Loss of the Ice Queen
Copyright Nick Armbrister 2012
All of the characters in this story are fictional and the story is influenced by old British horror films like Hammer and by Man’s evil deeds to other people. Let peace reign.
Only a single paragraph maybe reproduced solely for reviewing purposes. Credit Nick Armbrister in any article. All rights reserved.
ISBN - 978-1-4710-9928-1
Intro
She stood on the frozen surface. Snow, freshly fallen, gave way to her gentle steps. Harder, frozen snow, already turned to ice, remained solid. Ice, two metres thick, formed a barrier to the water beneath but she wasn’t aware of any of this. Instead she screamed, long and hard. In fear, simple animal fear. Until her breath left her and again, her loud high-pitched scream echoed through the falling snow, over the ice. For she was alone, totally alone. It was this one thought that registered again and again in her mind. And a new scream came forth, until, exhausted, she fell to her knees. Broken, exhausted and defeated. Quiet sobs wracked her body, she was spent, a former image of her beautiful Scandinavian self. Almost involuntarily she collapsed in slow motion and lay down on the cold surface, the falling snow turning her pure white. She was lost – her mind had retreated to some other place, not here, far away from here and this ice cold world. Where her dead lost love was, where she was, where they are together. Giving up hope, she prepared to die, to freeze to death, an empty shell of a girl, finally sleeping, her pain and loss and anguish taken away, momentarily…
A distant noise came through the snow, almost non-existent – maybe it was nothing. Did nothing have a sound? Slightly louder, it came again. There was something there, not natural, a man-made sound of a machine in distress. It to was dying; something else was coming to this godforsaken place of death to die. Was it a Norwegian God, coming to claim the lost girl’s soul before she passed – as was alleged to happen in the Viking days? Then it was here, huge black, on fire and dying. The crippled Halifax bomber almost fell onto the ice surface, slicing through the snow blizzard…
In the distant depths of her mind the young Norse girl dreamed, of warmth that wasn’t here, that was now, of a man who she had lost some summers before. A cold, a cold so razor sharp that it threatened to drag her back to some place she wanted to escape from, grabbed hold of her body. Back to the cold place, her dream said. She wanted to reach the warm place, for there she would find him, be with him. Yet she needed the cold that would take her to him, her dead love, because it would freeze her to death on the ice. For how could he have survived the bullets that had pierced his heart, for he was hers? Murdered by her own kind because he was different, was the enemy. Because he wasn’t of the Satanic Church, because they thought he was too good, too pure, to even exist in their world? He dared to fight his common enemies, the Nazis, and the Satanic Black Magicians in the total war that engulfed the whole world. They had guessed his purpose, that he was a Pagan Warrior who had ended his mission; he had failed like all his comrades had. So he had to die, for in war, any war, there is no second place for the defeated.
In her dream, as she drifted towards him, something tried to pull her away, even as she could see him beckoning her to him. Something not of this place pulled her back, even as her body had started to freeze, her body and systems shutting down. Something unknown stirred and an even deeper thing came to her. Quite clearly considering her state. It said, don’t die, don’t die, but another voice in her soul said, I must, to be with him for this world has too much pain. My homeland is overrun by Nazis, my lover is gone and those of my own kind have turned against me. I have nothing, am nothing.
It was not enough: the other thing remained there, refusing to be quiet. In effect it lifted her up from the paralysis that engulfed her mind. Something snapped and caused her to open her eyes, frozen shut with tears, how did she do it? She saw the lake surface, white, fluffy and cold, at a vertical angle. Her brain registered this but remained numb, and then she saw the snowflakes falling, like cold Norwegian tears, her tears, her country’s tears.
Then she heard it, an unearthly roar of an unknown thing not from here and a huge grey shadow passed over her. It touched her, something in her damaged mind whispered, and then it was gone, replaced by a vibration felt through her body. A huge eagle smashed onto the ice, dying, crying in pain, torn asunder. Most important of all, this fallen eagle, this thing carried something for her, very important. Before unconsciousness claimed her once again, ending her mortal fight, she knew that everything was okay, it really was. Blackness came, a welcome friend – she was going, forever from this world…
In the Satanic Castle
“You stupid little traitorous bitch! You’ve betrayed us, you’ve betrayed me and you’ve betrayed yourself! Why? Don’t you know what you’ve done? Do you?!” the High Priest screamed, red with anger.
“I had to! I had to! Please believe me!” the scared girl pleaded.
“Lies, all lies! How dare you lie to me! You betrayed us all, with your lies. There is only one outcome for you girl. Death!” It was a fixed decision. Unchangeable.
“Please, no! Listen to me! I had no choice. They forced me to do it. I would never betray you on purpose. Never betray my kind, my kin. They made me! Don’t kill me! Cast me out into the wilderness. Anything but death, please!”
