"We are the troll company, we don't let anyone go free!"
– Rune Andreasson, Bamse The Magic Forest
[popular Swedish children's comic book]
8 November
The Traneberg Bridge. When it was unveiled in 1934 it was hailed as a minor miracle of engineering. The longest concrete single-span bridge in the world. One single mighty arc that soared between Kungsholmen and the western suburbs, which at that time consisted of the little garden cities of Bromma and Appelviken. The single-family-house movement's prefabricated prototypes were in Angby.
But the modern was already on its way. The first real suburbs of three-story apartment buildings were already finished in Traneberg and Abra-hamsberg, and the state had bought up large areas further west in order to start constructing everything that would one day become Vallingby, Hasselby and Blackeberg.
To all this, the Traneberg Bridge was the link. Almost everyone who traveled to or from the western suburbs used the Traneberg Bridge.
Already in the 1960s reports had started to come in about how the bridge was slowly disintegrating as a result of the heavy traffic it was subjected to. It was renovated and reinforced from time to time but the large-scale renovation and new construction that came up in talks was still a thing of the future.
So on the morning of the eighth of November 1981 the bridge looked tired. A life-weary senior, sorrowfully pondering the days when the heavens were brighter, the clouds lighter, and when it was still the longest single-span concrete bridge in the world.
The snow had started to melt toward morning and snow-slush ran down into cracks in the bridge. The city didn't dare to salt it because it could eat away further at the aging concrete.
There wasn't much traffic at this time of day, particularly not on a Sunday morning. The subway had stopped running for the night and the occasional drivers who passed by were either longing for their beds or to return to their beds.
Benny Molin was an exception. Sure, he was looking forward to his bed at home but he was probably too happy to be able to sleep.
Eight times now he had met with various women through the personal ads, but Betty, whom he had arranged to meet on Saturday night was the first… that he had clicked with.
This was going to be something. Both of them knew it.
They had doubled over with laughter at how ridiculous it sounded: "Benny and Betty." Like a comedic duo, but what can you do? And if they had kids, what would they call them? Lenny and Netty?
Yes, they had had a lot of fun together. They had sat in her place in Kungsholmen, talking about their worlds, trying to fit their puzzle pieces together, with pretty good results. Toward morning there were sort of only two alternatives for what to do next.
And Benny had chosen what he thought was the right one, even though it was hard. He had said good-bye, with the promise of meeting up again Sunday night, then got into his car and driven home to Bromma while he sang "Can't Help Falling in Love" out loud.
So Benny was not someone who had any energy to spare for complaining about, or even noticing, the miserable state of the Traneberg Bridge this Sunday morning. For him it was simply the bridge to paradise, to love.
He had just arrived at the end of the bridge on the Traneberg side and started in on the refrain for perhaps the tenth time when a blue figure turned up in the beam of his headlights, in the middle of the road.
He had time to think: Don't jump on the brakes! before he took his foot off the accelerator and jerked the steering wheel to the side, swerving to the left when there were only about five meters between him and the person. He caught a glimpse of a blue coat and a pair of white legs before the corner of the car banged into the concrete barrier between the lanes.
The scraping sound was so loud it deafened him as the car was pressed up against and forced down along the barrier. The side view mirror was torn off and fluttered away, and the car door on his side was pushed in until it touched his hip before the car was flung out into the middle of the road again.
He tried to ward it off, but the car skidded over to the other side and hit the railing of the pedestrian walkway. The other side view mirror was knocked off and flew away over the bridge railing, reflecting the lights of the bridge up into the sky. He braked carefully and the next skid was less violent; the car only nudged up against the concrete barrier.
After approximately a hundred meters he managed to stop the car. He exhaled, sat still with his hands in his lap and the engine running. He had a bloody taste in his mouth, had bitten his lip.
What kind of lunatic was that back there?
He looked up into the rearview mirror and in the yellowish light of the street lamps he could see the person stagger on down in the middle of the lane as if nothing had happened. That made him angry. A nutcase, sure, but there were limits, damn it.
He tried to open the door on his side, but couldn't. The lock must have gotten smashed in. He took off his seat belt and crawled over onto the passenger side. Before he wriggled out of the car he turned on the hazard lights. He stood next to the car, his arms folded, waiting.
Saw that the person making his way across the bridge was dressed in some kind of hospital gown and nothing more. Bare feet, bare legs. Would have to see if it was possible to talk any sense into him.
Him?
The figure got closer. The slush splashed up around the bare feet; he walked as if he had a thread attached to his chest, inexorably pulling him along. Benny took a step toward him and stopped. The person was maybe ten meters away now and Benny could clearly see his… face.
Benny gasped, and steadied himself against the car. Then he quickly wriggled back into it through the passenger side, put the car in first gear and drove away so fast the slush sprayed out from his back wheels and probably hit… that thing on the road.
Once he was back in his apartment, he poured himself a good-sized whisky, drank about half. Then he called the police. Told them what he had seen, what had happened. When he had drunk the last of the whisky and started to lean towards hitting the hay after all, the mobilization was in full swing.
They were searching all of Judarn forest. Five police dogs, twenty officers. Even one helicopter, unusual for this type of search.
One wounded, dazed man. A single canine unit should have been able to track him down.
But the stakes were raised in part because of the high media profile of the case (two officers had been assigned simply to handle all the reporters crowding around Weibull's nursery next to the Akeshov subway station) and they wanted to demonstrate that the police were putting in the maximum effort even on a Sunday morning.
And in part it was because they had found Benke Edwards.
That is to say, they assumed it was Benke Edwards, since they had found a wedding band with the name Gunilla engraved on it.
Gunilla was Benke's wife; his coworkers knew that. No one could bring themselves to call her. Tell her that he was dead, but that they still could not be completely sure it was him. Ask her if she knew of any defining bodily characteristics on, say… the lower half of his body?
The pathologist who had arrived at seven o'clock in the morning in order to work on the body of the ritual killer found himself with a new case. If he had been presented with Benke Edwards' remains without knowing any of the circumstances he would have guessed that the body had lain outside for one or two days in severe cold, during which time it would appear the body had been mutilated by rats, foxes, perhaps wolverines and bears-if "mutilate" is even the appropriate word to use in the context of animals. At any rate, larger predators could have torn off pieces of flesh in this way, and rodents could have been responsible for damage to protrusions such as nose, ears, and fingers.
The pathologist's hasty, preliminary assessment that went out to the
police was the other reason for the considerable mobilization on their part. The offender was determined to be extremely violent, in official terms.
Completely fucking crazy, in other words.
That the man was still alive was nothing short of a miracle. Not a miracle of the kind the Vatican would want to wave their incense at, but a miracle nonetheless. He had been a vegetable before the fall from the tenth story. Now he was up and walking and worse.
But he couldn't exactly be in great shape. The weather was a little milder now, of course, but it was only a few degrees above freezing and the man was dressed in a hospital gown. He had no accomplices as far as the police knew, and it was simply not possible for him to remain hidden in the forest for more than a few hours.
The telephone call from Benny Molin had come in almost an hour after he had seen the man on the Traneberg Bridge. But a few minutes later they had received an additional call from an older woman.
She had been out for a morning walk with her dog when she had spotted a man in a hospital gown in the vicinity of the Akeshov stables where the King's sheep were housed in the winter. She had immediately gone home and called the police, thinking the sheep were potentially in danger.
Ten minutes later the first patrol car had turned up and the first thing the officers did was check the stables, nervous, their guns out and ready.
The sheep had become restless and before the officers were done combing the building the whole place was a seething mass of anxious, woolly bodies, loud bleating, and an inhuman screeching that drew even more police.
During their search of the sheep pen, a number of sheep escaped into the walkway in the middle, and when the police finally determined that the place was clean and left the building-their ears ringing-a ram managed to slip out the front door. An older officer with farmers in the family threw himself over the ram and grabbed him by his horns, dragging him back to the pen.
It was only after he had finished coaxing the animal back that he realized some of the bright flashes he had seen out of the corner of his eye during his quick action had been photoflashes. He had made the erroneous assumption that the matter was too serious for the press to want to
use such a picture. Shortly thereafter, however, they managed to erect a base for the media, outside the perimeter of the search area.
It was now half past seven in the morning and dawn was creeping in under dripping trees. The search for the lone lunatic was well-organized and in full swing. The police felt assured of a resolution before lunchtime.
Another couple of hours would go by with negative results from the infrared camera of the helicopter, and from the secretions-sensitive noses of the dogs, before the speculation started that the man was no longer alive. That they were searching for a corpse.
When the first pale dawn light trickled in through the tiny gaps in the blinds and struck Virginia's palm like a burning hot light bulb, she only wanted one thing: to die. Even so she instinctively pulled her hand away and crawled further back into the room.
Her skin was cut in more than thirty places. There was blood all over the apartment.
Several times during the night she had sliced her arteries in order to drink but had not had time to suck or lick everything that ran out. It had landed on the floor, on the table, chairs. The large rug in the living room looked like someone had butchered a deer on it.
The degree of satisfaction and relief lessened each time she opened a new wound, each time she drank a mouthful of her own rapidly thinning blood. Towards morning she was a whimpering mass of abstinence and anguish. Anguish because she knew what had to be done if she was to live.
The realization had come to her gradually, grown to certainty. Another person's blood would make her… healthy. And she couldn't manage to take her own life. Probably it was not even possible; the cuts she made in her skin with the fruit knife healed with unnatural swiftness. However hard and deep she cut, the bleeding stopped within a minute. After an hour the scar tissue was already visible.
And anyway…
She had sensed something.
It was toward morning, when she was sitting on a kitchen chair and sucking blood from a cut in the crook of her arm-the second one in the same spot-that she was suddenly pulled into the depths of her body and caught sight of it.
The infection.
She didn't really see it, of course, but suddenly she had an ever-increasing perception of what it was. It was like being pregnant and getting an ultrasound, looking at the screen showing you how your belly was filled with, in this case, not a child but a large, writhing snake. That this was what you were carrying.
Because what she had realized at that moment was that the infection had its own life, its own force, completely independent of her body. That the infection would live on even if she did not. The mother-to-be could die of shock at the ultrasound but no one would notice anything because the snake would take control of the body instead.
Suicide would make no difference.
The only thing the infection seemed to fear was sunlight. The pale light on her hand had hurt more that the deepest cut.
For a long time she sat curled up in a corner of the living room, watching how the dawn light through the slats of the blinds laid a grate over the soiled rug. Thought about her grandson Ted. How he had crawled over to that place where the afternoon sun shone in onto the floor and fallen asleep in the pool of sunlight with his thumb in his mouth.
The naked, soft skin, the tender skin that you would only have to…
What am I thinking!
Virginia flinched, staring vacantly into space. She had seen Ted, and she had imagined that she…
No!
She hit herself in the head. Hit and hit until the picture was crushed. But she would never see him again. Could never see anyone she loved ever again.
I am never again to see anyone I love.
Virginia forced her body to straighten up, crawled slowly over to the sun-grate. The infection protested and wanted to pull her back, but she was stronger, still had control over her own body. The light stung her eyes, the bars of the grate burned her corneas like glowing-hot steel wire.
Burn! Burn up!
Her right arm was covered in scars, dried blood. She stretched it into the light.
She could not have imagined it.
What the light had done to her on Saturday was a caress. Now a blowtorch started up, directed at her skin. After one second the skin was chalk-white. After two seconds it started to smoke. After three seconds a blister formed, blackened, and burst with a hiss. The fourth second she pulled her arm back and crawled sobbing into the bedroom.
The stench of burnt flesh poisoned the air. She didn't dare look at her arm as she slithered up into her bed.
Rest.
But the bed…
Even with the blinds drawn there was too much light in the bedroom. Even if she pulled the covers over her she felt too exposed on the bed. Her ears perceived every smallest morning noise coming from the house around her, and every noise was a potential threat. Someone walked over a floor above her. She flinched, turned her head in the direction of the sound, listened. A drawer was pulled out, the clinking of metal one floor up.
Coffee spoons.
She knew from the delicateness of the sound that it was… coffee spoons. Saw before her the velvet-clad case with silver coffee spoons that had been her grandmother's and that she had been given when her mother moved into the nursing home. How she had opened that case, looked at the spoons, and realized that they had never been used.
Virginia thought about that now as she slid down out of bed, pulled the covers off with her, crawled over to the double closet, opened its doors. On the floor of the closet there was an extra duvet and a couple of blankets.
She had felt a kind of sadness, looking at the spoons. Spoons that had been lying in their case for perhaps sixty years without anyone ever picking them up, holding them, using them.
More sounds around her, the building coming to life. She didn't hear them anymore when she pulled out the duvet and the blankets and wrapped them around her, crawled into the closet and shut the doors. It was pitch black in there. She pulled the duvet and blankets over her head, curling up like a caterpillar in a double cocoon.
Never ever.
On parade, standing at attention in their velvet bed, waiting. Fragile little coffee spoons of silver. She rolled over with the fabric of the blankets tight over her face.
Who will get them now?
Her daughter. Yes. Lena would get them, and she would use them to feed Ted. Then the spoons would be happy. Ted would eat mashed potatoes from the spoons. That would be good.
She lay completely still, like a stone, calm spreading through her body. She had time to formulate one last thought before she sank into rest. Why isn't it hot?
With the blankets over her face, wrapped in heavy cloth, it should be hot and sweaty around her head. The question floated sleepily around a large black room, finally landing on a very simple answer.
Because I have not been breathing for several minutes.
And not even now, when she was conscious of the fact, did she feel any need to. No feeling of suffocation, no lack of oxygen. She didn't need to breathe anymore. That was all.
The mass started at eleven o'clock but Tommy and his mom, Yvonne, were already on the platform in Blackeberg at a quarter past ten, waiting for the subway.
Staffan, who was singing in the choir, had already informed Yvonne what the theme of today's mass was going to be. Yvonne had told Tommy about it, cautiously asking if he wanted to go and to her surprise he had accepted.
The theme was about the youth of today.
Taking their starting point from a place in the Old Testament that described the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the ministers had-with Staffan's help-crafted a series of texts around the idea of guiding stars. Something a young person in today's society could, so to speak, hold up before him, something he could use to guide him through his desert wanderings, and so forth.
Tommy had read this particular passage in the Bible and then said he was happy to attend.
So when the subway came thundering out of the tunnel from Iceland
Square this morning, propelling a pillar of air in front of it that caused Yvonne's hair to fly around, she was completely happy. She looked at her son, who was standing next to her with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jacket.
It's going to be alright.
Yes. Simply the fact that he was willing to come to church with her was big enough. But this also pointed to the fact that he had accepted Staffan, didn't it?
They got on the subway car and sat down next to an old man, across from each other. Before they got on the train they had been talking about what they had heard on the radio this morning: the search for the ritual killer in the Judarn forest. Yvonne leaned forward to Tommy.
"Do you think they're going to catch him?"
Tommy shrugged.
"Probably. But it's a big forest and all that… have to ask Staffan."
"I just think the whole thing is so horrible. What if he comes here?"
"What would he do here? But, sure. What's he going to do in Judarn? He might as well come here."
"Ugh."
The older man stretched, made a movement like he was shaking something off his shoulders, said: "You have to ask yourself if someone like that is even human."
Tommy looked up at the man. Yvonne said, "Hm," and smiled at him, which the man clearly took as an encouragement.
"I mean… first those terrible… deeds, and then… in that condition, a fall of that magnitude. No, I tell you: he can't be human, and I hope the police shoot him on sight."
Tommy nodded, pretending to agree.
"Hang him in the nearest tree."
The man was getting excited.
"Exactly. That's what I've been saying this whole time. They should have given him a lethal injection or something while he was in the hospital, like you do with crazy dogs. Then we wouldn't have to be sitting here in a state of constant terror and be witness to this panicky search paid for with the taxpayer's money. A helicopter. Yes, I went by it on the train right by Akeshov and they had a helicopter up there. Oh, they can afford that
alright. But when it comes to paying out pensions large enough to live on, after a lifetime of service to society, that they can't do. But to send a helicopter up there circling around, scaring the animals out of their wits…"
The monologue continued all the way to Vallingby where Yvonne and Tommy got off, while the man stayed on. The train was going to turn here, so he was probably going back the way he came in order to get yet another glimpse of the helicopter, maybe continue his monologue with a different audience.
Staffan was waiting for them outside the brick heap that was the St. Thomas church.
He was wearing a suit and a pale yellow-striped tie that made Tommy think of the picture from the war: "A Swedish Tiger." Staffan's face lit up when he saw them, and he walked forward to greet them. He embraced Yvonne and held his hand out to Tommy, who shook it.
"I'm so glad both of you wanted to come. Especially you, Tommy. What made you decide?…"
"I just wanted to see what it was like."
"Mm. Well, I hope you'll like it. That we'll get to see you here again."
Yvonne stroked Tommy's shoulder.
"He read that part in the Bible… the passage you're going to be talking about."
"Has he, indeed? Well, that's very impressive… by the way, Tommy. I haven't found that trophy yet. But… I think maybe we should just write it off, what do you say?"
"Mmm."
Staffan waited for Tommy to say something, but when he didn't, Staffan turned back to Yvonne.
"I should be out in Akeshov right now, but… I didn't want to miss this. But as soon as it's over I'll have to go, so we'll have to…"
Tommy walked into the church.
There were only a few older people, with their backs to him, sitting in the pews. To judge by their hats they were all old ladies.
The church was lit up by a yellow light coming from lamps that were suspended along either wall. In the walkway down between the pews there was a red carpet all the way to the altar, woven with geometric figures; a stone bench with some flower arrangements. Above all that there was a large wooden cross with a modernist Jesus. His facial expression could easily be interpreted as a taunting smile.
At the very back of the church, by the entrance where Tommy was, there was a stand with brochures, a box to put money in, and a christening font. Tommy walked up to the font and looked in.
Perfect.
When he first saw it he thought it looked too good to be true, that it was probably filled with water. But it wasn't. The whole christening font was carved out of one large piece of stone that reached up to Tommy's waist. The bowl part was dark gray, had a rough surface and did not have a single drop of water in it.
OK, let's do it.
He pulled out a two-liter plastic bag from his pocket, filled with a white powder. Looked around. No one even looking in his direction. He made a hole in the bag with his finger and let its contents run down into the christening font.
Then he tucked the empty bag back in his pocket and walked back out, while he tried to figure out a good explanation for why he didn't want to sit up next to his mom in church, why he wanted to sit way back, next to the christening font.
Could say he wanted to be able to leave without disturbing anyone, if it got too boring. That was good. That sounded…
Perfect.
Oskar opened his eyes and was filled with anxiety. He didn't know where he was. The room around him was only dimly lit and he didn't recognize the bare walls.
He was lying on a couch, a blanket pulled over him that smelled a little.
The walls floated in front of his eyes, swimming freely in the air while he tried to put them in their place, organize them so they made a room he recognized. He couldn't.
He pulled the blanket up to his nose. A mildewy smell filled his nostrils and he tried to calm down, stop working on the room and remember instead.
Yes, now he remembered.
Dad. Janne. Hitching a ride. Eli. The couch. Cobwebs.
He stared up at the ceiling. The dusty cobwebs were still up there, hard to discern in the half-light. He had fallen asleep with Eli next to him on the couch. How long ago was that? Was it morning?
The windows were covered in blankets, but in the corners he could make out a faint outline of gray light. He pulled off the blanket and walked over to the balcony window, lifted the corner of the blanket. The blinds were drawn. He angled them open and yes, it was morning out there.
His head ached and the light stung his eyes. He drew his breath in sharply, dropped the blanket, and felt his neck with both hands. No. Of course not. She had said she would never…
But where is she?
He looked around the room; his eyes stopped at the closed door to the room where Eli had changed her shirt. He took a few steps toward the door, stopped himself. The door lay in shadow. He balled his hands up, sucked on a knuckle.
What if she really… sleeps in a coffin.
Silly. Why would she do that? Why do vampires do that anyway? Because they're dead. And Eli said she wasn't…
But what if…
He sucked on his knuckle, ran his tongue over it. Her kiss. The table with food in his vision. Just the fact that she could make him see that. And… her teeth. A predator's teeth.
If only it wasn't so dark in here.
The switch for the overhead lamp was next to the door. He pushed on it, thinking nothing would happen, but yes, it went on. He screwed up his eyes in the strong light, let his eyes get used to it before he turned to the door, rested his hand on the door handle.
The light didn't help at all. In fact it was only more horrible now that the door was only a normal door. Like the door to his own room. Exactly the same. The door handle felt the same. What if she was lying in there? Maybe her arms neatly folded across her chest?
Ihave to look.
He pushed the handle down, tentatively; it only offered light resistance. The door must not be locked, then it would only have glided down.
He pushed it down all the way and the door opened, the gap widened. The room inside was dark.
Wait!
Would she be hurt by the light if he opened the door?
No, yesterday she had sat next to the floor lamp without it seeming to bother her. But the overhead light was stronger and perhaps there was a… special kind of bulb in the floor lamp, a light that… vampires could withstand.
Ridiculous. The specialty store for vampire lamps.
And why would she have let the overhead light remain in place if it could be… harmful to her?
Even so, he opened the door cautiously, allowing the cone of light to slowly widen into the room. It was as sparsely furnished as the living room. A bed and a pile of clothes, nothing more. The bed only had a sheet and a pillow. The blanket he had slept with on the couch must have come from there. There was a note taped to the wall next to the bed.
The Morse code.
So it was here she had been lying when she…
He drew a deep breath. He had managed to forget it.
My room is on the other side of this wall.
Yes, he was two meters from his own bed, from his own normal life.
He lay down on the bed, had the impulse to tap out a message on the wall. To Oskar. On the other side. What should he say?
W.H.E.R.E. A.R.E. Y.O.U.
He sucked on his knuckle again. He was here. It was Eli who was gone.
He felt dizzy, confused. Let his head flop down onto the pillow, his face turned out facing the room. The pillow smelled funny. Like the blanket, but stronger. A stale, greasy smell. He looked at the pile of clothes a few meters from the bed.
It's so repulsive.
He didn't want to be here anymore. It was completely quiet and empty in the apartment, and everything was so… abnormal. His gaze traveled over the pile of clothes, stopped at the closets that covered the whole length of the opposite wall, all the way to the door. Two double closets, one single.
There.
He pulled his legs up against his stomach, staring at the closed closet
doors. He didn't want to. His stomach hurt. A shooting pain in his lower belly.
Had to pee.
He stood up from the bed, walked to the door with his eyes glued to the closet doors. He had the same kind of closets in his room and knew she could easily fit inside. That's where she was and he didn't want to see anymore.
Even the light in the hall worked. He turned it on and walked along the short corridor to the bathroom. The door to the bathroom was locked. The colored strip above the handle was red. He knocked on the door.
"Eli?"
Not a sound. He knocked again.
"Eli? Are you in there?"
Nothing. But when he said her name aloud he remembered that it was wrong. That was the last thing she had said as they lay together on the couch. That her real name was… Elias. Ellas. A boy's name. Was Eli a boy? They had… kissed and slept in the same bed and…
Oskar pressed his hands against the bathroom door, rested his forehead against his hands. He tried to think. Hard. And he didn't get it. That he could somehow accept that she was a vampire., but the idea that she was somehow a boy, that that could be… harder.
He knew the word. Fag. Fucking fag. Stuff that Jonny said. To think it was worse to be gay than to be a…
He knocked on the door again.
"Elias?"
A weird feeling in his stomach as he said it. No, he wasn't going to get used to it. She… His name was Eli. But it was too much. Regardless of what Eli was, it was too much. He just couldn't. Nothing about her was normal.
He lifted his forehead from his hands, held the pee back firmly.
Steps outside in the stairwell and shortly thereafter a sound of the mailbox opening, a thud. He walked out there and looked at what it was. Advertising.
Ground beef. 14:90 per kilo.
Garish red letters and numbers. He picked up the advertisements in his hand with dawning comprehension; pressed his eyes against the keyhole while footsteps echoed in the stairwell; more bangs as additional mail flaps were opened and shut.
After half a minute his mom passed by the keyhole, on her way down. He only managed to catch a glimpse of her hair, the collar of her coat, but he knew it was her. Who else would it be?
Delivering the advertising packets in his absence.
With the flyers clenched in his hand, Oskar sank down into a crouch by the front door, leaned his forehead against his knees. He didn't cry. The need to pee was like a stinging nest of ants in his groin that in some way prevented him.
But the thought ran through his head over and over:
I don't exist. I don't exist.
Lacke had spent the night worrying. Ever since he left Virginia, a sneaking anxiety had been intent on gnawing a hole in his stomach. He had spent about an hour with the regulars at the Chinese restaurant Saturday night, trying to share his concerns, but the others wanted none of it. Lacke had sensed things could get out of hand, that there was a danger he would get really ticked off, so he left.
Those guys weren't worth shit.
Sure, it wasn't exactly news to him, but he had thought that… well, what the hell had he thought?
That we were all in on it.
That at least one other person also had the feeling that something damn creepy was going on. There was so much talk, big words, especially from Morgan, but when it came down to it, no one had the gumption to lift a finger to actually do something.
Not that even Lacke knew what to do, but he was at least worried about it. If that helped. He had lain awake most of the night, tried to read a little from Dostoevsky's The Demons but kept forgetting what happened on the previous page, the previous sentence, and he gave up.
But the night brought something good with it; he had made up his mind about something.
Sunday morning he had gone over to Virginia's place, knocked on the door. No one opened and he had assumed that… hoped that she had gone to the hospital. On his way back home he walked past two women
who were talking, heard something about a murderer that the police were searching for in the Judarn forest.
There's a murderer behind every damn hush these days, for god's sake. Now the papers have something else to jump all over.
About ten days had gone by since they captured the Vallingby killer and the newspapers had grown tired about speculating about his identity and possible motive.
In the articles that mentioned him there had been a strong streak of… ghoulish delight. With painstaking care they had described the murderer's present condition and how he was unlikely to leave his hospital bed for six months. A separate factual box about hydrochloric acid and what it could do to the body, so you could really revel in how much it must hurt.
No, Lacke took no pleasure in that kind of thing. Just thought it was creepy how people got all worked up about someone getting their "just deserts" and all that. He himself was absolutely anti-death penalty. Not because he had some "modern" sense justice, no. More like a premodern one.
His reasoning went something like this: if someone kills my child, then I kill that person. Dostoevsky talked a lot about forgiveness, mercy. Sure. From society's perspective, absolutely. But as a parent to the child it is my moral right to end the life of the one who did it. That society in turn gives me eight years in jail or something is a different matter.
That wasn't what Dostoevsky meant, and Lacke knew it. But he and Fyodor simply didn't see eye to eye on this point.
Lacke thought about these things as he walked home to Ibsengatan. Once he was home he realized he was hungry and cooked up a batch of quick macaroni, ate them from the pan with a spoon, squeezed some ketchup on them. While he was pouring water into the pan to make it easier to wash up later he heard something in the mail slot.
Advertisements. He didn't care about that, had no money anyway.
No, that was just it.
He wiped off the kitchen table with the dishrag, went and got his dad's stamp collection from the sideboard, which he had also inherited from his father, and that had been hell to transport back to Blackeberg. He put the album down on the kitchen table, opened it.
There they were. Four unmarked specimens of the first stamp ever to
be issued in Norway. He leaned over the album and squinted at the lion, raised up on its hind legs against a light blue background.
Incredible.
They had cost four shillings when they were issued in 1855. Now they were worth… more. That they were connected in two pairs made them even more valuable.
That was what he had made up his mind about last night, while he tossed and turned between his smoke-saturated sheets; that it was time. This thing with Virginia had been the last straw. Then, on top of that, the complete incomprehension on the part of the guys, his realization that: you know, these are not people worth hanging around with.
He was going to leave this place, and so was Virginia.
