The story goes like this:
I had taken my sister and her boyfriend along for a bike ride following the motorway construction that I had been documenting since last summer. It was a nice evening, one of those marvellous Danish ones. A pale blue sky inhabited by a couple of lone clouds.
We had biked from Lystrup to Skødstrup to have a closer look at where the motorway began. The work on the road had come a long way since my last visit in February. Back then the landscape was covered in snow, seemingly blending bits of newly erected bridge elements together with the surrounding landscape. If only temporary.
My fellow travelers seemed to enjoy themselves as they were biking along in their own tempo. On our way home, we stopped at a badly neglected little farmhouse. It must have been a beautiful place when it was fully functional. Now the walls of the house were covered with graffiti and the grass was a couple of meters up in the air. My sister wanted to have a closer look.
We noticed that the front door to the house was open, and you could hear the sound of water running. I decided to have a look inside. The entrance was littered with old advertisement leaflets and wet newspapers. It stank of decay. Not shit, just mushy, heavy decay. It was moist as hell. The walls and the carpets were wet, which made it pretty hard to breathe. The toilet looked like it hadn’t been used for a couple of years.
After my first inspection I waved them all over and we all had a look inside. No lights were on. In what used to be a living room there was a sofa. On it we found a couple of boxes full of papers. The small desk next to it was also full of papers. My sister had a closer look. Some of them were court papers, others bank statements — all neatly organised. On the wall I found a framed wedding picture, a classic from the 70s. I took it down to have a closer look and showed it to my sister. I was very excited and wanted to take it with me. She told me that I better not. I placed it back on the wall and eventually started taking a couple of photographs. There was hardly any light and I didn’t have my flash with me. The others left the house, leaving me to my own accord. I was fiddling with my camera. The card was full—forcing me to delete a couple of unwanted shots and I take some photos of a surprisingly well organised rack full of old suits and a couple ties. The water was still running in the bathroom.
I left the house and we were standing around outside chatting. I was telling my sister’s boyfriend some lame joke that I had just bought the house. We both pretended that it was funny. I mentioned the state of the bathroom to my sister and she decided to have a look for herself.
She walked back into the house — only to reappear moments later yellling — “There is someone in there”. I look up and a man with a full beard wearing a red sweater (in the middle of the summer, mind you) is standing outside looking quite bewildered. My sister is apologising to him. “We didn’t know that anyone was living in there”. I tell him that we were just talking in his courtyard and have done nothing wrong. He starts shouting — and we decide that it might be a good idea to get the hell out of there. We all jump on our bikes. My chain falls off. The two of them are cycling away leaving me behind to fiddle with my chain.
He doesn’t chase us.