by Stefan Spjut
She watched them without announcing her presence. Stood there in the door like a recently dead ghost watching her old family. What was left of it. Normality like a membrane. Which she didn’t want to rupture, so instead of announcing her presence, she went straight to the bathroom.
She inspected herself in the mirror while the tub was filling. Polychrome like a crime victim in a Polaroid picture. And the man who had caused her injuries, he was dead. Probably still out there like some kind of bizarre beach find. Maybe the gulls had found him. Though maybe they didn’t eat people. Then again, maybe they did. They were probably pragmatic creatures.
She sat down on the toilet seat and stared at the floor tiles, the grid pattern of the grout joints, and tried to silence her thoughts, which kept returning to that beach. Every time she closed her eyes, she was transported back there. She took a deep breath, puckered her lips and exhaled slowly. I’m here. I’m home. That’s my towel, that’s my insanely expensive shampoo, that’s Kiruna’s wind-up hippo. I’m here.
Dazed, she undressed and stepped into the tub. The water was scalding; she sat up for a while to get used to the heat before sliding her bum forward, leaning back and letting her head sink toward the bottom, where it landed with a gentle thud. Maybe she should stay down here, just stay. She resurfaced with closed eyes and slicked back her hair, reached for the shampoo bottle and squeezed a dollop into the palm of her hand.
When she got back out of the water after rinsing her hair out and slicking it back once more, he was sitting on the toilet, watching her solemnly. He looked tired and ugly. The way he’d looked the first year after Kiruna was born. A face paralysed by the anaesthetics of chronic sleep deprivation.
In one of the many scenarios that had played in her head during the almost ten-hour drive, she had lain with her head in his lap, telling him a terrible story laced with supernatural elements. She had told him everything, every detail, and he had listened, without mocking, without even interrupting her, and he had looked empathetic because her facial injuries confirmed she was telling the truth.
Now he was sitting there on the toilet seat with his stubbly cheeks and she knew it wouldn’t be like that. He hadn’t waited up for her; he’d been watching Netflix. Detached from reality. And now he was keeping his distance. He almost seemed afraid of her. Of touching her.
‘You shouldn’t have gone out there.’
No questions, no sympathy. Just reproach. She realised she had never seen this side of him. He had probably been terrified. Likely still was.
‘But I did.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I was knocked about. Among other things.’
He said nothing.
‘I’ve been locked in the boot of a car. My nose is broken, look, and I think I have an orbital fracture. Because it feels like I do when I open my mouth.’
‘Did you call the police?’
She shook her head. Now he was going to get up and get the phone and call. Introduce himself as a doctor and file a report. But he didn’t. He just sat there. There were food stains on his shirt.
‘Who did this?’ he said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
She shook her head.
‘Does Susso know who they are?’
‘She might.’
‘Is she back too?’
‘No, they took her. She’s with someone named Erasmus. And don’t ask me who that is, because I don’t know.’
They sat in silence. The only sound was the water dripping from her hands when she gingerly touched the skin stretched taut over her cheekbone.
‘I suppose it’s that cult,’ he said. ‘Lennart Brösth.’
‘Can we talk about it tomorrow? Look at me. I’m beat up, both physically and mentally. I barely know my own name and I need to sleep. I can tell you more tomorrow.’
‘Do you want me to take off work?’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded.
‘What are you going to tell Kiruna?’
He motioned toward her face.
‘Sometimes you get assaulted. For no good reason. Children get that.’
He looked like he was about to object. But nothing came out.
‘Have you talked to Gudrun?’ he said.
‘To Gudrun? I’ve barely even talked to you.’
He stood up but didn’t leave.
‘You shouldn’t have gone out there.’
‘Doctor Sillfors concurs with Doctor Sillfors.’
She was able to make a joke. Where did she find the strength? She didn’t understand it herself. But she assumed it was some kind of defence mechanism. An attempt at redirection. Or was she happy? Baffled at still being alive? Despite everything. She lay still and watched the water lap against her knees. She had figured she would call Gudrun and tell her what had happened to Susso. The urge had overwhelmed her several times during the drive. But she had suppressed it each time. If Gudrun decided to call the police, what had happened would be translated into paltry police prose and registered and archived. That would make it irrevocable. There would be a file and that file would redefine her life. And she didn’t want that. She still held out hope she might manage to wiggle out of the whole thing somehow. Find a way out. Trap the event between the brackets of a parenthesis. Her whole being was straining to achieve that. Working toward it, tireless, automated. Like smooth muscle tissue. Her eyelashes stuck together when she blinked; she wiped the water away with the tip of her middle finger, which had gone pruney.
He was still on his back with the screen on his chest when she entered the bedroom. But he turned it off and took out his earphones and watched her put on her nightgown, a gown of light-blue, almost transparent cotton. She lifted the duvet, gently pushed the little girl aside and slipped in next to her, feeling the heat from the tiny body. Then she pressed her fingertips against his shoulder and said they would talk tomorrow and he nodded.