Depressed market or not, he would get about three hundred thousand for the stamps, plus two hundred for the apartment. Then they would get a house in the country. Or alright: two houses. A little farm. There was enough money for that and it would work out. As soon as Virginia had recovered he would present her with the idea, and he thought that… he was almost certain that she would agree to it, would love it in fact.
So that was how it was going to be.
Lacke felt calmer now. He saw everything clearly. What he would do today, and in the future. It would all work out.
Filled with pleasant thoughts, he wandered into the bedroom, lay down on top of the bed to rest for five minutes, and fell asleep.
We see them on streets and squares and we find ourselves standing in before them at a loss, saying to ourselves: what can we do?"
Tommy had never been this bored in his whole life. The service had only been going for half an hour and he thought he would have had more fun if he had sat in a chair staring at the wall.
"Blessed be" and "Hallelujah!" and "Joy of the Lord," but why did they all sit there staring in front of them like they were watching a qualifying match between Bulgaria and Romania? It didn't mean anything to them, that stuff they read in the book, that they sang about. Didn't seem to
mean anything to the minister either. Just something he had to get through in order to collect his paycheck.
Now the sermon was underway, at least.
If the minister mentioned that place in the Bible, that stuff Tommy had read, then he would do it. Otherwise he wouldn't.
Let him decide.
Tommy checked his pocket. Everything was ready and the christening font was only three meters behind him from where he sat in the back row. His mom was sitting in the very front, no doubt so she could twinkle at Staffan as he sang his meaningless songs with his hands loosely clasped in front of his police dick.
Tommy clenched his teeth. He hoped the minister was going to say it.
"We see a lost look in their eyes, the look of someone who has wandered astray and is unable to find his way back home. When I see a young person like this, I always think about the Israelites' exodus from Egypt."
Tommy stiffened. But maybe the minister was not going to mention that exact place. Maybe it would be something about the Red Sea. Still, he took the stuff out of his pocket; a lighter and a small tinder cube. His hands were trembling.
"For it is thus we have to view these young people who sometimes leave us so perplexed. They are wandering in a desert of unanswered questions and unclear future prospects. But there is a great difference between the people of Israel and the young people of today…"
Go on, say it…
"The people of Israel had someone leading them. You are probably familiar with the words of the Scripture. 'And the Lord went before them, by day in a pillar of cloud,
Public interest in the police search of Judarn forest was at an all-time high. The evening news realized they would not be able to print the composite picture of the murderer one more time. They had been hoping for images of an apprehended suspect but in the absence of this both evening papers ran the sheep picture.
The Expressen even put it on the front page.
Say what you will, there was undeniable drama in that photograph. The police officer's face twisted by exertion, the splayed limbs and open mouth of the sheep. You could almost hear the panting, the bleating.
One of the papers had even tried to reach the royal court for comment, since it was the King's sheep that the officer was manhandling in this way. The King and Queen had only two days earlier inweet smell.
He had done this a bunch of times: burned saltpeter and sugar. But rarely in this quantity, and never inside. He was excited to find out what the effect would be without a wind to disperse the fumes. He interlaced his fingers, pressing his hands hard together.
Bror Ardelius, temporary minister of the Vallingby parish, was the first to notice it. He took it for what it was: smoke from the christening font. He had been waiting for a sign from the Lord his whole life and it was undeniably the case that when he saw the first pillar of smoke he thought for a moment,
Oh, My Lord. At last.
But the thought did not last long. That the feeling of it being a miracle left him so quickly, he took as a proof that it was indeed no miracle, no sign. It was simply this: smoke from the christening font. But why?
The janitor, whom he was not on particularly good terms with, had decided to play a practical joke. The water in the font had started to… boil.
The problem was that he was in the middle of a sermon and could not spend a long time thinking about these questions. So Bror Ardelius did what most people do in these situations: he carried on as if nothing had happened and hoped the problem would resolve itself on its own. He cleared his throat and tried to remember what he had just said.
The works of the Lord. Something about seeking strength in the works of the Lord. One example.
He glanced down at the notes on his paper. He had written: Barefoot.
Barefoot? What did I mean by that? That the people of Israel walked barefoot or that Jesus… wandered for a long time…
He looked up and saw that the smoke had thickened, formed a pillar that rose up from the font to the ceiling. What was the last thing he had said? Yes, now he remembered. The words were still hanging in the air.
"And the strength for this we can take from the works of the Lord."
That was an acceptable conclusion. Not great, not what he had been planning, but acceptable. He gave the congregation a somewhat bewildered smile and nodded to Birgit, who led the choir.
The choir, eight people, stood up as one and walked up to the podium. When they turned to the congregation he could tell by their expressions that they also saw the smoke. Blessed be the Lord; it had occurred to him that perhaps it was only he who could see it.
Birgit looked at him for guidance and he made a gesture with his hand: go on, get started.
The choir started to sing.
Lead me, God, lead me into righteousness. Let mine eyes behold Thy path…
One of old Wesley's beautiful compositions. Bror Ardelius wished he had been able to enjoy the beauty of the song, but the pillar of cloud was starting to worry him. Thick white smoke was billowing up out of the christening font and something inside the basin itself was burning with a blue-white flame, smoking and sputtering. A sweetish smell reached his nostrils and the members of the congregation started to turn around in order to figure out where the crackling sound was coming from.
For only you, my Lord,
offer my soul
peace and security…
One of the women in the choir started to cough. The members of the congregation turned their heads from the smoking font to Bror Ardelius in order to receive instruction from him as to how they should behave, if this was a part of the service.
More people started to cough, holding handkerchiefs or sleeves in front of their mouths, noses. A thin haze had started to form inside the
church, and through this haze Bror Ardelius saw someone get up from the very last row and run out the door.
Yes, that is the only reasonable thing to do.
He leaned toward the microphone.
"Yes, well, there has been a small… mishap and I think it is best if we… clear the building."
Already at the word "mishap" Staffan left the podium and started walking toward the exit with quick, controlled steps. He got it. It was Yvonne's hopeless delinquent of a kid who had done this. Even now, as he was walking down from the podium he was trying to control himself, because he sensed that if he got hold of Tommy right now he would give him a good hiding.
Of course this was exactly what the young hooligan needed; it was exactly the kind of guidance he was lacking.
Pillar of cloud come help me. A good spanking is what this kid sorely needs.
But Yvonne wouldn't accept it, as things stood right now. Once they were married things would be different. Then he would, God so help him, take on the task of disciplining Tommy. But first and foremost he would get ahold of him right now. Shake him up a little bit, at the very least.
Staffan didn't get very far. Bror Ardelius' words from the podium had worked like a starting gun on the members of the congregation, who had only been waiting for his go-ahead in order to stampede out of the church. Halfway down the aisle Staffan found himself blocked by little old ladies who were hurrying toward the exit with grim determination.
His right hand flew to his hip but he stopped it halfway, clenched it into a fist. Even if he had had his baton this would hardly have been a good time to use it.
The smoke production in the font was starting to die down but the church was now full of a thick haze that smelled of candy and chemicals. The exit doors were wide open and through the haze you could see a strong rectangle of morning light.
The congregation moved toward the light, coughing.
There was a single wooden chair in the kitchen, nothing more. Oskar pulled it up to the sink, stood on it, and peed into the drain while he had water running out of the tap. When he was done he put the chair back. It looked strange in the otherwise empty kitchen. Like something in a museum.
What does she keep it for?
He looked around. Above the fridge there was a row of cabinets you could only reach by standing on the chair. He pulled it over and steadied himself by putting a hand on the refrigerator door handle. His stomach rumbled. He was hungry.
Without thinking more about it, he opened the fridge in order to see what there was. Not much. An open carton of milk, half a packet of bread. Butter and cheese. Oskar put his hand out for the milk.
But… Eli…
He stood there with the carton of milk in his hand, blinked. This didn't add up. Did she eat real food as well? Yes. She must. He took the milk carton out of the fridge and put it on the counter. In the kitchen cabinet above the counter there was almost nothing. Two plates, two glasses. He took a glass and poured milk into it.
And then it hit him. With the cold milk glass in his hand it finally hit him, with full force.
She drinks blood.
Yesterday evening, in his tangle of sleepiness and sense of detachment from the world, in the dark, everything had somehow felt possible. But now in the kitchen, where no blankets hung in the window and the blinds let in a weak morning light, with a glass of milk in his hand it seemed so… beyond anything he could comprehend.
Like: If you have milk and bread in your fridge you must be a human being.
He took a mouthful of milk and immediately spit it out. It was sour. He smelled the rest that was in the glass. Yes, definitely bad. He poured it out into the sink, rinsed the glass out, and then drank some water in order to get the taste out of his mouth. Looked at the date on the carton.
USE BY 28 OCTOBER.
The milk was ten days too old. Oskar had a realization.
The old guy's milk.
The refrigerator door was still open. The old guy's food.
Revolting. Totally revolting.
Oskar slammed the door shut. What had that old guy been here for anyway? What had he and Eli… Oskar shivered.
She has killed him.
Yes. Eli must have kept the old guy around in order to be able to… drink from him. To use him like a living blood bank. That's what she did. But why had the old guy agreed to it? And //she had killed him, where was the body? Oskar glanced up at the high kitchen cabinets. And suddenly he didn't want to be in the kitchen anymore. Didn't want to stay in the apartment at all. He walked out of the kitchen, through the hall. The closed bathroom door.
She's in there.
He hurried into the living room, collected his bag. The Walkman was on the table. He would have to buy new headphones, that was all. When he picked up the Walkman in order to put it into his bag he saw the note. It was lying on the coffee table, at the same height as his head had been resting.
Hi. Hope you've slept well. I'm also going to sleep now. I'm in the bathroom. Don't try to go in there, please. I'm trusting you. I don't know what to write. I hope you can like me even though you know what I am. I like you. A lot. You're lying here on the couch right now, snoring. Please. Don't be afraid of me.
Please please please don't be afraid of me.
Do you want to meet me tonight? Write so on this note if you do.
If you write No I'll move tonight. Probably have to do that soon anyway. But if you write Yes I'll hang around for a while longer. I don't know what I should write. I'm alone. Probably more alone than you can imagine, I think. Or perhaps you can.
Sorry I broke your music machine. Take the money if you want. I have a lot. Don't be afraid of me. There's no reason for you to be. Maybe you know that. I hope you know that. I like you so very much.
Yours, Eli
P.S. Feel free to stay. But if you leave make sure the door locks behind you.
Oskar read the note several times. Then he picked up the pen next to it. He looked around the empty room, Eli's life. The bills she had tried to give him were still lying on the table, scrunched up. He took one thousand kronor bill, put it in his pocket.
He looked for a long time at the space on the page under Eli's name. Then he lowered the pen and wrote in letters as tall as the space
YES.
He put the pen down, got up, and slipped the Walkman into his bag. He turned around one last time and looked at the by-now upside-down letters.
YES.
Then he shook his head, dug the thousand kronor bill out of his pocket, and put it back on the table. When he was out in the stairwell he checked that the door had locked securely behind him. He pulled on it several times.
From the Daily Update, 16:
The official search for the man who early Sunday morning escaped from Danderyd Hospital after having killed one person, has not yet yielded any results.
The police have searched all of Judarn forest in western Stockholm in the attempt to track down the man, who is assumed to be the so-called Ritual Killer. At the time of his escape the man was critically wounded and the police now suspect he had an accomplice.
Arnold Lehrman, of the Stockholm Police:
"Yes, that's the only logical explanation. There is no physical possibility that he would have been able to keep himself hidden this long in his… condition. We have had thirty officers out here, dogs, a helicopter. It's just not feasible, that's all."
"Will you keep searching Judarn forest?"
"Yes. The possibility that he remains in the area cannot be ruled out. But we will divert some of our forces from here in order to concentrate on… in order to investigate how he has been able to proceed."
The man is severely disfigured and was at the time of his escape dressed in a light blue hospital gown. The police ask that anyone with information regarding the disappearance contact them at the following number…
8 November [Evening]
Public interest in the police search of Judarn forest was at an all-time high. The evening news realized they would not be able to print the composite picture of the murderer one more time. They had been hoping for images of an apprehended suspect but in the absence of this both evening papers ran the sheep picture.
The Expressen even put it on the front page.
Say what you will, there was undeniable drama in that photograph. The police officer's face twisted by exertion, the splayed limbs and open mouth of the sheep. You could almost hear the panting, the bleating.
One of the papers had even tried to reach the royal court for comment, since it was the King's sheep that the officer was manhandling in this way. The King and Queen had only two days earlier informed the public that they were expecting their third child, and decided that that would have to do. The court offered no comment.
Of course several pages were devoted to maps of Judarn and the western suburbs. Where the man had been sighted, how the police search had been organized. But all this had been seen before, in other contexts. The sheep picture was something new and it was this that people remembered.
Expressen had even dared to try a little joke. The caption said, "Wolf in sheep's clothing?"
You had to laugh a little, and people needed this. They were scared. This same man had killed two people, almost three, and now he was once more on the loose and kids again were subject to a curfew. A school field trip to Judarn on Monday was canceled.
And running right through this there was an underlying anger at the fact that one person, one single person, could have the power to dominate so many people's lives simply through his evil and his… ability to stave off death.
Yes. Experts and professors who were called upon to comment in newspapers and TV all said the same thing: it was impossible that the man was still alive. In answer to a direct question they then went on to say in the next breath that the man's escape was just as impossible.
A professor of medicine at Danderyd made an unfavorable impression on the evening news when he said, in an aggressive tone of voice: "Until very recently the man was hooked up to a respirator. Do you know what that means? That means that you are not able to breathe on your own. Add to this a fall of about thirty meters…" The professor's tone implied that the reporter was an idiot and that the whole thing was an invention by the media.
So everything was a soup of guesses, impossibilities, rumors and-of course-fear. Not so strange then that one used the sheep picture in spite of everything. That at least was concrete. The photograph was disseminated throughout the land and found its way to people's eyes.
Lacke saw it when he bought a packet of Red Prince cigarettes in the Lover's newsstand, with his last few kronor, on his way over to Gosta's. He had been sleeping all afternoon and felt like Raskolnikov; the world was hazily uncertain. He glanced at the sheep photograph and nodded to himself. In his present state it did not seem strange to him that the police were apprehending sheep.
Only when he was halfway to Gosta's place did the image come back
to him and he thought, "What the hell was that?" but didn't have the energy to pursue it. He lit a cigarette and kept going.
Oskar saw it when he came home after having spent the afternoon walking around Vallingby. When he got off the subway Tommy was getting on. Tommy looked jumpy and wound up and said he had done something "fucking hilarious" but didn't have time to say anything more before the doors closed. At home there was a note on the kitchen table; his mom was going to dinner with the choir tonight. There was food in the refrigerator, the advertising flyers had been delivered, hugs and kisses.
The evening paper was on the kitchen sofa. Oskar looked at the sheep on the front page and read everything about the search. Then he did something he had been lagging behind on: cut out and saved the articles about the Ritual Killer from the paper over the last few days. He took the pile of newspapers out from the cleaning closet, his scrapbook, scissors, paste, and got to work.
Staffan saw it about two hundred meters from where it had been taken. He had not been able to catch Tommy, and after a few brief words with a distraught Yvonne he had left for Akeshov. Someone there had referred to a colleague he didn't know by the name of "the sheep man" but he hadn't gotten the joke until a few hours later when he had a chance to see the evening paper.
Police management was ticked off at the newspapers' indiscretion, but most officers in the field thought it was funny. With the exception of "the sheep man" himself, of course. For several weeks he had to endure the occasional "baaaaaa" and "nice sweater, is that sheep's wool?"
Jonny saw it when his four-year-old little brother-half little brother- Kalle came up to him with a present. A wooden block that he had
wrapped in the first page of the evening paper. Jonny shooed him out of his room, said he wasn't in the mood, locked the door. Took up the photo album again, looking at pictures of his dad, his real dad, who was not Kalle's dad.
A little later he heard his stepfather yelling at Kalle because he had destroyed the paper. Jonny then unwrapped the present, turning the block in his fingers as he studied the close-up of the sheep. He chuckled, the skin pulled taut around his ear. He stowed the photo album in his gym bag-it would be safest to keep it at school-and from there his thoughts turned to what the hell he should do with Oskar.
The sheep picture would start a minor debate about the ethics of photojournalism, but was nonetheless featured in both papers' end-of-year collage of the year's most unforgettable images. In the spring the tackled ram himself was let out into the Drottningholm summer pastures, forever oblivious to his fifteen minutes of fame.
Virginia rests rolled up in duvets and blankets. Her eyes are closed, the body completely still. In a moment she will wake up. She has been lying here for eleven hours. Her body temperature is down to twenty-seven degrees, which corresponds to the temperature inside the closet. Her heart rate is four faint beats a minute.
During these past eleven hours her body has changed irrevocably. Her Stomach and lungs have adapted to a new kind of existence. The most interesting detail, from a medical point of view, is a still-developing cyst in the sinoatrial node of the heart, the clump of cells that controls the heart's contractions. The cyst has now grown to twice its former size. A cancer-like growth of foreign cells continues unhindered.
If one could take a sample of these cells, put the sample under a mi-croscope, one would see something that all heart specialists would reject with the assumption that the sample had become contaminated, mixed. A tasteless joke.
Namely, the tumor in the sinoatrial node consists of brain cells.
Yes. Inside Virginia's heart a separate little brain is forming. This new brain has, during its initial stage of development, been dependent on the large brain. Now it is self-sufficient, and what Virginia during a terrible moment sensed is completely correct: it would live on even if her body died.
Virginia opened her eyes and knew she was awake. Knew it even though opening her eyelids made no difference. It was as dark as before. But her consciousness was turned on. Yes. Her consciousness came to life, and at the same time it was as if something else quickly withdrew.
Like…
Like coming to a summer cottage that has been empty all winter. You open the door, fumble for the light switch, and at that same moment you hear the rapid scuttling, the clicking of small claws against the floorboards, you catch a brief glimpse of the rat squeezing in under the kitchen counter.
An uncanny feeling. You know it's been living there in your absence. That it thinks of the house as its own. That it will come sneaking out again as soon as you turn out the light.
I am not alone.
Her mouth felt like paper. She had no feeling in her tongue. She continued to lie there, thinking of the cottage that she and Per, Lena's father, had rented a couple of summers when Lena was little. The rat's nest they found all the way in under the kitchen counter. The rats had chewed off small pieces of a milk carton and a packet of cornflakes, built what almost looked like a little house, a fantastic construction of multicolored cardboard.
Virginia had felt a certain kind of guilt as she vacuumed up the little house. No, more than that. A superstitious feeling of transgression. As she inserted the cold mechanical trunk of the vacuum cleaner into the delicate, fine construction the rat had spent the winter building it felt like she was casting out a good spirit.
And sure enough. When the rat was not caught in any of the traps but continued to eat their dry goods even though it was summer, Per had put out rat poison. They had argued about it. They had argued about other things. About everything. In July sometime the rat had died, somewhere inside the wall.
As the stench of the rat's dead, decomposing body spread through the
house, their marriage slowly broke down that summer. They had gone home a week earlier than planned since they could no longer tolerate the stench or each other. The good spirit had left them.
What happened to that house? Does anyone else live there now?
She heard a squeaking sound, a hiss.
There IS a rat! Inside these blankets!
She was gripped by panic.
Still wrapped up, she threw herself to the side, hitting the closet doors so they flew open, and she tumbled out onto the floor. She kicked with her legs, waving her arms until she managed to free herself. Disgusted, she crawled up onto the bed, into a corner, pulling her knees under her chin, staring at the pile of blankets and duvets, waiting for a movement. She would scream when it came. Scream so the whole house came rushing with hammers and axes and beat the pile of blankets until the rat was dead.
The blanket on top was green with blue dots. Wasn't there a movement there? She drew a breath in order to scream, and she heard the squeaking, hissing again.
I'm… breathing.
Yes. That was the last thing she had determined before she fell asleep: that she wasn't breathing. Now she was breathing again. She drew the air in tentatively, and heard the squeaking, hissing. It was coming from her air passages. They had dried out as she was resting, were making these sounds. She cleared her throat and felt a rotten taste in her mouth.
She remembered everything. Everything.
She looked at her arms. Strands of dried blood covered them, but no cuts or scars were visible. She picked out the spot on the inside of her elbow where she knew she had cut herself at least twice. Maybe a faint streak of pink skin. Yes. Possibly. Except for that everything was healed.
She rubbed her eyes and checked the time. A quarter past six. It was evening. Dark. She looked down again at the green blanket, the blue dots.
Where is the light coming from?
The overhead light was off, it was evening outside, all the blinds were drawn. How could she possibly be seeing all the contours and colors so clearly? In the closet it had been pitch black. She hadn't seen anything there. But now… it was clear as day.
A little light always gets in.
Was she breathing?
She couldn't figure it out. As soon as she started to think about her breathing she also controlled it. Maybe she only breathed when she thought of it.
But that first breath, the one she had mistaken for the sound of a rat… she hadn't thought that one. But perhaps it had only been like a… like a…
She shut her eyes.
Ted.
She had been there when he was born. Lena had never met Ted's father again after the night when Ted was conceived. Some Finnish businessman in Stockholm for a conference and so on. So Virginia had been there for the birth, had nagged and pleaded her way there.
And now it came back to her. Ted's first breath.
How he had come out. The little body, sticky, purple, hardly human. The explosion of joy in her chest that changed to a cloud of anxiety when he didn't breathe. The midwife who had calmly picked up the little creature in her hands. Virginia had expected her to hold the little body upside down, slap him on the behind, but just as the midwife picked him up a bubble of saliva formed at his mouth. A bubble that grew, grew and… burst. And then came his cry, the first cry. And he breathed.
So?
Was that what Virginia's squeaky breath had been? A birth cry?
She straightened up, lying down on her back on the bed. Continued to replay the images of the birth. How she had washed Ted, since Lena had been too weak, had lost a lot of blood. Yes. After Ted had come out it had run over the edge of the birthing bed and the nurses had been there with paper, masses of paper. Finally it had stopped of its own accord.
The heap of blood-drenched paper, the midwife's dark red hands. Her calm, her efficiency in spite of all… the blood. All that blood.
Thirsty.
Her mouth was sticky and she replayed the sequence a number of times, zooming in on everything that had been covered in blood; the midwife's hands to let my tongue glide over those hands, the blood-drenched paper on the floor, put them in my mouth, suck on them, between Lena's legs where the blood ran out in a thin rivulet, to…
She sat up abruptly, ran doubled-over to the bathroom and threw open the lid to the toilet, leaned her head over the bowl. Nothing came. Just dry, convulsive heaves. She leaned her forehead against the edge of the bowl. The images of the birth started to well up again.
Don'twantdon'twantdon'twantdon'twa-
She banged her forehead hard against the porcelain and a geyser of icy clear pain spurted up in her head. Everything in front of her eyes turned bright blue. She smiled, and fell sideways to the floor, down onto the bathroom rug that…
Cost 14:90, but I got it for ten because a large piece of fuzz came off when the cashier pulled off the price tag, and when I came out onto the square from Ahlen's department store there was a pigeon pecking from a cardboard container where there were a couple of french fries and the pigeon was gray… and… blue… there was… a strong backlight…
She didn't know how long she had been gone. One minute, an hour? Maybe only a few seconds. But something had changed. She was calm.
The fuzz of the bathroom mat felt good against her cheek as she lay there and looked at the rusted pipe that ran down from the sink into the floor. She thought the pipe had a beautiful shape.
A strong smell of urine. She hadn't wet her pants, no, because it was… Lacke's urine she smelled. She bent her body, moved her head closer to the floor under the toilet, sniffed. Lacke… and Morgan. She couldn't understand how she knew that but she knew: Morgan had peed on the side.
But Morgan hasn't even been here.
No, actually. That evening when they had helped her home. The evening when she was attacked. Bitten. Yes, of course. Everything fell into place. Morgan had been here, Morgan had used the bathroom, and she had been lying out there on the couch after having been bitten and now she could see in the dark, was sensitive to light, and needed blood and-
A vampire.
That's how it was. She had not contracted some rare and unpleasant disease that was treatable at the hospital or in a psychiatric ward or with…
Photo-therapy!
She started to laugh, then coughed, turned over on her back, stared up at the ceiling, and went over everything. The cuts that healed so quickly, the effect of the sun on her skin, blood. She said it aloud:
"I am a vampire."
It couldn't be. They didn't exist. But even so something felt lighter. As if a pressure in her head eased. A weight lifted from her. It wasn't her fault. The revolting fantasies, the terrible things she had done to herself all night. It wasn't something she was responsible for.
It was simply… very natural.
She got up halfway, and started to run a bath, sat on the toilet and watched the running water, the bath as it slowly filled. The phone rang. She only registered it as an indifferent noise, a mechanical signal. It didn't mean anything. She couldn't talk to anyone anyway. No one could talk to her.
Oskar had not read Saturday's paper. Now it was spread out in front of him on the kitchen table. He had had it turned to the same page for a while and read the caption to the picture over and over again. The picture he couldn't let go of.
The text was about the man who had been found frozen into the ice down by the Blackeberg hospital. How he had been found, how the recovery work had been undertaken. There was a small picture of Mr. Avila as he stood pointing out over the water, toward the hole in the ice. In the quote from Mr. Avila, the reporter had smoothed out his linguistic eccentricities.
All this was interesting enough and worth cutting out to save, but that wasn't what he was staring at, couldn't tear himself from.
It was the picture of the shirt.
Stuffed inside the man's jacket there had been a child-sized bloodstained sweater, and it was reproduced here, laid out against a neutral background. Oskar recognized the sweater immediately.
Aren't you cold?
The text stated that the dead man, Joakim Bengtsson, was last seen alive Saturday the twenty-fourth of October. Two weeks ago. Oskar remembered that evening. When Eli had solved the Cube. He had stroked her cheek and she had walked out of the courtyard. That night she and… the old guy had argued and the old guy had left.
Was that the night that Eli had done it?
Yes, probably. The next day she had looked a lot healthier.
He looked at the photograph. It was in black and white but the caption said the sweater was light pink. The reporter speculated that the murderer might have yet another young victim on his conscience.
Hang on a minute.
The Vallingby murderer. In the article it said the police now had strong indications that the man in the ice had been killed by the so-called Ritual Killer, who had been captured at the Vallingby swimming pool about a week earlier, and who was now on the loose.
Was it… the old guy? But… the kid in the forest… why?
A lightbulb went on in his head. Understood everything. All of these articles he had cut out and saved, radio, TV, all the talk, the fear…
Eli.
Oskar didn't know what to do. What he should do. So he went to the fridge and took out the piece of lasagna his mom had saved for him. Ate it cold while he kept looking at the articles. When he was done eating he heard a tap on the wall. Closed his eyes so he could hear better. He knew the code by heart at this point.
I.A.M.G.O.I.N.G.O.U.T.
He quickly got up from the table, walked into his room, lay belly-down on his bed, and tapped out an answer.
C.O.M.E.O.V.E.R.
A pause. Then:
Y.O.U.R.M.O.M.
Oskar tapped a reply.
A.W.A.Y.
His mom wouldn't be back until around ten. They still had three hours. When Oskar had tapped the last message he rested his head on the pillow. For a moment he concentrated on formulating words that he had forgotten.
Her top… the paper.
He jumped, was about to get up in order to sweep up all the papers that lay out. She would see them… know that he…
Then he leaned his head back against the pillow, decided he didn't care.
A low whistle outside the window. He got up out of bed, walked forward, and leaned against the windowsill. She stood there below with her face turned up to the light. She was wearing the checkered shirt that was too big for her.
He made a gesture with his finger: Go to the door.
Don't tell him it was me, OK?"
Yvonne made a face, blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth in the direction of the half-open kitchen window, didn't reply.
Tommy snorted. "Why do you smoke like that, out the window?"
The ash pillar of her cigarette was so long it started to bend. Tommy pointed to it, made a duht-duht movement with his finger like he was flicking the ash off. She ignored him.
