The room was silent. Tense with anticipation. Everyone was worried about this thing with the Heath; maybe there was a new twist to the whole thing that they hadn’t considered.
Benny wrinkled his forehead as if contemplating a difficult issue.
‘And the one thing I’d really like to know…’
A rhetorical pause.
‘Is the ice cream van going to want to drive there?’
Relieved laughter. Not funny enough for applause, but not far off. Benny went on, ‘And if it’s going to go there, will it sell anything?
‘And if it sells something, then what?’
Benny waved his hand through the air, sketching a screen that everyone was supposed to look at.
‘Just imagine. Hundreds of dead people lured from their homes by…’ Benny started up a rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ and then quickly switched to being a zombie staggering along with outstretched arms. People giggled and when Benny groaned, ‘Popsiiiic-eeeel, Popsiiiic-eeeel…’ the applause came.
David downed the last of his beer and slunk out behind the bar. He couldn’t handle this. Benny and all the rest of them had every right to joke about something as current as this, in fact they were obliged to, but he didn’t have to listen. He walked quickly through the bar and out of the doors onto the street. A new round of applause fired off behind him and he walked away from the sound.
The painful thing was not that they were joking about it. There had to be jokes, jokes were necessary if people were going to keep living. The painful thing was that it had happened so quickly. After the ferry Estonia sank, for example, it had taken six months before anyone tried to say anything funny about ferry salvage or bow doors, and then without much success. The World Trade Center had gone much faster. Only a couple of days after the attack someone said something about the new cut-price alternative Taliban Airways, and people had laughed. It had been far enough away to feel like it wasn’t really happening.
Apparently the reliving fell into the same category. They weren’t real, you didn’t have to have any respect. That’s why David’s presence had been hard for the other comedians to take; he made it real. But in the end that’s what the reliving were to them: a joke.
He slunk past the tightly parked cars that lined Surbrunnsgatan, seeing Balthazar’s headless body wriggling in Eva’s lap, and wondered if he would be able to see the funny side of anything ever again.
The walk from Norra Brunn had exhausted his strength. The hastily downed beer sloshed in his stomach and every step was an act of will. Most of all he wanted to curl up in the nearest doorway and sleep away the remaining hours of this horrible day.
He had to lean up against the wall in the entrance and rest for a couple of minutes before going up to the apartment. He did not want to appear so pathetic that Sture offered to stay. He wanted to be alone.
Sture did not offer. After reporting that Magnus had slept the whole time, he said, ‘I guess I should go home now.’
‘Of course,’ David said. ‘Thanks for everything.’
Sture looked searchingly at him.
‘Will you manage, then?’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Sure?’
‘I’m sure.’ He was so tired, his speech was starting to sound like Eva’s; he could only repeat what was said to him. They parted with a hug, instigated by David. This time he let his head drop onto Sture’s chest for a few seconds.
When Sture had left he stood still in the kitchen for a while, staring at the bottle of wine, but decided that he was too tired even for that. He went and checked on Magnus, regarding his sleeping child for a long time. He had fallen asleep in almost exactly the position David had left him in: his hand under his cheek, the eyes slowly sliding under thin eyelids.
David crawled gently into bed, slipping into the narrow space between Magnus’ body and the wall. Was only planning to lie there for a couple of seconds and look at the thin, smooth shoulder that stuck out of the blankets. He closed his eyes and thought…thought nothing. Slept.
Tomaskobb 21.10
When Mahler stepped ashore on the nearest island he saw the marker. It was fashioned from bleached boards and he had missed it in the dark. The inlet lay straight in. He climbed back into the boat, started the engine. It roared, sputtered and died.
He waggled the tank, pumped in new fuel and this time the engine ran long enough for him to reverse away from the island before it died again. He leaned his arms against his knees and stared in among the islands, velvet blue in the summer night. Lone trees stuck up from low islands, silhouetted against the sky like in documentaries from Africa. The only sound was the distant engine vibration from the passing ferry.
This isn’t so bad.
He preferred recognising his surroundings to having fuel. Now he could at least see what was in front of him. With the oars it would take about half an hour to the island, gliding over the still water. No problem. If he just took it easy it would be fine.
He placed the rowlocks in their holes and set to work. He rowed with short strokes, breathing deeply in the mild air. After a couple of minutes he was in a rhythm and hardly noticed the work. It was like meditation.
Om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum…
The oar strokes pushed the sea behind him.
When he had rowed for perhaps twenty minutes he thought he heard the call of a deer. He lifted the oars out of the water, listening. The sound came again. It was no deer, it was more like…a scream. It was hard to determine which direction it was coming from; the sound bounced between the islands. But if he had been asked to guess he would have said it came from…
He put the oars back in the water, and started to row with longer, more powerful strokes. He did not hear another scream. But it had come from the direction of Labbskär Island. Sweat broke out across his back and his calm scattered. He was no longer a meditating person, just a damnably effective motor.
I should have got fuel…
Thick mucus collected in his mouth and he spat at the engine.
‘Bloody shit-engine!’
