Chapter 14

For two weeks, nothing happened. No emails, packages, or other unpleasant surprises.

It was as if the whole world was taking a deep breath, and she was enveloped in a remarkable peacefulness. But nothing felt normal – time seemed to fray at the edges and she found herself constantly interrupting her own routine to look around, spy out the window, check to see if she had gotten any sketchy emails. A faint sense of unease snuck up on her when she went out for a walk. Shadows that had once been invisible grew and shrank behind the bushes. And in some ways, the fact that nothing was happening frightened her even more. It was like they were keeping an eye on her from a distance; she felt watched. Sometimes she went to the dumpster to double-check that no one had gone through her trash. She imagined she must look completely ridiculous, standing there poking through refuse. But the trash bags remained untouched.

The people who’d received the fake emails took it better than she’d expected. Her boss, Edith Bergman, had merely laughed awkwardly, and said she’d realized right away that the email hadn’t come from Sofia. Her parents hadn’t even read their email. They mostly kept in touch over the phone these days. Wilma called to ask if Sofia missed her so much she’d gone crazy.

She spent more time at her parents’ house, but whenever she tried to bring up her time in the cult, everything went off the rails. Her mother brushed her off immediately: ‘Don’t think about that anymore. You have your whole life ahead of you!’

Mom’s voice went brisk and shrill. Like an actress in the theatre.

‘I think you should have a party here at our place,’ she went on cheerfully. ‘Invite all your childhood friends. Reconnect with people.’

This suggestion seemed so idiotic that at first Sofia couldn’t make a sound.

‘Thanks, but right now I just want peace and quiet,’ she said at last.

She never brought up ViaTerra with her mother again.

Sometimes she chastised herself for having started the blog. Why had she been so pig-headed? Why couldn’t she just do as everyone told her and forget Oswald and ViaTerra? But that line of reasoning didn’t work; she couldn’t keep her inner voice from talking back, bringing up every possible argument.

Benjamin had been by to secure her apartment. An extra lock with a chain on the door, and black blinds – which Sofia truly hated, but Benjamin pointed out that they would stop anyone from spying in. When he wanted to call a security company and order an alarm system, though, she put her foot down. After all, the harassment seemed to have stopped.

Yet she was still having trouble sleeping. She was afraid of having more nightmares, which had only gotten worse. Oftentimes she woke up thrashing, startled, drenched in sweat. Sometimes, before she even opened her eyes, she lay there petrified, scared she might find herself back in the dorms at ViaTerra.

One morning, when the dream seemed particularly clear in her mind, she tried to hold onto it and sink back into her body, where it had been pressed to the wall under Oswald’s weight. She purposely relived the fear tingling up and down her spine and tried to make herself turn around and kick him in the crotch. But his body had dissolved as she rose to consciousness, and the way back into her dream was blocked.

She got out of bed and went to the window. The streetlights had gone out and the room was full of a pale dawn light. A strange, surreal feeling washed over her. The morning outside was so quiet, aside from a faint breeze that was shaking the leaves of the aspens. Someone walked across the lawn in front of her building, then turned around and looked at her. For an instant she went stiff, but the man looked away and resumed his walk towards the city centre. She noticed his backpack and decided it must just be someone on his way to work. Even so, a warning buzzed in her bones, like the background music of a horror film.

Late one night, she received an unexpected call from Ellis. ‘What do you want to do about the blog?’

‘Shit, I almost forgot about it.’

Sofia hadn’t told Ellis about her hacked email account, but as they spoke she realized that had been a mistake. If anyone could help her, it was Ellis. So she did something she’d promised herself she would never do: she invited Ellis to come over to her apartment. It turned out to be a good idea in the end, because he installed extra security on her computer. Firewalls, encryption, and other safeguards she didn’t even understand.

Then there was the blog. Interest in it had cooled; after all, Elvira was gone and probably wouldn’t turn up again. There were still several people leaving comments, mostly with questions about Elvira: Where did she go? Did she have the babies?

Ellis and Sofia sat down to chat over a glass of red wine. She still couldn’t look him in the eyes without a certain amount of hesitation. He had been such a jerk in the past, and it was hard to trust him. She even wondered if his almost overwhelming helpfulness was him trying to wiggle his way back into her life. It seemed he had read her mind, because he laughed suddenly.

‘Are you stewing about the good old days? Listen, I really have changed. You don’t owe me a damn thing for helping you. And look, I can have a glass of wine with you without getting drunk. But you do have to decide what you want to do about the blog.’

It was tempting to tell him to delete it. Everything had calmed down. Benjamin and Ellis had transformed her apartment into some sort of armoured submarine. No one could enter her home, and her accounts would be difficult to hack. It seemed like a good time to get out of the fight.

But the injustice of it all was still pounding stubbornly at her temples.

I’m not going to let any of those bastards keep me from speaking out.

‘What do you say, Sofia, should we take down the blog?’

‘Nope, I don’t want to.’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘No, we’ll turn it into my own blog instead. I’m sure I won’t get as many followers as Elvira, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll just describe what it was like for me. If I can scare a single person out of joining a cult, it will be worth it.’

‘That’s a big risk you’re taking…’

‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’

They were up all night. They changed the name to After the Cult and took down the photo of Elvira, replacing it with a gloomy picture of the manor house swept in fog, barbed wire in the foreground. It was the same image that the journalist Magnus Strid had used in an article about ViaTerra. They kept Elvira’s story and added Sofia’s. Ellis took care of the design and layout. Sofia took out the secret diary she’d kept on the island. The last entries had been written on the train from Lund to Haparanda when she was escaping ViaTerra, and what she had written was useful – she had been upset and angry when she’d written it. There were detailed descriptions of the way Oswald had treated the staff – the punishments, the violence, everything that had happened before her escape. She wrote a lengthy entry based on the diary and Ellis published it on the blog.

‘We have to include what happened to Elvira,’ he said.

‘Yeah, we’ll say that Oswald bought her back, offered her so much money she couldn’t refuse. People will be furious. Maybe it will even lead to a demonstration out on the island. A mob with signs protesting outside the gates. That would be amazing.’

‘Sure. Just like the time I stood there shouting at them to free you, Sofia.’

By the early hours, the blog was live.

‘Damn, it looks good,’ she said. ‘Seriously creepy. You’re awesome.’

‘What do you suppose Benjamin will think of this?’

‘That’s my problem. Either I keep living in denial, or I do something about it. I’ll just have to deal with the consequences.’

By the time Ellis left, it was too late to go to bed; she had to work in a few hours. She sat down on the balcony and watched the moon shining through broken bits of thin clouds. It was nearly dawn, and there was a faint light on the horizon. She walked to the bathroom and let her clothes drop to the floor.

The tile was cold beneath her feet. She turned on the shower, hot water – so hot the whole bathroom filled with steam and her face vanished from the mirror. She stood there for a long time, letting the water lash at her body and rinse away the exhaustion that was starting to creep up on her. Then she dried off, got dressed, and made a cup of strong coffee.

She went back to the balcony to watch the sun rise over Lund, enjoying the fighting spirit that had been reborn inside her.