"Because Staffan doesn't like it, right? The smell of smoke."
Tommy leaned back in his kitchen chair, looked at the ash, and wondered what it actually consisted of that allowed it to get so long without breaking off, waved his hand in front of her face.
"I don't like the smell of smoke either. Didn't like it at all when I was little. But that didn't make you crack the window like this. Oh, see there it goes…"
The pillar of ash broke off and landed on Yvonne's thigh. She brushed it off and a gray streak was left on her pants. She raised the hand holding the cigarette.
"I did so. Most of the time, at least. There may have been times when I had people over or something, when I didn't… and who the hell are you to sit here lecturing me about not liking smoke."
Tommy grinned. "But you have to admit it was a little funny."
"No, it was not. Think about if people had panicked. If people had… and what about that basin, the…"
"Christening font."
"Yes, the christening font. The minister was in despair over it, there was like a… black crust over the whole… Staffan had to-"
"Staffan, Staffan."
"Yes, Staffan. He didn't say it was you. He said it to me, that it was
hard for him, with his… faith to stand there lying to the minister's face but that he… to protect you…"
"But you get it, don't you?"
"Get what?"
"That he's really protecting himself."
"He is not, I-"
"Think about it."
Yvonne took a last long drag of her cigarette, put it out in the ashtray, and immediately lit another.
"It was an… antique. Now they have to send it off to be restored."
"And it was Staffan's stepson who did it. How would that look?"
"You are not his stepson."
"No, but you know. If I said to Staffan that I was going to go see the minister and tell him that it was me, and that my name is Tommy and Staffan is my… sort-of stepfather. Don't think he would like it."
"You should talk to him yourself."
"No, not today anyway."
"You don't dare."
"You sound like a little kid."
"And you're behaving like one."
"But it was a little funny, wasn't it?"
"No, Tommy. It wasn't."
Tommy sighed. He knew his mom would get pissed, but he had still thought she might be able to see something comical in it. But she was on Staffan's side now. Had to come to terms with it.
So the problem, the real problem, was finding somewhere to live. When they got married, that is. For now he could crash in the basement those evenings when Staffan came over. At eight he was going to finish his shift at Akeshov and come straight out here. And Tommy had no intention of listening to some damn moralizing lecture from that guy. Not on his life.
So Tommy went to his room and got his blanket and pillow from his bed while Yvonne still sat there smoking, looking out of the kitchen window. When he was ready he stood in the kitchen door with his pillow under one arm, the rolled up blanket under the other.
"OK, I'm going now. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell him where I am."
Yvonne turned to him. She had tears in her eyes. Smiled a little.
"You look like when… when you would come and ask…"
The words caught in her throat. Tommy stood still. Yvonne swallowed, cleared her throat, and looked at him with clear eyes, said quietly: "Tommy. What should I do?"
"I don't know."
"Should I?…"
"No, not for my sake. Things are what they are."
Yvonne nodded. Tommy felt that he was also going to get really sad, that he should go now before things went wrong.
"And you won't tell, that-"
"No, no. I won't."
"Good. Thanks."
Yvonne got up and went over to Tommy. Hugged him. She smelled strongly of cigarettes. If Tommy's arms had been free he would have hugged her back. But he didn't, so he just put his head on her shoulder and they stood like that for a while.
Then Tommy left.
Don't trust her. Staffan can start going off on some damn thing or other and…
In the basement he threw the blanket and pillow on the couch. Put in a wad of chewing tobacco and lay down to think things over.
It would be best if he got shot.
But Staffan probably wasn't the kind of guy who… no, no. Was more like the one who would plant a bull's-eye right in the killer's forehead. Get a box of chocolates from his police friends. The hero. Would turn up here later looking for Tommy. Maybe.
He fished out his key, walked out in the corridor and unlocked the shelter, took the chain in with him. With his lighter as a lamp he made his way through the short corridor with the two storage units on either side. In the storage units there were dry goods, cans of food, old games, a camp stove, and other things to make it through a siege.
He opened a door, threw in the chain.
OK, he had an emergency exit.
Before he left the shelter he took down the shooting trophy and weighed it in his hand. At least two kilos. Maybe he could sell it? The value of the metal alone. They could melt it down.
He studied the pistol shooter's face. Didn't he kind of look like Staffan? In that case melting it down was the right option.
Cremation. Definitely.
He laughed.
The absolutely best thing would be to melt everything down except the head and then give it back to Staffan. A solid pool of metal with only that little head sticking up. Was probably too hard to arrange. Unfortunately.
He put the trophy back in its place, walked out, and closed the door without turning the wheels of the lock. Now he would be able to slip in here if he had to. Which he didn't really think would happen.
But just in case.
Lacke let it ring ten times before hanging up. Gosta sat on the couch and stroked a striped orange cat over the head, didn't look up when he asked:
"No one home?"
Lacke rubbed his hand over his face, said with some irritation: "Yes, damn it. Didn't you hear us talking?"
"You want another one?"
Lacke softened, tried to smile.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to… sure, yes, what the hell, Thanks."
Gosta leaned over carelessly so the cat on his knee was squeezed. It hissed and slipped down onto the floor, sat down and stared accusingly at Gosta, who was pouring a touch of tonic and a good amount of gin in Lacke's glass, holding it out to him.
"Here. Don't worry, she's probably just… you know…"
"Admitted. Thanks. She's gone to the hospital and they've admitted her."
"Yes… that's right."
"Then say that."
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. Cheers."
"Cheers."
They both drank. After a while Gosta started to pick his nose. Lacke looked at him, and Gosta pulled his finger away, smiled apologetically. Not used to having people around.
A large gray and white cat was lying flat on the floor, looked like it barely had the energy to lift its head up. Gosta nodded at it. "Miriam is going to have babies soon."
Lacke took a big sip, made a face. For every drop of numbness the alcohol gave him, the smell of the apartment lessened.
"Whadya do with them?"
"What do you mean?"
"The kittens. What do you do with them? Let them live, do you?"
"Yes, but mostly they're dead. Nowadays."
"So that… what. That fat one, you said… Miriam?… that belly, it's just… a bag of dead kittens in there?"
"Yes."
Lacke drank the rest of the glass, put it on the table. Gosta gestured to the gin bottle. Lacke shook his head.
"No, I'm taking a little break."
He lowered his head. An orange carpet so full of cat hair it looked like it was made of it. Cats and cats all over. How many were there? He started to count. Got to eighteen. In this room alone.
"You've never thought about… having them fixed? Like castration, or whatever it's called… sterilizing? You could make do with one sex, you know."
Gosta looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"How would I go about doing that?"
"No, you're right."
Lacke imagined Gosta getting on the subway with maybe… twenty-five cats. In one box. No, in a bag, a sack. Go to the vet and just pour out all the cats. "Castration, please." He chuckled. Gosta put his head to one side.
"What is it?"
"I was just thinking… you could get a group discount."
Gosta did not appreciate the joke and Lacke waved his hands in front of him. "No, sorry. I was just… uh, I'm all… this thing with Virginia, you know. I…" He suddenly straightened up, slammed his hand on the table.
"I don't want to be here anymore!"
Gosta jumped in his spot on the couch. The cat in front of Lacke's feet snuck away, hid under the armchair. From somewhere in the room he heard a cat hiss. Gosta shifted his weight, wiggled his glass in his hand.
"You don't have to. Not for my…"
"No, not that. Here. The whole shebang. Blackeberg. Everything. These buildings, the walking paths, the spaces, people, everything is just… like a single big damn sickness, see? Something went wrong. They thought all this out, planned it to be… perfect, you know. And in some damn wrinkle it went wrong, instead. Some shit.
"Like… I can't explain it… like they had some idea about the angles, or fucking whatever, the angles of the buildings, in their relation to each other, you know. So it would be harmonious or something. And then they made a mistake in their measurements, their triangulation, whatever the hell they call it, so that it was all a little off from the start, and it went downhill from there. So you walk here with all these buildings and you just feel that… no. No, no, no. You shouldn't be here. This place is all wrong, you know?
"Except it isn't the angles, it's something else, something that just… like a disease that's in the… walls and I… don't want any part of it anymore."
A clinking when Gosta, unasked, poured Lacke another drink. Lacke took it gratefully. The outburst had caused a pleasant calm in his body, a calm that the alcohol now suffused with warmth. He leaned back in the chair, exhaled.
They sat quietly until the doorbell rang. Lacke asked: "Are you expecting anyone?"
Gosta shook his head while he heaved himself out of the couch.
"No. Damn central station here tonight."
Lacke grinned and raised his glass to Gosta as the latter walked past. Felt better now. Felt pretty OK actually.
The front door opened. Someone outside said something and Gosta answered:
"Please come in."
Lying there in the bathtub, in the warm water that grew pink as the dried blood on her skin dissolved, Virginia had made up her mind.
Gosta.
Her new consciousness told her it had to be someone who would let her in. Her old one said it couldn't be someone she loved. Or even liked. Gosta fit both descriptions.
She got up, dried herself, and put on pants and a blouse. It was only when she was down on the street that she realized she hadn't put on a coat. Even so she wasn't cold.
New discoveries all the time.
Below the tall building she stopped, looked up at Gosta's window. He was home. Was always home.
If he resists?
She hadn't thought about that. Only imagined the whole thing as her taking what she needed. But maybe Gosta wanted to live?
Of course he wants to live. He is a person, he has his pleasures, and think of all the cats that will…
She put the brakes on, willed the thought away. Put her hand over her heart. It had a rate of five beats a minute and she knew she had to protect it. That there was something to that thing with… stakes.
She took the elevator up to the second to last floor, rang the bell. When Gosta opened the door and saw Virginia his eyes widened to something that resembled horror.
Does he know? Can you see it?
Gosta said: "But… is it you?"
"Yes, can I?…"
She gestured into the apartment. Couldn't understand. Only knew intuitively that she needed an invitation, otherwise… otherwise… something. Gosta nodded, took a step back.
"Please come in."
She stepped into the hall and Gosta pulled the door shut, looked at her with watery eyes. He was unshaven, the droopy skin of his throat dirty with gray stubble. The stench in the apartment was worse than she remembered, clearer.
I don't want to-
Then the old brain was turned off, and hunger took over. She put her hands on his shoulders, saw her hands put on his shoulders. Allowed it to happen. The old Virginia now sat curled up somewhere at the back of her head, without control.
The mouth said: "Do you want to help me with something? Stand still."
She heard something. A voice.
"Virginia! Hi! I'm so glad to…"
Lacke flinched when Virginia's head turned toward him.
Her eyes were empty. As if someone had poked a needle into them and sucked out what had been Virginia and only left behind the expressionless gaze of an anatomical model. Plate number eight: Eyes.
Virginia stared at him for a second, then she let go of Gosta and turned to the door, pressed the handle down, but the door was locked. She turned the lock, but Lacke grabbed ahold of her, dragged her away from the door.
"You're not going anywhere until…"
Virginia fought his hold and he got her elbow against his mouth, his lip splitting against his teeth. He held her arms firmly, pressed his cheek against her back.
"Ginja, damn it. I have to talk to you. I've been so damn worried. Calm down, what is it?"
She jerked toward the door but Lacke held her fast, coaxing her in the direction of the living room. He made an effort to speak calmly and quietly, as if to a frightened animal, while he pushed her in front of him.
"Now Gosta is going to pour us a drink and then we'll sit down all calm and collected and talk about this, because I… I'm going to help you. Whatever it is, I'm going to help you. OK?"
"No, Lacke. No."
"Yes, Ginja. Yes."
Gosta pushed past both of them into the living room and poured Virginia a drink in Lacke's glass. Lacke managed to get Virginia in, let go of
her, and placed himself in the doorway to the hall with his hands on the door posts, like a sentry.
He licked a little blood away from his lower lip.
Virginia was standing in the middle of the room, tensed. Looked around as if she were looking for a way out. Her eyes stopped at the window.
"No, Ginja."
Lacke prepared to run over to her, to grab her again if she tried something stupid.
What is it with her? She looks like the whole room is full of ghosts.
He heard a sound like when you crack an egg into a hot pan.
Then another.
And another.
The room was filled with more and more hissing, spitting.
All of the cats in the room had stood up, their backs curled and tails bushed out, looking at Virginia. Even Miriam got clumsily to her feet, her belly dragging on the floor, pulling her ears back and baring her teeth.
From the bedroom, kitchen, more cats streamed in.
Gosta had stopped pouring; stood there now with the bottle in his hand, staring wide-eyed at his cats. The hissing was a cloud of electricity in the room, increasing in strength. Lacke had to shout in order to make his voice carry above the din.
"Gosta, what are they doing?"
Gosta shook his head, sweeping his arm to the side and spilling a little gin from the bottle.
"I don't know… I've never…"
A little black cat jumped up onto Virginia's thigh, digging in her claws and biting down. Gosta brought the bottle down on the table with a bang, said: "Bad, Titania, bad!"
Virginia bent over, grabbed the cat by its back, and tried to pull it off. Two other cats used this as an opportunity to jump up on her back and neck. Virginia let out a scream and ripped the cat from her leg, throwing it from her. It flew across the room, hit the edge of the table, and fell down at Gosta's feet. One of the cats on Virginia's back climbed up onto her head and held itself in place with its claws while it made dives for her forehead.
Before Lacke got there three more cats had jumped up. They screeched at the top of their lungs while Virginia pummeled them with her fists. Even so they managed to hang on, ripping her flesh with their small teeth.
Lacke thrust his hands into the crawling, seething mass on Virginia's chest, grabbed skin that glided over tensed muscles, pulled off small bodies, and Virginia's blouse was ripped, she screamed and-
She's crying.
No; it was blood running down her cheek. Lacke grabbed the cat that was sitting on her head, but the cat dug its claws in even deeper, sat there like it was sewn on. Its head fit inside Lacke's hand and he yanked it from side to side until he-in the middle of all the noise-heard a
snap
and when he dropped the head it fell down lifeless on Virginia's head. A drop of blood trickled out of the cat's nose.
"Aaaaaah! My baby…"
Gosta reached Virginia and, with tears in his eyes, he started to stroke the cat that even in death stayed attached to Virginia's head.
"My baby, little darling…"
Lacke lowered his gaze and his eyes met Virginia's.
It was her again.
Virginia.
Let me go.
Through the double tunnel that was her eyes Virginia was looking out at everything that was happening with her body, Lacke's attempts to save her.
Let it be.
She wasn't the one fighting them off, her arms going out. It was that other thing that wanted to live, wanted that its… host should live. She had given up when she saw Gosta's throat, taken in the stench of the apartment. This was how it was going to be. And she didn't want a part of it.
The pain. She felt the pain, the cuts. But it would soon be over.
So… let it be.
Lacke saw it. But he didn't accept it.
The farm… two cottages… the garden…
In a panic he tried to tear the cats from Virginia. But they hung on, furry knots of muscles. The few he managed to get off took with them strips of her clothing, leaving deep cuts in the skin underneath, but most of them stayed put like leeches. He tried to hit them, he heard bones cracking, but if one came off another jumped on, because the cats were climbing over each other in their eagerness to…
Black.
Something hit him in the face and he stumbled back about one meter, almost falling, steadied himself against the wall, blinking. Gosta stood next to Virginia fists drawn, staring at him with tearful anger in his gaze.
"You are hurting them! You're hurting them!"
Next to Gosta, Virginia was a boiling mass of mewling, hissing fur. Miriam dragged herself across the floor, got up on her hind legs and bit Virginia in the calf. Gosta saw it, bent down, and shook his finger at her.
"You can't do that, little lady. That hurts]"
All sense of reason left Lacke. He took two steps, aimed a kick at Miriam. His foot sunk into her bloated belly and Lacke felt no revulsion, only satisfaction, when that sack of guts flew from his foot, was crushed against the radiator. He grabbed Virginia's arm-
Out, must get out of here
– and pulled her with him toward the door.
Virginia tried to resist. But Lacke and the will of her sickness were the same, and they were stronger than she. Through the tunnels in her head she saw Gosta fall to his knees on the floor, heard his howl of grief as he took a dead cat in his hands, caressing its back.
Forgive me, forgive me-
Then Lacke pulled her out with him, and her ability to see was blocked as a cat climbed up onto her face, bit her in the head, and all was pain, living needles puncturing her skin, and she found herself in a live iron maiden as she lost her balance, fell, felt herself dragged across the floor.
Let me go.
But the cat in front of her eyes changed position and she saw the apartment door opening in front of her, Lacke's hand, dark red, that pulled her along, and she saw the stairwell, the steps, she was up on her feet again, fighting her way along, in her own consciousness, taking control and-
Virginia pulled her arm free of his hand.
Lacke turned around to the crawling mass of fur that was her body in order get a hold of her again, in order to-
What? What?
Out. In order to get out.
But Virginia forced her way past him and for one second the trembling back of a cat was pressed against his face. Then she was out in the stairwell where the cats' hissing was amplified like excited whispers while she ran toward the edge of the landing and-
Nonono-
Lacke tried to reach her in time to stop her, but like someone convinced of a soft landing or someone who doesn't care if she crashes, Virginia relaxed and toppled forward, let herself fall down the stairs.
Cats that were caught underneath her howled as she rolled and bounced down the concrete steps. Damp crunching sounds as slender bones broke, heavier thuds that made Lacke cringe when Virginia's head-
Something walked across his foot.
A small gray cat that had something wrong with its hind legs dragged itself out into the stairwell, sat down on the top step, and howled sorrowfully.
Virginia came to rest at the bottom of the stairs. The cats that survived the fall left her and went back up the stairs. Went into the hall and started to groom themselves.
Only the little gray one stayed where it was, mourning the fact that it had not been able to take part.
The police held a press conference Sunday evening.
They had chosen a conference room at the police station with room for forty people, but it had turned out to be too small. A number of reporters from European newspapers and television stations turned up. The fact that the man had not been recaptured during the day made the news more sensational, and a British journalist gave the best analysis of why the whole thing had attracted such attention.
"It's a search for the archetypal Monster. This man's appearance, what he's done. He is The Monster, the evil at the heart of all fairy tales. And every time we catch it, we like to pretend it's over for good."
Already, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, the air in the poorly ventilated room was warm and humid, and the only ones who did not complain were the Italian TV team who said they were used to worse conditions.
They moved the event to a larger room and at exactly eight o'clock, the Stockholm district's chief of police came in, flanked by the commissioner who was spearheading the investigation and who had questioned the Ritual Killer in the hospital, as well as the patrol leader who had directed operations in Judarn forest earlier that day.
They were not afraid of being torn limb from limb by the reporters, because they had decided to throw them a bone.
They had a photograph of the man.
The investigation of the watch had finally yielded results. On Saturday a watchmaker in Karlskoga had taken the time to go through his index file of outdated proof-of-insurance forms and had come across the number the police had asked him and other watchmakers to try to locate.
He called the police and gave them the name, address, and phone number of the man who was registered as the buyer. The Stockholm police entered the man's name into their register and asked the Karlskoga police to go to the address to see what they could find.
There was some excitement at the station when it turned out that the man had been prosecuted for attempted rape of a nine-year-old, seven years earlier. Had spent three years locked up in an institution, deemed mentally ill. Was thereafter determined to be recovered and subsequently released.
But the Karlskoga police found the man at home, in good health.
Yes, he had had a watch like that. No, he couldn't remember what had happened to it. It took a couple of hours of interrogation at the station in Karlskoga, reminders that there were conditions under which a psychiatric certificate of good health could be subject to reevaluation, before the man recalled who he had sold the watch to.
Hakan Bengtsson, Karlstad. They had met somewhere and done something, he couldn't remember what. He had sold him the watch, at any rate, but he had no address and could only give a vague description of him, and could he please be allowed to go home now?
There was nothing on Hakan Bengtsson in the police records. There were twenty-four Hakan Bengtssons in the Karlstad area. About half of them could immediately be disregarded because of age. The police started to call around. The search was simplified by the fact that the ability to speak immediately disqualified someone as a viable candidate.
Toward nine o'clock in the evening they were able to narrow the list to a single person. One Hakan Bengtsson who had been a Swedish teacher at the high school and who had left Karlstad after his house burned down under unclear circumstances.
They called the principal of the high school and were told that yes, there had been rumors about Hakan Bengtsson… liked children a little bit too much, you could say. They had the prinicipal go to the school on a Saturday evening and produce a photo of Hakan Bengtsson from the school archives, taken for the school catalogue in 1976.
A Karlstad police officer, who needed to be in Stockholm on Sunday anyway, faxed over a copy and then started driving up with the original late Saturday night. It reached the Stockholm headquarters at one o'clock Sunday morning, that is to say, about a half hour after the man in question had fallen from his hospital window and been declared dead.
Sunday morning was devoted to verifying through dental and medical
records from Karlstad that the man in the snapshot was the same man who, until the preceding evening, had been bound to his hospital bed, and yes: it was him.
Sunday afternoon there was a meeting at the station. They had counted on slowly being able to unravel what the dead man had done since leaving Karlstad, see if his deeds were part of a larger context, if he had left more victims strewn in his wake.
But now the situation had changed.
The man was still alive, was on the loose, and the most important thing at this point appeared to be locating where the man had lived since there was a small chance he would try to return there. His movements toward the western suburbs seemed to indicate as much.
Therefore it was decided that if the man was not apprehended before the press conference one would turn to the somewhat unreliable but oh so many-headed hunting dog, The General Public.
It was possible that someone had seen him during the time when he still looked like he did in the photo and maybe had some sense of where he had lived. And anyway, of course it was only a secondary concern. One needed a bone to throw the media.
So now the three police officers were sitting there at the long table up by the podium, and a ripple went through the assembled journalists when the police chief-with the simple gesture that he well knew was the most effective, theatrically speaking-held up the enlarged school photo of Hakan Bengtsson, and said:
"The man we are looking for is called Hakan Bengtsson and before his face was damaged he looked… like this."
The police chief paused while the cameras clicked and the flashes transformed the room into a stroboscope for a while.
Of course there were copies of the grainy picture on hand to be passed out among the journalists but, above all, the foreign papers were most likely to prefer the more emotionally expressive staging of the police chief with the murderer-so to speak-in his hand.
When everyone had gotten their photos and the investigative team had reported on their activities, it was time for questions. The first one came from a reporter from Dagens Nyheter, the big morning paper.
"When do you expect to apprehend him?"
The police chief took a deep breath, decided to put his reputation on the line, and said:
"Tomorrow at the latest."
Hey there."
"Hi."
Oskar went in before her, straight to the living room in order to get the record he wanted. Flipped through his mom's thin record collection and found it. The Vikings. The whole group was assembled in something that looked like the skeleton of a Viking ship, misplaced in their shiny costumes.
Eli didn't come in. With the record in his hand he went back into the hall. She was still standing outside the front door.
"Oskar, you have to invite me in."
"But… the window. You have already…"
"This is a new entrance."
"I see. OK you can…"
Oskar stopped himself, licked his lips. Looked at the picture on the album cover. The picture had been taken in the dark, with a flash, and the Vikings glowed like a group of saints about to walk onto land. He stepped toward Eli, showed her the album.
"Check it out, they look like they're in the belly of a whale or something."
"Oskar…"
"Yes?"
Eli stood still, with her arms hanging by her side, and looked at Oskar. He smiled, went up to the door, waved his hand in the air between the door frame and the door jamb, in front of Eli's face.
"What? Is there something here or what?"
"Don't start."
"But seriously. What happens if I don't do it?"
"Don't. Start." Eli gave a thin smile. "You want to see? What happens? Do you? Is that what you want?"
Eli said it in a way that was clearly intended for Oskar to say no: the promise of something terrible. But Oskar swallowed and said: "Yes. I do. Show me."
"You wrote in the note that…"
"Yes, I know. But let's see it. What happens?"
Eli pinched her lips together, thought for a second, and then took a step forward, over the threshold. Oskar tensed his whole body, waiting for a blue flash, or for the door to swing forward through Eli and slam shut or something like that. But nothing happened. Eli went into the hallway, closed the door behind her. Oskar shrugged his shoulders.
"Is that all?"
"Not exactly."
Eli stood still, in the same way as she had outside the door, her arms along her sides and her eyes glued to Oskar's. Oskar shook his head.
"What? There's nothing…"
He stopped when he saw a tear come out of the corner of one of Eli's eyes; no, one in each eye. But it wasn't a tear, since it was dark. The skin in Eli's face started to flush, became pink, red, wine-red, and her hands tightened into fists as the pores in her face opened and tiny pearls of blood started to appear in dots all over her face and throat.
Eli's lips twisted in pain and a drop of blood ran out of the corner of her mouth, joined with the pearls emerging on her chin and, growing larger, trickled down to join the drops on her throat.
Oskar's arms became limp; he let them fall and the record fell out of its sleeve, bounced once with its edge against the floor, then fell flat onto the hall rug. His gaze went to Eli's hands.
The backs of her hands were damp with a thin covering of blood and more was coming out.
Again he looked Eli in the eyes, didn't find her. Her eyes looked like they had sunk into their sockets, were filled with blood flowing out, running along the bridge of her nose over her lips into her mouth, where more blood was coming out, two streams running out of the corners of her mouth down over her throat, disappearing under the collar of her T-shirt where dark spots were starting to appear.
She was bleeding out of all the pores in her body.
Oskar caught his breath, shouted: "You can come in, you can… you are welcome, you are… allowed to be here!"
Eli relaxed. Her clenched fists loosened. The grimace of pain disappeared. Oskar thought for a moment that even the blood would somehow dissolve, that it would all sort of not have happened once she was invited in.
But no. The blood stopped running, but Eli's face and hands were still dark red, and while the two of them were standing in front of each other without saying anything, the blood started to coagulate, form darker stripes and lumps in the places it had flowed, and Oskar picked up a faint hospital smell.
He picked the record up off the floor, put it back in its sleeve and said, without looking at Eli: "Sorry, I… I didn't think…"
"It's alright. I was the one who wanted to do it. But I think I should probably have a shower. Do you have a plastic bag?"
"Plastic bag?"
"Yes. For the clothes."
Oskar nodded, went out into the kitchen and dug a plastic bag with the logo ica-eat, drink, and be happy on it from the recess down below the sink. He walked into the living room, put the record on the coffee table, and stopped, the bag crinkling in his hand.
If I hadn't said anything. If I had let her… bleed.
He scrunched the bag into a ball, let go of it, and the bag jumped out of his hand, fell to the floor. He picked it up, threw it into the air, caught it. The shower was turned on in the bathroom.
It's all true. She is… he is…
While he walked toward the bathroom he smoothed out the bag. Eat, drink and be happy. He heard splashing from behind the closed door. The lock showed white. He knocked gently.
"Eli…"
"Yes. Come in…"
"No, it's just… the bag."
"Can't hear what you're saying. Come in."
"No."
"Oskar, I-"
"I'm leaving the bag here for you!"
He laid the bag outside the door and fled to the living room. Took the record out of its sleeve, put it on the playing table, turned the record player on, and moved the needle to the third track, his favorite.
A pretty long intro, and then the singer's soft voice began rolling out of the speakers.
The girl puts flowers in her hair as she wanders through the field. She will be nineteen this year and she smiled to herself as she walks.
Eli came into the living room. She had fastened a towel around her waist. In her hand she had the plastic bag with her clothes. Her face was clean now and her wet hair fell in tendrils over her cheeks, ears. Oskar folded his arms across his chest where he stood next to the record player, nodding to her.
Why are you smiling, the boy asks then when they meet by chance at the gate I'm thinking of the one who will be mine says the girl with eyes so blue The one that I love so.
"Oskar?"
"Yes?" He lowered the volume, inclined his head toward the record player. "Silly, isn't it?"
Eli shook her head. "No, this is great. This I really like."
"You do?"
"Yes. But Oskar…" Eli looked like she was going to say more, but only added an "oh well" and undid the towel knotted around her waist. It fell to the floor at her feet and she stood there naked a few feet away from him. Eli made a sweeping gesture with her hand over her thin body, said: "Just so you know."
