‘No.’
‘Was it Elsa’s recommendation you be excluded?’
‘No.’
The way he spoke, his gestures and body language, were confusing. Words like ‘participant’ and ‘recommendation’ were not what I would have expected from a person like him, and there was something polite in his manner, as if he were a cultural correspondent working undercover as a skinhead. I must have been staring at him without realising, because he frowned and, as if to confound my suspicions, said, ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’
‘Nothing—it’s just you’re so different from others who…go for that style.’
‘You mean skins?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you think that everyone who looks a certain way is a certain way? Bit bigoted, maybe?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware.’
‘Okay, but most people are, and they don’t even know it.’
He snorted and shook his head, as if other people’s prejudices never ceased to amaze him. I was about to ask what he was called, because I wanted to put a name to this contradictory apparition, but before I could speak he had walked out without saying goodbye. I glanced around and saw something glinting on the table where people folded their clean laundry. A smooth gold ring. I picked it up and read the inscription on the inside: Kajsa & Erik 25/5/1904.
I was about to put the ring back where I had found it when the door opened and the skinhead reappeared. Without a word he took the ring from me and put it in the pocket of his jeans. As he was on his way out again I managed to ask my question: ‘What’s your name?’
He stopped, his hand resting on the doorhandle. I expected a dismissive response, but instead he said, ‘Thomas.’
‘Okay,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘Hi. John.’
Thomas looked me up and down, possibly wondering whether it would be best to shake my hand or punch me, but he contented himself with saying, ‘Fucking nutcase,’ as he walked out.
Elsa.
It was Elsa who had led the delegation the evening I fled, and it was on Elsa’s recommendation that Thomas had been denied entry to the shower room. I waited a while to make sure he wasn’t coming back, then I switched off the lights, went outside and headed up the fire escape to Elsa’s door.
*
There was a green plastic wreath hanging next to the nameplate that said Karlgren. Thomas’s assertion that his father had been driven crazy worried me a little, but my anxiety was allayed by the sight of the wreath, and I rang the bell. If you’re raving mad, you’re hardly likely to bother with Christmas decorations.
As I waited I questioned this conclusion. Maybe Christmas decorations are exactly the kind of thing you pay attention to if you’re crazy—details that set the stage with an appearance of normality while you run amok in the wings. I tensed as I heard soft footsteps approaching.
Elsa was an elderly lady and there was no peephole, so I was expecting her to call out, ‘Who is it?’—but while I was considering how to respond, the door opened and there she stood, dressed in a black tracksuit and sheepskin slippers.
The light in her eyes was still there, but now it was mixed with something else that made her seem slightly…I hesitate to use the word depraved, so instead I’ll go for tired—like someone who has had the opportunity to live out their fantasies to the full, and has discovered that it’s not enough. A worldliness bordering on weariness. I should add, however, that Elsa still looked several years younger than when I first met her.
‘John.’
‘Yes.’
‘Come in.’
Her hallway had the smell that is fairly common in the homes of older people: mothballs, lavender bags, or the smell of ageing bodies and time going around in circles. A domesticated, unthreatening smell. I took off my boots and followed Elsa into the living room, where she sat down in an armchair with her hands resting in her lap. This room too was exactly as you might imagine the living room in the home of Elsa Karlgren, a lady in her seventies.
A sofa and two well-used armchairs around a glass table with a lace mat. A corner cabinet with glass doors, in which a number of ornaments were neatly arranged. A chest of drawers, also with a lace mat on top, and above it a cheap print of the sun setting over a mountain chalet. A dark wooden shelf displaying books with yellowing spines.
And yet there was something strange about the room, something outside the norm. It was only when I had sat down in the other armchair that I realised what it was: no photographs. Elsa had both children and grandchildren, yet there was no sign of any of them. As I covertly glanced around the walls I could just make out faint rectangular shadows where the wallpaper hadn’t been faded by the sun, because something had been hanging there, something that had been removed quite recently.
Elsa said, ‘So. You’re back. How come?’
That question would take a long time to answer, and I wasn’t even sure if I could do it. I presumed that wasn’t really what Elsa wanted to know anyway, so I simply said, ‘I want to be part of it.’
Elsa raised her eyebrows, which were more coloured pencil than hairs, and asked, ‘Part of what?’
‘Whatever it is you’re all doing. In the laundry block.’
Since we sat down Elsa had been sitting with her hands in her lap, like a queen patiently listening to one of her subjects. Now she laced her fingers together, rested her elbows on her thighs and her chin on her hands, then sat and stared at me for a long time. I had to make an effort to stop my eyes darting across the walls, searching for more shadows of memories.
Eventually she said, ‘I want you to answer one question. Why did you run away that night?’
I leaned back and ran my hands over my face before I gave the only possible answer: ‘I don’t know why I ran away and I don’t know why I’ve come back. It just feels as if it’s what I have to do.’
To my surprise Elsa smiled and nodded, as if she approved of my response. Her attitude softened as she asked, ‘Do you have any idea at all? Of what this is about?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Tell me.’
