25 Days: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Per Jacobsen is an internationally bestselling Danish author known for writing thrillers with supernatural elements, including the Strung series, Dry, and 25 Days. He lives in southern Spain with his wife and children. Visit AuthorPerJacobsen.com for more information. 

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Adam

Adam

IT’S PURE REFLEX. As soon as the first few notes of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You have found their way to his ears, Adam Gray’s hand releases its grip on the steering wheel and moves down to the radio’s volume knob.

He doesn’t turn it, though. Something makes him hesitate and change his mind. Perhaps it’s the realization that he’s the only one of the four people in the vehicle who has registered the music.

In the past, the two girls in the back seat would have ordered him to crank up the volume—and the woman in the passenger seat would have belted along from the very first line, not worrying about key or rhythm. Now, they just sit there, staring at glass plates; the girls at the screens of their cell phones and Beth through the pane of the side window.

In the past. It’s a strong phrase to use for something that doesn’t go further back than a few years. It’s crazy how so much can change in such a short time.

Outside the car, the air is full of dancing snowflakes, and the pines whizzing by on both sides have been given a touch of white on top of their evergreen needles.

So has the asphalt of the road, which Adam isn’t too happy about. Especially not if it gets worse. True, they can also get large amounts of snow in Newcrest, where they live, but it usually doesn’t take very long before the first snowplows are sent out to clear the roads.

But they are up north now. Far from Newcrest, and far from major cities in general. And Adam has a strong feeling that these deserted roads that wind through the Willowbend forests aren’t exactly at the top of the clearing crew’s itinerary.

But that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? he thinks. To get away from it all and spend some quality time together as a family.

He glances over at Beth in the passenger seat. She sits with one leg pulled up so that her foot is resting on the seat and her chin on her knee. He can’t see her face because it’s still turned toward the window, and her freckled cheek is hidden away behind a thick lock of chestnut-brown hair.

She has been gazing at the landscape almost nonstop throughout the drive. Three hours of her just staring blankly out the window… although Adam has a feeling that she isn’t so much looking at the landscape as she is avoiding looking at him.

He shifts his gaze up to the rearview mirror just in time to see his eldest daughter move her hand up in front of her mouth as if she is suppressing a burst of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

Abby jolts when she realizes that she is the one he is talking to, and she slams the phone down on her thigh with the speed of a furious cobra.

“Nothing,” she says. “Just something on TikTok.”

Adam opens his mouth, then sees the expression in her eyes in the rearview mirror and thinks twice. No need to start a war by asking her for more details.

While her older sister picks up her phone again, Chloe momentarily takes her eyes off her trance-inducing screen and leans in between the front seats.

“How much farther is it?”

“In about half an hour we’ll be at the gas station where we’re supposed to meet the guy who owns the cabin,” Adam replies. “He’s going to take us the rest of the way up there. How far that is, I don’t know, but it’s probably not that bad.”

“Why don’t we just meet at the cabin?”

Adam turns around in his seat and glances at her with one eyebrow raised.

“Because it’s a vacation in the country that I’ve booked for us,” he says. “And when you’re out in the country, like really out in the country, the GPS gets confused.”

He emphasizes the last word by crossing his eyes and tilting his head from side to side before moving his gaze back to the windshield. This makes nine-year-old Chloe let out a giggle—and her fifteen-year-old sister roll her eyes.

One in three he can still get a smile from. Guess that’s better than nothing. In any case, it’s what he will have to settle for. However, he is hoping that this vacation might change that a bit.

Through the speakers, Mariah Carey’s only Christmas wish fades out, and a news fanfare takes over. After that follows a deep male voice.

“Straight from WBCN’s studio in Colmena, this is Mark Ranter, wishing you a good afternoon and welcoming you to the news on this bitterly cold first of December. We start off in Grismond, where a family with children woke up this morning to an unpleasant—and rather macabre—start to the Christmas month. It was the father who made the chilling discovery on his way out with the garbage. He spotted a bloody trail leading into the family’s garage. And what he found in there was nothing short of a horrendous sight. Someone had hanged—”

A click, and the voice is gone. Adam looks down and sees Beth’s fingers clutching the dial on the radio. From there, his gaze slides up and meets hers.

She looks angry. Judgmental.

“What?” he says, gesturing down to the radio. “I’m not the one who decides what they say on the news, am I?”

“No, but you are able to decide what your daughters need to listen to, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t know what bothers him the most—what she’s saying, or the way she says it. The way she whispers it, as if that would somehow prevent the two girls in the back seat from hearing it. Christ, they’re sitting less than four feet away from her. And on top of that, she has just turned off the radio.

Adam’s teeth dig into the flesh on the inside of his lip, but he manages to maintain a smile on the outside. Which is good, because he has promised himself that he won’t argue with Beth on this trip. He wants to course-correct the ship, not sink it.

“I… I didn’t really listen to it,” he says. “My head was in a completely different place. But you’re right. Sorry.”

He looks at her, she stares at him, and then—luckily—she nods and leans back in her seat. Catastrophe avoided.

Half an hour of awkward silence later, Adam turns the car into the parking lot in front of the Exxon gas station, a short distance outside the town of Crimson.

The town. Using that word to describe Crimson is almost a stretch. How many houses did they pass between the WELCOME TO CRIMSON sign and the NOW LEAVING CRIMSON sign? Ten? Fifteen?

“What a fucking ghost town,” Abby mumbles in the back seat.

“Hey, language!” both parents yell in chorus… but after a short pause, Beth leans toward Adam and whispers:

“Who the hell taught those little fuckers to talk like that?”

Adam feels his lips pulling up in a smile. Partly because that sentence is an old inside joke between him and Beth, but even more so because she also smiles at him. That happens so rarely these days. Maybe this trip really is what’s needed to get them back on track.

“You’re not wrong, though, Abby. It didn’t exactly look overpopulated,” he replies as he lets his gaze wander, first across the roof above the gasoline pumps and then down to the facade of...