… down to the lake, where they draw in the sand they quietly say to each other; You my friend, it is you I want La-lala-lalala…
A short instrumental section and then the song was over. A mild crackling from the speakers, as the needle moved toward the next song, while Oskar looked at Eli.
The small nipples looked almost black against her pale white skin. Her upper body was slender, straight, and without much in the way of contours. Only the ribs stood out clearly in the sharp overhead light. Her thin arms and legs appeared unnaturally long the way they grew out of her body: a young sapling covered with human skin. Between the legs she had… nothing. No slit, no penis. Just a smooth surface.
Oskar pulled his hand through his hair, let it rest cupped against his neck. He didn't want to say that ridiculous mommy-word, but it slipped out anyway.
"But you don't have a… willie."
Eli bent her head, looked down at her groin as if this was a completely new discovery. The next song started and Oskar didn't hear what Eli answered. He pushed back the lever that raised the needle so it lifted from the record.
"What did you say?"
"I said I've had one."
"What happened to it?"
Eli chuckled and Oskar heard himself what the question sounded like, blushing a little. Eli waved her arms to the side and pulled her lower lip over the upper one.
"I left it on the subway."
"Don't be stupid."
Without looking at Eli, Oskar went past her to the bathroom to check that there were no traces.
Warm steam hung in the air; the mirror was misted over. The bathtub was as white as before, just a faint yellow streak of old dirt near the edge that never went away. The sink, clean.
It hasn't happened.
Eli had simply gone into the bathroom for appearance's sake, dropped the illusion. But, no: the soap. He lifted it up. The soap was faintly
streaked with pink and in the little porcelain indentation under it, in the water that collected there, there was a lump of something that looked like a tadpole, yes: alive, and he flinched when it started to-
to swim
– to move, wag its tail and wriggle its way to the outlet of the indentation, ran down into the sink, getting stuck on the edge. But it didn't move there, was not alive. He ran water out of the tap and splashed some on it so it was flushed down the drain. He also rinsed off the soap and washed out the indentation. Then he took his bathrobe from the hook, went back into the living room, and held it out to Eli, who was still standing naked on the floor, looking around.
"Thanks. When will your mother be back?"
"In a couple of hours." Oskar held up the bag with her clothes. "Should I throw these away?"
Eli pulled on the bathrobe, tied the belt around the middle.
"No. I'll get it later." She nudged Oskar's shoulder. "Oskar? You understand now that I'm not a girl. That I'm not…"
Oskar stepped away from her.
"You're like a goddamn broken record. I got it. You told me already."
"But I haven't."
"Of course you have."
"When?"
Oskar thought it over.
"I can't remember, but I knew about it at least. Have known it for a while."
"Are you… disappointed?"
"Why would I be?"
"Because… I don't know. Because you think it's… complicated. Your friends-"
"Cut it out! Cut it out! You're sick. Just lay off."
"OK."
Eli fiddled with the belt of the bathrobe, then walked over to the record player and looked at the turning record. Turned around, looked around the room.
"You know, it's been a long time since I was… just hanging out in someone's home like this. I don't really know… What should I do?"
"I don't know."
Eli let her shoulders fall, pushed her hands into the pockets of the bathrobe, and watched the record's dark hole in the middle as if she were hypnotized. Opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it again. Took her right hand out of the pocket, stretched it out toward the record, and pushed her finger on it so it came to a stop.
"Watch it. It can get… damaged." Sorry.
Eli quickly pulled his hand back and the record sped up, kept turning. Oskar saw that his finger had left a damp imprint behind that could be seen every time the record spun through the strip of light from the overhead lamp. Eli put his hand back in the pocket, watching the record as if he were trying to listen to the music by studying the tracks.
"This sounds a bit… but…" the corners of Eli's mouth twitched, "… I haven't had a… normal friendship with anyone in two hundred years."
He looked at Oskar with a sorry-I'm-saying-such-silly-things smile. Oskar widened his eyes.
"Are you really that old?"
"Yes. No. I was born about two hundred and twenty years ago, but half the time I've slept."
"That's normal, I do that too. Or at least… eight hours… what does that make… one third of the time."
"Yes. But… when I say sleep I mean that there are months at a time when I don't… get up at all. And then a few months when I… live. But then I rest during the daytime."
"Is that how it works?"
"I don't know. That's how it is with me at any rate. And then when I wake up I'm… little again. And weak. That's when I need help. That's maybe why I've been able to survive. Because I'm small. And people want to help me. But… for very different reasons."
A shadow crossed Eli's cheek as he clenched his teeth, pushed his hands down into the pockets of the robe, found something, drew it up. A shiny, thin strip of paper. Something Oskar's mom had left there; she sometimes used Oskar's bathrobe. Eli gently laid the strip of paper back in the pocket as if it was something valuable.
"Do you sleep in a coffin?"
Eli laughed, shook his head.
"No, no, I…"
Oskar couldn't keep it in any longer. He didn't mean to, but it came out like an accusation when he said: "But you kill people!"
Eli looked back at him with an expression that looked like surprise, as if Oskar had forcefully pointed out that he had five fingers on each hand or some such equally self-evident fact.
"Yes. I kill people. Unfortunately."
"So why do you?"
A flash of anger from Eli's eyes.
"If you have a better idea I'd like to hear it."
"Yes, what… blood… there must be some way of… some way to… that you…"
"There isn't."
"Why not?"
Eli snorted, his eyes narrowed.
"Because I am like you."
"What do you mean like me? I…"
Eli thrust his hand through the air as if he was holding a knife, said:
"What are you looking at, idiot? Want to die, or something?"
Stabbed the air with his empty hand. "That's what happens if you look at me."
Oskar rubbed his lips together, dampening them.
"What are you saying?"
"It's not me that's saying it. It's you. That was the first thing I heard you say. Down on the playground."
Oskar remembered. The tree. The knife. How he had held up the blade of the knife like a mirror, seen Eli for the first time.
Do you have a reflection? The first time I saw you was in a mirror.
"I… don't kill people."
"No, but you would like to. If you could. And you would really do it if you had to."
"Because I hate someone. That's a very big…"
"Difference. Is it?"
"Yes?…"
"If you got away with it. If it just happened. If you could wish someone dead and they died. Wouldn't you do it then?" … sure.
"Sure you would. And that would be simply for your own enjoyment. Your revenge. I do it because I have to. There is no other way."
"But it's only because… they hurt me, because they tease me, because I…"
"Because you want to live. lust like me."
Eli held out his arms, laid them against Oskar's cheeks, brought his face closer.
"Be me a little."
And kissed him.
The man's fingers are curled around some dice and Oskar sees that the nails are painted black.
Silence blankets the room like thick fog. The thin hand tips… slowly… and the dice fall out, onto the table… pa-bang. Hit against each other, spin around, stop.
A two. And a four.
Oskar feels a sense of relief… he doesn't know where it comes from… when the man walks around the table, stopping in front of the row of boys like a general in front of his army. The man's voice is tonelessly flat, neither low nor high, as he stretches out his long index finger and starts to count down the row.
"One… two… three… four…"
Oskar looks to the left, in the direction the man has started to count. The boys stand, relaxed, freed. A sob. The boy next to Oskar bends over, his lower lip trembling. Oh. He's the one who is… number six. Oskar now understands his own relief.
"Five… six… and… seven."
The finger points straight at Oskar. The man looks into his eyes. And smiles.
No!
That wasn't… Oskar tears his gaze away from the man, looks at the
dice. They now show a three and a four. The boy next to Oskar looks around wildly, as if he has just woken up from a nightmare. For a second their eyes meet. Empty. Without comprehension.
Then a scream from next to the wall.
… mother…
The woman with the brown shawl runs toward him, but two men intervene, gripping her arms and… throwing her back against the stone wall. Oskar's arms fly out a little as if to catch when she falls and his lips form the word:
"… Mama!"
But hands as strong as knots are laid over his shoulders and he is taken out of the line, led to a little door. The man in the wig is still holding out his finger, following him with it while he is pushed, pulled out of the room into a dark chamber that smells
… alcohol…
… then flickering, fuzzy images; light, dark, stone, bare skin…
until the picture stabilizes and Oskar feels a strong pressure against his chest. He cannot move his arms. His right ear feels as if it is going to burst, lies pressed against a… wooden plank.
Something is in his mouth. A piece of rope. He sucks on the rope, opens his eyes.
He is lying face down on a table. Arms bound to the legs of the table. He is naked. In front of his eyes are two figures: the man with the wig and another one. A little fat man who looks… funny. No. Who looks like someone who thinks he is funny. Always tells stories that no one laughs at. The funny man who has a knife in one hand, a bowl in the other.
Something is wrong.
The pressure against his chest, his ear. Against his knees. There should be pressure against his… willie as well. But it is as if there is a… hole in the table right there. Oskar tries to wriggle a little to check it out but his body is bound too hard.
The man in the wig says something to the funny man and the funny man laughs, nods. Then both of them crouch down. The wig man fastens his gaze on Oskar. His eyes are clear blue, like the sky on a cold autumn day. Looks as if he is taking a friendly interest. The man looks into Oskar's eyes as if he is searching for something wonderful in there, something he loves.
The funny man crawls in under the table with the knife and the bowl in his hands. And Oskar understands.
He also knows that if he can just… get this piece of rope out of his mouth he doesn't have to be here. Then he disappears.
Oskar tries to pull his head back, leave the kiss. But Eli, who was prepared for this reaction, cups one hand around the back of his head, pushing his lips against his, forcing him to stay in Eli's memories, continues.
The piece of rope is pressed into his mouth and there is a hissing, wet sound when Oskar farts with fear. The man in the wig scrunches up his nose and smacks his lips, disapprovingly. His eyes don't change. Still the same expression, as on a child opening a cardboard box he knows contains a puppy.
Cold fingers grasp Oskar's penis, pulling on it. He opens his mouth to scream "nooo!" but the rope prevents him from forming the word and all that comes out is "aaaaaaah!"
The man under the table asks something and the wig man nods without shifting his gaze from Oskar. Then the pain. A red hot iron forced into his groin, gliding up through his stomach, his chest corroded by a cylinder of fire that passes right through his body and he screams, screams so his eyes are filled with tears and his body burns.
His heart beats against the table like a fist against a door and he shuts his eyes tight, he bites the rope while at a distance he hears splashing, he sees…
… his mother on her knees at the stream rinsing the clothes. Mama. Mama. She drops something, a piece of cloth, and Oskar gets up, he has been lying on his stomach and his body is burning, he gets up, he runs toward the stream, toward the rapidly disappearing piece of cloth, he throws himself into the stream to put out his torched body, to save the piece of cloth, and he manages to get it. His sister's shirt. He holds it up to the light, to his mother, who is silhouetted on the shore, and drops fall from the cloth, glittering in the sun, falling splashing into the stream, in his eyes, and he cannot see clearly because of the water running into his eyes, over his cheeks as he…
… opens his eyes and sees the blond hair unclearly, the blue eyes like distant forest pools. Sees the bowl the man is holding in his hands, the bowl he brings to his mouth and how he drinks. How the man shuts his eyes, finally shuts them and drinks…
More time… Endless time. Imprisoned. The man bites. And drinks. Bites. And drinks.
Then the glowing rod moves up into his head and everything turns pink as he jerks his head up from the rope and falls…
Eli caught him when he fell backward from Eli's lips. Held him in his arms. Oskar fumbled for whatever there was to grasp, the body in front of him, and squeezed it hard, looked unseeing around the room.
Stay still.
After a while a pattern started to emerge before Oskar's eyes. Wallpaper. Beige with white, almost invisible roses. He recognized it. It was the wallpaper in his living room. He was in the living room in his and his mom's apartment.
And the person in his arms was… Eli.
A boy. My friend. Yes.
Oskar felt sick to his stomach, dizzy. He freed himself from Eli's arms and sat down in the couch, looked around as if to reassure himself again that he was back and not… there. He swallowed, noticing that he could recall every detail of the place he had just been. It was like a real memory. Something that had happened to him, recently. The funny man, the bowl, the pain…
Eli kneeled on the floor in front of him, hands pressed against his stomach.
"Sorry."
Just like…
"What happened to Mama?"
Eli looked uncertain, asked:
"Do you mean… my mother?"
"No…" Oskar grew silent, saw the image of Mama down by the stream rinsing the clothes. But it wasn't his mother. They didn't look anything alike. He rubbed his eyes and said,
"Yes. Right. Your mother."
"I don't know."
"They weren't the ones who-"
"I don't know!"
Eli's hands squeezed so hard in front of his stomach that the knuckles whitened, his shoulders pulled up. Then he relaxed, said more gently:
"I don't know. Excuse me. Excuse the whole… thing. I wanted you to… I don't know. Please excuse me. It was… stupid."
Eli was a copy of his mother. Thinner, smoother, younger but… a copy. In twenty years Eli would probably look just like the woman by the stream.
Except that he won't. He's going to look exactly like he looks now.
Oskar sighed, exhausted, leaned back in the couch. Too much. An incipient headache groped along his temples, found foothold, pressed in. Too much. Eli stood up.
"I'll go now."
Oskar leaned his head in his hand, nodded. Didn't have the energy to protest, think about what he should do. Eli took off the bathrobe and Oskar got another glimpse of his groin. Now he saw that in the midst of that pale skin there was a faint pink spot, a scar.
What does he do when he… pees? Or maybe he doesn't…
Couldn't muster the energy to ask. Eli crouched down next to the plastic bag, untied it, and started to pull out his clothes. Oskar said: "You can… take something of mine."
"It's OK."
Eli took out the checkered shirt. Dark squares against the blue. Oskar sat up. The headache whirled against his temples.
"Don't be silly, you can-"
"It's OK."
Eli started to put on the bloodstained shirt and Oskar said: "You're gross, don't you get it? You're gross."
Eli turned to him with the shirt in his hands. "Do you think so?"
"Yes."
Eli put the shirt back in the bag.
"What should I take then?"
"Something from the closet. Whatever you like."
Eli nodded, went into Oskar's room where the closets were while Oskar let himself slide sideways into the couch and pressed his hands against his temples to prevent them from cracking.
Mom, Eli's mom, my mom. Eli, me. Two hundred years. Eli's dad. Eli's dad? That old man who… the old man.
Eli came back into the living room. Oskar got ready to say what he was planning to say but stopped himself when he saw that Eli was wearing a dress. A faded yellow summer dress with small white dots. One of his mother's dresses. Eli stroked his hand over it.
"Is this alright? I took the one that looked the most worn."
"But it's…"
"I'll bring it back later." Yes, yes, yes.
Eli went up to him, crouched down, and took his hand.
"Oskar? I'm sorry that… I don't know what I should…"
Oskar waved with his other hand to get him to stop, said: "You know that that old guy, that he's escaped, don't you?"
"What old guy?"
"The old guy who… the one you said was your dad. The one who lived with you."
"What about him?"
Oskar shut his eyes. Blue lightning flashed inside his eyelids. The chain of events he had reconstructed from the papers flashed past and he got angry, loosening his hand from Eli's and making it into a fist, hitting against his own throbbing head. He said with his eyes still shut: "Cut it out. Just cut it out. I know all of it, OK. Quit pretending. Quit lying, I'm so damn tired of that."
Eli didn't say anything. Oskar pinched his eyes shut, breathed in and out.
"The old man has escaped. They've been looking for him the whole day without finding him. Now you know."
A pause. Then Eli's voice, above Oskar's head:
"Where?"
"Here. In Judarn. The forest. By Akeshov."
Oskar opened his eyes. Eli had stood up, stood there with his hand over his mouth and large, frightened eyes above his hand. The dress was too big, hung like a sack over his thin shoulders, and he looked like a kid who had borrowed his mom's clothes without permission and was now awaiting his punishment.
"Oskar," said Eli. "Don't go out. After it gets dark. Promise me that." The dress. The words. Oskar snorted, couldn't help saying it. "You sound like my mom."
The squirrel darts down the trunk of the oak tree, stops, listens. A siren, in the distance.
On Bergslagsvagen an ambulance is going by with flashing blue lights, the sirens on.
Inside the ambulance there are three people. Lacke Sorensson is sitting on a folding seat and is holding a bloodless, lacerated hand belonging to Virginia Lind. An ambulance technician is adjusting the tube that administers saline solution to Virginia's body in order to give her heart something to pump around, now that she has lost so much blood.
The squirrel judges the sound to be not dangerous, irrelevant. It continues down the tree trunk. All day there have been people in the forest, dogs. Not a moment of calm and only now, when it is dark, does the squirrel dare come down out of the oak tree it has been forced to hole up in all day.
Now the dogs' barking and the voices have died down, gone away. The thundering bird that has been hovering over the tree tops also appears to have returned to its nest.
The squirrel reaches the foot of the tree, runs along a thick root. It does not like to make its way over the ground in the dark, but hunger forces it on. It makes its way with alertness, stopping to listen, looking around every ten meters. Makes sure to steer clear of a badger den that has been inhabited as recently as this summer. He hasn't seen the family for a long time but you can never be too careful.
Finally the squirrel reaches its goal: the nearest of the many winter stores it has laid up in the fall. The temperature this evening has sunk below freezing and on top of the snow that has been melting all day there is now a thin, hard crust. The squirrel scratches with its claws through the crust, gets through, and moves down. Stops, listens, and digs again. Through snow, leaves, dirt.
Just as it picks up a nut between its paws it hears a sound.
Danger.
It takes the nut in its teeth and runs straight up into a pine tree without having time to cover over the store. Once in the safety of a branch it takes the nut into its paws again, tries to locate the sound. Its hunger is great and the food only some centimeters from its mouth but the danger must first be located, identified, before it is time to eat.
The squirrel's head jerks from side to side, his nose trembles as he looks down over the moon-shadowed landscape below and traces the sound to its source. Yes. Taking the long way around was worth it. The scratching, wet sound comes from the badger den.
Badgers can't climb trees. The squirrel relaxes a little and takes a bite of the nut while it continues to study the ground, but now more as a member of a theater audience, third balcony. Wants to see what will happen, how many badgers there are.
But what emerges from the badger's den is no badger. The squirrel removes the nut from its mouth, looks down. Tries to understand. Put what it sees together with known facts. Doesn't manage it.
Therefore takes the nut into its mouth again, dashes further up the trunk, all the way up into the very top.
Maybe one of those can climb trees.
You can never be too careful.
November [Evening/Night]
At is half past eight, Sunday evening.
At the same time as the ambulance with Virginia and Lacke is driving over the Traneberg Bridge, the Stockholm district chief of police holds up a photograph for the image-hungry reporters, Eli chooses a dress out of Oskar's mother's closet, Tommy squeezes glue into a plastic bag and draws in the exquisite fumes of numbness and forgetfulness, a squirrel sees Hakan Bengtsson-as the first living creature in fourteen hours to have done so-and Staffan, one of the ones who has been searching for him, is pouring out a cup of tea.
He has not realized that a sliver is missing from the very front of the spout and a large quantity of tea runs along the spout, the teapot, down onto the kitchen counter. He mumbles something and tips the teapot at an even steeper angle so the tea comes splashing out and the lid tumbles off and into the cup. Scalding hot tea splashes onto his hands and he slams the teapot down, holding his arms stiffly at his sides, while in his head he starts to run through the Hebrew alphabet in order to quell his impulse to throw the teapot against the wall.
Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth…
Yvonne came into the kitchen, saw Staffan bent over the counter with closed eyes.
"How are you doing?"
Staffan shook his head. "It's nothing."
Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samesh…
"Are you sad?"
"No."
Koff, Resh, Shin, Taff. There. Better.
He opened his eyes, pointed at the teapot.
"That's a terrible teapot."
"It is?"
"Yes, it… spills when you try to pour the tea."
"I've never noticed."
"Well, it does."
"There's nothing wrong with it."
Staffan pinched his lips together, stretched out his scalded hand towards her with a gesture of Peace. Shalom. Be quiet. "Yvonne. Right now I feel such an… intense desire to hit you. So please, don't say any more."
Yvonne took half a step back. Something in her had been prepared for this. She had not admitted this insight into her conscious mind, but had still sensed that behind his pious facade Staffan stored some kind of… rage.
She crossed her arms, breathed in and out a few times, while Staffan stood still, staring at the teacup with the lid in it. Then she said: "Is that what you do?"
"What?"
"Hit. When something goes wrong."
"Have I hit you?"
"No, but you said-"
"I said. And you listened. And now it's alright."
"And if I hadn't listened?"
Staffan looked completely calm again and Yvonne relaxed, lowered her arms. He took both her hands in his, kissed the backs of them lightly.
"Yvonne. We have to listen to each other."
The tea was poured out and they drank it in the living room. Staffan made a mental note to buy Yvonne a new teapot. She asked about the search in Judarn forest and Staffan told her. She did her best to engage him in conversation on other topics but, finally, came the unavoidable question.
"Where's Tommy?"
"I… don't know."
"You don't know? Yvonne…"
"Well, at a friend's house."
"Hm. When is he coming home."
"I think he was… supposed to spend the night. Over there."
"There?"
"Yes, at…"
In her head Yvonne went through the names of Tommy's friends that she knew. Didn't want to tell Staffan that Tommy was gone for the night without knowing where. Staffan took this thing about a parent's responsibility very seriously.
"… at Robban's."
"Robban. Is that his best friend?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"What is he called, more than Robban?"
"… Ahlgren. Why? Is that someone you have…"
"No, I was just thinking."
Staffan took his spoon, hit it lightly against the teacup. A delicate ringing sound. He nodded.
"Great. You know… I think we're going to have to call this Robban and ask Tommy to come home for a while. So I can talk to him a little."
"I don't have the number."
"No, but… Ahlgren. You know where he lives, don't you? All you have to do is look it up in the telephone directory."
Staffan got up out of the couch and Yvonne bit her lower lip, felt how she was constructing a labyrinth that it was getting harder and harder to get out of. He got the local part of the telephone book and stopped in the middle of the living room, flipping through it and mumbling:
"Ahlgren, Ahlgren… Hm. Which street does he live on?"
"I… Bjornsonsgatan."
"Bjornsonsgatan… no. No Ahlgren there. But there is one here on Ibsengatan. Could it be him?"
When Yvonne didn't answer, Staffan put his finger in the phone book and said:
"Think I'll give him a try at any rate. It's Robban, right?"
"Staffan…"
"Yes?"
"I promised him not to tell."
"Now I don't understand anything."
"Tommy. I said I wouldn't tell you… where he is."
"So he is not at Robban's?"
"No."
"Where is he then?"
"I… I promised."
Staffan put the telephone book on the coffee table, went and sat down next to Yvonne on the couch. She took a sip of tea, held the teacup in front of her face as if to hide behind it while Staffan waited for her. When she put the cup down on the saucer she saw that her hands were shaking. Staffan put his hand on her knee.
"Yvonne. You have to understand that-"
"I promised."
"I only want to talk to him. Forgive me for saying this, Yvonne, but I think it is exactly this kind of inability to deal with a situation as it arises that is the reason… well, that they happen in the first place. In my experience, the faster young people have someone respond to their actions, the greater the chance that… take a heroin addict, for example. If someone takes action when he is only doing, say, hashish…"
"Tommy doesn't do things like that."
"Are you completely sure of that?"
Silence fell. Yvonne knew that for each second that went by, her "yes" in response to Staffan's question decreased in value. Tick-tock. Now she had already answered "no" without saying the word. And Tommy did act strange sometimes. When he came home. Something about his eyes. What if he…
Staffan leaned back in the couch, knew the battle was won. Now he was only waiting for her conditions.
Yvonne's eyes were searching for something on the table.
"What is it?"
"My cigarettes, have you-"
"In the kitchen. Yvonne-"
"Yes. Yes. You can't go to him now."
"No. You can decide. If you think-"
"Tomorrow morning. Before he goes to school. Promise me. That you won't go to him now."
"Promise. So. What kind of mysterious place is he holed up in anyway?"
Yvonne told him.
Then she went out into the kitchen and smoked a cigarette, blew the smoke out through the open window. Smoked one more, cared less about where the smoke went. When Staffan came out into the kitchen, demonstratively waved away the smoke with his hand, and asked where the cellar key was, she said she had forgotten for the moment but it would probably come back to her tomorrow morning.
If he was nice.
When Eli had gone, Oskar sat down at the kitchen table again looking through the displayed newspaper articles. The headache was starting to lessen now that the impressions were taking on more of a pattern.
Eli had explained that the old man had become… infected. And worse. The infection was the only thing in him that was alive. His brain was dead, and the infection was controlling and directing him. Toward Eli.
Eli had told him, begged him not to do anything. Eli would leave this place tomorrow as soon as it got dark, and Oskar had of course asked why not leave tonight already?
Because… I can't.
Why not? I can help you.
Oskar, I can't. I'm too weak.
How can that be? You've just…
I just am.
And Oskar had realized that he was the reason that Eli was weak. All the blood that had run out in the hall. If the old guy got ahold of Eli it would be all Oskar's fault.
The clothes!
Oskar got up so violently the chair tipped over backward and fell to the floor.
The bag with Eli's bloodied clothes was still sitting in front of the couch, the shirt half hanging out. He pressed it deeper into the bag and the sleeve was like a damn sponge when he pressed it down, tied the bag, and… He stopped, looked at the hand that had pressed the shirt down.
The cut he had made in his palm had a crust that had broken up a little, revealing the wound underneath.
… the blood… he didn't want to mix it. … am I… infected now?
His legs carried him mechanically to the front door with the bag in his hand, listening for sounds outside. He didn't hear anyone and he ran up the stairs to the garbage chute, opened it. He pushed the bag in through the opening, held it fast for a moment, dangling in the dark.
A cold breeze whooshed through the chute, chilling his hand where he held it outstretched, squeezed around the plastic knot of the bag. The bag shone white against the black, slightly craggy walls of the duct. If he let go, the bag would not be sucked up. It would fall down. Gravity would pull it down. Into the big garbage sack.
In a few days the garbage truck would come and collect the sack. It came early in the morning. The orange, blinking lights would flash onto Oskar's ceiling at about the same time as he generally woke up and he would lie there in his bed and listen to the rumbling, masticating crunch as the garbage was crushed. Maybe he would get up and watch the men in their overalls who tossed the big bags with habitual ease, pressed the button. The jaws of the garbage truck closing and the men who then hopped into the truck and drove the short distance to the next building.
And it always gave him such a feeling of… warmth. That he was safe in his room. That things worked. Maybe there was also a longing. For those men, for the truck. To be allowed to sit in that dimly-lit coach, drive away…
Let go. I have to let go.
The hand was convulsively clenched around the bag. His arm was aching from having been held outstretched so long. The back of his hand was numb from the cold air. He let go.
There was a hissing sound as the bag slipped along the walls, a half
second of silence as it fell freely, and then a thud when it landed in the sack below.
I'll help you.
He looked at his hand again. The hand that helped. The hand that…
I'll kill someone. I'll go in and get the knife and then I'll go out and kill someone. Jonny. I'll slit his throat and gather up his blood and then I'll bring it home for Eli because what does it matter now that I'm infected and soon I will…
His legs wanted to crumple up under him and he had to lean on the edge of the garbage chute not to fall over. He had thought it. For real. This wasn't like the game with the tree. He had… for a moment… really thought about doing it.
Warm. He was warm, like he had a fever. His body ached and he wanted to go lie down. Now.
I'm infected. I'm going to become a… vampire.
He forced his legs to move back down the stairs while he steadied himself with one hand-
the uninfected one
– on the railing. He managed to let himself back into the apartment, went into his room, lay down on his bed, and stared at the wallpaper. The forest. Quickly one of his figures appeared, looked him in the eyes. The little gnome. He stroked his finger over it while a completely ridiculous little thought appeared:
Tomorrow I have to go to school.
And there was a worksheet he hadn't filled out yet. Africa. He should get up now, sit down at his desk, light the lamp, and start to look up places in the geography book. Find meaningless names and write them down on the blank lines.