“No, the decision has been made. As soon as you started to plot and connive against us, you died. In the morning you will be killed. By ritual, slowly, for our great Evil God, Satan. You will suffer as we did for your betrayal,” the evil man commented, nodding.
“I can sort this entire mess out! Give me a chance. I’ll go out and see the enemy and sort this out, it’s not too late, really. It isn’t too late, let me fix it. Damn you, give me a chance!”
“No, you offer to act has come too late. You have one last night on this hallowed Satanic earth. In the morning you will be put to death!”
“Please, no! You need me! You need my skills. Let me sort out my betrayal, I can! I will use my magical powers, don’t kill me, I beg you. Let me live!” she shouted.
“No! Take her away and put her in the lower dungeons. Let her think of her actions and regret them. She can look forward to her own end, painfully.”
The High Priest turned away from his High Priestess. He lowered his eyes to the old, stone tiled floor. With a nod of his head, his guards took the forsaken girl away, to face her doom…
Ice
A lost soul, so far from love and so far from anyone who cared. Now she was forsaken, doomed to die.
Nothing could save her. Should she surrender without a fight? Should she fight her own kind, those who she belonged to, who now prepared to kill her in one last savage ritual?
A maelstrom of images and thoughts pounded her mind. Her life would soon be over; she would be with her dead lover. He was all that mattered. All she had to do was get from now to then. The torture and pain she would suffer was worth it – just to be with him. She had to endure and be strong: her destiny was set out before her. She would die, she knew this for certain.
Part of her wished they would do it now so she didn’t have to wait, endure the pain in her mind, the cold loneliness like Norwegian ice.
A World of trees
After she had escaped she went to the only place where she would be safe, into the wilderness to the woods, the rivers, lakes and fjords – Nature’s world. Here she was safe, at least for now. She knew this area like the back of her hand, all of the hiding places like caves and an old abandoned cabin. The cabin would be good for shelter and they’d look there first.
She had been walking and sleeping rough for four days, now felt more relaxed and knew that yes, she could do this. The weather was fair but overcast and the temperature dropped in the last few hours. Soon it would snow as the cold front moved in. Even now, frost covered the ground in a delicate sparkling carpet of ice crystals.
Patches of short grass felt springy underfoot as her weight left small indentations in the whiteness. Pine trees, evenly spaced, rose above her and she stopped to look up at their towering tops, high above. Slowly turning in a circle she had the impression that the forest was revolving, not her. This was an enchanting place, she thought, special and alive. She was part of it and it was of her, a perfect union. Quietly she stood still and said silent thanks in her mind to her Gods and Goddesses and to Satan:
“Mighty ones who guide and protect me, you have saved me and shown me the way. I thank thee for letting me escape and giving me the chance to live a little while longer. I thank thee, mighty ones. Please let me be with my lost soulmate in the future. Darkness be!”
Her mind was numb with a dull pain that caused catharsis, a short circuit stopping her from thinking rationally, if her present mental state could be called normal. It came in waves, seemingly from nowhere but from everywhere. She walked automatically like an automaton, one foot in front of the other. Secondary undergrowth snagged her thick winter coat, caught in her hair and scratched her face. Pine trees towered over her and several deciduous trees were dotted here and there; most had shed their leaves.
Lost in sorrow, she sat down under a pine tree. Needles pricked her hands as she placed them by her sides. Resting her head against the rough bark, she closed her eyes. Exhaustion tugged at her like a stone weight consuming her like a hungry monster. Gently, sleep came, taking some of her pain away and letting her rest. Around her the watery Norwegian sun dipped to the horizon. Soon it would be dark, with the fall of the old world followed by a new one arising, of darkness and black. In the dusk long shadows of pine trees took ominous form, caricatures of a mad woman’s mind.
A gentle breeze shifted the treetops and a fine shower of pine needles fell onto her blonde hair. In the night more frost would come, perhaps even snow on the coming bank of clouds. She would be in trouble then, not even her winter coat would be enough to keep her warm in a snowstorm. Finding a cave or building as a shelter was not on her mind; not even if she were awake – she was past caring. Her food had run out. It was the fourth day away from them, her kindred, who had cast her out and had planned to kill her. She couldn’t blame them; still the fact was hard to believe. What would she have done to someone, against a traitor? She would have done the same thing.
