On his way to Dad’s house. Every bend in the road familiar; he had taken this route…how many times? Alone, maybe only ten or twelve, with his mum maybe another thirty, at least. His mum and dad had divorced when he was four, but Oskar and his mum had kept coming out on weekends and holidays.
The last three years he had been allowed to take the bus by himself. This time his mum hadn’t even come with him in to the Tekniska Högskolan stop where the buses left. He was a big boy now, had his own book of prepaid tickets to the subway in his wallet.
Actually, the main reason he had the wallet was to have a place to keep the prepaid tickets but now there was also twenty kronor to buy sweets and such, as well as the notes from Eli.
Oskar fiddled with the band aid on his palm. He didn’t want to see her any more. She was scary. What happened in the basement was—
She showed her true face.
—there was something in her, something that was…Pure Horror. Everything you were supposed to watch out for. Heights, fire, shards of glass, snakes. Everything that his mum tried so hard to keep him safe from.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t wanted Eli and his mum to meet. His mum would have recognised it, forbidden him to get near it. Near Eli.
The bus exited the freeway and turned down towards Spillersboda. This was the only bus that went to Rådmansö Island— that was why it had to wind its way up and down all the roads in order to drive through as many settlements as possible. The bus drove past the mountainous landscape of piled timber at the Spillersboda sawmill, made a sharp turn and almost slid on its back down towards the pier.
He had not waited for Eli on Friday evening.
Instead he had taken the snow racer and gone by himself to Ghost Hill. His mum had protested since he had stayed home from school that day with a cold, but he said he felt better.
He walked through China Park with the Snow racer on his back. The sledding hill started a hundred metres past the last park lights, a hundred metres of dark forest. The snow crunched under his feet. There was a soft soughing from the forest, like breathing. The moonlight filtered through the trees and the ground between them turned into a woven tapestry of shadows where figures without faces waited, swaying to and fro.
He reached the place where the path started to bear down strongly towards Kvarnviken Bay, and climbed onto his Snow racer. The ghost house was a black wall next to the hill, a reprimand: You are not allowed to be here in the dark. This is our place now. If you want to play here, you’ll have to play with us.
At the bottom of the hill you could see the occasional light shining from the Kvarnviken boat club. Oskar inched himself forward, the incline took over and the Snow racer started to glide. He squeezed the steering wheel, wanted to close his eyes but didn’t dare to because then he might veer off the road and down the steep slope towards the ghost house.
He shot down the hill, a projectile of nerves and tensed muscles. Faster, faster. Formless, snow-covered arms stretched out from the ghost house, grabbing for his hat, brushing against his cheek.
Maybe it was only a sudden gust of wind, but at the very bottom of the hill he drove into a viscous, transparent filmy barrier stretched out over the path that tried to stop him. But his speed was too great.
The Snow racer drove into the filmy barrier and it was glued onto his face and body, was stretched until it burst and then he was through.
The lights were glittering over Kvarnviken Bay. He sat and stared out over the spot where he had knocked down Jonny yesterday morning. Turned around. The ghost house was an ugly shack of sheet-metal.
He pulled the Snow racer up the hill again. Slid down. Up again. Down again. Couldn’t stop. And he went on. Went on until his face was a mask of ice.
Then he walked home.
He had only slept four or five hours, afraid that Eli was going to come. Of what he would be forced to say, to do if she did that. Push her away. And so he fell asleep on the bus to Norrtälje and didn’t wake up until they were there. On the Rådmansö bus he had kept himself awake, made a game out of trying to remember as much as possible along the way.
Soon there will be a yellow house with a windmill on the lawn.
A yellow house with a snowy windmill on the lawn passed by outside the window. And so on. In Spillersboda a girl got on the bus. Oskar gripped the back of the seat in front of him. She looked a little like Eli. Of course it wasn’t her. The girl sat down a few seats in front of him. He looked at her neck.
What’s wrong with her?
The thought had come to him even as he was in the cellar gathering the bottles together and wiping the blood away with a piece of cloth from the garbage: Eli was a vampire. That explained a lot of things.
That she was never out in the daytime.
That she could see in the dark, which he had come to understand she could.
Plus a lot of other things: the way she talked, the cube, her flexibility, things that of course could have a natural explanation…but then there was also the way that she had licked his blood from the floor and what really made him shiver was when he thought about the ‘Can I come in? Say that I can come in.’
That she had needed an invitation to come into his room, to his bed. And he had invited her in. A vampire. A being that lived off other people’s blood. Eli. There was not one person who he could tell. No one would believe him. And if someone did believe him, what would happen?
Oskar imagined a caravan of men walking through Blackeberg, in through the covered entrance where he and Eli had hugged, with sharpened stakes in their hands. He was afraid of Eli now, didn’t want to see her any more, but he didn’t want that.
Three quarters of an hour after he had boarded the bus in Norrtälje he arrived in Södersvik. He pulled on the string and the bell rang up front by the driver. The bus pulled over right in front of the store and he had to wait for an old lady whom he recognised but didn’t know the name of to get off.