That was what he ought to do. He softly stroked the gnome's little cap. Then he tapped on the wall.
E.L.I.
No answer. Was probably out-
doing what we do.
He pulled the covers over his head. A fever-like chill coursed through his body. He tried to imagine it. How it would be. To live forever. Feared, hated. No. Eli wouldn't hate him. If they were… together…
He tried to imagine it; he spun out a fantasy about it. After a while the front door was unlocked. His mom was home.
Pillows of fat.
Tommy stared blankly at the picture in front of him. The girl was pressing her breasts together with her hands so they stood out like two balloons, had pursed her mouth into a pout. It looked sick. He had thought he was going to jack off, but there must be something wrong with his brain, because he thought the girl looked like a freak.
He folded the magazine up with unnatural slowness, tucked it back in under the sofa cushions. Every little movement directed by conscious thought. Wasted. He was utterly wasted with glue fumes. And that was good. No world. Only the room he was in, and outside that… a billowing desert.
Staffan.
He tried to think about Staffan. Couldn't. Didn't get ahold of him. Only saw that cardboard cutout of the policeman up at the post office. Lifesize. To scare off any would-be robbers.
Should we rob the post office?
Man, you must be crazy! Can't you see the cardboard policeman is there?
Tommy giggled when the cardboard policeman's face took on Staffan's features. Assigned as punishment. To guard the post office. There was something written on the cutout as well, what was it?
Crime doesn't pay. No. The police are watching you. No. What the hell was it? Watch out! I'm a champion pistol-shooter!
Tommy laughed. Laughed more. Laughed until he shook and thought the naked bulb in the ceiling was swinging to and fro in time with his laughter. Giggled at it. Watch out! The cardboard policeman! With his cardboard gun! And his cardboard head!
There was a knock inside his head. Someone wanted to come into the post office.
The cardboard policeman pricks up his ears. There are two hundred cardboards at the post office. Undo the safety. Bang-bang.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Bang.
… Staffan… Mom, shit…
Tommy stiffened. Tried to think. Couldn't. Just a ragged cloud in his head. Then he calmed down. Maybe it was Robban or Lasse. It could be Staffan. And he was made of cardboard.
Penis-dummy, cardboard-mummy.
Tommy cleared his throat, said thickly: "Who is it?" It s me.
He recognized the voice, couldn't place it. Not Staffan, at any rate. Not paper-Papa.
Barba-papa. Stop it.
"Who are you, then?"
"Can you open?"
"The post office is closed for the day. Come back in five years."
"I have money."
"Paper money?"
"Yes."
"That's good."
He got up out of the couch. Slowly, slowly. The contours of things didn't want to stay put. His head was full of lead.
Concrete cap.
He stood still for a few seconds, swaying. The concrete floor tilted dreamily to the right, to the left, like in the Funny House. He walked forward, one step at a time, lifted the latch, pushed open the door. It was that girl. Oskar's friend. Tommy stared at her without understanding what he was seeing.
Sun and surf.
The girl was wearing only a thin dress. Yellow, with white dots that absorbed Tommy's gaze, and he tried to focus on the dots but they started to dance, move around so he became sick to his stomach. She was maybe twenty centimeters shorter than him.
As cute as… a summer day.
"Is it summer now all of a sudden?" he asked.
The girl put her head to one side.
"What?"
"Well you're wearing a… what's it called… a sundress."
"Yes."
Tommy nodded, pleased that he had been able to think of the word. What had she said? Money. Yes. Oskar had said that…
"Do you… want to buy something?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Can I come in?"
"Yes, sure."
"Say that I can come in."
Tommy made an exaggerated, sweeping gesture with his arm. Saw his own hand moving in slow-motion, a drugged fish swimming through the air.
"Step inside. Welcome to the… local branch."
He didn't have the energy to stay on his feet any longer. The floor wanted him. He turned around and flopped back on the couch. The girl walked in, closed the door behind her, put the latch back on. He saw her as an enormous chicken, giggling at his vision. The chicken sat down in an armchair.
"What is it?"
"No, it's just… you're so… yellow." I see.
The girl crossed her hands over a little purse in her lap. He hadn't noticed that she had one. No. No not a purse. More like a cosmetic bag. Tommy looked at it. You see a bag. You wonder what's inside.
"What do you have in there?"
"Money."
"Of course."
Nope. This is fishy. There's something strange about this.
"What do you want to buy, then?"
The girl unzipped the case and took out a thousand kronor note. One more. Then another. Three thousand. The bills looked ridiculously large in her small hands when she leaned forward and laid them on the floor.
Tommy chortled: "What's all this?"
"Three thousand."
"Yes. But what for?"
"For you."
"Give me a break."
"No, really."
"That must be some kind of damn… Monopoly money or something. Isn't it?"
"No."
"It isn't?"
"No."
"What's it for, anyway?"
"Because I want to buy something from you."
"You want to buy something for three thou… no."
Tommy stretched out one arm as far as he could, snapped up a bill. Felt it, crinkled it with his hand, held it up against the light and saw the watermark. Same king or whatever who was printed on the front. The real deal.
"You're not kidding, are you?"
"No."
Three thousand. Could… go somewhere. Fly somewhere.
Then Staffan and his mom could stand there and… Tommy felt his head clear a little. The whole thing was cuckoo but OK: three thousand. That was a fact. Now the only question was…
"What do you want to buy? For this you can have…"
"Blood."
"Blood."
"Yes."
Tommy snorted, shook his head.
"No, sorry. We're all sold out."
The girl sat still in the armchair, looking at him. Didn't even smile.
"No, but seriously," Tommy said. "I mean, what?"
"You'll get this money… if I get some blood."
"I don't have any."
"Yes, you do."
"No."
"Yes."
Tommy suddenly got it.
What the hell…
"Are you… serious?"
The girl pointed at the bills.
"It's not dangerous."
"But… what… how?"
The girl stuck her hand into the kit, fished something out. A small, white, square bit of plastic. Shook it. It rattled a little. Now Tommy saw what it was. A packet of razor blades. She put it into her lap, took out something else. A skin-colored rectangle. A large Band-Aid.
This is ridiculous.
"No, cut it out now. Don't you understand that… I could just take that money from you, you know. Put it in my pocket and say, What? Three thousand? Haven't seen it. It's a lot of money, don't you realize that? Where did you get it from?"
The girl shut her eyes, sighed. When she opened them again she didn't look as friendly.
"Do you want to or not?"
She means it. She really means it. No… no…
"What, are you, like, going to… swish, and then…"
The girl nodded, eagerly.
Swish? Wait a minute. Wait a little now… what was it… pigs…
He frowned. The thought bounced around inside his head like a rubber ball thrown hard inside a room, trying to find a resting place, to stop. And it stopped. He remembered something. Gaped. Looked her in the eyes.
"… no…"
"Yes."
"This is some kind of joke, isn't it? You know what? Go. I want you to leave."
"I have an illness. I need blood. You can have more money if you want."
She dug around in the kit and took out two more thousand kronor notes, put them on the floor. Five thousand. "Please."
The murderer. Vallingby. His throat slit. But what the hell… this girl…
"What do you need it for… what the hell… you're just a kid, you…"
"Are you scared?"
"No, I can always… are you scared?"
"Yes."
"Of what?"
"Of you saying no."
"But I am saying no. This is completely… come off it. Go home."
The girl sat still in the chair, thinking. Then she nodded, got up, and picked the money up off the floor, put it back in the makeup kit. Tommy looked at the spot where it had been. Five. Thousand. A clink as the latch was lifted. Tommy turned over on his back.
"But… what… are you planning to slit my throat?"
"No, on the inside of your elbow. Only a little."
"But what will you do with it?"
"Drink it."
"Now?"
"Yes."
Tommy's mind turned inward and he saw that chart of the circulatory system projected over his skin like an overhead transparency. Felt, maybe for the first time in his life, that he had a circulatory system. Not just isolated points, wounds where one or more drops came out, but a large pumping tree of veins filled with… how much was it?… four or five liters of blood.
"What kind of illness is it?"
The girl didn't say anything, just stood there at the door with the latch in her hand, studying him, and then the lines of veins and arteries of his body, the chart, suddenly took on the character of a… butcher's chart. He pushed the thought away, and thought instead: Become a blood donor. Twenty-five even and a cheese sandwich. Then he thought:
"So give me the money."
The girl unzipped the case, took out the bills again.
"How about if I give you… three now. And two after?"
"Yeah, sure. But I could just… jump you and take the money anyway, don't you understand that?"
"No. You couldn't."
She held the three thousand out to him, between index and middle finger. He held each one of them up to the light, checking to make sure that they were genuine. Rolled them into a cylinder that he clenched his left hand around.
"OK. And now?"
The girl put the other two bills on the chair, crouched down next to the couch, dug out the white packet from the kit, shaking out a razor blade.
She's done this before.
The girl turned the razor blade to see which side was sharper. Then held it up next to her face. A little message, whose only word was: Swish. She said:
"You can't tell anyone about this."
"What happens if I do?"
"You cannot tell anyone about this. Ever."
"No." Tommy glanced at his outstretched arm, at the thousand kronor bills on the chair. "How much are you going to take?"
"One liter."
"Is that… a lot?"
"Yes."
"Is it so much that I…"
"No. You can handle it."
"Because it comes back."
"Yes."
Tommy nodded. Then watched with fascination as the razor blade, shining like a little mirror, was lowered against his skin. As if it was happening to someone else, somewhere else. Only saw the play of lines. The girl's jawbone, her dark hair, his white arm, the rectangle of the razor blade that pushed aside a thin hair on his arm and reached its goal, rested for a split second against the swelling of the vein, somewhat darker than the surrounding skin.
Then it pressed down, lightly, lightly. A point that sank down without puncturing it. Then-
Swish.
He had an involuntary reaction to pull away and Tommy gasped, squeezed his other hand tightly around the bills. A creaking inside his head as his teeth bit down, grinding against each other. The blood streamed out, pressed out in spurts.
The razor blade fell to the floor with a tinkle and the girl grabbed hold of his arm with both hands, pressing her lips against the inside of his arm.
Tommy turned his head away, only felt her warm lips, her tongue lapping against his skin, and again he saw that chart inside his head, the channels that the blood ran through, rushing toward that… opening.
It's running out of me.
Yes. The intensity of the pain increased. The arm was starting to feel paralyzed; he no longer felt the lips, he only felt the strong suction, how it was sucked out of him, how it was…
Flowing away.
He got scared. Wanted to put an end to it. It hurt too much. The tears came to his eyes, he opened his mouth to say something, to… couldn't. There were no words that would… He bent his free arm toward his mouth, pressed the clenched fist against his mouth. Felt the cylinder of paper that stuck out of it. Bit down on it.
11:17, Sunday evening, Angbyplan:
A man is observed outside the hair salon. He presses his face and hands against the glass, and appears extremely intoxicated. The police arrive at the scene fifteen minutes later. The man has left by this point. The window does not appear damaged in any way, only the traces of mud or earth. In the lighted window display there are numerous pictures of young people, hair models.
Are you sleeping?"
"No."
A waft of perfume and cold as his mom came into his room, sat down on the bed.
"Have you had a good time?"
"Yes."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing in particular."
"I saw some papers. On the kitchen table."
"Mm."
Oskar pulled the covers more tightly around him, pretended to yawn.
"Are you sleepy?"
"Mm."
True and not true. He was tired, so tired his head was buzzing. Only wanted to roll himself up in his covers, seal the entrance, and not emerge again until… until… but sleepy, no. And… could he even sleep now that he was infected?
Heard his mother ask him something about his dad, and he said "fine" without knowing what he was answering. It got quiet. Then his mom sighed, deeply.
"Sweetheart, how are you doing, really? Is there anything I can do?"
"No."
"What is it?"
Oskar pressed his face into the pillow, breathing out so that his nose, mouth, and lips became hot and moist. He couldn't do it. It was too hard. Had to tell someone. Into the pillow he said:"… iemfecte…"
"What did you say?"
He lifted his mouth from the pillow.
"I'm infected."
His mom's hand stroked the back of his head, across his neck, continued, and the blankets came off a little.
"How do you mean, inf… but… you're still wearing all your clothes!"
"Yes, I…"
"Let me feel you. Are you hot?" She leaned her cold cheek onto his forehead. "You have a fever. Come on. You have to take your clothes off and get into bed properly." She stood up and gently shook his shoulder. "Come on."
She was breathing faster now, thinking something else. Said in a different tone of voice:
"Weren't you dressed warmly enough when you were at your dad's?"
"I was, it's not that."
"Were you wearing a hat?"
"Yes. It's not that."
"What is it then?"
Oskar pressed his face into the pillow again, squeezed it, and said: "… agoinbeahmpire…"
"Oskar, what are you saying?"
"I'm going to be a vampire!"
Pause. The soft rustling of his mother's coat as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"Oskar. Get up. And take your clothes off. And get into bed."
"I'm going to be a vampire."
His mom's breathing. Deliberate, angry. "Tomorrow I am going to throw away all of those books you're always reading."
The covers were pulled off him. He got up, slowly took his clothes off, avoided looking at her. Lay down in the bed again, and his mom tucked the covers in around him.
"Do you want anything?"
Oskar shook his head.
"Should we take your temperature?"
Oskar shook his head harder. Now he looked at her. She was leaning over the bed, hands on her knees. Searching, concerned eyes.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"No. Yes."
"What?"
"No, nothing."
"No, tell me."
"Could you… tell me a story?"
A string of different emotions crossed his mom's face: sadness, joy, worry, a small smile, a wrinkle of concern. All in a few seconds. Then she said: "I… don't know any fairy tales. But I… I can read one to you if you want. If we have some book…"
Her gaze went up to the bookcase by Oskar's head.
"No, don't bother."
"But I'm happy to do it."
"No, I don't want you to."
"Why not? You said-"
"Yes, I did, but… no. I don't want you to."
"Should I… should I sing something?"
"No!"
She pressed her lips together, hurt. Then she decided not to be, since Oskar was sick, said: "I guess I could think of something, if that is-"
"No, it's fine. I want to sleep now."
His mom eventually said good night, left the room. Oskar lay there, his eyes open, staring at the window. Tried to feel if he was in the process of… becoming. Didn't know what that felt like. Eli. How had that actually worked when he… was transformed?
To be separated from everything.
Leave. His mom, dad, school… Jonny, Tomas…
To be with Eli. Always.
He heard the TV go on in the living room, how the volume was quickly lowered. Distant clatter of the coffee pot from the kitchen. The gas stove being turned on, rattle of a cup and saucer. Cupboards opened.
The normal sounds. He had heard them a hundred times. And he felt sad. So very sad.
The wounds had healed. The only remaining traces of the lacerations on Virginia's body were white lines, here and there the remnants of scabs that had not yet fallen off. Lacke stroked her hand, pressed against her body with a leather strap, and yet another scab crumbled away under his fingers.
Virginia had resisted. Had made violent resistance when she came to her full senses and understood what was happening. She had torn out the catheter for the blood transfusion, screamed and kicked.
Lacke had not been able to watch as they struggled with her, how she seemed like a different person. Had gone down to the cafeteria and had a cup of coffee. Then another, and another. When he was in the process of pouring himself his fourth cup, the woman at the register had pointed out in a tired voice that he was only allowed one free refill. Lacke had then said that he was broke, felt like he was going to die tomorrow, could she make an exception?
She could. She even offered Lacke a dry mazarin cake that would have been thrown away the next day anyway. He had eaten it with a lump in his throat, thinking about people's relative goodness, relative evil. Then he went and stood out by the front doors and smoked the second to last cigarette in the packet before he went back up to Virginia.
They had tied her down with straps.
A nurse had received such a blow that her glasses had broken and a sliver had slashed an eyebrow. Virginia had been impossible to calm. They had not dared give her an injection because of her general state and therefore they had strapped her arms down with leather straps, mainly to prevent-as they put it-"to prevent her from injuring herself."
Lacke rubbed a scab between his fingers; a powder as fine as pigment colored the tops of his fingers red. A movement in the corner of his eye; the blood from the bag hanging from the stand next to Virginia's bed fell in drops down a plastic tube, and on down through the catheter into Virginia's arm.
Apparently, once they had identified her blood group, they had first given her a transfusion where they literally pumped in a quantity of blood, but now, when her condition had stabilized, she received it by the drop. There was a label on the half-full blood bag printed with incomprehensible markings, dominated with a capital A. The blood type, of course.
But… wait a minute…
Lacke had blood type B. He now recalled that he and Virginia had talked about that one time, that Virginia also had the blood group B and that therefore he could… yes. That was exactly right. That they could give blood to each other because they had the same blood type. And Lacke had B; he was completely sure of that.
He got up, walked out into the corridor.
Surely they don't make these kinds of mistakes?
He got hold of a nurse.
"Excuse me, but…"
She glanced at his worn clothes, put on an aloof air, said: "Yes?"
"I was just wondering. Virginia… Virginia Lind who you… admitted a while ago…"
The nurse nodded, looked positively dismissive now. Had perhaps been present when they…
"Well, I was just wondering… her blood type."
"What about it?"
"Well, I saw there's a big A on the bag that… but she doesn't have that."
"I'm afraid I'm not following this."
"You see… uh… do you have a moment?"
The nurse looked around down the corridor. Perhaps to check if there was help to be had if this deteriorated into something, perhaps to underscore that she had more important things to do, but she did agree to accompany Lacke into the room where Virginia lay with closed eyes, the blood slowly dropping down the tube. Lacke pointed to the bag of blood.
"Here. This A, it means that…"
"That it contains type A blood, yes. There is such a shortage of blood donors these days. If people knew how-"
"Excuse me, yes. But she has blood type B. Isn't it dangerous to…"
"Of course it is."
The nurse was not unfriendly, exactly, but her body language suggested that Lacke's right to question the competence of hospital staff was minimal. She shrugged lightly, said: "If one has blood type B. But this patient does not. She has AB."
"But… the bag says A…"
The nurse nodded, as if she was explaining to a child that there were no people on the moon: "People with the blood type AB can receive blood from all blood groups."
"But… I see. Then she has changed her blood type."
The nurse raised an eyebrow. The child had just claimed that it had been to the moon and seen people up there. With a hand gesture, as if she were slicing a ribbon, she said: "That's just not possible."
"Is that a fact. Well, she must have been wrong, then."
"She must have been. If you'll excuse me I have other things to attend to."
The nurse checked the catheter in Virginia's arm, adjusted the IV stand slightly, and with a last look at Lacke that said that these were important things and god save him if he so much as looked at them, she left the room with energetic steps.
What happens if you get the wrong kind of blood? The blood… coagulates.
No. It must have been Virginia who couldn't remember correctly.
He walked to a corner of the room, where there was an armchair, a small table with a plastic flower. Sat down, looked around the room. Bare walls, shining floor. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Virginia's bed of metal tubing, over her a pale yellow blanket printed with county
ADMINISTRATION.
This is how things end up.
In Dostoevsky, illness and death were almost always dirty, impoverished affairs. Crushed beneath wagon wheels, mud, typhus, bloodstained handkerchiefs. And so on. But damned if that weren't preferable to this. Slow disintegration in a polished machine.
Lacke leaned back into the armchair, closed his eyes. The chair back was too short, his head slumped back. He straightened up, put his elbow on the armrest, and leaned his head in his hand. Looked at the plastic flower. It was as if they had put it there simply to emphasize the fact that no life was allowed here; here order reigned.
The image of the flower stayed on his retina when he shut his eyes again. It transformed into a real flower that grew, became a garden. A garden attached to the house they were going to buy. Lacke stood in the garden, looked at a rosebush with shining red flowers. From the house came the long shadow of a person. The sun set hastily and the shadow grew, became longer, stretched out over the garden…
He jumped and was suddenly awake. His palm was wet with saliva that had run out of the corner of his mouth as he was sleeping. He rubbed his mouth, smacked his lips together, and tried to straighten his head. Couldn't. His neck had seized up somehow. He forced it to straighten out with a crackling of the ligaments, stopped.
Wide open eyes staring right at him.
"Hi! Are you…"
His mouth closed. Virginia was lying on her back, restrained by the straps, with her face turned toward him. But her face was much too still. Not a flicker of recognition, joy… nothing. Her eyes didn't blink.
Dead! She is…
Lacke flew up out of the armchair and something cracked in his neck. He threw himself on his knees next to the bed, grabbed the metal tubing, and moved his face close to hers as if to will her soul back into her face, from her depths, by the sheer force of his presence.
"Ginja! Can you hear me?"
Nothing. And yet he could have sworn that her eyes in some way looked back into his, that they were not dead. He looked for her, all the way through them, casting hooks from deep within himself, into the holes that were her pupils, in order to reach through the darkness for…
Her pupils. Is that what you look like when you…
Her pupils were not round. They were stretched lengthwise, to little points. He made a face when a cold stream of pain washed over his neck, put his hand on it, rubbed.
Virginia blinked. Opened her eyes again. And was there.
Lacke gaped idiotically, still rubbing his neck mechanically. A wooden click as Virginia opened her mouth, asked: "Are you in pain?"
Lacke removed his hand from his neck, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn't be.
"No, I just… I thought you were…"
"I'm tied down."
"Yes, you… put up a bit of a fight before. Wait a second and I'll…" Lacke put his hand in between two of the bars on the bed frame and started loosening one of the straps.
"No."
"What?"
"Don't do it."
Lacke hesitated, the strap in his fingers.
"Are you planning to do some more fighting?"
Virginia half-closed her eyes.
"Don't do it."
Lacke dropped the strap, didn't know what to do with his hands now they had been robbed of their task. Without getting up he turned on his knees, pulled over the little armchair to the bed-with a new burst of pain in his neck as a result-and clumsily crawled up into it.
Virginia nodded almost imperceptibly. "Have you called Lena?"
"No. I can-"
"Good."
"Do you want me to?…"
"No."
A silence fell between them. The kind of silence that is particular to hospitals and that stems from the fact that the very situation-one person in the bed, sick or injured, and a healthy person at her side-says it all. Words become small, superfluous. Only the most important can be said. They looked at each other for a long time. Said what could be said, without words. Then Virginia turned her head in line with her body, stared at the ceiling.
"You have to help me."
"I'll do anything."
Virginia licked her lips, breathed in, and let out the air with a sigh so deep and long that it seemed to draw on hidden reserves of air in her body. Then she let her gaze slide up Lacke's body. Searching, as if she were taking a last good-bye of the body of a loved one and wanted to imprint his image in her mind. She rubbed her lips against each other and finally got out the words.
"I am a vampire."
The corners of Lacke's mouth wanted to pull up into a silly grin, his mouth say something soothing, perhaps funny. But the corners of his mouth didn't move and the comment took a wrong turn somewhere, never got anywhere near his lips. Instead all he got out was a: "No!"
He massaged his neck in order to change the atmosphere, to break the stillness that made all words the truth. Virginia spoke in a low voice, controlled.
"I went to Gosta. To kill him. If it hadn't happened. What happened. I
would have killed him. And then… drunk his blood. I would have done that. It was my intention. With it all. Do you understand?"
Lacke's gaze wandered over the walls of the room as if it were searching for the mosquito, the source of the insufferable, buzzing sound that in the silence was tickling his brain, making it impossible to think. Finally stopped at one of the overhead lights.
"That damned sound."
Virginia looked up at the light, said: "I can't stand light. I can't eat. I have horrible thoughts. I'm going to hurt people. You. I don't want to live."
Finally something more concrete, something he could respond to.
"You can't say things like that," Lacke said. "Ginja, you are not allowed to talk like that, you hear? Do you?"
"You don't understand."
"No, I probably don't. But you are not going to die, damn it. Here you are, you're talking, you are… it's OK."
Lacke got up out of the chair, took a few aimless steps over the floor, held his arm out.
"You're not allowed to… you're not allowed to say those things."
"Lacke. Lacke?"
"Yes!"
"You know. That it's true. Don't you?"
"What?"
"What I'm talking about."
Lacke snorted, shook his head while his hands patted his chest, his pockets. "Need a smoke. That…"
He found the crumpled cigarette packet, the lighter. Managed to get out the last cigarette, put it into his mouth. Then he remembered where he was. Took the cigarette out.
"Damn, they'll have me out on my behind if I…"
"Open the window."
"Now you're telling me to jump, too?"
Virginia smiled. Lacke walked over to the window, opened it all the way, and leaned out as far as he could.
The nurse he had talked to could probably catch the whiff of a cigarette a mile away. He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, making an effort
to exhale the smoke so it didn't blow back in the window. Looked up at the stars. Behind him, Virginia started to talk again.
"It was that child. I've been infected. And then… it has grown. I know where it's centered. In my heart. The whole heart. Like cancer. I can't control it."
Lacke blew out a column of smoke. His voice echoed between the tall buildings around them.
"Nonsense. You seem… normal."
"I'm making an effort. And they've given me blood. But if I let go. At any moment I could let go. And then it would take over. I know it. I feel it." Virginia took a few deep breaths, continued, "You are standing there. I'm looking at you. And I want to… eat you."
Lacke didn't know if it was the kink in his neck or something else that sent a shiver down his spine. He suddenly felt vulnerable. He quickly stubbed out the cigarette against the wall, flicked the butt away in an arc. Turned back into the room.
"This is complete utter insanity."
"Yes, but that's how it is."
Lacke crossed his arms over his chest. With a forced laugh he asked: "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to… destroy my heart."
"What? How?"
"However you want."
Lacke rolled his eyes.
"Can you hear yourself? How this sounds? It's crazy. Like I should… drive a stake into you or something."
"Yes."
"No, no, no. You can forget about it in that case. Have to think of something better." Lacke laughed, shaking his head. Virginia looked at him as he walked to and fro across the room, with his arms still folded across his chest. Then she nodded gently.
"OK."
He walked over to her, took her hand. It felt unnatural that it was… restrained. He didn't even have enough room to put both his hands around it. But her hand was the warm one, squeezed his. With his free hand he stroked her cheek.
"Are you sure I shouldn't undo these things?"
"No. It can… come back."
"You're going to get well. It'll work out. I only have you. Do you want to know a secret?"
Without letting go of her hand he sat down in the armchair and started to tell her. Told her everything. About the stamps, the lion, Norway, the money. The little cottage they were going to buy. Red Falu paint. Spun out a long fantasy about what the garden was going to look like, what flowers they would have, and how you could put out a small table, make a little shady patio where you could sit…
Somewhere in all of this the tears started to flow from Virginia's eyes. Quiet, translucent pearls that found their way down her cheeks, wet her pillowcase. No sobs, just tears that streamed down, jewels of sadness… or joy?
Lacke grew silent. Virginia squeezed his hand, hard.
Then Lacke walked out into the corridor and managed to half-convince, half-plead his way to an extra cot. Lacke positioned it so it was exactly next to Virginia's. Turned out the light, took off his clothes, and crawled down into the stiff sheets, fumbled for and found her hand.
They lay like that for a long time. Then came the words. "Lacke. I love you."
And Lacke did not reply. Simply let the words hang in the air. Become encapsulated and grow until they were a large red blanket that floated around the room, that lowered itself onto him and kept him warm all night.
4:23, Monday morning, Iceland sqUare:
A number of people in the vicinity of Bjornsonsgatan are awakened by loud screams. One person who calls into the police believes it is an infant crying. When the police arrive on the scene ten minutes later the screams have stopped. They search the area and find a number of dead cats. On some the extremities have become separated from the body. The police find contact information on the cats with collars and make a note of names and telephone numbers with the intention of notifying the owners. Street services are contacted for clean up.
Half an hour until sunrise.
Eli is reclining in the armchair in the living room. He has been here all night, morning. Packed up what there is to pack.
Tomorrow evening, as soon as it gets dark, Eli will go to a telephone booth and ring a taxi. He doesn't know which number to call, but it's probably something that everybody knows. Just have to ask. When the taxi comes he'll load his three boxes into the trunk and ask the taxi driver to take him…
Where?
