Shadow of Fog Island

by Mariette Lindstein

  It was the last Sofia would see of Elvira for a very long time.

  11

  That night, Sofia dreamed about Franz Oswald again, but in this dream he touched her tenderly, as he had done at first. Massaging her shoulders and back.

  She woke up feeling slightly horny and very ashamed. She had never forgiven herself for being drawn to him, and it disgusted her to think of how susceptible to his flirting she’d been at first. But then she decided that Oswald must be hanging around in her mind because she’d never understood how he turned out the way he did. A family history had been written about his relatives, and she’d searched for it while she worked for the cult. But it was in Oswald’s hands now, so she would probably never find out.

  With a deep sigh, she got out of bed. It struck her that she hadn’t seen Elvira in three days, and just then she caught sight of a note on the doormat. A small, crumpled piece of paper that had been tossed through the mail slot. She picked it up and recognized Elvira’s sprawling penmanship right away. It seemed she’d scribbled down the message as fast as she could.

  Sorry, have to think of the babies.

  That was all. Not even a signature. But Sofia knew exactly what those words meant. She had guessed as much while she watched Elvira walk down the road in the dark.

  All at once, she felt bitter and betrayed. Her thoughts wandered to Simon; she wanted to talk to someone about this right away. He was probably out working, but maybe she could send a quick email before she left her apartment.

  It took a lot of effort to focus on her job that day. Elvira’s betrayal still stung, making tears burn her eyes. Then there was the thought that Oswald had gotten his claws into the innocent children, and the irritating knowledge that he’d won some sort of victory.

  When she returned home that night, a plastic bag was hanging from the handle of her apartment door. She peered into it, but at first she couldn’t tell what was inside. Resisting the urge to stick her hand inside, she instead dumped its contents onto the hallway floor. Her scream echoed off the walls. It was a toad. Flattened, dead as a doornail. She used the plastic bag as a glove to pick it up, then went out the building’s front door and tossed it into the bushes, thoroughly disgusted. Assuming one of the neighbourhood kids must have been behind it, she went back to her apartment to wash her hands.

  She sat down at the computer and logged in to see if she’d received a response from Simon. An email from an unnamed sender popped up – an order confirmation, five hundred kronor spent on something she’d never ordered. The items weren’t listed; it just said ‘adult contents’. She figured it was spam and opened the next email. This one was from Simon. He had written ‘Is this you?’ in response to an email from her account that was nothing but foul language. The fact that he could even think she would write that was offensive. Someone had hacked her account.

  She opened the folder of sent messages and her suspicions were confirmed. Several obscene emails had been sent to her friends and acquaintances. She quickly logged into her bank account and found that five hundred kronor had been debited, the money that had been used to order those ‘adult contents’, apparently from a company in Great Britain.

  The urgency of the situation made her hands tremble. She dialled the wrong number more than once before she managed to get hold of the bank and ask them to freeze her account. Then she sent an apology to everyone who had received the obscene message, including her parents and Edith Bergman, her boss at the library. She shuddered to think of what her boss would think when she read those terrible words. That done, she opened a new email account with a different password and sent the address to all her contacts. At last she sank onto the sofa, feeling absolutely drained and almost faint.

  Something wasn’t right. If someone had gone to the trouble of hacking her bank account to steal her money, they never would have settled for just five hundred kronor. And that toad on the door. This was about something else. And she had only one enemy in the whole world.

  The certainty that a living hell was about to engulf her found her guts and squeezed. Her eyes went to the window; she thought she saw a figure there. She lived on the ground floor, which was nice in a building with no elevator, but now she realized that anyone could watch her from outside.

  She went over to the window, but there was no one there. What was going on? Why did they want to come after her now, after more than six months? They’d got Elvira back, so what more did they want? But then, Sofia herself was primarily responsible for the blog.