His dad was standing below the stairs, nodded and said ‘hum’ to the old lady. Oskar climbed off the bus, stood still for a second in front of his dad. This last week things had happened that had made Oskar feel bigger. Not adult. But bigger, at any rate. All that fell away as he stood in front of his father.
His mum claimed his dad was childlike, in a bad way. Immature, couldn’t handle responsibility. Oh, she said some nice things about him too, but that was what she always came back to. The immaturity.
For Oskar his dad was the very image of an adult as he now stretched out his broad arms and Oskar fell into them.
His dad smelled different from all the people in the city. In his torn Helly Hansen vest fixed with velcro there was always the same mixture of wood, paint, metal and, above all, oil. These were the smells, but Oskar didn’t think of them in that way. It was all simply ‘Dad’s smell’. He loved it and drew a deep breath through his nose as he pressed his face against his dad’s chest.
‘Well hey there.’
‘Hi Dad.’
‘Your trip go OK?’
‘No, we ran into an elk.’
‘Oh no. That must have been something.’
‘Just joking.’
‘I see. I see. But you know, I remember a time…’
As they walked towards the store Dad started telling a story about how once a truck he was driving had collided with an elk. Oskar had heard the story before and looked around, humming from time to time.
The Södervik store looked as trashy as ever. Signs and streamers that had been allowed to stay up in anticipation of next summer made the whole store look like an oversized ice-cream stand. The large tent behind the store where they sold garden tools, soil, outdoor furniture and such was tied up for the season.
In summer the population of Södervik increased four-fold. The whole area down towards Norrtäljeviken Bay, Lågarö, was an unruly conglomeration of summer houses and even though the mailboxes down towards Lågarö were hung in double rows of thirty, the postman almost never had to go there at this time of year. No people, no mail.
Just as they reached the moped his dad finished the story with the elk.
‘…and then I had to hit him with a crowbar that I had for opening drawers and that kind of thing. Right between the eyes. He twitched like this and…yes. No, it wasn’t so nice.’
‘No, of course not.’
Oskar jumped up on the trailer, pulling his legs in under him. His dad dug around in a pocket on the vest and pulled out a cap.
‘Here. It’ll get cold around your ears.’
‘No, I have one.’
Oskar took out his own cap and put it on. Dad put the other one away.
‘What about you? It’ll get cold around your ears.’
Dad laughed.
‘No, I’m used to it.’
Of course Oskar knew that, he was just teasing. He couldn’t remember ever seeing his dad in a wool cap. If it got really cold and windy he put on a kind of bearskin hat with earflaps that he called his ‘inheritance’ but that was the limit.
His dad kick-started the moped and it roared like an electric chainsaw. He shouted something about the idling and put it in first. The moped jumped forward, almost causing Oskar to fall backwards. His dad yelled something about the gears and then they were off.
Second, third gear. The moped flew through the town. Oskar sat with his legs crossed in the clattering trailer. He felt like the king of the world and would have been able to keep going like this forever.
A physician had explained it to him. The fumes he had inhaled had burned away his vocal cords and he would probably never be able to speak normally again. A new operation would give him a rudimentary ability to produce vowels, but since even his tongue and lips were badly injured there would have to be additional operations to enable the possibility of uttering consonants.
As a former Swedish teacher Håkan could not help but be fascinated at the thought: to create speech by surgical means.
He knew quite a bit about phonemes, the smallest components of language, common across many cultures. He had never reflected much over the actual tools of production—the roof of the mouth, lips, tongue, vocal cords—in this way. To coax speech from this shapeless raw material with a scalpel.
But it was meaningless anyway. He did not intend to speak. In addition he suspected that the doctor was talking that way for a special reason. He was considered suicide-prone. Therefore it was important to imprint him with a linear sense of time. To recreate the feeling of life as a project, a dream of future conquests.
He didn’t buy it.
If Eli needed him he could consider living. Otherwise he could not. Nothing indicated that Eli needed him.
But how would Eli be able to contact him in this place?
From the treetops outside his window he sensed that he was high up. And furthermore, he was well guarded. In addition to the doctors and nurses there was always at least one policeman nearby. Eli could not reach him and he could not reach Eli. The thought of escaping, of getting in touch with Eli one last time had gone through his head. But how?
The throat operation had made him capable of breathing on his own again, he no longer had to be attached to a respirator. But he could not get food down in the normal way (even this would be repaired, the doctor had assured him). The feeding tube dangled constantly at the edge of his vision. If he pulled it out an alarm would go off somewhere, and anyway he saw very badly. To escape was basically unthinkable.
A plastic surgeon had taken the opportunity to transplant a piece of skin from his back to his eyelid so he could shut his eye.
He shut his eye.
The door to his room opened. It was time again. He recognised the voice. The same man as before.
‘Well, well,’ said the man. ‘They tell me there won’t be any talking in the near future. That’s too bad. But I have this stubborn thought that we could still manage to communicate with each other, you and me, if you’re up for it.’
Håkan tried to remember what Plato said in The Republic about murderers and violent offenders, what you were supposed to do with them.
