Trolls

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘Abraham!’

  The young woman was walking toward them, and she wasn’t alone. When Diana saw who it was wobbling along behind her like a dressed-up child, it was as if she had slipped into a forgotten nightmare.

  The naked little animal slunk down from the man’s shoulder to the ground and vanished. It unexpectedly reappeared a few feet away, as if it had travelled at lightning speed through an underground tunnel, and had found time to put on fur as well. Because now the animal was a weasel and nothing else. Diana was staring at the weasel when the red jacket disappeared from her field of vision. It was as quick as it was unexpected. The man just stepped up to the edge of the precipice, shouted something into the wind, some kind of deranged pronouncement, and then he was gone.

  Only then could she bring herself to have a proper look at the creature who had come to her rescue. She realised its face had once belonged to an older person. A jagged line of broken skin, joined together by a seam of irregular sutures, ran up the wrinkled neck, in behind the long-lobed ears and some way into the grey mop of hair. The chequered shirt hung down like a smock and the tip of a tail moved underneath. A broom of grey bristles. Every once in a while, it bent in under the fluttering fabric and she wished it would disappear for good so she could write it off as a mirage; when it didn’t, she placed her hand on her throat and swallowed. It tasted of blood. When she wiped her lip with the back of her hand, it came away red.

  The saggy old man’s face turned, but not toward her, toward a little critter sitting in the grass, flaunting his snowy white chest. They looked at each other for a while. Then the old man walked away, back the way he’d come, up among the sharp, mist-shrouded cliffs, and the weasel followed.

  Diana was shaking with cold. Her trousers were like a cold compress around her thighs and she had nothing but an idiotic denim jacket over her shirt.

  The young woman left without so much as a glance in her direction. She was grateful for that. It was as though they’d forgotten all about her. As though she’d watched it all through a peephole and they couldn’t see her. And soon, they’d be gone.

  ‘Wait!’

  The girl turned around but didn’t stop.

  ‘Do you know where Susso is? The woman who was with me?’

  She shook her head but Diana thought it seemed more like a reflex than an answer to her question. She limped after her, trying to catch her eye. She pleaded with her.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘They were going to someone called Erasmus. In Rumajärvi or Runajärvi or whatever it was. That’s all I know.’

  The young woman wouldn’t say anything else and Diana watched her disappear between the labyrinthine cliffs. She stood still and then sank into a squat. She didn’t move for a long time. Then she trudged back. It wasn’t easy to find her way because all the cliffs looked identical, but eventually she spotted the lighthouse.

  Since the van was gone, she sidled up to the Audi. It was locked, but she tried the handle anyway. Her handbag was on the seat inside. There was a knit jumper in it and she would have loved to put that on. She pondered whether she should try to break the window somehow. But her wish to keep the car intact was stronger than her yearning for warmth.

  The person who appeared in the window reflection surprised her; she turned out the side mirror to inspect her face. She looked terrible. Her nose was broken and there was a violet monocle around her left eye. She palpated for fractures but found none. Her eye seemed able to follow all movements. She pulled up her top lip; her teeth looked intact. But she found it difficult to open her mouth wide. Her skull clicked and crunched.

  She sat down with her back against the car and looked out across the damp, barren landscape while she pushed and prodded her jaw, as though the pain could be massaged away. How did you end up here? How the fuck did you end up here? Fucking Susso.

  The mouse followed us everywhere. Closing the front door or the door to the kitchen was pointless. There was a brief respite during which you prayed it wouldn’t reappear, but it always did.

  I think it upset the little demon when I turned on the vacuum, because Håkan suddenly burst into tears. He was sitting at the table, sobbing uncontrollably and when I turned the vacuum off, it was almost like I turned off the tears as well. So I found a brush and pan instead.

  He had stared at the mouse when he first noticed it and I had reminded him not to, and to be safe I had done so in English. ‘Don’t look,’ I told him. The best thing to do was ignore it. Which of course was easier said than done.