Stava climbed out of the car and walked up to the boom barrier. She moved almost furtively and after realising the barrier was locked, she froze. Her slender body watchful and tense. With her long black hair, she looked like some kind of Native American scout at the edge of an unknown territory. Her sudden insecurity was probably due in large part to them having dropped Ransu off, but he had also noticed that she spoke of her father with deference that bordered on fear. He wondered what kind of person he might be. Was he even human, biologically speaking? Probably not, considering her constitution.
He had a pen in his hand and now he started jabbing it hard into the side of his head. He pushed the button in and out, in and out, in and out, but he stopped the instant she got back in the car.
She reversed off the road and parked.
‘I don’t know the code,’ she said and turned the engine off. ‘So we’re going to have to leave the car here.’
They got out and followed the gravel road that led down to a lake that came into view, cold and smooth like polished metal, between the spruce trees. Stava moved so quickly Anders had to jog a few steps now and then to keep up.
Suddenly, a wolf materialised in their path. It was smaller than Ransu and had lighter fur.
Stava sank into a squat.
The wolf came closer but stopped before it got too near. It stood with its head lowered, studying her. Its nose practically touching the gravel. Another wolf was padding about behind it.
‘Maybe I should leave,’ Anders said. ‘I can wait in the car.’
‘These are my friends,’ she said. ‘They know me.’
After a while, the wolves withdrew and continued watching them from a distance. Stava didn’t get up straight away.
Two children were walking toward them between two houses surrounded by tarpaulins. A girl with plaits. She had an otter on a lead, scuttling along with its back arched. The other child had a peculiar, jerky gait and kept in the background. It was wearing a mosquito head net and Anders soon realis
ed it was no child’s face hiding behind the dark netting. He backed up a few steps and then broke into a run. Stava chased after him and grabbed his jacket.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘It’s dangerous.’
She took him by the hand and led him back.
‘I’m looking for Erasmus,’ she said. ‘Do you know where he is?’
The otter darted this way and that and the little girl stepped out of the lead, which was wrapped around her legs. She yelled at the animal, which turned its funny, snub-nosed face toward her.
‘They’re barbecuing,’ the girl said.
‘They’re barbecuing?’
‘I said cut it out!’
The girl yanked the lead so hard the otter was pulled backward. It wanted to go into the ditch and stared at it longingly. It soon made another attempt but the girl was relentless. The lead went taut and the animal swayed on its hind legs.
‘Could you show us the way?’ Stava asked.
‘It’s that house,’ the girl replied. ‘The yellow one over there.’
‘Thank you,’ Stava said and pulled Anders along.
*
The house the girl had pointed to was older than the other houses in the village. The porch roof was crowned by an elegant spire and the brick well had both a roof and a shadoof.
An old man came around the corner. His grey hair fell in flowing tight curls down his shoulders and his beard was combed and glossy. He was dressed in a striped work smock and on his head was a stiff-crowned felt hat. A wolf trailed him.
Stava sprang an embrace on him and after letting him go, she tried to take his hands, but they slipped out of her grasp. He didn’t even want to look in the pillowcase she held open for him.
They followed him around the house to the backyard, where a party tent had been erected. Stava’s father walked up behind a woman and kissed her on the head. One of the woman’s eyes was covered by a large compress and she seemed drugged. She was staring at the grass with her mouth open. Anders stared at the grass too. Next to the kettle grill was a bottle of lighter fluid with no cap. A plastic lid with a round béarnaise imprint. Cutlery.
A man in a military jacket started heckling Stava in Finnish. His insults grew increasingly offensive until in the end, he got to his feet and picked up a beer can from the table. Stava managed to turn away; the can, which flew through the air with a tail of liquid behind it, clipped her shoulder.
The man started pushing her around and when she fell to the ground, he chased her around with kicks and poured abuse on her. Then he snatched the pillowcase out of her hands and looked in it.
‘Did you sold the car? Do you think that all now is okay?’
He fished a ring out of the bag and examined it. Then he dug out a rumpled wad of cash.
‘There’s more,’ Stava said, ‘we can get more! A lot of money. We can get a lot of money.’
‘Do you have a phone?’
She shook her head and he kicked out at her.
‘I have one. But it’s in the car.’
‘What car?’
‘It’s a Volvo. It’s his Volvo. But you can have it!’
He dropped the bag on the ground and sat down.
‘We have nowhere else to go.’
‘Where’s Ransu?’ said the old man, who had sat down next to the woman and entwined his fingers in hers.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘So that is what you bring us? Lies and a bag of money.’
She said nothing for a while.
‘We dropped him off. Further up the road.’
‘Where?’
‘Up by the main road. But I can get him. I can bring him down here. So long as you promise not to hurt him.’
She got up on all fours and crawled toward her father like a dog. The lid for the béarnaise sauce clung to her back like a sticker.
‘Please, Daddy. We have nowhere else to go.’
