Labbskar Island 16.45
The shadows had grown long by the time Mahler rose from his bolt-hole and walked back to the cottage. His body ached from the extended period of sitting on rock. He had stayed away longer than it took him to calm down. He had wanted to make a protest, to give Anna a taste of how it would be if he, superfluous as he was, were gone.
On the rocks outside the house there was an old drying rack for nets, three large T-shapes with hooks. Anna was standing under one of them, humming and hanging up Elias' clothes, which she had washed with soap and salt water. She looked thoroughly content, not anxious as Mahler had hoped.
She heard his footsteps on the rock and turned around. 'Hello,' she said. 'Where have you been?'
Mahler waved vaguely with his hand and Anna tilted her head, taking stock of him.
As if I were a child, Mahler thought and Anna chuckled, nodding. The low sun gleamed momentarily in her eye.
'Have you found any water?' he asked.
'No.'
'And that doesn't worry you?'
'Yes, of course, but… ' she shrugged and hung up two tiny socks
on the same hook.
'But what?'
'I thought you'd go and get some.'
'Maybe I don't feel like it.'
'Well, in that case you'll have to show me how the motor works.'
'Don't be ridiculous.'
Anna shot him a look, don't be ridiculous yourself, and Mahler stomped into the house. The largest lifejacket was too small for him, he looked like a giant baby when he pulled the strap across his tummy, so he decided to forgo the vest. Everything seemed to matter less, all of a sudden. He looked in on Elias, lying in the bed under the troll painting. He felt no particular desire to go to him. He picked up the water container and walked out.
'Well then,' he said. 'I guess I'm off.'
Anna had finished hanging up the washing. She crouched down with her hands on her knees.
'Dad,' she said in mild tone of voice. 'Stop it.'
'Stop what?'
'Just stop. You don't have to.'
Mahler walked past her down to the boat. Anna said,
'Drive carefully.'
'Sure, sure.'
When the sound of the engine had died away between the islands, Anna lay on her back on the sun-baked rock, shifting around so the warmth would reach as much of her skin as possible. When she had lain like this for a while she went in and got Elias, putting him next to her on the rock, wrapped in the blanket.
She turned on her side, cradling her head in her hand and focusing on a point in the middle of his black-brown blotchy forehead.
Elias?
The answer she received was not articulated in words. It wasn't even an answer, more of a mute affirmation: I am here. It had happened a couple of times recently that Elias had actually talked to her, the last time when she was mowing the lawn as her father was doing his meaningless exercises.
She had been picking a pebble out of the handmower when Elias' clear, high-pitched voice filled her head.
Mummy, come! Grandad is angry. I am going to…
Elias did not get any further before his voice was drowned out by a piercing, whining sound. When she reached the house Elias was lying on the floor with the chair on top of him and the whining sound vanished just as the contact with him was severed.
The time before, it had been in the middle of the night. She was not sleeping much and when she did drop off it was from sheer exhaustion. It was difficult to sleep when she knew Elias was lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling; that she was leaving him alone when she disappeared into the closed room of sleep.
She had been lying on the mattress next to Elias' bed when she was awakened by his voice. She jerked, sat up and looked at him as he lay in bed, his eyes open.
'Elias, did you say something?'
Mummy…
'Yes?'
I don't want to.
'What is it you don't want?'
Don't want to be here.
'You don't want to be in this cottage?'
No. Don't want to be… here.
They had not been able to get any further before the whining sound had gotten louder. Until it started to get painful, she could feel physically how Elias drew back, disappearing into himself. Something left him for a moment as he talked to her; as soon as he pulled it back they could only communicate without words, weakly.
Another thing.
Every time Elias Withdrew, it was from fear. She felt it. What Elias was afraid of was connected with that whining sound.
Out in the sunshine on the rock, with his mummified face sticking out of the blanket, it was clear, terribly clear, that Elias' body was just the shell that people always spoke of. A skin, dried and shrivelled, that enclosed something else, unnameable and not of this world. The boy Elias who had liked the swings and loved nectarines no longer existed and would not Come back She had understood this even in those first minutes in Mahler's bedroom in Vallingby.
And yet, and yet…
She was standing on her own two feet now. She was hanging up laundry and humming songs, which she would never have done a week ago. Why?
Because now she knew that death was not the end.
All those times that she had gone to Rkksta and sat by the grave, lain on the grave, whispered to the grave. At that point she had known that his body was down there but also known that he could not hear her, that nothing of him was really left. That Elias had only been the sum of swings, nectarines, Legos, smiles, grumpiness and 'Mummy, give me another goodnight kiss.' When all that had gone, only memories were left.
She had been wrong. Completely wrong, and that was the reason she was humming. Elias was dead. Elias wasn't gone.
She opened the blankets a little, letting in a bit of air. Elias still smelled bad but not like in the beginning. As if whatever it was that. smelled bad had been… used up.
'What is it you are afraid of?'
No answer. She flapped the pyjama top Over his stomach and a puff of stale air was released. When the clothes had dried she would change him. They lay on the rocks until the Sun sank into the sea of Aland and the cooler breezes began to blow in. Then Anna carried Elias inside again.
The bedclothes smelled mildewed, so she took them out and hung them in an alder tree close to the house. She found an empty kerosene lamp and filled it with fuel for the evening. Checked the fireplace by lighting a sheet of newspaper, placed it on the hearth. The smoke came in. The chimney had probably been closed off. Maybe a bird had built a nest.
Anna made a couple of caviar-spread sandwiches in the kitchen, poured a glass of lukewarm milk and walked out and sat on the rock. When she had finished eating the sanwiches she walked down to the water's edge to examine the large, silver-coloured object, halfconcealed in the grass, that had caught her eye a couple of times.
At first she did not understand what it was. A large cylinder covered in holes. Something you tossed into the air, took a picture of and claimed it was a UFO. Then she realised it was the drum of a washing machine, that it had been used as a fish safe.
She walked along the shore, found an empty tube of shaving cream and a beer can. The clouds were starting to get pink and she thought Mahler would be coming soon.
To get a better view of the sunset, as well as her father, she walked to the cairn on top of the hill behind the house. The view was fantastic. Even though the hill was only a couple of metres higher than the house, it gave her a clear view over all of the nearby islands.
Seen from the side, the mass of evening clouds became one big fluffy blanket draped over the low islands, reflected in a sea of blood. To the east there was nothing between the watcher and the horizon. She understood perfectly why people had once believed that the world was flat, that the horizon was an edge beyond which the great Nothingness lay.
She listened. No engine sounds.
When she stood here like this with a view of the whole wide world, it seemed incredible to her that her father would even be able to find his way back here. The world was so infinitely vast.
What is that?
She trained her gaze on a cluster of trees and bushes in a hollow on the other side of the island. She thought she'd seen something moving there. Yes. There was a rustle, and a flash of something White that disappeared again.
White? What kind of animals are white?
Only animals that live where there's snow. Except cats, of course.
And dogs. Could it be a cat? Forgotten or inadvertently left behind. Maybe it had fallen off a boat, managed to make its way to land.
She started to walk toward the hollow, then stopped.
It had been larger than a cat. More like a dog. A dog that had fallen off a boat and… gone wild.
She turned and walked quickly back to the cottage. Paused outside the door and listened one last time. It had to be past eight o'clock, why didn't her father come?
She went in, closing the door behind her. It slid open. The lock was gone. She took a broom and threaded it through the handle, jamming the end up against the wall. It was worthless as a lock, but an animal would not be able to get in.
The more she thought about it, the more anxious she became.
It wasn't an animal. It was a person.
She stood at the door and listened. Nothing. Just a lone blackbird trying to sound like a lot of other birds simultaneously.
She could feel her heart, insistent, pumping faster and more emphatically. She was getting worked up Over nothing. It was just that she was alone with Elias and couldn't get away from here-it was putting ghosts in her head. There's no problem balancing on a piece of wood ten centimetres wide when it's lying on the ground, but hoist it up ten metres off the ground and sheer terror sinks its claws in. Even though it's the same piece of wood.
It was a gull, probably. Or a swan.
A swan. Yes, of course. It was a swan that had nested on land.
Swans are big.
She calmed down and went and checked on Elias. He was lying with his head turned to the wall and appeared to be looking at the troll painting, just a dark rectangle against the wall in the dusk. She sat beside him on the bed.
'Hello sweetheart, how is everything?'
The sound of her own voice filled the silence, chasing it away. The anxious feeling in her chest stilled.
'When I was little I had this kind of painting by my bed. Except it had a troll-daddy and his daughter, fishing. The girl was holding the rod and the father who was-this big-and clumsy, and covered in warts, he was teaching her how she should hold it, holding her arm carefully like this to show her. I don't know if my mum knew how I stared at that picture and how I thought or fantasised that I had a father who would do that with me. Who showed me what to do and who was so close, standing behind me and was big like that and looked kind. All I know is that when I was little I wanted to be a troll. Because everything seemed simple for the trolls. They had nothing, and yet they had everything.'
She rested her hands in her lap, looking straight at the painting-Whatever happened to it?-recalling how she had kneeled in her bed, tracing the outline of the troll father's face with her finger.
She sighed, looking at the window. A painted balloon was floating outside. She gasped violently. The balloon was a face. A swollen, white face with two dark slits for eyes. The lips were gone and the teeth exposed. She stared at the face as if turned to stone. The nose was just a hole in spongy, white flesh and it was a face made of floury dough with a lot of big teeth stuck into it.
A hand rose and was placed on the glass. Even this was corpse white, swollen.
She screamed, deafening herself.
The face drew back from the window, in the direction of the door. She jumped to her feet, hitting her hip against the corner of the table but felt nothing, reached the kitchen-
Mummy?
– and took hold of the door, holding the handle.
Mummy?
Elias' voice, inside her head. She braced herself against the wall, pulling on the handle as hard as she could. Someone had grabbed it on the outside. She was resisting. The thing on the other side was jerking on it.
Dear merciful God, don't let it come in don't let it
Mummy what
don't let it
is it?
It was strong. She sobbed when the door hit against the frame.
'Go away! Go away!'
She could feel the dead, mute power through the handle as the creature monotonously pulled on the door, wanting to get in to her and Elias. Terror made her throat a single tensed muscle. She turned her head stiffly toward the kitchen, looking for a weapon, anything.