  The emails left a bitter aftertaste. They had been written for the sole purpose of causing offence. Whoever had written them wasn’t smart; in fact, they were probably so dense they would stop at nothing. Her mind went to Benny and Sten, the guards at ViaTerra.

  Just when she’d managed to get her heart rate back down, the jangle of her doorbell startled her. She peered through the peephole and saw her neighbour, a woman in her eighties who always gave her a friendly smile when they passed each other on the stairs. But now she didn’t look friendly at all. She looked furious.

  Sofia opened the door.

  ‘This isn’t funny,’ Alma said, holding a box up right before Sofia’s nose.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand…’

  ‘Don’t play dumb.’

  Sofia looked into the box and saw a large, realistic dildo resting on a bed of tissue paper. The woman took a card from the box and handed it to Sofia.

  From Sofia in number one, for those lonely nights.

  Her stomach knotted and bile rose into her mouth like the prelude to a sudden case of stomach flu.

  ‘Oh my god! This is all a misunderstanding, my bank account was hacked…’

  But the woman didn’t seem to understand what a hacked bank account meant. She threw the box at Sofia’s feet, did an about-face, and limped back to her apartment. Sofia felt so ashamed her cheeks burned. She barely managed to run over and stick a foot into the doorway; she couldn’t stand the thought that the woman might think she had done something so heinous. The tears began to flow and she felt stupid and humiliated. Sobbing, she explained to Alma that she was being harassed by a cult. That she would never send such terrible items to someone. She begged for forgiveness again and again.

  In the end Alma invited her in for coffee, fascinated by Sofia’s story, and promised to keep an eye out for shady types in the area. And as they shared coffee in the cosy kitchen, Sofia began to feel a little bit better.

  But her anguish returned when she got back to her own apartment. The sky outside the window had lost its colour and plunged the room into a gloomy half-darkness. It was so quiet that the fridge sounded like a highway cutting through the apartment. She called Benjamin, who became furious, cursing Oswald and saying he would jump in the car and come down right away. But Sofia assured him she would be okay until he got there on Friday, as usual.

  All I can do is find the silver lining, she thought. Now I’m friends with my neighbour and I have a new email account, so I won’t get spam. They’ll never break me.

  Yet the apartment felt lonely and too quiet.

  She tried to call Wilma, who’d been hired by a fashion magazine in Stockholm, but she only got her voicemail. This was the first time since leaving the cult that she’d felt so alone. She hadn’t had a choice about spending most of her time with other people at ViaTerra, so these days she usually enjoyed being by herself. But now the solitude made her consider moving in with Benjamin. Although she didn’t feel prepared to allow his aimless ways back in her life again. She imagined what it would be like to have his clothes scattered all over the floor, the doors to every cabinet left wide open, and his snores accompanying her sleep at night.

  She decided to email Simon, write the fear away, relieve the pressure. She wrote about the harassment and suggested they talk the next day, then realized it was past midnight; she put on her pyjamas and brushed her teeth as she stared into her own frightened eyes in the mirror above the sink. Feeling how exhausted she was, s
he went to the apartment door and made sure it was locked, then turned out all the lights but one lamp in the living room.

  Not until she was under the covers did it all sink it. It had happened so fast. A typical day at work. Life had felt perfectly normal until she saw that plastic bag on the door. This is insane, she thought. Who sends a dildo to an eighty-year-old woman? What kind of people am I dealing with? An icy chill spread through her nerves. The certainty that this sort of individual had no limits was the worst part of all. The dildo in its box flashed into her mind. Shit! It was still outside her door. What if someone else in the building saw it? She threw on her robe and went out to pick up the box, which she carried to the trash receptacle behind the building. It was painfully cold out, and even though it was still winter, there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. The hair rose on the back of her neck and she turned around, but there was no one there.

