“I’ve realized that.”
Erik took out the chain with the key on the end and unlocked the handcuff on the bedpost. Annika rotated her arm to bring it back to life, and Erik said, “This doesn’t mean that I trust you. We’ll revert to the arrangement that was in place before our little incident. Perhaps you’d like a shower?”
“Yes, please.”
“Come along, then.”
Over the next two weeks Annika was moved from room to room as her belly grew. She could feel kicks, movements. She had to make a huge effort to stop herself from screaming when Erik came along and wanted to feel the child. She spent her days chained to various objects in the house. Where there were no suitable fixtures such as pipes or posts, Erik screwed heavy metal rings in place so that she could be tethered like a pregnant cow in her stall.
She had heard Erik answer her cell several times, explaining that unfortunately the lady of the house is on vacation and does not wish to be disturbed. She had given him her email address and password when he asked for them, so presumably he had set up an automatic reply saying that she was away on vacation. She was cut off from the outside world.
Apart from Robert. Incredibly, he was still turning up every day for his meetings with Erik. A couple of times he had shot her a guilt-laden glance when she happened to be standing in his way, but he hadn’t lifted a finger to help her.
She didn’t understand it—she really didn’t. Her background was a simple one, and she was incapable of grasping how a business could make Robert act this way.
She tried to think of all the wedding guests who had been dependent on the success of the company, of the long line of ancestors gazing encouragingly at Robert as he took on the task of carrying the proud tradition of Axryd’s into the future, but it just wasn’t enough. Not for her. The only thing she could see was a stupid old miller who had been seduced by a tomte, bringing a curse on his entire family for all time.
Perhaps Robert was simply afraid. At least that would make sense. She knew he wasn’t a courageous person, but now she was learning the extent of his cowardice. She was alone with her child. Her child.
One light evening in April, Annika was standing by the living room window when she caught sight of Erik doing something or other among the shrubs. Suddenly he darted forward and bent down. When he straightened up, he was holding a wriggling rat by the scruff of the neck.
He made a sharp twisting movement with his fingers, and the body went limp. He gazed at it for a moment, then brought it up to his mouth, bit off the head and began to chew. Annika could hear faint crunching noises. Then he stuffed the entire body into his mouth so that only the tail was dangling between his lips. He looked up and stared at Annika before swallowing the rat and sucking the tail into his mouth like a strand of spaghetti. Annika gulped and met his eyes; she even managed a smile.
Perhaps that was the wrong way to react; perhaps Erik had wanted to shock or disgust her. When he started digging in the loose soil under the shrubs and found a couple of fat earthworms, dangling them above his mouth before he ate them, Annika pulled a face when he looked at her. Erik nodded and disappeared from view.
The child was kicking so violently that she could actually see a bulge under the loose T-shirt she was wearing. She stroked her belly and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. No one is going to take you.”
The time had come. She had weighed up the pros and cons of various plans and had finally settled on the simplest of all. It wasn’t watertight, and it depended on whether she had the courage to injure or kill when it came to the crunch.
The child moved again.
She could. She would. That very evening.
Apart from in the shower, dinner was the only time when she was not handcuffed. She had studied Erik’s routine in the kitchen and found a couple of weak points that she hoped to be able to exploit.
That evening she sat at the table looking amenable as she waited for the first opportunity. Erik set out a plate, a glass and cutlery for her. He had also started to put candles on the table, and lit them with the air of a butler so that she could enjoy her microwaved meal by candlelight like a real lady of the manor.
Then he went to the freezer in the pantry to fetch today’s meal. That was the first weak point. As soon as he turned his back on her and crouched down in front of the freezer, she slid out of her seat, holding the loose handcuff pressed against her wrist with her index and middle finger so that it wouldn’t make a sound.
Silently she removed the largest knife from the block and returned to the table in a single movement; she sat down and pressed the knife along her forearm just as Erik straightened up and came back into the kitchen, reading the packet.
“Beef Stroganoff,” he said. “With noodles. Is that okay?”
Annika shrugged. She didn’t want to say anything in case her voice shook and gave her away. She didn’t care what he chose. It all tasted the same.
She clutched the handle of the knife and visualized the movement she would have to make, going over and over the course of events as she sat completely still, looking unconcerned. The next weak point was coming up.
Erik had a childish fascination for the microwave. Not every day, but often, it was as if the golden glow and the slowly rotating pack of food exerted some primitive magnetic attraction over him. Annika hoped this was one of those days.
And it was. When Erik had placed the food on the glass plate and set the timer for five minutes, he remained standing there with his back to Annika, his elbows resting on the worktop, gazing at the little window as if he were spellbound.
She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer, then got to her feet and raised the knife. With all her strength she drove it into Erik’s back to the right of his left shoulder blade. The knife was long enough to penetrate as far as the heart, and she hoped that was exactly what it would do.
One worry had been that bone would get in the way and impede the progress of the blade through Erik’s flesh, but it went all the way in with a satisfying, sucking sound, right up to the handle, and Erik let out a sigh. Annika moved back two steps, hoping to see his muscular body go limp and slump over the worktop. To be on the safe side she pulled another knife out of the block; when it was in her hand she saw that it was a bread knife.
