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The Ghost in the Woods [Hannu, Ville, & the Kuikka twins]
Title: The Ghost in the Woods
Fandom: A Redtail's Dream
Characters/Pairing: Hannu, Ville, Joona & Jonna
Rating: 13+
Length: 11k
Summary: Joona and Jonna have heard about a ghost in the woods. They want to find out if the story is true - and they want Hannu and Ville to come with them. But ghosts aren't real - are they?
Other: Finally finished this! Thanks to everyone for the encouragement. :)
The Ghost in the Woods
The fire burned brightly in the cold autumn night.
It was too late in the year for an evening meetup around the firepit. Paju said it, and then repeated it, and then said it again. "It'll be too cold. It isn't summer any more, you know." But Joona and Jonna turned a deaf ear to her, as usual.
"It'll be fine. Throw on a sweater or two!"
"And a jacket. And maybe a scarf? Yeah, that's all you need."
That night, even if she'd said (again and again) that it wasn't a good idea, Paju was right there in their backyard, along with all the rest.
It was a clear night, and the sky above was bright, the smoke circling lazily upward toward the near-full moon. They talked, and the night echoed with their voices, and the occasional laugh punctuating the crisp dark.
Riikka and Anssi passed around the marshmallows.
As the moon rose higher and the hour grew later, the conversation turned toward one thing: stories.
Scary stories.
It wasn't the first time they passed around tales like this. Occasionally, on that kind of night, when they were all together and it was late and there was nothing better to do, Joona and Jonna would bring the idea up. Everyone around the circle would take turns, each person telling one story, always trying to outdo the previous person in terms of how gruesome it was, or failing that, how good it was, even if it wasn't the kind of game anyone could win. Every time, nobody would claim to be scared. But in spite of those claims, every time, nobody really wanted to walk home alone, either.
That night was no different. They took turns, one story after another. A tale of a haunted book that kept getting sold and resold, and every person who owned it died under mysterious circumstances. A fishing boat went down in a storm, and ever since it could be seen from the beach on foggy nights, never to reach the shore. An empty lighthouse, abandoned decades ago, shone brightly at night even if nobody was there - and anyone who went to investigate never returned.
"Pass," Hannu muttered, like he always did, rolling his eyes a little when his turn came up. But after Ville whispered in his ear, he sighed, and gave in, and told a story about a man who became lost in his dreams and died there.
After that, it was Joona and Jonna's turn. They looked at one another for a moment, as if deciding on something. A familiar expression crossed their faces; it was the look they both tended to get when they were up to something. It was as if somehow, without even speaking, they were able to agree on a plan. Then they turned toward the circle again, and the fire's light cast shadows on their faces.
"Sooo we heard this creepy story the other day," Jonna began. The fire flickered, reflecting in her eyes as a grin slipped across her face.
"It's a real one, too," Joona added. "The genuine article."
"You always say that," Riikka said, holding back a laugh. "Every time. Even for the ones that are really far-fetched. They can't all be true."
"But this one is!"
"Go on with it, then." Anssi poked at the fire, sending a handful of sparks drifting lazily upward, crackling. "We're listening."
And after a second or two of sideways glances at each other, as they had a silent argument over which of them should tell it, Joona cleared his throat and started.
"So, we know this one's true, because we heard it from our old man. Well, he mentioned some things that sounded weird, and then we went and looked it up. Like, we even went to the library. Everything checked out. It's kind of creepy; it's not really the kind of thing that we expected to read about happening here, outside of like, during the war and stuff. Though I guess this kind of thing could happen anywhere.
No, don't ask me what; I'm going to tell you. Just hold on, okay? Right. Stop looking at me like that, Jonna; I'm getting to it.
So. This story happened a long time ago, in this village, in these woods. There was some creepy stuff going on back when our dad was a kid. That's how he knows about it. It's always been kind of hush-hush. People here don't like to talk about it much. But it starts with a story that happened even earlier than that, way before any of our parents were born. So, I'm going to start there.
A long time ago, there was this girl. She was - well, a little younger than your brother, Paju. Old enough to get into trouble, though. Or old enough for other people to drag her into it.
So, the story goes that she was in love with this guy. He wasn't exactly stand-up boyfriend material, if you know what I mean; he was kind of a lazy bum. And a real jerk, too. Like Hannu over here - yikes, wow, keep the creepy glares to yourself, man. You know it's true.
So. Her dad didn't like her boyfriend. What that meant was that they had to meet in secret. Every night, they'd sneak out, and go into the woods. They had a special place where they'd meet each other in the forest. For some reason, nothing else grew in that spot; just that big, black, rotted-out old thing that just didn't want to fall over. It was easy enough to find.
That was what they did. They'd go out and meet every night. Well, almost every night. Sometimes one or the other would stay home, because their parents would notice that they were missing. But at times like that, if one of them got there and the other didn't show up, they'd leave a letter in a cairn that they built up under the tree. Romantic, right? But risky. It was hard to sneak out at night. And it got even harder once summer was over and it started getting darker, and darker, and colder. Not to mention that there was dear old dad to think of. They figured he was oblivious. Who wouldn't? They figured that since they were getting away with it, there was no way that he knew.
But the girl's father wasn't exactly oblivious. He knew what was going on. He just didn't know where they were meeting.
One night, it was getting pretty cold. It was autumn, almost winter really. Late enough in the year for it to get really cold. And one night, snow fell. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to cover everything a bit, you know how it gets. Well, even though it was cold, the girl climbed out through her window and went out into the woods. What she didn't know that there was someone watching her. Her father stood in his bedroom window, and he watched her go, until all that was left were her footprints in the snow.
The girl left, but she never came back. She disappeared. Nobody ever saw her again after that night.
Now, people talked. Most people thought that she just got lost in the woods, maybe. Or that she ran away, who knows where. But some people thought she'd been murdered. They also thought they knew who did it. Some say it was her father, that he followed the footprints she left in the snow that night. Others say it was her boyfriend. They claimed that he wasn't just a lazy guy, like everyone thought he was, but that he was a real sicko. Others thought that maybe she just ran away. Whatever the case, they never found a body, so I guess we'll never know.
But even if she was gone, the tree was still there. And people knew about that tree, and that she met her boyfriend met there. Some people who knew her went to it, poking around, looking for clues. But they didn't find anything. And when they left, they felt a little bit weird, like somebody was watching them.
That was how it went in daylight, at least.
Well, nobody went back there for a few years. Sometimes people would go looking for more evidence, though they never found anything. They always searched in daylight, because the place was kind of spooky, and it isn't like it's easy to search in the dark anyway. And eventually people just stopped looking.
Now, a long time passed, and people never really forgot about the story and the tree. They always knew it was there. And then one day, some troublemakers decided to head to that old tree, just for kicks. Just because it was the last place that this missing girl had been, probably, and that was pretty creepy. Kids these days, right?
Well, they waited until it was dark, because that would make it even creepier. And they went into the forest. They headed toward that clearing with the tree.
Now, I'm not saying that anything actually happened there. But the story goes, that when they stepped into the clearing, the temperature suddenly dropped, and the air was ice-cold. And they felt like there was someone watching them. But they weren't going to turn back just yet. It was kind of a walk to get there, and they weren't going to just give up even though things were already getting kind of weird. So, one guy turned to the other guy and said, "I dare you to grab one of the stones off that cairn". And of course the other guy agreed to it. Wouldn't want to look like a chicken in front of his buddy, right?
So, he stepped closer. And he started to hear a noise, kind of like - yeah, exactly like that, Jonna. Kind of like a whine. At first it sounded like a mosquito or something. It was weird, but he figured was just his friend trying to scare him. So, he stepped even closer. And with every step, the noise got louder, and louder, and louder. But again, he figured it's just his friend trying to scare him, so he didn't turn back to look at him, because that would just prove that he was scared.
And then he got to the cairn. And he put his hand on the top stone. And as soon as he did that, he heard a scream, like a thousand people all screeching at once!
Well, he bolted, and so did the other guy, and they ran like the devil was after both of them, and the screaming stayed behind. And they didn't stop running until they were back at home, safe and sound, because whatever had happened back there, it scared the piss out of both of them. Later, the guy who'd held back, the one who'd dared the other to go into the clearing, swore he saw something - something that looked human-shaped, standing with its mouth wide open, just screaming its head off. As far as they could figure, it was probably that dead girl, still waiting for her boyfriend, and she didn't want anyone else to show up.
That's what happens every time someone heads out there at night. The ghost. The screaming. And that's why people warn not to go there. Not even in daylight. And never at night. Because she's there, waiting. She'll always be there."
The fire crackled, sending sparks drifting lazily upward. The circle was quiet.
"You win," Anssi said after a moment. "That was creepy."
"I think it's sad." Riikka shook her head. "Poor girl. Nobody ever found out what happened to her?"
"Nope." Jonna grinned. "But guess what? We know where that tree used to be."
"... Oh no."
"And we're going to go there and see it for ourselves!" Joona grinned, rubbing his hands together. "Who's with us?"
There was a collective groan from around the fire. Paju folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at the twins. "You aren't serious, are you?" she asked.
"Well, like, not tonight. We're gonna go tomorrow! But yeah, totally serious." Jonna rested her chin against one hand, the smile on her face broadening. "Want to come? It'll be fun! Or are you too scared?"
"I am not scared." Paju huffed, sitting up a little straighter, giving them both her sternest glare. "But I have better things to do than go tramping around in the dark with you two. It's just a story; there's nothing to find."
The twins glanced at each other. "Well, sure, maybe it isn't your thing," Jonna said slowly. "But I dunno' about it being just a story."
There was a long silence. Finally, Ville asked what everyone had been wondering. "What do you mean?"
"You know those guys who went to the tree?" Joona dropped his voice a little, as if it were a conspiratorial secret. "One of them was our dear old dad. I mean, it happened when he was a lot younger. Our age, probably. Or younger than that, maybe. Now, I know you don't know him that well yet, Ville. But he isn't the kind of guy who'd make stuff up just to scare us. Something happened that night." He grinned. "So we're going to find out what it was. And you guys should all come with us."
Paju shook her head, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Riikka and Anssi looked at each other uneasily. "Um. We'll pass," Riikka said, while her brother nodded. "I just don't think-"
"It's fine, it's fine," Jonna said, with a wave of her hand. "I figured. It's okay. But what about you two?" She turned toward Hannu and Ville, smiling widely, the light flickering eerily on her face. "Are you going to come, or are you too scared?"
"Um... Well, maybe-" Ville began, then stopped, and looked from the twins to Hannu, who had dozed off on his shoulder. He gave him a gentle nudge, tilting his head a bit to hiss at him. "Hey, Hannu, should we do it?"
Hannu opened his eyes, blinking blearily up at him, looking as if he had missed the last few minutes of conversation. "Ugh... Yeah, sure, whatever," he muttered, oblivious to what he was agreeing to.
"Okay!" Ville looked back toward the twins, nodding as he passed on the message. "We'll do it."
Joona and Jonna looked at each other and grinned. Mission accomplished.
The next day passed quickly. Everything happened the way it normally would; nobody mentioned the previous night when Hannu and Ville arrived at work the next morning. Nobody said anything about plans, either. The only indication that anything was going on was a wink from Jonna, who put one finger to her lips. The indication was clear: keep it hush-hush. Ville saw, and nodded. Obviously, they couldn't talk about it at work. He'd keep it hush-hush. No problem.
Throughout the day, the three of them were on edge with anticipation. They tried not to let it show - but even then, the occasional smirk tugged at Joona's lips. Now and then, the Kuikka twins would duck their heads to whisper to one another, and Ville knew exactly what it was about. It was hard to stay quiet about it.
Hannu was the only one who didn't seem to have any trouble keeping quiet about the plans. In fact, he didn't act any differently at all; just continued to go about his business with the usual dour expression on his face. Was it possible that he didn't remember the conversation from last night? Ville thought about asking him, but decided against it. He had been with them, after all, so of course he'd heard the whole story. Hadn't he? And he'd agreed to the idea of going out and searching for the ghost. There was no way he didn't know exactly what Joona and Jonna were grinning about. ...Was there?
Ville got his answer when it was finally time to leave for the day.
"See you tonight," Joona said, holding out a fist for a bump that Ville eagerly returned. "Eleven o'clock, don't forget."
"I won't forget. See you tonight!"
"...What did he mean by 'tonight'?" Hannu asked, turning to Ville as they headed down the leaf-scattered pathways to their home. "You didn't tell me you were going to meet up with them."
"... Um." Oh. Oh. "I'll explain when we get home."
"I agreed to what?"
Hannu swore under his breath. There was no way he'd heard that correctly. That had to be it. It had to be something else. It had to be -
"Um..." Ville looked halfway surprised by his surprise, and halfway unsurprised at all. In the end, he put on a pathetic expression, and turned to put the coffee on. "Ghost hunting. Tonight. With Joona and Jonna. You really don't remember?"
"... No." Hannu frowned as he tried to recall it and came up with nothing. "When was this?"
