Free One, Two ... He Is Coming for You by Willow Rose

you seen each other for so long?” I asked deliberately
avoiding answering his question.
    “Oh, I don’t know. It has been so many years. Time flies. We went to the
same school for years and I have tried to watch everybody’s careers from a
distance, but we never saw each other since the day we graduated.”
    “Why do you think that is?”
    He shook his head. “We were just school buddies. We really didn’t have
that much in common.”
    We walked down the path for awhile in silence. Then I took out Irene’s
picture from the pocket in my brown leather jacket. I showed it to him.
    He stopped and stared at it for a long time.
    ”How did you get that picture?” He said.
    “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you seem to be much more
than just school buddies in this picture.”
    He sighed deeply and put a hand to his forehead. He seemed a bit preoccupied
for a second.
    “What is it you want from me?” he asked.
    “I want to know about your friends. What were they like? My sister used
to date Didrik Rosenfeldt for a short while and she told me you and your
friends acted out a lot when you came to Karrebaeksminde on summer vacation in
the Rosenfeldt’s residence. That you harassed people on the port area, and I
know that you were at one point accused of having raped a girl on the boat.”
    Ulrik Gyldenlove sighed again.
    “I just want to know the truth,” I continued.
    “You must do your research a little better next time,” he said handing
me the picture back. “The charges were all dropped. There was no case against
us. They were false accusations. The poor girl must have been mentally ill or
something.”
    “It was dropped because you paid her family off. Don’t think I didn’t do
my research,” I said, suddenly afraid of having said too much. Would they come
after Irene for this?
    He sighed again. “It’s such a long time ago. Why dig up the past now?
Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
    “Because someone is killing your old school buddies and it might be
because of something you did back then. For all I know you might be next.”
    He looked at me with serious eyes. “Don’t you think I have been asking
myself that?”

 
     
     
     
     
     
    14
     
     
     
    Ulrik Gyldenlove was quiet for a long period of time while we were still
walking on the path. I had borrowed a pair of Wellies at the Riding Club and
they made a funny squelching sound when I walked. We reached Erimitageslottet,
a small castle that never was used for the royalties to live in, but as a place
for the king to have his banquet for the riders of the hunt. It was placed on
the highest point of the forest overlooking all of the beautiful landscape.
    It had a big history. I sensed that as we passed it.
    “Most of the other students were afraid of that group,” he said suddenly
without looking at me. He stared out in the wide landscape that opened up
between the trees. A flock of deer were gathered not far from us. One looked up
and stared back at us.
    “They enjoyed it. They liked to make people scared of them,” he
continued. ”The school was their domain. And a lot of the other students got a
taste of their tough love. They had a reputation of being like wild animals.”
    “What do you mean by they ‘got a taste of their tough love’?”
    “They beat them up. Sometimes half to death.”
    “Why?”
    He looked at me. “For fun.” He looked away again. ”They got some kind of
pleasure out of it. Sometimes there was no reason at all for them to pick on
some poor kid and beat the crap out of him. He was just at the wrong place at
the wrong time.”
    “I don’t think I understand.”
    “What is there to understand? They were just pure evil. They wanted to
be evil.”
    “But weren’t they afraid to be kicked out of the school? Didn’t their
parents send them there to get a good education and a bright future?”
    “You don’t know a lot about boarding schools do you?”
    “I’m sure I