‘Do you know what?’ said Edwin Björk. ‘In the end it was like you all didn’t even exist.’
They were drinking coffee in the Björks’ cottage.
‘What do you mean?’ Benjamin asked.
‘Well, at first we were rather pissed off when you all showed up and took over the manor. No one in the village wanted a cult on the island. But later on it was so quiet up there. And with the fog and the walls, it was hard to see the estate. So it felt like you had disappeared. Like you no longer existed.’
‘So anything could have happened?’
‘More or less. To be honest, we wouldn’t have noticed if he had killed every soul up there. Life just went on as usual out here on the island.’
‘Are you going to go see the place again?’ Elsa asked.
‘Yes, we’re going to take one last look,’ said Sofia.
‘What do you think will happen to the manor now?’
‘I don’t actually know,’ said Sofia. ‘But I heard everyone left, because the whole property has to be cordoned off — it’s a crime scene.’
‘He does still own the place,’ said Edwin. ‘I’m sure he’ll sell it to some other idiot. Some poor fellow who doesn’t know about the curse. And then the Countess will pay a visit some dark night...’
‘There is no curse,’ Sofia interrupted. ‘That was Oswald and his girlfriend, scaring you that day out on the heath. She was wearing the Countess’s cape. They had found it in the attic.’
‘I’ll be damned!’
Björk gazed near-sightedly into his coffee cup, and when he looked up his eyes had taken on a sheen of dreamy amazement. It was still there when they left the cottage not long after.
*
They took the path through the woods and up to the manor. She showed Benjamin the path she’d run that rainy, dark night. Everything looked different in the daylight — there were no dangers lurking behind trees, no steps echoing in front of them on the path, and when an owl hooted in the forest it just sounded like home. The setting sun shot golden rays between the trees, and the pine shadows grew long, stretching over the moss and the narrow path. They scared a crow, which flapped away above their heads with a hoarse caw.
When they reached the gravel path that led to the estate, the sun glinted off the gravel, bright enough to blind her, so she looked up and saw the façade of the manor house towering up against the sky. It stood there like a mountain, a landmark, completely untouched by everything that had happened. The breeze carried a faint scent of the sea and for an instant time stood still. Then she felt the urge to turn around, forget this bloody place, and just move on with her life.
‘I suppose it’s all closed and locked up here,’ she said to Benjamin.
‘I doubt it. If it is, we’ll just go over the wall.’
She squinted, because she saw a shape just inside the gate. Sure enough, someone was standing there, a figure leaning against the iron bars.
‘There’s someone here,’ she said, poking Benjamin in the side.
‘You’re imagining things!’ he said at first, but then he, too, spotted the figure. ‘Wait, that’s —’
He was dressed in his usual get-up, a coverall and large gardening gloves. He was hanging around the gate lazily, standing so still that he might have been an illusion. She wondered if her desire to see him was so strong that she’d manufactured a vision.
But then he started laughing and she set off for the gate as fast as she could. She threw her arms around him, laughing herself.
‘Simon! What are you doing here?’
‘Björk said the two of you were coming. And I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to see you.’
‘But why are you still here?’
‘It’s a long story. I was about to leave with everyone else, but then the woman who owns the guest house in the village called. They want to start serving organic, local food, so I’m going to work there. I just have to move all my plants and tools and everything, and it’s a tough job. Who would think that a few tiny plants could be such trouble?’
‘Damn, it’s good to see you again, Simon,’ Benjamin said, thumping him on the back.
‘You too,’ he replied. ‘Just think, you made the walls fall at last.’
As they walked through the gate, the sky paled, no longer the clear blue it had been that afternoon. The sun shone weakly through thin clouds, striking the manor house and making it sparkle like crystal. It was still the same beautiful place, even though the property was deserted. The wide-open space still made her head spin. Then she thought of how it had looked when the fog had enveloped the buildings, when the storms whipped at the trees and twigs chased each other across the courtyard, and when the snow had been the only bright point of the coldest, harshest part of winter. Yet her memories were beautiful in a strange, surreal way.
