Mists of Stegeborg — The New Batch – Chapter 2
Saturday, 15 October 1859 — Just Before Dawn
The night in Skälvik did not concern itself with comfort. Beds creaked, shutters rattled in the wind, and the inn seemed to breathe in its sleep, expanding and settling like an old creature dreaming of better days. Torun and the dog, however, slept as if both had been dropped from a great height and landed on soft moss—he curled on his side, he draped across his legs in the serene confidence of a creature who had never once considered being unwelcome.
Hugo and Anders had lingered over the local spirits long after sensible hours had ended. By the time the candles guttered low, Hugo found himself comfortably warm and philosophising about the precise moral value of a well‑made hymn tune, while Anders offered contributions that grew less coherent with each refill. By morning, Hugo was clear‑eyed; Anders was upright only through stubbornness and the lingering pride of a man who refused to lose an argument with his own hangover.
Before dawn, the sounds of industry seeped through the thin walls: boots thudding onto floorboards, groans about the cold, the first clatter of pans below. The workers stirred with the rhythm of habit, rising because rising was what life required of them.
Hugo washed briskly at the basin and let a splash of holy water shock the last weight of sleep from his face. Anders, still cocooned in misery, watched the process with the dull resignation of someone witnessing another man’s questionable life choices.
Downstairs, the common room glowed with stove heat, carrying a faint briny smell—salt, woodsmoke, and morning damp all braided together. The workers were already eating, faces lined with fatigue and resignation, their breakfasts disappearing at a speed that suggested the food was better than their expressions implied. The innkeeper moved with quiet efficiency behind the counter, while a woman—apron neatly tied, hair bound back—wove between tables with practiced certainty.
The party settled at a table near the wall, coffee and tea arriving soon after. The first mouthful of coffee elicited a near‑silent recognition from the entire group: whatever its flavour, it had the force of a medical intervention.
Plates followed—eggs, crisp bacon, potatoes fried to the edge of burnt, cured meats whose origins were best left unexamined. It was food for work and cold mornings, not conversation.
Over the scrape of cutlery, as the warmth of breakfast settled into them, the group began to piece their morning’s intentions together. Frederick, sharpening purpose along with his appetite, leaned toward matters of the dead: the drowned butler, the crypt, the possibility of examining the body before burial. Hugo, more measured, weighed whether it was wiser to begin with the living instead—the farmhand, the priest, the village itself. Vilhelm, as ever, listened to the room before declaring any preference, noting the advantage of letting the locals’ conversations drift naturally toward useful truth.
It didn’t take long. A worker, nudged by Vilhelm’s mild enquiry, mentioned the manor across the river and the Count’s impatience with its progress. Another spoke of the fog that came in heavy at night, thick enough to make the river crossing perilous. The ferry, they said, was the only safe route; the bridge would come later.
The missing girl came up next—Eva Stark of Stegeborg—gone a week now, with no body recovered. The hard, bright edge of hope still clung to the village talk for that reason alone. The drowned butler was treated with less mystery: found in the river, declared an accident, with burial set for tomorrow. The body, the serving woman confirmed, rested in the church crypt.
The outline of a plan took shape between spoonfuls of potatoes and the slow disappearance of bacon. The vicar first—condolences, questions, perhaps permission to see the crypt. Then the riverbank where the butler was found. Later, Stegeborg, to speak with the missing girl’s father.
It was only when the serving woman lingered a moment longer than necessary at their table that the conversation shifted. There was curiosity in her eyes—the quiet, measuring kind. They were strangers who asked too many questions, who watched too closely, who had the look of people accustomed to walking directly toward trouble.
When Frederick, with typical flourish, introduced them as members of the Society, the woman’s expression changed at once. Shock first, then something like relief breaking through fear. She named herself Erika and, in a voice meant only for them, admitted she had been the one to send the letter to Linnea.
