The Last Execution Read Free Page B

down to the ground while he stood idly by, hissing a demonic laugh.
    Not to mention the murder of the sheriff’s son. The messenger had heard that the man had held the little lad down with just one arm while he had hammered away at his head with a stone, and the child’s cranium burst like an egg, his brain trickled out like yolk!
    That the likes of him had gone free among men! The messenger gets the shivers just thinking about it, the thought that it could have been him who met that man on a deserted country lane late one night. It could just as easily have been the messenger ending up in a ditch with a cracked skull or a slit throat!
    The messenger senses at once that someone is lurking behind him. Even though he knows it’s just his imagination, he can’t help but peer over his shoulder. But there is someone. Someone watching him. There, in the shadows of the goldsmith’s house. His heart beats faster. Then he sees it: It’s a thin girl. She’s shifting from one foot to the other with something clutched in her arms. Perhaps she’s waiting for someone?
    The messenger thinks she’s a fallen woman. That she has gotten herself pregnant. And she’s waiting for the father of the child, but the father doesn’t show. The messenger thinks this because she seems so desperate. She’s not sluggish like the others on the town square. And then she stares at him. As if she needs his help.
    He yells at her, which only makes her draw back into the shadows.
    â€œWhat’s your name?!”
    She doesn’t answer; but she doesn’t flee, either. The messenger is confused. He has the feeling that this is what he’s been waiting for, that this moment is essential to life at large. It is now he must do the one and only right thing.
    â€œThe executioner is coming all the way from Odense city,” he finally says. “That’s why it’s going to be so late.”
    He doesn’t know why—of all things—he chooses to say this, whether it’s the right or wrong thing to say. The words come out of his mouth, but it isn’t him who speaks. He goes on, regardless.
    â€œA whole lot of people are coming to watch. A whole lot,” he says. “But I’m sure that if you stand up real close, you’ll be able to see the chop quite clearly.”
    The girl doesn’t answer, and the messenger can’t tell if he should say any more. He considers offering to arrange a spot for her in the front row. In a flash, his brain imagines how he leads her through the masses: He clears the way before her up to the scaffold, his goal. And he is sweating heavily as he forces his way through the crowd with elbows, shoves, and calls of authority. He leads her by the hand on the final stretch. He feels as if everyone steps aside of their own accord, and they make it to the front of the crowd in good time to see the swing of the ax. And then she turns to him and smiles. Her face and dress, her protruding belly, are splattered with rancid blood and gore. That should take care of it , he thinks. That’s taken care of.
    The messenger is back on the town square, where his heart skips a beat, and he is struck by an insane idea: He is the father of the child! Just because he’s had those thoughts. About doing it. Doing it with Signe from next door. Doing it with other girls—and now, with this lass here.
    The bad conscience wells up inside him. There is so much to be taken care of, so much work to be done. He has dallied on the square for too long, and thought about it . He’s got to get moving! Still, something holds him back. A desire to drop everything he has in his hands. To run to the girl in the shadows. To rob the goldsmith’s! But he’s being pushed and pulled from all sides—being borne down. He can hear the scolding he will receive in the course of the day, feel the raps on his knuckles; he is utterly aroused, yet tired as an old