The Ice People 37 - The City of Horror. Margit Sandemo

and pointed it out.

      “The loaf is more expensive. The price went up today.”

      After a pretty long discussion about the one-penny increase, Kamma finally threw the money on the table to show her annoyance at the price rise she hadn’t been notified about. Then she went back into the hall.

      She was shocked. It wasn’t Hans-Magnus she had heard but the removers, and all Vinnie’s furniture was gone.

      Vinnie came through the door at that moment.

      “Have they left?” Aunt Kamma asked hoarsely.

      “The removers? Yes, they have. Here’s the embroidery thread.”

      “The thread? Yes, of course.”

      Vinnie’s digs were in Sarpsborg. How would Kamma manage to ...?

      “When will you be moving?”

      “I believe I’ll be ready the day after tomorrow.”

      “I’ll come along and see to it that you settle in properly.”

      “You don’t have to, Aunt Kamma. I know exactly how I want everything to be.”

      “That is precisely what worries me. You’ve never had any taste, Vinnie. You’ve no idea how to furnish a room so that it looks stylish. And the curtains ...”

      “The lady I’ll be staying with says that there are already curtains and quite a lot of furniture. It’ll be all right. Anyway, I’m sure you would rather be here when Hans-Magnus comes, wouldn’t you?”

      Kamma was silent while her thoughts whirled in her head. She’d get hold of that letter, she really would!

      The witnesses, the Johannessens, were out of the picture.

      Splendid!

      If only Hans-Magnus would bring the car now! Then they could be on their way to Vinnie’s new home. Why didn’t he come?

      Then it was the afternoon.

      Kamma’s voice, which was cultivated and soft as velvet as usual, albeit now with a touch of shakiness to it, said: “Vinnie.”

      The girl appeared in the doorway. True to form, she stood with her head bowed as if she was expecting to be scolded or hit. Kamma was irritated. Stupid girl, she thought, I’ve never slapped her.

      “Stand properly, for heaven’s sake! Do pull yourself together! We’re going to a meeting!”

      Vinnie couldn’t help shuddering. She was drawn to but also repulsed by these meetings. Aunt Kamma was one of Pastor Prunck’s devoted disciples. Prunck led a strange, newly formed sect, and Vinnie went along because Kamma wanted her to. And perhaps because the pastor was the only person who treated her with a degree of dignity.

      That was how Vinnie interpreted it. However, she wasn’t so sure about what he preached. She had never been allowed to go out among other young people; her childhood and youth had been marked by shocking discipline and a degradation of her persona. Aunt Kamma had never allowed her to do anything. She had been desperately lonely and an outsider at school, because Aunt Kamma had forbidden her to play with “those simple children” and Vinnie didn’t have enough willpower to defy the ban. She just withdrew, so, of course, she was the one that everybody picked on in class. Because of her clothes, her aunt’s snobbishness, everything. But most of all, because she was the kind of child who would let the others bully her.

      No wonder Vinnie weakened under Pastor Prunck’s gaze of undivided sympathy. She didn’t understand that he was also appraising her female attributes. She also imagined that she just about understood what he preached.

      Of course, Prunck wasn’t a genuine pastor. There were oceans between the sincere and generally accepted big congregation to which Abel Gard and Christa had belonged and Prunck’s twisted ideas that he was chosen and that he had had a revelation. In it, heaven had ordained him as a pastor and asked him to set up his very own, new congregation, under the name “Prunck’s Holy Chosen Ones”. He had also been told that the world would end on 6 February of that year.

      There weren’t many days left.

      For this reason, he had secretly occupied a half-forgotten cave under a cliff on the outskirts of the city. The members of the sect – sixty-four in all – had been given a message from heaven that they were to seek shelter in the cave. Only they would survive the catastrophe that was coming.

      Pastor Prunck had ordered them to relinquish their worldly possessions, because this was part of the message from heaven. They wouldn’t be purified until they did so. He, Prunck, had promised to take care of their filthy, earthly possessions, hiding everything that was obnoxious in the eyes of heaven. “You won’t go to heaven with your pockets full of filthy lucre,” he would thunder from the pulpit that had been rigged up in the cave where the meetings were held. “I promise to obliterate your earthly belongings for you, cleanse you in readiness for this great moment.”

      Some members of the congregation had hesitated, particularly Kamma. She found it difficult to part with the lovely money. She had given gifts, small amounts taken out of Grandma’s passbook, but she found it difficult to part with the lump sum.

      The pastor’s congregation was strangely homogeneous. Ninety per cent were single, not terribly intelligent, elderly women possessed of a certain fortune. There were also some children and the odd sheepish man, who accepted the pastor’s spate of words with a guilty, bent head, believing blindly in his tirades.

      Some of them undoubtedly had problems seeing the logic in what Prunck preached. If the world was to go asunder, and only they were to survive, what was the point in shedding their riches? But their small brains couldn’t be bothered to figure that out. Of course, the pastor knew best how everything was to be arranged when the time came.

      Kamma had another problem: her son, Hans-Magnus. He too had to be saved from the apocalypse, but he didn’t want to be. He said that Pastor Prunck was a humbug.

      This was why Kamma had reached a compromise with the pastor. Her son’s life and soul could be saved if Vinnie became his proxy and took his place in the shelter. Kamma didn’t give a damn about Vinnie – she could perish. But the girl had to attend the meetings on behalf of Hans-Magnus. To keep his place in heaven, so to speak. Then he would be bound to survive the catastrophe even if he was somewhere else.

      It was all extremely complicated, and only the most simple-minded could make sense of the pastor’s mental transactions.

      Of course, Vinnie knew nothing about the agreement that her pastor and Kamma had entered into. She trudged willingly along to the meetings, listened fearfully to the pastor’s sermons and was filled with warmth when his eyes sought hers. Now she suddenly meant something! Now somebody could actually see her!

      The other members of the congregation gloated in other ways: they thought triumphantly of all the people outside. Those who knew nothing about this paradisiacal sect and would therefore perish. This was a delightful feeling. Some of them had certainly told friends and acquaintances about the end of the world, but they had been met with scorn and disgust. But just wait and see! They would get to see it for themselves! The day would come when they would be writhing in their death throes, knocking on the cave door to be let in. But then it would be too late! Only the chosen would be allowed in!

      The cave had come into existence as a result of earlier attempts to mine ore in the area. The venture had been abandoned and the cave forgotten. Pastor Prunck had succeeded in getting hold of the key to the iron door, and thanks to the hard work put in by members of the sect, the bare grotto had been turned into a habitable, almost cosy, shelter. With electric light and wooden walls and simple amenities. The heating was also good.

      This afternoon, Vinnie and her aunt arrived a quarter of an hour early, because there was something that Kamma wanted to discuss with the pastor.

      Vinnie would have to wait in the hall while Kamma was called into the holy of holies – the grotto’s storeroom.

      Pastor