Her explanation came slowly, each detail carrying a quiet dread that made the table still. Years ago, she said, she had wandered along the creek and walked farther than she realised—farther than was natural. She had found herself in a clearing she had never seen before, surrounded by trees that felt older than anything growing in the valley. There, she met something that called itself the Fairy Queen: small, woman‑shaped, hair like black silk trailing behind it, fingers too long, ears too sharp, movement too light to belong to anything bound to earth. It had made her dance, compelled her legs to move until reason blurred and time twisted. She escaped only when another woman—Annika—intervened, bargaining for Erika’s release. The next moment, Erika had stood by the creek again, as though nothing had happened at all.
Now, she said, the workers dug across the river, close to where that clearing had been. Stones were being taken from the old castle ruin on the island. Fog rolled heavier than it used to. She urged them to speak with Hans the boatsman if they meant to cross.
Her story left a quiet behind it. The kind of quiet in which facts and fears rearrange themselves into something more urgent.
When Erika returned to her duties, the group finished their meal in silence, each privately adjusting the day’s intentions. The vicarage was the next logical step. After that, the church. And eventually, Stegeborg.
Outside, a thin veil of mist softened the road in front of the inn, turning the village into a landscape of smudged outlines and damp air. Workers tramped toward the river with their collars up, disappearing one by one into the greying light.
The Society—if they could yet call themselves that without irony—rose from the table and followed the path toward the vicarage at the edge of Skälvik, the dog trotting at Torun’s side, the cold sharpening the edges of the day ahead.
The road to the vicarage slipped quietly away from the centre of Skälvik like a thread tugged loose from a fraying sleeve. Houses thinned, the air cooled, and the neat yellow rectangle of the building came into view—three storeys high, recently painted, and far too proud for the modest parish it claimed to serve.
A carriage stood outside, glossy black, its wheels still faintly damp as though it had only just arrived. Its presence unsettled the group long before the front door did. There was nothing inherently ominous about a well-kept carriage, yet in a village this size it felt like a stranger intruding on a small room.
They paused beneath the short overhang of the porch. The dog sat neatly at Torun’s heel. The group held a brief, murmured conference—Hugo to speak first, Frederick to request what he needed with tact, the others to present themselves as travelling companions rather than an encroaching committee.
Hugo knocked.
A maid answered, her expression politely blank in the way of someone under strict instruction not to volunteer information. She nodded at Hugo’s request for the vicar and slipped inside. The door shut firmly but not rudely.
Silence settled. A window above creaked faintly; footsteps crossed a floorboard. Before anyone could comment, the door opened again—not for them, but to let a man pass out.
He was dressed well, but not like a noble—more akin to a senior servant with enough authority to forget to acknowledge anyone else. He slipped by the group without a word and disappeared toward the outbuildings with the air of someone who had better places to be.
Only when he was gone did the vicar appear.
Vicar Brännström looked as though sleep had taken to avoiding him deliberately. Shadows clung beneath his eyes, his posture held the stiffness of a man bracing for a conversation he did not wish to have. His gaze fell on Hugo first, recognising clergy by bearing if not by collar.
There was a brief exchange—respectful at first, though the vicar’s stiffness made his reluctance clear long before his words did. Hugo offered condolences; the vicar acknowledged them without warmth. Frederick stepped forward, introducing himself with calm purpose, speaking of medical aid should any be needed in preparing the butler for burial. The vicar deflected each attempt gently but firmly, insisting preparations were nearly complete, that the constable had examined the body, and that no further disturbance was necessary.
The door remained mostly closed throughout, as though the building itself wished to keep its occupants hidden.
The more Hugo tried to ease the conversation toward questions, the more the vicar’s composure tightened. Mentions of accidental drowning were met with minimal elaboration. Suggestions of permission to view the crypt were waved aside. Even the simplest enquiries—where the body had been found, who had discovered it—seemed to strain his patience.
Eventually, with a polite but unmistakable dismissal, the vicar withdrew. The door shut fully this time, the latch settling with a soft, determined click.
For a moment the group simply stood on the step, the cold air flattening the last of their hopes for cooperation. A shadow passed across an upstairs window again—brisk movement, then stillness. Someone was pacing.