‘I see you can shut your eye now. That’s good. You know what? I’ll try to make this a little more concrete for you. Because it struck me that maybe you don’t believe we’re going to identify you. But we will. I’m sure you remember you had a wristwatch. Luckily it was an older watch with the manufacturer’s initials, serial number and everything. We’re going to trace it within a couple of days, in one way or another. A week maybe. And there are other things.
‘We’ll find you, that’s a certainty.
‘So…Max. I don’t know why I want to call you Max, it is entirely provisional. Max? Maybe you want to help us out a little here. Otherwise we’ll have to take a picture of you and send it to the papers and…well, you see. It will be…complicated. Much easier if you talk…or something…with me now.
‘You had a piece of paper with the Morse code in your pocket. Do you know the Morse code? Because in that case we can talk by tapping.’
Håkan opened his eye, looked in the direction of the two dark spots in the white, blurry oval that was the man’s face. The man clearly chose to interpret this as an invitation. He continued.
‘This man in the water. It wasn’t you who killed him, was it? The pathologists say that the bite-marks on his neck were probably made by a child. And now we’ve had a report that I unfortunately can’t give any details of, but…I think you are protecting someone. Is this correct? Lift your hand if this is correct.’
Håkan shut his eye. The policeman sighed.
‘OK, then we’ll let the machine keep working. Is there anything else you would like to tell me before I go?’
The man was about to get up when Håkan lifted his hand. The policeman sat down again. Håkan lifted the hand higher. And waved.
Goodbye.
The policeman let out a snorting sound, got up and left.
Virginia’s injuries had not been life-threatening. On Friday afternoon she was discharged from the hospital with fourteen stitches and a large bandage on her neck, a smaller one on her cheek.
She had refused Lacke’s offer to stay with her, live with her until she felt better.
She had gone to bed Friday evening convinced that she would get up and go to work Saturday morning. Couldn’t afford to stay home.
It had been hard to fall asleep. Memories of the attack kept returning, and she couldn’t get settled. Thought she saw black lumps emerge out of the shadows of her room and fall down on her as she lay in bed with her eyes wide open. The wound on her throat itched under the bandage. Around two o’clock in the morning she got hungry, went out into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
Her stomach had felt empty, but as she stood there and looked at all the food there was nothing she wanted. From habit, she had still taken out the bread, butter, cheese and milk and set them on the kitchen table.
She made herself a cheese sandwich and poured milk into a glass. Then she sat at the table and looked at the white liquid in the glass, the brown piece of bread with its yellow slice of cheese. It looked revolting. She didn’t want it. She threw it out, pouring the milk into the sink. There was a half-full bottle of white wine in the fridge. She poured out a glass, brought it to her lips. But when she smelled the wine she lost interest.
With a feeling of failure she poured herself a glass of water from the tap. She hesitated. Surely you could always drink water…? Yes.
She could drink the water. But it tasted…stale. As if everything good in the water had been removed and only left the flat dregs.
She went back to bed, shifting restlessly for a few more hours then finally falling asleep.
When she woke up it was half past ten. She threw herself out of bed, pulled on some clothes in the dim bedroom. Good heavens. She should have been at the store at eight. Why hadn’t they called?
Oh, but wait. She had heard the phone ring. It had rung in her last dream before she woke up, then stopped. If they hadn’t called she would still be sleeping. She buttoned her blouse and walked over to the window, pulled up the blinds.
The light struck her face like a physical blow. She staggered back, away from the window and dropped the cords to the blinds. They slipped down again with a clattering sound, stopping at a crooked angle. She sat down on the bed. A single beam of sunlight came in through the window, shining on her naked foot.
A thousand pinpricks.
As if her skin were being twisted in two directions at once.
What is this?
She moved her foot away, pulled on her socks. Moved her foot back into the sunlight. Better. Only a hundred pinpricks. She stood up to go to work then sat down again.
Some kind of…shock.
The sensation when she pulled up the blinds had been ghastly. As if the light were heavy matter flung at her body, pushing her away. It had been the worst in the eyes. Two strong thumbs pressing on them, threatening to gouge them out of her head. They were still stinging.
She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, took her sunglasses out of the bathroom cabinet and put them on.
Hunger raged in her body but all she had to do was think of the refrigerator and pantry contents to make all thoughts of eating breakfast disappear. And anyway she had no time. She was almost three hours late.
She went out, locked the door and walked down the stairs as fast as she could. Her body was weak. Maybe it was a mistake to go to work today. Well, the store would only be open four more hours and it was now the Saturday customers started to come in.
She was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she did not hesitate before opening the front door of the building.
The light was there again.
Her eyes hurt despite the sunglasses, boiling water was poured over her hands and face. She gave a little scream. Pulled her hands into her coat, bent her face to the ground and ran. She could not protect her neck and scalp and they stung like they were on fire. Luckily it was not far to the store.
When she was safely inside, the stinging and pain eased. Most of the store windows were covered in advertising and protective plastic film so that the sunlight wouldn’t affect the goods. She took off her glasses. It hurt a little, but that could be because some sunlight came in the spaces between the advertising posters. She put her sunglasses in her pocket and walked to the office.