  As soon as she opened the trash receptacle, she saw the garbage bag she’d tossed in on her way to work that morning. There was a large slit in the bag, as if had been given a C-section. Someone had gone through her trash. The remains of yesterday’s noodles had slithered through the hole, along with an empty tampon box. A sudden wave of nausea welled up inside her and she doubled over. The sight was so repulsive and private that she was forced to grab the receptacle and throw up into the flowerbed.

  12

  Anna-Maria disliked their intermediary from the start: the way he looked at her, as if she were an object; the way he made her wait in the stairwell and never invited her into his apartment; the arrogant tilt of his head. She was Oswald’s right-hand man, but this guy was treating her like a messenger.

  His attitude rekindled the jealousy that was always smouldering inside her. It made her wonder whether Franz had been talking about her behind her back and why this idiot hadn’t introduced himself. He must have a name, damn it! No, he just stood there in his flip-flops and ratty jeans, yawning hugely and looking as if he’d just dragged himself out of bed, all mussed hair and blank gaze. Her rage at Franz’s choice of this loser as their intermediary was eating Anna-Maria up from the inside.

  And then there were the envelopes Oswald sent him. So carefully sealed, every time. Not even a name on the front, just the address of the apartment. Once she had taken a detour to her own apartment to hold the envelope under a bright light, but she still couldn’t make out any letters. She could only tell it was Franz’s handwriting on the page.

  Now she was sitting on the balcony and trying to figure out how to make Franz get rid of this loser. Now and then, a thought niggled at her: What is happening to me? What is the point of falling in love if it’s going to hurt this much?

  The day’s last bit of pale glow was dissolving on the horizon. It smelled like rain. She took a deep breath and soaked up the fresh air until her ruminations swallowed her up again. She was so caught up in her spiralling thoughts that she lost track of time.

  She realized too late that she should already be on her way to Skogome. She made it through the car ride there in a fog of anguish, fully aware that Oswald would be furious that she was late. She convinced herself that everything would get better eventually. When he got out of prison. After all, prison would be stressful for anyone. She began to imagine the future, picturing herself hanging casually on his arm at gatherings and parties in the limelight. Wedding photos in women’s magazines, their noses nudging each other all lovingly.

  But her fantasies were no cure for her anxiety, so she tried to come up with a believable lie to explain her tardiness. There had been a lot of Google activity surrounding Sofia Bauman in the past week. Nothing concrete, but still.

  Her heart in her throat, she arrived at the central security station. A male guard was on duty – young, a little absent-minded – and Anna-Maria felt a rush of relief. More and more often, it seemed McLean’s eyes saw right through her. The guard raised his hand towards her while he finished a phone call.

  ‘Franz Oswald is no longer in the visitors’ room,’ he said then. ‘He asked to return to his studies after waiting for you for fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Damn, I really have to talk to him today.’

  ‘We can ask, but it’s not as if we can force him to see you.’

  ‘No, I understand. But tell him I had to take care of something regarding his case,’ she lied. ‘And that I have some information he’ll find interesting.’

  The guard sighed in resignation.

  ‘Okay, but it would be best if you’re on time next visit. Visiting hours are almost over by now.’

  He turned around to make a call.

  ‘He’ll be there in a minute.’

  Oswald made her wait fifteen minutes. When the guard escorted her into the visitors’ room, he was sitting there with a cruel gleam in his eye.

  ‘What did you want?’

  ‘I’m sorry to make you wait, but Sofia Bauman’s name popped up in my Google alerts. I thought it would be best to read it all before I came.’

  ‘I see. Anything concrete?’

  ‘No, not yet. Just posts on Facebook and that sort of thing. She was writing about Elvira. How it sucks that she’s back at ViaTerra.’

  ‘Did she mention me by name?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You heard me. Did she mention me? My name, Franz-Fucking-Oswald?’

  ‘I mean, I don’t recall exactly. But I think so. Or, maybe not directly, but she implied…’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Stop waffling. Do you think I can’t tell you’re lying?’