But it was actually his fault. His, and no one else’s.
To dispense with mooring the boat, he rowed straight to the shore and crawled out. Water seeped into his shoes and they sucked at the soles of his feet as he walked up to the hut. No lights were on; the house was simply an outline against the deep blue sky.
‘Anna! Anna!’
No answer. The front door was closed. When he pulled on it there was a strong resistance until whatever was fighting him gave up. He jumped and put his arm up to shield his face, thinking there was something coming at him. But it was only a loose broomstick that fell forward and clattered to the ground.
‘Anna?’
It was darker inside and it took a couple of seconds for his eyes to grow accustomed to it. The door through to the bedroom was closed and on the kitchen floor there was a…heap of snow. He blinked as the snow pile began to take shape, became a blanket and then Anna, who was sitting on the floor squeezing the blanket.
‘Anna, what is it?’
Anna’s voice was just a hoarse whisper from a screamed-out throat.
‘It was here…’
Mahler looked around. The moonlight pouring in through the open door did not help much and he listened for sounds in the other room. Nothing. He knew how afraid Anna was of animals and sighed, saying with irritation, ‘Was it a rat?’
Anna shook her head and said something he could not make out. As he turned from her in order to go into the other room and check, she hissed, ‘Take this,’ and pointed to a small axe lying on the floor at her feet. Then she crawled across the floor with the bedding in her arms, pulled the door shut and sat down with her back against the door post, one hand on the door handle. The room became pitch dark.
Mahler weighed the axe in his hand.
‘What is it, then?’
‘…drowned…’
‘What?’
Anna forced her voice to get louder and cr
oaked, ‘A dead man. A corpse. Someone who drowned.’
Mahler closed his eyes, retrieving his memory of the kitchen; visualising the torch on the counter. He groped his way through the dark until his fingers closed around the heavy handle.
Batteries…
He turned it on and a cone of light shot out, illuminating the entire kitchen. He trained the beam on the wall next to Anna so as not to dazzle her. She looked like a ghost; sweat-drenched hair hung in wisps over her face, vacant eyes stared straight ahead.
‘Daddy,’ she whispered without looking at him. ‘We have to let Elias…go.’
‘What are you saying? Go where?’
‘Go…away.’
‘Keep quiet now and I’ll…’
He opened the door to the other room a crack, let the light in. There was nothing there. He opened the door a little more, directing the beam of light inside.
Now he saw that the window on the opposite side was broken. Reflected light glittered in slivers of glass spread over the floor and table. He squinted. Something was lying on the table, among the shards. A rat. He took a couple of steps closer.
No, not a rat.
It was a hand. A severed hand. The skin was wrinkled, thin. The flesh on the front of the index finger was gone and only a stick-thin bone remained.
He swallowed, poking the hand with the axe. It rolled over among the glass, lay still. He snorted. What had he expected? That it was going to jump up and put on a stranglehold? He shone the light through the window and saw nothing except rocks sticking up from the creeping juniper.
‘OK,’ he said to Anna when he returned to the kitchen. ‘I’ll go out and look around.’
‘No…’
‘Then what should we do? Go to bed, hope that…’
‘…weevil…’
‘What was that?’
‘It wants to do evil.’
Mahler shrugged, brandishing the axe. ‘Were you the one who…’
‘Had to. It wanted to get in.’
The adrenaline rush that had kept him going ever since he heard Anna’s scream from the boat was starting to abate, and he was faint with hunger. He sank down on the floor next to Anna, breathing heavily. He pulled over the cooler, took out a packet of hot dogs, wolfed two of them and held the rest out to Anna, who made a face.
He ate two more but it felt like the effort of chewing was simply making him hungrier. When he had swallowed the pulpy mass he asked, ‘Elias?’
Anna looked at the bundle in her arms and said, ‘He’s scared.’ Her voice was cracked but audible.
Mahler took out a packet of cinnamon buns and ate five. More chewy mass to swallow. He drank a couple of sips of lukewarm milk out of the container and felt just as hungry as before, except that now he also had a heavy mass in his stomach. He leaned back, lying down on the floor to try and get the heaviness to distribute itself more evenly.
‘Let’s go back,’ Anna said.
Mahler shone the flashlight on the petrol container under the kitchen counter and said, ‘If there’s petrol in it we can. Otherwise it’s out of the question.’
‘We don’t have any fuel?’
‘No.’
‘I thought you were going to…’
‘I didn’t have the energy.’
Anna did not say anything, which he thought was worse than if she had berated him. Rage slowly kindled in his chest.
‘I’ve been working,’ he said. ‘The whole time since we…’
‘Not now,’ Anna said. ‘Stop it.’
Mahler clenched his teeth, rolled over and crawled up to the petrol container, lifting it. It was very light, because it was empty.
Fucking idiots, he thought. The fucking idiots don’t have any reserve fuel.
From the door he heard Anna snort, remembered that she knew what he was thinking. He slowly pulled himself up to his feet, taking the torch and the axe.
‘You can sit there and laugh,’ he said. ‘I’ll just go out and…’ he waved the axe toward the door. Anna did not move.