Eli shuts his eyes, tries to imagine a place he would like to be.
As usual, the first image he sees is of the cottage where he lived with his parents, his older siblings. But it is gone. Outside Norrkoping where it once stood there is now a roundabout. The stream where his mother rinsed their clothes has dried up, become overgrown, a depression next to the intersection.
Eli has a lot of money. Would be able to ask the taxi driver to take him anywhere, as far as the darkness allows. North. South. Could sit in the back seat and ask the driver to drive north for two thousand kronor. Then get out. Start over. Find someone who…
Eli throws his head back, screams up at the ceiling:
"I don't want to!"
The dusty cobwebs sway slightly in his exhalation. The sound dies in this sealed room. Eli puts his hands up on his face, presses his fingers against his eyelids. Feels it in his body, the approaching sunrise, like a worry. He whispers:
"God. God? Why can't I have anything? Why can't I…"
It has been brought up many times before, this question.
Why can't I be allowed to live?
Because you should be dead.
Only once after he had been infected did Eli meet another infected person. A grown woman. Just as cynical and hollow as the man with the wig. But Eli received an answer to another question that had been nagging him.
"Are there many of us?"
The woman shook her head and had said with theatrical sadness:
"No. We are so few. So few."
"Why?"
"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my." Her hands fluttered; she said in a shrill voice: "Ooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscience."
"Can we die?"
"Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or…" She held out her index finger and pressed it hard into Eli's chest, above the heart. "There. That's where it is, isn't it? But now my friend, I have a wonderful idea…"
And Eli had fled from that wonderful idea. As before. As later.
Eli put his hand on his heart, felt the slow beats. Maybe it was because he was a child. Maybe that was why he hadn't put an end to it. The pangs of conscience were weaker than his will to live.
Eli got up out of the armchair. Hakan would not turn up tonight. But before Eli went to rest he had to check on Tommy. That he had recovered. He had not become infected. For Oskar's sake he wanted to make sure that Tommy was fine.
Eli turned off all the lights and left the apartment.
Down in Tommy's stairwell all he had to do was pull the cellar door open; a long time ago when he was down here with Oskar, he had tucked a piece of paper into the lock so it would stay unlatched when the door closed. He stepped into the cellar corridor and let the door fall shut behind him with a muted thud.
He stopped, listened. Nothing.
No sound of a sleeping person's breathing; only the cloying smell of paint thinners, glue. He walked quickly along the corridor to the storage area, pulled open the door.
Empty.
Twenty minutes until sunrise.
During the night, Tommy had glided in and out of a daze of sleep, half-wakefulness, nightmares. He didn't know how much time had gone by when he started to wake up properly. The naked bulb in the cellar was always the same. Maybe it was dawn, morning, day. Maybe school had already started. He didn't care.
His mouth tasted of glue. He looked around bleary-eyed. There were two bank notes on his chest. Thousand kronor notes. He bent his arm to pick them up, felt a tugging on his skin. A large Band-Aid was pasted over the inside of his elbow, a small blood stain in the middle of the patch.
But there was… something more.
He turned in the couch, searching along the inside of the cushions, and found the roll he had dropped during the night. Three thousand more. He unfolded the bills, put them together with the bills from his chest, felt the whole lot, made them crinkle. Five thousand. Anything he wanted to do.
He looked at the Band-Aid, chuckled. Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.
Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.
What was that? Someone had said it, someone…
That was it. Tobbe's sister, what was her name… Ingela? Turning tricks, Tobbe had told him. And she got five hundred for it, and Tobbe's comment was:
"Not bad for…"
Just lying back and closing your eyes.
Tommy squeezed the bills in his hand, scrunched them up into a ball. She had paid for and drunk of his blood. An illness, she had said. But what kind of fucking illness was that? He had never heard of anything like it. And if you had something like that, you went to the hospital, then they gave you… You didn't fucking go down into some basement with five thousand and…
Swish.
No?
Tommy sat up in the couch, pulled off the blanket.
They didn't exist. No. Not vampires. That girl, the one in the yellow dress, she must somehow believe that she is… but wait, wait. It was that Ritual Killer that… the one they were searching for…
Tommy leaned his head in his hands; the bills crinkled against his ear. He couldn't figure it out. But in any case he was damn scared of that girl now.
Just as he was thinking about going back up to the apartment after all, even if it was still night, come what may, he heard the door to his stairwell open. His heart fluttered like a frightened bird and he looked around.
Weapon.
The only thing he could see was the broom. Tommy's mouth was pulled up into a smile that lasted for a second.
The broom-a good weapon against vampires.
Then he remembered, got up and walked to the safety room while he stuffed the money into his pocket. Cleared the corridor in one step and slid into the safety room as the cellar door opened. Didn't dare lock the door since he was afraid she would hear it.
He sank into a crouch in the dark, tried to breathe as silently as possible.
The razor blade glimmered on the floor. One corner was stained with brown, like rust. Eli tore off a corner of the cover of a motorcycle magazine, wrapped the paper around the razor blade, put it into his back pocket.
Tommy was gone; that meant he was alive. He had left on his own, gone home to sleep, and even if he put two and two together he didn't know where Eli lived, so…
Everything is as it should be. Everything is… great.
There was a wooden broom with a long handle leaned up against the wall.
Eli picked it up, broke it over his knee, almost as far down as the head of the broom. The surface of the break was rough, sharp. A thin stake, about an arm's length. He put the point against his chest, between two ribs. Exactly the place that the woman had put her finger.
He took a deep breath, squeezed the shaft, and tried on the thought.
In! In!
Breathed out, loosened his grip. Squeezed again. Pressed.
For two minutes he stood with the point one centimeter from his heart, the shaft held firmly in his hand, when the handle of the cellar door was slammed down and the door glided open.
He removed the wooden stake from his chest, listened. Heard slow, tentative steps in the corridor like from a child who had just learned to walk. A very large child who had just learned to walk.
Tommy heard the steps and thought: Who?
Not Staffan, not Lasse, not Robban. Someone who was sick in some way, who was carrying something very heavy… Santa Claus! His hand went up to his mouth to smother a giggle as he imagined Santa Claus, the Disney version-
Hohoho! Say "Mama!"
– come staggering through the corridor with his enormous bag on his back.
His lips trembled under his hand and he clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering. Still in a crouch, he shuffled back from the door, one step at a time. Felt the corner of the room at his back at the same time as the spear of light from the door was darkened.
Santa Claus had stopped between the light and the shelter. Tommy put his other hand over the first to stop himself from screaming, waited for the door to open.
Nowhere to run to.
Through cracks in the door he could see a fragmented outline of Hakan's body. Eli stretched the stake out as far as it went, nudged the door. It swung out about ten centimeters, then the body outside stopped it.
One hand grabbed hold of the edge of the door, threw it open so it banged into the wall, tearing off one of the hinges. The door sagged, swung back leaning on its only remaining hinge, hitting against the shoulder of the body that now filled the door opening.
What do you want from me?
There were still patches of blue on the shirt that covered the body to the knees. The rest was a dirty map of earth, mud, stains of something Eli's nose identified as animal blood, human blood. The shirt was torn in several places revealing white skin etched with scratches that would never heal.
His face had not changed. It was still a clumsily fashioned mass of naked flesh with one single red eye thrown in as if for fun, a ripe cherry to top a rotten cake. But his mouth was open now.
A black hole in the lower half of the face. No lips that could cover the teeth that were therefore revealed; an uneven semicircle of white that made the oral cavity seem even darker. The hole increased and decreased in size with a chewing motion and out of it came: "Eeeiiiijj."
You couldn't hear if the sound was supposed to mean "Hi," "Hey" or "Eli" since the "L" had to be formed without the help of lips or tongue. Eli pointed the stake at Hakan's heart, said, "Hi."
What do you want?
The undead. Eli knew nothing about them. Didn't know if the creature in front of him was limited by the same restrictions as he was. If it even helped to destroy the heart. That Hakan was standing still in the doorway seemed to imply one thing: that he needed an invitation.
Hakan's gaze ran up and then down over Eli's body, which felt unprotected in the thin, yellow dress. He wished there were more to the fabric, more protection between his body and Hakan. Tentatively Eli held the stake closer to Hakan's chest.
Can he feel anything? Can he even feel… fear now?
Eli experienced a feeling that he had almost forgotten: fear of pain. Everything healed of course, but there was such an overpowering sense of threat emanating from Hakan that…
"What do you want?"
A hollow, rasping sound as the creature pressed out air and a drop of yellowish, viscous liquid ran out of the double hole where the nose had been. A sigh? Then a damaged whisper: "Aaaaaaijjjj…" and one arm flinched quickly, cramplike,
baby movements
clumsily grabbed the shirt down at the hem, pulled it up.
Hakan's penis stood out from his body to one side, craving attention, and Eli looked at its stiff swolleness crisscrossed with veins and-
How can he… he must have had it the whole time.
"Aaeejjlll…"
Hakan's hand pulled the foreskin aggressively up and back, up and back, and the head of his penis appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box while he uttered a sound of pleasure or suffering.
"Aaaee…"
And Eli laughed with relief.
All this. To be able to jack off.
He could stand there, rooted to the spot until… until…
Can he even get it off? He's going to have to stand there… forever.
Eli imagined one of those obscene dolls that you wound up with a key; a monk whose cape went up and he started masturbating as long as the mechanism allowed.
clickety-click, clickety-click…
Eli laughed, was so occupied with the crazy image that he didn't notice when Hakan stepped into the room, uninvited. Didn't notice anything until the fist that had just been sealed around an impossible pleasure was raised above his head.
With a flashing spasm the arm came down and the fist landed over Eli's ear with a force that could have killed a horse. The blow came sideways and Eli's ear was folded in with such force that the skin split and half the ear was separated from his head, which was thrown abruptly down, meeting the cement floor with a muffled crack.
When Tommy realized that the thing that was out in the corridor was not on its way to the shelter, he dared to take his hand from his mouth. He sat pressed into the corner and listened, trying to understand.
The girl's voice.
Hi. What do you want.
Then her laugh. And then that other voice. Didn't even sound like it came from a human being. Then muffled thuds, the sounds of bodies moving.
Now there was some kind of… rearranging going on out there. Something was dragged across the floor and Tommy was not planning to find out what it was. But the sounds disguised those he would make as he stood up and felt his way along the wall to the stacked boxes.
His heart was pattering like a toy drum and his hands shook. He didn't dare light his lighter, so in order to concentrate better he shut his eyes and searched with his hand over the top of the boxes.
His fingers clenched around what they found. Staffan's shooting trophy. He carefully lifted it from its place, tested it in his hand. If he held the figure's chest the stone base made a kind of club. He opened his eyes, found that he could vaguely make out the outline of the little silver pistol shooter.
Friend. My little friend.
With the trophy pressed against his chest he sank down into the corner against the wall and waited for all this to finally be over.
Eli was being handled, like an object.
While he was swimming to the surface of the darkness he had sunk into he felt how his body, at a distance, in another part of the sea… was being handled.
Intense pressure against his back, legs that were forced up, back, and iron rings pulled tight around his ankles. Now the ankles with their iron rings were on either side of his head and his spine was tight, so stretched it felt like it was about to snap.
I'm going to break.
His head felt like a container of gleaming pain, as his body was doubled over by force, folded up like a bolt of fabric and Eli thought he was still having an hallucination because when his eyes started to see again, they only saw yellow. And behind the yellow a massive, billowing shadow.
Then came the cold. Something was rubbing a ball of ice across the thin skin between his buttocks. Something tried, first poking, then thrusting, to force its way into him. Eli gasped; the fabric of the dress that had been spread over his face was blown aside, and he saw.
Hakan was lying over him. His only eye was staring fixedly at Eli's spread buttocks. His hands were locked around Eli's ankles. His legs had been brutally bent back so that his knees were pressed to the ground on
either side of Eli's shoulders and when Hakan pressed harder Eli heard how the tendons in the back of his thighs broke like tightly pulled strings.
"Noooo!"
Eli screamed into Hakan's shapeless face where no feelings at all could be discerned. A strand of drool came out of Hakan's mouth, stretched and broke, falling onto Eli's lips, and the taste of corpse filled his mouth. Eli's arms fell out from his body as limp as a rag doll's.
Something under his fingers. Round, hard.
He tried to think, forced himself to create a sphere of light inside the black, whirling insanity. And envisioned himself in the pool of light, holding the stick in his hand.
Yes.
Eli squeezed the handle of the broom, locking his fingers around the delicate savior while Hakan kept pushing, poking, trying to enter.
The point. The point has to be on the right side.
He turned his head to the stick and saw it was lying the right way.
A chance.
Everything went quiet inside Eli's head as he visualized what he had to do. Then he did it. In one movement he raised the stick from its prone position and thrust it up toward Hakan's face with all his might.
His underarm brushed against the side of his thigh and the stick formed a straight line that… stopped a few centimeters from Hakan's face when Eli, because of his position, could not manage to bring his arm further.
He had failed.
For one second Eli had time to think that maybe he possessed the ability to will his body to die. If he turned off all…
Then Hakan thrust himself forward and at the same time dropped his head down. With the soft sound of a wooden spoon pushed down into thick porridge, the sharp end of the stick went into his eye.
Hakan did not scream. Perhaps he did not even feel it. Maybe it was simply surprise over not being able to see that made him loosen his grip around Eli's ankles. Without feeling anything from his damaged legs, Eli wriggled his feet free and kicked straight out at Hakan's chest.
The soles of his feet met skin with a moist smacking sound and Hakan fell back. Eli pulled his legs under him and with a wave of cold pain from his back he got to his knees. Hakan had not fallen, only been folded up, and like an electric doll in a ghost house he now straightened up again.
They faced each other, on their knees.
The stick in Hakan's eye was pulled downward in stages, inching down with the regularity of a second hand and then fell out, drummed out a few beats on the floor and then it lay still. A translucent fluid started to seep out of the hole where it had been, a teary flood.
Neither of them moved.
The fluid from Hakan's eye trickled down onto his naked thighs.
Eli concentrated all of his strength into his right arm, made a list. When Hakan's shoulder jerked to life and his body made an effort to stretch out to Eli, to pick up where it had left off, Eli hit his right hand straight into the left side of Hakan's chest.
The ribs cracked and the skin was stretched to its limit for a moment, then gave way, broke.
Hakan's head bent down to see what it couldn't see as Eli fumbled inside his chest cavity and found his heart. A cold, soft lump. Unmoving.
It's not alive. But it has to…
Eli squeezed the heart until it went to pieces. It gave way too easily, allowed itself to be broken like a dead jellyfish.
Hakan only reacted as if a particularly persistent fly had settled on his skin. He moved his arm up to remove the irritating element and before he had time to grip Eli's wrist Eli pulled his hand out with remnants of the heart quivering in the clenched fist.
Have to get away from here.
Eli wanted to get up but his legs would not obey him. Hakan was groping blindly with his arms in front of him, trying to find him. Eli rolled over on his stomach and started to crawl out of the room, his knees whispering on the concrete. Hakan turned his head in the direction of the noise, put his arms out, and got a hold of the dress, managed to tear off one sleeve before Eli reached the door, got up on his knees again.
Hakan stood up.
Eli had a few seconds of reprieve before Hakan found his way to the door. He tried to order his broken joints to heal enough to enable him to stand, but when Hakan reached the door his legs were only strong enough to allow Eli to stand braced against the wall.
Splinters from the rough planks punctured the tops of his fingers as he scratched with his hand along them in order not to fall. And he knew now. That without a heart, blind, Hakan would pursue him until… until…
Must… destroy… must… destroy him.
A black line.
A vertical, black line in front of his eyes. It had not been there before. Eli knew what to do.
"Aaaaa…"
Hakan's hand around one edge of the door frame and then the body that came staggering out of the storage unit, his hands groping the air in front of him. Eli pressed his back into the wall, waiting for the right moment.
Hakan came out, a few tentative steps, then stopped exactly in front of Eli. Listened, sniffed.
Eli leaned forward so that his hands were the same height as Hakan's shoulder. Then he braced himself against the wall, rushed forward, and put everything into throwing Hakan off balance.
He succeeded.
Hakan took a mincing step to the side and fell against the door to the shelter. The crack in the door that Eli had seen as a black line widened as the door opened inwards and Hakan tumbled into the darkness, his arms waving for help, while Eli started to fall headlong into the corridor, managed to stop himself before the floor met his face, then crawled to the door, and grabbed the lower of the two locking wheels.
Hakan lay still on the floor inside as Eli pulled the door shut and turned the wheel, locked it. Then he crawled out to the cellar office, got the stick, and threaded it in between the locking wheels so that it could not be unlocked from the inside.
Eli continued to concentrate his energy on healing his body and started to crawl out of the basement. A rivulet of blood snaked out of his ear. At the door out of the cellar he was healed enough to be able to stand up. He pushed the door open and managed to go up the stairs on wobbly legs.
rest rest rest
He pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out into the hall lamp. He was beaten, humiliated, and the sunrise threatened just under the horizon.
rest rest rest
But he had to… exterminate. And there was only one way he knew to do that. Fire. Staggering, he made his way across the yard, heading to the only place he knew where he could find it.
7:34, Monday morning, Blackeberg:
The burglar alarm at the ICA grocery store on Arvid Morne's Way is set off. The police arrive at the scene eleven minutes later and find the store window broken. The store owner, who lives next door, is there. He says that from his window he saw a very young dark-haired person leave the place running. But upon searching the store nothing is found to be stolen.
7:36, Sunrise.
The hospital blinds were much better, darker, than her own. There was only one place, where the blinds were damaged, where they let in a thin ray of morning light that made a dust-gray slash in the dark ceiling.
Virginia lay outstretched, stiff, in her bed, staring at the gray slice of light that trembled when a gust of wind made the window vibrate. Reflected, weak light. No more than a mild irritation, a grain of sleep in her eye.
Lacke snuffled and wheezed in the bed next to her. They had stayed awake for a long time, talking. Memories, mostly. Close to four in the morning Lacke had finally fallen asleep, with his hand still in hers.
She had had to disentangle her hand from his an hour later when a nurse had come in to check her blood pressure, found it satisfactory, and left them with a glance, actually a tender look at Lacke. Virginia had heard how Lacke pleaded to stay, the reasons he had given. Thus the tender glance, she supposed.
Now Virginia lay with her hands strapped at her sides, fighting her body's desire to… turn off. Fall asleep was not an adequate expression for it. As soon as she did not consciously concentrate on her breathing, it stopped. But she needed to stay awake.
She hoped a nurse would come back in before Lacke woke up. Yes. The very best thing would be if he could sleep until it was over.
But that was probably too much to hope for.
The sun caught up with Eli in the courtyard, a glowing tong that pinched his mauled ear. Instinctively, he backed up into the shade of the vaulted entrance to the yard, squeezed the three plastic bottles of denatured alcohol to his chest, as if to shield them from the sun as well.
Ten steps away was his front door. Twenty steps to Oskar's. And thirty steps to Tommy's.
I can't do it.
No, if he had been healthy, strong, he would perhaps have tried to make it to Oskar's entrance through the flood of light that grew in intensity for every second he waited. But not to Tommy's. And not now.
Ten steps. Then up the stairs. The big window in the stairwell. If I trip. If the sun…
Eli ran.
The sun threw itself over him like a hungry lion, biting itself into his back. Eli almost lost his balance as he was thrown forward by the sun's physical, howling force. Nature vomited its disgust at his transgression: to show himself in sunlight for even one second.
It sizzled, bubbled, like someone pouring boiling oil on Eli's back when he reached the front door, threw it open. The pain almost made him faint and he moved toward the steps as if drugged, blinded; didn't dare open his eyes for fear that they would melt.
He dropped one of the bottles, heard it roll away across the floor. Couldn't be helped. With head bent, one arm wrapped around the remaining bottles, the other on the banister, he limped up the stairs, reached the landing. One flight left.
Through the window the sun delivered a last swipe at his neck, snapped at him, then bit him in the thighs, calves, heels while he moved up the stairs. He was burning. The only thing missing was flames. He got the door open, fell into the wonderful, cool darkness inside. Slammed the door shut behind him. But it was not dark.
The kitchen door was open and in the kitchen there were no blinds in front of the window. The light was weaker, grayer than what he had just experienced and, without hesitation, Eli dropped the bottles onto the floor, continued on. While the light clawed relatively tenderly at his back as he crawled down the corridor to the bathroom the smell of burnt flesh wafted into his nose.
I will never be whole again.
He stretched his arm out, opened the bathroom door, and crawled into the compact darkness. He pushed a couple of plastic jugs out of the way, closed the door, and locked it.
Before he slid into the bathtub he had time to think:
I didn't lock the front door.
But it was too late. Rest turned him off at the same moment as he sank down into the wet darkness. He wouldn't have had the energy anyway.
Tommy sat still, pressed into the corner. He held his breath until his ears started to ring and he saw shooting stars in front of his eyes. When he heard the cellar door slam shut he dared to let his breath out in a long panting exhalation that rolled along the cement walls, died out.
It was completely quiet. The darkness was so complete that it had mass, weight.
He held one hand in front of his face. Nothing. No difference. He touched his face as if to convince himself that he existed at all. Yes. His fingertips touched his nose, his lips. Unreal. They flickered to life under his fingers, disappeared.
The little figurine in his other hand felt more alive, more real than he did. He squeezed it, held it close.
Tommy had been sitting with his head bent down between his knees, his eyes tightly shut, his hands held against his ears in order not to have to know, not to hear what was going on outside in the storage unit. It sounded like that little girl was being murdered. He would not have been able to do anything, not dared do anything, and therefore he had tried to deny the whole situation by disappearing.
He had been with his dad. On the soccer field, in the forest, at the Canaan baths. Finally he had paused at the memory of that time on the Racksta field when he and his dad had tried a remote-control airplane that his dad had borrowed from someone at work.
Mom had come along for a while, but in the end she thought it was boring to look at the airplane making circles in the sky, had gone home. He and his dad had kept going until it got dark and the airplane was a silhouette against the pink evening sky. Then they had walked home, hand in hand, through the forest.
Tommy had been in that day, far from the screams, the insanity going on a few meters away. The only thing he was aware of was the furious buzz of the airplane, the warmth of his father's large hand on his back while he nervously maneuvered the plane in wide circles over the field, the graveyard.
Back then Tommy had never been in the graveyard; had imagined people walking aimlessly around the graves, crying large shiny comic book tears that splashed against the headstones. That was then. Then Dad had died and Tommy had learned that graveyards rarely-all too rarely- look like that.
His hands tightly pressed against his ears, killing away those thoughts. Think about walking through the forest, think about the smell of the airplane's special gas in the little bottle, think about…
Only when he-halfway through his soundproofing-heard a lock being turned, had he taken his hands down and looked. To no avail, since the safety room was even blacker than the darkness behind his eyelids. Started to hold his breath when the second wheel thundered into place, kept holding it in case whatever-it-was was still in the basement.
Then that distant bang from the door to the stairwell, a vibration in the walls, and here he was. Still alive.
It didn't get me.
Exactly what "it" was, he didn't know, but whatever it was it had not discovered him. Tommy got up from his crouched position. A tingling trail of ants ran through his numb leg muscles as he groped along the wall, toward the door. His hands were sweaty with fear and the pressure against his ears; the statuette almost slid out of his hand.
His free hand found the wheel of the closing mechanism and started to turn it.
It went about ten centimeters, then it stopped.
What is this…
He pressed harder, but the wheel wouldn't budge. He dropped the statuette in order to be able to grab the wheel with both hands, and it fell to the floor with a
thud.
He froze.
That sounded funny. As if it landed on something… soft.
He crouched down next to the door, tried to turn the lower wheel. Same thing. Ten centimeters, then stop. He sat down on the floor. Tried to think practically.
Damn, am I going to be stuck here.
Like that, sort of.
But it still came creeping… this terror he had had a few months after his dad died. He had not felt it for a long time, but now, locked in, in the pitch blackness, it was starting to make itself known again. Love for his dad that through death had been transformed into a fear of him. Of his body.
A lump started to grow in his throat, his fingers stiffened.
Think now! Think!
There were candles on a shelf in the storage room on the other side. The problem was making his way over there in the dark.
Idiot!
He slapped his forehead, laughed out loud. He had a lighter! And any-
way: what was the use of looking for those candles if there wasn't anything to light them with?
Like that guy with thousands of cans and no can opener. Starved to death surrounded by food.
While he dug around in his pocket for his lighter he reflected that his situation wasn't so hopeless. Sooner or later someone would come down into the basement, his mom-if no one else-and if he could just get some light in here, that would be something.
He got the lighter out of his pocket, lit it.
His eyes that had adjusted to the dark were momentarily blinded by the light, but then when they adjusted again he saw that he was not alone.
Outstretched on the floor, right next to his feet, was…
… Dad…
The fact that his father had been cremated did not register with him as, in the fluttering flame of the lighter, he saw the face of the corpse and it met his expectations of how one would look after having been in the earth for many years.
… Dad…
He screamed straight into the lighter so the flame went out, but the split second before the light went out he had time to see his dad's head jerk and…
… it's alive…
The contents of his bowels spilled into his pants in a wet explosion that splattered warmth over his rear end. Then his legs crumpled up, his skeleton dissolved, and he fell into a heap, dropped the fighter so it bounced away across the floor. His hand landed straight on the corpse's cold toes. Sharp nails scratched the palm of his hand and while he continued to shriek-
But Dad! Haven't you trimmed your toenails?
– he started to pat, to stroke the cold foot as if it were a frozen puppy that needed comforting. Kept petting up the shinbone, the thigh, felt the muscles tense under the skin, move while he screamed in fits and starts, like an animal.
The tips of his fingers felt metal. The statuette. It lay nestled between the thighs of the corpse. He grabbed the figurine by the chest, stopped screaming, and returned for a moment to the practical.
A club.
In the silence after his scream he heard a dripping, sticky sound when the corpse raised its upper body. And when a cold limb nudged the back of his hand he pulled it back, squeezing the statuette.
It is not Dad.
No. Tommy drew back, away from the corpse, with excrement clinging to his buttocks, and thought for a moment that he could see in the dark as his sound impressions transformed into vision and he saw the corpse rise up in the darkness, a yellowish shape, a constellation.
With his feet tap-dancing over the floor, he shuffled backward to the wall; the corpse on the other side uttered a short exhalation:… aa…
And Tommy saw…
A little elephant, an animated elephant, and here comes (toooot) the BIG elephant and then… trunks up!… and toot "A" and then Magnus, Brasse, and Eva enter and sing "There! Is Here! Where you are not…"
No, how did it go…
The corpse must have bumped into the stack of boxes because he could hear thuds, the rattle of stereo equipment that fell to the floor, as Tommy slid up against the wall, hitting the back of his head and seeing a kind of static. Through the roar he could hear the smack of stiff, bare feet walking across the floor, searching.
Here. Is There. Where you are not. No. Yes.
Just like that. He wasn't here. He couldn't see himself, couldn't see the thing that was making the noise. So it was only sound. It was just something he was listening to as he stared into the black mesh of the speaker. This was something that didn't even exist.
Here. Is There. Where you are not.
He almost started to sing out loud, but a sensible remnant of his consciousness told him not to. The white buzz started to die down, leaving an empty surface where he started to stack new thoughts, with effort.
The face. The face.
He didn't want to think about its face, did not want to think about…
Something about the face that had been momentarily illuminated by the lighter.
It was getting closer. Not only did the footsteps sound closer, now hissing across the floor, no, he could feel its presence like a shadow more impenetrable than the darkness.
He bit down on his lower lip until he tasted blood, shut his eyes. Saw his own two eyes disappear out of the picture like two…
Eyes.
It doesn't have eyes.
A faint breeze on his face as a hand went through the air.
Blind. It is blind.