In her mind she dreamed of happiness with her lost love. They were together in a summer meadow walking hand in hand through knee-high grass. A cloudless blue sky arched overhead, so clear it was like glass. Time didn’t belong here – it was alien and unknown. Neither said a word, both thought and felt the same thing, a happiness that was so of ‘now’, so precious and a love which was so awe-inspiring and powerful. When had this time been? She couldn’t remember. In the middle of the meadow both stopped and turned to face each other, drew close and kissed endlessly, passionately. Then in one fluid moment both dropped to the grass and made love slowly, ecstatically. That was a million years ago, something in her mind screamed, when the dream drifted away replacing love and passion with pain and loss. From nowhere words came to her:
Loss
“I am sorry for your loss, of a soul so precious to be taken away.
But some things can’t be stopped, not even by fate or destiny.
It is the order of things, meant to be unchangeable.
But fear not, we will be together one day, maybe sooner than you think.
Your dead love is watching over you. He will ease your pain…”
Hours passed and a deep sleep haunted by traumatic dreams troubled her greatly. Finally she jerked awake as unseen terrors in her sleeping mind caused her real fear. With wide, tired eyes she looked around, startled. She struggled to focus. She rubbed her eyes and blinked several times. Still she couldn’t see clearly. Then she realised, a thick mist had fallen. It hid everything in deep grey white tendrils of nothingness. Trees five metres away looked surreal as the vapours moved around their trunks and branches. Water vapour gently dripped from lower branches. Slowly this turned to ice in this freezing fog, cold like the ancient ice world. Still unmoving, looking ahead, she tried to remember the terror in her dream that awoke her. She couldn’t bring it to the surface of her mind; it hovered just out of reach. She screamed loudly to dislodge it from her mind. Twice more the sound carried, lost in the fog, deadened to nothing.
She felt a bit better. She realised all she had before fell through her fingers like grains of sand: her love, her friends, her group, her family. All she had was herself, her skills and nothing more. Fighting the despair she carried with her, an unwelcome friend, she realised that even she would cease to be if they found her, caught her in the woods. She had to move get to a safe place.
Tired, she stood up, aching limbs protested when she slowly stretched and looked around her. She was the only living thing, person or animal here, she thought, except for the trees. Oh, if only I had a way to stay in these sacred woods forever to become one with them, to become a tree even! The thought lifted her mood and she laughed for the first time in days: if only I could become a tree! Such a silly thought! She began to walk, following the lie of the land that rose gradually up a small hill, still forested. After about half an hour she stopped and drank some water from a small stream. It was cold to her touch and she drank several handfuls. She again cupped her hands and let the water run down her face; it woke her up and was a refreshing sensation.
Looking around, she saw the mist was beginning to thin towards the top of the low hill she was on. In amongst the denser trees, lower down, it was as thick as before. She made a decision and headed upwards to the top of the hill where she hoped she would be able to see through the thinner mist to get her bearings. If not, she would keep walking. Soon she would need food. Her stomach was empty and she tried to remember when she had last eaten. It was many hours ago. She wondered how she would overcome this problem of getting food. It was urgent, she knew, but then again, do I really need to eat? What if I give up and surrender to the dark side, death? What if I want to be with my love, my dead love? Well, I do, so do I give up now and join him? I have to be with him, my emotions and thoughts are falling, tumbling again… I’m closer to death than to life. I will join him, I can’t stay here, it’s too painful… to hell with not eating, and yes it’s been days. Already my stomach is knotted up and crying for food, as my wounded soul cries out for my soulmate. Oh Gods and Goddesses, oh Satan, I’m so alone.
Death
“My special child, you will soon be with your soulmate. Yes, your soul is empty, torn in two. Your dead love is the same; don’t fret, as you will soon be together. Now you must find a way to be there: journey to a place where your end can be symbolic, in a place you will be together with him.
“There is no pain like loneliness and no heaven like being together with your lost love, permanently. Soon it will be so, so don’t worry, my young one.
“Go to the lake, to the frozen lake of death. There you will die…”
She walked on numbly through the trees. Gently sloping ground went on for a mile or so to the hilltop. She came to the top and the trees thinned giving a breathtaking view of the landscape below but it didn’t lift her oppressive mood. Oh hell! Looking ahead she saw in the distance a row of mountains, snow covered, clouds brooding just above them. It was coming towards her, slowly bringing snow. The lake was beyond the mountains through the distant snow. She looked back and saw her tracks in the frost covering the forest floor. Soon it would re-freeze and hide her tracks. Still pausing, she thought back to when she was a member of the Satanic church, of the evil things they did, of five young boys kidnapped in the night, tortured and sacrificed to Satan. A blood sacrifice. A tear came to her eye as she remembered them, so young and innocent and now all dead. Only aged 10 to 12 years of age, what right had her Satanic brethren to murder in cold blood? Even now, two years after the evil deeds, she felt a guilt and pain and regret that she had been part of it. The High Priest Gjoran had ordered it done, for Satan, he had said. She was guilty because she was part of the group. She never held the knife that had killed them but she had been there and had worshipped Satan and thanked him for this pointless death sacrifice. She had also partaken drinking the slaughtered boys’ blood at each ritual sacrifice and eaten some of their still warm flesh, raw, as was ordered by their mad leader. Madness bred madness.
