AURORA (Original Novel)

Chapter 6. Barbie girl.

By mid-October, just before Halloween, the weather decided to smile on the residents of Sør Trøndelag. The sun was shining brightly, almost like summer. The wind near the sea was always strong, but even now, if it blew across the land, it was somehow tender, loving, caressing its surface, like a shy lover. he leaves turned completely orange-red, only the spruce and pine trees turned green, eternal in their attire. Gruve was a very small village, no more than half a thousand people lived, old people, children and visitors to visit relatives. The houses are spread over a long distance. An ideal place for introverts, loners and those who don't like neighbors looking into their windows. Fields and forest clearings separating them, as well as small but densely tree-covered hills, made up the main landscape, the same as in neighboring Lita and Orwe, Gruve-like wilderness settlements.

The Valley of the Pits, as the quiet village was also called, was distinguished by the fact that its landscape initially consisted of potholes and hollows, and deep ravines. This presented a hardship for farmers; fields had to be leveled, costing time and money, before planting crops. But the soil was saturated and fertile. In the year 1950, archaeologists who came from Oslo itself discovered an ancient temple and hundreds of remains of human bodies. Researchers then decided that even before our era, a certain cult of sacrifices flourished in these parts, and they wrote it down in smart books, eventually happily forgetting about the mysterious history of Gruve. The dark past was reminded by the dragon's teeth that came across here and there. This is the popular nickname for the local megaliths, weighing several tons, dotted with mysterious symbols and not fully studied writings, reminiscent of Scandinavian runes, but in fact they are not.

But only a few people who were very interested in the past knew about this history of their village; everyone else did not care about antiquities and terrible stories, caring about this minute matters. At the houses, especially closer to the center of Gruve, where the street stretched straight like an arrow with shops, a single cafe and a church, the attributes of All Saints' Day, obligatory in recent times, began to appear. Twenty years ago, no one here would have even heard of Halloween; then they still celebrated already forgotten holidays with local flavor, no less ancient than Samhain, from which Halloween and gloomier ones came. Of course, some residents did not accept this tradition, which came from outside, for various reasons. The Ege family kept up with the times and fashion trends, their large three-story stone house was already decorated with garlands and a witch sat on the roof. The decoration was of high quality and from the outside it could seem that the witch was real, she was holding a broom in her hands and looking down with curiosity, as if flying past from another Sabbath, she decided to rest on the bright red tiled roof.

At the entrance doors there were several artificial pumpkins; at night the evil faces carved into them glowed greenish, terrifying the local children. The Ege family consisted of four people; the head of the house, Olaf, was a very respected gentleman, after all the chief of police of the province. He was almost constantly absent from work in the big city. His wife, bearing the ancient name Helga, ran the household and led a Christian circle for pious wives at the church. In general, she spent more time on the sermons of Father Malcolm, who was the rector of the local parish, than she paid attention to her children. For her, they were more like wardrobe items or furniture in the house; in the woman's opinion, the kingdom of heaven where she was striving would not get closer if she was distracted by unimportant little things, such as her eleven-year-old daughter Camilla and twenty-year-old son Ulle. The latter could not appear at home at all for weeks, especially after his father gave him a car. Camilla, having gotten up early, spent about forty minutes preening herself in her personal dressing room, she was already putting on makeup like an adult woman, she had at her disposal a whole dressing table of various lipsticks, creams, eye shadows and powders.