She giggled nervously and her teeth began to chatter as Erik turned around. His eyes were black, but nothing in his demeanor suggested that he had a twenty-centimeter-long knife through one lung.
“Annika,” he said, and she raised the hand holding the bread knife. He looked at her with an expression that said, What on earth were you thinking? then reached over his shoulder with his right arm and pulled out the knife as easily as if he were plucking out an irritating strand of hair. When he pointed the blade at Annika, she saw that there wasn’t a drop of blood on it. Erik didn’t bleed.
“Do you think that human beings can harm me?” he yelled. “Is that what you think?”
It wasn’t a question, and Annika didn’t answer. She dropped the bread knife. Erik’s lips parted in predatory grin and he pointed the knife at her belly.
“I thought we had an agreement,” he said. “But obviously we didn’t. How about a C-section? Put an end to all this?”
Annika backed away until she bumped into the wall. There were no weapons; there was no escape route. Nothing. Erik stood in front of her with his jaws working, breathing through his nose. Then he thrust the knife into the wall and left it there.
He grabbed her wrist and dragged her up the stairs.
She thought she knew what to expect, but she thought wrong. When they reached the landing he opened the door of his room and pushed her inside, switching on all the ceiling lights. He forced her down onto the floor so that she was sitting with her back to the side of the desk, and attached her right hand to one of its legs. He took another pair of handcuffs out of a drawer and attached her left hand to the other leg.
A large oak cupboard stood against the opposite wall. Annika was sitti
ng two meters away from its double doors. Erik selected a key from his chain and walked over to the cupboard.
“I’m sure you’re curious,” he said as he unlocked it. “You must be wondering. I’ve left you in ignorance so far, but there’s no longer any point.”
He opened the doors wide and showed her his collection.
Shelf after shelf was filled with stuffed animals: cats, dogs, piglets, lambs and calves. The firstborn. But what Erik really wanted to show her was on the bottom shelf.
It looked unnatural. Newborn human children can neither stand nor walk. After stuffing them and giving them glass eyes, Erik had mounted the four newborn babies on metal stands, enabling them to stand on their chubby legs in spite of their smallness.
The skin of those who had been processed first had begun to contract, turning brown and beginning to resemble parchment, while the child on the far right—the brother Robert had never known—still looked nauseatingly like a normal newborn baby, with the eyes of a ghost.
Erik gazed at his trophies, then pointed to the empty space to the right of his most recent acquisition and nodded in the direction of Annika’s belly.
“Unless of course it’s a special child,” he said. “Which I doubt.”
Annika couldn’t even manage to feel sick. All she wanted was to be allowed to leave this room and the sight before her eyes. Put an iron collar around her neck and leave her on the stone floor in the cellar, anything. Poke out her eyes.
“Why?” she croaked from a dry throat.
Erik scratched the back of his neck as if he had never even considered the question. “Well …” he said, “I eat the flesh, of course. That’s the most important thing. And”—he spread his hands wide—“everybody needs a hobby, don’t they?”
He left her for the night. Without switching off the light.
He came for her the following morning, and she offered no resistance as he carried her over to the bed and fixed each arm to a bedpost using the handcuffs. When she needed a wee she simply let it run into her pants. Later in the day when she needed to defecate she considered calling to him, but eventually she simply allowed nature to take its course.
She wanted to die. If only there was a button, a switch inside her that she could turn off. She tried to imagine it, to conjure up a clear picture of a black Bakelite switch pointing to LIFE, then making her imaginary fingers flick it to DEATH. Nothing happened.
She tried to hold her breath, but she didn’t succeed in fainting. She tried to swallow her tongue. She threw herself from side to side in an attempt to bite the veins in her wrists, but she couldn’t reach. She fell back on the bed, a stinking, whimpering receptacle, a vessel containing someone else’s property.
She heard the front door open and screamed at the top of her voice, “Robert! Robert! Help me! He’s killing me!”
Nothing. And still nothing. The hours passed. The child kicked and she no longer whispered words of consolation. Her last hope was that the fetus would die of malnourishment and poison her from the inside.
The stuffed infants were constantly there in her mind’s eye. They came padding across the landing on their dried-up feet and gathered around her bed. They writhed in pain as if knives had sliced into their flesh while they were still alive. When they opened their mouths to scream in pain, worms and half-digested rats came pouring out.
The babies crawled over her body and rested their heads on her belly so that they could get to know their future sibling. They never let her sleep, they merely allowed her to fall into a temporary stupor before they once again began scratching at her eyelids with their fingers, like tiny twigs.
Sometimes she was fed, sometimes water was poured into her mouth and she swallowed. Occasionally she was dragged to the shower and sluiced down. It didn’t matter. Time passed, that was all.
“Annika? Annika? Can you hear me?”
With difficulty she opened her eyes. She thought she recognized the person leaning over her bed, holding something in his hands. The light in the room suggested that it must be daytime.
