The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

I stand up, take a look around, and go over to the rope that’s hanging a bit away from the ledge. I lean out over the railing and get hold of it, give it a tug to test it. The rope is thin and black. I wonder if he forced Sam to climb up on her own. If he did it before he hurt her.

  To get onto the roof of the tower I need to climb the rope, with nothing underneath me. I look at my hands, red from the cramp-like grip I had on the metal rungs. It might not take the weight. Grim might have cut the rope, so that it’s just hanging by a few small threads. I tug the rope again. It doesn’t give way. I take a deep breath and haul myself out, over the edge of the ledge.

  The rope starts to creak, once, then another time, and again. I struggle to get my footing back on the railing on the ledge, but it’s no good; I’m too far out. I can’t reach and I close my eyes, prepare myself for the fall, and hope that I don’t land face first.

  I DON’T FALL. I don’t think so. I open my eyes and notice that I’m being winched up, jolting up a bit at a time. Someone’s pulling me up. Soon my face is level with the water tower’s roof — the thick, rounded concrete disc. I’m being hauled up gradually, until I can swing one leg round and crawl up onto the roof. It’s windier up here, and I can feel the cold wind on my cheek.

  ‘It’s not going to be that easy,’ a voice above me says, and I feel his hand grabbing my hair, so hard that I’m sure his grip is going to pull clumps of hair from my scalp.

  I have time to see someone lying a little way away, in a red pool. Right in front of my face are two legs, and a hand in my hair is pulling me upwards. He’s trying to help me stand up, I think to myself. Far too quickly for me to react, he smashes my face back down into the concrete. Something cracks — my nose, maybe — and my eyes water. Everything starts spinning, and the darkness, when it arrives, is threatening and unnaturally black.

  XXVIII

  There’s buzzing in my ear, like feedback. I’m blind, I think. My eyes are open, but I can’t see a thing. I blink, but all that happens is a slashing sensation and vibration in my temples, as though someone were drilling into them. Maybe the pain makes me scream; I don’t know, but I think so, because as it wanes slightly there’s a scraping in my throat.

  I’m not blind. Everything is a tunnel, and somewhere, far away, is an opening that is growing, pushing the black walls of the tunnel to the periphery. I don’t know how much time has passed, but it can’t be that long. It’s light around me, light and blurry, but gradually it gets sharper. My eyes are stinging because I don’t want to blink. In the end I have to, and it flashes in my head again, but not as violently.

  Grim is standing a little way away and sucking hard on a cigarette, taking two steps, turning around, taking two steps back the other way, turning around, another few steps. Just behind him, Sam. She’s no longer lying down; maybe she wasn’t before either. Everything happened so fast, I’m just not sure. She’s sitting holding her hand, a red lump. She’s pale.

  I manage to sit myself up, which makes him come over and stare down at me. He’s holding a black pistol. His eyes dart back and forth.

  ‘Where are your colleagues?’ he asks.

  I try to say something, but I don’t think I succeed, because he grabs my shoulder and pushes the pistol to my temple, asks again, screaming this time, where they are. Spit flecks my forehead, and I think I’m shaking.

  ‘They don’t know where I am.’

  He lets go, backs away. I move my head from side to side, try to establish if anything’s broken. Something must be, but there’s no pain in my neck. I follow the thin black snake of a rope that leads from me to a little hook, projecting from the roof like a bent finger. The rope is attached by an intricate knot. A bit away from the hook, I notice, there’s only a thin slip of rope left. The rest has worn away. He must have been up here before, many times.

  ‘So you did as you were told, at least.’

  I shrug my shoulders; my fingers fumble across my coat, looking for the pocket.

  ‘I’m here now. You got what you wanted.’

  My hand finds the pocket, grasps for the knife. It’s not there. Grim’s stare follows me, but reveals nothing. He might have taken it off me. It might have fallen out; it might be lying on the ground down there. I can feel my phone in the other pocket.

