Page 263 of These Tears

Elias leaves me by the workbench and walks towards the new door. From his pocket, he fishes out a large skeleton key, new and polished, which looks as though it belongs in a manor, not a cabin buried in Norway.

He turns before reaching the lock and holds it out to me. I’m nearly worried by the fact that I don’t hesitate for a single second as I cross the space between us, watching the key shift once between his fingers before he finally lets it fall into my palm.

What is he up to?

His gaze fixes on my face with such intensity that my fingers clench the metal. As if he’s struggling against the urge to snatch it right back.

I push the key in.

The lock clicks open beneath my hand.

And I pull.

Before the door moves more than an inch, his palm comes down against it and pushes it shut again.

The sound cracks through the red-lit quiet.

I twist at the waist to look up at him.

He stares at his own fingers over my head where they splay across the seam between the new wall and the door. His cologne surrounds me, caught so thoroughly in the room that even the wooden panels seem to carry it.

His fingers press harder into the wood until it complains faintly. As if something behind that door has reached through and put a hand around his throat.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he says.

Which is, of course, the perfect thing to say in this moment.

‘Scared?’ I echo, a coldness beginning to climb up my neck.

He moves at last, releasing the door.

I stare at him for several heartbeats. When his eyes find mine in the dim light, I take in a breath and open the door.

The space beyond is dark. It still smells of sawdust. Elias crowds in behind me as I step over the threshold, his heat at my back, his voice so low the words tangle and disappear into my hair.

‘Switches are on the left.’ His nose drags along the side of my neck. He draws my hair away, and his mouth flattens against the skin there with such hunger that my hand nearly misses the wall entirely.

I steady myself with barely any focus, feel along the wood until my fingers find several bumps. The switches click on one by one beneath my hand.

At first, it looks like a narrow storage room.

Shelving fills the wall in front of us – somewhere for storing cards, prints, boxes of paper and all the delicate things that do not like damp or daylight.

Then the rest of the lights come up to the left.

My gaze drags sideways—

And stops.

Five cameras in total, each mounted on a tripod at different heights and angles. They stand in a ring like silent sentries, thin cables running from them towards a black integrated recorder beneath the projection screen – all surrounding a wide king-size bed.

My fingers twitch, still at one of the switches as the open doorway at my back suddenly feels further away than it is.

I blink rapidly and look again, no longer merely taking in what he has built, but studying it.

The placement of each lens. The lighting.

The screen positioned where we could watch without having to turn away from one another.