Lennart, the store manager and her boss, was there filling out forms but he looked up when she came in. She had expected some kind of reprimand but he simply said, ‘Hi, how’s it going?’
‘Oh…fine.’
‘Shouldn’t you be at home getting some rest?’
‘No, I thought…’
‘You didn’t need to, you know. Lotten will fill in for you today. I tried to call you earlier, but when you didn’t pick up…’
‘Isn’t there anything for me to do, then?’
‘Check with Berit in the meat department. And Virginia…’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t know exactly how to say it, but…I feel badly about it. And I completely understand if you need to take it easy for a while.’
Virginia couldn’t get her head around it. Lennart was not the type of person who looked kindly on sick leave or, for that matter, any problem that other people might have. And to hear him extend his personal sympathies was something completely new. She must look pretty terrible with her swollen cheek and her bandages.
‘Thanks,’ Virginia said, ‘I’ll think it over,’ and went to the meat department.
She looped over past the checkout registers to say hi to Lotten. Five people were lined up at her register and Virginia thought she should open another one after all. But the question was if Lennart even wanted her to sit at a checkout register looking as she did.
When she walked into the light from the horrible window behind the registers it got like that again. Her face tightened, her eyes ached. It wasn’t as bad as the direct sunlight out on the street, but it was bad enough. She would not be able to sit there.
Lotten caught sight of her, waved in between two customers.
‘Hi, I read…How are you doing?’
Virginia held up her hand, wiggled it from side to side: so-so.
Read?
She nabbed the Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, took them with her over to the meat department, quickly eyed the front pages. Nothing there. That would have been a stretch.
The meat department was at the very back of the store, beside the milk products; strategically planned so that you had to walk through the whole store to get there. Virginia stopped next to the shelves with canned food. She was trembling with hunger. She looked carefully at all the cans: crushed tomatoes, mushrooms, mussels, tuna, ravioli, Bullen’s beer sausage, pea soup…no. She felt nothing but revulsion.
Berit saw her from the meat counter, waved. As soon as Virginia had come around the back of the counter Berit hugged her, and carefully touched the bandage on her cheek.
‘Ugh. Poor you.’
‘Oh, it’s…’
Fine?
She retreated to the little storage room behind the meat counter. If she let Berit get started she would be subject to a long harangue about people’s suffering in general and the evils of today’s society in particular.
Virginia sat down on a chair between the scales and the door to the freezer room. It was an area of only a few square metres but it was the most comfortable place in the store. No sunlight. She flipped through the papers and found a small article in the Dagens Nyheter domestic news section. She read:
WOMAN ATTACKED IN BLACKEBERG
A fifty-year-old woman was attacked and assaulted Thursday night in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg. A passer-by intervened and the perpetrator, a young woman, immediately fled the scene. The motive of the assault is unknown. The police are now investigating a possible connection to other violent incidents in the western suburbs during the past few weeks. The fifty-year-old woman’s injuries were described as minor.
Virginia lowered the paper. So strange to read about yourself in that way. ‘Fifty-year-old woman’, ‘passer-by’, ‘minor injuries’. Everything that was concealed by those words.
‘Possible connection’. Yes, Lacke was convinced that she had been attacked by the same child who killed Jocke. He had had to bite his tongue not to say this at the hospital to the female police officer and the doctor who examined her early on Friday morning.
He was planning to talk to the police, but wanted to inform Gösta first, thought Gösta would see the whole thing from a new perspective now that even Virginia had been involved.
She heard a rustling sound and looked around. It took a few seconds before she realised that it was the newspaper shaking in her own hands that was making the noise. She set the papers on the shelf above the white coats, and went out to join Berit.
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Do you really think it’s a good idea, hon?’
‘Yes, it’s better for me to be doing something.’
‘I see. You can portion out the shrimp, in that case. Five hundred gram bags. But shouldn’t you…?’
Virginia shook her head and walked back to the storage room. She put on a white coat and hat, took a case of shrimp out of the freezer, pulled a plastic bag over her hand and started to weigh them out. Dug around in the carton with the hand that had the plastic bag over it, portioned them out into bags, weighed them on the scales. A boring, mechanical job, and her right hand felt frozen already on her fourth bag. But she was doing something, and it gave her an opportunity to think.
At the hospital Lacke had said something really strange: that the child who attacked her had not been a human being. That it had fangs and claws.
Virginia had dismissed this as a drunken hallucination.
She didn’t remember much from the attack. But she could accept this: the thing that had jumped on top of her had been much too light to be an adult, almost too light to be a child, even. A very small child in that case. Five or six maybe. She recalled that she had stood up with the weight on her back. After that everything was black until she woke up in her apartment with all the guys except Gösta gathered around her.
She put a tie around a finished bag, took out the next one, dropped in a few handfuls. Four hundred and thirty grams. Seven more shrimp. Five hundred and ten.
Our treat.
She looked down at her hands that were working independently of her brain. Hands. With long nails. Sharp teeth. What was that called? Lacke had said it out loud. A vampire. Virginia had laughed, carefully, so that the stitches in her cheek wouldn’t come out. Lacke had not even smiled.
‘You didn’t see it.’
‘But Lacke…they don’t really exist.’