I didn’t recognise her at first. She wore a baseball cap and sunglasses and her cheek was blue, the way it only ever gets when you’ve been beaten up, and I figured it was a junkie who wasn’t going to buy anything but definitely cause trouble, maybe even shoplift. So I glared at her as she approached the counter and when I realised it was Diana standing in front of me, I clapped my hand to my mouth.
‘You were right,’ she said, gesturing to her face.
I couldn’t get a word out; all I could do was stare.
‘You said they were dangerous. You were right.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s with someone called Erasmus. In Runajärvi.’
‘Who’s Erasmus?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then how do you know she’s there? Maybe she’s home.’
She shook her head and then she told me what she’d been through over the past few days. I asked a lot of questions, and then repeated each one even though she’d already answered them.
‘And you didn’t see Lennart Brösth?’
‘I didn’t see anything. I had tape on my face.’
She grimaced at the pain her smile caused.
‘It’s my fault,’ I said.
‘Your fault?’
‘I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.’
‘You know what? I’m glad you did.’
‘How can you be, looking like that …’
‘It was a good thing I went out there. Otherwise she’d be gone now and we wouldn’t have known. We wouldn’t have known anything.’
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘How’s Håkan doing?’
‘Håkan?’
‘He came here. Last Saturday. When you hadn’t come home when you said you would. And he couldn’t reach you on your phone. So we went out there. To Susso’s. But we weren’t sure what had happened. Since you were just gone. Given that you hadn’t seen each other in so long, we figured you had probably gone off somewhere. Your car wasn’t there.’
‘Without letting him know? And without bringing my phone?’
I bent down and pulled out a drawer. Took out her phone and put it on the counter. She picked it up and checked the screen.
‘Eleven missed calls.’
‘It was ringing in here, so I turned the sound off.’
She nodded.
‘He didn’t tell you that? Håkan.’
‘No.’
‘Nothing?’
‘We’ve barely spoken. He’s at work.’
I got to my feet. Customers had entered the shop.
‘And the little girl, is she at nursery school?’
Diana shook her head.
‘With my parents.’
‘Then you should go home and get some rest.’
‘I can’t.’
A woman came up to the counter with a stack of kitchen towels. Black moose stamped on unbleached linen. She put the towels down and pulled out her wallet and while I served her, Diana sat with her head turned away, gazing out across the square.
When we were alone again, neither one of us knew how to proceed, so we just sat staring at each other. At length, she asked what we should do.
‘About what?’
‘About Susso, of course!’
‘I don’t know, Diana.’
‘You don’t seem to care all that much.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘Because that’s how it seems.’
‘It’s just that I’ve known this day was coming. I’ve known they would take her, sooner or later. That it was inevitable.’ The incredulous look spreading across Diana’s face made me lower my voice. ‘That person you saw. The one with the mask. You do realise that wasn’t a human, don’t you?’
‘He had a tail. So I kind of figured.’
‘And what are your thoughts on that?’
‘My thoughts?’
‘Yes. About him having a tail.’
Diana crossed her arms.
‘I suppose it’s some kind of birth defect.’
&
nbsp; ‘There’s another word for it, and that’s troll. You saw a troll, Diana. A real troll. They come in all sizes. Some are as big as bears and some as small as mice. Because they are bears and they are mice. On the outside. They can transform. This is something I’ve seen with my own eyes. Susso shot a troll, she shoved a gun into its mouth and pulled the trigger and the moment it died, the troll turned into a bear. I saw it for myself, so I know it’s true.’
I glanced over at the door before carrying on.
‘The unsettling thing about them is that they can force their way into your consciousness and make you not be yourself. That’s what’s happened to Susso; you’ve seen her, you know what I’m talking about.’
‘They’re not trolls,’ she said, ‘they’re people. A cult or something. They spoke Norwegian.’
‘Those are the humans you’re talking about, they’re the trolls’ humans. Some of them are the trolls’ offspring. Because sometimes trolls breed with humans and the result is true freaks. Lennart Brösth is one of those freaks. That’s why he’s so old. Remember how he sawed off his own hand? During the trial, they said he was trying to kill himself, remember?’
She nodded.
‘He wasn’t. He sawed off his hand so no one would see what it looked like. See it was furry. And had claws!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve met one of those freaks. She came here, to the shop, an elegant Norwegian lady in a wheelchair. She looked like an old film star. The wheelchair was exactly where you’re standing now, and she had a hairy finger with a claw on it and she scraped that little claw against the palm of my hand, like this; I’ll never forget it.’
Diana was studying Dad’s books, which were stacked in neat piles on the counter; it wasn’t easy to tell what she thought of what I’d just told her. By all appearances, it had been too much to take in at once, so I told her to go home and rest. That made her shake her head.
‘We have to agree on what to tell the police.’
‘There’s no point sending the police after them, don’t you see? It won’t accomplish anything.’
‘Of course we’re calling the police.’
‘No, Diana. There’s no point.’
‘Then what do we do?’