This episode of the Satanic church, her home for eight years until then, had changed her mind; she decided to leave, but how could she? She pledged her own life to Satan and even her soul. She daren’t leave, couldn’t leave, for they would come after her, find her and kill her just like the young boys. So she had stayed another two years, waiting for a chance that she thought would never come. Yet it had come and now she had left them, she was free. Even if only briefly, she was free.
Pilot
She remembered meeting him, the English pilot who had force-landed his plane on the beach, seeing him climb out of his damaged aircraft when she strolled down the beach. She remembered how it was raining, of how she saw him look at her and pause long enough to know her beauty. Then he returned to the task of destroying the stranded warplane. She noticed large holes in the fuselage that shouldn’t be there and the small rear cockpit with broken glass and blood everywhere. Another crewman was still inside, obviously dead. She gasped in shock when the pilot fired a flare into the open cockpit. With a sudden bright glare the petrol ignited in a fierce roar. He soaked the cockpit with a single five-litre can of fuel which was now cast aside on the beach. He leapt off the wing and raised his hand, back! back!, before the plane blew up. She stared at him then turned and ran ten yards away and hid in the tree line near the beach. He followed her and was there in a few seconds. He shouted in a foreign language that she struggled to understand: “Get down! She’ll blow in a second!”
She realised he was English, from England, across the North Sea. She had never met anyone from there before. A huge roaring sound shook her out of her thoughts and her eyes focused onto the plane that exploded with a massive sound. The fuel tanks had exploded. Bits and pieces of metal were thrown far and wide. Some fell near enough for her to flinch. Flames crackled and roared, taking hold of the smashed metal structure that was once an aircraft. Black smoke billowed up into the gloomy drizzle. She looked at the man and noticed he was young, a little older than her. He smiled at her and she frowned because of the strange sensation she felt at this equally strange situation. Then she returned the smile and said, “Welcome to Norway.”
Everything else after that was a blur. Things had moved so quickly after the crash. His arrival was the catalyst for her leaving the church, the magic circle and the cult of death. She hadn’t done it straight away but planned it carefully. When she talked to her new love, her soulmate, told him everything that happened, about being caught up in evil, both acted. He helped her and together they headed for the border, to Sweden. She had to be careful, for if caught she would be sent back to her church and punished – she knew she would be killed in the end. For a long time she lived a lie, to herself and the others, not wanting to be found out, having a foreign lover, a soulmate who was their enemy and she was sheltering him at her small home in the village. She was successful in this, this fact gave her courage and hope that it could be done – hope that they could escape away to safety and to another country. For a while they had been safe but in the end they were caught.
Fight and Capture
Her love had fought and wounded Sigurd, Gjoran’s number two. The other three of the group gunned him down in cold blood, ending his threat to them, permanently. Before this act, he had laughed in defiance of their Satanic church and in mockery of their so-called black magic, at the pure folly of worshipping the Devil. Even at the end he was a fighter, not killed by magic but by ordinary bullets. She had told him that the Satanists were dangerous and he laughed: “Well, my love, so are the Nazis. I’ve killed plenty of them and will kill plenty more.” He was glad she left the church and went with him, to freedom.
Being caught had changed all that; he was now dead and her old comrades had her now. They took her back, blindfolded, straight to Gjoran. He explained her fate, to be killed in the Satanic castle in a ritual, just like the children, as a lesson to her and a warning to others: don’t mess with us or else! Since then she had managed to escape, now four days ago. She made good progress and her old group never came close to finding her. But where could she go? She had no food left and soon it would snow. It was already on the mountains. All she could do was go to the lake; there she would end her own life and be with him. For she had seen him murdered and was lost and alone, so alone.
Pain
This pain couldn’t go on and she couldn’t take it. Was this the law of karma coming back to haunt her after the evil she had witnessed, the acts of violence she had done? Somewhere in the corner of her mind a voice said, “Yes,” and yet she didn’t dare believe that.
A brutal image came to her from her past; it filled her with such guilt and remorse that she collapsed to the cold frosty ground. In her mind’s eye, a person died. A heavily pregnant woman, seven or eight months pregnant, eyes wide in terror, absolute terror. Her mouth opened and shut but no sound came out: she was too terrified to scream or beg for her own life or that of her unborn child. A heavy size 10-boot crashed into her side, stunning her. She gasped for breath, tears streaming out of her stricken eyes. Again the tall man kicked her. This time the blow connected in the desired place – her large swollen stomach. She screamed and rose then ran to the single door in the large room. It was locked and she fell to the stone tiled floor and clawed at the wood with her delicately cut fingernails. Soon they broke, leaving her fingers bloodied. She shrank in the corner near the door, shaking and looking at the locked door and at the tall blonde Norwegian Satanist.
