Shadow of Fog Island

by Mariette Lindstein

  ‘Okay, well, we’ve got an IT expert, obviously…’

  ‘Great. Then that person can trace the site and figure out who put it up, right?’

  ‘Yes, we can certainly hope so,’ the officer said with a sigh.

  Sofia was boiling inside. She took her phone from her pocket and slammed it onto the officer’s desk. Not even that got a reaction.

  ‘Have you ever been a victim of online bullying?’ she asked.

  ‘Huh? No, definitely not.’

  Sofia brought up her phone camera and held it towards him.

  ‘Then I’ll take a picture of you right now, and I’ll go home and put up a truly disgusting porn site about you. Cut and paste your face onto naked bodies. Maybe that will help you take this seriously.’

  The indifferent look on his face disappeared, and his eyes took on a malicious glimmer. He snorted and assured her that he was taking the situation seriously and would handle it. Then he sent Sofia home, more furious now than she had been when she arrived.

  And then there was Benjamin. He couldn’t visit that weekend because his sister was throwing a party with a bunch of people who wanted to meet him and Sofia. Benjamin said they wanted to hear about their escape from the cult, but the last thing she wanted to do was answer people’s cult-related questions. Those sorts of people always had a sympathetic smile on their faces, but you could see what they were really thinking in their eyes: You are stupid and gullible. They only pretended to be compassionate.

  Benjamin hadn’t been upset by the online harassment. He just said Ellis would surely take care of it, and that there was so much shit on the internet that no one would even notice the entries about her. He wasn’t even on Facebook and only used the internet to order materials for his company. When Sofia declined the invitation to the party, Benjamin was grumpy. And when she told him about Magnus Strid and the newspaper article, he was truly annoyed.

  ‘Why do you keep making yourself a target for those idiots? Let Oswald have his nasty cult out there on the island. When are we going to start acting like normal people?’

  ‘He won’t fucking leave me alone!’

  ‘That’s because you’re always provoking him with your blogging. What he wants to do with ViaTerra is his own business. Ignore him, and it will all go away.’

  Now it definitely sounded like Benjamin was defending Oswald, and Sofia completely lost her temper and called him cruel names – they just fell out of her mouth.

  ‘Go ahead and ruin your own life if you want, but leave mine out of it!’ he snapped, then hung up on her.

  A whole day passed before they made up. Temporarily, anyway. Benjamin was starting to seem distant. He didn’t really want much out of life, aside from his job and the chance to see Sofia on weekends. That was enough for him. If someone spread lies about him all over the internet, he would only shrug and move on. He had left ViaTerra behind with such ease and nonchalance that Sofia was jealous.

  And then there was the letter incident. A piece of mail thumped through her mail slot one day, a white envelope with no return address. She picked it up and felt something firm, narrow, and oblong inside. After slitting the envelope with her finger, she stuck in her hand and took out a pencil. There were obviously bite marks on the shaft, and a rubber band was wound around the end. Her head spun. She forced herself to sit down on the sofa. It was her pencil, one of the ones she’d used in Oswald’s office. Its plainness was so familiar that the stress she’d felt when holding it at ViaTerra returned. There was no letter in the envelope. Why had someone gone to the trouble of sending something so silly?

  Just as she set the pencil on the coffee table, her phone dinged with an incoming text. A brief message from an unknown number.

  Write ‘I’m sorry’ a thousand times for all the lies you’ve spread about us.

  She darted up and went to look out the window, but there was no one there. She opened the apartment door, but the hallway was empty, full of a gentle, sunny haze that streamed through the windows. The silence that surrounded her had become so palpable that it felt like she was in a vacuum. She pulled herself together and hurried off to work. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the pencil all day, and her workday was ruined.

  All of this was going on in her life as a pile of unanswered texts grew on her phone. Now she was sitting in the park outside the library after a long day at work. She took her phone from her pocket and saw that there were thirty unread messages.

  Spring had come early. April had only just begun, but the grass in the park was lush and daffodils brightened up the flowerbeds. The light was pale and fell across the park like a veil. An airplane passed slowly, high in the sky. She was alone in the park, and the silence felt unnatural. As her eyes swept across the ethereal spring sky, she was flooded with relief. Soon it would be summer. The one-year anniversary of her escape from the cult was approaching. And she was still free.

  She tackled the thirty texts as she sat there, but she saved Simon’s for last. The others were less important, although one had arrived from Strid to let her know what time he would be arriving on the train the next day. Her chest constricted when she read what Simon had sent. It was concise, as usual, but it was perfectly clear.

  Oswald is controlling ViaTerra again, through Madde. Like Nazi rules and punishment, worse than before. Benny has a project that will make life tough for you. Call when you have a chance. But not right away. Sending this from within ViaTerra’s walls. The dog is a fat old Saint Bernard, not a guard dog.

