Chapter 6

There was one thing Simon hadn’t mentioned when they were eating lunch on the last day of the trial. It was really just a feeling he’d had when he walked by the manor one morning: something was going on in there.

A few weeks after the trial, he walked there again. It was late October. A raw, chilly wind found its way under his clothes. The sky was iron-grey and the leaves glowed yellow and orange. There were two ways to get from the village to ViaTerra – the tarmac road, which followed the island’s eastern coast and led to a gravel drive up to the manor, and the shortcut: narrow paths through the woods that were often overgrown during the warm months.

Dusk was falling, so Simon took the road. He walked slowly, his hands stuffed in his pockets, whistling to himself. There wasn’t a car in sight; the island felt deserted now that the summer tourists had left for the season. The darkness was oppressive; no moon, no stars, only a thick blanket settling across the road. There was a fresh breeze, and the sea hissed and frothed to his right. A couple of gulls sailed on the wind, apparently keeping pace with him for some peculiar reason. As he turned onto the gravel path that led to ViaTerra, he could see the façade of the manor house towering up against the sky. Stately and gleaming white in the dim light. All the windows were dark. Everything was quiet and still. Good – it had only been his imagination.

The manor house was enclosed by a three-metre wall topped with an electric fence. A massive iron gate formed the main entrance, and next to it stood a sentry box. When he reached the gate, Simon discovered a motorcycle standing next to the booth where the guard typically sat. Strange. He was almost positive it hadn’t been there last time he walked by. It was chained into place. It must have been Benny’s bike, the one he used to patrol the property. Simon was curious; he tried to open the gate, but found it locked. He followed the wall around to the smaller gate that led from the grounds into the forest. It, too, was locked. Franz Oswald had used it on occasion, and was the only one who’d had the key. On the day the police had stormed the manor, he had snuck out through the gate and run down to the sea, where he had hidden in a cave.

Simon looked up at the manor house again and noticed the flag fluttering in the breeze. It was the flag of ViaTerra, green and white, symbolizing the power of nature over humanity. Now Simon felt wary; there had been no flag on the pole last time.

The wall was too high for him to peer over. The first autumn storm had already felled some trees, and by putting his back into it, he dragged over a small birch and leaned it against the wall. He climbed up, slipping a few times, but at last he could grab the edge of the wall. Gazing down at the open yard on the other side, he saw something huge: a large removal truck parked at the main entrance. It was full of furniture and suitcases. A couple of guys he didn’t recognize were carrying a chest of drawers through the door.

Someone was moving in.

Simon climbed back down, then lifted the tree away from the wall and placed it on the ground. He tried the handle of the gate again, just to make sure. It was definitely locked.

As he turned homeward, it was so dark he could hardly see where the gravel drive ended and the ditch began. He walked slowly, tentatively, and was suddenly blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car. Though he had to shield his eyes with one hand, he was able to see the figure in the driver’s seat: a woman. Sharp features and a familiar, pale face. It was Anna-Maria Callini, Oswald’s defence attorney. He was so curious that he considered going back to spy on her. But he decided to take one thing at a time. For now, he had to figure out how to gain access to the place.

That evening, Simon spent a long time online. When he was done, he knew all there was to know about changing a lock. The next day was a Saturday. After seeing to the greenhouses, he took the ferry to the mainland and purchased everything he would need.

When darkness fell, he set off for the manor house. This time he was sure no one was there; the windows were dark and it was quiet, aside from an owl hooting now and then from the forest. He walked to the far side, where the smaller gate was, fastened his flashlight to a tree, aimed it at the gate, and got started. Simon first picked the lock, a skill he had learned as a boy. He then preceded to remove the lock itself. Now he would have access to the manor whenever he pleased. But there was one more thing he had to do.

He hummed as he walked home in the dark, sweeping the treetops with his flashlight and blinding an owl and laughing at the way it stared down at him. The bird took off with a screech; it flew so low and so fast that its talons brushed his hair and he could feel the whorls of air coming off its wings. Simon cried out, dropped his flashlight, and suddenly found himself in total darkness. He crawled around on the gravel path, fumbling until he found the flashlight.

An unpleasant lump of fear lingered in his belly all the rest of the way home. Perhaps the owl was a bad omen, a warning that he would do best to keep away from ViaTerra. But he knew that what he planned to do was important.

Back home in his cottage, which was on the pension’s property, he sat down at the computer and sent an email to Sofia. They wrote to each other now and then – that is, when Simon managed to drag himself to the computer and log in. But Sofia always responded right away.

Do you have Ellis’s email address? I need some expert advice about my computer, he wrote.

Ellis was Sofia’s ex-boyfriend, from the time before she had joined the cult; he was a computer genius who had harassed her and hung her out to dry online. But he wasn’t all bad: when Sofia fled ViaTerra, Ellis had come to her aid by hacking Oswald’s computer and digging up evidence.

Sofia sent Simon Ellis’s email address that same evening, and wrote that she had just found a job and an apartment. Simon felt warm inside; he wrote back to congratulate her on the job but said nothing about his discoveries at the manor house. He didn’t want to upset her when she was so happy.