There was a small axe under the kitchen counter, but she couldn't let go of the door to grab it. The creature was pulling harder and when the door opened slightly she could momentarily glimpse the whole of the body. It was white and naked, lumps of dough thrown onto a skeleton, and she understood.
A drowned man. It's a drowned man.
She laughed breathlessly as she continued to resist, getting more glimpses of the creature's dissolved, fish-eaten flesh.
The drowned ones. Where are they?
In a flash she saw the whole sea filled with drowned people, all the accidents of the summer months-how many? Floating white bodies, scraping against the bottom. Predatory fish, eels that ate through the skin and gorged themselves on the innards.
Mummy!
Elias' voice was frightened now. She could neither rejoice at the fact that he was speaking to her, nor comfort him. The only thing she could do was resist, stop the thing from entering.
Her arms were starting to feel paralysed by the continuous pulling, the strength required to hold out.
'What do you want? Go away! Go away!'
It let go.
The door banged shut one last time and some slivers of wood broke off, fluttering down to her feet. She held her breath, listening. The blackbird had stopped singing and she heard rapping sounds on the rock outside. Bone on stone. The creature was leaving.
Mummy, what is it?
She answered.
Don't be afraid. It's leaving now.
The whining started, like a fleet of small boats approaching across the bay, coming closer. More than anything Anna wanted to scream, Stop it, leave us alone, go away to everything that seemed to want to get at them, but she did not dare for fear that it would frighten Elias. Elias quickly pulled out of her head and the whining died away.
Anna jumped back from the door, grabbed the axe and took up her post again. She listened outside. Nothing to be heard. The axe slid in her sweaty hand. During the whole episode she had not felt the drowned one inside her head for an instant, and that scared her even more. With Elias there was always a shimmer, a presence. The drowned man was silent.
When the blackbird resumed its song, she dared to leave the door and go in to Elias. She stopped in the door opening, dropping the axe.
The drowned man was standing on the rock outside the window, looking in. She carefully lowered herself down and took up the axe again, as though it were an animal that might be startled by the slightest movement. But the drowned one stood still.
What is it doing?
It couldn't look, it had no eyes. Anna sat on the edge of the bed squeezing the axe hard, sitting at an angle so that she could not see the thing outside the window. She'd be able to hear if it moved again, though. It was the most repulsive thing she had ever seen. She could not think about it, was not permitted to think about it-as if there was a finely balanced switch inside her head, poised to flip and catapult her into the darkest insanity.
She stared at the troll picture on the wall; the kind troll-man with his big comforting hands. The little child. And she thought:
Daddy, come home.
Kungsholmen 17.00
They had found a spot in an overgrown thicket along the beach at Kungsholm, halfway between their apartment and the parliament building. David assumed it was against the law to bury animals in the city without authority, but what could they do?
Before they set out they had made a cross from some pieces of string and skirting board. Magnus himself had written BALTHAZAR with a felt pen. David stood guard while Magnus and Sture dug a hole in the thicket large enough for the shoebox.
From this smaller perspective, David thought he could understand the purpose of a burial. Magnus busied himself with the box and the flowers that would be added to it, the construction of the cross satisfied him in a way that words and comforting on their own could not. He had cried a great deal on his way back from the Heath, but as soon as they reached the apartment he had started to talk about the funeral and what they should do.
Even David and Sture had become completely absorbed in the project; they had not yet said a word about what happened. What Eva had done and what it might mean could not be discussed with Magnus there, needing all their attention. But one thing you cou lei say for sure: Eva would not be coming home. Not for a long time.
The hole was ready. Magnus opened the lid of the box one last time and Sture hurried to shift the rabbit's head into place. Magnus stroked the fur with his finger.
'Goodbye little Balthazar. I hope it will be good for you.'
David could not cry anymore. What he felt was rage. A hopeless, compressed rage. If he had been alone he would have shaken his fists at the sky and screamed at it. Why Why Why? Instead he sank down next to Magnus and put a hand on his back.
It's his birthday for fuck's sake. Couldn't he have had… just one day.
Magnus put the lid back and placed the shoebox in the ground. Sture handed him the shovel and he shovelled earth and more earth until the box disappeared from view. David sat absolutely still, staring at the shrinking pile of dirt, the hole filling up.
If it… comes back…
He clapped a hand over his mouth, forcing his face not to contOrt in howls of laughter, as he imagined the headless rabbit digging itself up and crawling zombie-like back to their apartment, dragging itself up the stairs.
Sture helped Magnus put the tufts of grass back, pat them in place and bang the cross into the ground with the shovel. He looked at David and they nodded at each other. It was doubtful whether the grave would stay intact for long, but it was done.
Everyone stood up. Magnus started to sing, 'The world is a sorrow-island… ' like he had seen them do in All of us on Saltkrakan and David thought:
This is the bottom. Now We have reached rock bottom. We have to have reached the bottom.
David and Sture laid one hand each on Magnus' shoulders and David -could not shake the feeling that it was really Eva's funeral they were enacting.
The bottom. It has to be…
Magnus crossed his arms over his chest and David felt his shoulders draw together, shrinking, as he said, 'It was my fault.'
'No,' David said. 'It was certainly not your fault.'
Magnus nodded. 'I was the one who did it.'
'No, little one, it was… '
'Yes, it was. I was the one who thought, so Mum did it.'
David and Sture exchanged looks. Sture bent down and asked, 'What do you mean?'
Magnus wrapped his arms around David's hips and said into his stomach, 'I thought bad things about Mummy and that was why she got angry.'
'My darling boy… ' David crouched down and scooped Magnus into his arms. 'We were the ones who should have known… it is not your fault.'
Magnus body was wracked with sobs and the words gushed out of him.
'Yes, because I thought…I thoughtthat 1… because she was only talking so strange like that because she didn't care about… and I was thinking that I didn't like her, I was thinking that she was ugly and that I hated her even though I didn't want to because I thought she was going to be like normal and then she was like that and that's why I thought it and when I thought it… when I thought it, that was when she did it.'
Magnus was still talking as David carried him back to the apartment, did not stop until he lay in his bed, his eyes red and his eyelids heavy.
His birthday…
After a while his eyes closed and he fell asleep. David tucked him in and went out to Sture in the kitchen, collapsing onto a chair.
'He's finished,' David said. 'He's completely finished. These past few days… he hasn't slept much at night and today… it's too much for him. He can't… how's he supposed to handle this?'
Sture didn't answer. After a period of silence he said, 'I think he'll manage. If you do. Then he will too.'
David's gaze travelled across the kitchen and fixed on a bottle of wine. Sture looked in the same direction, then back at David, who shook his head.
'No,' David said. 'But it's… hard.'
'Yes,' Sture said. 'I know.'
Haltingly, with long pauses, they talked about what had happened at the Heath but reached no conclusions. The area had been in uproar since they left. It seemed unlikely that visiting would' be reinstituted for a long time. David went and checked on Magnus. He was sleeping deeply. When he came back to the kitchen Sture said, 'This thing that the doctor asked about. The Fisher.'
'Yes?'
'It's…' Sture pulled a finger along the table top as if he was tracing
back along a timeline, 'pretty strange. Or completely natural. I don', know which.'
'What is it, then?'
'Well, you know her books. Bruno Beaver. Do you have one here?'
They had a little box with gratis copies of each and David picked
out the two books, laying them side by side. Sture turned to a page in Bruno the Beaver Finds His Way Home and pointed to! the place where Bruno finally found the spot where he was going to build his house, only to discover that the Waterman also lived, in the lake.
'This Waterman,' Sture said and pointed at the blurry figure, down in the water. 'She met him. I started telling you about it out there, but…' He raised and dropped his shoulders. 'When she almost', drowned. Later… quite a few days later she told us that there had been… well, that there had been some kind of creature down there with her.'
David nodded. 'She's told me about that. That it was like that was the thing that had come to take her. The Waterman.'
'Yes,' Sture said. 'But then…I don't know if she remembers, she's told you, but when she was little… she called that creature the Fisher.'
'No,' David said. 'She never said that.'
Sture idly turned the pages of the book. 'Whenever we've talked about it since she grew up she's always called it the Waterman or just That Thing, so I was wondering if she'd…forgotten.'
'But now she says the Fisher.'
'Yes. I remember that she… We encouraged her, thinking it might be good for her, that she drew a lot of pictures of the Fisher at the time, after it had happened. She was quite an artist even then.'
David went to the hall closet and brought back a box of old papers, magazines, drawings; the objects that Eva had chosen to keep from her childhood. It felt good to have something to do, something to investigate. He placed the box on the kitchen table and they hauled out text books, photographs, beautiful rocks, school year books and drawings. Sture lingered over certain items, sighing deeply at a snapshot of Eva, maybe ten years old, with a large pike in her arms.
'She was the one who got him,' he said. 'All by herself. I just helped her with the net.' He wiped his eyes. 'It was a… nice day.'
They continued through piles. Many of the sketches were dated and it was not hard to see that Eva would one day become an artist. Even as a nine-year-old she was drawing animals and people much better than David would ever be able to.
And then they found what they were looking for.
A single drawing, dated July 1975. Sture quickly checked the papers underneath but there were no others.
'There used to be more,' he said. 'She must have thrown the others out.'
The other papers were pushed aside and David walked around to Sture's side to study the single sketch in the middle of the table.
Eva's style was still childlike, of course. The fish were drawn with a single line, and the little girl who was supposed to be Eva had a disproportionally large head in relation to her body. You could tell
she was under water from the wavy line toward the upper edge of the page.
'She's smiling,' David said.
'Yes,' Sture said. 'She is smiling.'
The mouth drawn on the girl's face was so happy as to flout accepted childhood standards of how to represent people. The smile covered half her face. This was a happy child.
Not easy to understand, in view of the character who was right next to her. The Waterman, the Fisher. It was at least three times as big as she was. It did not have a face, there was just an empty oval where the face should be. Outlines of arms, legs and body were drawn with trembling, wavering lines as if the figure was electric or dissolving.
Sture said, 'It wasn't clearly defined, she said. As if it was changing all the time.'
David did not answer. There was a detail in the picture he could not tear his eyes away from. The rest of the body was deliberately drawn to be indistinct, but there was one exception: the hands. The hands had clearly defined fingers, and at the tip of each was a large hook. The hooks were stretched out toward the smiling girl.