‘No. But what was it then?’
‘A child. Living out a strange twisted fantasy.’
‘Who grew out her nails? Filed her teeth down? I’d like to see the dentist who…’
‘Lacke, it was dark. You were drunk, it—’
‘It was, and I was. But I saw what I saw.’
It burned and felt tight under the bandage on her cheek. She removed the plastic bag from her right hand, put her hand over the bandage. It was ice cold and that felt good. But she was weak, it felt as if her legs weren’t going to carry her much longer.
She would finish this carton and then go home. This wasn’t going to work. If she could rest over the weekend she would probably feel better on Monday. She put the plastic bag back on and started in on the work again with a spark of anger. Hated being sick.
A sharp pain in her index finger. Damn it. That’s what happens if you don’t concentrate. The shrimp were sharp when they were frozen and she had pricked her finger. She pulled off the plastic bag and looked at the finger. A smallish cut with a little blood welling out of it.
She automatically popped it into her mouth to suck the blood away.
A warm, healing, delicious spot radiating out from the place where her fingertip met her tongue, started to spread. She sucked harder on the finger. All good tastes concentrated into one filled her mouth. A shiver of well-being went through her body. She sucked and sucked, giving in to the pleasure until she realised what she was doing.
She pulled the finger out of her mouth, stared at it. It was shiny with saliva and the tiny amount of blood that now welled out was immediately thinned out by the wetness, like an overly diluted watercolour. She looked at the shrimp in the carton. Hundreds of pink bodies, covered with frost. And eyes. Black pinheads dispersed in the white and pink, an upside-down starry sky. Patterns, constellations started to dance in front of her eyes.
The world spun on its axis and something hit her in the back of the head. In front of her eyes there was a white surface with cobwebs in the corners. She understood that she was lying on the floor but had no strength to do anything about it.
In the distance she heard Berit’s voice: ‘Oh my God… Virginia…’
Jonny liked to hang out with his older brother. At least when none of his sketchy buddies were around. Jimmy knew some guys from Råcksta that Jonny was pretty scared of. One evening a few years ago they had come by to talk to Jimmy, hanging around outside but without ringing the buzzer. When Jonny told them Jimmy wasn’t home they asked him to deliver a message.
‘Tell your brother that if he doesn’t get us the dough by Monday we’ll put his head in a vice. You know what that is? OK…and turn it like this until the dough runs out of his ears, like this. Can you tell him that? OK, great. Jonny’s your name? Goodbye then, Jonny.’
Jonny had delivered the message and Jimmy had simply nodded, said he knew. Then some money had disappeared from Mum’s wallet and then there had been an angry scene.
Jimmy was not home as often nowadays. There was no real room for him any more since their youngest little sister was born. Jonny already had two younger siblings and there weren’t supposed to be any more. But then Mum had met some guy and…well…that’s how it went.
At least Jonny and Jimmy had the same dad. He worked on an oil rig off the coast of Norway and not only had he started sending regular child support, he was also sending a little extra just to make up for before. Mum blessed him, and when she was drunk she had even cried over him a few times and said she would never again meet a man like that. So for the first time in as long as Jonny could remember, a lack of money was not the constant topic of conversation.
Now they were sitting in the pizzeria on the main square in Blackeberg. Jimmy had been home in the morning, argued a bit with Mum, and then he and Jonny had gone out. Jimmy heaped condiments on his pizza, folded it up picked up the large roll with both hands and started to eat. Jonny ate his pizza in the usual way, thinking that next time he ate pizza without Jimmy he would eat it like that.
Jimmy chewed, nodded his head at the bandage over Jonny’s ear. ‘Looks like hell.’
‘Yes.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Mum said it’s damaged for life. That you won’t be able to hear anything.’
‘They don’t know yet. Maybe it’ll be all right.’
‘Hmm. Let me get this straight. The guy just picked up some big branch and bashed it into your head.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Damn. What are you going to do about it?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Need any help?’
‘No.’
‘What? Me and a few of my pals can take him out.’
Jonny pulled off a big piece with shrimp, his favourite, put it in his mouth and chewed. No. Not drag Jimmy’s friends into this, then it would get out of hand. Nonetheless Jonny smiled at the thought of how scared shitless Oskar would be if he appeared at his house with Jimmy and, say, those guys from Råcksta. He shook his head.
Jimmy put his pizza roll down and looked seriously at Jonny.
‘OK, but I’m just saying. One more thing, and then…’
He snapped his fingers hard and made a fist.
‘You’re my brother and no little shit is going to come and…One more thing, then you can say whatever you like. Then I’m going after him. OK?’
Jimmy held out his fist across the table. Jonny also made a fist and bumped Jimmy’s with it. It felt good. That there was someone who cared. Jimmy nodded.
‘Good. I have something for you.’
He bent down under the table, took out a plastic bag that he had been carrying all morning. He drew a thin photo album out of the bag. ‘Dad came by last week. He’s grown a beard, almost didn’t recognise him. He had this with him.’
Jimmy held the album out to Jonny, who wiped his fingers on a napkin and opened it.