  The fear she felt wasn’t unmanageable. Not yet. Before her years in the cult, fear had been something diffuse and difficult to deal with. It had sometimes paralysed her. These days, it prompted her to search for a way out, no hesitation. Life at ViaTerra, towards the end, had been about finding ways out. She had gotten good at it: sneaking a bit of extra sleep while sitting on the lid of the toilet. Swiping some extra food from the kitchen when the thought of rice and beans again made her feel nauseated. Coming up with a believable lie in a split second when Oswald caught her snooping. Experience had taught her that there was always a way out. And then came the next step: turning her fear to her own advantage. She had gotten really good at that too.

  That was what she needed to do now. She wondered if she could find out more information on the project Simon had written about. Use it against them. Or at least stay a step ahead of them.

  She decided to call Simon, who picked up right away.

  ‘How did you find all this out?’ she asked.

  ‘Hello to you too. And I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so formal, Simon. Obviously you’re fine. But I’m not, because those bastards won’t leave me alone. So tell me.’

  She stood up and set off for home as he spoke. By the time he was done, her knees were so trembly that she had to find another bench to sit on. It wasn’t so much the project, as that the whole hellish machine had been set in motion again. It had been quiet for too long.

  Simon discreetly cleared his throat. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I was just thinking. You don’t suppose you could get hold of that memo, do you?’

  ‘Well, I could go visit Benny in the guard booth and ask him for a copy.’

  ‘Very funny. But wait, I know how we can get it. Ellis can hack their computers. After all, they hacked mine, right? Then we’ll be, like, even.’

  ‘How will you explain how you got access to it later on?’

  ‘Oh, we could always say you were on a walk and found a copy that blew away in the wind, just like that first piece of paper you found. We could even dirty it up a little to make it seem believable.’

  ‘You’re too funny, you know that?’

  ‘I’ll check with Ellis and get back to you later. And before I forget, everything okay with you?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better. Spring is here. I’m in my element.’

  In some ways she had known this would be coming. They had terrible plans for her – it
was only to be expected. Now, if she could just find out what those plans were…

  She saw the mess the second she arrived at her building. Someone had opened the dumpster and emptied the bags of garbage, which were strewn over the grass, tossed every which way. On one side of the dumpster, someone had written:

  A WHORE LIVES HERE

  A sudden wave of nausea welled up inside her and she had to steady herself against the dumpster as she threw up. It was the very same spot as when she’d found the slit-open garbage bag. Traces of dried food were even still there, in the flowerbeds. She squatted down, pressed her hands to her stomach, and swallowed again and again. Then she forced herself to stand up again and take pictures of the dumpster on her phone. She gathered up the bags and tossed them back inside. All the milk cartons, aluminium cans, and soda bottles had leaked a little, and her fingers were disgustingly sticky once she had gathered them up.

  She noticed the writing on her apartment door as soon as she stepped into the stairwell.

  SLUT

  The word was painted in thick, black, scrawling letters, and it covered half the door. And something had been written in even bigger letters right over Alma’s door:

  OLD BITCH

  20

  The police said they would get there as fast as they could. Sofia took pictures of the doors, then went outside to wait. She called Benjamin as she sat there. It felt good to hear his horrified gasp when she told him what had happened. Now he would understand that some things were more important than his sister’s boring party. But when he offered to come straight to Lund and stay the night, she said no. It would be so late by the time he got there, and she was still upset with him. She suspected they would just start fighting about that party, and she was exhausted after the day’s incidents – she felt hot and sick and wondered if she was coming down with something.

  Her building was two storeys high and contained four apartments. She and Alma lived on the ground floor. She had never talked to the upstairs neighbours, having only run into them and said hello on the stairs a time or two. An older man with a dachshund and a younger couple lived up there. The couple seemed to hardly ever be home. But now the man with the dachshund popped up in the park in front of the building. The dog was tugging at its leash, making him stagger forward, his back bent. He stopped short when he saw her on the steps.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes. Or, well, no, someone came here and made a mess. Opened up the trash bags and spray-painted horrible words on my door and Alma’s. I called the police.’

  The man’s forehead wrinkled in concern.

  ‘I saw the mess when I went by. I have sciatica, so I couldn’t bend down and pick up the trash. I thought someone else…’ he looked mildly ashamed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I took care of it,’ she said.

  ‘But there was nothing there when I went out shopping a few hours ago,’ he said, shaking his head.

  It struck her that whoever had done this must have stood there in broad daylight, heaving the rubbish bags out of the dumpster and spraying those words on their doors despite the risk of being caught red-handed. It was frighteningly bold, almost desperate.

  ‘You haven’t seen anyone prowling around here?’ she asked the man.

  He considered her question for a moment.

  ‘Actually, I did see someone. But he didn’t look suspicious. A young man, on his way down the stairs. I only saw his back. But he was wearing nice clothes, and it wasn’t Jonas from number four, I know what he looks like. Always wearing a hoodie and jeans and so forth. This man was wearing a suit.’

  ‘Please, can you stay and talk to the police?’

  The man nodded, and just then the patrol car arrived.

  The officer who stepped out gave Sofia an apologetic look and shook her head when he saw the words on the dumpster. She was short and muscular with black hair in a tight ponytail. Her eyes were light brown and her eyebrows formed two perfect arches over them. She had a ring in one nostril. An unusual sense of calm emanated from her. She put out her hand and introduced herself as Andrea Claesson.