"Last night. At the fire. I guess you were kind of out of it, but I really did think you were listening."
"I was tired." Sighing, Hannu turned and looked out the window. It was early evening, and the sky was already black. The moon was up, full and bright, but it didn't look very welcoming. He stared up at it and tried to remember the conversation. There was... something. He recalled, vaguely, a story about a ghost in the woods, and Ville whispering him after it was over. That must have been it. "We're not going."
"But -"
"Don't start. I told you, I'm not going."
He turned around, fully prepared to face down Ville's puppy-eyed look. Instead, his friend looked as if he was deep in thought, biting at his lower lip as he considered something very carefully.
"Okay."
"Okay?" Hannu's eyebrows raised. "... You're really fine with staying home?"
"I'm fine with you staying home. But I'm going."
"You're what?"
Ville handed him a coffee mug. "I'm going out with Joona and Jonna tonight," he repeated. His voice had taken on a stubborn note. "I told them I would, so I will. Besides, I'm pretty sure they made that story up, so it isn't like we'll find any real ghosts anyway. It'll be fun! You don't have to worry."
There was a firm edge in Ville's voice that Hannu had heard before. It was a tone that he had heard a few times, and he knew that it always meant that Ville wouldn't budge. He didn't get like that often, but every now and then.... "I can't believe this," Hannu muttered under his breath.
"Well, you can still come, if you want to."
"No."
That "No" was as firm and forceful as he could make it. That was that, Hannu said. And Ville, utterly unconcerned, agreed.
They had supper and coffee in silence. Once or twice, Hannu brought up the subject again, in a low mutter that Ville stubbornly evaded.
Later that night, as the clock hands crept to eleven, Hannu stared at his watch. Paced around in his bedroom a bit. After a few minutes of this, he frowned, then reached for his jacket. "Fine," he muttered under his breath. "Have it your way."
Ville was waiting for him in the kitchen. By the way he brightened up when he saw him, Hannu guessed that if he still had his tail, it would be wagging.
"You changed your mind!"
Hannu shook his head. "I'm just going to come with you because I feel like going for a walk. The story's all made up, anyway, so we're just going to be wasting our time. And I don't want them to scare you too much. That's all." And that was all, as far as he was concerned.
It would be a cold night, and even with the bright moon, it was uncomfortably dark. Hats. Gloves. Coats. They pulled everything on, opting to prepare for the inevitable chill. As soon as they managed to dig the flashlights out from where they had been stowed in the closet, there was a knock on the door.
Hannu opened it, and Joona and Jonna's bright, smiling faces greeted him.
"Hey! Are you ready?"
"We were placing bets on whether you'd come with us or not."
"Yeah. But he looks like he's ready to go, doesn't he?" Jonna gave her brother a friendly punch to the shoulder. "You can cough up the cash when we get home."
Hannu clenched his teeth. It was so tempting to say, Actually, I'm not going, and I never wanted to do this in the first place. But then he heard Ville's footsteps behind him, and sighed.
"Let's just get this over with," Hannu said, glancing back toward Ville, completely unsurprised by the hopeful expression he saw on his face. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave."
In the dark, under the moon's light, four figures slinked down the street toward the forest, whispering.
"We had a really hard time getting out here. Almost didn't make it."
"It took forever for Dad to go to bed. It's like he knew we were planning something. It's not like we could tell him where we were going!"
"He would've flipped out so bad."
When they approached the edge of the woods, it seemed as though the darkness grew darker. Even with the moon high above, the forest loomed thick and black in the night, almost as if it was watching them. Hannu let his gaze drift slowly over it, taking in the entrance to the footpaths with a careful eye. In the daylight, there was nothing ominous about it; and usually in the night, there wouldn't be anything weird about it either. You're just tired, he told himself.
Ville drew close to him. "Are you scared?" he asked. There was a hint of humour in his voice, a little bit of light teasing. But underneath that, there was a note of worry, too.
"Nah," Hannu muttered. "There's nothing weird out there. You know that. What's going to happen is we'll go in, and Joona and Jonna will try to scare us, and it'll just be a waste of time." He paused. "Are you scared?"
"No!"
"Good."
If the twins heard their exchange, they didn't give any sign of it. They were too distracted with digging out their flashlights. From their direction came a sound of rummaging and muttering and whispering between them, and then after a pause, a blinding white light.
"Hah! Got it!" Joona said as the other three groaned from the brightness. "This thing is great. We'll be good for hours."
Hannu blinked as his sight slowly came back enough for him to see the heavy industrial flashlight Joona was holding. "Okay," he said slowly. "Fine. Can we just get this over with?"
It was going to be a long night.
Even with the path made by the beam from Joona's huge flashlight, the trail and the forest around them were both dark. Too dark. The moon filtered weakly down at them through the bare branches, but even then, making their way in the dark was not easy. They deviated from the main paths quickly, turning down an old one that had been overgrown for ages, disappearing and re-appearing as the forest slipped in to reclaim it.
"How far away is this place, anyway?" Ville asked, his voice ringing too-loud in the darkness.
"Oh, not far," Jonna replied. "Should just be a little while now."
That was what she had said the moment they stepped into the forest. If we get lost, Hannu thought, I'll know who to blame. Finding their way back would ordinarily be easy enough, but in the dark, on a path that he wasn't familiar with - that would be much harder.
He stumbled through the undergrowth, swore, and felt Ville's hand on his arm.
"Don't worry!" Cheerful, confident. "I'm sure they know where we're going."
"Well, I'm not sure," Hannu hissed. After years of knowing Joona and Jonna, he knew better than to expect that they'd plan things out. Should have known better, at least. Occasionally, they did put a lot of effort into their grand schemes, but more often than not, everything was done on the spur of the moment.
If he actually had learned from all the other times that they had dragged him into their schemes, he wouldn't have been out in the dark, following two idiots who would probably get all of them lost.
Ville reached for his hand. Hannu sighed and took it. It didn't matter, anyway, he told himself. Even in the dark, he could find his way back if he had to. It would be hard, but he could do it – if he had to. And the twins were more likely to get bored and turn around than get lost.
That didn't change the fact that they were picking their way through an overgrown deer trail in the dark, and that it was getting late. He leaned against Ville, yawned, and resigned himself to struggling to stay awake until they gave up.
They went farther than they should have, farther than they ordinarily would go at night, pressing deeper into the woods. Hannu knew that in truth they should not have been doing it at all, not at night. The thought didn't worry him too much until later, when he checked his watch. The glow from the electric light was blinding in the dark, and after squinting at it, he realized that they had been tramping around in the woods for an hour. Frowning, Hannu resumed his pace a few steps behind Ville, and tried to decide what to do about it.
He wasn't worried. Not exactly. Between himself and Joona and Jonna, they could find a way out if they got lost.
But it was inconvenient. And he was tired.
He must have sighed heavily, because he saw Ville turn a bit to look at him in the dim light. "It's all right!" he said cheerfully. "We're almost there."
"We've been 'almost there' for ages," Hannu muttered. But there were whispers coming from in front of them, and the sound of the twins talking in hushed tones.
After a moment, Joona spoke, his voice ringing out too loud in the dark. "This is it!" he said. "We're h- ow!" A yelp as Jonna elbowed him in the ribs, which did nothing for how loud he was.
Silently, Hannu and Ville moved around them to look into the clearing. The twins' industrial flashlight cast a sturdy beam out into it, reaching far enough to pick out something on the other side that Hannu was very surprised to see: a twisted, charred, lightning-struck tree, and a pile of stones. Beside him, Ville gasped.
Hannu turned to Jonna.
"Okay. So it's a dead tree and a pile of rocks. Fine. Can we go now?"
"Nah. We want to see if the story's true." She held one of the smaller flashlights out to him. "How about you try it?"
Ah. There was the catch. Hannu frowned, glancing down at the flashlight in her hand. "No," he said.
"Well, then Ville can go."
"Wh - I'm not going in there!"
Both twins were smiling, on the verge of laughing, as if this was the best idea they'd ever had. And to be fair, Hannu thought, it was the kind of thing that they would figure was a pretty good joke. Tell a creepy story, then take some suckers out and scare the pants off of them. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to work. After everything he had been through with Ville, Hannu didn't scare very easily.
"Ugh, fine," Hannu said, holding out his hand for the flashlight. "We'll go together."
Ville looked startled, staring at him with wide eyes, but after a moment he nodded. "O-okay," he said, straightening up. "Let's go."
"Good luck!" Joona said, giving Ville a friendly pat on the back. "And remember: it doesn't count unless you touch the cairn."
They were several paces away when Ville tilted his head toward Hannu, hissing, "Why didn't you make them go instead?!"
Hannu sighed. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can leave." He stopped, looking at Ville. "And I don't believe their story, anyway. Do you?"
"No, but - maybe there is a ghost? The dream -"
"That was different." They still hadn't found an explanation for what they had been through a year ago, Hannu thought wearily, and probably never would. The idea that they had actually gone on a journey through the dream world was too weird to believe, but in the face of the evidence – especially Ville's presence – there was no other explanation than the fact that it had actually happened. But this? Ghost stories? No.
Better to just get it over with, then.
"Here," Hannu said, offering Ville his hand. "Hold my hand if you're scared. Okay?"
Ville looked down at his hand, hesitating for a moment. Then he pointedly took it, squeezing it hard. The gesture didn't surprise Hannu at all; it only made him sigh. You spent all that time wandering in the dark, he thought, and now you're scared?
But he kept that to himself, and just nodded instead. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."
They turned forward - and Hannu stopped.
There was something there.
Something was there, but not there, as if it was somehow out of the range of his vision, even though it was right in front of them. Hannu tilted his head. Watched it flicker. Frowned.
"Hannu?" A whisper by his ear. "What is it?" Ville's voice wavered. He could see it too.
Before Hannu could answer, there was a call from behind him.
"If you're too scared, you just have to say so!" Jonna's singsong voice rang out into the dark.
"We can go home if you want!" Joona said, echoing her.
Hannu cursed under his breath. If they turned away, neither of them would ever live it down, and that would be an even worse fate than whatever kind of weirdness might be waiting in front of them. "Let's go," he told Ville again, and felt the reassuring squeeze of Ville's hand around his own.
They only took a few more paces before the noise started. It was sharp, tinny, like a mosquito whining in his ear. Hannu felt his insides flip, but he didn't stop moving.
"Do you hear that?" Ville again.
Hannu pursed his lips, set his jaw, and stood up a little straighter. "It's just them," he said, giving a half-nod behind him to indicate the twins. "That's all." He was lying through his teeth. He hoped it wouldn't be obvious.
Obvious or not, that seemed to satisfy his friend, at least for the moment.
Ville quieted.
The noise didn't.
It got louder with every step they took into that wide, impossibly dark clearing. Louder, sharper. Louder.
The flickering figure came back, too.
"Hannu...."
"I see it."
He stopped. Breathed. Felt the grip Ville had on his hand tighten, tighten, tighter. Tight enough to make him feel that if Ville's grip were any stronger, it would crush his fingers.
It was impossible to excuse it away, impossible to brush off what he was seeing as just his imagination, or something the twins had done. He couldn't pin the blame for this on Joona and Jonna, no matter how much he wanted to. There was something there, thin and pale and flickering, standing behind the cairn.
The figure wasn't clear enough for him to get an impression of what it actually looked like. Not properly. All he could see was the shape of a person, and the deep sunken recesses of its eyes, and the wide black hole of an open mouth. Hannu sucked in a breath and tried to shine the flashlight on it. As the weak beam slid over where it stood, the figure disappeared.
As soon as he moved it away, it was back again, as formless as an after-image.
There was a call from the edge of the clearing. "Everything okay over there?" Jonna. Her voice lacked the light tone that it had at the beginning of the evening; she was starting to sound a little concerned.
Couldn't she see it? Hannu licked his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. "Yeah," he called back, and felt Ville squeeze his hand again. This time, he squeezed back.
Hannu didn't have to prompt him. All he had to do was take a step forward. Ville followed. Their footsteps were careful, hushed, almost-silent. He kept the flashlight's beam on the ground in front of him, but his gaze was on the transparent figure beside the cairn.
It was a miracle neither of them tripped.
The noise slowly grew louder.
As they drew closer, the image still flickered, but it also became more defined. Sharper outline. Clearer, going from a shape as fuzzy as a flicker of light to something crisp as a projection. Hannu forced himself to breathe, and to ignore the iron grip Ville had on his hand, and to ignore the noise.
The screaming. With those dark eyes, and that impossibly wide open mouth, that was what it looked like. As if it was screaming.
As long as it - as long as she just stood there, it didn't matter, Hannu told himself. Ghost or not, there's nothing scary about something that just stands there and screeches at you and does nothing else.
The cairn was only a few paces away.
"Should I-" Ville's voice in his ear, barely audible even up close.
"I'll do it," Hannu said, looking at him. By what little light they had, it was hard to read his face, but he could see how wide-eyed and pale and anxious he looked. "Then we can go home."