'The hooks,' David said. 'What are they?'
'We fished a lot when she was little,'
Sture said. 'So…' 'What?'
'Well, at the time she said that it had those hooks to catch her. But it wasn't fast enough.' He pointed to the Fisher's fingers. 'They were not as
big in reality, she said. But she saw them very clearly.'
They stared at the picture in silence, until David said, 'But even so she's smiling.'
'Yes,' Sture said. 'She is.'
Griiddo Island 17.45
Mahler moored at the dock in Graddo at a quarter to six. He walked as fast as he could and got to the store a couple of minutes before they closed. He bought UHT milk, a number of cans and packets of soup and sauces. Macaroni and tortellini. Skogaholm bread, which lasted forever, and soft cheese in a tube.
At the tap behind the store he filled his containers with fresh water. Then he remembered the wheelbarrow down by the harbour with 'Graddo Island Grocer' stencilled on it. Now he understood why it was there. He tried to decide what was better: go back to the harbour and get the wheelbarrow or try to carry the two containers-now weighing forty kilos-plus the two bags of food.
He decided to carry them.
After twenty minutes he was only half-way there-he had been forced to take a break almost every other minute-so he walked the rest of the way and fetched the wheelbarrow, pushing it back to where his goods were, and was down at the harbour in ten minutes.
It was past seven and starting to get dark. You could still see the bald head of the sun sticking up over the trees, but it was sinking rapidly. He would have to hurry; navigating back to the island in the dark without a map was beyond him. He got the bags containers in the boat, and had to take another longish break so his heart wouldn't start to race.
Then he said a prayer and pulled on the starter cord. The engine fired immediately. He steered to the pontoon filling station and found that it was closed. He moored the boat but left the engine on, examining the pumps. There was no pump that took cash or cards. The only possibility of getting fuel would be to go back up to the store again. He lifted the fuel container and rocked it from side to side. About half full.
He looked up at the road that led to the store. He just did not have the energy.
He was sure he could get back to the island with the fuel he had. The return trip was less certain.
Maybe there was fuel somewhere in the house on the island? He had seen a petrol container under the kitchen counter but had not checked to see if there was anything in it. Admittedly the water containers had been empty, but petrol would keep as long as you wanted.
It was highly likely that there was petrol in the container, Extra fuel for a situation like their own. Yes, of course. It was guaranteed there'd be petrol in the container. And if I here wasn't, they had oars.
He didn't like this. He should go back up to the store. Without fuel they were at the mercy of…
Of what?
Of nature. Fate.
But there was petrol in that container.
He got back in the boat. Drove away frorn the mainland and normality.
It was half past nine when he reached the area he was supposed to turn South. He didn’t recognize anything around him. The sun was just a dark red edge horizon and dusk gave the island an and altered appearance. He could still see the Manskar Island mast but thought it lay too far to the right.
Must have gone too far.
He turned the dinghy and went back the same way he had come. He could still not tell where he was. In the slowly dimming light it was getting increasingly difficult to judge distances. What was a single large island, and what was a collection of many small ones.
He bit his knuckles.
No map. No extra fuel. The only thing he had to go on was the handful of landmarks he knew, and none of them was in sight.
He turned the throttle as low as he dared without stalling and put the gears in neutral. Tried to' calm himself, gazing out over the islands, going over the route he had taken in his head. As long as he had an idea of where the merchant shipping routes were there was no risk that he would get completely lost. He looked around. A Finland ferry, lit up like a fun fair, was approaching from the Sea of Aland. Approaching rapidly.
He did not want to leave the shipping route but the ferry forced him to do so. He puttered in closer to the islands at low power, leaving the passage free. If the ferry collided with him, no shadow of blame would fall upon the captain-you could add lights to the list of things Mahler ought to have but didn't.
The ferry went by. Mahler could see people through the windows who did not have a care in the world. He longed to be with them. Just fly in through the window, land at the bar and order drinks until his wallet was empty; listen to vapid pop music and sneak glances at girls who had slid out of reach thirty years ago. Maybe listen to some lone Estonian tell his sad life story while the alcohol laid a forgiving veil over everything.
The ferry went by. Its lights went by and Mahler was left alone in the dark again.
He checked the time. Past ten o'clock. He feltthe petrol tank. Almost empty. When he shook it, the engine sputtered, but resumed its even puttering when he restored the tank to its upright position.
This is no catastrophe, he told himself.
If worse came to worst he could go ashore on some island and wait out the short hours of the night. Motor home the next morning or row, if need be. Maybe it was better to go ashore right now, while there was still fuel for the trip tomorrow.
Anna and Elias would get anxious of course, but they would manage.
And to be honest, would they even get worried?
Relieved, more likely.
He turned and puttered in to the nearest island to spend the night.
The Heath 20.50
It was not until the colour of the little window had faded to dark grey that Flora and Peter talked about going out. There had been no sounds or signs of consciousness for several hours but it was hard to be completely sure.
Flora had winced when Peter opened the door. He had looked undernourished before; now he looked emaciated. As soon as they were in his room he threw himself upon the fruit in her backpack. The room stank. As soon as Flora thought it-that the room stank of human waste-Peter said between bites, 'I know. Sorry. Haven't been able to empty it.'
The rag over the bucket had been reinforced with a blanket, but the odour still came through.
'Peter, you can't live like this.'
What's the alternative?
Flora chuckled. Peter's voice was loud and clear in her head now that everyone else was gone. They did not have to talk aloud as long as they stayed here.
I don't know, she thought.
No. We'll go out tonight, came the answer.
They waited. Amused themselves playing poker for matches, which mostly became a contest to see which one of them was better masking their thoughts. At the start they both knew each other cards, but after a while they each had to search for the other's pairs and incomplete straights among the static of numbers and songs th both used as shields.
When they had both become so good at masking that they we getting headaches trying to penetrate the noise, they tried turning off. Making a conscious effort not to read the other's thoughts.
'Which card?' Peter asked, and held out a card with its back Flora as he looked at it.
It came immediately: the seven of clubs. They tried several times, but it was no good. However hard Flora tried to put differ kinds of static between her head and Peter's, she could not block t telepathy. As long as the sender did nothing to deliberately distort their thoughts, it was impossible not to read them.
During the hours they spent in the basement she got to know, Peter better than ever before, probably better than he wanted her know him. He got to know her, too. And she knew what he thou he was seeing, and he knew what she thought of what she was seeing and by eight o'clock it was starting to get unbearable-a kind torture in the narrow basement. They glanced more and more oft out the window to see if it wasn't getting dark enough to go out.
At ten to nine, with the room sunk in darkness and the windo rectangle hovering above them, Peter said, 'Shall we go then?'
'Yes.'
Speaking was a relief. Spoken language had boundaries, t words not so loaded with significance and hidden meanings as the language of thought. By this point they had almost started to hate each other from the sheer saturation of information, and they both knew it. She knew everything about his latent homosexuality, his stinginess towards other people and his contempt for himself. She also felt the work he'd done to overcome his flaws; his longing for and terror of tenderness, of contact with others, which expressed itself in his self-imposed isolation.
It was not a matter of contempt or disdain; it was just too close.
When they reached the outer bicycle basement she turned to Peter and asked, 'Peter? Can we forget this?'
'I don't know,' Peter said. 'We can try.'
After checking that there were no people out in the yard, they parted and went their separate ways. Peter went off to empty his bucket and look for water, while Flora walked in the direction of the courtyard where she had seen herself.
Before their telepathic conversation became stifling, they had talked about what Flora had seen. At first Peter had not understood what she meant, but when she sent him the whining sound that accompanied the apparition, he said, or thought, 'I've seen it. But it wasn't you. It was a wolf.'
'A wolf?'
'Yes. A large wolf.'
And as soon as he said it, she received an image that must have come from Peter's childhood.
Cycling unsteadily along a gravel road, between spruce trees. A bend in the road and there is a wolf in front of me. Five metres away. Yellow eyes, grey fur, big. Much bigger than me. My hands squeeze the handlebars, the scream that can't get past my mouth because I am scared. It is standing still, I know that I am about to die. Any second now it will take two leaps and be on top of me. But it looks at me for a while, then goes into the forest. I feel warmth in my pants, I have peed all over myself. I can't move for several minutes. When I do, I go back the way I came, I don't dare go past where it was.
The image came with such force that she felt her own sphincter relax, but her consciousness intervened and took control of the muscles just in time.
For me death is a wolf, Peter thought and Flora realised that something she had thought was only imaginative play was her own fundamental belief: she herself was Death.
Of all the ways it was possible to imagine Death as a human figure-the man with the scythe, the Phantom Charioteer, a leering skeleton or an old African woman-Flora had been drawn to the idea of Death as a twin sister. It stemmed from a couple of years ago when she had been standing in front of the mirror with a candle trying to summon the Dark Lady, and seen only herself. The idea had come to her then.
The courtyards lay silent, empty. Electricity had been brought in with some temporary cables and there were a couple of lights on in every yard. She moved carefully, trying to keep to the shadows, but it seemed that her caution was unnecessary. There was no one in sight, not a glimmer in any window, and the area appeared more like a ghost town than ever.
A ghost town.
Exactly what it was. The dead were in the dark apartments.
Sitting, standing, lying, walking around. The remarkable thing was that she was not frightened. Quite the opposite. As her footsteps whispered back to her from the paths, she walked in the tranquility you can feel at a graveyard on a calm evening. She was among friends. The only thing that worried her was if that whining was going to come back.
She had given up on finding her grandfather, but it was almost as hard to find the number she was now looking for: 17C. There were no lights in the passageways where the signs were, and she could not understand the way they'd chosen to number the courtyards. Right now she was in the courtyard where the numbers started, the first one she had come to, Closest to the fence.
A door opened!. She froze and shrank back against the wall. At first she did not understand that why Power had not warned her, but it took her only a couple of seconds to realise that the person coming out of the door was one of the dead. Despite the warm glow of camaraderie she had been feeling, her heart started to beat faster and she pressed harder into the wall as if it would help her glide further into the shadows, become more invisible.
The dead man-or dead woman, you couldn't tell-was standing
outside the building, swaying. Took a couple of steps to the right, stopped. Took a couple of steps to the left, stopped. Looked around. Another door opened further down and another dead person emerged. This one walked straight out into the courtyard and stopped under a lamppost.
