Fog Island: A terrifying thriller set in a modern-day cult

MARIETTE LINDSTEIN was born and raised in Halmstad on the west coast of Sweden. At the age of 20, she joined the Church of Scientology and worked for the next 25 years at all levels of the organization, including at its international headquarters outside Los Angeles. Mariette left the Church in 2004 and is now married to Dan Koon, an author and artist. They live in a forest outside Halmstad with their three dogs. Fog Island is her debut novel and was first published in Sweden where it won the Best Crime Debut at the Specsavers CrimeTime Awards. Mariette now dedicates her life to writing and lecturing to warn others about the dangers of cults and cult mentality.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Mariette Lindstein 2019

English translation © Rachel Willson-Broyles

Mariette Lindstein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Rachel Willson-Broyles asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the Translation.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008245368

Version: 2018-10-22

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Epilogue

About the events and characters in this book

Thanks!

About the Publisher

Prologue

She has been lying awake in the dark for ages, marking the time by counting her breaths. One breath in takes three seconds. One breath out, another three. Seconds become minutes. And soon, an hour.

The darkness is dense. There are no shadows, outlines, no numbers on a clock radio. She feels weightless lying there, as if she’s floating. But the counting keeps her awake, and anyway, she is far too tense to fall asleep now. Doubt gnaws in the back of her mind. The fear of failure makes her nerves whine like the strings on an untuned violin as a blurry veil of anxiety settles over all her thoughts. Best just to breathe, not think, just be until the right moment.

She hears a faint tapping against the window; it grows into a persistent patter. Rain, despite the forecast. She curses the weather service and thinks about how hard it will be to run through the forest.

Then it’s time. She cautiously slides out from under the blanket and kneels on the floor. Her hands fumble under the bed, finding the bundle of her backpack. It contains everything she needs — and yet, almost nothing. Her tennis shoes are there too, the kind you just stick your feet into, no time for tying shoes. She carefully pulls on her jacket, which had been wrapped around the backpack, and puts on the shoes. Tiny, cautious steps across the floor. Her body feels dreamlike and heavy.

There’s a murmur from one of the beds and she stiffens. Someone turns over, making bedsprings creak. She waits until she hears deep breathing again. The last few steps. She fumbles for the door handle and finds it. A gust of cool air rushes in from the corridor as the door swings open. The night-time lighting paints the white walls a pale yellow. It feels like she’s gliding down the hallway. She pushes open the heavy iron door to the basement stairs, where the main breaker is. This is it. Sink or swim. She only has ten minutes, fifteen at the most. After that they’ll notice she’s missing. She knows the routines all too well. Once the first wave of confusion has settled down, they will gather and count the personnel. Then the manhunt will begin.

I am not afraid, I am not afraid.

She repeats the words silently to herself, like a mantra, and takes a couple of deep breaths. She can still change her mind. Turn around. Crawl back into her warm bed. But if she doesn’t escape now, she never will, and that thought is so unbearable that it blows the spark of her courage back into a flame.

As she pulls down the handle of the breaker, there’s a snap and a crackle and suddenly it is so dark that she feels dizzy and sways a bit in the black void. She grabs the wall, feels her way to the emergency exit, and opens the door. Cold, humid air hits her. The rain falls over the courtyard like a thick curtain; it has already drenched the grass, which eagerly sucks at her foot.

She splashes through puddles at a run, completely vulnerable to chance now. If her luck runs out, someone will spot her from the window of the manor house. But nothing happens. All she can hear is the drumming of the rain against the roof, the water pouring out of the drainpipes, and her own thudding steps.

The ladder is leaning against the wall. Thank God.

She has to make it over quickly, because soon the backup generator will be turned on, the courtyard will be bathed in light, and the barbed wire at the top of the wall will be capable of delivering a serious shock.

She climbs up the ladder, fumbles for a foothold between the razor-sharp barbs of the electric wire, and stands up on the slippery wall.

This is the moment she has been dreaming of, with longing and terror both. Down there, on the other side, there is no return. A burst of exhilaration runs through her mind, but then the fear grabs hold of her again.