He wasn't sure, but the lump on the creature's shoulders had not had any eyes.
When the hand went through the air again Tommy felt the caress of air on his cheek one tenth of a second before it reached him, had time to turn his face so the hand only brushed against his hair. He finished the movement and threw himself flat on the floor, started to snake along the floor with his hands circling in front of him, swimming.
The lighter, the lighter…
Something poked into his cheek. A wave of nausea when he realized it was the thing's toenail, but he quickly rolled over so he wouldn't be in the same place when the hands came groping for him.
Here. Is There. Where I am not.
An involuntary chuckle issued from his mouth. He tried to stop it, but couldn't. Saliva sprayed out of his mouth and out of his hoarse-from-screaming throat came hiccoughs of laughter or crying, while his hands, two radar beams, continued searching the floor for the only advantage he maybe, maybe had over the darkness that wanted to devour him.
God, help me. Let the light of thy face.. . God… sorry about that thing in church, sorry about… everything. God. I will always believe in you, however you want, if you just… let me find the lighter… be my friend, please God.
Something happened.
At the same moment that Tommy felt the thing's hand flailing across his foot the room was illuminated for a split second with blue-white light, like from a flash, and during that split second Tommy really did see the boxes that had tumbled to the floor, the uneven surface of the walls, the passageway into the storage rooms.
And he saw the lighter.
It was only one meter from his right hand, and when the darkness engulfed him again the location of the lighter was burned onto the inside of his eyelid. He yanked his foot from the thing's grip, flung his arm out and managed to grab the lighter, held it firmly in his hand, jumped up onto his feet.
Without thinking about whether it was too much to ask, he started to chant a new prayer inside his head.
Let the thing he blind, God. Let it he blind. God. Let it be blind…
He flicked the lighter. A flash, like the one he just experienced, then a yellow flame with a blue center.
The thing stood still, turned its head toward the sound. Started to walk in that direction. The flame flickered when Tommy slid two steps to the side and arrived at the door. The thing stopped where Tommy had been three seconds earlier.
If he had been able to feel joy, he would have. But in the weak light from the lighter everything suddenly became mercilessly real. It was no longer possible to escape into some fantasy that he was really not here at all, that this wasn't happening to him.
He was locked into a soundproofed room with the thing he was most afraid of. Something turned in his stomach but there was nothing more to be emptied. All that came was a little fart and the thing turned its head again, toward him.
Tommy pulled at the wheel of the locking mechanism with his free hand so that the hand holding the lighter trembled, and the flame went out. The wheel didn't budge, but out of the corner of his eye Tommy had had time to see how the thing was coming toward him and he threw himself away from the door, in the direction of the wall where he had been sitting before.
He sobbed, snuffled.
Let this end. God, let it end.
Again the big elephant who raised his hat and with his nasal voice said:
This is the eeeend! Blow the trumpet, trunk, tooootl This is the end!
I'm going crazy, I… it…
He shook his head, flicked the lighter on again. There on the floor in front of him was the trophy. He bent over, picked it up, and jumped a few steps to the side, kept going toward the other wall. Looked at the thing groping the space where he had just been.
Blind man's bluff.
The lighter in one hand, the trophy in the other. He opened his mouth to say something but only managed a hoarse whisper.
"Come on, then…"
The thing appeared alert, turned around, came toward him.
He raised Staffan's trophy like a club and when the creature was half a meter away he swung it at its face.
And like in a perfect penalty kick in soccer, when at the same moment as your foot meets the ball you feel that this one… this one has hit the spot exactly, Tommy felt the same thing already halfway into his swing, that-
Yes!
– and when the sharp stone corner met the thing's temple with a force that continued in an arc along Tommy's arm, he was already feeling triumph. It was only a confirmation of this feeling when the skull crumpled and with a crack of splitting ice, cold liquid splashed onto Tommy's face and the thing crashed to the ground.
Tommy remained in place, panting. Looked at the body that was laid out on the ground.
He has an erection.
Yes. The thing's penis was sticking out like a minimal, half overturned gravestone and Tommy stood there staring, waiting for it to wilt. It didn't. Tommy wanted to laugh, but his throat hurt too much.
A throbbing pain in his thumb. Tommy looked down. The lighter had started to burn the skin on his thumb that was holding the gas tab down. Instinctively he let go. But his thumb didn't obey him. It was locked in a cramp over the tab.
He turned the lighter the other direction. Didn't want to turn it off anyway. Didn't want to be left in the dark with this…
A movement.
And Tommy felt how something important, something he needed in
order to be Tommy, left him when the creature lifted its head again, and started to get up.
An elephant balancing on the little, little thread of a spiderweb!
The thread broke. The elephant fell through.
And Tommy hit again. And again.
After a while he started to think it was fun.
9 November
Morgan walked through the controls, waved the monthly pass that had expired six months ago, while Larry dutifully stopped and pulled out a wrinkled coupon strip and said "Angbyplan."
The ticket collector looked up from the book he was reading, stamped two coupon spaces. Morgan laughed when Larry came over to him and they started to walk down the stairs.
"What the hell do you bother to do that for?"
"What? Get my ticket stamped?"
"Yeah. It's not like you're some model citizen."
"It's not that."
"What is it?"
"I'm not like you, OK?"
"But come on… the guy was just… you could have shown him a picture of the king for all he cared."
"Yes, fine. Quit talking so loud."
"Think he's going to come after us or something?"
Before they opened the doors down to the platform Morgan cupped his hands into a makeshift megaphone and shouted back up to the station hall: "Alert! Alert! Illegal riders!"
Larry slunk away, taking a few steps toward the platform. When Morgan reached him he said:
"You're pretty childish, you know that?"
"Absolutely. Now, run the whole thing by me again. From the top."
Larry had called Morgan already that night and given a summary of what Gosta had told him ten minutes earlier on the telephone. They had agreed to meet at the subway station early in the morning in order to go to the hospital.
Now Larry went over it all again. Virginia, Lacke, Gosta, the cats. The ambulance that Lacke had climbed into with her. Added a few extra details of his own, and before he was done the subway train to the city arrived. They got on and claimed a four-seater for themselves, and Larry finished his story with:
"… and then it drove off with sirens going full blast."
Morgan nodded, chewing on a thumbnail, looking out of the window while the train climbed out of the tunnel, stopped at Iceland Square.
"What the hell made them go off like that?"
"You mean the cats? I don't know. Something made them all crazy."
"But all of them? And at the same time?"
"You have a better suggestion?"
"No. Damn cats. Lacke must be completely crushed and all."
"Mm. Wasn't doing so great before either."
"No," Morgan sighed. "I feel damned sorry for the guy, actually. We should… I don't know. Do something."
"What about Virginia?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, being injured. Sick. What can you do. You have to lie there. The hard part is sitting next to the bed and… no, I don't know, but he was right… last time, when he… what the hell did he ramble on about? Werewolves?"
"Vampires."
"Yeah. That's not a sign that you're doing so damned great, is it?"
The train pulled into the Angbyplan station. When the doors closed Morgan said:
"There. Now we're in the same boat."
"I think they're more lenient if you have at least two stamped sections."
"That's what you think. But you don't know."
"Did you see the results of the poll? For the Swedish Communist Party?"
"Yes, yes. It'll straighten itself out after the election. There're a lot of people, who are leftist at heart, that when they stand there with the ballot still vote according to their conscience."
"That's what you think."
"No. I know. The day the Communists are pushed out of parliament is the day I start believing in vampires. But of course: there's always the conservatives. Bohman and his lot, you know. Talk about bloodsuckers…"
Morgan launched into one of his monologues. Larry stopped listening somewhere near Akeshov. There was a lone police officer outside the greenhouses, looking up at the subway. Larry felt a brief pang of conscience when he thought about his understamped ticket, but immediately suppressed the thought when he remembered why the police were there.
But this police officer looked simply bored. Larry relaxed; the occasional word in Morgan's rambling made its way into his consciousness while they thundered on toward Sabbatsberg.
A quarter to eight, and no nurse had yet appeared.
The dirt-gray strip of light on the ceiling had turned light gray, and the blinds let in enough light to make Virginia feel like she was on a tanning bed. Her body was hot, throbbed, but that was all. It wouldn't get any worse.
Lacke lay in the bed next to her, snarling, chewing in his sleep. She was ready. If she had been able to press a button to summon a nurse, she would have done so. But her hands were bound and she couldn't.
So she waited. The heat in her skin was painful, not excruciating. What was worse was the constant effort to try to stay awake. One moment's forgetfulness and her breathing stopped, lights started to go off in her head with increasing speed, and she had to open her eyes wide and shake her head in order to get them to turn on again.
At the same time, this necessary wakefulness was a blessing; it stopped her from having to think. All her mental energy went to keeping herself awake. There was no room for hesitation, regret, an alternative.
The nurse came in at exactly eight o'clock.
When she opened her mouth to say "Good morning, how are we today!" or whatever it was that nurses said in the morning, Virginia hissed: "Shhhhhh!"
The nurse closed her mouth with a surprised click, and she frowned when she walked through the dim room to Virginia's bed, leaned over her and said, "and how-"
"Shhh!" Virginia whispered. "Sorry, but I don't want to wake him up." She made a gesture with her head in Lacke's direction.
The nurse nodded, said in a lower voice, "No, of course not. But I need to take your temperature and a little blood."
"Sure, whatever. But could you… take him out first?"
"Take him… do you want me to wake him up?"
"No. But if you could… roll him out while he's still sleeping."
The nurse looked at Lacke as if to determine if it was even physically possible, then smiled, shook her head and said: "I think this will be alright. We'll take your temperature orally, so you don't have to feel…"
"It's not that. Couldn't you just… do what I'm asking?"
The nurse cast a glance at her watch.
"You'll have to excuse me, but I have other patients and I-"
Virginia snapped, as loud as she dared:
"Please!"
The nurse took half a step back. She had clearly been informed of Virginia's actions during the night. Her eyes quickly went to the bindings holding Virginia's arms. She appeared to be reassured by what she saw, went back up to the bed. Now she talked to Virginia as if she was weak in the head.
"You see… I need… we need, in order to be able to help you get better again, just a little…"
Virginia closed her eyes, sighed, gave up. Then she said: "Would you be so kind as to open the blinds?"
The nurse nodded and walked over to the window. Virginia took the opportunity to kick off the blanket, exposing her body. Held her breath. Kept her eyes tightly shut.
It was over. Now she wanted to turn off. The same function she had been resisting all morning she now consciously tried to let forth. But she
couldn't. Instead she experienced that thing that you heard about: seeing your life pass before you like a strip of film in fast forward.
The bird I had in the cardboard box… the smell of freshly mangled sheets in the laundry room… my mother leaning over the cinnamon bun crumbs… my father… the smoke from his pipe… Per… the cottage… Len and I, the big mushroom we found that summer… Ted with mashed blueberries on his cheek… Lacke, his back… Lacke…
A clattering noise as the blinds were raised, and she was sucked down into a sea of fire.
Oskar's mom had woken him up at ten past seven, the usual. He had climbed out of bed and had breakfast, as usual. He had put his clothes on and then hugged his mom good-bye at half past seven, as usual.
He felt like normal.
Filled with anxiety, dread, sure. But even that wasn't unusual when he was heading back to school after the weekend.
He packed his geography book, the atlas, and the photocopy he had not finished. Was ready at twenty-five minutes to eight. Didn't need to leave for fifteen minutes. Should he sit down and do that worksheet anyway? No. Didn't have the energy.
He sat down at his desk, stared at the wall.
This must mean he wasn't infected? Or was there an incubation period? No. That old man… that had only taken a few hours.
I'm not infected.
He should be happy, relieved. But he wasn't. The phone rang.
Eli! Something has happened to…
He shot up from the table, out into the hall, yanked up the telephone receiver.
"HithisisOskar!"
"Oh… hello there."
Dad. It was only Dad.
"Hi."
"Well, so… you're at home."
"About to leave for school."
"Right, in that case I won't… Is your mother home?"
"No, she's left for work."
"I see, I thought as much."
Oskar got it. That was why he was calling at this strange time: because he knew Mom wasn't home. His dad cleared his throat.
"So I was thinking… about what happened Saturday night. It was a bit… unfortunate."
"Yes."
"Yes. Did you tell your mother about… what happened?"
"What do you think?"
There was silence on the other end. The static crackle from one hundred kilometers of telephone lines. Crows sitting on them, shivering, while people's conversations darted past under their feet. His dad cleared his throat again.
"You know, I asked about those ice skates and it worked out. You can have them."
"I have to go now."
"Yes, of course. Hope you… have a good day at school."
"OK. Bye."
Oskar put the receiver down, picked up his bag and left for school.
He felt nothing.
Five minutes left until the lesson started and quite a few members of the class were standing in the corridor outside the classroom. Oskar hesitated for a moment, then tossed his bag onto his shoulder and walked toward the door. All eyes turned toward him.
Running the gauntlet. Gang attack.
Yes, he had feared the worst. Everyone knew what had happened to Jonny on Thursday, of course, and even though he couldn't pick Jonny's face out of the crowd it was Micke's version they had heard on Friday. And Micke was there, with his idiot grin pasted on his face, like usual.
Instead of slowing down, preparing to escape in some way, he lengthened his stride, walking quickly toward the classroom. He was empty inside. He didn't care what happened anymore. It wasn't important.
And sure enough: a miracle occurred. The sea parted.
The group assembled outside the door broke up, created room for Oskar to get to the door. He had not expected anything else actually. If it was because of some strength emanating or because he was a stinking pariah who had to be avoided; it didn't matter.
He was different now. They sensed it, and slunk back.
Oskar walked into the classroom without looking to either side, sat down at his desk. He heard murmuring from the corridor and after a few minutes they streamed back in. Johan gave him the thumbs up when he walked past. Oskar shrugged.
Then the teacher came in and five minutes after the lesson started, Jonny arrived. Oskar had expected him to have some kind of bandage over his ear, but there wasn't anything. The ear was, however, dark red, swollen, and didn't look like it belonged to his body.
Jonny took his seat. He didn't look at Oskar, didn't look at anyone.
He is ashamed.
Yes, that must be it. Oskar turned his head to look at Jonny, who pulled a photo album out of his backpack and slipped it into his desk. And he saw that Jonny's cheeks had turned bright red, matching his ear. Oskar thought about poking his tongue out at him, but decided against it.
Too childish.
Tommy started school at quarter to nine on Mondays so at eight o'clock Staffan got up and had a quick cup of coffee before he went down to have his man-to-man talk with the boy.
Yvonne had already left for work; Staffan himself was supposed to report for duty at nine in Judarn in order to continue a search of the forest, an undertaking he sensed would be fruitless.
Well, it would feel good to be outside and it looked like the weather was going to be decent. He rinsed the coffee cup out under the tap, deliberated for a moment, then went and put on his uniform. Had considered going down to see Tommy in his normal clothes, talk to him like a normal person, so to speak. But, strictly speaking, this was a police matter, vandalism, and anyway, the uniform imbued him with a shell of authority
that he, although he didn't think he lacked in his everyday person, nonetheless… well.
And anyway it was practical to be ready for work since he was heading off to work after this. So Staffan pulled on his work clothes, the winter jacket, checked in the mirror to see the impression he made and found it pleasing. Then he took the cellar key that Yvonne had put out for him on the kitchen table, walked out, closed the door, checked the lock (work habit) and walked down the stairs, unlocked the door to the cellar. And speaking of work…
There was something wrong with this door. No resistance when he turned the key, the door could simply be opened. He crouched down and checked the mechanism. Aha. A wad of paper.
A classic trick of burglars: make up some excuse to visit a place you wanted to rob, tamper with the lock, and then hope the owner wouldn't notice it when they left.
Staffan unfolded the blade of his pocketknife, picked out the piece of paper.
Tommy, of course.
It didn't occur to Staffan to wonder why Tommy needed to rig the lock of a door that he had a key to. Tommy was a thief who hung out here and this was a thief's trick. Therefore: Tommy.
Yvonne had described the location of Tommy's unit for him, and while Staffan walked in that direction he prepared in his head the lecture he was going to hold. He had considered taking the pal route, taking it easy, but this thing with the lock had made him angry again.
He would explain to Tommy-explain, not threaten-about juvenile detention facilities, social services, the age at which you could be legally tried as an adult, and so on. Just so he understood what kind of path he was about to head down.
The door to the storage unit was open. Staffan looked in. Well, what do you know. The bird has flown the coop. Then he saw the stains. He squatted and pulled his finger over one of them. Blood. Tommy's blanket lay on the couch and even that had the occasional
bloodstain on it. And the floor was-he now saw when he was looking for it-covered in blood.
Alarmed, he backed up out of the unit.
In front of his eyes he now saw… a crime scene. Instead of the lecture he was supposed to have delivered, his mind now started to flip through the rulebook for the handling of a crime scene. He knew it by heart, but as he was proceeding through the paragraphs-
immediate recovery of such material as may otherwise be lost… note the exact time… avoid contamination of locations where traces of fibers may potentially be recovered…
– he heard a faint murmur behind him. A mumbling punctuated with muffled thuds.
A stick was threaded through the wheels of the locking mechanism of the safety room. He walked over to the door, listened. Yes. The mumbling, the thuds, were coming from in there. It almost sounded like a… mass. A recited litany that he could not make out the words to.
Devil worshippers…
A silly thought, but when he looked closer at the stick in the door it actually frightened him, because of what he saw at the very tip. Dark red, lumpy streaks that reached about ten centimeters up the stick itself. Thus, and exactly thus, is what knives looked like when they had been used for violent altercations and had partly dried.
The muttering on the other side of the door continued.
Call for reinforcements?
No. There was perhaps something criminal going on behind that door that would be completed while he was upstairs making the call. Had to manage this on his own.
He undid the fastening on his holster in order to make easy access to his gun, unhooked the baton. With his other hand he picked out a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wrapped it around the end of the stick and started to pull it out of the wheels while he listened closely to see if the scraping sound from the stick altered the noises from inside the room in any way.
No. The litany and the thuds continued.
The stick was out. He propped it up against the wall in order not to destroy any hand or fingerprints.
He knew that the handkerchief was no guarantee that prints would not be erased, so instead of grabbing the wheels he used two stiff fingers on one of the spokes and forced it to turn.
The wheel pistons gave way. He licked his lips. His throat felt dry. The other wheel was turned back all the way and the door slid open one centimeter.
Now he heard the words. It was a song. The voice was a high-pitched, broken whisper:
Two hundred and seventy-four elephants
On a teensy spider weeeee-
(Thud.)
– eh!
They thought it was
Such jolly good fun
That they went and got a friend!
Two hundred and seventy-five elephants
On a teensy spider weee-
(Thud.)
– eh!
They thought it was…
Staffan angled the baton away from his body, pushed the door open with it.
And then he saw.
The lump that Tommy was kneeling behind would have been hard to identify as human had it not been for the arm that stuck out of it, half separated from the body. The chest, stomach, face were only a heap of flesh, guts, crushed bone.
Tommy was holding a square stone with both hands that, at a certain point in his song, he thrust down into the butchered remains, which did not provide more resistance than that the stone went all the way through and hit against the floor with a thud, before he lifted it up again and yet another elephant was added to the spiderweb.
Staffan could not tell for sure that it was Tommy. The person holding the stone was covered in so much blood and tissue scraps that it was difficult to… Staffan became intensely nauseated. He restrained a wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, looked down in order not to have to see, and his eyes stopped at a tin soldier lying by the threshold. No. It was the figure of pistol shooter. He recognized it. The figure was lying in such a way so the pistol was aimed straight up.
Where is the base?
Then he realized.
His head spun and, oblivious to fingerprints and crime scene protocol, he leaned his hand against the door post in order not to fall while the song continued repetitively:
Two hundred and seventy-seven elephants On…
He must be pretty shaken up because he was hallucinating. He thought he saw… yes… saw clearly how the human remains on the floor, between each blow… moved. As if trying to get up.
Morgan was a chain smoker; he was already putting out his butt in a flower bed outside the hospital entrance when Larry still had half of his left. Morgan pushed his hands down into his pockets, walked to and fro in the parking lot, swore when water from a puddle seeped in through the hole in his shoe and made his sock wet.
"Got any money, Larry?"
"As you know I'm on disability and-"
"Yeah, yeah. But do you have any money?"
"Why? I'm not going to lend you any if that's-"
"No, no, no. But I was thinking: Lacke. What if we were to treat him to a real… you know."
Larry coughed, looked accusingly at the cigarette.
"What… to cheer him up, you mean?"
"Yes."
"No… I don't know."
"What? Because you don't think it'll make him feel better or because you don't have any money or because you're too cheap to put out?"
Larry sighed, took another puff, coughing, then made a face and put the cigarette out with his foot. Then picked up the butt and put it in a sand-filled receptacle, looked at his clock.
"Morgan… it's half past eight in the morning."
"Yes, I know. But in a couple of hours. When stuff opens."
"No, I have to think about it."
"So you have money?"
"Should we go in, or what?"
They walked in through the revolving door. Morgan pulled his hands through his hair and walked up to the woman at the reception desk to find out where Virginia was, while Larry went and looked at some fish that were swimming sleepily through a large bubbling cylindrical tank.
After a minute Morgan came back, rubbed his hands over his leather vest to wipe off something that had stuck to him, said: "Damn bitch. Didn't want to tell."
"Oh well. Must be in intensive care."
"Can you get in there?"
"Sometimes."
"You seem like you know what you're doing."
"I do."
They moved in the direction of the Intensive Care Unit. Larry knew the way.
Many of Larry's "acquaintances" were in or had been in the hospital. At the moment there were two here at Sabb, excluding Virginia. Morgan suspected that people that Larry had only met briefly became acquaintances or even friends only at that moment that they landed in the hospital. Then he sought them out, went for visits.
Why he did this, Morgan had just been about to ask when they reached the swinging doors of the ICU, pushed them open, and caught sight of Lacke at the far end of the corridor. He was sitting in an armchair, in only his underpants. His hands were clutching the arms of the chair while he stared into a room in front of him that people were hurrying in and out of.
Morgan sniffed: "What the hell, are they cremating someone or what?" He laughed. "Damn conservatives. Budget cuts, you know. Let the hospitals take over the…"
He stopped talking when they reached Lacke, whose face was ashen, his eyes red and unseeing. Morgan sensed what must have happened, let Larry take the lead. Wasn't good at this kind of thing.
Larry walked over to Lacke, put a hand on his arm.
"Hey there, Lacke. How's it going?"
Chaos in the room closest to them. The windows visible from the door were wide open but despite this the sour smell of ash drifted out into the corridor. A thick cloud of dust was floating through the air, people were standing in its midst talking loudly, gesturing. Morgan caught the words "hospital's responsibility" and "we have to try…"
What they had to try he didn't hear because Lacke turned to them, staring at them like they were two strangers, said: "… should have realized…"
Larry leaned over him.
"Should have realized what?"
"That it would happen."
"What's happened?"
Lacke's eyes cleared and he looked toward the foggy, dreamlike room, said simply: "She burned."
"Virginia?"
"Yes. She went up in flames."
Morgan took a couple of steps toward the room, peeked in. An older man with an air of authority came over to him.
"Excuse me, this is not a public exhibition."
"No, no. I was just…"
Morgan was about to say something witty about looking for his boa constrictor, but dropped it. At least he had had time to see. Two beds. One with wrinkled sheets and a blanket thrown to one side as if someone had gotten out of it in a hurry.
The other was covered with a thick gray blanket that stretched from the foot end to the pillow. The wood of the headrest was covered with soot. Under the blanket he could see the outline of an unbelievably thin person. Head, chest, pelvis were the only details he could make out. The rest could just as well be folds, irregularities in the blanket cloth.
Morgan rubbed his eyes so hard that his eyeballs were pressed a centimeter or so into his head. It's true. It's fucking true.
He looked around the corridor, looking for someone to work through his confusion on. Caught sight of an older man leaning against a walker, an IV stand next to him, trying to get a glimpse into the room.
"What are you looking at, you old fool? Want me to kick your walker out from under you too?"
The man started to retreat, in tiny intervals. Morgan balled his hands into fists, tried to control himself. Remembered something he had seen in the room, turned abruptly and went back.
The man who had spoken to him was on his way out.
"Excuse me, but what…"
"Yes, yes, yes…" Morgan shoved him out of the way,"… just getting my friend's clothes for him, if that's alright. Or do you think he should keep sitting out there in the buff?"
The man crossed his arms over his chest, let Morgan pass.
He grabbed Lacke's clothes from the chair next to the unmade bed, threw another glance at the other bed. A charred hand with outstretched fingers poked out from under the sheet. The hand was unrecognizable; the ring that sat on the middle finger was not. Gold, with a blue stone, Virginia's ring. Before Morgan turned away he also noted that a leather strap was fastened across the wrist.
The man was still standing in the door, his arms crossed.
"Happy now?"
"No. But why the hell was she restrained like that?"
The man shook his head.
"You can let your friend know the police will be here shortly and they will no doubt want to talk to him."
"What for?"
"How should I know? I'm not the police."
"No, of course not. Easy to make that mistake, though, isn't it."
Out in the corridor, they helped Lacke get into his clothes, and had just finished when two police officers arrived. Lacke was completely spaced out, but the nurse who had pulled the blinds up had enough presence of
mind to be able to vouch for the fact that he had had nothing to do with it. That he had still been sleeping when the whole thing… began.
She was comforted by one of her colleagues. Larry and Morgan led Lacke out of the hospital.
When they had gone through the revolving front door Morgan drew a deep breath of the cold air and said: "Sorry, have to barf," leaned over the flower beds and deposited the remains of yesterday's dinner mixed with green slime over the bare bushes.
When he was done he wiped his mouth with his hand and dried his hand on his pant leg. Then held up the hand as if it were exhibit A and said to Larry:
"Now look here, you're fucking going to have to cough up."
They made their way back to Blackeberg and Morgan was given one hundred and fifty to spend at the alcohol shop while Larry took Lacke back to his place.
Lacke allowed himself to be led. He had not said a single word the whole time they were on the subway.
In the elevator up to Larry's apartment on the sixth floor he started to cry. Not quietly, no, he wailed like a kid, but worse, more. When Larry opened the elevator door and pushed him out onto the landing the cry deepened, started to reverberate against the concrete walls. Lacke's scream of primal, bottomless sorrow filled the stairwell from top to bottom, streamed through the mail slots, keyholes, transformed the high-rise into one big tomb erected in the memory of love, hope. Larry shivered; he had never heard anything like it before. You don't cry like this. You're not allowed to cry like this. You die if you cry like this.
The neighbors. They're going to think I'm killing him.
Larry fumbled with his keys while thousands of years of human suffering, of helplessness and disappointments, that for the moment had found an outlet in Lacke's frail body continued to pour out of him.
The key finally made it into the lock and, with a strength he had not believed he possessed, Larry basically carried Lacke into the apartment
and closed the door. Lacke continued to scream; the air never seemed to give out. Sweat was starting to form on Larry's brow.
What the hell should I… should I…
In his panic he did what he had seen in the movies. With an open hand he slapped Lacke's cheek, was startled by the sharp slapping sound and regretted it in the same moment that he did it. But it worked.
Lacke stopped screaming, stared at Larry with wild eyes, and Larry thought he was going to get hit back. Then something softened in Lacke's eyes, he opened and closed his mouth like he was trying to get some air, said: "Larry, I…"
Larry put his arms around him. Lacke leaned his cheek against his shoulder and cried so hard he was shaking. After a while Larry's legs started to feel weak. He tried to untangle himself from the embrace so he could sit down on the hall chair, but Lacke hung onto him and followed him down. Larry landed on the chair and Lacke's legs buckled under him, his head sank down onto Larry's lap.
Larry stroked his hair, didn't know what to say. Just whispered:
"There, there… there, there…"
Larry's legs had fallen asleep when a change occurred. The crying had died down, and given way to a soft whimpering, when he felt Lacke's jaws tense up against his thigh. Lacke lifted his head, wiped away the snot with his sleeve and said:
"I'm going to kill it."