Ville looked as if he were going to speak. Then he simply let go and nodded, taking a step back in concession. Hannu looked toward the cairn. Took a deep breath, then took the few steps that were left.
He reached down.
He touched one of the stones.
He felt something cold grip his shoulder, and heard Ville screaming over the sound of the ghost.
He lifted his head and stared straight into the ghost's face. Its wide empty eyes stared right back.
For a moment, he was petrified. Then something grabbed him from behind, pulled him away, yelling his name. Ville.
Hannu shoved the stone in his pocket and they ran, the noise ringing in their ears.
They crashed together through the woods in the dark, trying to find the overgrown trail that was just barely there, their flashlight beams leaving scattered bright impressions in the darkness. Hannu stumbled; Ville grabbed him and heaved him up again.
Ahead, they could see slivers of light from Joona's flashlight; could hear them crashing through the dark. The twins had bolted, leaving them behind.
Assholes, Hannu thought, and called out, "Joona! Jonna!"
The light stopped. Moved, becoming blinding as it turned and pointed toward them. "Hannu?!"
"It's us!" Ville called. "Wait!"
They ran toward the light, glad that it didn't move, relieved when they finally saw the twins' pale faces in the dark.
"Thank heavens -"
"You assholes!"
As Ville latched onto Jonna and clung to her, Hannu tackled Joona.
The flashlight dropped. The two of them went down, crashing amid the brush and scrub and undergrowth.
Two strong hands grabbed at his wrists before he could go in for the choke.
"Wh- Hannu, what the hell -"
"You left us!" Hannu said through his teeth, trying to pull out of Joona's grip. "I don't know what the hell happened, but you left us there. How the fuck were we supposed to find out way back?!"
"Well..."
"He has a point, Joona."
"...Sorry."
For a long moment, neither of them said anything; Hannu glared down at Joona in the dark and tried to steady himself, tried to even out his breathing. He gave another experimental tug, trying to pull out from Joona's grip.
Slowly, deliberately, Jonna stepped away from Ville. She moved to gather up the fallen flashlights, leaves and twigs crunching under her feet in the dark. "Look," she said, the weariness and exhaustion in her voice almost covering up the nervousness. "We didn't mean it, okay?"
"But-"
"Ville, we were really creeped out. Okay?"
"... Okay."
Another long breath. Another pause. Hannu took the hand Ville offered to him, not wanting to look at Joona. "Is it still back there?"
"What, you want to find out?!" Joona asked as he stood, brushing leaves off his clothing.
"No!" Hannu rolled his eyes. "But who stays it'll stay where it is?"
They went silent. Turned and looked in the direction that they had come from, breath sharp. There was nothing in sight. As for sound -
Hannu listened silently. The forest was quiet. No breeze to rattle the branches in the trees. Underneath it, he thought he heard a sharp, indefinable something.
He looked first to Ville, who nodded. Then he looked to Joona and Jonna, who glanced at one another, unable to quite meet his eyes.
"I don't hear anything," Jonna said. She was lying. Hannu didn't want to correct her.
"Okay," he said. "it doesn't matter. Let's just go home."
They walked back in the dark, their weak flashlights casting a thin glow over the overgrown trail as they went. They said little, almost nothing, and it didn't escape Hannu's notice that Ville kept closer to him than he had before, and that the twins' demeanour had turned cold and quiet and nervous, their good mood from earlier in the evening entirely gone.
What did they see? Hannu wondered as he pulled his hands into his sleeves, wrapped his arms around himself. What did all of this look like from where they'd been standing? But he didn't ask. It was the wrong time to ask. It could wait until tomorrow.
Or never, maybe.
They soon returned to the familiar warmth of the village, the streetlamps giving off a light that now was more welcoming and comforting than it had ever been. The four of them paused at the crossroads, two not quite wanting to look at the other two, even if it was hard to avoid it. What could they say?
"So."
"...So."
Hannu lifted his head. The twins glanced at each other, not quite guiltily, then looked at him and Ville. Almost sheepish. Not sheepish enough.
"We'll see you tomorrow?" Jonna offered, as if in concession.
"... Right."
They parted ways not long after that. There was nothing more to do about it, and nothing they could say that wouldn't come out too weird and too awkward and too unbelievable.
He and Ville hardly said anything to each other, either. One glance at one another was all it took. Hannu didn't want to say anything, and Ville didn't ask. Not until they were finally home, stepping into the warmth, locking the door soundly behind them. Not until they were getting ready for bed, slipping into their pyjamas. Hannu looked at the clock, frowned, and set the alarm. They'd hardly get enough sleep for tomorrow.
... If any.
That was when Ville sank down beside him on the edge of the bed. Ville hesitated, as if needing a moment to think, then leaned against him. Hannu allowed it, and after a moment, leaned into him as well.
"What do you think that was?" Ville asked. "Back there, I mean."
Hannu closed his eyes. There were some things he'd decided long ago that he would rather not accept, but experiences over the past year had forced him to accept them. The fact that it was Ville asking that question meant that he had to take it for what it was. "Ghost," he said simply. "That's all. The story was true."
"I thought you didn't believe in ghosts."
"I don't believe in talking foxes, either." Hannu sighed. "Or dogs turning into people. Or, you know, whatever. Look, whatever it was, it's over now, okay? Let's just get to bed."
Sleep didn't come easily. Not even when they were both under the covers, curled up with one another. Hannu nestled against Ville's bulk and tried not to think about ghosts.
Tried. And failed. It was almost impossible to get his mind off of it.
Somehow, he could still hear it, though it seemed far-off. That high sound. Screaming. He shut his eyes tight, but all he could see were the empty eyes, that open, crying mouth. Drawing in a deep breath, he carefully turned over in bed and curled closer to Ville, and drew the covers up more securely over the two of them so he could push out of his mind the memory of the cold touch he'd experienced back in the clearing. He listened as hard as he could to the steady sound of Ville's breathing and tried to take comfort in the fact that his friend seemed to not have any trouble sleeping.
When sleep finally came, it was sharp and uneasy and restless, and when the alarm clock blared in the morning it was all Hannu could do to stop himself from throwing it at the wall.
The night had been unsettling, but the morning was another thing. Even though the morning was as dark as the evening, it was easy to pretend that what had happened the night before was nothing. And even if it was something, it was something that didn't matter.
Breakfast. Coffee. Hot shower and frosty autumn air as they stepped out into it. It felt good, and that was promising. Hannu pulled his cap down over his ears and walked in silence beside Ville. They didn't talk about ghosts, and they didn't think about ghosts.
Ghosts, after all, weren't real. They weren't.
Work was another thing altogether. The twins were tight-lipped, irritable, and it wasn't long before Ville was able to get an explanation out of them: they had been caught as they were attempting to sneak back into the house. Old man Kuikka had given them a tongue-lashing. It hadn't been pretty.
"He said we should've told him we were going out," Joona muttered as he relayed it to Ville. "And normally, we would, but - can you imagine how he would've reacted if he'd actually told him where we were going?"
"It's not like we had to tell where we were going. We could have lied," Jonna said, elbowing her brother in the ribs.
"You should've thought of it!"
"No, you!"
The rest of the day proceeded in pretty much the same way. Not for the first time, Hannu found himself glad that he worked in the back. Out of sight. Out of mind. No need to talk to anyone - mostly. And when Jonna came to him and said, "You look like death warmed over, are you okay?" Hannu simply gave her a glare that could crack mirrors and said that he was tired.
It wasn't like it wasn't the truth.
When evening came, the previous night seemed far away. Hannu was glad for it. Ville had shaken off the last bit of skittishness left over from their experiences yesterday, and was acting as if it were a perfectly normal night. They stood side by side, washing the supperdishes together, Ville singing along to the radio, and Hannu saying nothing. It was peaceful. Comfortable. The light from the kitchen spilled out into the dark of the outside, and in a warm moment like that, they could pretend that everything was normal, and nothing had ever been amiss.
Suddenly, Ville's singing trailed off. He stopped. Set down the plate he was drying. "Hannu..."
Hannu lifted his head. Looked at Ville, who was staring out the window, his cheeks pale and his lips slightly parted, as if he wanted to say something but wasn't sure how to continue. Slowly, Hannu followed his gaze and looked outside.
Something stood there in the dark.
There was a tree. The light that came from the moon and the nearby streetlamps didn't press through all of it; its thick evergreen boughs left plenty of darkness. And in front of that darkness, something stood, flickering thinly in the dim light.
It stared at them.
Hannu looked out at its empty eyes, and its wide mouth, which didn't seem to be screaming now. That mouth merely hung open, as if it couldn't shut it.
As he stared, the ghost stared back. Or maybe it didn't. With eyes like that, it was hard to tell.
"How did it get here?" Ville whispered, tilting his head so his lips practically brushed Hannu's ear, as if he were afraid the thing outside might hear him if he spoke too loudly. "I thought it couldn't leave the clearing!"
"I don't -" Hannu began. Then he stopped. Quickly thought back to the previous night, and felt his stomach sink.
"...Shit."
"What?"
"I put a stone from the cairn in my pocket."
Ville groaned. "But why-"
"I don't know, okay?! I wasn't thinking." Hannu glanced at Ville, glared, then looked out the window again.
The ghost looked back. Then, slowly, it raised an arm. Pointed toward the window. Just as slowly, it moved to point toward the woods, and continued pointing, staring open-mouthed at the two of them.
Hannu frowned.
"I think we'll have to go back there if we want to get rid of it," he muttered.
"... But I don't want to go back."
"You don't have to." Hannu sighed. He looked away from the window, and drained the sink, trying to get some sense of normalcy, even if his life was nowhere near normal anymore and hadn't been for a year. "But someone has to take it back."
"You're going back there?"
"Well, who else?" Hannu turned to him. "It isn't like I want to! I want to go to bed. But I can't sleep with that thing standing outside my house. Can you?" He gestured out the window at the ghost.
Ville looked over at it.
Hannu looked as well.
The ghost stared at them, still flickering, still pointing the way toward the woods.
"No," Ville said quietly. "I... don't think I'll be able to sleep."
"Exactly." Hannu looked at it for a while. Didn't take his eyes away from it. There was something about it that made it look weirdly small, and almost sad. He bit his lower lip and thought about it.
It hadn't tried to hurt him. It had scared him, sure. But it hadn't hurt him. Just screamed in his face and touched his shoulder. Compared to some of the other weird things he'd seen, that wasn't so bad. It hadn't even tried to kill him.
Slowly, the story from the fire a few nights before came back to him. He'd dozed off in the middle of it, but he'd heard just enough to get the general idea, enough to remember what the twins had said about the girl who disappeared.
Not it, then. She.
"Okay," Hannu said quietly. "Here's what we'll do. We'll just... go. And we'll get it over with. And then we'll come home and sleep."
A deep sigh. "Okay." Pause. "Just as long as we won't get lost."
"We won't."
Caps. Flashlights. Extra batteries. And phones. GPS. That was how they'd do it. As Hannu ran down with Ville how to use it, he muttered that he'd been meaning to teach him, in case they went hiking together. This, however, was not what he'd had in mind.
They shared a laugh over it, but an uneasy one. Soon enough, they stepped out into the cold autumn nigh. The sun had gone down completely and their breath left fog in the air. There would be frost in the morning.
The cairn stone was heavy in Hannu's pocket.
They were silent as they walked around the side of the house to the tree where the ghost stood. She was still there, her eyes empty, her pale arm pointing toward the woods. Her form was more visible up close; not solid, but steady and clear, like a film projection.
Her eyes were nothing but dark holes. She wore winter clothing. The front of it was darkened, a black rosette on her chest, and as Hannu drew closer he realized what it was.
She had been murdered, then.
She stared at him.
He took Ville's hand.
"...So." He looked in the direction the ghost was pointing. "That's the way, then?"
And to his surprise, she nodded.
The walk into the woods was not like it had been the previous night. There aren't the sound of the twins laughing, and no stumbling and crashing through the brush, and no moments where they lost the trail and found it again. The ghost girl glided through the forest in front of them, steady and visible at such a close range, practically glowing. With the flashlight's beam to the ground, the trail was easy enough to see.
Hannu wondered just how much of that was on account of the four of them breaking through the path the previous night. He decided it was best not to think about it.
Ville was silent beside him, nervous, skittish, one hand in Hannu's hand, the other in his pocket. He said nothing, only kept his head down, following the beam from Hannu's flashlight.
Maybe it was to avoid looking at her. The black stain was spread out over her back, too, the darkness seeping into her clothes. It was a good thing that she only manifested that way, as a pale image; that he couldn't see the dark red that the stain would have been.
She led them, and they followed. Eventually, she took them into the clearing. Hannu stepped carefully, lifted his flashlight beam, and let it cross milky-white over the cairn.
He heard nothing. Not the mosquito-whine he'd heard at the beginning. Not the screaming, either.
Then again, since she'd led them here, maybe she didn't have any reason to scream.