She tosses her backpack down first, then jumps with all her might. Over the barbed wire, away from the danger behind her, into the darkness. Pain shoots through her foot when she lands. She brushes her hand over it and the pain abates. Her eyes search for the head of the path. And find it. She runs down it like a madwoman. Sometimes she misses a turn and almost darts into a bush, but she always makes it back to the path. She is riding high on adrenaline now. Forward. Forward is all that matters.

I am not afraid, I am not afraid.

She tries to make out the terrain, jumping over winding roots and rocks that criss-cross the narrow path. Her heart is pounding, her chest burning. The alarm begins to sound at the manor, behind her. The sweeping beam of the searchlight glints off the leaves. Things are going to get chaotic for a while. Then it will be all hands on deck, chasing her down.

Her clothing is wet and heavy and the backpack is digging into her shoulders. At last, she can see a light through the trees. She is close to her hiding place now. So very close.

She slows down. Stops.

Her eyes search for the end of the path. A sudden creak in the forest.

Her heart jumps into her throat; her muscles lock in panic.

He emerges from between the trees and stops not far away from her. She doesn’t have a chance; there is nowhere to run. The terrain is rough, either side of the path overgrown.

Her disappointment is overwhelming. Her insides tighten into one big, hard knot.

It is impossible.

And still, it has happened.

And still, he is standing there.

Somewhere, a dog barks.

The alarm sounds.

The last thing she thinks of is a voice. A faded memory returning to her.

You will never, ever get out of here. Just so you know.

The blood pounds at her temples.

Flickering sparks shower onto the curtains of her eyelids.

Then come the violent waves of dizziness and everything begins to go black.

I let the bumblebee fly around in the small aquarium for a while. It tries to get out, buzzing angrily, but all it can do is bounce off the walls.

Then it gives up for a moment and lands on the cork mat at the bottom.

I lift the glass lid off, slowly and cautiously. I hold my breath as I lower my hand, which holds a pin. It only takes a millisecond, and then the bumblebee is stuck to the mat. It hums furiously, spinning on the pin in a crazy, futile dance. Its wings work frantically, but it goes nowhere. Then I lift the cork mat out of the aquarium, place it before me, and pick up the tweezers.

Lily looks at me, her mouth agape. She runs her tongue over her lower lip. I search for something in her eyes, fear or hatred, but all I find is a great emptiness, a dark abyss that sucks me in.

But first, the bumblebee.

I pull off the wings first, then the legs. Taking my time, lining them up on the table in front of her. The stupid bumblebee never stops buzzing, moving around on the pin, just a body now, as if it ever had a chance.

‘Why are you doing that?’ she asks.

‘Because it’s amusing,’ I say.

‘What? To watch it suffer?’

‘No, your face when you watch.’

I almost can’t breathe when I realize she’s trembling a bit.

That’s how it all begins. With a tiny bumblebee.

1

The small ferry bobbed in the swells on the dark water. They were close now, but couldn’t see the island; the morning fog was a heavy blanket on the sea. The horizon was invisible.

Sofia felt relief as the mainland, on the other side, vanished behind the curtain of fog. She was putting distance between herself and Ellis. It was nice to get away from him, if only for a while.

There had always been something hectic and wild about her relationship with Ellis, an intensity that could lead to nothing but disaster. His terrible temper should have set off warning bells, but at first she just thought it made him exciting. They had argued about absolutely everything and it ended with him getting his revenge online. She had been so distracted that she almost bombed her last exam at college. She passed in the end, but just barely.

It was in the midst of this catastrophe that the invitation to the lecture by Franz Oswald popped up in her email. And it was because of that lecture that she was sitting here on a ferry, on her way to a strange island way out in the archipelago.

Wilma, Sofia’s best friend, was there too, staring into the fog. There was a hint of excitement between them. A vague sense of apprehension about what awaited them on the island.

*

On the morning she received the lecture invitation, Sofia had been on the computer, Googling phrases like ‘planning for the future’ and ‘career choices,’ realizing in the end that her search was not at all helpful. When she read the email, her first thought was to wonder why it hadn’t ended up in the spam folder.

A lecture on ViaTerra by Franz Oswald. For those who wish to walk the way of the earth, it read.

How the heck did a person do that? She thought it sounded strange, but she had heard of Franz Oswald before. There was some chatter about him around the university. He’d showed up out of the blue, giving talks about his philosophies of clean living, which he called ViaTerra. Among the young women, the talk about Oswald mostly revolved around the fact that he was attractive and a little mysterious.