  ‘Gudrun,’ he said.

  The mouse had climbed up on his shoe. It was turning this way and that, seemingly unsure which way to turn.

  ‘What do I do?’

  I pulled an old milk carton from a paper bag sitting in the cupboard under the sink. I pulled the sealed flaps apart and started filling the carton with shards of glass. Several drinking glasses had been smashed.

  ‘Maybe you could take this out?’

  Håkan took the bin bag and got up, slowly, and when he moved, he hopped along as though his foot were in a cast. After a few steps, the mouse had had enough and slipped back down onto the floor.

  When he came back in and sat down, the mouse ran up his leg and onto the kitchen table, where it submitted to inspection by Håkan, who took off his glasses and examined its fur.

  ‘Did you know Diana cheated on me once?’

  I shook my head. He was speaking unnaturally loudly and I didn’t like it.

  ‘With an old course mate, at a conference in Gothenburg. I think that’s why I reacted like I did. Because she’d told me it was just going to be her and Susso here. And then that bloke was on the bed. I just snapped.’

  ‘You certainly did.’

  ‘You can never trust each other again after something like that.’

  ‘No, it can be difficult.’

  ‘It can’t be fixed.’

  We had decided not to start digging until late that night. There were no neighbours around but better safe than sorry. A person could come sailing down the river. But when I noticed that the mouse was already beginning to burrow into Håkan, I realised waiting that long might come with risks.

  ‘Maybe it’s time?’ I said.

  He looked up, with a vacant, indifferent look on his face.

  ‘Time for what?’

  *

  I went outside and walked over to the henhouse. There were some gardening tools just inside the door, including two shovels. One for digging and one for scooping.

  Digging a hole deep enough to fit a full-grown man is not the work of a moment. And if the soil is stony and criss-crossed with roots that seem to serve no other purpose than to make digging harder, then it’s terrifically tiring work. Håkan had to do the digging, of course. He was unwilling at first, but I turned the conversation back onto the topic of adultery; that got him moving. He dug with gritted teeth and boundless, furious energy.

  I ambled about in the yard, on the lookout. Not primarily for people. A feeling of being watched had crept up on me and it wasn’t hard to figure out who it might be. My eyes searched the pine trees, but furtively, because I had no intention of appearing inviting.

  After an hour or so, he was done. He stabbed the shovel into the turf and sank down onto the ground. His shirt was dripping with sweat and his hair was lank. I walked over and looked down into the grave. Roots were flaring out from the walls of the dark pit. Some were thick and knobbly, others hung down like black, blindly searching tendrils.

  ‘Are you sure he’s going to fit?’

  ‘That’s his problem,’ Håkan said and got to his feet.

  *

  He hadn’t moved while we were gone. It would, naturally, have been extremely alarming if he had, but it still seemed strange to me, probably a symptom of my guilt. He was staring at the ceiling in a way that was anything but peaceful; I looked away because I knew that face was going to haunt me until my dying day. Håkan, on the other hand, seemed unperturbed and I worried it
was because the mouse was wreaking havoc inside him. That being said, he’d probably seen a thing or two, in his line of work. Dead bodies were likely nothing to him. At least that’s the impression he gave when he grabbed the dead man’s feet, pulled him down onto the floor and then paused to ponder how to proceed. He wore a belt with a box-frame buckle, which he took off and wrapped under the arms of the dead man and buckled around his chest. Then he grabbed the belt and dragged the body across the floor, out onto the landing and over to the stairs. Once there, he paused for another think. It looked like he was contemplating how to move a piece of furniture and I thought to myself that it couldn’t be professional detachment, it had to be something else.

  The mouse never left our side. It ran in circles around us, watching everything intently. Håkan pushed the body until it rolled down the stairs. Then he ran after it. The mouse zipped down the trim along the edge of the steps.

  Håkan had squatted down next to the body and was holding a wallet that had fallen out of the dead man’s back pocket. It was connected to a belt loop by means of a clip-on keychain.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s better not to know. Makes it easier to forget.’