As he watched, the ghost went to take up her place beside the cairn. She stood there, stared at him with her black, empty eyes. Then she pointed down at it.
"Okay," Hannu said, looking over at Ville. "Let's get this over with." And then, he thought, we can go home.
Somehow, he felt light. That hadn't been so hard. Creepy, sure. But not had. And soon, he thought as he went over to the cairn, it would all be over. He fished the rock out of his pocket. Glanced at the ghost as if to confirm. She said nothing, just pointed emphatically down at the pile of stones.
"Fair enough," Hannu muttered, and placed his stone on top of it.
He didn't know what he expected to happen. A word of thanks, maybe. Or for the ghost to disappear in a screaming whirlwind. A puff of smoke. Something.
He did not expect her to reach out and touch him,
He did not expect that arm to come up again, pointing out into the darkness, past the clearing and into the trees beyond; not the way that they had come, but even further into the forest, deeper into the dark.
"Hannu, what -"
Hannu's mouth was dry. He could hear Ville, but couldn't bring himself to tear his gaze away from that face. Even if the ghost said nothing, it was clear what she wanted.
Damnit, he thought. This keeps getting worse. So much for going home at a reasonable time. "I think... I think we still have to go," he said.
Suddenly, Ville was beside him. He grabbed Hannu's hand, looking as if he wanted to pull him away from the ghost.
Hannu dug in his feet. "Ville. It's fine."
"But-"
"Look, she isn't even screaming."
The ghost slowly turned her head to look at Ville. Then at Hannu. Her expression flickered, and she seemed to point more emphatically.
"... I don't think we're getting out of this," Ville whispered by Hannu's ear.
Hannu doubted that there was any chance that the ghost had not heard them. "I don't think so either."
A pause. "We could run?"
"Maybe." Maybe not, Hannu thought. But what if she comes back somehow? The thought of having to deal with ghosts for yet another night made him feel exhausted. "She'll just find some other way to chase us." He looked over at Ville, offered his hand. "Come on. Let's find out what she wants. It isn't that late, so we might as well get it over with."
Ville's expression flickered. He frowned, looking as if he might protest, then finally nodded and took Hannu's hand.
Hannu looked at the ghost again. It stared at him for a moment, its gaze empty and dark in that white face. Then, slowly, it turned and led them into the dark.
The going was slower this time. Hannu and Ville stepped carefully through the forest, tramping through it, picking their way through growth that hadn't seen human feet in years. The flashlight beam was pale and weak, seeming to emphasize the darkness more than cut through it.
In front of them, the ghost continued on its way, a slip of whiteness leading them somewhere.
Somewhere.
Hannu gripped Ville's hand. Not that he needed to. Not that they would lose one another, even with the dark as thick as it was. It was simply that the hold gave a steadiness that they both needed, an assurance that they were together. Even when they parted at times to get through thick brush, to make their way around fallen trees, to hold back low-lying branches so the other could pass, they found one another again.
It felt as if they were going on forever.
When Hannu finally stopped to check the time on his phone, his eyes widened, and he muttered a curse under his breath. He held it up so Ville, peering over his shoulder, could see it.
They had been wandering around in the woods for three hours.
"What should we do?" Ville whispered in his ear.
"I don't know," Hannu whispered back. Maybe she wasn't taking them anywhere at all, he thought. Maybe she was just trying to get them lost. The thought sunk down heavy in his stomach. "Maybe we should leave."
If they turned around, they could get home soon enough that maybe if they were lucky, they could get a scrap of sleep before they'd have to be up again. Maybe....
As he shoved his phone back into his pocket Hannu looked up and realized that the ghost had stopped moving. Not only that, she had turned to face them, was staring at them with her empty black eyes.
She looked annoyed.
Then again, she wasn't the only one.
"Look," Hannu said, holding his hands up. "Whatever it is that you want, make it quick, okay?! You can't just drag us around the woods for nothing!"
The ghost's expression hardly changed, but there was a flicker there, a hint of suggestion that unlike Hannu, she had all the time in the world.
"I mean it!"
"Hannu, don't make it mad-"
"No," Hannu replied, sure that the ghost had heard Ville's loud whispering, and not caring one bit. "I don't have time for this! Do you understand?!" He glared at the ghost, trying to ignore the sensation that surfaced, the feeling that she was staring right through him.
The two of them looked at the pale figure in front of them. it looked back. After a moment, the ghost's mouth moved, as if trying to speak.
No sound came out. Finally, the ghost pointed once again in the direction it had been leading them.
She looked as if she might cry.
Hannu and Ville looked at one another.
"I don't... It doesn't look like it's trying to get us lost," Ville said slowly.
Hannu sighed. Deflated. He felt exhausted. He wanted to go home. He could feel the beginnings of a headache rising, even as his eyes drooped. Ville was right, but did it matter? They didn't have any reason to go on a wild goose chase like this.
Glancing at Ville, he took in the way he looked in what little light there was to see by. Even if it was dim, it was enough to see the look Ville was giving him. That expression again.
"... Okay. Fine." One step forward, then another. "But if something happens, I'll know who to blame."
It led them forward, deeper into the forest. Eventually, they stopped talking altogether. There was no sound except the crunch of their feet on twigs in the undergrowth. Hannu didn't dare to check the time.
Eventually, there came the distinct sensation that they were moving downhill. Hannu swept the flashlight across the ground and saw that he was right; they were moving on a gentle descent, as if toward water. He nudged Ville, muttered a word to him. From there, they were more careful.
The ghost led them down the gentle incline to a lazy-flowing stream. She stopped there, then looked one way, then another, as if not sure which way to go. There was confusion in her dark eyes.
If she's lost, Hannu thought with exasperation, then we're all screwed. But just as he was about to question her, the ghost began moving again.
The forest seemed to get even darker and colder than it was before. Hannu looked up, frowning when he realized that the moon had ducked beneath the clouds. He cursed to himself, and stepped more carefully, trying not to trip.
It wasn't long before the ghost stopped again.
She led them to a small space ringed with trees and the curled dry remnants of autumn leaves. Their feet crunched softly as they stepped into it. The ghost stood in the centre, looking at them, blank-faced and white and more solid than she had appeared even at the beginning of the evening, when she had stood in Hannu's yard and stared at them through the window.
She looked at them.
Then she pointed down at the ground.
Hannu and Ville looked at each other.
"What do you think she wants?" Hannu muttered.
"I think... she wants us to dig."
"You can't be serious."
"Well, do you have any other ideas?"
Hannu had to admit that he didn't.
He stared at the ground, pursing his lips. Then he looked at the ghost again. "Well?" he asked, as if expecting an answer. "Is he right? Should we dig or not?"
The ghost looked at him. Her eyes, though dark, weren't as empty as before, and the face not as featureless. She gave him what could only be described as a withering look.
Then she opened her mouth and screamed.
Hannu's hands flew to his ears. The flashlight dropped, scattering light across the leaf-strewn hollow. Even with his ears covered, he could still hear it, the high-pitched shrieking.
"Okay!" he yelled. "Okay, we'll do it!"
The noise stopped.
Carefully, Hannu took his hands from his ears. Nothing. He looked up at the ghost, gritting his teeth, trying to ignore the impulse to yell right back at her. He'd only get more ear-shattering shrieks for it, he was sure.
Beside him, Ville bent to retrieve the flashlight. Hannu sighed.
"Okay," he said. "You win."
It didn't take them long to set to it. They found some sturdy branches with sharp ends, knelt and set to clearing away the forest floor at the spot where they had been directed.
Above them, the ghost stood, watching. It was unnerving, having her stare while they worked, her dark eyes boring into the back of their heads. But at least, Hannu thought, it gave some glow to see by. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
The soil under their hands was surprisingly soft, even if it showed no sign of having been moved for a long time. As they stirred it, Hannu glanced toward Ville. Their eyes met. Ville parted his lips to speak, then seemed to think better of it, and went back to scraping the soil away.
Best not to talk about it. Best not to say anything. It was hard to be sure what they might find under there, but Hannu could guess at it. It was better not to say anything until he knew for sure.
It wasn't long before they found something. As the ghost's glow spilled into the hole, they hit something hard. Brushing the remnants of soil away revealed white shapes, knobbed and rounded, the distinct curve of bone. The sunken recess of empty eye sockets.
Ville scrambled back from the hole. Hannu pulled his hands back as if they had been burned. "Gross," he muttered.
The eerie white glow was fading. He looked up, expecting to see the ghost. But instead of the blank-eyed face that he had seen more than enough of, he saw the rapidly-fading shape leave the clearing, heading toward the stream.
At t stream's edge, the ghost stopped, looking toward the other side as if unsure what to do next. Then she turned toward them and lifted a hand, waving.
The splash of blood across the front of her coat was gone.
As Hannu watched, she turned and walked across the stream, picking her way carefully through the shallow water, fading with every step she took. Finally, she reached the other side of the bank and was gone.
It was a while before the two of them left the clearing. Not that they wanted to hang around; in fact, it was the last thing either of them wanted to do. Neither Ville nor Hannu relished the thought of staying there, and they were both exhausted. But after the ghost disappeared, they stayed in the clearing for a while, looking down at the hole. There was something important they had to take care of first.
"What should we do?"
"What do you mean? We don't have to do anything." Hannu shoved his hands in his pockets. They didn't have to do anything. They had done more than enough already. "It's over, that thing's gone... let's just go home."
Ville glanced down into the hole, then quickly looked away. He took a deep breath, as if to ground himself. "We have to tell somebody about this, Hannu," he said softly.
"Oh, come on," Hannu groaned. "Like who? The police, or what? And what're we going to say, that a ghost led us to where her body was stuffed a hundred years ago and made us dig her bones up so she could cross over into the underworld?" He rolled his eyes.
"Well... yes?"
"You can't be serious."
"I am serious." Ville folded his arms over his chest. The set of his face was stubborn, even though he looked as if he was trying not to shudder at what they had dug up. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. "I think she needs a proper burial. What if she comes back if she doesn't get one?"
Hannu went quiet. Ville pursed his lips, watched him, and waited. And Hannu made him wait; took his time while he thought it over. What if that was what they needed to do? What if it would come back if it - if she - didn't get buried? He shut his eyes to stop his gaze from drifting to the long-decayed body they'd found, and tried not to think of all the horror movies he'd watched where even after it seemed as if the spirit had been laid to rest, it returned anyway.
"... Okay," Hannu said eventually. "I'll think of something. I guess."
They covered the remains with evergreen boughs, concealing the hole for the time that it would be abandoned, not wanting to fill it again. Then they rose and, by the light of their flashlights and the aid of the GPS on their phones, made their way back home.
Somehow, even though nothing had changed, the light seemed brighter, the going more easy. They grasped one another's hands as they walked, not wanting to be separated.
When they finally reached home, it was all Hannu could do to keep from collapsing. He fought the impulse to slink to bed just long enough to call the Kuikka and leave a message on the voicemail. After a night like that, there was no way he and Ville were coming in to work.
"Aren't you going to call the police?" Ville asked as he watched Hannu shuffle off to the bedroom. "Or, um, whoever it is that you... call... in a situation like this..."
Hannu paused. Considered it for a moment. "She's been dead for years," he said. "It can wait a few more hours."
The look of disapproval that Ville sent him was half-hearted. He pursed his lips, but said nothing. Even Ville couldn't argue with that, not after two nights of tramping around in the woods.
In the morning, they would make the call. They would deal with the questions, the explanations. A story, Hannu decided. That was what they needed. They'd followed up on the ghost legend, and that had led them to the body. It was close enough to the truth that he wouldn't need to worry about Ville giving them away.
And even if Ville did accidentally spill the beans on what really happened, nobody would believe it.
He gave up thinking about it. Instead, he let himself drift off, let exhaustion carry him away, knowing he would sleep like the dead.
The Swan peered at the girl standing on the riverbank. The girl tilted her head, looking up at her with wide eyes. She looked pale-faced, nervous, and above all, tired.
"You took your time getting here," the Swan said with a sniff.
"It wasn't my fault." The girl shook her head. The set of her mouth had a stubbornness to it.
One of those, then. It never was their fault, in cases like that, and the Swan knew that she couldn't blame them for it. Let the blame go to those who did the deed, she thought. "I understand." She stopped, hesitating for a moment. "Someone helped you find your way?"
"Yes. A boy and his... dog?" The girl's face flickered with doubt. "It was strange - he looked like a human, but he was also a dog -"
The Swan groaned. "Oh no, not those two," she said, shaking her head from side to side, huffing. "I thought I'd heard the last of them."
"... I'm sorry?"
"Never mind." The Swan breathed deeply. It would do her no good to let her feathers get ruffled over something like that. Not when there was business to take care of - and there was always business to take care of. "Come along, then. You look tired."
"I am. ...Thank you."
"There is a place for you, of course. It's been waiting for you for a long time."
In the darkness of Tuonela, the Swan brought the girl's soul to rest, and though she felt some lingering bitterness about hearing news of the two troublemakers in the world of the living, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of satisfaction that an outstanding case could be filed away.