He emailed Ellis to explain what he wanted and received a reply the next morning. Sure, Ellis could help Simon, for a small fee. The kind of falsification he was talking about was illegal, but by all means, if it could help Sofia…

The envelope from Ellis arrived a few days later. Inside was a letter on police letterhead, addressed to the owners of ViaTerra. Without mincing words, it said that they had been forced to break the lock during the raid but had now replaced it, and were sending along the new keys to the gate. Simon took out an envelope he’d addressed to the manor. The lock he’d just installed had three keys. He put two into the envelope and kept one, then sealed the envelope, which he would drop in the mailbox next time he went to the mainland. The extent of his own daring made him dizzy.

From then on, Simon visited the manor once a week, typically on the weekends. He sneaked through the forest to the gate and opened it with his key. Within the gate was a stretch of woods that bordered the huge lawn. If he stood perfectly still and kept quiet, no one could see him from there.

Sometimes he went to the sea first, and sat on the cliff rocks to spend some time with his thoughts. The fog had begun to move in at night and the air was damp and raw. He found the coastal landscape was most beautiful when it was swept in fog. No shadows, no sharp reflections. Gentle silence. It made him so calm he nearly dozed off, but his thoughts were always drawn back to the manor.

After their ferry trip, once Madeleine had cobbled together that new group, he’d figured they would all meet up on the mainland. Talk about old memories, write loving letters to Oswald in prison. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would return to the island. And he didn’t like the fact that they had. Not at all.

One morning in early November, he heard voices on the other side of the wall. Followed by sounds that reminded him of his time in ViaTerra: feet scraping on the gravel, chatter, those rare moments before roll call, before everything began in earnest.

So they had begun to hold assembly again.

Christ, this is nuts, he thought. How was it even possible? It had to be against the law for them to come back and start up all their shit again.

Curious, he hurried to the far side of the property and slipped through the gate. Now that the trees had lost their leaves, he had to hide behind the trunk of a big oak.

They were all lined up in rows. Twenty-five or thirty individuals – half the former group. Madeleine and Bosse in front of the staff. Katarina, Anna, Benny, and Sten were in the first row.

Bosse was preaching about priorities. His voice made Simon nervous, like an annoying itch under his skin.

They’d managed to scrape together uniforms; everyone was dressed in grey, but he spotted jackets that hung like sacks and trouser legs that left ankles exposed. And they all looked worn out and tired. Far from the cocksure group he was used to. But how fun was it, really, to stand there listening to Bosse? There was something contradictory about the heavy, grey bodies and ViaTerra’s flag, waving so freely in the wind. But indeed, the cult had returned.

The accident happened on Christmas Day. Simon was drowsy after a big Christmas dinner at the pension and decided to take a walk to perk himself up. When he turned onto the gravel drive that led to the manor, he saw an ambulance and two police cars outside the gate and a group of people gathered on the road. He didn’t want to be recognized, so he slipped into the forest. Two men came out of the gate carrying a stretcher covered in a big grey blanket. They hopped into the ambulance, which raced past him, sirens blaring. Clearly something serious had happened.

The group of people began to scatter, and he saw Edwin Björk, the ferry captain, come walking down the road. Simon emerged from the forest and fell into step beside Björk.

‘Hi, Simon!’ he said. ‘They’re up to all that devilry again. Can you believe those idiots came back?’

‘No, I really can’t. What happened?’

‘Not sure. They carried someone out under that blanket. A suicide, I heard.’

Simon didn’t learn any more that day. He couldn’t concentrate on anything as he tried to figure out who had been on the stretcher. He had to know, so he returned the next day, to sneak through the gate and hide behind the oak. And there stood the staff, their shoulders slumped, a sad, grey mass. Bosse stood before them, holding a bundle of papers in one arm. He spoke loudly, so loudly that Simon could make out a few words: ‘don’t panic’ and ‘keep working just like normal’ were two phrases that reached Simon’s hiding spot.

As Bosse was about to hand out the papers, a gust of wind blew several sheets from his grip. They fluttered across the lawn like butterflies, landing here and there on the wilting grass. Simon’s eye caught a sheet that seemed to be heading his way, but Anna came running and picked it up. Once all the papers had been gathered up and handed out, the staff dispersed.

Jacob, the caretaker of animals who had been one of Simon’s few friends, plodded toward the farm area. Simon felt a stab of pity; Jacob looked sad.

Simon was just about to sneak back out through the gate when he noticed something white lying on a pile of pine needles. He got down on his belly and crawled his way to the pile to retrieve the white thing. It was a piece of paper; he stuck it under his jacket.

Not until he was back home did he read what it said; it was a list of bullet points that together formed a plan. Things that needed doing around the property. Renovations, purchases, cleaning. He sneered as he read Find someone to take care of cultivation. So they were fixing up the manor again, preparing it for something. Oswald’s return? Hardly. He would be behind bars for a good while longer. But it occurred to Simon that perhaps such an operation could be managed from prison.

His eye was drawn to the very last point on the list; it was slightly separate from the others. Almost like an afterthought.

Sofia Bauman? It said. Just her name, followed by a question mark.