Flora jumped when the door right next to her opened. The dead
person was a woman, to judge from the long grey hair. The hospital clothes hung loosely, shroud-like over her bony body. She took a couple of steps from the door, slow tentative steps as if she was walking across black ice in smooth soles.
Flora held her breath. The dead woman turned jerkily. The gaze
issuing (Flora supposed) from the empty eye sockets slid toward the place where she was sitting, her presence unnoticed and irrelevant. The woman's interest was drawn instead to the dead man standing under the lamppost; she was lured to the light like a moth. Flora watched, mouth agape; it looked as if the woman had just caught sight of her one true love and was being pulled toward him by a power stronger than death.
More dead people joined the fold. From some doors only one
came, from others two or three. When fifteen or so were assembled under the lamp something started that filled Flora with awe, the feeling of bearing witness to an event so primordial that it seemed
beyond everything.
She could not see who had started it, but slowly they started to
move in a clockwise direction. Soon an irregular circle had formed, with the lamppost in the middle. Sometimes someone bumped into someone else, someone stumbled or fell but quickly resumed their place in the ring. Around and around they moved and their shadows glided across the buildings. The dead were dancing.
Something came to mind that Flora had read about monkeys, or was it gorillas, in captivity. If you placed a pole in their midst it did not take long until the monkeys gathered around the pole, moving around it. The most primitive of all rites, the worship of the central axis.
Tears sprang up in her eyes. Her field of vision narrowed and blurred. She sat as if mesmerised for a long, long time and watched the dead circle, their motion without interruption or variation. If someone had told her at that moment that this was the dance that held the Earth in its rotation, she would have nodded and said, Yes, I know.
As the enchantment wore off a little she looked around. In many windows around the courtyard she saw pale ovals that had not been there before. Onlookers. Dead people who were too weak to make their way out, or who did not wish to participate, there was no way of knowing which.
This is how it is.
She formed the thought, and had no idea what she meant by it.
She stood up, intending to move on. Perhaps the same scene was
being enacted in all the courtyards right now. She had only taken a couple
of steps when she stopped short.
Others were approaching, she COli Id feci it. Other living minds.
How many? Four, maybe five. They carne from the outside; the same direction she had come from.
As she felt the vivid resonance of other living beings in her head she suddenly understood what she had onl y suspected earlier: apart from Peter and herself and the OIlt'S who were now approaching, there was not a single living person inside the fence. No guards, nothing.
She withdrew to her previous place, concentrating on reading the people approaching. What she sensed dislodged a clump of fear that dropped into her stomach. She read excitement, terror. And just as she managed to disentangle the confused thoughts and identify them as belonging to five people, they entered the courtyard.
Five young men. Too far away for Flora to see properly but they had things in their hands. Sticks or… no. Flora hugged her belly, suddenly sick with comprehension and horror. They were holding baseball bats. Their thoughts were so agitated and mixed up that she could barely isolate any clear images, and she recognised this, knew that it was because they were very drunk.
The dead continued in their dance, apparently unaware of their new audience. One of the guys said, 'What the fuck are they doing?'
'Dunno,' said another. 'Looks like a disco.'
'Zombie disco!'
The guys laughed and Flora thought They're not going to…. they can't.., but knew that they were thinking it and were fully capable. One of them looked around. He was almost as unsteady on his feet as those who had come out of the buildings.
'Hey,' he said. 'There's someone here, isn't there?'
The others stopped talking, scanning the area. Flora bit her lip, sitting absolutely still. It was a completely new situation for herothers reading her thoughts as clearly as she could read theirs. She tried not to think. When that didn't work she used the static she had tried on Peter.
'Fuck it,' one of them said, gesturing at his head. 'It was just
something.'
They walked closer to the dead. One of them wrenched off a
backpack, said, 'Should we light 'em up right away, or what?'
'Nah,' said another and waved his bat. 'Let's have a feel first.'
'Damn, they're ugly.'
'They're gonna get even uglier.'
The guys stopped only a couple of metres from the dead, who had now stopped their dance and turned towards them. The hatred and terror that had been emanating from the young men grew stronger. And stronger.
'Hello gorgeous!' one of them shouted.
'Aaaaahhhhhh… ' another said and an image of a zombie from Resident Evil flashed in Flora's head. When she had caught it, other images linked to it. Zombies from movies, monsters from games. This was what the guys' excursion was about: they'd headed out to get a little live action.
I can't…
Before she had made a conscious decision-it was hard to think with the guys' agitation crackling in her head-she got up and shouted 'Hello!'
It would have been comic under any other circumstances, all of the young men turning their heads in her direction at once. Flora stepped out of the shadows. Her legs shook; no amount of willpower could get them to stop. Trembling, she moved forward half-way to the lamppost, stopped.
'I'm watching you,' she said. 'Just so you know.'
That was all she could say. The only threat she had to brandish.
But she knew that her voice, her thoughts betrayed her fear. Their thoughts were set on destruction and human consideration paled.
'A girl!' one of them called out and Flora felt her own body looked over by five minds, picked up twinges of lust, the impulse to fuck her into the ground, before or after they had done what they were going to do. She instinctively backed up a step.
'Go home to bed!' she shouted at the one who seemed to be the leader. He let his bat swing back and forth at her. 'Start thinking with your head
instead of your dick, because you can't do this!'
The guy smiled broadly. His hair was combed back and his smile… professional. He was dressed in a light blue shirt and clean jeans. They were all dressed the same way-less like a lynch mob than a social club from the Business School; they'd just wound up a meeting and decided to go out and have some fun.
'Show me the law that…' the guy started and Flora saw an older man, presumably the young man's father, sitting at the kitchen table in a suit, saying until the laws are changed the reliving are defenceless since they have already been legally determined to be deceased. The guy didn't get any further, however, because one of his friends shouted, 'Markus! Watch out!'
While the guys were looking at Flora, the reliving had started to move closer to them, nourished and goaded by their hatred. The closest, a stick-thin old man a head shorter than the one they called Markus, stretched out his hands and took hold of Markus' shirt.
Markus jumped back and a low tearing of cloth could be heard.
He looked down at the rip and screamed, 'Are you going to tear up my shirt, you bastard?' and swung his baseball bat against the dead man's head.
The blow connected perfectly right above the ear and made a sound like someone cracking a dry branch over their knee, before the force of the blow slung the dead man away a couple of metres, spinning a half-turn in the air and landing on his head e, He rolled through another half-rotation in the same direction and collapsed on the concrete.
Markus held his hand up in the air and one of his pals high-fived
him. They moved in on their prey.
Flora was unable to move. It was not only the terror that kept her feet nailed to the spot-the blood lust and hatred blazing from the men was intense enough to paralyse her mind. She lost command of her body, her thoughts swamped by theirs. She stood. She watched.
The dead were no match for five young, fit men. They went down one by one, accompanied by shrieks of triumph. Even when they were on the ground the men kept hitting them. It was as if they were demolishing a wall that had to be smashed into little pieces, small enough to be carried away in sacks. The dead made no effort to protect themselves. Even after their legs were broken they just kept crawling towards their attackers, taking more blows. The brittle snapping sounds went on but the dead did not stop, they only moved more slowly.
The young men lowered their bats and moved a couple of paces away from the crawling mass at their feet. One of them took out a pack of cigarettes, offering them round. They smoked and regarded their work.
'Damn,' said one. 'I think one of them bit me.'
He held out his arm and displayed a dark spot on the light fabric.
The others recoiled in feigned horror, holding up their hands and shouting, 'Ahhh! He's been infected!'
The guy who had the bite smiled uncertainly and said, 'Oh, come off it. Do you think I should get a tetanus shot or something?'
The others picked up his concern and went on ribbing him about how he'd soon turn into a zombie hungry for human flesh until the guy told them to shut up. They laughed at him and he crouched nonchalantly next to the closest wreck of what had been a person, a little old lady whose one arm was so shattered it lay limply across her neck. He held out his injured arm to her mouth and said, 'Yum, yum. Come on, have a snack.'
The woman's mangled mouth, its few teeth protruding between crushed lips, opened and closed like a fish on a riverbank. The guy smiled and looked up at the others, and at that moment something happened that Flora had been fervently hoping for: the old woman's other arm shot out to grab his, and her teeth sunk into his flesh.
He screamed and lost his balance then quickly regained his feet.
The teeth refused to let go and the old woman was dragged up from the ground like a ragdoll, hanging from his arm.
'Someone help me, God damn it,' the young man screamed and shook his arm, but even though the old woman was only a pile of broken bones in a sack of skin, her jaws were locked and she dangled along with his movements.
The man she'd latched onto wrenched his arm and gave an incoherent scream of revulsion as a substantial piece of flesh was torn out of his lower arm. He hopped around stamping his feet as if he could only think of getting away somewhere-anywhere but in this situation.
As the blood ran down the man's arm his friend Markus pulled off his shirt, ripped off the arm that already had a tear and said, 'Come on, we'll have to apply a pressure b… '
His injured friend did not appear to hear him. He frantically ripped open the backpack, produced a couple of plastic bottles, unscrewed the caps and splashed liquid over the heap of bodies still quivering, searching.
'What about this, you bastards!' He ran around the perimeter of the heap, spraying from both bottles until they were empty. 'Let's see you bite now!'
The paralysis that had overcome Flora was wearing off; the other four guys had calmed down, having battered themselves into a state of exhaustion. Only the injured one's hysteria pierced her head like a saw, a saw through metal…
No…
It was the other sound she was hearing. There was nothing she could do to stop the guys, it was too late. She looked around. There, on the other side of the courtyard, she spotted herself on her way toward the lamppost. It was still hard to look, there was a force that told her to look away, but it was as if she was getting used to it-she pushed the whining into the back of her mind and left her thoughts free.
Do something, do something she thought at the figure, so like herself, who had moved, between one breath and another, to the edge of the heap of corpses where the guys were now getting a box of matches out of the backpack. They did not see her, but apparently they heard the sound and spotted her in their peripheral vision because their heads whipped round and they started shouting. 'What the hell is this, what the hell, what the hell…'
Death spread her arms, an invitation to embrace and-as if mesmerised-Flora did the same. She was a mirror image. The guys managed to light a match and Death took a couple of steps into the mass of bodies. She bent down and stretched her hands out, making small plucking movements as if she was picking berries, gathering something.