He laughed the laugh of a madman, for that is what he was, so insane that he had no control over his actions; his vessel of a mere mortal body was filled, in his eyes, by Satan, taken over ready for the kill. Standing six foot three inches tall, he slowly walked over to the doomed woman. Blood and urine pooled underneath her quivering body. She shook her head from side to side and mouthed the word “No” several times. The Satanist noticed with a sick perversion that the Christian woman, in his view a sack of putrid shit, had now given up. She accepted that she was totally doomed, her and her bastard Christian child. He would have liked her to struggle more but you can’t have everything; now he would still beat her, without remorse.
This was his next action, kicking her half a dozen times in the side, the chest and once in the head, stunning her. She fainted as her lips bled red. He knelt down and sat her upright against the wall, so she was sitting down at an awkward angle. He punched her once, breaking her nose and cheekbone. She let out a moan of unbelievable pain, one more punch to the chest and he was done. Though hurt, bloodied and doomed, she wasn’t dead, or her Nazarene child.
Nodding once to three other Satanists, the tall man waited for the other men to come over. Together they dragged the limp bundle of humanity over the floor to the sacred altar, leaving a trail of blood and piss. Effortlessly lifting her to the cold marble surface, each man carried out his actions in silence. It was a well-practised routine. Securing her arms first in metal fasteners with screw type locks took two minutes; adjusting similar but larger ankle locks took a minute longer. Any size person from a young boy to a tall man could be held securely in place on this sacrificial slab. It was a simple but very efficient design. No one had yet escaped alive, only dead. Now bending down and gently lifting a red velvet bundle over three feet long from a recess in the altar side, the blond man stood still. Opening the drawstrings, he removed the velvet to reveal three different edged weapons.
The most striking one was a medium sized stabbing sword, silver bladed in the dim candlelight, its razor sharp blade ending in a wicked triangular tip for stabbing, slashing or cutting. This weapon was perfect. Legend had it that Satan himself had used this very sword to slay one of God’s angels on his fall from Heaven. Holding this weapon, the Satanist placed the two smaller weapons on the altar edge. The smallest was a dagger with a Platinum blade, durable and sharp. This had been used to butcher the children, bloodily. Next to it was an even more potent knife, a double bladed thing with a handle in the middle. When held in ones fighting hand, one blade was above and one below – ten inches of pure evil. The children killing knife was a fraction smaller at nine inches. Men would be sacrificed with the double blade.
Holding the sword in the candlelight, the crazy Satanist stared at the blade, his face dimly reflected in it. Turning it to the now unconscious woman, he prodded her gently with the tip on her left arm; a small cut appeared, bleeding. Again he did it. This brought her to. Shaking her head, coughing and spitting out congealed blood, she opened her eyes and realised where she was. She screamed, horrifically. The blond man backhanded her with his free hand and shut her up. Turning to the assembled Satanist church, the black magic worshippers, he spoke. “Now we have our sacrifice, a Christian bitch with a Christian child in her belly. Both will be killed in the name of his Dark Lord. Hail Mighty Satan. We thank thee, our provider. This sacrifice is our gift to you. May you continue to guide us in our evil ways, Mighty Satan. We kill this Christian and her Nazarene bastard child for you. Hail Lucifer, God of all evil, our dark Lord. Hail Satan!”
When his deep voice had finished, the followers repeated “Hail Satan” as one. Now he held the sword in front of the woman. She screamed and struggled, moving from side to side and up and down like a stranded fish, but it was no use. The restraints remained secure and her movement was limited. Walking to her left side the blond Satanist raised the sword high. Her frightened tear-filled eyes followed the blade’s movement.
In a quick movement the man brought the sword down and in an arc. It contacted the woman’s belly, right on the bulge, slicing skin, fat and tissue in one cut. The result was devastating: blood poured over her shredded clothes, over bruised skin, over the marble altar top and over the floor. And on the tip of the wicked blade. In a roar of anger and joy, the swordsman screamed, a sound so primeval it chilled all those present to the bone. Stopping his scream, he slowly lifted the sword and then cut down delicately into the unborn baby’s protective tissue, causing more blood and liquid to flow. The pregnant bulge slightly relaxed in size and her baby became visible. In a scene from Hell the mother looked down in utter shock and horror at her open stomach and at her unborn baby. She instantly fainted. Gripping the red bloody child, so small and helpless, the evil man wrenched it out of her stomach and the group of Satanists saw this and cheered. A victory against the Christian God and his bastard Christ was being won, right here, right now. With umbilical cord still attached the child made the slightest movement. Cutting the cord with the skill of a doctor, King Satanist held up the child and then turning with a speed that defied his large size, he threw the baby at the wall with sickening force.