Pictures of children. Of Mum. Maybe ten years ago. And a man he recognised as his father. The man was pushing the kids on swings. In one picture he was wearing a much-too-small cowboy hat. Jimmy, maybe nine years old, was standing next to him with a plastic rifle in his hands and a grim expression. A little boy who had to be Jonny sat on the ground nearby and looked wide-eyed at them.
‘He loaned me this till next time. He wants it back, said it was… yeah, what the fuck was it…“my most valuable possession” I think he said. Thought it might interest you too.’
Jonny nodded without looking up from the album. He had only met his dad two times since he left when Jonny was four. At home there was one picture of him, a pretty bad one where he was sitting around with some other people. This was something completely different. Here you could construct a real image of him.
‘One more thing. Don’t show it to Mum. I think Dad kind of swiped it when he left and if she sees it…well, he wants it back, as I told you. Promise. Don’t show Mum.’
Still with his nose buried in the album Jonny made a fist and held it out over the table. Jimmy laughed and then Jonny felt Jimmy’s knuckles against his. Promise.
‘Hey, you check it out later. Take the bag too.’
Jimmy held out the bag and Jonny reluctantly folded up the album, put it in the bag. Jimmy was done with his pizza, leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach.
‘So. How are things on the chick front?’
The village flew by. Snow that was kicked up by the wheels of the moped trailer was sprayed back and peppered Oskar’s cheeks. He gripped the towrope with both hands, shifted his weight to the side, swinging out of the snow cloud. There was a sharp scraping sound as the skis sliced through the loose snow. The outer ski nudged an orange reflector where the road split in two. He wobbled, then regained his balance.
The road down to Lågarö and the summerhouses wasn’t ploughed. The moped left three deep tracks in the untouched snow-cover, and five metres behind it came Oskar on skis, making two additional tracks. He drove zigzag over the moped tracks, stood on one ski like a trick skier, crouched down into a little ball of speed.
When his dad slowed down on the long hill heading down to the old steamship pier Oskar was going faster than the moped and he was forced to brake a little so he didn’t let too much slack into the line, which would mean a strong jerk when the hill levelled off and the moped picked up speed again.
The moped got all the way down to the pier and his dad switched down out of gear and stood on the brake. Oskar was still travelling at full throttle, and for a short moment he thought about dropping the rope and keeping going…Out over the end of the pier, down into the black water. But he angled the mini-skis out, braked a couple of metres from the edge.
He stood panting for a while, looked out over the water. Thin sections of ice had started to form, bobbed up and down in the small waves by the shores. Maybe there was a chance of real ice this year. So you could walk across to Vätö on the other side. Or did they keep a channel into Norrtälje open? Oskar couldn’t remember. It was several years since there had been ice like that.
When Oskar was out here in the summer he would fish for herring from this pier. Loose hooks on the line, a lure on the end. If he found a school he could end up with a couple of kilos if he had the patience, but mostly he ended up with ten to fifteen fish. That was enough for dinner for him and his dad, the smallest ones went to the cat.
Dad came up and stood behind him.
‘That went well, it did.’
‘Mmm. But I went all the way through the snow a couple of times.’
‘True, the snow is a little loose. If we could pack it tighter somehow. If we could…maybe take a particle-board and hitch it up, put some weight on it. You know, if you put the board and the weight down, then…’
‘Should we do it?’
‘No, it’d have to be tomorrow, at any rate. It’s getting dark now. We’ll have to get home and work on that bird a little if there’s going to be any dinner.’
‘OK.’
His dad looked out over the water, stood there quietly for a while.
‘You know, I’ve been thinking about something.’
‘Yes?’
It was coming now. Mum had told Oskar that she let Dad know in no uncertain terms that he had to talk to him about what happened with Jonny. And actually Oskar wanted to talk about it. Dad was at a secure distance from it all, wouldn’t interfere in any way. His dad cleared his throat, gathered himself. Breathed out. Looked over the water. Then he said, ‘Yes, I was thinking…do you have any ice skates?’
‘No, none that fit me.’
‘No, no. No. Well, if we get ice this winter and it looks like… then it would be fun to have some, wouldn’t it? I have some.’
‘They probably won’t fit.’
His dad snorted, a kind of chuckle.
‘No, but…Östen’s boy has some he’s grown out of. Thirty-nines. What size do you wear?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘Yes, but with woollen socks you’d…I’ll ask him if you can have them.’
‘Great.’
‘Then it’s settled. Good. Should we get going, then?’
Oskar nodded. Maybe it would come later. And the part about the skates was good. If they could manage it tomorrow then he could bring them back with him.
He walked on his mini-skis over to the end of the towrope, backed up until the line was taut, signalled his dad that he was ready. His dad started the moped. They had to go up the hill in first gear. The moped roared so that it frightened some crows out of the top of a pine tree.
Oskar glided slowly up the hill like he was going up a rope tow, stood straight with his legs pressed together. He wasn’t thinking about anything except trying to keep his skis in the old tracks in order to avoid cutting through the snow layer to the ground. They made their way home as twilight was falling.