The match sailed through the air and Flora screamed, 'Look out, get away!'
At the instant the match landed, Death lifted her head and met Flora's gaze. They were identical to one another. There was nothing forbidding or dark in her eyes, they were simply Flora's eyes. For a second they had time to look into each other, share their secrets. Then the petrol exploded into fire and a wall of flames bloomed between them.
The guys stood frozen, staring at the bonfire. The highest flames stretched up almost to the rooftops, but after a few seconds the fumes had burned away and the fire took hold of the fuel itself; a sputtering crackle as hospital gowns and flesh charred.
'Come on, let's get out of here!'
The young men watched the fire a moment longer, as if to imprint it on their memories for good, then turned and jogged away from the yard. The one called Markus, his torso now bare, paused for a moment, looked at Flora and raised his index finger. But if he was planning to say something, he decided against it and followed the others. After a couple of minutes their minds were out of her reach.
The flames died out. Flora knew from the stillness in her mind that Death was gone. She walked up to the bonfire-no more than isolated little flare-ups and a strong, cloying smoke now, billowing up into the sky. Maybe it was because the dead had so little flesh, so little fat, that the fire hadn't really caught.
Everything was black. The doubly dead lay curled up with their elbows against their sides and their fists sticking straight out, as if boxing into the dark. The stench that rose from the heap was nauseating and Flora pulled a corner of her jacket over her nose and mouth.
They were dancing a moment ago.
Her chest filled. Grief, as deep as an abyss. The opposite of that wondrous awe she had felt for the dance of the dead. Grief for all humankind and its paths upon the Earth. And the same thought that had gripped her then returned now, in a different light:
This is how it is.
Norra Brunn 21.00
David had let Sture talk him into this and was already regretting it. As expected, Leo had cancelled him. There was a message on his answering machine that he had not listened to. He got a beer and went to join the others in the kitchen. A condoling silence. The jokes and laughter from just a moment ago died away.
This was not the place for serious conversation. If you couldn't joke about it, it didn't get said. The comedians were all, as individuals, regular people with the same capacity for sadness and joy as everyone else, but as a group they were a flippant lot, unable to handle anything that could not be expressed as a one-liner.
Right before the show was about to start, Benny Melin came up to him and said, 'Look, I hope you don't… but I have some stuff about all this with the reliving.'
'No, no,' David said. 'Do your thing.'
'OK,' Benny said and his face grew lighter. 'It's such a big thing, it's hard not to get into it, you know.'
'I understand.'
David saw that Benny was on the verge of trying out some of his material on him so he raised his glass, wished him good luck and backed away. Benny grimaced faintly. You didn't wish someone good luck, you said break a leg or something and David knew it, and Benny knew that David knew. To say good luck was very like an insult.
David went to the bar. The staff nodded to him but no one came up to talk. David downed his beer and asked Leo to pour him another.
'How's it going?' Leo asked as he poured. 'It's going,'
David said. 'That's about it.'
Leo placed the beer on the counter. There was no point answering the question in more detail. Leo dried his hands on a towel and said, 'You'll have to give her my regards. When she's better.'
'I will.'
David felt that he was close to tears again. He turned away from the bar, toward the stage, and sank half the glass greedily. Better now. Now that he was left alone and no one had to pretend that they could understand any of it.
Death makes us strangers to one another.
The stage lights went up and via the ghost mike, Leo wished everyone a warm welcome and asked them to put their hands together for the evening's host, Benny Melin.
The place was full and the clapping and whistling that accompanied Benny up on stage gave David a twinge of longing to be back here, in this real world of unreality.
Benny gave a quick bow and the applause died down. He adjusted the mike stand-a little up, a little down-and the microphone ended up in the same place it had been from the start. He said, 'So, I don't know about you, but I'm a little worried about this thing with the Heath. A suburb full of dead people.'
The room was silent. Tense with anticipation. Everyone was worried about this thing with the Heath; maybe there was a new twist to the whole thing that they hadn't considered.
Benny wrinkled his forehead as if contemplating a difficult issue. 'And the one thing I'd really like to know…’
A rhetorical pause.
'Is the ice cream van going to want to drive there?'
Relieved laughter. Not funny enough for applause, but not far off.
Benoy went on, 'And if it's going to go there, will it sell anything?
'And if it sells something, then what?'
Benny waved his hand through the air, sketching a screen that everyone was supposed to look at.
'Just imagine. Hundreds of dead people lured from their homes by…' Benny started up a rendition of 'Greensleeves' and then quickly switched to being a zombie staggering along with outstretched arms. People giggled and when Benny groaned, 'Popsiiiic-eeeel, Popsiiiiceeeel…' the applause came.
David downed the last of his beer and slunk out behind the bar.
He couldn't handle this. Benny and all the rest of them had every right to joke about something as current as this, in fact they were obliged to, but he didn't have to listen. He walked quickly through the bar and out of the doors onto the street. A new round of applause fired off behind him and he walked away from the sound.
The painful thing was not that they were joking about it. There had to be jokes, jokes were necessary if people were going to keep living. The painful thing was that it had happened so quickly. After the ferry Estonia sank, for example, it had taken six months before anyone tried to say anything funny about ferry salvage or bow doors, and then without much success. The World Trade Center had gone much faster. Only a couple of days after the attack 'someone said something about the new cut-price alternative Taliban Airways, and people had laughed. It had been far enough away to feel like it wasn't really happening.
Apparently the reliving fell into the same category. They weren't real, you didn't have to have any respect. That's why David's presence had been hard for the other comedians to take; he made it real. But in the end that's what the reliving were to them: a joke.
He slunk past the tightly parked cars that lined Surbrunnsgatan, seeing Balthazar's headless body wriggling in Eva's lap, and wondered if he would be able to see the funny side of anything ever again.
The walk from Norra Brunn had exhausted his strength. The hastily downed beer sloshed in his stomach and every step was an act of will. Most of all he wanted to curl up in the nearest doorway and sleep away the remaining hours of this horrible day.
He had to lean up against the wall in the entrance and rest for a couple of minutes before going up to the apartment. He did not want to appear so pathetic that Sture offered to stay. He wanted to be alone.
Sture did not offer. After reporting that Magnus had slept the
whole time, he said, 'I guess I should go home now.'
'Of course,' David said.
'Thanks for everything.' Sture looked searchingly at him.
'Will you manage, then?'
'I'll manage.'
'Sure?'
'I'm sure.' He was so tired, his speech was starting to sound like Eva's; he could only repeat what was said to him. They parted with a hug, instigated by David. This time he let his head drop onto Sture's chest for a few seconds.
When Sture had left he stood still in the kitchen for a while, staring at the bottle of wine, but decided that he was too tired even for that. He went and checked on Magnus, regarding his sleeping child for a long time. He had fallen asleep in almost exactly the position David had left him in: his hand under his cheek, the eyes slowly sliding under thin eyelids.
David crawled gently into bed, slipping into the narrow space between Magnus' body and the wall. Was only planning to lie there for a couple of seconds and look at the thin, smooth shoulder that stuck out of the blankets. He closed his eyes and thought… thought nothing. Slept.
Tomaskobb 21.10
When Mahler stepped ashore on the nearest island he saw the marker. It was fashioned from bleached boards and he had missed it in the dark. The inlet lay straight in. He climbed back into the boat, started the engine. It roared, sputtered and died.
He waggled the tank, pumped in new fuel and this time the engine ran long enough for him to reverse away from the island before it died again. He leaned his arms against his knees and stared in among the islands, velvet blue in the summer night. Lone trees stuck up from low islands, silhouetted against the sky like in documentaries from Africa. The only sound was the distant engine vibration from the passing ferry.
This isn't so bad.
He preferred recognising his surroundings to having fuel. Now he could at least see what was in front of him. With the oars it would take about half an hour to the island, gliding over the still water. No problem. If he just took it easy it would be fine.
He placed the rowlocks in their holes and set to work. He rowed with short strokes, breathing deeply in the mild air. After a couple of minutes he was in a rhythm and hardly noticed the work. It was like meditation.
Om mani padme hum, am mani padme hum… The oar strokes pushed the sea behind him.
When he had rowed for perhaps twenty minutes he thought he heard the call of a deer. He lifted the oars out of the water, listening. The sound came again. It was no deer, it was more like… a scream. It was hard to determine which direction it was coming from; the sound bounced between the islands. But if he had been asked to guess he would have said it came from…
He put the oars back in the water, and started to row with longer, more powerful strokes. He did not hear another scream. But it had come from the direction of Labbskar Island. Sweat broke out across his back and his calm scattered. He was no longer a meditating person, just a damnably effective motor.
I should have got fuel. …
Thick mucus collected in his mouth and he spat at the engine. 'Bloody shit-engine!'
But it was actually his fault. His, and no one else's.
To dispense with mooring the boat, he rowed straight to the shore and crawled out. Water seeped into his shoes and they sucked at the soles of his feet as he walked up to the hut. No lights were on; the house was simply an outline against the deep blue sky.
'Anna! Anna!'
No answer. The front door was closed. When he pulled on it there was a strong resistance until whatever was fighting him gave up. He jumped and put his arm up to shield his face, thinking there was something coming at him. But it was only a loose broomstick that fell forward and clattered to the ground.
'Anna?'
It was darker inside and it took a couple of seconds for his eyes to grow accustomed to it. The door through to the bedroom was closed and on the kitchen floor there was a… heap of snow. He blinked as the snow pile began to take shape, became a blanket and then Anna, who was sitting on the floor squeezing the blanket. 'Anna, what is it?'
Anna's voice was just a hoarse whisper from a screamed-out throat.
'It was here… '
Mahler looked around. The moonlight pouring in through the open door did not help much and he listened for sounds in the other room. Nothing. He knew how afraid Anna was of animals and sighed, saying with irritation, 'Was it a rat?'
Anna shook her head and said something he could not make out.
As he turned from her in order to go into the other room and check, she hissed, 'Take this,' and pointed to a small axe lying on the floor at her feet. Then she crawled across the floor with the bedding in her arms, pulled the door shut and sat down with her back against the door post, one hand on the door handle. The room became pitch dark.
Mahler weighed the axe in his hand. 'What is it, then?'