End
Fandom: A Redtail's Dream
Characters/Pairing: Hannu, Ville, Joona & Jonna
Rating: 13+
Length: 11k
Summary: Joona and Jonna have heard about a ghost in the woods. They want to find out if the story is true - and they want Hannu and Ville to come with them. But ghosts aren't real - are they?
Other: Finally finished this! Thanks to everyone for the encouragement. :)
The Ghost in the Woods
The fire burned brightly in the cold autumn night.
It was too late in the year for an evening meetup around the firepit. Paju said it, and then repeated it, and then said it again. "It'll be too cold. It isn't summer any more, you know." But Joona and Jonna turned a deaf ear to her, as usual.
"It'll be fine. Throw on a sweater or two!"
"And a jacket. And maybe a scarf? Yeah, that's all you need."
That night, even if she'd said (again and again) that it wasn't a good idea, Paju was right there in their backyard, along with all the rest.
It was a clear night, and the sky above was bright, the smoke circling lazily upward toward the near-full moon. They talked, and the night echoed with their voices, and the occasional laugh punctuating the crisp dark.
Riikka and Anssi passed around the marshmallows.
As the moon rose higher and the hour grew later, the conversation turned toward one thing: stories.
Scary stories.
It wasn't the first time they passed around tales like this. Occasionally, on that kind of night, when they were all together and it was late and there was nothing better to do, Joona and Jonna would bring the idea up. Everyone around the circle would take turns, each person telling one story, always trying to outdo the previous person in terms of how gruesome it was, or failing that, how good it was, even if it wasn't the kind of game anyone could win. Every time, nobody would claim to be scared. But in spite of those claims, every time, nobody really wanted to walk home alone, either.
That night was no different. They took turns, one story after another. A tale of a haunted book that kept getting sold and resold, and every person who owned it died under mysterious circumstances. A fishing boat went down in a storm, and ever since it could be seen from the beach on foggy nights, never to reach the shore. An empty lighthouse, abandoned decades ago, shone brightly at night even if nobody was there - and anyone who went to investigate never returned.
"Pass," Hannu muttered, like he always did, rolling his eyes a little when his turn came up. But after Ville whispered in his ear, he sighed, and gave in, and told a story about a man who became lost in his dreams and died there.
After that, it was Joona and Jonna's turn. They looked at one another for a moment, as if deciding on something. A familiar expression crossed their faces; it was the look they both tended to get when they were up to something. It was as if somehow, without even speaking, they were able to agree on a plan. Then they turned toward the circle again, and the fire's light cast shadows on their faces.
"Sooo we heard this creepy story the other day," Jonna began. The fire flickered, reflecting in her eyes as a grin slipped across her face.
"It's a real one, too," Joona added. "The genuine article."
"You always say that," Riikka said, holding back a laugh. "Every time. Even for the ones that are really far-fetched. They can't all be true."
"But this one is!"
"Go on with it, then." Anssi poked at the fire, sending a handful of sparks drifting lazily upward, crackling. "We're listening."
And after a second or two of sideways glances at each other, as they had a silent argument over which of them should tell it, Joona cleared his throat and started.
"So, we know this one's true, because we heard it from our old man. Well, he mentioned some things that sounded weird, and then we went and looked it up. Like, we even went to the library. Everything checked out. It's kind of creepy; it's not really the kind of thing that we expected to read about happening here, outside of like, during the war and stuff. Though I guess this kind of thing could happen anywhere.
No, don't ask me what; I'm going to tell you. Just hold on, okay? Right. Stop looking at me like that, Jonna; I'm getting to it.
So. This story happened a long time ago, in this village, in these woods. There was some creepy stuff going on back when our dad was a kid. That's how he knows about it. It's always been kind of hush-hush. People here don't like to talk about it much. But it starts with a story that happened even earlier than that, way before any of our parents were born. So, I'm going to start there.
A long time ago, there was this girl. She was - well, a little younger than your brother, Paju. Old enough to get into trouble, though. Or old enough for other people to drag her into it.
So, the story goes that she was in love with this guy. He wasn't exactly stand-up boyfriend material, if you know what I mean; he was kind of a lazy bum. And a real jerk, too. Like Hannu over here - yikes, wow, keep the creepy glares to yourself, man. You know it's true.
So. Her dad didn't like her boyfriend. What that meant was that they had to meet in secret. Every night, they'd sneak out, and go into the woods. They had a special place where they'd meet each other in the forest. For some reason, nothing else grew in that spot; just that big, black, rotted-out old thing that just didn't want to fall over. It was easy enough to find.
That was what they did. They'd go out and meet every night. Well, almost every night. Sometimes one or the other would stay home, because their parents would notice that they were missing. But at times like that, if one of them got there and the other didn't show up, they'd leave a letter in a cairn that they built up under the tree. Romantic, right? But risky. It was hard to sneak out at night. And it got even harder once summer was over and it started getting darker, and darker, and colder. Not to mention that there was dear old dad to think of. They figured he was oblivious. Who wouldn't? They figured that since they were getting away with it, there was no way that he knew.
But the girl's father wasn't exactly oblivious. He knew what was going on. He just didn't know where they were meeting.
One night, it was getting pretty cold. It was autumn, almost winter really. Late enough in the year for it to get really cold. And one night, snow fell. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to cover everything a bit, you know how it gets. Well, even though it was cold, the girl climbed out through her window and went out into the woods. What she didn't know that there was someone watching her. Her father stood in his bedroom window, and he watched her go, until all that was left were her footprints in the snow.
The girl left, but she never came back. She disappeared. Nobody ever saw her again after that night.
Now, people talked. Most people thought that she just got lost in the woods, maybe. Or that she ran away, who knows where. But some people thought she'd been murdered. They also thought they knew who did it. Some say it was her father, that he followed the footprints she left in the snow that night. Others say it was her boyfriend. They claimed that he wasn't just a lazy guy, like everyone thought he was, but that he was a real sicko. Others thought that maybe she just ran away. Whatever the case, they never found a body, so I guess we'll never know.
But even if she was gone, the tree was still there. And people knew about that tree, and that she met her boyfriend met there. Some people who knew her went to it, poking around, looking for clues. But they didn't find anything. And when they left, they felt a little bit weird, like somebody was watching them.
That was how it went in daylight, at least.
Well, nobody went back there for a few years. Sometimes people would go looking for more evidence, though they never found anything. They always searched in daylight, because the place was kind of spooky, and it isn't like it's easy to search in the dark anyway. And eventually people just stopped looking.
Now, a long time passed, and people never really forgot about the story and the tree. They always knew it was there. And then one day, some troublemakers decided to head to that old tree, just for kicks. Just because it was the last place that this missing girl had been, probably, and that was pretty creepy. Kids these days, right?
Well, they waited until it was dark, because that would make it even creepier. And they went into the forest. They headed toward that clearing with the tree.
Now, I'm not saying that anything actually happened there. But the story goes, that when they stepped into the clearing, the temperature suddenly dropped, and the air was ice-cold. And they felt like there was someone watching them. But they weren't going to turn back just yet. It was kind of a walk to get there, and they weren't going to just give up even though things were already getting kind of weird. So, one guy turned to the other guy and said, "I dare you to grab one of the stones off that cairn". And of course the other guy agreed to it. Wouldn't want to look like a chicken in front of his buddy, right?
So, he stepped closer. And he started to hear a noise, kind of like - yeah, exactly like that, Jonna. Kind of like a whine. At first it sounded like a mosquito or something. It was weird, but he figured was just his friend trying to scare him. So, he stepped even closer. And with every step, the noise got louder, and louder, and louder. But again, he figured it's just his friend trying to scare him, so he didn't turn back to look at him, because that would just prove that he was scared.
And then he got to the cairn. And he put his hand on the top stone. And as soon as he did that, he heard a scream, like a thousand people all screeching at once!
Well, he bolted, and so did the other guy, and they ran like the devil was after both of them, and the screaming stayed behind. And they didn't stop running until they were back at home, safe and sound, because whatever had happened back there, it scared the piss out of both of them. Later, the guy who'd held back, the one who'd dared the other to go into the clearing, swore he saw something - something that looked human-shaped, standing with its mouth wide open, just screaming its head off. As far as they could figure, it was probably that dead girl, still waiting for her boyfriend, and she didn't want anyone else to show up.
That's what happens every time someone heads out there at night. The ghost. The screaming. And that's why people warn not to go there. Not even in daylight. And never at night. Because she's there, waiting. She'll always be there."
The fire crackled, sending sparks drifting lazily upward. The circle was quiet.
"You win," Anssi said after a moment. "That was creepy."
"I think it's sad." Riikka shook her head. "Poor girl. Nobody ever found out what happened to her?"
"Nope." Jonna grinned. "But guess what? We know where that tree used to be."
"... Oh no."
"And we're going to go there and see it for ourselves!" Joona grinned, rubbing his hands together. "Who's with us?"
There was a collective groan from around the fire. Paju folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at the twins. "You aren't serious, are you?" she asked.
"Well, like, not tonight. We're gonna go tomorrow! But yeah, totally serious." Jonna rested her chin against one hand, the smile on her face broadening. "Want to come? It'll be fun! Or are you too scared?"
"I am not scared." Paju huffed, sitting up a little straighter, giving them both her sternest glare. "But I have better things to do than go tramping around in the dark with you two. It's just a story; there's nothing to find."
The twins glanced at each other. "Well, sure, maybe it isn't your thing," Jonna said slowly. "But I dunno' about it being just a story."
There was a long silence. Finally, Ville asked what everyone had been wondering. "What do you mean?"
"You know those guys who went to the tree?" Joona dropped his voice a little, as if it were a conspiratorial secret. "One of them was our dear old dad. I mean, it happened when he was a lot younger. Our age, probably. Or younger than that, maybe. Now, I know you don't know him that well yet, Ville. But he isn't the kind of guy who'd make stuff up just to scare us. Something happened that night." He grinned. "So we're going to find out what it was. And you guys should all come with us."
Paju shook her head, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Riikka and Anssi looked at each other uneasily. "Um. We'll pass," Riikka said, while her brother nodded. "I just don't think-"
"It's fine, it's fine," Jonna said, with a wave of her hand. "I figured. It's okay. But what about you two?" She turned toward Hannu and Ville, smiling widely, the light flickering eerily on her face. "Are you going to come, or are you too scared?"
"Um... Well, maybe-" Ville began, then stopped, and looked from the twins to Hannu, who had dozed off on his shoulder. He gave him a gentle nudge, tilting his head a bit to hiss at him. "Hey, Hannu, should we do it?"
Hannu opened his eyes, blinking blearily up at him, looking as if he had missed the last few minutes of conversation. "Ugh... Yeah, sure, whatever," he muttered, oblivious to what he was agreeing to.
"Okay!" Ville looked back toward the twins, nodding as he passed on the message. "We'll do it."
Joona and Jonna looked at each other and grinned. Mission accomplished.
The next day passed quickly. Everything happened the way it normally would; nobody mentioned the previous night when Hannu and Ville arrived at work the next morning. Nobody said anything about plans, either. The only indication that anything was going on was a wink from Jonna, who put one finger to her lips. The indication was clear: keep it hush-hush. Ville saw, and nodded. Obviously, they couldn't talk about it at work. He'd keep it hush-hush. No problem.
Throughout the day, the three of them were on edge with anticipation. They tried not to let it show - but even then, the occasional smirk tugged at Joona's lips. Now and then, the Kuikka twins would duck their heads to whisper to one another, and Ville knew exactly what it was about. It was hard to stay quiet about it.
Hannu was the only one who didn't seem to have any trouble keeping quiet about the plans. In fact, he didn't act any differently at all; just continued to go about his business with the usual dour expression on his face. Was it possible that he didn't remember the conversation from last night? Ville thought about asking him, but decided against it. He had been with them, after all, so of course he'd heard the whole story. Hadn't he? And he'd agreed to the idea of going out and searching for the ghost. There was no way he didn't know exactly what Joona and Jonna were grinning about. ...Was there?
Ville got his answer when it was finally time to leave for the day.
"See you tonight," Joona said, holding out a fist for a bump that Ville eagerly returned. "Eleven o'clock, don't forget."
"I won't forget. See you tonight!"
"...What did he mean by 'tonight'?" Hannu asked, turning to Ville as they headed down the leaf-scattered pathways to their home. "You didn't tell me you were going to meet up with them."
"... Um." Oh. Oh. "I'll explain when we get home."
"I agreed to what?"
Hannu swore under his breath. There was no way he'd heard that correctly. That had to be it. It had to be something else. It had to be -
"Um..." Ville looked halfway surprised by his surprise, and halfway unsurprised at all. In the end, he put on a pathetic expression, and turned to put the coffee on. "Ghost hunting. Tonight. With Joona and Jonna. You really don't remember?"
"... No." Hannu frowned as he tried to recall it and came up with nothing. "When was this?"
