He helps me to the sofa and I collapse onto it, my limbs aching and frozen. He takes off his snowshoes, then pulls off mine. I can’t get the image of them out of my mind. Something had clawed Yrsa to shreds. I glance up, and Stig looks as sick as I feel.

‘We have to tell someone, the police or –’ He takes his phone from his pocket and mutters angrily in Norwegian, then shoves it back. I check my phone but there’s nothing. No new messages and no signal.

Stig goes to the window and yanks the curtain shut. He stands with his back to me for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is strained but strangely calm. ‘Your mother will be here in the morning. I’m guessing she’ll bring a car. We just have to get through the night.’

A couple of hours ago he was desperate to leave the cabin, but now he knows something is out there. Now he’s seen what it can do …

Stig kneels before the stove and opens the door. I watch as he pokes the fire then takes a log from the basket. How can he carry on as normal?

I chew my thumbnail and whisper, ‘You said it was a stray dog.’

He gives me a hurt look.

A tear runs down my face. ‘You said Olav had shot the wolf.’

He says nothing.

‘They were clawed to death! Not bitten. What kind of wolf would do that?’

He shrugs and shakes his head sadly. ‘I don’t know.’

Yrsa seemed so strong – mentally and physically. The way her arms were ripped, she must have put up a fight. They had a gun but they still couldn’t stop it.

I clamp a hand to my mouth as I remember.

Stig frowns. ‘What is it?’

The raspy voice when I got off the ferry … it sounded like the woman in the tree.

‘No bullet can stop the dead.’ I say the words quietly, almost to myself.

‘What?’

‘There are claw marks around the hole in the tree. Like something crawled its way out. You said the tree’s roots reach down to the underworld.’

‘What are you saying?’

The shadows that darted past the kitchen window and then rushed by me on the porch; the creepy face in the mirror … The Norns were trying to warn me! Mormor must have known what would happen if the tree wasn’t watered. She didn’t say, because it was too hideous.

‘The tree is rotting because no one watered it, and now the dead are escaping.’

Stig’s face is ashen. ‘You can’t be serious.’