She heard a metallic click, and one arm dropped. This was something new. This hadn’t happened before. She watched the person as he moved to the other side of the bed and raised the object that was called a … a bolt-cutter. Another click, and the other arm dropped. She moved her arms to cradle her swollen belly, and rolled over onto her side so that she could drift away once more.
“Annika! It’s me, Robert. We haven’t got much time. Come on.”
Robert. Robert.
Why did that name give her such a bad feeling? He was tugging at her arm, pulling her toward the edge of the bed.
“Stop it,” she mumbled. “Leave me alone.”
“Please, Annika. He could come home at any minute. We have to get out of here.”
She made an effort to understand what he was saying to her. He. Could come. He. That was Erik. Could come. Erik wasn’t here. Now. But he could come. Erik. The tomte. And the child.
Robert.
Annika’s eyes widened. Robert. The child’s father. Her husband. Selma Lagerlöf and a spillage on the sofa.
“Come on. I’ll help you.”
She was dragged to her feet. Robert looped her arm around his neck because her legs wouldn’t carry her. However, it wasn’t long since she had been washed down in the shower, and had walked a few steps. By the time they reached the landing, she was able to stand on her own, and pushed him away.
“You little shit,” she said. “You pathetic, useless little fucking shit.”
“I know,” Robert said. “I know. But right now we just have to—”
“It’s not your child. You’re not having it.”
Robert stopped trying to pull her along. “I don’t want it, Annika. I never did. Don’t you remember?”
Annika tried to spit at him, but she had no saliva. Instead she staggered toward the stairs, grabbed the banister and began to make her way down, one step at a time. She nodded in the direction of Erik’s room. “Do you know what he’s got in there?”
She turned her head so that she could look at Robert. He knew. His expression told her that he knew and she raised her hand. “Stay there,” she said. “Leave me alone.”
Robert took a step toward her, and she made her fingers curl into claws. “I mean it! I’ll scratch your eyes out. Stay. Where. You. Are.”
Robert’s shoulders slumped. When she turned away from him to concentrate on the stairs, she heard him say, “The keys are in the car.”
Her legs grew stronger with every step she took. By the time she opened the front door, she no longer needed to lean on something in order to walk. She stank of excrement and would probably soil the upholstery in Robert’s BMW, which was parked on the drive. The thought made her smile.
When she reached the bottom of the steps, she heard the sound of Erik’s pickup approaching along the avenue. She glanced at the BMW; Erik would have no trouble pushing it off the road.
She mumbled, “Please help me, God,” and before the pickup appeared she turned left and slipped around the side of the house. Moving as quickly as she could, she crossed the garden; she heard a car door slam. She passed the tunnel leading through the rhododendrons and carried on along the side of the lake, heading for the stables.
Don’t let him see me, please, please …
She was only a few meters from the barn door when she heard a tinkling sound, and turned to look back at the house. An upstairs window had broken, and something was being forced out through the gap. It looked so peculiar that she stopped.
Limbs unfolded and a deformed head appeared. Robert was dangling over the window ledge like a broken marionette, and Annika gasped when she realized why he looked so … wrong. The bolt-cutter had been forced into his mouth, and protruded through the back of his head. She only had a second to observe the terrifying sight before the figure overbalanced and fell to the ground.
Erik was standing in the window, his arm still outstretched. And he was looking at her. S
he tore open the door of the barn. One last chance.
“I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name. But you’re the only one who can help me, so please, please help me. Understand what I’m saying. Please understand what I’m saying.”
Annika stroked the black mare’s chest as she whispered in her ear. The horse snorted and jerked her head, so that the bridle almost slipped out of Annika’s hand. She gripped it more firmly.
“Stand still,” she said. “You have to stand just here, you see, shhh …”
Annika leaned to the side and looked at the barn door three meters away. The mare was positioned with her hindquarters a meter from the door, and Annika tugged at the bridle so that the mare moved ten centimeters further back. She heard Erik’s footsteps approaching, and kissed the mare’s neck. “Please, sweetheart. Please let this work.”
Do you think that human beings can harm me?
Just a hint. And her only hope.
The barn door opened and Erik stepped inside. His hands were covered in blood. When he caught sight of Annika and the horse, he frowned. Before he had time to realize what was going on or to react, Annika shouted, “Gamm!”
Erik hardly had time to open his mouth before the horse kicked out backward; its hooves struck him right in the face. He was thrown out through the open door and lay motionless on the ground, legs and arms outstretched.
Annika kissed the horse on the muzzle, then ran outside. Erik still wasn’t moving. There was no blood on his face, but one cheekbone and temple had been pushed inwards like modeling clay. She searched his pockets and found her cell.
She had managed to hit one number when something began to happen to Erik. She watched as the concave area of his face began to swell, gradually regaining its shape. She slipped the phone into her pocket and raced into the stable.
Erik had regained consciousness while she was attaching the last chain. Fortunately, it had taken quite some time from the first signs of recovery to the completion of the process. His face was now back to normal, looking exactly as it had for God (or the Devil) knew how long.
Fearie Tales Page 44