"Last night. At the fire. I guess you were kind of out of it, but I really did think you were listening."
"I was tired." Sighing, Hannu turned and looked out the window. It was early evening, and the sky was already black. The moon was up, full and bright, but it didn't look very welcoming. He stared up at it and tried to remember the conversation. There was... something. He recalled, vaguely, a story about a ghost in the woods, and Ville whispering him after it was over. That must have been it. "We're not going."
"But -"
"Don't start. I told you, I'm not going."
He turned around, fully prepared to face down Ville's puppy-eyed look. Instead, his friend looked as if he was deep in thought, biting at his lower lip as he considered something very carefully.
"Okay."
"Okay?" Hannu's eyebrows raised. "... You're really fine with staying home?"
"I'm fine with you staying home. But I'm going."
"You're what?"
Ville handed him a coffee mug. "I'm going out with Joona and Jonna tonight," he repeated. His voice had taken on a stubborn note. "I told them I would, so I will. Besides, I'm pretty sure they made that story up, so it isn't like we'll find any real ghosts anyway. It'll be fun! You don't have to worry."
There was a firm edge in Ville's voice that Hannu had heard before. It was a tone that he had heard a few times, and he knew that it always meant that Ville wouldn't budge. He didn't get like that often, but every now and then.... "I can't believe this," Hannu muttered under his breath.
"Well, you can still come, if you want to."
"No."
That "No" was as firm and forceful as he could make it. That was that, Hannu said. And Ville, utterly unconcerned, agreed.
They had supper and coffee in silence. Once or twice, Hannu brought up the subject again, in a low mutter that Ville stubbornly evaded.
Later that night, as the clock hands crept to eleven, Hannu stared at his watch. Paced around in his bedroom a bit. After a few minutes of this, he frowned, then reached for his jacket. "Fine," he muttered under his breath. "Have it your way."
Ville was waiting for him in the kitchen. By the way he brightened up when he saw him, Hannu guessed that if he still had his tail, it would be wagging.
"You changed your mind!"
Hannu shook his head. "I'm just going to come with you because I feel like going for a walk. The story's all made up, anyway, so we're just going to be wasting our time. And I don't want them to scare you too much. That's all." And that was all, as far as he was concerned.
It would be a cold night, and even with the bright moon, it was uncomfortably dark. Hats. Gloves. Coats. They pulled everything on, opting to prepare for the inevitable chill. As soon as they managed to dig the flashlights out from where they had been stowed in the closet, there was a knock on the door.
Hannu opened it, and Joona and Jonna's bright, smiling faces greeted him.
"Hey! Are you ready?"
"We were placing bets on whether you'd come with us or not."
"Yeah. But he looks like he's ready to go, doesn't he?" Jonna gave her brother a friendly punch to the shoulder. "You can cough up the cash when we get home."
Hannu clenched his teeth. It was so tempting to say, Actually, I'm not going, and I never wanted to do this in the first place. But then he heard Ville's footsteps behind him, and sighed.
"Let's just get this over with," Hannu said, glancing back toward Ville, completely unsurprised by the hopeful expression he saw on his face. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave."
In the dark, under the moon's light, four figures slinked down the street toward the forest, whispering.
"We had a really hard time getting out here. Almost didn't make it."
"It took forever for Dad to go to bed. It's like he knew we were planning something. It's not like we could tell him where we were going!"
"He would've flipped out so bad."
When they approached the edge of the woods, it seemed as though the darkness grew darker. Even with the moon high above, the forest loomed thick and black in the night, almost as if it was watching them. Hannu let his gaze drift slowly over it, taking in the entrance to the footpaths with a careful eye. In the daylight, there was nothing ominous about it; and usually in the night, there wouldn't be anything weird about it either. You're just tired, he told himself.
Ville drew close to him. "Are you scared?" he asked. There was a hint of humour in his voice, a little bit of light teasing. But underneath that, there was a note of worry, too.
"Nah," Hannu muttered. "There's nothing weird out there. You know that. What's going to happen is we'll go in, and Joona and Jonna will try to scare us, and it'll just be a waste of time." He paused. "Are you scared?"
"No!"
"Good."
If the twins heard their exchange, they didn't give any sign of it. They were too distracted with digging out their flashlights. From their direction came a sound of rummaging and muttering and whispering between them, and then after a pause, a blinding white light.
"Hah! Got it!" Joona said as the other three groaned from the brightness. "This thing is great. We'll be good for hours."
Hannu blinked as his sight slowly came back enough for him to see the heavy industrial flashlight Joona was holding. "Okay," he said slowly. "Fine. Can we just get this over with?"
It was going to be a long night.
Even with the path made by the beam from Joona's huge flashlight, the trail and the forest around them were both dark. Too dark. The moon filtered weakly down at them through the bare branches, but even then, making their way in the dark was not easy. They deviated from the main paths quickly, turning down an old one that had been overgrown for ages, disappearing and re-appearing as the forest slipped in to reclaim it.
"How far away is this place, anyway?" Ville asked, his voice ringing too-loud in the darkness.
"Oh, not far," Jonna replied. "Should just be a little while now."
That was what she had said the moment they stepped into the forest. If we get lost, Hannu thought, I'll know who to blame. Finding their way back would ordinarily be easy enough, but in the dark, on a path that he wasn't familiar with - that would be much harder.
He stumbled through the undergrowth, swore, and felt Ville's hand on his arm.
"Don't worry!" Cheerful, confident. "I'm sure they know where we're going."
"Well, I'm not sure," Hannu hissed. After years of knowing Joona and Jonna, he knew better than to expect that they'd plan things out. Should have known better, at least. Occasionally, they did put a lot of effort into their grand schemes, but more often than not, everything was done on the spur of the moment.
If he actually had learned from all the other times that they had dragged him into their schemes, he wouldn't have been out in the dark, following two idiots who would probably get all of them lost.
Ville reached for his hand. Hannu sighed and took it. It didn't matter, anyway, he told himself. Even in the dark, he could find his way back if he had to. It would be hard, but he could do it – if he had to. And the twins were more likely to get bored and turn around than get lost.
That didn't change the fact that they were picking their way through an overgrown deer trail in the dark, and that it was getting late. He leaned against Ville, yawned, and resigned himself to struggling to stay awake until they gave up.
They went farther than they should have, farther than they ordinarily would go at night, pressing deeper into the woods. Hannu knew that in truth they should not have been doing it at all, not at night. The thought didn't worry him too much until later, when he checked his watch. The glow from the electric light was blinding in the dark, and after squinting at it, he realized that they had been tramping around in the woods for an hour. Frowning, Hannu resumed his pace a few steps behind Ville, and tried to decide what to do about it.
He wasn't worried. Not exactly. Between himself and Joona and Jonna, they could find a way out if they got lost.
But it was inconvenient. And he was tired.
He must have sighed heavily, because he saw Ville turn a bit to look at him in the dim light. "It's all right!" he said cheerfully. "We're almost there."
"We've been 'almost there' for ages," Hannu muttered. But there were whispers coming from in front of them, and the sound of the twins talking in hushed tones.
After a moment, Joona spoke, his voice ringing out too loud in the dark. "This is it!" he said. "We're h- ow!" A yelp as Jonna elbowed him in the ribs, which did nothing for how loud he was.
Silently, Hannu and Ville moved around them to look into the clearing. The twins' industrial flashlight cast a sturdy beam out into it, reaching far enough to pick out something on the other side that Hannu was very surprised to see: a twisted, charred, lightning-struck tree, and a pile of stones. Beside him, Ville gasped.
Hannu turned to Jonna.
"Okay. So it's a dead tree and a pile of rocks. Fine. Can we go now?"
"Nah. We want to see if the story's true." She held one of the smaller flashlights out to him. "How about you try it?"
Ah. There was the catch. Hannu frowned, glancing down at the flashlight in her hand. "No," he said.
"Well, then Ville can go."
"Wh - I'm not going in there!"
Both twins were smiling, on the verge of laughing, as if this was the best idea they'd ever had. And to be fair, Hannu thought, it was the kind of thing that they would figure was a pretty good joke. Tell a creepy story, then take some suckers out and scare the pants off of them. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to work. After everything he had been through with Ville, Hannu didn't scare very easily.
"Ugh, fine," Hannu said, holding out his hand for the flashlight. "We'll go together."
Ville looked startled, staring at him with wide eyes, but after a moment he nodded. "O-okay," he said, straightening up. "Let's go."
"Good luck!" Joona said, giving Ville a friendly pat on the back. "And remember: it doesn't count unless you touch the cairn."
They were several paces away when Ville tilted his head toward Hannu, hissing, "Why didn't you make them go instead?!"
Hannu sighed. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can leave." He stopped, looking at Ville. "And I don't believe their story, anyway. Do you?"
"No, but - maybe there is a ghost? The dream -"
"That was different." They still hadn't found an explanation for what they had been through a year ago, Hannu thought wearily, and probably never would. The idea that they had actually gone on a journey through the dream world was too weird to believe, but in the face of the evidence – especially Ville's presence – there was no other explanation than the fact that it had actually happened. But this? Ghost stories? No.
Better to just get it over with, then.
"Here," Hannu said, offering Ville his hand. "Hold my hand if you're scared. Okay?"
Ville looked down at his hand, hesitating for a moment. Then he pointedly took it, squeezing it hard. The gesture didn't surprise Hannu at all; it only made him sigh. You spent all that time wandering in the dark, he thought, and now you're scared?
But he kept that to himself, and just nodded instead. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."
They turned forward - and Hannu stopped.
There was something there.
Something was there, but not there, as if it was somehow out of the range of his vision, even though it was right in front of them. Hannu tilted his head. Watched it flicker. Frowned.
"Hannu?" A whisper by his ear. "What is it?" Ville's voice wavered. He could see it too.
Before Hannu could answer, there was a call from behind him.
"If you're too scared, you just have to say so!" Jonna's singsong voice rang out into the dark.
"We can go home if you want!" Joona said, echoing her.
Hannu cursed under his breath. If they turned away, neither of them would ever live it down, and that would be an even worse fate than whatever kind of weirdness might be waiting in front of them. "Let's go," he told Ville again, and felt the reassuring squeeze of Ville's hand around his own.
They only took a few more paces before the noise started. It was sharp, tinny, like a mosquito whining in his ear. Hannu felt his insides flip, but he didn't stop moving.
"Do you hear that?" Ville again.
Hannu pursed his lips, set his jaw, and stood up a little straighter. "It's just them," he said, giving a half-nod behind him to indicate the twins. "That's all." He was lying through his teeth. He hoped it wouldn't be obvious.
Obvious or not, that seemed to satisfy his friend, at least for the moment.
Ville quieted.
The noise didn't.
It got louder with every step they took into that wide, impossibly dark clearing. Louder, sharper. Louder.
The flickering figure came back, too.
"Hannu...."
"I see it."
He stopped. Breathed. Felt the grip Ville had on his hand tighten, tighten, tighter. Tight enough to make him feel that if Ville's grip were any stronger, it would crush his fingers.
It was impossible to excuse it away, impossible to brush off what he was seeing as just his imagination, or something the twins had done. He couldn't pin the blame for this on Joona and Jonna, no matter how much he wanted to. There was something there, thin and pale and flickering, standing behind the cairn.
The figure wasn't clear enough for him to get an impression of what it actually looked like. Not properly. All he could see was the shape of a person, and the deep sunken recesses of its eyes, and the wide black hole of an open mouth. Hannu sucked in a breath and tried to shine the flashlight on it. As the weak beam slid over where it stood, the figure disappeared.
As soon as he moved it away, it was back again, as formless as an after-image.
There was a call from the edge of the clearing. "Everything okay over there?" Jonna. Her voice lacked the light tone that it had at the beginning of the evening; she was starting to sound a little concerned.
Couldn't she see it? Hannu licked his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. "Yeah," he called back, and felt Ville squeeze his hand again. This time, he squeezed back.
Hannu didn't have to prompt him. All he had to do was take a step forward. Ville followed. Their footsteps were careful, hushed, almost-silent. He kept the flashlight's beam on the ground in front of him, but his gaze was on the transparent figure beside the cairn.
It was a miracle neither of them tripped.
The noise slowly grew louder.
As they drew closer, the image still flickered, but it also became more defined. Sharper outline. Clearer, going from a shape as fuzzy as a flicker of light to something crisp as a projection. Hannu forced himself to breathe, and to ignore the iron grip Ville had on his hand, and to ignore the noise.
The screaming. With those dark eyes, and that impossibly wide open mouth, that was what it looked like. As if it was screaming.
As long as it - as long as she just stood there, it didn't matter, Hannu told himself. Ghost or not, there's nothing scary about something that just stands there and screeches at you and does nothing else.
The cairn was only a few paces away.
"Should I-" Ville's voice in his ear, barely audible even up close.
"I'll do it," Hannu said, looking at him. By what little light they had, it was hard to read his face, but he could see how wide-eyed and pale and anxious he looked. "Then we can go home."
