“Oh dear,” Noora says. “Hanna, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. I know how it can be. Death. It’s so…final. It’s hard for mortal brains to comprehend.”
I gesture to the casket again while keeping my eyes on them. “Noora. Go and look for me. Please. He’s not in there. I’m not hallucinating. And then that guy just showed up out of nowhere. He says he knows where my father is.”
Noora doesn’t even glance at Rasmus. “Oh don’t mind him. He was your father’s apprentice. Seems he can’t let go of him either. So terribly sad. I feel for both of you.”
I sense Rasmus’ presence still behind me but he’s staying silent. There’s a dark, cold feeling in my stomach like I’ve swallowed a pit of ice. “Apprentice? Apprentice of what? Hotel management?” As far as I know, my father didn’t even run the hotel, he was just behind the concept, one of the owners.
“Noora, why don’t you go take a look,” Eero says in a patient tone and nods at the casket. “Just to give our dear Hanna peace of mind.”
Noora gives me a tight smile and walks past me, the air smelling like rot, so much so that I nearly start gagging.
Don’t look, I tell myself. Keep your eyes on Eero.
Eero gives me a half-smile in response, something more sly than anything, like he heard my thoughts and he knows I’m going to lose. Lose what? I don’t know. That pit of ice in my stomach grows sharper.
I hear Noora chuckle softly from behind me. “Oh, Hanna. He is in here, looking so peaceful. He is at peace now, don’t you understand? Come look.”
Eero holds my gaze as I start to waver.
“Really?” I ask. “Rasmus?” I add, wanting to hear it from him. “Is he really in there?”
But there’s only silence. Why isn’t Rasmus saying anything? He was so hell-bent on getting me out of here and now he’s just gone mute.
“He’s at peace, so you need your own peace,” Noora says. “Come see, Hanna. Come see your dear father.”
I can barely swallow the lump in my throat. My entire body feels like shaking uncontrollably and I can’t stop it.
I turn around, breaking eye contact with Eero, a freeing sensation entering my body, and blink. Rasmus is gone. Like, he’s completely disappeared. But before I can even point that out, how that’s even possible, I see Noora peering over the casket.
And I see my father in that casket.
My mouth drops open, hit with both bewilderment at how fucked up my mind must be to have not seen him before, to utter gut-kicking sadness.
It’s him.
“Papa!” I cry out and run toward the casket, Noora stepping out of the way.
Tears automatically stream down my face as I stare down at my father’s lifeless body. It’s him, it’s really him. From his white beard, to his hooked nose which he always used to call his beak, to the stubborn crease between his white brows, like he’s frowning his way through death…
“Papa,” I say again, the word coming out raw and broken and I feel like the grief I thought I knew, the grief I thought I was making friends with, that was setting like cement, has changed once again. It’s deeper now, potent, and ripping my soul apart into tiny little pieces that will never come back together.
I want to touch him but I’m afraid he’ll be cold, that he won’t feel like him. I lean over his face, trying to memorize the details. It had been so long since I’d seen him and yet he looks the exact same. Like he hasn’t aged at all. Like he’s not even dead, just resting, just sleeping.
“I love you,” I whisper to him, and the tears fall from my face, splashing onto his skin. “I’m sorry I never said it enough. I should have said it more. I should have called more, I should have been more present, I should have been with you as soon as I was able to and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I kept putting it off. Putting you last. I thought we had more time. I really thought we had more time and we…we don’t. We didn’t. Now you’re gone. You’re gone.”
More tears fall from my eyes, landing on his face. With shaking hands, I reach to wipe it off his cheek but before I do, his skin seems to move beneath the droplet. I pause, staring wide-eyed. His skin seems to warp and shimmer, becoming translucent, and I swear I can see something underneath.
Something moving.
Something like…another face.
I shake my head, as if trying to right it, because I have to be hallucinating again, I have to be.
But then something shifts, and my father’s nose appears to disintegrate before my eyes, turning black, like it’s rotting off.
His eyes open.
He stares right at me.
A scream chokes inside my throat.
Because it’s not my father’s eyes.
These are Rasmus’ eyes.
“Run!” Rasmus’s voice comes out through my father’s open mouth, now turning black like rotting sludge, his teeth falling out.
I scream. Pure panic courses through me and I turn to run, because it feels like the only thing to do. This isn’t my father, I don’t know what this is, but I have to get far, far away from here.
But Noora is right there behind me, her body pressed against mine, and she’s grabbing me in a chokehold before I can even turn, her arm pressing in hard against my windpipe.
I can’t breathe. I start to struggle. For an older lady, she has the strength of a beast, and her smell is becoming even more pungent, and for a moment I feel this sensation to give up, almost like there’s another voice inside me, one that doesn’t belong to me, telling me it’s all over.
But then I manage to push through it and I remember who I am and what I can do, and all my training comes flooding back. It’s basic self-defense and I’m jabbing my elbow back, striking her where I can. It doesn’t loosen her grip as much as I hoped, but she does let out a groan, shifting, and I take the opportunity to quickly widen my stance and flip her over my head.
She goes summersaulting over on top of the casket, knocking it off the stand, and for a moment I’m horrified as my father’s body starts to slide out, but that horror stops when I realize it’s now Rasmus, scrambling to his feet.
“Run outside!” he yells at me, trying to push off Noora who is trying to drag him down.
I whip around and see Eero coming at me. He’s a big man and his eyes are so black that there’s no iris, and I don’t know if it’s my mind or something else that’s making me believe he has claws on his outstretched hands and horns starting to poke through his hair, but I drop low and spin forward off my hands, sliding under him as he tries to make a grab for me.
Claws just scrape along the back of my scalp, slicing off a strand of hair, and then I’m up again and running out of the room, through the lounge, past the dining room. I want to scream in horror, scream for help, but I don’t think anyone is going to help me now.
As I round the bend to the lobby, I can feel Eero’s presence behind me, getting closer and closer, but I don’t dare turn around and look. I’m almost at the front doors when I suddenly feel a flash of intense cold at my back, as if a door opened behind me, and in the reflection of the glass I see a white wall, as if the air in the lobby frosted over.
My hands strike the door and I push it open and I keep running, the sub-zero temperatures causing my breath to freeze in my lungs, my eyes to burn. Thankfully I’m wearing boots, but I’m just in a sweater, my coat left back in my room, and I’ll freeze to death soon if I don’t find shelter or someone to help me.