  Sam looks up from her hand to me. Her hair is a mess, up in a plait like she sometimes has it when she’s working. The plait looks worn out. Grim has been pulling it; maybe he dragged her along by it. A little bit to the right is what must be Sam’s finger, a little stump lying in a pool of dark, dark red. She avoids looking at it. I lift my hand to my face; I’m not sure if I’m bleeding. I am, from the forehead. My nose and throat feel swollen and raw. I wipe the blood onto my jeans.

  ‘Put the finger in your pocket,’ I tell Sam.

  ‘Shut up,’ Grim says.

  He swings an open palm towards my cheek. The slap feels muffled, the pain remote. It’s still flashing inside my forehead. I think I’m bleeding internally, too, somewhere. My head is swollen, throbbing.

  ‘Let her go.’

  ‘No.’

  Grim is just as straw-coloured as he was this morning, but he’s no longer dressed in black. Instead, he’s wearing light-blue jeans and a dark-green hoodie. It’s him, my friend, and yet it isn’t. He’s hollow, emptier. He sits down on his haunches by the hook and adjusts the rope, quickly undoing the knot and then tying it back on.

  He takes a little tube out of his pocket. His hands are shaking violently, making the pills rattle around inside it. He flips off the lid, takes a tablet, puts the lid back on, and stuffs the tube back in his pocket. Only now do I notice how he’s sweating, how hot he looks.

  ‘I tried,’ he says, smiling apologetically. ‘I really did try, Leo. But it …’ He laughs, to himself, as though it were an absurd thought. His eyes have that insane glint that you only see in people going through a psychotic episode. ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. I got the diary,’ I say.

  A dark veil falls over his face, and I’m surprised at just how crazed he looks.

  ‘It’s as though something inside me is driving me to this,’ he says. ‘I can’t explain it.’

  ‘You can let go of it,’ I attempt. ‘You can drop all of this. I saw the car, the Volvo down there. You can just drive away. No one needs to know anything.’

  ‘Stop. You know what happened. Do you think I wanted this? Do you see that I feel completely … How completely fucked everything turned out? And it all started with you, getting to know you.’

  I need to stall for time. Maybe Birck can get here. Behind Grim, Sam is looking at her finger. Then, with her eyes on his back, she starts carefully moving towards it. But Grim turns, beats her to it. From here, where I’m sitting, it looks weird, as though his hand has an extra finger for a moment, before he throws it over the edge. Sam gasps.

  ‘Take it easy,’ I manage to force out, and look at Sam. ‘Everything is okay.’

  Sam nods slowly.

  ‘Everything is okay,’ repeats Grim, and he turns towards me. The pistol is dangling loose in his hand. ‘Everything is okay.’

  He laughs, an empty laugh, and looks past me, out over Salem. I glance at Sam, who looks like she’s about to pass out. Her eyelids are heavy, and she rocks back and forth every now and then, as though she were falling asleep.

  ‘Can you understand,’ he starts slowly, with an urgent look about him, ‘can you at least understand me? Can you understand what you did to me? To us?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told you that I understand.’

  ‘In that case, can you understand why I have to do this?’

  ‘No.’

  He waves the weapon towards me and pulls the trigger.

  I scream, I think, and my heart is beating so fast t
hat my hands are shaking. The shot rings out and seems to echo over Salem. The bullet bounces off the concrete next to me, so close that I can feel it cleave the air as it bounces past. Grim’s eyes flash back and forth between me and the pistol. I think he regrets it, that he realises he shouldn’t have fired.

  ‘You’re not listening to me,’ he says, calmer.

  ‘I am listening to you. But you’re not really making any sense.’

  I get my phone out, simultaneously swiping the screen to unlock the keypad.

  ‘Put it away.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Put it away, now.’

  ‘Let her go, and I’ll put the phone away.’

  Grim laughs, blankly.

  ‘You’re not the one who gets to decide here.’