Ville looked as if he were going to speak. Then he simply let go and nodded, taking a step back in concession. Hannu looked toward the cairn. Took a deep breath, then took the few steps that were left.
He reached down.
He touched one of the stones.
He felt something cold grip his shoulder, and heard Ville screaming over the sound of the ghost.
He lifted his head and stared straight into the ghost's face. Its wide empty eyes stared right back.
For a moment, he was petrified. Then something grabbed him from behind, pulled him away, yelling his name. Ville.
Hannu shoved the stone in his pocket and they ran, the noise ringing in their ears.
They crashed together through the woods in the dark, trying to find the overgrown trail that was just barely there, their flashlight beams leaving scattered bright impressions in the darkness. Hannu stumbled; Ville grabbed him and heaved him up again.
Ahead, they could see slivers of light from Joona's flashlight; could hear them crashing through the dark. The twins had bolted, leaving them behind.
Assholes, Hannu thought, and called out, "Joona! Jonna!"
The light stopped. Moved, becoming blinding as it turned and pointed toward them. "Hannu?!"
"It's us!" Ville called. "Wait!"
They ran toward the light, glad that it didn't move, relieved when they finally saw the twins' pale faces in the dark.
"Thank heavens -"
"You assholes!"
As Ville latched onto Jonna and clung to her, Hannu tackled Joona.
The flashlight dropped. The two of them went down, crashing amid the brush and scrub and undergrowth.
Two strong hands grabbed at his wrists before he could go in for the choke.
"Wh- Hannu, what the hell -"
"You left us!" Hannu said through his teeth, trying to pull out of Joona's grip. "I don't know what the hell happened, but you left us there. How the fuck were we supposed to find out way back?!"
"Well..."
"He has a point, Joona."
"...Sorry."
For a long moment, neither of them said anything; Hannu glared down at Joona in the dark and tried to steady himself, tried to even out his breathing. He gave another experimental tug, trying to pull out from Joona's grip.
Slowly, deliberately, Jonna stepped away from Ville. She moved to gather up the fallen flashlights, leaves and twigs crunching under her feet in the dark. "Look," she said, the weariness and exhaustion in her voice almost covering up the nervousness. "We didn't mean it, okay?"
"But-"
"Ville, we were really creeped out. Okay?"
"... Okay."
Another long breath. Another pause. Hannu took the hand Ville offered to him, not wanting to look at Joona. "Is it still back there?"
"What, you want to find out?!" Joona asked as he stood, brushing leaves off his clothing.
"No!" Hannu rolled his eyes. "But who stays it'll stay where it is?"
They went silent. Turned and looked in the direction that they had come from, breath sharp. There was nothing in sight. As for sound -
Hannu listened silently. The forest was quiet. No breeze to rattle the branches in the trees. Underneath it, he thought he heard a sharp, indefinable something.
He looked first to Ville, who nodded. Then he looked to Joona and Jonna, who glanced at one another, unable to quite meet his eyes.
"I don't hear anything," Jonna said. She was lying. Hannu didn't want to correct her.
"Okay," he said. "it doesn't matter. Let's just go home."
They walked back in the dark, their weak flashlights casting a thin glow over the overgrown trail as they went. They said little, almost nothing, and it didn't escape Hannu's notice that Ville kept closer to him than he had before, and that the twins' demeanour had turned cold and quiet and nervous, their good mood from earlier in the evening entirely gone.
What did they see? Hannu wondered as he pulled his hands into his sleeves, wrapped his arms around himself. What did all of this look like from where they'd been standing? But he didn't ask. It was the wrong time to ask. It could wait until tomorrow.
Or never, maybe.
They soon returned to the familiar warmth of the village, the streetlamps giving off a light that now was more welcoming and comforting than it had ever been. The four of them paused at the crossroads, two not quite wanting to look at the other two, even if it was hard to avoid it. What could they say?
"So."
"...So."
Hannu lifted his head. The twins glanced at each other, not quite guiltily, then looked at him and Ville. Almost sheepish. Not sheepish enough.
"We'll see you tomorrow?" Jonna offered, as if in concession.
"... Right."
They parted ways not long after that. There was nothing more to do about it, and nothing they could say that wouldn't come out too weird and too awkward and too unbelievable.
He and Ville hardly said anything to each other, either. One glance at one another was all it took. Hannu didn't want to say anything, and Ville didn't ask. Not until they were finally home, stepping into the warmth, locking the door soundly behind them. Not until they were getting ready for bed, slipping into their pyjamas. Hannu looked at the clock, frowned, and set the alarm. They'd hardly get enough sleep for tomorrow.
... If any.
That was when Ville sank down beside him on the edge of the bed. Ville hesitated, as if needing a moment to think, then leaned against him. Hannu allowed it, and after a moment, leaned into him as well.
"What do you think that was?" Ville asked. "Back there, I mean."
Hannu closed his eyes. There were some things he'd decided long ago that he would rather not accept, but experiences over the past year had forced him to accept them. The fact that it was Ville asking that question meant that he had to take it for what it was. "Ghost," he said simply. "That's all. The story was true."
"I thought you didn't believe in ghosts."
"I don't believe in talking foxes, either." Hannu sighed. "Or dogs turning into people. Or, you know, whatever. Look, whatever it was, it's over now, okay? Let's just get to bed."
Sleep didn't come easily. Not even when they were both under the covers, curled up with one another. Hannu nestled against Ville's bulk and tried not to think about ghosts.
Tried. And failed. It was almost impossible to get his mind off of it.
Somehow, he could still hear it, though it seemed far-off. That high sound. Screaming. He shut his eyes tight, but all he could see were the empty eyes, that open, crying mouth. Drawing in a deep breath, he carefully turned over in bed and curled closer to Ville, and drew the covers up more securely over the two of them so he could push out of his mind the memory of the cold touch he'd experienced back in the clearing. He listened as hard as he could to the steady sound of Ville's breathing and tried to take comfort in the fact that his friend seemed to not have any trouble sleeping.
When sleep finally came, it was sharp and uneasy and restless, and when the alarm clock blared in the morning it was all Hannu could do to stop himself from throwing it at the wall.
The night had been unsettling, but the morning was another thing. Even though the morning was as dark as the evening, it was easy to pretend that what had happened the night before was nothing. And even if it was something, it was something that didn't matter.
Breakfast. Coffee. Hot shower and frosty autumn air as they stepped out into it. It felt good, and that was promising. Hannu pulled his cap down over his ears and walked in silence beside Ville. They didn't talk about ghosts, and they didn't think about ghosts.
Ghosts, after all, weren't real. They weren't.
Work was another thing altogether. The twins were tight-lipped, irritable, and it wasn't long before Ville was able to get an explanation out of them: they had been caught as they were attempting to sneak back into the house. Old man Kuikka had given them a tongue-lashing. It hadn't been pretty.
"He said we should've told him we were going out," Joona muttered as he relayed it to Ville. "And normally, we would, but - can you imagine how he would've reacted if he'd actually told him where we were going?"
"It's not like we had to tell where we were going. We could have lied," Jonna said, elbowing her brother in the ribs.
"You should've thought of it!"
"No, you!"
The rest of the day proceeded in pretty much the same way. Not for the first time, Hannu found himself glad that he worked in the back. Out of sight. Out of mind. No need to talk to anyone - mostly. And when Jonna came to him and said, "You look like death warmed over, are you okay?" Hannu simply gave her a glare that could crack mirrors and said that he was tired.
It wasn't like it wasn't the truth.
When evening came, the previous night seemed far away. Hannu was glad for it. Ville had shaken off the last bit of skittishness left over from their experiences yesterday, and was acting as if it were a perfectly normal night. They stood side by side, washing the supperdishes together, Ville singing along to the radio, and Hannu saying nothing. It was peaceful. Comfortable. The light from the kitchen spilled out into the dark of the outside, and in a warm moment like that, they could pretend that everything was normal, and nothing had ever been amiss.
Suddenly, Ville's singing trailed off. He stopped. Set down the plate he was drying. "Hannu..."
Hannu lifted his head. Looked at Ville, who was staring out the window, his cheeks pale and his lips slightly parted, as if he wanted to say something but wasn't sure how to continue. Slowly, Hannu followed his gaze and looked outside.
Something stood there in the dark.
There was a tree. The light that came from the moon and the nearby streetlamps didn't press through all of it; its thick evergreen boughs left plenty of darkness. And in front of that darkness, something stood, flickering thinly in the dim light.
It stared at them.
Hannu looked out at its empty eyes, and its wide mouth, which didn't seem to be screaming now. That mouth merely hung open, as if it couldn't shut it.
As he stared, the ghost stared back. Or maybe it didn't. With eyes like that, it was hard to tell.
"How did it get here?" Ville whispered, tilting his head so his lips practically brushed Hannu's ear, as if he were afraid the thing outside might hear him if he spoke too loudly. "I thought it couldn't leave the clearing!"
"I don't -" Hannu began. Then he stopped. Quickly thought back to the previous night, and felt his stomach sink.
"...Shit."
"What?"
"I put a stone from the cairn in my pocket."
Ville groaned. "But why-"
"I don't know, okay?! I wasn't thinking." Hannu glanced at Ville, glared, then looked out the window again.
The ghost looked back. Then, slowly, it raised an arm. Pointed toward the window. Just as slowly, it moved to point toward the woods, and continued pointing, staring open-mouthed at the two of them.
Hannu frowned.
"I think we'll have to go back there if we want to get rid of it," he muttered.
"... But I don't want to go back."
"You don't have to." Hannu sighed. He looked away from the window, and drained the sink, trying to get some sense of normalcy, even if his life was nowhere near normal anymore and hadn't been for a year. "But someone has to take it back."
"You're going back there?"
"Well, who else?" Hannu turned to him. "It isn't like I want to! I want to go to bed. But I can't sleep with that thing standing outside my house. Can you?" He gestured out the window at the ghost.
Ville looked over at it.
Hannu looked as well.
The ghost stared at them, still flickering, still pointing the way toward the woods.
"No," Ville said quietly. "I... don't think I'll be able to sleep."
"Exactly." Hannu looked at it for a while. Didn't take his eyes away from it. There was something about it that made it look weirdly small, and almost sad. He bit his lower lip and thought about it.
It hadn't tried to hurt him. It had scared him, sure. But it hadn't hurt him. Just screamed in his face and touched his shoulder. Compared to some of the other weird things he'd seen, that wasn't so bad. It hadn't even tried to kill him.
Slowly, the story from the fire a few nights before came back to him. He'd dozed off in the middle of it, but he'd heard just enough to get the general idea, enough to remember what the twins had said about the girl who disappeared.
Not it, then. She.
"Okay," Hannu said quietly. "Here's what we'll do. We'll just... go. And we'll get it over with. And then we'll come home and sleep."
A deep sigh. "Okay." Pause. "Just as long as we won't get lost."
"We won't."
Caps. Flashlights. Extra batteries. And phones. GPS. That was how they'd do it. As Hannu ran down with Ville how to use it, he muttered that he'd been meaning to teach him, in case they went hiking together. This, however, was not what he'd had in mind.
They shared a laugh over it, but an uneasy one. Soon enough, they stepped out into the cold autumn nigh. The sun had gone down completely and their breath left fog in the air. There would be frost in the morning.
The cairn stone was heavy in Hannu's pocket.
They were silent as they walked around the side of the house to the tree where the ghost stood. She was still there, her eyes empty, her pale arm pointing toward the woods. Her form was more visible up close; not solid, but steady and clear, like a film projection.
Her eyes were nothing but dark holes. She wore winter clothing. The front of it was darkened, a black rosette on her chest, and as Hannu drew closer he realized what it was.
She had been murdered, then.
She stared at him.
He took Ville's hand.
"...So." He looked in the direction the ghost was pointing. "That's the way, then?"
And to his surprise, she nodded.
The walk into the woods was not like it had been the previous night. There aren't the sound of the twins laughing, and no stumbling and crashing through the brush, and no moments where they lost the trail and found it again. The ghost girl glided through the forest in front of them, steady and visible at such a close range, practically glowing. With the flashlight's beam to the ground, the trail was easy enough to see.
Hannu wondered just how much of that was on account of the four of them breaking through the path the previous night. He decided it was best not to think about it.
Ville was silent beside him, nervous, skittish, one hand in Hannu's hand, the other in his pocket. He said nothing, only kept his head down, following the beam from Hannu's flashlight.
Maybe it was to avoid looking at her. The black stain was spread out over her back, too, the darkness seeping into her clothes. It was a good thing that she only manifested that way, as a pale image; that he couldn't see the dark red that the stain would have been.
She led them, and they followed. Eventually, she took them into the clearing. Hannu stepped carefully, lifted his flashlight beam, and let it cross milky-white over the cairn.
He heard nothing. Not the mosquito-whine he'd heard at the beginning. Not the screaming, either.
Then again, since she'd led them here, maybe she didn't have any reason to scream.
As he watched, the ghost went to take up her place beside the cairn. She stood there, stared at him with her black, empty eyes. Then she pointed down at it.