With a wet thud the child hit the wall and fell to the floor. Walking slowly over to it, he towered above it. With a truly evil deed he stamped on the poor baby’s head. He nearly slipped on the mass of brains, blood and brain fluid from the smashed skull. Laughing in pure glee, he picked up the lifeless baby and threw it down the long castle wall. Its corpse was useless now, dead.
Turning to its unconscious mother he went to her leg restraints and checked their tightness, then nodded. Lifting up her skirt he exposed her shapely legs and thighs, now bloodied and bruised. Pulling her underwear down he exposed her private parts. A smell of blood and something else filled the air. Brown shit covered the madman’s hands. This he wiped on her dress. Opening her legs as far as they would go, he inserted first one and then two fingers into her cunt. She was on the edge of death, but her body ever so slightly still clung to life. Lifting the sword to her vaginal opening, the Satanist placed the tip at the opening. By keeping two fingers there he carefully guided the sword blade up into her cunt. In the most unspeakable of cruel acts ever carried out by man, he fucked with the sword blade. His thrusts came slowly, then faster and faster as his sword cut into flesh and tissue as it hit the end of her vaginal canal. Blood rushed forth and the unconscious woman lifted out of her coma to feel an unbearable and indescribable pain. She screamed once and shouted, “God help me!” and died.
In the Satanic audience many smiled and some looked solemn. A teenage girl screamed once in horror at what she had just witnessed. Dozens of cruel, hard eyes gazed remorselessly at her. She looked at the floor and remained silent. Quickly the young girl’s conditioning took over and she shut thoughts of pity, guilt and horror out of her mind. Looking up she noticed the lead Satanist, the butcher murderer with the bloody sword, watching her. He smiled and his eyes burned into hers. She turned away and prayed silently, “Lord Satan, let me stop thinking that this is wrong and show me your way, the evil way, as you have with the others. I know I am young and still learning. Please be patient and guide me. Don’t let me be sacrificed like that. Hail Satan!”
Jerked back to reality, the same girl, now a woman, felt a tear in her eye. She sat on the hilltop and rested her head against a tree. She must forget the evil, the bad deeds and acts – all that had no place in her mind; she had to be strong and reach the lake. Standing now, she noticed the new snowfall, covering her, the ground and the trees, everywhere. She had to move now or she would die here. She didn’t want that. The lake was her final resting place…
She has the answers
It troubled her how it had come to this. She knew each detail, each action, each thought, but it still troubled her.
As she fell to her knees, her woollen skirt became sodden with freshly fallen snow. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she wept for her lost love, gone forever from this strife torn world. Soon she would do the ultimate sin and follow him.
Collapsing to the snow-covered ice, she was lost, so lost and alone and filled with unbearable sadness. She became a white mass, as indistinct as a lump of frozen Norwegian ice.
Soon her body would shut down, as her mind had closed in, concentrating on one thought – death. To be with her soulmate.
Crying silently, she opened her eyes. The frozen fjord arced vertically beyond her blurred vision, filled with tears and falling snow flakes.
She heard the noise, not of this place, when the huge grey shadow soared over her desolate form trailing fire. Was it a Valkyrie coming to claim her?
A huge jolt shook her body through the ice as the burning bomber smashed onto the frozen lake, also dying. A machine of war in her death throes like the young Norwegian girl, part of the slaughter of another war but just as real.
Would the crew live or die like the evil girl and the blazing plane? Fate held the answers…
Real
Standing up she looked around. Briefly disorientated, she found her bearings and set off walking to the lake that wasn’t far; in an hour she would be there. Empty now, her earlier traumatic thoughts left her like water down a waterfall. Before her the terrain was steadily climbing, a shallow hill rising up another two thousand feet until the lake occupied an area of ground that levelled off on a kind of large plateau, many miles across. Shallow hills surrounded the lake on three sides. Ice turned the water surface solid to a depth of two metres from three months of continually freezing temperatures. The exposed location helped bring the surface temperature down several more degrees. Compared to the forest, lower down the valley, where the temperature was higher, an extra two thousand feet and a continuous cold wind made all the difference. Ice covered the lake. It would soon be the scene of the most unreal event never to be repeated. She had to reach it.