‘Can you let me out?’
‘It isn’t like Elias,’ Anna said. ‘It’s been alone, it…’
‘Can you please move away from the door?’
Anna looked him in the eyes.
‘What do I do?’ she said. ‘What do I do if…something happens?’
Mahler gave a short bitter laugh.
‘Is that what you’re worried about?’ He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, turned it on and entered the PIN. He gave it to her. ‘Nine, one, one. If anything happens.’
Anna inspected the phone as if to check that there was reception, then said, ‘We’re calling now.’
‘No,’ Mahler said and reached for the phone. ‘In that case I’ll keep it.’ Anna sighed and hid the phone in the blankets. ‘You won’t call?’
Anna shook her head and let go of the door. ‘Daddy. We’re not doing the right thing.’
‘Yes,’ Mahler said. ‘I think we are.’
He opened the door and let the beam of light play over the rocks, grass and raspberry bushes. When he raised the beam it lit up a gap in the curtain of alder trees between the house and the water, and he saw a person lying on the shallow jutting rocks in the opening of the inlet. The torch was not really necessary, the moonlight was enough to make out the white shape lying with its torso on the rock, its head by the water’s edge.
‘I see it,’ he said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Remove it.’
He left the house. Anna did not close the door as he had believed she would. When he had taken a couple of steps toward the creature, he turned around. Anna was sitting on the step, hugging the bundle and watching him.
Perhaps it should have made him happy, even touched, but he simply felt scrutinised: Anna did not trust him and was sitting there now to watch him fail, again.
When he reached the shore and passed the boat he saw what the creature was doing. It was drinking. It was lying on its stomach, scooping sea water into its mouth with its one remaining hand.
Mahler turned off the flashlight and crept over the slick seaweed, gripping the axe.
Get rid of it.
That was what he was going to do. Get rid of it.
He was about twenty metres away when it stood up. It was a person, and yet it wasn’t. The moon gave enough light to see that large parts of its body were missing. A soft southerly breeze carried the stench of rotten fish. Mahler waded through an area with reeds and then came up on the rock where the creature was waiting for him. Its head was tilted as if it couldn’t believe its eyes.
Eyes?
It had no eyes. Its head turned from side to side as if it was sniffing, or listening for the sound of his steps. When Mahler was a couple of feet away from it, he saw that the skin on its chest had been eaten away, and its ribs stuck out white in the moonlight. He saw a movement and caught his breath, thinking it was the creature’s heart, pulsating.
He raised the axe and turned on the flashlight. Aimed at the creature, to blind it if it still had eyes to see with. The light made it chalk-white against the sea, and now Mahler saw what was causing the motion: inside the chest cavity was a fat black eel, caught as if in a trap, eating its way out.
Reflexively, from some kind of basic human shame at his own grossness, Mahler turned away before the food he had eaten erupted from his stomach and spurted through his lips. Sausage, pastries, milk poured out onto the rock and ran down into the water. He turned again, so as not to have his back to the creature, even before his nausea had fully subsided.
Vomit continued to trickle down between his trembling jaws, down over his chin. He saw the eel thrash around inside the chest and in the stillness he heard the sound of its snake-body, gliding over the remnant flesh of its prison. Mahler wiped his mouth but his jaws did not stop chattering.
His revulsion was such that the only impulse in his head was aversion beyond all reason, a command to remove—extinguish—this abomination from the f
ace of the Earth.
Kill it…kill it…
He took a step toward the creature and at the same time the creature moved towards him. It was quick, much quicker than he had thought possible with that wreck of a body. There were a couple of clicks as the bones clashed against the rock and even in his blind rage, Mahler backed up. It was the eel. He did not want that eel, grown fat on human flesh, to come near him.
He backed up and slipped in his own vomit. The axe flew from his hand as his body landed with a wet thud. His neck was jerked back by the blow and the back of his head struck the rock. Bright lights flashed and the instant before they died and dropped him into the darkness, he felt the creature’s hands on his body.
Labbskär Island 21.50
Anna saw it happen. She saw her father fall flat on the rock, heard his head meet the unyielding surface, saw the creature throw itself over him. She flew to her feet, still with Elias in her arms.
God, no! The fucking bastard…
The creature lifted its head in their direction and at that moment she heard Elias’ voice inside her head.
…nice…think nice…
Anna sobbed and took a few steps. Something rattled near her feet, but she paid it no attention, continuing instead toward the boat, toward the creature whose head tugged and jerked above her father’s lifeless body.
Disgusting bloody…
…nice…
She knew. Deep down she knew. As long as she’d sat on the bed doing nothing, thinking nothing, the creature had simply stood outside and looked at them. It was when she had gone up to the window and screamed at it to go away, sent hatred and disgust to it, that it had broken the window. It was her terror that had driven its attempts to get in in the first place.
When her father had started to send hate to the creature, toward the image of the eel in the chest cavity, she had tried to send the same thing as Elias was now doing: Think nice, but she had not reached him, and now it was too late.
Handling the Undead Page 30