"Okay," Hannu said, looking over at Ville. "Let's get this over with." And then, he thought, we can go home.
Somehow, he felt light. That hadn't been so hard. Creepy, sure. But not had. And soon, he thought as he went over to the cairn, it would all be over. He fished the rock out of his pocket. Glanced at the ghost as if to confirm. She said nothing, just pointed emphatically down at the pile of stones.
"Fair enough," Hannu muttered, and placed his stone on top of it.
He didn't know what he expected to happen. A word of thanks, maybe. Or for the ghost to disappear in a screaming whirlwind. A puff of smoke. Something.
He did not expect her to reach out and touch him,
He did not expect that arm to come up again, pointing out into the darkness, past the clearing and into the trees beyond; not the way that they had come, but even further into the forest, deeper into the dark.
"Hannu, what -"
Hannu's mouth was dry. He could hear Ville, but couldn't bring himself to tear his gaze away from that face. Even if the ghost said nothing, it was clear what she wanted.
Damnit, he thought. This keeps getting worse. So much for going home at a reasonable time. "I think... I think we still have to go," he said.
Suddenly, Ville was beside him. He grabbed Hannu's hand, looking as if he wanted to pull him away from the ghost.
Hannu dug in his feet. "Ville. It's fine."
"But-"
"Look, she isn't even screaming."
The ghost slowly turned her head to look at Ville. Then at Hannu. Her expression flickered, and she seemed to point more emphatically.
"... I don't think we're getting out of this," Ville whispered by Hannu's ear.
Hannu doubted that there was any chance that the ghost had not heard them. "I don't think so either."
A pause. "We could run?"
"Maybe." Maybe not, Hannu thought. But what if she comes back somehow? The thought of having to deal with ghosts for yet another night made him feel exhausted. "She'll just find some other way to chase us." He looked over at Ville, offered his hand. "Come on. Let's find out what she wants. It isn't that late, so we might as well get it over with."
Ville's expression flickered. He frowned, looking as if he might protest, then finally nodded and took Hannu's hand.
Hannu looked at the ghost again. It stared at him for a moment, its gaze empty and dark in that white face. Then, slowly, it turned and led them into the dark.
The going was slower this time. Hannu and Ville stepped carefully through the forest, tramping through it, picking their way through growth that hadn't seen human feet in years. The flashlight beam was pale and weak, seeming to emphasize the darkness more than cut through it.
In front of them, the ghost continued on its way, a slip of whiteness leading them somewhere.
Somewhere.
Hannu gripped Ville's hand. Not that he needed to. Not that they would lose one another, even with the dark as thick as it was. It was simply that the hold gave a steadiness that they both needed, an assurance that they were together. Even when they parted at times to get through thick brush, to make their way around fallen trees, to hold back low-lying branches so the other could pass, they found one another again.
It felt as if they were going on forever.
When Hannu finally stopped to check the time on his phone, his eyes widened, and he muttered a curse under his breath. He held it up so Ville, peering over his shoulder, could see it.
They had been wandering around in the woods for three hours.
"What should we do?" Ville whispered in his ear.
"I don't know," Hannu whispered back. Maybe she wasn't taking them anywhere at all, he thought. Maybe she was just trying to get them lost. The thought sunk down heavy in his stomach. "Maybe we should leave."
If they turned around, they could get home soon enough that maybe if they were lucky, they could get a scrap of sleep before they'd have to be up again. Maybe....
As he shoved his phone back into his pocket Hannu looked up and realized that the ghost had stopped moving. Not only that, she had turned to face them, was staring at them with her empty black eyes.
She looked annoyed.
Then again, she wasn't the only one.
"Look," Hannu said, holding his hands up. "Whatever it is that you want, make it quick, okay?! You can't just drag us around the woods for nothing!"
The ghost's expression hardly changed, but there was a flicker there, a hint of suggestion that unlike Hannu, she had all the time in the world.
"I mean it!"
"Hannu, don't make it mad-"
"No," Hannu replied, sure that the ghost had heard Ville's loud whispering, and not caring one bit. "I don't have time for this! Do you understand?!" He glared at the ghost, trying to ignore the sensation that surfaced, the feeling that she was staring right through him.
The two of them looked at the pale figure in front of them. it looked back. After a moment, the ghost's mouth moved, as if trying to speak.
No sound came out. Finally, the ghost pointed once again in the direction it had been leading them.
She looked as if she might cry.
Hannu and Ville looked at one another.
"I don't... It doesn't look like it's trying to get us lost," Ville said slowly.
Hannu sighed. Deflated. He felt exhausted. He wanted to go home. He could feel the beginnings of a headache rising, even as his eyes drooped. Ville was right, but did it matter? They didn't have any reason to go on a wild goose chase like this.
Glancing at Ville, he took in the way he looked in what little light there was to see by. Even if it was dim, it was enough to see the look Ville was giving him. That expression again.
"... Okay. Fine." One step forward, then another. "But if something happens, I'll know who to blame."
It led them forward, deeper into the forest. Eventually, they stopped talking altogether. There was no sound except the crunch of their feet on twigs in the undergrowth. Hannu didn't dare to check the time.
Eventually, there came the distinct sensation that they were moving downhill. Hannu swept the flashlight across the ground and saw that he was right; they were moving on a gentle descent, as if toward water. He nudged Ville, muttered a word to him. From there, they were more careful.
The ghost led them down the gentle incline to a lazy-flowing stream. She stopped there, then looked one way, then another, as if not sure which way to go. There was confusion in her dark eyes.
If she's lost, Hannu thought with exasperation, then we're all screwed. But just as he was about to question her, the ghost began moving again.
The forest seemed to get even darker and colder than it was before. Hannu looked up, frowning when he realized that the moon had ducked beneath the clouds. He cursed to himself, and stepped more carefully, trying not to trip.
It wasn't long before the ghost stopped again.
She led them to a small space ringed with trees and the curled dry remnants of autumn leaves. Their feet crunched softly as they stepped into it. The ghost stood in the centre, looking at them, blank-faced and white and more solid than she had appeared even at the beginning of the evening, when she had stood in Hannu's yard and stared at them through the window.
She looked at them.
Then she pointed down at the ground.
Hannu and Ville looked at each other.
"What do you think she wants?" Hannu muttered.
"I think... she wants us to dig."
"You can't be serious."
"Well, do you have any other ideas?"
Hannu had to admit that he didn't.
He stared at the ground, pursing his lips. Then he looked at the ghost again. "Well?" he asked, as if expecting an answer. "Is he right? Should we dig or not?"
The ghost looked at him. Her eyes, though dark, weren't as empty as before, and the face not as featureless. She gave him what could only be described as a withering look.
Then she opened her mouth and screamed.
Hannu's hands flew to his ears. The flashlight dropped, scattering light across the leaf-strewn hollow. Even with his ears covered, he could still hear it, the high-pitched shrieking.
"Okay!" he yelled. "Okay, we'll do it!"
The noise stopped.
Carefully, Hannu took his hands from his ears. Nothing. He looked up at the ghost, gritting his teeth, trying to ignore the impulse to yell right back at her. He'd only get more ear-shattering shrieks for it, he was sure.
Beside him, Ville bent to retrieve the flashlight. Hannu sighed.
"Okay," he said. "You win."
It didn't take them long to set to it. They found some sturdy branches with sharp ends, knelt and set to clearing away the forest floor at the spot where they had been directed.
Above them, the ghost stood, watching. It was unnerving, having her stare while they worked, her dark eyes boring into the back of their heads. But at least, Hannu thought, it gave some glow to see by. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
The soil under their hands was surprisingly soft, even if it showed no sign of having been moved for a long time. As they stirred it, Hannu glanced toward Ville. Their eyes met. Ville parted his lips to speak, then seemed to think better of it, and went back to scraping the soil away.
Best not to talk about it. Best not to say anything. It was hard to be sure what they might find under there, but Hannu could guess at it. It was better not to say anything until he knew for sure.
It wasn't long before they found something. As the ghost's glow spilled into the hole, they hit something hard. Brushing the remnants of soil away revealed white shapes, knobbed and rounded, the distinct curve of bone. The sunken recess of empty eye sockets.
Ville scrambled back from the hole. Hannu pulled his hands back as if they had been burned. "Gross," he muttered.
The eerie white glow was fading. He looked up, expecting to see the ghost. But instead of the blank-eyed face that he had seen more than enough of, he saw the rapidly-fading shape leave the clearing, heading toward the stream.
At t stream's edge, the ghost stopped, looking toward the other side as if unsure what to do next. Then she turned toward them and lifted a hand, waving.
The splash of blood across the front of her coat was gone.
As Hannu watched, she turned and walked across the stream, picking her way carefully through the shallow water, fading with every step she took. Finally, she reached the other side of the bank and was gone.
It was a while before the two of them left the clearing. Not that they wanted to hang around; in fact, it was the last thing either of them wanted to do. Neither Ville nor Hannu relished the thought of staying there, and they were both exhausted. But after the ghost disappeared, they stayed in the clearing for a while, looking down at the hole. There was something important they had to take care of first.
"What should we do?"
"What do you mean? We don't have to do anything." Hannu shoved his hands in his pockets. They didn't have to do anything. They had done more than enough already. "It's over, that thing's gone... let's just go home."
Ville glanced down into the hole, then quickly looked away. He took a deep breath, as if to ground himself. "We have to tell somebody about this, Hannu," he said softly.
"Oh, come on," Hannu groaned. "Like who? The police, or what? And what're we going to say, that a ghost led us to where her body was stuffed a hundred years ago and made us dig her bones up so she could cross over into the underworld?" He rolled his eyes.
"Well... yes?"
"You can't be serious."
"I am serious." Ville folded his arms over his chest. The set of his face was stubborn, even though he looked as if he was trying not to shudder at what they had dug up. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. "I think she needs a proper burial. What if she comes back if she doesn't get one?"
Hannu went quiet. Ville pursed his lips, watched him, and waited. And Hannu made him wait; took his time while he thought it over. What if that was what they needed to do? What if it would come back if it - if she - didn't get buried? He shut his eyes to stop his gaze from drifting to the long-decayed body they'd found, and tried not to think of all the horror movies he'd watched where even after it seemed as if the spirit had been laid to rest, it returned anyway.
"... Okay," Hannu said eventually. "I'll think of something. I guess."
They covered the remains with evergreen boughs, concealing the hole for the time that it would be abandoned, not wanting to fill it again. Then they rose and, by the light of their flashlights and the aid of the GPS on their phones, made their way back home.
Somehow, even though nothing had changed, the light seemed brighter, the going more easy. They grasped one another's hands as they walked, not wanting to be separated.
When they finally reached home, it was all Hannu could do to keep from collapsing. He fought the impulse to slink to bed just long enough to call the Kuikka and leave a message on the voicemail. After a night like that, there was no way he and Ville were coming in to work.
"Aren't you going to call the police?" Ville asked as he watched Hannu shuffle off to the bedroom. "Or, um, whoever it is that you... call... in a situation like this..."
Hannu paused. Considered it for a moment. "She's been dead for years," he said. "It can wait a few more hours."
The look of disapproval that Ville sent him was half-hearted. He pursed his lips, but said nothing. Even Ville couldn't argue with that, not after two nights of tramping around in the woods.
In the morning, they would make the call. They would deal with the questions, the explanations. A story, Hannu decided. That was what they needed. They'd followed up on the ghost legend, and that had led them to the body. It was close enough to the truth that he wouldn't need to worry about Ville giving them away.
And even if Ville did accidentally spill the beans on what really happened, nobody would believe it.
He gave up thinking about it. Instead, he let himself drift off, let exhaustion carry him away, knowing he would sleep like the dead.
The Swan peered at the girl standing on the riverbank. The girl tilted her head, looking up at her with wide eyes. She looked pale-faced, nervous, and above all, tired.
"You took your time getting here," the Swan said with a sniff.
"It wasn't my fault." The girl shook her head. The set of her mouth had a stubbornness to it.
One of those, then. It never was their fault, in cases like that, and the Swan knew that she couldn't blame them for it. Let the blame go to those who did the deed, she thought. "I understand." She stopped, hesitating for a moment. "Someone helped you find your way?"
"Yes. A boy and his... dog?" The girl's face flickered with doubt. "It was strange - he looked like a human, but he was also a dog -"
The Swan groaned. "Oh no, not those two," she said, shaking her head from side to side, huffing. "I thought I'd heard the last of them."
"... I'm sorry?"
"Never mind." The Swan breathed deeply. It would do her no good to let her feathers get ruffled over something like that. Not when there was business to take care of - and there was always business to take care of. "Come along, then. You look tired."
"I am. ...Thank you."
"There is a place for you, of course. It's been waiting for you for a long time."
In the darkness of Tuonela, the Swan brought the girl's soul to rest, and though she felt some lingering bitterness about hearing news of the two troublemakers in the world of the living, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of satisfaction that an outstanding case could be filed away.
End