'… drowned… '
'What?'
Anna forced her voice to get louder and croaked, 'A dead man.
A corpse. Someone who drowned.'
Mahler closed his eyes, retrieving his memory of the kitchen; visualising the torch on the counter. He groped his way through the dark until his fingers closed around the heavy handle.
Batteries.…
He turned it on and a cone of light shot out, illuminating the entire kitchen. He trained the beam on the wall next to Anna so as not to dazzle her. She looked like a ghost; sweat-drenched hair hung in wisps over her face, vacant eyes stared straight ahead.
'Daddy,' she whispered without looking at him. 'We have to let Elias… go.'
'What are you saying? Go where?'
'Go… away.'
'Keep quiet now and I'11… '
He opened the door to the other room a crack, let the light in.
There was nothing there. He opened the door a little more, directing the beam of light inside.
Now he saw that the window on the opposite side was broken.
Reflected light glittered in slivers of glass spread over the floor and table. He squinted. Something was lying on the table, among the shards. A rat. He took a couple of steps closer.
No, not a rat.
It was a hand. A severed hand. The skin was wrinkled, thin. The flesh on the front of the index finger was gone and only a stick-thin bone remained.
He swallowed, poking the hand with the axe. It rolled over among the glass, lay still. He snorted. What had he expected? That it was going to jump up and put on a stranglehold? He shone the light through the window
and saw nothing except rocks sticking up from the creeping juniper.
'OK,' he said to Anna when he returned to the kitchen. 'I'll go out and look around.'
'No… '
'Then what should we do? Go to bed, hope that…
' weevil… '
'What was that?'
'It wants to do evil.'
Mahler shrugged, brandishing the axe. 'Were you. the one who… '
'Had to. It wanted to get in.'
The adrenaline rush that had kept him going ever since he heard Anna's scream from the boat was starting to abate, and he was faint with hunger. He sank down on the floor next to Anna, breathing heavily. He pulled over the cooler, took out a packet of hot dogs, wolfed two of them and held the rest out to Anna, who made a face.
He ate two more but it felt like the effort of chewing was simply making him hungrier. When he had swallowed the pulpy mass he asked, 'Elias?'
Anna looked at the bundle in her arms and said, 'He's scared.' Her voice was cracked but audible.
Mahler took out a packet of cinnamon buns and ate five. More chewy mass to swallow. He drank a couple of sips of lukewarm milk out of the container and felt just as hungry as before, except that now he also had a heavy mass in his stomach. He leaned back, lying down on the floor to try and get the heaviness to distribute itself more evenly.
'Let's go back,' Anna said.
Mahler shone the flashlight on the petrol container under the kitchen counter and said, 'If there's petrol in it we can. Otherwise it's out of the question.'
'We don't have any fuel?'
'No.'
'I thought you were going to… ' 'I didn't have the energy.'
Anna did not say anything, which he thought was worse than if
she had berated him. Rage slowly kindled in his chest.
'I've been working,' he said. 'The whole time since we… '
'Not now,' Anna said. 'Stop it.'
Mahler clenched his teeth, rolled over and crawled up to the petrol container, lifting it. It was very light, because it was empty.
Fucking idiots, he thought. The fucking idiots don't have any reserve fuel.
From the door he heard Anna snort, remembered that she knew what he was thinking. He slowly pulled himself up to his feet, taking the torch and the axe.
'You can sit there and laugh,' he said. 'I'll just go out and… ' he waved the axe toward the door. Anna did not move.
'Can you let me out?'
'It isn't like Elias,' Anna said. 'It's been alone, it… '
'Can you please move away from the door?'
Anna looked him in the eyes.
'What do I do?' she said. 'What do I do if… something happens?'
Mahler gave a short bitter laugh.
'Is that what you're worried about?' He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, turned it on and entered the PIN. He gave it to her. 'Nine, one, one. If anything happens.'
Anna inspected the phone as if to check that there was reception, then said, 'We're calling now.'
'No,' Mahler said and reached for the phone. 'In that case I'll keep it.' Anna sighed and hid the phone in the blankets. 'You won't cal1?'
Anna shook her head and let go of the door. 'Daddy. We're not doing the right thing.'
'Yes,' Mahler said. 'I think we are.'
He opened the door and let the beam of light play over the rocks, grass and raspberry bushes. When he raised the beam it lit up a gap in the curtain of alder trees between the house and the water, and he saw a person lying on the shallow jutting rocks in the opening of the inlet. The torch was not really necessary, the moonlight was enough to make out the white shape lying with its torso on the rock, its head by the water's edge.
'I see it,' he said.
'What are you going to do?'
'Remove it.'
He left the house. Anna did not close the door as he had believed she would. When he had taken a couple of steps toward the creature, he turned around. Anna was sitting on the step, hugging the bundle and watching him.
Perhaps it should have made him happy, even touched, but he simply felt scrutinised: Anna did not trust him and was sitting there now to watch him fail, again.
When he reached the shore and passed the boat he saw what the creature was doing. It was drinking. It was lying on its stomach, scooping sea water into its mouth with its one remaining hand.
Mahler turned off the flashlight and crept over the slick seaweed,
gripping the axe.
Get rid of it.
That was what he was going to do. Get rid of it.
He was about twenty metres away when it stood up. It was a person, and yet it wasn't. The moon gave enough light to see that large parts of its body were missing. A soft southerly breeze carried the stench of rotten fish. Mahler waded through an area with reeds and then came up on the rock where the creature was waiting for him. Its head was tilted as if it couldn't believe its eyes.
Eyes?
It had no eyes. Its head turned from side to side as if it was sniffing, or listening for the sound of his steps. When Mahler was a couple of feet away from it, he saw that the skin on its chest had been eaten away, and its ribs stuck out white in the moonlight. He saw a movement and caught his breath, thinking it was the creature's heart, pulsating.
He raised the axe and turned on the flashlight. Aimed at the creature, to blind it if it still had eyes to see with. The light made it chalk-white against the sea, and now Mahler saw what was causing the motion: inside the chest cavity was a fat black eel, caught as if in a trap, eating its way out.
Reflexively, from some kind of basic human shame at his own grossness, Mahler turned away before the food he had eaten erupted from his stomach and spurted through his lips. Sausage, pastries, milk poured out onto the rock and ran down into the water. He turned again, so as not to have his back to the creature, even before his nausea had fully subsided.
Vomit continued to trickle down between his trembling jaws, down over his chin. He saw the eel thrash around inside the chest and in the stillness he heard the sound of its snake-body, gliding over the remnant flesh of its prison. Mahler wiped his mouth but his jaws did not stop chattering.
His revulsion was such that the only impulse in his head was aversion beyond all reason, a command to remove-extinguishthis abomination from the face of the Earth.
Kill it.… kill it.…
He took a step toward the creature and at the same time the creature moved towards him. It was quick, much quicker than he had thought possible with that wreck of a body. There were a couple of clicks as the bones clashed against the rock and even in his blind rage, Mahler backed up. It was the eel. He did not want that eel, grown fat on human flesh, to come near him.
He backed up and slipped in his own vomit. The axe flew from his hand as his body landed with a wet thud. His neck was jerked back by the blow and the back of his head struck the rock. Bright lights flashed and the instant before they died and dropped him into the darkness, he felt the creature's hands on his body.
Labbskar Island 21.50
Anna saw it happen. She saw her father fall flat on the rock, heard his head meet the unyielding surface, saw the creature throw itself over him. She flew to her feet, still with Elias in her arms.
God, no! The fucking bastard.…
The creature lifted its head in their direction and at that moment she heard Elias' voice inside her head.
… nice… think nice…
Anna sobbed and took a few steps. Something rattled near her feet, but she paid it no attention, continuing instead toward the boat, toward the creature whose head tugged and jerked above her father's lifeless body.
Disgusting bloody.…… nice….
She knew. Deep down she knew. As long as she'd sat on the bed doing nothing, thinking nothing, the creature had simply stood outside and looked at them. It was when she had gone up to the window and screamed at it to go away, sent hatred and disgust to it, that it had broken the window. It was her terror that had driven its attempts to get in in the first place.
When her father had started to send hate to the creature, toward the image of the eel in the chest cavity, she had tried to send the same thing as Elias was now doing: Think nice, but she had not reached him, and now it was too late.
It's a challenge to reason clearly when someone has just killed your father. Quite a challenge.
Disgusting bloody white disgusting.…
She continued into the grass, unable to find any nice words.
Everything was being taken from her, bit by bit, person by person. She saw the creature stand up, go down into the reeds and cross the sand toward the boat, toward her.
Her gaze flitted over the ground, looking for a strong tree branch, something to use as a weapon. The branches lying on the ground were all clearly rotten, otherwise they would not have fallen. The creature's feet sloshed through wet seaweed and Anna suddenly spotted the drying rack where Elias' socks still hung. She could break it off, she could use it as…
The creature was level with the boat now and Anna was moving parallel to the shore higher up. If she managed to break off the rack, if she could-Elias squirmed restlessly in her arms, the blanket dragging by her feet-if she could…
What? What? You can't kill someone who's already dead.
But nonetheless she persevered along the hill, laid Elias down on the rocky ground and pulled on the pole, forcing it back and forth. The elements had weathered the wood, but her terror made her strong and the rack broke off at its foot with a creak. Elias' socks were still dangling on their hooks and even as the creature was coming up through the grass, only five metres away, she dashed the rack against the rockface to break off the cross board, make a clean weapon.
Mother's little Olle, walking in the woods…
Elias' little voice penetrated the shell of her terror and she understood. As the creature reached the foot of the boulder right under her and the cadaver stench reached her nostrils she disconnected every other thought and filled her head with:
Roses on his cheek and sunshine in his eyes lips so small, of blueberries so blue
She could not think nice, but she could sing in her mind. The creature stopped. Its legs froze, its arms went limp. A machine suddenly run out of fuel.
If only I did not have to walk here quite so alone.
The tears ran silently down Anna's cheeks as she saw a black substance smeared around the creature's mouth, but she would not think about Daddy's blood, nor anything that could lead her thoughts to anger and hatred. Instead she went on reciting:.
' Brummelibrum, Hark! Who goes there?,
The bushes are shaking, it must be a dog.!
The irony of the lyrics made her body tremble, but she was no longer in her body. She was standing beside it. Noting its changes, seeing what it saw, but directing: directing the body's brain to keep singing.
