Chapter 3: The Wall of Sun

Chapter 3: The Wall of Sun

The world began to fray at the edges the farther north she went. Tamara’s journey started with the sterile predictability of airports and the rhythmic clatter of trains, but each transfer took her to a smaller station, a more ancient track. The hand-drawn map from Elena’s box, now creased and fragile, was her only true guide. The letters, with their Soviet postmarks from a ghost town, had given her a search area: a remote, sparsely populated expanse of forest straddling the border of what were now two different countries, a forgotten pocket of the old Iron Curtain.

Her final train journey ended in a village that was little more than a platform and a pub. From there, she rented a battered Land Rover that groaned in protest with every shift of the gears. The paved roads dissolved into gravel, then into deeply rutted dirt tracks that clawed at the vehicle’s undercarriage. Her phone’s GPS had given up an hour ago, the blue dot of her location blinking uselessly in a sea of undifferentiated green. She was navigating by the sun and a cheap compass, just as her grandmother must have.

Finally, the track ended, consumed by a wall of pine trees so dense and uniform they looked less like a forest and more like a barricade. She left the Rover, pulled on her pack, and took a final look at the mundane world behind her before stepping into the shadows of the trees.

The silence was the first thing she noticed. It was absolute. There were no birds, no skittering squirrels, no hum of insects. The only sound was the soft, deadened crunch of her own boots on a thick carpet of rust-colored pine needles. The air was cold and still, heavy with the scent of pine and damp earth. An hour passed, then two. The trees never changed. Each one was a perfect, straight-backed twin of the last, the forest floor a uniform blanket of needles. It was a place devoid of landmarks, a landscape designed to disorient.

Her compass began to misbehave. The needle, which had been pointing steadily north, started to quiver, then swing in lazy, uncertain arcs. Tamara stopped, her breath misting in the frigid air. She tapped the glass, a useless gesture. The needle spun slowly, as if searching for a signal it couldn't find. The rational part of her brain, the part that had written papers on magnetic interference and geological anomalies, was being drowned out by a primal, rising dread. She was in the right place. This unnatural wrongness was the first signpost.

She clutched the worn paper of the map, its lines and labels more real to her now than the compass. She pushed onward, ignoring the spinning needle, relying instead on the subtle slopes of the land Elena had sketched. The story from the laptop echoed in her mind, a grim counterpoint to the silence. ‘Our Christmas begins not with joy, but with the tolling of the 7 a.m. bell.’ She imagined a thirteen-year-old Lucinda walking through these same oppressive woods, her scuffed shoes kicking at the needles.

That’s when she saw it. It wasn’t a wall of stone or wood. It was a line drawn through the forest, as sharp and straight as a razor’s cut. On her side, the gloom was deep, the light filtered through the dense canopy into a perpetual twilight. But just ahead, through the trunks of the pines, the world was bathed in a strange, golden light, the kind you only see for a few fleeting minutes at sunset. It was a fixed, unwavering glow, a captured moment of dusk that refused to fade.

A wall of sun.

Hesitantly, she approached the demarcation line. The air grew warmer, and a low hum vibrated through the soles of her boots. It was a sound she felt more than heard, a thrum of latent energy. A strange scent reached her, cutting through the smell of pine. It was the cloying sweetness of a hothouse flower mixed with something else, something metallic and sharp, like fresh blood. The Christmas Begonia.

Tamara reached out a trembling hand. As her fingers passed from the gloom into the light, she felt a tangible resistance, like pushing her hand through a thick, invisible curtain of gelatin. The air on the other side was warm and buzzed against her skin. The humming grew louder in her ears. This was the barrier. Not a fence to keep people out, but a cage to keep something in. It was a distortion of reality itself, a supernatural quarantine line.

Every instinct for self-preservation screamed at her to turn back, to run to the rusty Land Rover and drive until the compass worked again. But the image of Lucinda’s legs, a grotesque Christmas gift, flashed in her mind. The memory of her grandmother’s unfinished story, the blinking cursor a silent plea. She couldn't turn back. She was the epilogue.

Taking a deep breath, she lowered her shoulder and pushed.

The pressure was immense. The humming crescendoed into a deafening roar inside her head. The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of golden light and searing pain. For a terrifying second, she felt as if her molecules were being pulled apart and reassembled. Then, with a sudden lurch, she stumbled through.

She fell to her knees on the other side, gasping. The roaring stopped, replaced by the same profound silence as before. But the world was different. The oppressive forest was gone, ending abruptly just behind her as if it had never existed. Before her lay a gentle, sloping hill leading down to a small town nestled in a valley.

Solenvol.

It was exactly as the crude map depicted, yet infinitely more disturbing. The houses were perfect, almost sterile, with neatly painted fences and identical wreaths on every door. Smoke curled from every chimney in tidy, uniform plumes. There were no cars on the immaculate streets, no children playing in the manicured yards.

And in the window of every single house, bathed in the perpetual golden light, sat a potted plant with waxy, blood-red leaves.

A palpable sense of dread hung over the town, a suffocating blanket woven from forced cheerfulness and unspoken terror. It was a place holding its breath, waiting for the 7 a.m. bell.

Tamara got to her feet, brushing the rust-colored needles from her jeans. She could feel it now, an awareness that prickled at the back of her neck. She was being watched. Not by a person in a window, but by the town itself. By the silent houses, the empty streets, the very air she was breathing.

She took her first step onto the paved road leading into the valley, her worn leather jacket feeling like a flimsy shield. The journey was over. The investigation had just begun.