Lacke walked down the stairs from the main square with a box of Aladdin chocolates tucked inside the top of his pants. Didn’t like to steal, but he had no money and he wanted to give Virginia something. Should have brought roses as well, but try swiping anything at a florist.
It was already dark and when he reached the bottom of the hill towards the school he hesitated. Looked around, scraped the snow with his foot and uncovered a rock the size of a fist that he kicked loose and slipped in his pocket, squeezing his hand around it. Not because he thought it would help against what he had seen but the stone’s weight and cold offered a bit of comfort.
His asking around in the various apartment courtyards had not yielded any results other than guarded, suspicious looks from parents who were out building snowmen with their youngsters. Dirty old man.
It was only when he opened his mouth to talk to a woman who was beating rugs that he realised how unnatural his behaviour must appear. The woman had paused in her task, turned to him with the stick in her hand like a weapon.
‘Excuse me,’ Lacke said. ‘Yes, I was wondering…I’m looking for a child.’
‘Really?’
He heard himself how it sounded, and it made him even more unsure of himself. ‘Yes, she has…disappeared. I was wondering if someone had seen her around here.’
‘Is it your child?’
‘No, but…’
Apart from a couple of teenagers, he had given up talking to people he didn’t know. Or at least recognised. He bumped into some acquaintances, but they hadn’t seen anything. Seek and thou shalt find, sure. But then you probably also had to know exactly what you were looking for.
He came down the path through the park leading to the school and glanced over at Jocke’s underpass.
The news had made quite a splash in the papers yesterday, mostly because of the macabre way in which the body had been discovered. A murdered alcoholic was normally nothing noteworthy but there had been salacious interest in the children watching, the fire department who had to saw into the ice, etc. Next to the text there was a passport photo of Jocke in which he looked like a mass murderer, at the very least.
Lacke continued on past the Blackeberg school’s dour brick façade, the wide high steps, like the entrance to the National Courts, or to hell. On the wall next to the lowest step someone had spray-painted the words Iron Maiden, whatever that meant. Maybe some group.
He walked past the parking lot, out onto Björnsonsgatan. Normally he would have taken a short cut across the back of the school but there it was…dark. He could very easily imagine that creature curled up in the shadows. He looked up into the tops of the tall pine trees that bordered the path. A few dark clumps in among the branches. Probably birds’ nests.
It wasn’t just what the creature looked like, it was also the way in which it attacked. He would maybe, maybe have been able to accept the idea that the teeth and claws had some natural explanation, if it hadn’t been for the jump from the tree. Before carrying Virginia back he had looked up at the tree. The branch that the creature had jumped from was maybe five metres above the ground.
To fall five metres onto someone’s back—if you added ‘circus artist’ to the other things to arrive at a ‘natural explanation’, then maybe. But all things considered it was as improbable as what he had said to Virginia, which he now regretted.
Damn it… He pulled the box of chocolates from his pants. Maybe his body heat had already melted them? He shook the box gently. No. It made a rattling sound. The chocolates had not run together. He continued along Björnsonsgatan, past the ICA store.
CRUSHED TOMATOES. THREE CANS 5 KRONOR
Six days ago.
Lacke’s hand was still wrapped around the stone. He looked at the sign, could imagine Virginia’s concentration to make the even, straight letters. Wouldn’t she have stayed home to rest today? It would be just like her to stumble in to work before the blood even had a chance to congeal.
When he reached the front door of her building he looked up at her window. No light. Maybe she was with her daughter? Well, he had to at least go up and leave the chocolates on her door handle if she wasn’t home. It was pitch-black inside the stairwell. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
The child is here.
He stood frozen in place, then threw himself on the shining red button of the light switch, pushing it in with the back of the hand carrying the box of chocolates. The other hand squeezed tightly around the stone in his pocket.
A soft clonking from the relay in the cellar as the light was turned on. Nothing. Virginia’s stairwell. Yellow vomit-patterned concrete stairs. Wood doors. He breathed deeply a few times and started up the steps.
Only now did he realise how tired he was. Virginia lived all the way up on the third floor, and his legs were dragging him up there, two lifeless planks attached to his hips. He was hoping Virginia was home, that she was feeling good, that he could sink down into her armchair and simply rest in the place he most wanted to be. He let go of the rock in his pocket and rang the bell. Waited a while. Rang it again.
He had started trying to balance the box of chocolates on the door handle when he heard creeping steps from within the apartment. He backed away from the door. On the inside, the steps came to a halt. She was standing next to the door, on the other side.
‘Who is it?’
Never, ever had she asked this question before. You rang the bell, you heard her steps, swish swish, and then the door opened. Come in, come in. He cleared his throat.
‘It’s me.’
Pause. Could he hear her breath or was it his imagination?
‘What do you want?’
‘I wanted to see how you were doing, that’s all.’
Another pause.
‘I’m not feeling so good.’
‘Can I come in?’
He waited. Held the box of chocolates in both hands, feeling silly. A bang as she turned the first lock, the rustle of keys as she unlocked the deadbolt. Another rustle as she took the chain off the door. The door handle was pushed down and the door opened.
He involuntarily took half a step back, the small of his back hitting against the stair railing. Virginia was standing in the doorway. She looked like she was dying.