They walked through all the buildings on the property. In only a few weeks, their magnificence had started to fade. The lawn was soft and springy, overgrown with moss. The flowerbeds were brown and full of weeds. Dust had begun to gather in thick layers on indoor surfaces. How well she knew these rooms, their moods and light, how the shadows fell on the walls. Yet it wasn’t the rooms themselves that sparked the most memories, but the objects that had been left behind in them.
Boxes of letters in the tiny mailroom, so painstakingly addressed — a couple of spiders were creeping over them now. A few plates in the kitchen sink, still covered in bits of rice and beans. The paperweight on Oswald’s desk, the one he had thrown at them on that awful day. A cigarette butt in a flowerbed from someone’s illicit smoke break. A hair-band and a pen pocked with bite marks from Sofia’s teeth lay on her old desk.
It wasn’t painful at first; it wasn’t even uncomfortable to walk around there. She just thought of how things might have been if it hadn’t all gone so wrong. She recalled the winter in the stable, how she had felt more at home there, with Simon, than in Oswald’s office.
‘Where are the animals?’ she asked Simon.
‘A farmer on the island is taking care of them. They’re all fine,’ he assured her.
‘Even the pigs?’
She walked over to the wall where she had been standing when Oswald attacked her. An icy tingle spread down her spine and the hand she had rested on the wall began to tremble.
‘Let’s skip the attic,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see it. Let’s go out to Devil’s Rock instead.’
‘Tell me what happened after I ran away,’ she requested as they came out to the yard.
Simon scratched his head.
‘Well, nothing, really.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Oh, that first night there was a hell of a fuss. After the alarm sounded. Bosse and his gang dashed around asking if we had seen you and made us comb the forest for you. We were up all night. But afterwards, everything went back to normal again.’ He thought back for a moment. ‘Wait, there was one thing. The day after you escaped.’
‘What was it?’
‘Oswald came to the assembly and sent around a sheet of paper. It was a drawing. He said that if any of us had drawn it we had to confess before the night was over.’
‘So what was it?’ Benjamin asked.
‘It was a drawing of a little devil with horns and an evil smile.’
*
They were sitting on the very edge of Devil’s Rock, dangling their legs over the water. The gentle curve of the inlet lay before them. A few grey clouds had parked on the horizon, blocking the sun, but the sky around the clouds glowed red. The sea was high, reaching for them, sparkling and billowing. Further out the fog had begun to rise off the water and only the very tip of the lighthouse was visible, like a little knob. A flock of birds soared across the sky, circling and darting back and forth like a single, coordinated being.
It seemed like you could see the whole world from up there.
She wondered how much of what had happened would end up affecting her. She wasn’t sure if the worst memories were lying in wait somewhere deep down inside, only to force their way up to the surface one day and surprise her. But at that particular moment, all she felt was relief. She tried to decide how much she regretted the moment when she had accepted Oswald’s offer and started working for him. She had lost two years of her life. Could she get them back? But she didn’t find any regret there. If she’d said no, she would never have learned how to put together a library, how to save animals from an inferno, how to hack a computer or climb over an electric fence. And she never would have met Benjamin and Simon. And what would have happened to Elvira? Besides, she never would have experienced the joy of seeing Oswald apprehended in the end.
It felt like a whole lifetime had passed since the first day she saw him at that lecture. And now everything had come full circle; this whole moment had begun when she had gotten sidetracked two years ago. Because here she was again, with no plans for the future, no vision for her life. She had no idea what she would do, no idea where she would live or how she would earn money. She didn’t even know what would happen with Benjamin. And that was just the way she wanted it.
‘There’s just one thing that irks me,’ she said aloud. ‘The family history. Oswald’s got it now, and there’s nothing I can to do get my hands on it. What if —’
‘Don’t go getting any ideas,’ Benjamin cut her off.
A lone gull cried out at sea as the darkness spread; the night would soon swallow the bay.
Benjamin tugged teasingly at her earlobe. ‘Hey, you can stop worrying now.’
He said it like it was as easy as flipping a switch.