Awkwardly, she passed a group of large rocks covered with faded green moss, old snow and frozen ice from snowmelt. Centuries old, permanent. Looking behind her, she stumbled and fell onto a jagged rock and was winded but unhurt. Her eyes moved from the deserted pine trees behind her to the rougher terrain and a single jagged rock. She swore in Norwegian, under her breath and continued on. Up she went, very slowly and haphazardly, getting tired now and starting to ache from the gradient of the hillside. Eight hundred feet up she stumbled again, tearing her clothing and cutting her leg. Fresh warm blood poured forth. It steamed in the cold. She swore loudly and kicked a stone, crying out again. She was shocked and angry. Her foot didn’t collide with a solid object but a piece of snow-covered metal that flew a yard and landed with a metallic crash on a real outcrop of stone. She spoke aloud: “Satan’s breath! What is this?”
Ignoring her cut leg and torn woollen skirt, she stepped over to the metal. Picking it up, she shook it and some snow fell off, revealing a grey colour paint scheme and some yellow writing stencilled in German. She realised what it was, a bit of some crashed Nazi warplane. Placing the metal on the ground, she looked around her. Nothing behind her just her own tracks in the snow. In front of her, some stunted trees, rocks and boulders of various sizes.
Then she saw it, a boulder that was the wrong size and shape, snow-covered and easily identifiable from thirty yards away. Some of the “rocks” were in fact, the remains of a plane. She headed up to it – it was on her way up the hill, so there was no need to pass it by. Stopping by the wing that rested by a boulder, she inspected it closely. It had a square tip, made of metal and was twice as long as she was tall. The leading edge was crumpled and damaged; this was where it had caught the ground, bringing the fighter down to earth. Through the gaps in the snow she could see more grey paint and the outline of a Nazi cross. Metal spars and ribs stuck out of the hole where it had been attached to the fuselage. She avoided touching the sharp metal edge, remembering her leg wound and now feeling the pain. She bent to examine it. Blood had stopped running, though it coloured her pale skin. Dark red stained her thick wool skirt, acting like a sponge. Her wound didn’t trouble her, not really – what use was it worrying about a cut when she would soon be dead?
Following the outline of the wing, she saw the fuselage a few yards away. It was almost unrecognisable and a mess. Looking at what she guessed was the cockpit, she studied it, saw the broken Perspex and within, the dead pilot. He was beyond help. His head was at a severe angle – neck broken on impact. Decay had started to take hold. His eyes were gone and his skin tight to his skull, revealing a death mask, hideous in the extreme. Holes showed where birds had pecked his eyes out. She looked away and continued on, twelve hundred feet to the top. One last thought about the plane: how long had it been there? Did it crash because it was shot down or bad weather? Was it from Kristiansand? It wasn’t black like the fighters of the special unit there, for she had seen their black planes on practice flights. Maybe it was an old colour they once used? It didn’t matter. Her leg ached and she walked on, being more careful now, less clumsy and looking where she put her feet.
Torn Asunder
Broken girl cast upon the ice, you are ready now to meet your end, an end to the cruel pain that consumes your heart destroying your love. Yet you still love. You are in a paradox that destroys you even more. You scream to your God, Satan – he has left you also, so you’re now truly on your own.
If he served you, wouldn’t he have your dead love? You have no answers, only silence and a huge immeasurable loss.
So you go to the ice lake, you can do no more. If you could change things, what would you do? Bring him back, turn away from Satan? Live a normal life? None of that matters now, you are so lost, a mere speck of nothing but please be happy in one respect.
You had him for a while and still love him so. He loved you back and soon you’ll be together, forever. Your beautiful world has been torn apart by evil, Nazi and Satanic, in a battle of good and evil as old as time itself.
You chose to love evil and it was a farce, nothing more. It destroyed you and only now do you see the errors of your ways, being left with nothing.
The spirits are sorry for your pain and suffering. You got caught up in something too big, too wrong and too evil.
Not long now. She could see the top at just over a thousand feet away. She would rest a little and then hurry on from the top, over the summit. On and on, looking above her, she saw the sky faraway and separate, a world of clouds and wind and snow, as cold as sin. It was far and distant, glimpsed briefly through the ragged clouds moving in with the bad weather, snow carrying clouds. For several seconds she gazed upwards then looked down and walked on, past rocks, trees, a frozen stream, its surface white striated ice. Treacherously slippery to cross, she bent double and held on to an overhanging branch to steady herself. In two well-placed steps she was over and on her way. She focused her mind and walked on at an even pace, taking time not to slip or dawdle. Her leg ached but not painfully.
Lake
Minutes later she came to the lakeside marked by rocks and pebbles, past the shoreline, the bridge of land to frozen water – ice. It was a lake totally frozen and covered by snow, a huge weird panorama of great beauty. Carefully, she left the tree line and made her way over the rocks and onto the ice. She felt relief, being there, the place where she would die, by her own actions, her own choice. Without pause or hesitation she walked forward, iceward bound. Beneath her feet snow crunched and the ice was less slippery than she had imagined. She scanned around the lake, shore and overhead while she walked. To the middle I’ll go to do my last deed, to die, she thought.
