Gundrun’s health had declined fast for a while now. Her time had come. Nobody knew that better than I did.

She was ready to move on. Her life had been long and not always easy. There was only one thing that worried her.

“I wonder, Nervous.” Gundrun said to me one evening. “Do you think I will see Bjorn again?”

The safe thing to do would have been to give her some non-committing answer, like any normal person would. I believe if it had been anyone else, I would have done so. But this was Gundrun. She had saved my life. She had taken me in. She deserved to know the truth.

“He is. And he’s forgiven you. When you saved my life, you paid your debts. You can rest in peace now.”

Gundrun looked at me questioningly. Then she smiled, closed her eyes and died.



Unfortunately, Loki had overheard us. He demanded to know what it was that Gundrun and I had talked about. What would there be in his mother’s life that had to be forgiven?





He dragged me to his lab and locked me in. I would stay there until I talked.

And I couldn’t talk.



How could I tell him about that day?



About what had happened in this very lab?



About how the last remainders of Gundrun’s marriage had come crashing down?



And about how Bjorn had really died?



Well, after two days of imprisonment with no food, it turned out that I could. I thought at this time that Gundrun had told me to do it, but it might have been a hallucination.

Anyway, Loki did not take this story well. He called me a liar and said that he refused to believe me. He would keep me locked up until I told him the truth.

I think that he did believe me. He just didn’t want to. And maybe he also wanted to see what else I could tell him.



Circe was the next one to arrive. She brought me food and told me to stop being so stupid. All I had to do was tell Loki what he wanted to hear and everything would be fine.

She did a pretty convincing routine of good scientist here. Unfortunately, I happen to know that she is evil, so it was kind of wasted here. Even more unfortunately, there was another story I knew that would interest Loki and that I had no qualms telling her.



You can probably already guess what I was talking about. It was no secret to anybody in the neighborhood that Vidcund continued to hang around the house after Circe’s marriage.



Conveniently, always at a time when Loki was working.



And it’s not like they were ever particularly subtle about it.

Not included: A picture of Vidcund leaving Circe's room in his underwear and going "Whaddup?" to Nervous.



Circe couldn’t know that I’d never tell Loki that he wasn’t her child’s father. Gundrun was dead and past all care for her terrible secret, but the child was innocent.



The important part was that Circe believed me when I threatened to tell Loki her secret. And she let me out.



The end of that story was, that when a tired Vidcund stumbled home after work, Pascal looked up from his book and told him that Nervous Subject was looking for a place to stay and that he’d offered him Lazlo’s old room. “He can help take care of our babies.”

He couldn’t help adding “You seem to produce some of those.”

Vidcund was way too tired to figure out what his brother meant by that and just had enough energy left to shoot back a “Yeah, got it, move your boyfriend in to raise your kids. Bed now.”


And that is the story of Strangetown's second murder mystery.

Coming up next: Strangetown Teens