  ‘I picked up the trash,’ Sofia said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have…’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Andrea. She spoke first to the man with the dog, who now recalled that the stranger in the stairwell had had a backpack, and that it didn’t seem to match his fancy clothing. Otherwise, his description wasn’t much to go on. Short hair, average height, medium blond – it could have been anyone.

  They headed into the stairwell. Andrea grimaced when she saw the words on the doors. Alma stuck her head out and they spoke to her for a while. She hadn’t heard or seen anything because the TV had been on, but she didn’t seem upset in the least about her door – if anything, she was exhilarated over the drama Sofia had brought to the otherwise quiet neighbourhood.

  ‘I hope you get them,’ she told the officer. ‘Sofia, you have to tell the officer all about that horrible cult. They must be behind this.’

  Andrea and Sofia went to Sofia’s apartment and sat down at the kitchen table. Sofia bared it all, from the moment she had fled ViaTerra to the current day’s events. It was like pouring water from a bucket, because by the time she was finished she felt empty inside. She watched Andrea’s face transform as she listened. First there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes – she must have heard of ViaTerra – but then her expression became determined. When Sofia was done talking, Andrea stood up so quickly that her chair fell to the floor with a bang.

  ‘This is just awful. I am so sorry you haven’t been taken seriously. I promise we will help you deal with this.’

  She handed Sofia her card.

  ‘Call me right away if anything else happens. Day or night.’

  Sofia stood in the window, watching the patrol car turn onto the street and drive off. Loneliness crept in. She thought she saw something behind the dumpster. A long shadow reached across the parking lot. She opened the window and leaned out to see better. A loud noise made her recoil, and an empty can rolled across the asphalt, propelled by the breeze. The shadow was gone. She closed the window and double-checked that the apartment door was locked. Suddenly she was freezing. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could feel it in her jugular. She turned on the TV and pulled down the blinds, but she was so restless. To take the edge off her anxiety. She had a beer along with the sandwich she ate at the kitchen counter.

  It was hard to fall asleep that night. She kept thinking she heard sounds outside, and she wished Benjamin were there. Why had she refused his offer to come?

  Magnus Strid was supposed to arrive on the noon train the next day, so Sofia had taken the day off. She spent the morning buying paint and covering up the graffiti. Luckily, both the doors and the dumpster were grey, and it only took a few coats to make the insults disappear. She had just enough time to wash up and change clothes before it was time to meet Magnus’s train. She biked to the station at top speed.

  Sofia saw him as soon as she stepped onto the platform. He was trudging towards her like a bear, loaded with bags and camera equipment, and he laughed when he spotted her.

  ‘Time to have some fun with that perfect ass Oswald!’

  They gathered material for his article that afternoon: he photographed her at the library and at home and took notes as she told him everything that had happened. They went through all the material she’d gathered from Oswald’s trial, as well as copies of the hate mail and the pictures she’d taken of the doors and the dumpster. He gathered it all in a folder and helped her transfer the pictures to his laptop.

  When they were done, they had dinner in downtown Lund. ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can talk undisturbed,’ he said.

  They went to a nearly empty Thai place on Stortorget; she knew the food there was good.

  ‘Listen, you might want to think about going away for a while,’ Magnus said when they were done eating. ‘Get away from everything for a good long time.’

  ‘What? That would be like g
iving up!’

  ‘Not at all. You would have room to breathe. It doesn’t mean you can’t keep blogging and making Oswald miserable.’

  She considered it for a moment. But the thought of leaving everything she had so recently built for herself in Lund was overwhelming. Her job, her proximity to her parents, her apartment.

  ‘Maybe. I have to think about it.’

  ‘You know that none of what they’re doing to you is new, right? They harass everyone who criticizes them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When I wrote that article about ViaTerra, they did everything they could to ruin my life. They hired a private detective to follow me around the clock. They went through my trash, hacked my email, and sent horrible letters to the newspapers I write for. Don’t tell me you didn’t know? You worked with Oswald for almost two years.’

  Her mind brought her back to Oswald’s office. The meetings with Bosse, leader of the ethics unit. The extensive archive of folders where they stored personal information about anyone who’d ever been to ViaTerra. And sure, she’d known someone had tailed Strid. But it had felt different back then. It had been understood that ViaTerra would wage a merciless battle against all enemies, because anyone who wanted to stop ViaTerra was in opposition to all of humanity.

  ‘Sure, but it seemed right back then. Although they never shared details with me,’ she rushed to add.

  ‘You should know that Oswald has unlimited financial resources. I’ve been snooping in his affairs. He inherited billions from his family in France. What’s more, ViaTerra has been running in the black. People paid a small fortune for his so-called programs. I actually believe he’s one of the richest men in Sweden. Which means that he can essentially buy whatever abominable services he likes. He sees you as an annoying little mosquito he can squash easy as anything.’ He paused, squinting at her under his unruly hair. ‘But that’s what makes this so exciting. It’s a challenge, you know? To be that little mosquito who pops up time and again, buzzing around and being irritating. Biting him when he least expects it. One he never manages to kill.’