Besides the swollen cheek her face was covered with tiny little boils and her eyes looked like she had the hangover of the century. A tight network of red lines in the whites and the pupils so tightly contracted they had almost disappeared. She nodded. ‘I look like hell.’
‘No, no. I only…I thought maybe…can I come in?’
‘No. I don’t have the energy.’
‘Have you been to the doctor?’
‘I will. Tomorrow.’
‘Good. Well, I…’
He handed her the box of chocolates, which he had been holding in front of him the whole time like a shield. Virginia accepted it. ‘Thank you.’
‘Virginia. Is there anything I can—?’
‘No. It’ll be all right. I just need some rest. Can’t stand here any longer. We’ll be in touch.’
‘Yes, I’ll come by…’
Virginia closed the door.
‘…tomorrow.’
The rustling of locks and chains again. He stood there outside her door with his arms hanging by his sides. Walked up to the door and put his ear to it. He heard a cabinet opened, slow steps inside the apartment.
What should I do?
It was not his place to force her to do something she didn’t want, but he would have preferred to take her to the hospital now. Well. He would come back tomorrow morning. If there was no improvement he would take her in to the hospital whether she wanted to or not.
Lacke walked down the stairs, one step at a time. So tired. When he reached the last flight of stairs before the door outside, he sat down on the highest step and leaned his head in his hands.
I am…responsible.
The light went off. The tendons in his neck tensed, he drew a ragged breath. Only the relay. On a timer. He sat on the steps in the dark, carefully taking the rock out of his pocket, resting it in both hands and staring out into the dark.
Come on, then. Come on.
Virginia closed the door on Lacke’s pleading face, locked it and put the chain on. Didn’t want him to see her. Didn’t want to see anyone. It had cost her a great effort to say those few words, to act normally.
Her condition had deteriorated rapidly after she got home from the ICA store. Lotten had helped her home and in her dazed state she had simply put up with the pain of daylight on her face. Once she was home she had looked in the mirror and seen the hundreds of tiny blisters on her face and hands. Burn marks.
She had slept for a few hours, woken up when it got dark. Her hunger had then changed in nature, been transformed into anxiety. A school of hysterically wriggling little fish now filled her circulatory system. She could neither lie down, nor sit, nor stand. She walked around and around the apartment, scratched her body, took a cold shower to dampen the jumpy, tingling feeling. Nothing helped.
It defied description. It reminded her of when she was twenty-two and had been informed that her father had fallen from the roof of their summer cottage and broken his neck. That time she had also walked around and around as if there was not a single place on earth where her body could rest, where it didn’t hurt.
Same thing now, except worse. The anxiety did not let up for a moment. It forced her around the apartment until she couldn’t stand it any longer, until she sat down on a chair and banged her head on the kitchen table. In desperation she took two sleeping pills and washed them down with a couple of mouthfuls of wine that tasted like dishwater.
Normally one pill was all she needed to fall asleep as if she had been hit on the head. The only effect on her now was that she became nauseous and after five minutes vomited green slime and both of the half-dissolved tablets.
She kept walking around, ripped a newspaper into tiny pieces, crawled on the floor and whimpered. She crawled into the kitchen, pushed the bottle of wine from the table so it fell to the floor and broke in front of her eyes.
She picked up one of the broken shards.
Didn’t think. Just pressed it into the palm of her hand and the pain felt good, felt right. The school of fish in her body rushed towards the point of the pain and blood welled out. She pressed the palm to her mouth and licked it, and the anxiety gave way. She cried with relief while she punctured her hand in a new place and kept sucking. The taste of blood mingled with the taste of tears.
Curled up on the kitchen floor, with her hand pressed against her mouth, greedily sucking like a newborn child that finds its mother’s breast for the first time, she felt—for the second time on this terrible day—calm.
About half an hour after she had stood up from the floor, swept the shards up and put on a band-aid, the anxiety had started to return. That was when Lacke had rung the bell.
When she had sent him away and locked the door she walked out into the kitchen and put the box of chocolates in the pantry. She sat down on a kitchen chair and tried to understand. The anxiety would not let her. Soon it would force her to her feet again. The only thing she knew was that no one could be with her here. Particularly not Lacke. She would hurt him. The anxiety would drive her to it.
She had contracted some kind of disease. There were medicines for diseases.
Tomorrow she would consult a doctor, someone who could examine her and say, ‘Well, this was simply an attack of X. We’ll have to put you on Y and Z for a couple of weeks. That’ll clear it right up.’
She paced around the apartment. It was starting to get unbearable again.
She hit her arms, her legs, but the small fish had come back to life and nothing helped. She knew what she had to do. She sobbed from fear of the pain but the actual sensation was so brief and the relief so great.
She walked out into the kitchen and got a sharp little fruit knife, went back out and sat down in the couch in the living room, rested the blade against the underside of her arm.
Only to get her through the night. Tomorrow she would seek help. It was self-evident she couldn’t keep going like this. Drink her own blood. Of course not. There would have to be a change. But for now…
The saliva rose up in her mouth, wet anticipation. She cut into herself. Deeply…