  ‘I know that,’ I say, and look down at the phone.

  ‘What are you doing? Put the phone down.’

  I put the keylock on again, and put the phone down next to me. I struggle to get up — first one knee, then the other, and eventually I’m standing on my feet. My head is spinning; it feels heavy. I look for a chance to get close enough to him to reach him, close enough to disarm him. He’s only using one hand — the other one is stuck to the weapon — but those seconds where I could make an attempt are too short, too risky. I’m afraid of Sam being hurt.

  Grim looks at the phone, unsure, and waves the pistol.

  ‘Throw it over.’

  ‘If you want it, you’ll have to come and get it.’

  He doesn’t dare. He’d have to bend down.

  ‘You really don’t get it, do you?’

  He goes over to Sam, takes a tight hold of her plait, and pulls her up. Sam says nothing. Instead she’s breathing noisily and laboriously, as though fighting against the panic.

  We’re in the middle of the roof. He pushes her in front of him, towards the edge of the roof, and Sam struggles, but the grip on her plait is hard to resist. She’s holding her injured hand to her chest and is gripping it tightly with the other one; she can’t use them to fight back. A shiny film of sweat covers her face, and she avoids my stare. As they get closer to the edge, she shifts her centre of gravity, like she’s scared of burning herself on an invisible flame.

  He pushes her again, so close to the rim that the point of Sam’s shoe is now sticking out over the edge. I stretch out my arm, as if to break her fall. Grim just stares at me, until I take it down. I can smell his aftershave.

  ‘She’s innocent,’ I say. ‘She’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Like that makes a difference? Do I get anything back because of the difference? Do I get my life back, my family? Myself? Eh?’ He stares at me. ‘Answer!’

  ‘No. But this won’t give you anything back either.’

  ‘All that matters are the consequences. And the consequences are the same. We will both have lost something.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I whisper.

  ‘Fair?’ Grim looks confused. ‘Do you think the world is fair?’ Holding onto her plait, he pushes Sam in the back, forcing her to lean over the edge. ‘Get back,’ he says, looking at me.

  I take a step back.

  And then he lets go of her plait.

  TIME SLOWS TO A CRAWL, as though gasping for air in vain, and I see Sam fall forwards, outwards, as Grim backs away. I throw myself towards her and grab hold of her coat, pull her to one side, and we fall on top of each other, Sam beneath me. I’m lying on her injured hand, but the adrenalin seems to be blocking out the pain because she doesn’t say anything. Instead she looks at me, surprised, and then starts retching.

  Behind me, I hear Grim pulling the tube of pills out again; I can hear it rattling in his hands.

  XXIX

  ‘You’re sick in the head,’ Sam says after several deep breaths to control the retching.

  ‘That’s probably very true,’ Grim says, and wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I think you would be, too.’ He looks at me. ‘And it’s your fault.’

  ‘Please, Grim …’ I start.

  ‘It will soon be over, Leo.’

  He might let me live. Maybe I’m just supposed to see Sam die. Or perhaps he’s going to let us both live. He might be about to kill himself. Or he’s chosen this place to give himself an escape route: if something doesn’t go according to plan, he can always throw himself off. That might be why we’re here. I don’t know; anything’s possible, Grim seems so unpredictable.

  ‘You are right,’ I say. ‘You’ve lost your mind.’

  Grim looks at Sam, who’s still lying on her back, staring back at him. As I turn towards the centre of Salem, to see it one last time — weird, I think to myself, that this seems like an important thing to see; maybe it meant more than I realised — there’s a flash of blue. Then it’s gone. I can almost see the block I grew up in.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

  He looks up.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Daniel Berggren, Tobias Fredriksson, Jonathan Granlund. That’s as far as I got.’

  ‘Ah-ha.’ Grim furrows his forehead slightly, and in that instant I see Julia’s face, her expression in his. ‘It’s not possible to get far enough to find that out.’

  ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

  He seems to be contemplating for a moment, before shaking his head.

  ‘Were you trying to stitch me up?’ I ask instead. ‘For Rebecca’s murder?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I just don’t get wh—’ I begin, but I don’t know where to go with it because I just don’t understand. All I know is that I have to try and spin this out. ‘You’ve followed me. You’ve sent me text messages. The necklace in her hand, which put me at the scene of the crime, was that … you could have done things differently.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, but something more … watertight. I don’t know. What you did was never going to be enough to get me convicted. And yet you seem to have planned it all so carefully. I just can’t make sense of it. Were you just trying to fuck things up for me, or what? I just don’t get it.’

  ‘I have no answer,’ Grim says and looks at me, his eyes darting about. ‘I can’t explain it. But it all makes sense to me.’

  ‘But not to anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit — this isn’t about anyone else.’

  ‘No, that’s what I’m starting to think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I take a deep breath. My head is throbbing.

  ‘Do you remember the party at the rec?’ I say.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The weekend before she died, there was a party on the rec.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  ‘Everything you said back then about Julia, or about all of you … it scared me. I got so fucking scared, for some reason. I can’t remember if I’d been scared of you before, but I don’t think I had. I think that was the first time. That was what made me have a go at Tim on the way home. And that was what made Tim … yeah. Do what he did. It would never have happened if you hadn’t been so fucking overprotective, if you hadn’t taken it upon yourself to try and keep it all together.’ I have to make a real effort not to look away. ‘It is your fault that she died. It is your fault that your life turned out the way it did. Not mine. If you are going to take anyone’s life, it should be your own, just like you wrote.’

  Grim looks at me with glassy eyes, and I wonder how much time is passing, wonder what he’s thinking.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t understand how you can take it this far, just to … well, what? Just for the sake of doing something? I don’t buy that. This isn’t going to make anything right; you’re just pushing yourself towards your own destruction. Everything you’ve built
up, I don’t know how extensive that is, but everything you’ve built up is going to be fucked by this. You’re not going to have anything left.’

  ‘Good,’ Grim shouts. ‘That’s what I want. Don’t you get it? I prefer nothing. None of this means anything. The only thing that meant anything to me, I lost a long time ago. My whole life has been changed by that.’

  ‘Why did you bother killing Rebecca Salomonsson? Why didn’t you just let her go to the police?’

  ‘She deserved it.’

  ‘I think you’re actually doing this to hurt yourself, not to get at me. You know full well what it would mean, being guilty of conspiracy to murder. You would never get away with it. This isn’t about her, or us. This is all about you — so that you won’t have any other way out. You know that it’s your fault that it turned out like this.’

  ‘You are wrong!’ he screams, and bends down to grab hold of Sam’s plait.

  In that movement, as he bends himself over her, reaching for the plait with one hand and holding the pistol in the other, I take a step to one side and throw myself at him. Grim tries to get the nose of the pistol up to her temple, but my shoulder cracks against his ribs and he stumbles backwards. We fall to the roof. Grim’s body is hard and bony underneath me. The smell of his aftershave, again. I think it’s the same aftershave he’s always used. And sweat. I notice for the first time just how bad Grim smells.

  Half lying underneath me, he grabs my hair while I try to prise the pistol out of his hand. He lets go and hits me in the side instead; the blows make me gasp for air. He writhes quickly and powerfully, he’s much stronger than me, and I’m about to fall off him, and then, any second, I think to myself, the shot will come and I’m going to die.

  It comes, unintentionally, when Grim touches the trigger and it passes me, up towards the sky. From the corner of my eye, beyond Grim, who I’m lying on top of, I see the coil of rope straighten to a taut line. Grim stops for a second before he cranes his neck. Someone else is on the way up.

  IT ALL HAPPENS QUICKLY: a heavy, black shoe seeking purchase against the roof; I see the beginning of a leg, equally black. Someone is trying to haul himself up.