The vicarage itself seemed too grand for its purpose—more estate house than parish home, its polish almost daring the viewer to question it. Fresh paint, well-kept grounds, and that black carriage—each detail pushed against the image of a grieving priest simply going about unpleasant duties.
Frederick exhaled slowly. If the door would not open for diplomacy, then the church—modest, older, less guarded—would have to be their next stop.
The dog gave a soft, uncertain huff, as if in agreement.
With no welcome left to wait for, they stepped away from its polished walls and began the short walk toward the church, where answers—or at least fewer locked doors—might wait.
Vilhelm peeled away from the others with the kind of quiet certainty that suggested this was not the first time he had chosen to follow his own line of inquiry. While the rest of the group made for the church, he lingered near the fork in the road and took the track leading back into the village. A man could learn much from a settlement if he listened to it at its edges.
Skälvik at midmorning had the same muted character as at sunrise—grey light, thin mist, the faint briny tang of the river drifting between houses. People moved with early efficiency: a woman sweeping her step, a man securing a tarp over stacked firewood, two children carrying a bucket between them with grave purpose. Life here did not pause for mystery.
Vilhelm slipped into the general store, heralded only by the small iron bell above the door giving a tired jangle. The interior smelled of dry goods and dust, with shelves packed too tightly for comfort—bolts of cloth, fishing hooks, tins whose labels had surrendered to time, and a curious assortment of trinkets that may once have been useful.
The shopkeeper looked up from his ledger, eyes narrowing with polite calculation. Strangers drew attention in places like this; solitary ones drew more.
Vilhelm asked after local history with the casual tone of a scholar who had made similar enquiries in dozens of villages. The phrase “old battlefield” surfaced naturally, as though merely checking a footnote. The shopkeeper, reassured by academic interest, began to talk.
Three or four centuries past, he said, the land beyond the village had been a contested ground between rival dukes. Plenty of blood spilled, plenty of dead buried, hardly any records written well enough for modern eyes. Burials and forgotten tombs lingered in the area, and stories claimed travellers sometimes lost hours wandering there—or forgot where they had been altogether. Villagers preferred to steer clear. Some histories lived too close to the surface.
The Count’s manor came up next. Most people, the shopkeeper said, approved of the construction: new work, new visitors, perhaps better fortunes ahead. Others were less pleased. Stones were being taken from the old Stegeborg ruin on the island, and some felt the land across the river should be left to itself. The shopkeeper did not say which opinion he held, but his shrug was a studied thing—too casual to be honest.
When Vilhelm inquired after Gustav Rask, the farmhand mentioned by the workers, the man had no precise direction to offer. “Try the farms,” he said, which in rural terms meant anywhere within a half-day’s walk.
Satisfied he had pressed as far as courtesy allowed, Vilhelm departed. Outside, the faint bustle of the village resumed around him. The mist hung low, turning the road toward Skälvik’s tavern and the church into a pale ribbon.
He made his way back toward the inn with the intention of rejoining the others after a brief pause, but found himself instead lingering on the square for a moment longer—taking in the shape of the place, the way its edges seemed frayed by time and fog alike.
There was history here. Not the clean, archived kind, but the sort people carried in their posture and in the warnings they never quite said aloud.
After a thoughtful breath, Vilhelm turned to follow the road toward elevenses and, eventually, back to the group—bringing with him a handful of leads and the persistent sense that the past in Skälvik was not nearly as buried as its residents preferred to believe.
The church stood only a short walk from the vicarage, though it could not have felt more different. Where the vicarage flaunted its fresh paint and orderly trim, the church seemed resigned to erosion. Its timbers sagged slightly, the stone threshold was worn hollow in the centre, and the front door bore an old scar where a hinge had once torn loose and been hammered back in place. In another village it might have been a relic worth restoring. Here, it was simply functional.
The group approached with the steady caution of people who expected resistance and were faintly surprised when none came. The door yielded under Hugo’s hand without complaint. Inside, the air was still and faintly stale—old incense, dust, and the lingering smell of damp wood that clung like a memory.