She read the email again. Made sure that the event was free of charge. She figured it couldn’t hurt to listen to what this Oswald had to say, so she sent a text to Wilma, who didn’t take much convincing. They did nearly everything together by that time.

They had arrived late to the talk and sat in the front row of a full lecture hall. A big banner was hung above the stage; it said ‘ViaTerra: We Walk the Way of the Earth!’ in huge, green letters. The lecture hall was otherwise bare and sterile and had a strong smell of cleaning agents.

A buzz of surprise ran through the audience when Oswald walked onstage with a wheelbarrow full to the brim with something white. Flour or sugar. She couldn’t tell what it was, because the lights were focused on the podium; the spot where he was standing was much dimmer. The woman sitting next to Sofia groaned. Someone behind her whispered, ‘What on earth?’

He set down the wheelbarrow and stood still for a moment before coming forward and gripping the edges of the podium.

‘Sugar,’ he said. ‘This is what the average family goes through in three months.’

Sofia suddenly regretted coming, and she felt the urge to get up and leave. The feeling was so strong that her legs twitched. She really should have been looking for a job, not listening to a lecture. And Oswald made her nervous.

He was tall and well-built, wearing a grey blazer over a black T-shirt. His dark hair was combed back into a ponytail. The tan couldn’t be real, but it suited him. He gave the impression of being trim and sophisticated while also radiating something primitive, almost animalistic. But above all, it was his strong stage presence that made the air tremble with anticipation.

He stood in silence for a moment. A calmer, more expectant mood spread through the audience. Then he launched into a dizzying tempo that only increased throughout the lecture. His voice went on like a machine gun. He showed the crowd a PowerPoint full of brains, nervous systems, lungs, and flabby bodies that had fallen victim to toxins and stress.

Sofia began to catch on to what he believed in. A sort of back-to-Mother-Earth philosophy where anything artificial was the root of all evil.

‘Now we’ll take a break,’ he suddenly said, ‘and afterwards I’ll tell you about the solution.’

During the second half, his elocution was calm and controlled. He spoke of things like sleeping in total darkness, drinking clean water, and eating organic food. Nothing new or sensational. Yet he made it all sound absolutely ground-breaking.

‘Our program also contains a spiritual element,’ he said. ‘But it’s not like you think, so listen carefully.’

He paused, and it seemed to Sofia that he was staring at her; she squirmed in her seat. He fixed his eyes on her as he continued.

‘Aren’t you tired of hearing that you have to be present and live in the now? We must stop listening to all these religious wackos who preach that the present is what matters. Buying their books and courses so we can learn to sit with your eyes closed and breathe deeply. In ViaTerra, we do not deny the past. We draw power from it.’

Sofia’s hand flew up of its own accord.

‘But how do you do that?’

Oswald put on a measured smile.

‘Your name?’

‘Sofia.’

‘Sofia, I’m glad you asked; the answer is in our theses. The physical program takes care of the body. The theses are for the spiritual side. But the short version is, you learn to draw power from everything that has happened in your life. Even your negative memories.’

‘But how?’

‘You have to read the theses to understand. It has to do with intuition. When a person stops denying the past, a whole lot of inhibitions disappear. One’s abilities are set free and one can rely on intuition again.’

‘Are your theses available to read?’

‘Of course, but only if you undergo the whole program. We have a centre on West Fog Island, off the coast of Bohuslän, a sanctuary where we help our guests find the correct balance in life. One can only make use of the theses in a setting free of all distractions. That’s why our centre is on an island.’

A man behind Sofia raised his hand.

‘Are you a religion?’

‘No, we’re actually the first anti-religion.’

‘Anti-religion? What’s that?’

‘That means that whatever you hate about religion, we’re the exact opposite,’ Oswald replied.

‘I hate that you have to pray to God in most religions,’ said the man.

‘In ViaTerra, we don’t pray to God. We’re realists, with our feet planted firmly on the ground.’

A stout, red-haired woman in the first row stood up.

‘I hate all these damn books and writings you’re supposed to read. And then you’re supposed to believe all that crap too.’

By now, almost everyone was laughing.

‘We don’t have any books in ViaTerra. Just a couple of simple theses we use, but that’s all voluntary.’

