I searched the room, pushing aside coils of wire, boxes of nails and thumbtacks, fine-gauge screens. At the back of one shelf, I found plastic containers plastered with FARA! labels—enough toxic preservatives to take out a small household:
ARSENIK. ALUN. SVAVEL SYRA FORMALDEHYD
On the next shelf was another box. Inside were ziplock bags full of empty darts, identical to those I’d discovered in the woods.
I continued searching until I spotted a knee-high refrigerator nearly hidden behind a large carton. A nautical chart was taped to the fridge door, along with a list of names and phone numbers, several curling photographs, and a Swedish flag magnet.
I stooped to open the fridge. On the top shelf were three bottles of Falcon beer, a box of milk, and a plastic container filled with earthworms. On the lower shelf was a large plastic bottle:
IMMOBILON: ETORPHINE HYDROCHLORIDE
I whistled softly. Whenever you see documentary footage of an elephant or rhino getting nailed by a dart, etorphine’s what got the job done. Thousands of times as powerful as morphine, it’s toxic to humans in even small amounts, and extremely difficult to obtain anywhere in the world—including the U.S. and, I assumed, Sweden. That hasn’t stopped people from snorting or injecting it. My old dealer Phil got his hands on some a few years back. I didn’t buy any, but others did, resulting in a spike in fatal ODs that week. Narcan can reverse the effects, but etorphine’s so powerful that cops and EMTs weren’t toting around enough of the antidote to bring anyone back.
The warning label on this bottle was in English. It had been imported from the UK. Why? As far as I knew, there were no rogue rhinos roaming Kalkö.
I took a photo of the bottle, closed the fridge, and got back to my feet. I photographed the table with its macabre menagerie, also the dead raven, focusing on where its eye had been before an etorphine dart turned it to jelly. Then I quickly turned to leave.
As I stepped away from the table, I bumped against one of the dirt-filled cartons on the floor and swore as my boot’s steel toe poked a hole in the side of the box. I reached to push the torn cardboard back into place, then recoiled.
Inside the box, dirt rippled like water, as though a wave was building beneath the dark surface. I watched as a minuscule yellow finger thrust through the dirt and began to writhe. Then another, and another emerged—dozens of them, hundreds, maybe thousands—until the entire box seethed.
Maggots.
I could hear them moving against one another, a sound like rustling paper. I backed away as they wriggled through the soil, attempting to crawl up the sides of the carton. A few escaped and I crushed them beneath my boot, but within seconds most had burrowed back into the dirt.
I grabbed a screwdriver from the table behind me. Taking a deep breath, I used the screwdriver’s tip to probe the quivering mass inside the carton, flicking aside maggots and dirt as a storm of blowflies whirled up around me.
A pale dome appeared inside the carton, flecked with writhing black threads—more maggots. With the screwdriver, I moved aside as many larvae as I could, until I exposed what they were feeding on. A ram’s skull, shreds of flesh peeling from its jaws. Fine white dust adhered to its coiled horns, lime, maybe, or some kind of enzyme powder.
I shoved the screwdriver through its empty eye socket and lifted the skull, yellow larvae raining from the rows of square teeth. I lowered the skull back into the carton and picked up my camera. I trained it on a beetle crawling along the skull’s lower jaw, its black wings holding a glint of iridescence, each antenna topped with a minute onyx bead.
The beetle paused, wing carapaces unfolding as I snapped the picture, and then it scuttled into the skull’s mouth cavity. I lowered the camera and used the screwdriver to smooth out the dirt, hoping the box’s contents would appear undisturbed.
I went to the next carton and prodded at the soil. Again the screwdriver struck something hard. This skull was much smaller—a lamb’s. Only a few larvae emerged from the soil. The maggots had been at work longer here.
I checked two more boxes. One contained another ram’s skull, the other that of some kind of carnivore with long incisors, a small dog or fox. I hurriedly swept the dirt back with my hands and stepped over to the window, pulling aside the curtain a fraction of an inch.
Outside, woods and road seemed unchanged beneath the curdled gray sky. The sun had crept a finger’s width closer to the horizon. I had no idea how much time had passed. An hour?
I turned and counted six more boxes in the shed, but I didn’t dare take any longer to examine them. I replaced the screwdriver where I’d found it, flicking off a larva that still clung to the handle. Despite the cold, I’d broken into a sweat.
I turned to leave, flies buzzing around my face. I swatted at one, stepping over a carton near the back door. Something glinted in the soil inside the box: a copper coin, like an oversize penny. I hesitated, crouched to get a better look, and saw several long black filaments protruding from the earth.
Hair.
I brushed at the earth to reveal more hairs, one twisted around a writhing maggot. I snatched my hand back, then gingerly plucked the copper coin from the soil.
It was smooth and almost weightless between my fingers. Not a coin, but a small amber disk threaded with wire, a hook that had been twisted out of shape. Two long hairs clung to it, electric blue. When I held it to the window, it glowed in the wintry light, a golden eye that winked at me as it turned. Tindra Bergstrand’s earring.