The nave was empty. Pews sat in uneven rows, some bowed with age, others marked with scratches where generations of boots had idly carved lines during sermons. Light filtered weakly through crooked windows, leaving the interior in a mottled patchwork of greys.
Axel, tied just outside, gave a curious whine. Torun murmured something reassuring and stepped over the threshold with the others.
It was clear the church had not seen a proper service in some time. The lectern leaned a little to one side. Hymnals curled at the edges from damp. A thin film of dust softened the floorboards underfoot, disturbed only by a few recent tracks—likely the vicar, moving between his duties and the crypt.
They found the interior doors near the pulpit without trouble. Heavy, wooden, reinforced with iron fittings that suggested a time when security had been more than ceremonial. One door led to what appeared to be an office or a storage room; the other, if tradition held, would descend toward the crypt.
Hugo lingered near the office, pretending interest in the clutter of records while keeping his distance from anything that might be construed as tampering. A glass-fronted display cabinet stood against the wall, filled with small curiosities—old coins, fragments of pottery, rusted nails excavated from nearby ruins. One item stood out: a dagger far too pristine for its supposed age, with a placard declaring it had been found in the bay. Hugo’s eyebrow lifted fractionally. Either Skälvik’s waters preserved metal like a miracle, or someone had grown overfond of embellishment.
Meanwhile, the others focused on the second door. It was locked, but not stubbornly so. Aleksander crouched with the comfortable familiarity of someone who had made a lifelong study of hinges and tumblers. The quiet click of success came quickly.
Behind the door, a narrow spiral staircase coiled downward. The stone steps were chilled with the kind of cold that belonged more to the ground than the air. A faint, earthen smell drifted upward—soil, stone, and something else beneath it, something that old buildings learned to keep.
Frederick went first, driven by the clinical certainty that the truth always waited at the bottom of things. Torun followed, then Anders, their footsteps muffled as the stair curved away from the light. Aleksander came last, pausing only long enough to cast a glance back at Hugo, who nodded once before returning his attention to the cabinet.
The staircase opened into a small, vaulted chamber. Candles, long extinguished, lined the walls in uneven holders. The air was colder here, dense with a stillness that clung to skin. In the centre of the room stood a stone slab draped with a burial sheet.
The shape beneath it was unmistakable.
Frederick stepped forward, the familiar ritual of his work guiding each movement. Tools laid out. Gloves pulled tight. The sheet lifted.
What lay beneath did not look peaceful.
The face was contorted—jaw strained wide in a silent, frozen scream, eyes bulging with a terror that had not eased in death. Skin blanched and waxen, marred only by the faint mottling of water exposure. The body bore the hallmarks of immersion, but not the injuries that drowning left behind. It was a man who had known fear, not water, as his final companion.
The reaction was immediate. Torun’s breath caught sharply; Anders stiffened, as though bracing against some unseen force; even Aleksander went still, fingers resting lightly against the crystal sphere he kept for focus. A chill brushed up each spine—a primal, involuntary recoil that settled in the gut and stayed there.
Frederick lowered the sheet for a moment, steadying himself before continuing. The horror of a face etched by its last moments lingered even with the cloth drawn back over it.
He resumed his examination with careful precision, describing findings in a low voice meant only for those beside him: signs of water taken in after death, not before; the absence of external wounds; no bruising consistent with a struggle; an overall picture of a man who had died of terror long before the river claimed him.
Aleksander searched the perimeter of the crypt, his eye drawn to details others might overlook. Hanging from a hook near the stair was a water-stained jacket. He checked the pockets, fingers coming away with ink residue and soggy parchment. The note inside was barely legible, its message warped and blurred—but one line clung stubbornly to the paper: Get the goods below by midnight.
In the quiet above, Hugo turned from the cabinet, a prickle of instinct catching at the back of his neck. Through the warped glass of the church’s front windows, a figure approached along the path—dark coat, slow stride, silhouette unmistakably clerical.
The Vicar was coming.
