloved neighbour, Ms. Bennett?”

“Ms. Bennett?” Who the hell is her again?

“You describe her as heather, because you don’t even know her name, but still you claim to have been to her bedroom a lot of times? How pathetic are you?”

I don’t get where her anger is suddenly coming from. Weren’t we just sitting here to drink tea. The tea, which I notice, is now dripping on my pants, burning against my skin. But still, I don’t scream. Not when the heat melts my skin and not at all when I notice that there is heat everywhere, that it never stemmed from the tea, but from the fire. Fire that now reached over to me, licking against my face.

“Bergljot, what’s happening?”, my voice creaks in my throat, a babbling comes out, together with some spit and a fear darker than the ocean.

My vison blurs before my eyes. There is orange everywhere, as I roll to the side, grab hold of anything there is. Wood from the door, a handle. Finally. I run out into the night, my steps again slippery from the grass. Until I with one great motion jump into the water.

I feel every cell of my body being cleansed, my whole being connecting to the water. Waves licking over my hair, masses of water clashing against me, playing a fight against me. But I don’t want to fight. Just play. Play until I die. But maybe the water is too strong to just play.

Vindstad, Lofoten

The tide was always hard to predict; almost as if the water had its own body and especially its own mind. But even in this force of nature, some predictability seemed to be happening.

Officer James Dunham stepped out of the small boat, still not used to the shaking of the sea.

Officer Ylva Bakke pointed at the small green house, which was surprisingly close to the shore. “So, this is it, then.”

“Or the other one.”, James remarked.

The body was found close to the border of Nordland. Some drunk fellow, as James called him. Now, it was time to look what was happening in Vindstad. The only place the body could have come from. Especially since it was the second one already. In a week. Vindstad must be empty at some point very soon.

Ylva opened the creaking door to the house. Unlocked, of course. “Are we even allowed to go in there?”

“Let’s not care too much.”

The living room was a mess. Bottles on the table, most of them still half full.

“I told you it’s a drunk.”

“You don’t know it’s him. Could be her as well.” Ylva remarked.

“But it turned out that there were only two houses that were actually occupied in the area.

“Who is he again?”; James asked?

“The station said he was some guy from Oslo who lived here for the summer. But her, we have no clue.”

The woman was found a few days ago. No sign of being drunk, no violence indicated. Drowned. And now him, drowned as well.

“Look at that.”, Ylva said back in the living room.

“What’s that?”

“Some notebook or so. It says Heather.”

“Oh yeah, wasn’t the guy also some kind of writer?”

“He had a book out, some stories, I think. But he wasn’t popular or anything.”

Ylva opened the notebook, only to find scrawled handwriting, almost impossible to read.

“What does it say? Something about his love?”

“I can’t decipher. But I think it’s something weird. But didn’t you say he was single?”

Her voice broke as she read the first words on the page. Out loud, so James could hear them too.  

It doesn't take years of marriage to startle when your partner suddenly talks in their sleeps. Still, it hurt even more when Bergljot turned over at three, her eyes shut like a locked door, whispering in my ear. "I can’t do this anymore.” But I’ll still love you, my heather. What should I be without you?