It went on like this for a while. Oswald handled each question deftly. He was really on a roll.

Then a man wearing a neat, black suit and round glasses stood up.

‘Do you have scientific evidence for all of this? Is this an accepted science, or just a cult?’

‘Everything we do is based on sound reason. It has nothing to do with science or religion. The important thing is that it works, right?’

‘So how do we know that your gimmick works?’

‘Come and see for yourself. Or don’t.’

‘Nah, I think I’ll pass.’

The man made his way through the rows of seats and left the hall.

‘There you go,’ Oswald said with a shrug. ‘Let’s move on, with those of you who are truly interested.’

*

When the lecture was over, they were ushered out of the hall by young people in grey suits and led to a large coatroom where several tables had been lined up along the walls. Pens and forms were handed out. A thin young man with slicked-back hair and a goatee loomed over Sofia and Wilma until they had filled out their forms; then, when they were finished, he greedily yanked the papers from their hands. They mingled for a bit, chatting with a few young women their own age.

Then, suddenly, there he was. He popped up behind Sofia. Wilma was the first to notice him, and she was startled. When Sofia turned around, he was right next to her. Only now that they were face to face did she notice how young he really was. Twenty-five, thirty at the most. His skin was smooth, except for the hint of a few wrinkles on his forehead. His jaw was wide, and a five o’clock shadow lent a hint of manliness to his soft features. That, and his thick, dark eyebrows. But what she noticed first was his eyes. His gaze was so intense that it made her uncomfortable. And then there was the noticeable scent of his aftershave: pine and citrus. He was something totally out of the ordinary — there was no standing this close to him without noticing it.

At first he said nothing, and the lengthy silence became awkward. She noticed his hands. Long, thin fingers with nails cut short. No ring. The expression in his eyes was unreadable. She swallowed and tried to think of something to say but realized that she was tongue-tied.

‘Sofia, I got the impression that you had more questions?’ he said at last, putting the emphasis on her name.

‘Not really. We’re just curious.’ Her voice sounded rough and hoarse.

He raised and lowered his eyebrows and drew up the corners of his lips, as if there were a secret between them. He was well aware, irritatingly so, of how good-looking he was.

‘Come and visit. I’d be happy to show you our centre. No commitment, just a tour of the property.’

He handed her a business card. Green and white, with embossed letters.

‘This number goes to Madeleine, my secretary. Call her and book a time.’

He held onto the card for a moment so she couldn’t take it from his hand. His eyes flashed and then he let go. Sofia was about to respond, but he had already turned around and was on his way into the crowd. Wilma tugged at Sofia’s sleeve.

‘Stop staring at him. Why don’t we visit that island and take a look? What harm can it do?’

She clears her throat a few times. Doesn’t quite know how to say it.

I just stare at her. I know it makes her uncomfortable, and I enjoy that.

‘We can’t go too far,’ she says. ‘I mean, it could be dangerous . . .’

‘Isn’t that the point?’

‘Yes, but . . . you know what I mean.’

‘Nope, not really. Tell me.’

‘I don’t want it to leave bruises.’

I snort.

‘So wear a turtleneck. Stop being such a wuss. You like it, don’t you?’

She lowers her eyes, all innocent. This is something new. Her fear.

It seeps out of her and turns me on; I get incredibly excited.

Have to take a few deep breaths, hold myself back, to keep from grabbing her and shaking her hard.

I own this person; I have her completely under my power.

She bends to my will like the grass in the wind. I turn my back on her.

Feel her drawn into the vacuum.

I think of how this night will be.

2

‘Are you dreaming, Miss?’

This was the man who captained the ferry, Edwin Björk. He was slightly overweight, with sideburns and a wind-chapped face; he smelled like diesel and seaweed. Sofia and Wilma had made friends with him on the journey over. Sofia tore herself from her memories of the lecture and looked at Björk.

‘Not really, just wondering if it’s usually so foggy here in the summer.’

‘It’s not unusual,’ Björk said. ‘She’s not called Fog Island for nothing. But it’s worst in the fall. The fog sometimes gets so thick that I can’t bring the ferry in. What are you two up to on the island?’

‘We’re going to visit a group at the manor, ViaTerra.’

Björn wrinkled his nose.

‘Then be careful. That place is cursed.’