The creature turned and walked back the way it had come:
toward the inlet, toward the jutting rocks, toward her father's body. She did not reflect on this, simply noted that it was happening.
She waited half a minute until she reached the end of the song, then wrapped Elias in the blanket and walked down to the boat. The yellow moon was reflected in a little pool on the rock face and as the grass whispered over her legs she saw-
Yellow?
– that yellow glow was all wrong. She looked again. The light was coming from the cell phone. She had dropped it. Still singing the same song-she dared not change in case she broke her concentration-she fished up the phone and laid it on Elias' stomach, walked down to the boat.
Teddy he eats almost all that there is.…
She settled Elias on the bottom and avoided looking toward the inlet as she pushed the boat out from the edge of the shore, took a couple of steps into the water and crawled in. The boat floated well and they glided out onto the faintly ruffled water. Anna sat in the middle seat, and saw the bags of food, the water. In the silence she heard the moist crunching sounds
from the inlet, the sound of a fish being gutted. Her lower jaw started to quiver, she hugged herself.
He tried to… he meant well… he just wanted to… filthy disgusting…. Holds out his basket with chubby little hands…
She had to keep singing. The creature could swim.
She unshipped the oars with shaking hands and rowed out into the inlet on the other side. She knew it was in the wrong direction, but she could not stand to get closer, perhaps see…
When she had rowed about fifty strokes and there was only the blue expanse of the Sea of Aland behind her back she let the oars go, let them hang freely from the rowlocks and crept down next to Elias, curled up on the bottom next to him and let everything come. Stopped fleeing, stopped singing, simply stopped.
The southerly breeze was slowly moving them farther and farther out. Gaskobb Island floated past and soon Soderarrn's lone blinking eye was the only thing that could be seen between space and the sea.
The Heath 22.00
Flora stood there gazing at the mass of tangled bodies.
That evening in Elvy's garden she had wished-she had known that something was going to happen. Something that would change Sweden forever. Now it had happened, and what was the change?
Nothing.
Terror gave birth to terror, hatred begat hate and all that was left in the end was a pile of burnt bodies. As everywhere; as always.
Something was moving among the bodies.
At first she thought it was fingers that had managed to survive the blaze somehow and were now struggling to make their way out. Then she saw it was caterpillars. White caterpillars burrowing their way out of some of the bodies. The stench from the bonfire was unbearable despite her face mask and she shuffled back a couple of metres.
Only seven caterpillars had emerged, even though there had been around fifteen people to start.
She took the others.
She knew the caterpillars were people… no, the caterpillars were the human element in the people, given a visible form it was possible to comprehend in this world. Not even her twin was really her twin-she wasn't anything that could be understood in human terms. Flora had known that in the second they had stared into each other's eyes.
The other Flora, the one wearing her best sneakers, was only a force: one that manifested itself in a way that made sense to each individual. The only constant was the hooks, since the task of the power was to catch, to collect. And not even the hooks were anything real, simply an image people could understand.
The caterpillars that had emerged from the black mass wriggled, nowhere to go now that their host had been destroyed.
Lost, Flora thought. Lost.
There was nothing she could do. They had turned away in fear and were now lost. As she watched they swelled up, becoming first pink, then red.
Faintly, faintly, Flora could hear screams of anguish as the caterpillar-people realised what she already knew: they were now being pulled inexorably to the other place. The place of which nothing can be said. Nothing.
The caterpillars swelled even more, the thin membrane stretching, and the screams grew stronger. Flora's head spun because she knew that none of this was really happening. Only the fact that she was watching made it visible, it was an invisible drama that was enacted before her eyes, as old as the human race.
With a plop-audible yet inaudible-the caterpillars burst one by one and a viscous, translucent fluid ran out, evaporating in the heat of the scorched bones as the screams faded away.
Lost.
She backed away from the bonfire, sitting down on the bench a couple of metres away, trying to think. She knew too much, much too much. The knowledge that had flooded into her head during that second of eye contact had been too much, she was not able to bear it.
Why? Why has this happened?
She knew. She knew everything. It could not be put into words, but something had happened in the greater order of things. And one of the minor effects, here on our little planet, was that within a certain circumscribed area, the dead had awakened. A hurricane had led to the beating of a butterfly's wings. In the greater scheme it was nothing, one of those things that happens from time to time. A footnote, at most, in the book of the gods.
Suddenly she sat up straight on the bench. She remembered something Elvy had said outside the gates earlier… was it today? Was it still the same day she had gone for a walk with Maja and… yes, the same day.
She took out her phone and dialled Elvy's number. By some miracle it was not any of the ladies or that repulsive guy who answered, but Elvy herself. She sounded tired.
'Nana, it's me. How's it going?'
'Not so good. Things are… not so good.'
Flora could hear raised voices in the background, people quarrel-
ling. The events of the day had caused ructions in the group.
'Nana, listen to me. Do you remember what you told me today?' Elvy sighed.
'No, I don't know…'
'The woman in the TV, you showed her to me…'
'Yes, yes. AlI that, it…'
'Wait. She said to you that they must come unto me, isn't that right?'
'We are trying,' Elvy said. 'But…'
'Nana, she didn't mean the living. She meant the dead.'
Flora told her what had happened in the courtyard. The gang of young men, the fire, her twin, the caterpillars.
As she was talking, she could feel in another part of her mind that people were approaching the area. These ones were not of a friendly mind-set either. Rage and hatred were approaching. Perhaps the guys had fetched some of their buddies, or there were others with the same idea.
'Nana, you've seen her too. You have to come here. Right now.
They… they'll disappear otherwise.'
The other end went quiet for a while, and then Elvy said with an entirely new strength in her voice, 'I'll take a taxi.'
As Flora hung up she realised that they had not arranged a meeting place. Still, that would take care of itself. Their minds were so in tune that it was like having walkie-talkies, at least while they were in this area. More problematic was the question of how Elvy would get in. But that was something they could deal with later.
Flora stood up. Hard people with minds bent on evil were coming.
What do I say, what do I do?
She ran out of the courtyard. She knew that somewhere in this complex there was a reliving whose thinking approximated her own, who thought in the same images. She was looking for 17C.
While she ran, dead people were coming out of the buildings and gathering outside. No dancing now. There were still faces that simply watched from the windows above, but with each passing minute they were getting fewer. The whining, piercing sound of the dentist's drill was growing. In the distance she felt more living people approaching-the gates must have been opened.
She ran with panic in her chest, an approaching catastrophe, a river of terror that she was not capable of damming. She found number 17 and ran in, then paused.
A dead person was on his way down the steps. An old man whose legs had been amputated was dragging himself down, down on his stomach. On each step his chin smacked into the concrete with a thud that hurt Flora's mouth. He was near the surface, she could hear him:
Home… home… home…
When Flora passed him, he reached for her but she twisted herself free and continued up to apartment C, flinging the door open.
Eva was standing in the hallway, on her way out. Her face was simply a pale blotch in the weak light from the stairwell that filtered through the door and illuminated the bandage over half her face.
Without thinking, Flora stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. At the moment the link between them was established Flora knew what to say. She closed her mind to everything going on outside and thought:
Come out. Listen to me.
The body struggled in her grip. What was still Eva in Eva answered:
No. I want to live.
You are not going to live. That door is closed. There are two ways out.
Flora transmitted the two images of souls leaving their fleshly bonds. The ones who were collected, and those that disappeared. The words were not her own, they were simply voiced through her.
Allow it to happen. Give yourself up.
Eva's soul neared the surface; the whining intensified somewhere behind Flora's back. Like a sea swallow that has been searching across the ocean for a long time, the Fisher now let itself swoop down to the glinting flash of silver, toward its catch.
I just want to.… say goodbye. Do it. You are strong.
Before the Fisher had time to take its shape, before Eva's soul had time to take the shape of the Fisher's catch, Eva leaped out of her chest and flew with the speed only disembodied spirit can command. A whisper brushed Flora's skin as a life flitted past her, the flame of a consciousness flickered in her head, and was gone. Eva's body collapsed at Flora's feet.
Good luck.
The whining grew more distant. The Fisher took up the chase.
Svarvagatan 22.30
David slept, and was dreaming. He was locked in a labyrinth, running along corridors. Sometimes he reached a door, but the door always turned out to be closed. Something was chasing him. Something that was always following, just behind a corner somewhere. He knew it was Eva's face, but it wasn't Eva. It was something that had assumed her form the better to get at him.
He tugged at door handles, screaming, feeling all the while the encroachment of something wholly the opposite of love. The worst thing was that he felt he had left Magnus behind; he was back in some room in the dark where the terrible thing could get him.
He ran along an endless corridor, towards a door he knew would be closed. As he ran he noticed something happening to the light in the corridor. All the passages he'd been running through had been lit by cold neon, but now there was another light. Daylight, sunlight. He looked up as he ran. The ceiling of the corridor was gone and he saw a summer sky.
As he laid his hand on the door handle he knew this door would open, and it did. It opened, all the walls dissolved and he was standing on a lawn by Kungsholm shore. Eva was there.
He knew what day it was, felt the moment. A big orange motorboat was approaching along the canal. Yes. He had looked at it, there was an orange spot on his retina, and then he turned to Eva and asked, 'Do you want to marry me?'
And she said yes. 'Yes! Yes!'
And they tumbled onto the blanket and embraced and they made plans and promised For Ever and For Ever and the man in the orange boat wolf-whistled at them and it was that day now and the boat was approaching and in a moment he would ask his question but right before the words left his lips Eva took his face between her hands and said: 'Yes. Yes. But I have to go now.'
David shook his head. His head turned back and forth on the pillow and he said, 'You can't go.'
Eva's mouth smiled, but her eyes were sad.
'We'll see each other again,' she said. 'It will take a few years, that's all. Don't be afraid.'
He shook off his blankets, held his arms out to the bedroom ceiling, he reached out his arms for her on the lawn and a piercing cry came between them.
The lawn, the canal, the boat, the light and Eva were sucked up, shrinking to a single point and he opened his eyes. He was lying in Magnus' bed with his arms outstretched. From his right he heard a whining sound almost loud enough to deafen him; he was not permitted to look in that direction. A white caterpillar lay curled up on his stomach.