"What?"
Lacke lowered his gaze, stared right through Larry's chest and nodded.
"I'm going to kill it. I'm not going to let it live."
During the long recess at half past nine both Staffs and Johan came over to Oskar and said "great job" and "fucking awesome." Staffe offered him chewy candy cars and Johan asked if Oskar wanted to come with them and collect empty bottles one day.
No one shoved him or held his nose when he walked past. Even Micke Siskov smiled, nodding encouragingly as if Oskar had told him a funny story when they met in the corridor outside the cafeteria.
As if everyone had been waiting for him to do exactly what he did, and now that it was done he was one of them.
The problem was that he couldn't enjoy it. He noted it, but it didn't affect him. Great not to be picked on anymore, yes. If someone tried to hit him, he would hit back. But he didn't belong here anymore.
During math class he raised his head and looked at the classmates he had been with for six years. They sat with their heads bent over their work, chewing on pens, sending notes to each other, giggling. And he thought: But they're just… kids.
And he was also a kid, but…
He doodled a cross in his book, changed it to a kind of gallows with a noose.
I am a child, hut…
He drew a train. A car. A boat.
A house. With an open door.
His anxiety grew. At the end of math class he couldn't sit still, his feet banged on the floor, his hands drummed against his desk. The teacher asked him, with a surprised turn of her head, to be quiet. He tried, but soon the restlessness was there again, pulling in the marionette threads and his legs started to move on their own.
When it was time for the last class of the day, gym class, he couldn't stand it any longer. In the corridor he said to Johan: "Tell Avila I'm sick, OK?"
"Are you taking off, or what?"
"Don't have my gym clothes."
This was actually true; he had forgotten to pack his gym clothes this morning, but that was not why he had to cut class. On the way to the subway he saw the class line up in straight rows. Tomas shouted "buuuuu!" at him.
Would probably tell on him. Didn't matter. Not in the least.
The pigeons fluttered up in gray flocks as he hurried across Vallingby square. A woman with a stroller wrinkled up her nose in judgement at him; someone who doesn't care about animals. But he was in a hurry, and all the things that lay between him and his goal were mere objects, were simply in the way.
He stopped outside the toy store. Smurfs were arranged in a sugary cute landscape. Too old for stuff like that. In a box at home he had a couple of Big Jim dolls that he had played with quite a bit when he was younger.
About a year or so ago.
An electronic doorbell sounded as he opened the door. He walked through a narrow aisle where plastic dolls, krixa-men, and boxes of building models filled the shelves. Closest to the register were the packages with molds for tin soldiers. You had to ask for the blocks of tin at the counter.
What he was looking for was stacked on the counter itself.
Yes, the imitations were stacked under the plastic dolls, but the originals, with the Rubik's logo on the packaging, they were more careful with. They cost ninety-eight kronor apiece.
A short pudgy man stood behind the counter with a smile that Oskar would have described as "ingratiating" if he had known the word.
"Hello… are you looking for anything special today?"
Oskar had known the Cubes would be stacked on the counter, had his plan figured out.
"Yes. I was wondering… about the paints. For tin."
"Yes?"
The man gestured to the tiny pots of enamel paint arranged behind him. Oskar leaned over, putting the fingers of one hand on the counter just in front of the Rubik's Cubes while the other hand held his bag, hanging open underneath. He pretended to search among the colors.
"Gold. Do you have that?"
"Gold. Of course."
When the man turned around Oskar took one of the Cubes, popped it into his bag, and had just managed to return his hand to the same place when the man came back with two pots of paint and placed them on the counter. Oskar's heart was beating heat up into his cheeks, across his ears.
"Matte, or metallic?"
The man looked at Oskar, who felt how his whole face was a warning sign on which it was written, "Here is a thief." In order not to draw attention to his red cheeks he bent over the tins, said: "Metallic… that one looks fine."
He had twenty kronor. The paint cost nineteen. He got it in a little bag that he scrunched into his coat pocket in order not to have to open his school bag.
The kick came as usual when he was outside the store, but it was bigger than normal. He trotted away from the store like a newly freed slave, just released from his chains. Could not help but run to the parking lot and, with two cars shielding him, carefully open the packaging, take out the Cube.
It was much heavier than the imitation he owned. The sections slid smoothly, as if on ball bearings. Perhaps they were ball bearings? Well, he wasn't planning to take it apart and examine it, risk destroying it.
The box was an ugly thing made of transparent plastic, now that the Cube was no longer in it, and on the way from the parking lot he threw it into a trash can. The Cube looked better without it. He put it in his coat pocket in order to be able to caress it, feel its weight in his hand. It was a good present, a great… good-bye present.
In the entrance to the subway station he stopped.
If Eli thinks… that I…
Yes. That he, by giving Eli a present, somehow accepted the fact that Eli was leaving. Give a good-bye present, over and done with. Good-bye, good-bye. But that wasn't how it was. He absolutely didn't want…
His gaze swept across the station, stopped at the kiosk. At the rack of newspapers. The Expressen paper. The whole first page was covered in a picture of the old guy who had lived with Eli.
Oskar walked over and flipped through the paper. Five pages were devoted to the search in Judarn forest… the Ritual Killer… background and then: yet another page where the photo was printed. Hakan Bengts-son… Karlstad… unknown whereabouts for eight months… police turning to the public… if anyone has observed…
Anxiety dug its claws into Oskar.
Someone else who might have seen him, known where he lived…
The kiosk lady leaned out through the kiosk window.
"Are you buying it or not?"
Oskar shook his head, tossed the paper back into its place. Then he ran. It was only once he was down on the platform that he remembered he hadn't shown his ticket to the ticket collector. He stomped his feet on the ground, sucked on his knuckles, his eyes teared up. Come on, please, subway train, come on…
Lacke half-lay on the sofa, squinting at the balcony where Morgan was trying to coax over a bird who was sitting on the railing-without result. The setting sun was exactly behind Morgan's head, spread a halo of light around his hair.
"Come on… come, come. I won't bite."
Larry was sitting in an armchair, half-watching a public education course in Spanish. Stiff people in obviously rehearsed situations walked across the screen, said:
"Yo tengo un bolso."
"Que hay en el bolso?"
Morgan bent his head, so Lacke got the sun in his eyes and closed them, while he heard Larry mutter:
"Ke haj en el balsa."
The apartment reeked of stale cigarette smoke and dust. The seventy-five was empty, lying on the coffee table next to an overfull ashtray. Lacke stared at a couple of burn marks on the table left by carelessly extinguished cigarettes; they slid around before his eyes like meek beetles.
"Ona kamisa y pantalanes."
Larry chuckled to himself.
"… pantalanes."
They had not believed him. Or rather, yes, they had believed him but refused to interpret the events in the way that he did. "Spontaneous combustion," Larry had said, and Morgan had asked him to spell it.
Except for the fact that the case for spontaneous combustion is just about as well-documented and scientifically proven as vampires. That is to say, not at all.
But of two equally implausible scenarios you probably choose to believe the one that demands the least amount of action on your part. They were not going to help him. Morgan had listened seriously to Lacke's account of what happened at the hospital, but when he got to the part about destroying the cause of all this, he had said:
"So, like, you mean we should become… vampire killers. You and me and Larry. With stakes and crosses and… No, sorry, Lacke, but I'm having a little trouble seeing it, is all."
Lacke's immediate thought when he saw their disbelieving, dismissive faces had been:
Virginia would have believed me.
And the pain had sunk its claws into him again. He was the one who had not believed in Virginia and that was why… he would rather have spent a couple of years in jail for mercy killing than have to live with the image he had seared on his retina.
Her body writhing in the bed as her skin blackens, starts to smoke. The hospital gown that rides up over her stomach, revealing her genitals. The rattle of the metal bed frame as her hips move, heaving up and down in infernal copulation with an invisible being as flames appear on her thighs, she screams, she screams and the stench of singed hair fills the room, her terrified eyes on mine and one second later they whiten, start to boil… burst…
Lacke had drunk more than half the contents of the bottle. Morgan and Larry had let him.
"… pantalanes."
Lacke tried to get up out of the couch. The back of his head weighed as much as the rest of his body. He steadied himself against the table, heaved himself up. Larry stood up in order to give him a hand.
"Lacke, damn it… sleep a while."
"No, I have to get home."
"What do you have to do there?"
"I just have to… do something."
"But it's nothing to do with… the stuff we were talking about, is it?"
"No, no."
Morgan came in from the balcony while Lacke was teetering out toward the hall.
"Hey you! Where do you think you're going?"
"Home."
"Then I'll walk you there."
Lacke turned around, making an effort to shore himself up, appear as sober as possible. Morgan walked over to him, his hands out in case Lacke fell. Lacke shook his head, patted Morgan on the shoulder.
"I want to be alone, OK. I want to be alone. That's all."
"Are you sure you can make it?"
"I'll manage."
Lacke nodded a few more times, got hung up on this movement, and had to consciously put an end to it so he wouldn't be stuck standing there, then turned and walked out into the hall, pulling on his coat and shoes.
He knew he was very drunk, but he had experienced this state so many times that he knew how to unhook his movements from his brain, perform them mechanically. He would have been able to play pick-up-sticks without his hands trembling, at least for a short while.
He heard the others' voices from inside the apartment.
"Shouldn't we?…"
"No. If that's what he wants we should respect it."
But they came out into the hall to see him off. Hugged him clumsily. Morgan took him by the arms and bent down to look him in the eyes, said: "You're not going to do anything stupid now are you? You have us, you know that."
"Yes, I know. Of course I won't."
Once he was outside the high-rise apartment building he came to a standstill, looked up at the sun resting in the top of a pine tree.
Will never again be able to… the sun…
Virginia's death, the way she had died, hung like a lead weight in his heart, in the place his heart had been, made him walk doubled over, compressed. The afternoon light in the streets was a mockery. The few people moving around in it… a mockery. Voices. Speaking about everyday things as if… all over, at any moment…
It can happen to you, too.
Outside the kiosk a person had leaned up against the window, was
talking to the kiosk owner. Lacke saw a black lump fall from the sky, attach itself to the person's back and…
What the hell…
He stopped in front of the rows of headlines, blinked, tried to focus properly on the photo that nearly filled the available space. The Ritual Killer. Lacke snorted. He knew better. What this was actually about. But…
He recognized that face. It was…
At the Chinese restaurant. The man who…. bought him the whisky. Could it…
He took a step forward, looked more closely at the picture. Yes. It was. The same closely-set eyes, the same… Lacke put his hand to his mouth, pressed his fingers to his lips. The images whirled around, attempted connections.
He had let him buy him drinks, the one who killed Jocke. Jocke's killer had lived in the same building complex as him, only a few doors down. He had greeted him a couple of times, he had…
But he wasn't the one who did it. That must have been…
A voice. Said something.
"Hi Lacke. Someone you know, or what?"
The owner of the kiosk and the man outside were both looking at him. He said:
"… Yes…" and started to walk again, toward his apartment. The world disappeared. In his mind's eye he saw the doorway the man came out of. The covered windows of the apartment. He was going to get to the bottom of this. He was.
His pace quickened and his spine straightened out; the lead weight was a pendulum now that beat against his chest, making him tremble, his resolve thundering through his body.
Here I come. By Jove… here I come.
The subway train stopped at Racksta and Oskar chewed his lips, impatiently, with a touch of panic, thought the doors stayed open too long. When there was a click on the speaker system he thought the driver was about to announce a delay but-
"Step away from the doors. The doors are closing."
– and the train pulled away from the station.
He had no plan beyond warning Eli; that anyone, at any time could call the police and say they had seen the old guy. In Blackeberg. In that building. In that stairwell. In that apartment.
What happens if the police… if they break down the door… the bathroom.
The train rattled across the bridge and Oskar looked out the window. Two men were standing down at the Lover's newsstand and, half-covered by one of the men, Oskar could still discern the row of hateful front-page headlines blown up and printed on yellow fliers. The other man walked quickly away from the kiosk.
Anyone. Anyone can recognize him. He could know.
Oskar was already up and standing by the doors when the train started to slow down. He pushed his fingers through the rubber lips between the doors as if that would make them open faster, and leaned his forehead against the glass, cool against his hot skin. The brakes started to squeal and the driver must have been distracted because only now did he announce:
"Next stop. Blackeberg."
Jonny was standing on the platform. And Tomas.
No. Nonono. Not them.
When the train, rocking, pulled to a halt, Oskar's eyes met Jonny's. They widened, and at the same time as the doors slid open with a hiss, Oskar saw Jonny say something to Tomas.
Oskar tensed, threw himself out through the doors, and started to run.
Tomas' long leg flicked out, hooked his, and he fell headlong onto the platform, scraping the palms of his hands when he tried to break his fall. Jonny sat on his back. "In a hurry to get somewhere?"
"Let me go! Let me go!"
"Why should we?"
Oskar shut his eyes, balled his hands into fists. Took a couple of deep breaths, as deep as he could with Jonny's weight on his chest, and said into the concrete:
"Do whatever you want. Then let me go."
"Okie-dokie."
They grabbed him by his arms and pulled him to his feet. Oskar caught a glimpse of the station clock. Ten past two. The second hand hacked its way around the face. He tensed the muscles in his face, in his stomach, tried to make himself like a rock, impervious to blows.
Just let it be over fast.
It was only when he saw what they were planning to do that he started to struggle. But as if by silent agreement both of them had twisted his arms around so that every movement made it feel as if his arms were going to break. They forced him toward the edge of the platform.
They wouldn't dare. They can't…
But Tomas was crazy and Jonny…
He tried to brace himself with his feet. They danced across the platform while Tomas and Jonny led him up to the white line that marked the start of the drop down toward the tracks.
Some hair on his left temple was tickling his forehead, fluttering from the gust of wind coming out of the tunnel as the train from the city approached. The tracks started to hum and Jonny whispered:
"You're going to die now, you understand."
Tomas giggled, gripped him even harder by the arm. Oskar's head went dark: they're really going to do it. They forced him out so his upper body was hanging out over the tracks.
The lights on the approaching train projected an arrow of cold light over the tracks. Oskar jerked his head to the left and saw the train come hurtling out of the tunnel.
BAAAAAAAAAAH!
The train's signal sounded and Oskar's heart leaped in its deaththrows at the same time as he wet his pants and his last thought was-
Eli!
– before he was pulled back, his field of vision filled with green when the train rushed past, a few centimeters in front of his eyes.
He lay on his back on the platform, his breath coming in puffs of smoke from his mouth. The wetness in his groin grew colder. Jonny squatted next to him.
"Just so you get it. How things are going to be around here. Understand?"
Oskar nodded, instinctively. Put an end to it. The old impulses. Jonny gingerly touched his injured ear, smiled. Then he put his hand across Os-kar's mouth, pushed his cheeks together.
"Squeal like a pig if you get it."
Oskar squealed. Like a pig. They laughed. Tomas said: "He was better at it before."
Jonny nodded. "We'll have to start training him again."
The train on the other side arrived. They left him.
Oskar lay where he was for a while, empty. Then a face came floating through the air in front of him. Some lady. She was holding her hand out to him.
"You poor dear. I saw the whole thing. You have to report them to the police, that was…"
The police.
"… attempted murder. Come, I'll help…"
Oskar ignored her hand and jumped to his feet. While he was limping toward the doors, up the stairs, he could still hear the lady's voice:
"Are you sure you're alright?"
The cops.
Lacke winced when he walked into the courtyard and saw the patrol car parked in the corner. Two police officers were standing outside the car; one was writing something on a pad. He assumed they were after the same thing as him, but that their information source was not as good. The officers had not noticed his hesitation, so he kept going to the first entrance in the row of buildings, walked in.
None of the names on the wall told him anything, but he knew which one it was anyway. Ground floor, to the right. Next to the basement door there was a bottle of T-Rod. He stopped, looked at it as if it could give him a clue as to what he should do next.
T-Rod is flammable. Virginia went up inflames.
But the thought stopped at that point and he only felt that dry, screaming rage again, continued up the stairs. A shift had occurred.
Now his mind was clear and his body clumsy. His feet slipped on the steps and he had to steady himself with the railing in order to maneuver himself up the stairs, while his brain clearly resonated:
I go in. I find it. I drive something through its heart. Then I wait for the cops.
In front of the door with no name plate he remained standing.
And how the hell am I going to get in.
As a kind of joke he tossed out one arm and felt the door handle. And the door opened, revealing an empty apartment. No furniture, rugs, paintings. No clothes. He licked his lips.
It's gone. There's nothing for me here…
There were two more bottles of T-Ro on the floor in the hall. He tried to decide what that meant. That this creature drank… no. That…
Only means that someone has been here recently. Otherwise that bottle back there would be gone.
Yes.
He stepped in, stopped in the hall and listened. Heard nothing. Did a quick round of the apartment, saw there were blankets hanging in the windows in several rooms, understood why. Knew he was in the right place.
Finally he ended up standing in front of the bathroom door. Pushed the door handle down. Locked. But this lock was no problem; all he needed was a screwdriver or something like that.
Again he concentrated entirely on his movements. To perform the movements. He shouldn't think beyond that. No need to. If he started thinking he would hesitate and he wasn't going to hesitate. Therefore: movements.
He pulled out the kitchen drawers, found a kitchen knife. Walked to the bathroom. Inserted the blade into the handle and turned it, clockwise. The lock gave way; he opened the door. It was pitch black in there. He groped around for a light switch, found one. Turned it on.
God help us. Damned if it isn't…
The knife fell out of Lacke's hand. The bathtub in front of his feet was half-filled with blood. On the bathroom floor were several large plastic jugs whose translucent plastic surfaces were smeared with red. The knife clattered against the tile floor like a little bell.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he leaned forward to… to what? To… investigate it… or something else, something more primal; the fascination of such quantities of blood… to dip his hand into it, to-bathe his hands in blood.
He lowered his fingers against the still, dark surface and… plunged in. His fingers appeared to be severed, disappeared, and with a gaping mouth he lowered his hand until it felt-
He screamed, pulled back.
He quickly drew his hand out of the bathtub and drops of blood flew in an arc around him, landing on the ceiling, walls. In a reflex motion he put his hand over his mouth. Only realized what he had done when his tongue, lips registered the sweet stickiness. He spit, dried his hands on his pants. Put the other, clean hand over his mouth.
Someone's lying… down there.
Yes. What he had felt under his fingertips had been a belly. That had yielded under the pressure of his hand, before he pulled it out. In order to stave off the feeling of revulsion, he scanned the floor, found the knife, picked it up and squeezed the shaft.
What the hell am I…
If he had been sober he would perhaps have left at this point. Left this dark pool that could be concealing just about anything under its once more still, polished mirror surface. A butchered body, for example.
The stomach is maybe… it mayhe is just a stomach.
But the intoxication made him merciless even to his own fear so when he saw the thin chain that led from the edge of the bathtub down into the dark liquid he stretched out his hand and pulled on it.
The plug was pulled out down there, there was a filtering, clucking sound from the pipes and a faint whirl formed on the surface. He kneeled in front of the bathtub, licked his lips. Felt the harsh taste on his tongue, spit on the floor.
The surface became gradually lower. A sharply delineated dark red edge became visible along its highest level.
It must have been here a long time.
After a minute the contours of a nose appeared at one end. At the
other a set of toes that, as he watched, became two half feet. The vortex on the surface became narrower, stronger, positioned exactly between the feet.
He crept with his gaze along the child's body that was gradually being revealed on the bottom of the bath. A couple of hands, folded across the chest. Knee caps. A face. A muffled slurp as the last of the blood drained out.
The body in front of his eyes was dark red, blotchy and slimy like a newborn. It had a navel, but no genitals. A boy or a girl? It didn't matter. When he looked closely at the face with its closed eyes he recognized it only too well.
When Oskar tried to run, his legs froze up. Refused.
During five desperate seconds he had really believed that he was going to die. That they were prepared to push him. Now his muscles were having a hard time getting past the idea.
They gave out in the passageway between the school and the gymnasium.
He wanted to lie down. Tip back into those bushes, for example. The jacket and his lined pants would protect him from sharp twigs; the branches would provide gentle support. But he was in a hurry. The second hand; its staccato progress along the clock face.
The school.
The red-brown sharp-edged brick facade of stone laid against stone. In his thoughts he swooped like a bird along the corridors, into the classrooms. Jonny was there. Tomas. Sat at their desks and smiled mockingly at him. He bent his head, checked his boots.
The shoelaces were dirty, one about to become untied. A metal hook toward the top had been bent open. He walked slightly pigeon-toed; the leather imitation on both shoes was slightly stretched at the heels, worn to a shine. Even so he was going to be wearing these boots all winter, most likely.
Cold in his wet pants. He lifted his head.
I won't let them win. I. Won't. Let. Them. Win.
Warmth streamed into his legs. The straight masonry lines of the
brick facade dropped away, were rubbed out, disappeared as he started to run. His legs stretched out, the dirt squelched and sprayed up around his feet. The ground flowed out from under him and now it felt as if the Earth was turning too fast, he couldn't keep up.
His legs took him stumbling past the high-rises, the old Konsum store, the coconut factory, and with his speed in combination with old habits he rushed into the courtyard, past Eli's door, and straight to his own building.
He almost ran into a police officer who was heading the same way. The officer opened his arms, received him.
"Hey there! You're in quite a hurry."
His tongue stiffened. The officer let go of him, looked at him… with suspicion?
"Do you live here?"
Oskar nodded. He had never seen this police officer before. Admittedly he looked quite nice. No. He had a face that Oskar would normally think looked nice. The officer pinched his nose and said:
"You see… something's happened here. In the building next door. So now I'm going door to door around here asking if anyone's heard anything. Or seen anything."
"Which… which building?"
The officer nodded his head toward Tommy's building and the immediate panic left Oskar.
"That one. Well, not in the building per se… more like, the basement. You wouldn't have happened to hear or see anything unusual around there? The past few days?"
Oskar shook his head, his thoughts spinning so chaotically that he technically wasn't thinking anything at all, but he suspected his anxiety was shining from his eyes, fully visible to the officer. And the officer really did incline his head, scrutinizing him.
"How are you doing?"
"… fine."
"There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all… over now. So there's nothing you need to be worried about or anything. Are your parents home?"
"No. My mom. No."
"OK. Well, I'm going to be walking around here for a while, so… you can always think a little about what you may have seen."
The police officer held the door open for him. "After you."
"No, I was going to…"
Oskar turned and did his best to walk naturally down the hill. Halfway down he turned and saw the police officer go into his building.
They've taken Eli.
His jaws started to chatter, his teeth clicking an unclear Morse code message through his bones while he pulled open the door to Eli's building, continued on up the stairs. Would they have put that kind of tape on the door, sealed it off?
Say that I can come in.
The door was ajar.
If the police have been here, why did they leave the door open? That wasn't something they did, was it? He put his fingers on the handle, pulled the door open gently, crept into the hallway. It was dark in the apartment. One of his feet bumped into something. A plastic bottle. At first he thought there was blood in the bottle, then he looked and saw it was lighter fluid.
Breathing.
Someone was breathing.
Moving.
The sound came from the corridor in the direction of the bathroom. Oskar walked toward it, one step at a time, folded his lips inward to stop his teeth from chattering and the shivering moved down toward his chin, his neck, the suggestion of an Adam's apple on his neck. He turned the corner, looked into the bathroom.
That's not a policeman.
A man in shabby clothes was kneeling next to the bathtub, his upper body leaning over the edge, outside Oskar's field of vision. He only saw a pair of dirty gray pants, ripped up shoes with the tips pointed down toward the tiled floor. The hem of a coat.
The old guy!
But he's… breathing.
Yes. Hissing inhalations and exhalations, almost like sighs, came from
the bathroom and Oskar crept closer without consciously thinking about it. Little by little he saw more of the bathroom, and when he was almost level with the bathtub itself he saw what was happening.
Lacke couldn't do it.
The body at the bottom of the tub looked completely defenseless. It wasn't breathing. He had put his hand on its chest and registered the fact that its heart was beating but only with a few beats a minute.
He had been expecting something… terrifying. Something in proportion to the horror he had experienced at the hospital. But this little bloody rag of a person didn't look as if it could ever get up again, much less hurt anyone. It was only a child. A wounded child.
Like seeing someone you love wasting away with cancer, and then being shown a cancer cell through a microscope. Nothing. That? That did this? That little thing? Destroy my heart.
He let out a sob, his head falling forward until it hit the edge of the bathtub with a dull, echoing thud. He could. Not. Kill a child. A sleeping child. He simply couldn't. Even though… That's how it has managed to survive. It. It. Not a child. It.
It had attacked Virginia and… it had killed Jocke. It. The creature lying in front of him. This creature who would do it again, to other people. This creature that was not a person. It wasn't even breathing, and even so its heart was beating… like an animal in hibernation. Think about the others.
A poisonous snake living among people. You think you shouldn't kill it, simply because for the moment it appears defenseless?
But in the end that wasn't what helped him make up his mind. It was when he looked at the face again; the face covered in a thin film of blood, and he thought it looked like it was… smiling. Smiling at all the evil it had done. Enough.
He raised the kitchen knife above the creature, moved his legs back a little so he could put all his weight behind the thrust and- "AAAAHHH!"
Oskar screamed.
The old guy didn't flinch; he simply froze, turned his head toward Oskar and said slowly: "I have to do it. Do you understand?"
Oskar recognized him. He was one of the drunks who lived in the apartment complex and said hello to him from time to time.
Why is he doing this?
But that was neither here nor there. The important thing was that the guy had a knife in his hands, a knife that was pointing directly at Eli's chest as he lay there in the bathtub naked, exposed.
"Don't do it."
The guy's head moved to the right, to the left, more as if he was looking for something on the floor than signaling refusal.
"No…"
He turned back to the tub, to the knife. Oskar wanted to explain. That the thing in the bathtub was his friend, that it was his… that he had a present for the thing in there, that… that it was Eli.
"Wait."
The point of the knife lay against Eli's chest, pressed in so hard it almost punctured Eli's skin. Oskar didn't know exactly what he was doing when he shoved his hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out the Cube, showed it to the guy.
"Look!"
Lacke only saw it in the corner of his eye as a sudden burst of color in the midst of all the black, gray that surrounded him. Despite the bubble of determination that enveloped him he couldn't help turning his head toward it, to see what it was.
One of those Cubes in the boy's hand. Bright colors.
Looked completely sick in the current context. A parrot among crows. For a second he was hypnotized by the toy's vividness. Then he turned his
gaze back to the bathtub, to the knife that was on its way down between the ribs.
All I need to do is… press…
A change.
The creature's eyes were open.
He tensed in order to drive the knife in all the way, and then his temple exploded.
The Cube creaked when one of the corners smashed into the guy's head and it was wrenched from Oskar's hand. The guy fell to one side, landing on a plastic jug that gave way, hitting the side of the tub with a thundering noise like a bass drum.
Eli sat up.
From the bathroom doorway Oskar could only see the back of his body. The hair was plastered against the back of his head and his back was one big open wound.
The guy tried to get back on his feet but Eli didn't so much jump as fall out of the bathtub, landed in his lap: a child seeking comfort from his father. Eli wrapped his arms around the guy's neck and pulled his head to him to whisper tender words.
Oskar backed away from the bathroom as Eli bit the guy's neck. Eli hadn't seen him. But the guy saw him. His gaze locked with Oskar's, held him fast as Oskar moved backward toward the hall.
"Sorry."
Oskar didn't manage to get any sound out, but his lips formed the word before he turned the corner and the eye contact was broken.
He stood with his hand on the door handle as the guy screamed. Then the sound stopped abruptly as if a hand had been clamped over his mouth.
Oskar hesitated. Then he closed the door. And locked it.
Without looking to the right he walked down the hall to the living room. Sat down in the armchair.
Started to hum in order to drown out the noise from the bathroom.