Out from the shore she went to her last place on earth, this damned tortured place where her young years had hardly come to blossom. Instead a black void had taken over, had claimed her and ended her life in this madness she was caught up in. Now it would soon be over and darkness had another victim to add to the countless others. She remembered all it had taken. Her friends, lovers, enemies and strangers sacrificed to a Devil God. Of how some had begged for mercy and had cried for Jesus to save them; when he didn’t they crawled over the floor, animal like, a broken twig, as death took them. Some had fought with warrior spirit to the last breath; only by being outnumbered did they fall. How the list of suffering went on! She was lucky not to have died by their hands, for her escape was by pure luck and skill. They must have found her tracks but she was too far ahead now to be caught. It didn’t matter now, nothing did. Only to die.
Snow started to fall from the thick grey clouds, lightly for several minutes, then thicker until a three-dimensional image of moving flakes tricked her vision. Over and over, a surreal scene, she closed her eyes and walked another hundred meters out over the ice until she was three hundred metres out from the shore. She turned in a circle and opened her eyes. Her emotions came then, wave after wave of painful, confusing and dangerous feelings coupled with vivid images – of her lost love, of friends, enemies, her own life, of how this was really the end.
Her mind was splitting apart into a multi-faceted mess a mental collapse, breakdown. The thought tortured her: I’m lost and gone beyond belief. She started to cry as grief welled up from inside her and took over completely. She let the tears fall, oblivious of everything else, even the snow and the light wind that blew over the exposed lake surface. She fell to her knees, weeping and sobbing shook her body.
Broken Bird
Was she aware of a noise? Of her own screams? Or was it a monster coming to claim her? She didn’t know, didn’t care. Onto her side she rolled, turned white by the snowfall, slowly freezing. For an age she stayed like this, lost and awaiting death, her mind closing in and shutting down, her body too. Something pulled her away from the blackness where she was heading, from the image of her love, and she struggled to open her eyes. A phantom shape glided over her, flames seemed to follow it. With a jolt whatever it was hit the ice, hard! She shut her eyes and drifted back into the darkness, total blackness, where her dead love beckoned her. Come to me, come to me…
Out of the smashed and burning plane struggled injured and disorientated men, falling drunkenly through the snow, trying to distance themselves from their burning bomber. It would blow up when the fire reached the fuel tanks. One figure fell and stayed on the ice, dead. A trail of scarlet blood ended his struggle, a death walk from the Halifax bomber. One of his comrades went over to help but it was too late, he raised a hand in despair. Another man collapsed: he was doomed as well. Two attempted to carry him but he was too heavy and their own wounds hampered them. Their leader shook his head. No. In exhaustion all of them gave up and fell to the snowy ice, their last resting place, human endurance lost hands down in this place.
In a roar and blast of flame the bomber exploded, jolting the ice with violence and debris. Black smoke coiled into the sky mixing with the snow – a nightmare vision, not of this place. Yet as real as tomorrow and as deadly as today, part of this war.
Peace
One injured crewman crawled through the snow, whimpering in pain like a wounded animal, away from his comrades, slowly to the shore. Of course he never made it; instead, he came across the girl, the lost Norwegian girl, the lost tragic dying beautiful ice queen. She shouldn’t have been there – this wasn’t her place, was it? In utter disbelief the injured man cradled her head in his hands like a baby. Like himself, he knew she was soon to leave this world and that nothing could save them. She managed to open her eyes and focus on the foreign flyer, not seeing his face but that of her dead soulmate. She called his name, silently and smiled. Again she spoke and the other flyer could just hear her but not understand her – then she was finally gone from this hateful world.
With a sudden rush she felt herself drawn to the dark black place, not of this world or of this time. Then a light so blinding was all around her: he was here! He enveloped her, came to her and reassured her – its okay, really. We are together now, finally, forever. An English Beaufighter pilot and an ex Satanist, his Norwegian girl. One last feeling of pure love and happiness filled her mortal body and took her over the edge, forever out of this terror torn beautiful mortal world of fjords, lakes, valleys and mountains…
An End
On the ice the men died, as did their machine of war. The crew huddled together perished, soon after the single man who crawled to the girl died. His last act brought some tenderness to the evil girl, helped her pass over into the abyss away from here, to a better place. He followed her to a different place, yet equally as peaceful and far away from there.
As the fire burnt out the derelict airplane the ice under it slowly melted and it fell to the bottom of the lake, a hundred and fifty metres below the ice. The frozen bodies would join it in the spring. All casualties of two wicked wars, both as real but so very different and surreal…