The scent of cheap perfume filled the room and he knew it, he recognised it. He saw a hint of pink out of the corner of his eye. His head was locked, he could not turn it to see his own image of Death, the woman in the grocery store. A hand reached into his field of vision. Colourful bracelets hung from the wrist and at the tips of the fingers there were hooks.
No! No!
His hands flew out, cupped over the caterpillar. The hooks halted, some ten centimetres from his hand. They were not permitted to touch him, he was a living. The caterpillar wriggled, tickling the palm of his hand and through the skin of his hand, in through the flesh and into his bones, there came a plea:
Let me go.
David shook his head, he tried to shake his head. He wanted to jump out of his bed with the caterpillar cupped in his hands, escape the house, get away from the Earth, the very world where things must be this way. But he was paralysed with fear as Death stood by his bedside. And he refused to let go.
The caterpillar swelled under his hand. The hooks slowly pulled back out of sight. The plea grew weaker, Eva's voice faded away, layer upon layer of darkness was coming between her and the part of him that could hear her. Only a whisper:
If you love me…. let me go.…
David let out a sob and lifted his hands. 'I love you.'
The caterpillar on his stomach was swollen now, pink. It looked sick. Dying.
What have I done, what have I.…
The hooks were there again, the hook on the index finger drilled into the caterpillar, lifted it up and David's mouth shaped around a scream but before it came something happened.
Where the hook had entered the caterpillar, a crack opened. The hand lingered before his eyes, as if to show him what was happening now. The crack widened and he saw that the caterpillar was not a caterpillar but a pupa. A head was emerging from the crack, no bigger than the head of a pin.
The butterfly made its way out of the pupa and the dry shell fell away, dissolving. It sat motionless on the hook for a moment, as if to dry its wings or display itself, then it lifted, flying upward. David followed it with his eyes and saw it disappear through the ceiling.
When he looked down again the hand with the hooks was gone and the whining noise had abated. He stared up at the ceiling, toward the point where the butterfly had disappeared.
Disappeared.
Magnus moved next to him. In his sleep he said, 'Mummy… ' David got up out of bed, careful not to wake Magnus. He closed the door behind him so he wouldn't hear. Then he lay down on the kitchen floor and cried until the tears dried up and he was empty. The world was empty again.
I believe.
There is a place where happiness exists. A place, and a time.
The Heath 22.35
Flora had changed her mind.
She found it natural, now, that the body must require a soul even for a simple act like standing up. Even more remarkable, the soul required a body. What remained here of Eva was something that could be burned, or buried like so much rubbish.
Why are we born? What is the point?
That was the great mystery and of this Flora knew nothing. It was not included in the science of Death. Flora remained kneeling for a couple of minutes beside the vacated body and heard the whole area in uproar around her.
1 can't go on…
It was absurd. This morning she had been smoking and chatting with Maja as usual, now she was supposed to be saving souls…
Saving?
She didn't know anything about it. The only thing she knew about the Place they were going was that it was a place you couldn't know anything about unless you were there. And that there was Another Place, about which nothing could be said, ever.
Why her? Why Elvy? Nana…
It was at least twenty minutes since she had called Elvy. She might already be standing at the gates. Even though Flora was afraid to go out, she ran down the stairs. All at once she felt like a little girl again. Nana would tell her, Nana would know what had to be done.
But I am the one who knows…
Life would never be the same after this.
The courtyard was deserted. No. The man without legs, the one she had encountered on the stairs, had got no further than the main entrance and was still dragging himself along by the arms. All around her there was calm, but the clamour inside her head was indescribable. An insane cacophony of cries, prayers, anger, pleas for help, howls of hatred.
She ran over to the man, crouched down and put her hand on his back, sent her knowledge into him, but the man resisted. He did not want to leave his wreck of a body. Instead he turned around and struck out at her hand, tried to grab her, baring his teeth.
Come on, you idiot. Don't you get it…
Impotent rage bubbled up inside her; she jumped back as the man's wrath and bitterness clicked in with her own, each feeding the other's. She measured a kick at his face but managed to control herself; she left him there.
She reached the other side of the courtyard entrance and stopped abruptly.
All of the dead had left their yards and were moving toward the fence. The field was boiling with people. The gates were wide open and a number of police SWAT teams had already driven in, more arriving as she watched. Police officers jumped out with weapons drawn. The dead were trying to move toward the gates but were being held at bay by the police. As yet no shots had been fired but it was only a matter of time. There was maybe one police officer for thirty dead.
Have to…
Flora ran toward the seething mass. When the legless man had turned to her and bared his teeth she had seen something inside him. Hunger. He had used up his own flesh and needed more to sustain his non-existence. It was possible he would have let himself starve to death if he had not been met by this anger from the outside, driving him to satisfy himself. Now he was crawling as fast as he could toward the source of the anger.
Flora reached a young police officer surrounded by the dead and threw herself forward-a second after she felt his consciousness give way-to avoid the gunfire he was pumping into the bodies around her.
He might as well have been using a cap gun. The effect was the same even if the bangs were louder. There were small tugs at the flesh of the dead as the bullets hit, but they didn't miss a step. Within a couple of seconds the policeman had disappeared in a mass of thin arms, legs, blue clothes.
Now there were shots from several directions. Flora reached the gates and ran past a SWAT unit where a policewoman in the front seat was shouting something about back-up into her radio. Flora ran on down the road and after a hundred metres saw Elvy hurrying along the muddy path.
The pistol shots were now distant, muffled cracks as if there was a New Year's Eve party somewhere far behind her. She caught up with her grandmother, took her hand and said, 'Come.'
As they walked quickly, hand-in-hand, back toward the gates an insight blossomed up inside Flora: It's too late.
Elvy pressed her hand harder, said, 'Someone. If only we can… how could 1… 1…'
We didn't know, Flora sent.
Yet another couple of SWAT vehicles came bouncing along the field in the direction of the gates. One pulled up next to them, and the front window wound down.
'Hey you! You're not allowed to be here!'
Flora stared at the gates. The dead were pouring out now, in the direction of the road, toward the city.
'For Chrissake,' came a voice from inside the vehicle. 'Jump in. Now!'
Flora looked at Elvy and for a couple of seconds they were able to share each other's thoughts. Elvy's great shame that she hadn't understood, that she hadn't done what she was supposed to. She didn't care what happened to her, she was old and this was her last chance to put something right. As for Flora, she knew that she would never be able to return to a normal life after that second inside Death.
They had to try.
They took a step away from the SWAT vehicle toward the dead, but at that moment a side door opened and a couple of officers jumped out and grabbed them.
'Are you deaf? You're not allowed here!'
They were manhandled onto the bus, turned over to more waiting arms that received them, held onto them. The door was pulled shut and locked. The armoured vehicle backed up a couple of metres, until the police officer next to the driver said, 'Take it once around.'
The driver asked what he meant and the man next to him gestured in a
circular motion at the horde of dead people approaching the car. The driver understood what he was getting at, gave a snort and stepped on the gas.
There was a clang of metal as they hit the dead, who were thrown wide by the vehicle ploughing through them. Through the side window, Flora saw the ones who had been hit stand up again.
She held her hands over her ears, sagged into Elvy's lap, but she felt the thud through her body whenever the car hit dead flesh.
It is over, she thought. It is over.
The Sea of Aland 23.30
Anna didn't care where they were. There were no islands in sight; even the Soderarrn lighthouse had disappeared below the horizon and they were floating down a silvery moon-river on an endless sea. The island of Aland was out there somewhere, and Finland beyond that, but these were names without significance. They were at sea; just at sea.
Light waves were clucking against the hull. Elias lay by her side. Everything was as it should be and if it was not, it no longer mattered. They were beyond, outside. They could go on floating for ever.
The sound that broke the silence was so wrong that at first Anna took it as a cosmic joke bestowed by the night: Eine kleine Nachtmusik, in an ugly electronic tone. She dug the cell phone out from under the blanket. Even though she had brought it in case of a situation like this, it seemed impossible that anyone could reach her out here: there was nothing here.
For a moment she was about to throw it overboard, the sound was so irritating. Then she came to her senses and pressed the talk button.
'Yes?'
A voice buzzing with tension on the other end. Or else it was simply that the reception was bad.
'Hello, my name is David Zetterberg. I'm trying to reach Gustav Mahler.'
Anna looked around. The light from the display had disturbed her night vision and she could no longer distinguish the line between sea and sky; they were hovering in space.
'He's… not here.'
'You'll have to excuse me, I have to talk to someone. He had a grandchild who… there is something I have to say.'
'You can say it to me.'
Anna listened to David's story, thanked him and turned off the phone. Then she sat there for a long time looking at Elias, pulled him up into her lap and laid her forehead against his.
Elias… I'm going to tell you something.…
She felt that Elias was listening. She related what she had just
been told.
You don't have to be afraid…
His voice echoed in her head: Are you sure?
Yes. I'm sure. Stay here until…. until it's time. Inside of me.
Through the blankets she felt his body slump together, becoming
dead weight. He went into her.
Mummy? What's it like there?
I don't know. I think you are…. light. Do you think you can fly?
Maybe. Yes, I think so.
A whining sound, intensifying, carried over the water, as if a ferry were approaching, but the only light came from the moon and the stars. The whining grew stronger, drawing closer, and Anna changed her mind. She had Elias with her, he was inside her again as he had been when he began, and she was no longer willing to give him up. At the moment she thought this, she felt Elias start to pull away from her.
No, no, my love. Stay. Stay. I'm sorry. Mummy, I'm
frightened.
Don't be afraid. I'm here with you.
The whining was in the dinghy now. From the corner of her left eye she saw a shadow slide across the moon. Something was sitting on the thwart. She could not look there.
Mummy, will we see each other again soon? Yes, my love.
Soon.
Elias was about to say something else, but his speech was going, becoming weaker as a white caterpillar broke free from his chest and a clump of
darkness reached out from where it was seated. At the very end of the clump there was a hook.
Anna cupped her hand around the caterpillar and picked it up, holding it there for a couple of seconds.
I will think of you always. Then she let him go.
The thought, so delicate, as hopeful as the northward journey of the light across the sky
in soft streaks like snail trails
or mussels sensing the bottom of the sea in the chest, mouth, hands
the heart, the beating heart
the cry of the brain.
MIA AJVIDE Cries of Flight