  He ran his fingers through his hair in the unconscious, recurring gesture she knew so well. But now she realized, for the first time, that this particular gesture meant he was ramping up to a burst of rage. His jaw clenched. His eyes went dark and that wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows.

  ‘You don’t have this under control in the least. What kind of hourly fee am I paying you, again? For you to sit there and lie to me? This is fucking absurd.’

  His voice was vicious and shrill. When he got this way, he would twist everything she said and turn it against her. Best to keep quiet until he calmed down.

  ‘I want to know every move she makes. Everything. Understood? Every comment. Every silly little picture she posts. Every goddamn smiley she uses. The whole fucking nine yards.’

  For a brief moment, Anna-Maria’s mind went fully quiet. Oswald’s mouth was moving, but it turned into a silent hole. It felt like someone was squeezing her ribcage hard. She heard herself breathing through her nose; she could feel her heart beating, softly, steadily. The pressure around her chest let go, but it left a mild dizziness behind. She had to lean against the wall when her legs could no longer bear her weight. She was only vaguely aware of the room around her. Oswald’s voice had begun to hum again, in the distance. As she stood there she was filled with a horrible sensation, a mixture of clarity and fear. This was something she’d suspected all along, but the thought had never come to complete fruition in her brain. Now she understood Oswald’s relationship with Sofia Bauman in a whole new light. This wasn’t about revenge. Or PR. Or even the good name of ViaTerra. This was personal. A frantic obsession that could not be swayed, much less stopped.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ he shouted.

  ‘Yes, every word. I understand. You’ll get all the information, I promise.’

  ‘Good, because I’m tired of your lies and your incompetence. Now I’m going to show you what I have to tolerate while you don’t give a single shit about how things are going for me.’

  She was about to protest, but he put up one hand to stop her. He stuck the other hand into his trouser pocket and took out an object wrapped in toilet paper. He held the small bundle in one palm and unwrapped the paper before her eyes. She recoiled and the dizziness returned; for an instant she thought she was staring at an amputated finger. She tried to make out the details of the object – it was like a bloody tendon with white specks.

  �
�What is that?’

  ‘Isterband. Lard sausage, this is the kind of thing I’m forced to eat while you wreck my life and fritter away my money. I think you should take it home and eat it up. Then maybe you’ll understand how serious this is.’

  Anna-Maria swallowed hard as crushing hopelessness washed over her.

  13

  Despite his promise to Sofia, Simon didn’t go to ViaTerra every week. He didn’t like the feeling of sneaking around the manor like a common thief or a spy. It made him feel silly. But he did take daily walks and always gazed up at the façade of the manor house when he walked by on the road.

  Life at the pension was busy. They had three greenhouses now, and he was preparing the spring outdoor plantings. A well-known gourmet magazine had learned about the pension’s organic food and had done a feature. ‘Organic Farming at its Best,’ read the headline, and under it was a picture of Simon leaning on a shovel. Simon had no desire to become famous or receive such praise for his work. The article did, however, make him feel an almost intoxicating schadenfreude towards Oswald. Look at this, you bastard, he thought. And you said no one cared about my plants.

  Inga Hermansson was so happy about the article that she suggested a raise for Simon, but he declined.

  ‘What I really want is for us to enter the Ekogrupp competition this summer,’ he said. ‘And for me to keep some of the money if we win.’

  Ekogrupp was an organization that held an annual competition for the best organic farm in the country. Simon had read about it online. The prize money was substantial. He actually had no idea what he would do with so much money, but he knew a win would annoy Oswald to no end. Oswald had always preached to the staff that they were of little worth ‘out in the real world’. That only he, Oswald, was capable of dealing with the media and the VIPs of Sweden. He had also repeatedly said that if they left ViaTerra the would end up unemployed. At best, they might be able to flip burgers at McDonald’s. These days Simon found it amusing to see that they were apparently having a hard time finding a replacement for him at ViaTerra.