  The wallet had a Velcro closure; he was turning it over in his hands.

  ‘It never happened. Remember?’

  That made him push the wallet back into the man’s pocket.

  ‘Would you mind checking?’ he said with a nod at the front door.

  My descent of the stairs was not half as nimble as Håkan’s and the mouse’s; it was more akin to the dead man’s. At least that’s how it felt, mentally. The determination that had filled me was fading now. I stepped out on the front porch and looked around; after I confirmed that the coast was clear with a look, Håkan grabbed the belt again and dragged the body outside. Halfway to the grave, he had to stretch out his back and rest for a moment.

  ‘His baseball cap,’ I said.

  I hurried into the house and up the stairs. My heart was pounding. Fetching the cap was almost worse than fetching the man who had worn it. It felt so calculated. Murder, Gudrun. This is murder. I pushed all such thoughts down, found a napkin in my handbag and grabbed the vizor with it, because you never know.

  When I got back down, Håkan had already wrestled the man into the pit. He was not going to have a comfortable eternal rest; he looked like he had failed to do a backflip.

  ‘Should we try to turn him over?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s just fill it up. Throw his cap in.’

  We grabbed the shovels and started filling the hole. The first few spadefuls of dirt were the worst; as soon as the body was out of sight, it got easier. I think we both drew strength from that.

  The mouse was very interested in our work. It dashed about around the grave and when I accidentally almost ran my shovel through it, I had a sudden impulse to kill it.

  I had no time to think, I just whacked it.

  It probably died instantly, but I followed up with a few more blows, both to make sure and to vent. Håkan tried to stop me, but it was too late. Once he was sitting there with the little beast in the palm of his hand, it had been thoroughly dispatched.

  I gave him a moment. After a while, he stood up and threw the mouse in the pit. Neither one of us said a word about what I had done or what he thought about it.

  *

  We filled up the hole, then studied our handiwork. A black rectangle in the lawn. A noticeable one. Not to say conspicuous.

  ‘What were we thinking?’ I said.

  ‘We weren’t thinking.’

  ‘Well, we can’t leave it like this.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re going to have to cover it up.’

  ‘If we cover it up, it’ll never grow over.’

  The only thing we could think to do was to expand the rectangle and make a fake vegetable plot, located, somewhat oddly perhaps, in a spot that had virtually no sun at any time. But we figured idiots must try to grow potatoes too. We dug up the lawn and turned it and then we tramped back and forth, hacking and digging like a couple of bizarre moonlight farmers in the bright summer night.

  I put the shovels back and Håkan went inside to wash his hands. He spent a long time at the sink. Rubbing and rinsing.

  ‘You won’t get it all off,’ I said.

  He carried on washing his hands.

  ‘You know all that sanitiser people are always slathering on themselves,’ he said. ‘Like healthcare professionals. Particularly healthcare professionals. You pump a dollop into your hand before doing anything else. As though it were some kind of absolution. In a small pump bottle from the pharmacy. A magical ointment.’

  ‘But it works though, right? Kills bacteria and whatnot?’

  ‘I guess the alcohol is fine, sure. But it makes people sloppy about washing their hands. Because they think they don’t need to. So the net effect is negative. From a sanitary perspective. In terms of public health. That’s my opinion.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Soap and water, Gudrun. Soap and water’s the thing.’

  *

  I kept an eye on the pine trees as we walked to the car. There didn’t seem to be any life in them. A fact I noted gratefully. I quickened my step as we got close and jumped into the car. Håkan probably assumed I just wanted to get out of there and I was happy to let him think that. I rolled down my window, but no more than half an inch; there were a lot of mosquitoes.

  ‘Now what?’ he said.

  ‘I need time to think.’

  ‘Aren’t we in kind of a hurry? If this is a kidnapping?’

  I saw his face dissolve. He had been composed. Weirdly composed, I had thought to myself. Now he fell apart.

  I experienced something similar on the way back. The further away I got, the worse I felt. You would have thought it would have been the other way around. By the time we reached Suptallen, I wanted to burst out crying.

  *

  We turned into a Statoil petrol station. Climbed out of our cars and stood in silence in the artificial light. Two crumpled individuals with ashen faces. I took his number and he took mine. Talk tomorrow, I said and he nodded. Then we went our separate ways. I had to drive the last stretch at a crawl, because the road was full of drunk people and I was scared of each and every one of them, even the girls.

  Diana walked toward the sea, which was Barents Sea. Gulls perched on a cliff that jutted out into the water, black as slate. Maybe a hundred of them. There was always one in the air, but rarely more than one. They sat spread out with their beaks pointing in exactly the same direction. Toward the horizon that merged with the overcast sky to form a blurred band. As though they were waiting for something. They certainly didn’t take any notice of her as she staggered along in her worthless clothes like an apocalyptic survivor on the shores of a dead ocean.

  The pebble beach was an orthopaedic minefield so she crossed it very cautiously. The reek of rotting seaweed hit her and she had turned up her collar and was hugging herself in the cold wind.

  Plastic bottles. Wooden boards and whitened branches. The jagged leg of a crab. A monstrous frond of sea wrack with ribbons as thick as leather belts. As though the slimy head of a sea gorgon had been washed ashore in this desolate place. A lone feather and over there a clump that had once been a shoe. All unique and conspicuous in the myriad of pale, wave-polished stones that crunched loudly under her feet.

  She glanced up at the outline of the steep cliffs, pushing their jaggedly crenellated edges up toward the sky, but there were no landmarks up there to guide her in one direction or another. The mountainside was formed of stacked stone discs, deposited one on top of the other like compacted lamellae; when she got closer to the precipitous drop where birds swarmed like insects around the ledges, it was like climbing up a flight of stairs. From time to time, she passed a pool of lifeless water.

  She found him in a crevice. On his back with his feet pointing out toward the sea lik
e some kind of insane subarctic sunbather. His face had turned pale and his eyes were pointing in the wrong direction, but otherwise he looked much as he had in life. The ball of tape with her hair stuck to it was still in his pocket. A chapstick. She pulled a mobile phone out of his right trouser pocket. She pushed her hair behind her ear and shaded the screen. It had survived the fall. It said Sunday. Three missed calls. She held the phone in her hand for a while before pushing it back into his pocket. Then she leaned over him and squeezed the left pocket. Felt the bulge of his member and next to it a small hard bump. She stepped over the body, dug out the car key and walked away quickly.

  Climbing the slopes leading up to the plateau was taxing. Before she could reach the top, she had to lie down on the crunchy grass and rest. With her hand closed tightly around the car key, she closed her eyes. The sound of a gentle surf rose from the sea below. Birds screeching. A wondrous serenity filled her; when she suddenly let out a giggle, she started, because she didn’t realise the sound had come from her.

  *

  She climbed into the car and locked the doors. Violent shudders kept running through her body. She looked at herself in the mirror and then looked again. It was like seeing someone else.

  Her hands were weak and trembling; she put them in her armpits to warm them and calm the shaking. After a while, she felt a bit better. At that point, she turned the engine on. She reversed out and followed the road leading down from the mountain. The car struggled over sharp stone shards and through small, water-filled cauldrons. She drove carefully. If the car broke down, she would break down too.

  At some point, she had glimpsed the sun like an elusive lantern behind the clouds, but she was too exhausted to even attempt celestial navigation. She felt she knew which direction was south, but no road led that way, it was just an endless prairie. On her left, she could see a sliver of sea. Far away on her right was a sign. A sign with white text against a blue background. She decided to drive toward the sign because she figured it would announce the name of a village waiting on the other side of the ridge. ‘Domen 410 ft above sea level’, it read. Not a village. A mountain. And there it was, the mountain called Domen, barren and dark.