Though I had spent my journey home on the subway speculating on this very issue, I hadn’t been able to put my suspicions into words, and all I could come out with was: ‘It’s something else. Something that lies beyond. A road. Yes. A road.’
‘And where do you think this road leads?’
‘I don’t know.’
Elsa frowned and her eyebrows lost their exaggerated symmetry, but I got the impression that I was doing okay. That my inarticulate responses were roughly what she wanted. ‘So is it sensible,’ she asked, ‘to set off along a road when you don’t know where it’s taking you?’
‘Yes. If you don’t have a choice.’
Elsa laughed, a not entirely pleasant sound, and shook her head. She glanced around the walls as if she were looking at the photographs that were no longer there. She didn’t make eye contact when she said, ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Twenty. And you’re telling me you have no other roads to choose from. Except that one. From that room.’
My anxiety about seeing Elsa had subsided as we talked, and now her condescending attitude was starting to annoy me. Admittedly she was a lot older than me, she had taken down her photos and her eyes were filled with world-weariness, but that didn’t mean she understood the depth of my feelings, or was entitled to sit in judgement.
‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but I don’t understand. Before you were very keen for me to be involved. What’s changed?’
‘A great deal. And you lived here then.’
‘I’m intending to live here again.’
Another silence as Elsa weighed me up. I tried to calm myself, suppress the irritation that was making my cheeks burn. She got to her feet with surprising ease and said, ‘Come into the kitchen.’
I didn’t want to obey the queen’s order immediately, so I stayed where I was, gazing at the tarpaulin outside the window. I didn’t know what to think. I ha
d expected the whole thing to be more… elevated.
I went into the kitchen and found Elsa sitting under the extractor fan with a cigarette in her hand. She blew a stream of smoke out of her mouth, aiming it carefully at the fan.
‘You smoke?’ I said stupidly.
Elsa shrugged. ‘I gave up for forty years, but now I’ve started again.’
I looked around. It was a typical 1950s kitchen, and I see no reason to describe it in detail. The main colour scheme was yellow, and the room was shabby but clean. I sat down at the table, which was adorned by yet another lace mat. Elsa took a deep drag, enjoying every second, then sighed.
‘I’ve lived for others,’ she said. ‘All my life. First my husband. And my children. Then my grandchildren.’
She tapped the ash into a clean ashtray. I guessed that she wasn’t a heavy smoker, partly because she took such pleasure in it, and partly because the apartment didn’t smell of smoke. Maybe she saved it for special occasions. Was this a special occasion?
‘Do you know why I did it?’
I assumed the question was rhetorical, and shook my head. I noticed that she said ‘did’ rather than ‘have done’, as if it were something that was now concluded.
‘Because I thought I’d get a reward.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Not that kind of reward, not a tangible reward, not something waiting for me in heaven. But a sense of satisfaction. Being able to think, at some point in my life: I’ve done all I can, and I’m where I’m supposed to be. Do you understand me?’
‘I think so.’
‘You think so. Or maybe you actually do. Understand, I mean. But you can’t know that it’s possible to spend an entire lifetime longing for that harmony. That sense of completion and fulfilment. To sit in an armchair with all your grandchildren around you, the Christmas lights sparkling in their eyes, hearing them say Grandma…’
Elsa took a final drag, stubbed out the cigarette and checked that it really was out before switching off the fan. ‘And then to find that wasn’t it—it was something else.’
‘How can a person know that?’
She picked up the stub and threw it in the bin, then rinsed the ashtray and placed it upside down on a tea towel. With her back towards me she said, ‘Good question.’ She turned around and for the first time she looked unsure, as if I had really made her think. Eventually she said, ‘What we think we want isn’t what we want. As it turns out.’
‘But when?’
‘When we start to…associate with what’s in that room.’
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t describe it. It has to be experienced.’
She opened the cupboard above the fan and took out a cocoa tin. Inside was a padlock key hanging from a red ribbon. She gave me one last long look, then said, ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
*
As I approach the dark core of this story, I am feeling unsure of myself. It’s exactly as Elsa said: it can’t be described, it has to be experienced. And yet I have to describe it as best I can, with the words at my disposal. My whole career as a horror writer stems from two locations: the tree house in the forest and the shower room on Luntmakargatan. Everything I have come up with since then is a projection or distortion of what was in those two places, and therefore it is with some trepidation that I now face up to the impossible task of describing it. I will try and I will fail again, but hopefully I will fail better.
*
I followed Elsa down the steps and into the courtyard, keeping my eyes fixed on the key on its red ribbon dangling from her hand. As we passed my window Elsa nodded towards it and said, ‘What’s it like in there?’
‘Dark.’
We didn’t say another word until we were standing in the laundry room and Elsa had switched on the fluorescent light. She handed me the key with a ceremonial air and said, ‘There you go. You can get yourself a copy made afterwards. If you want to carry on.’
‘Carry on with what?’
‘Associating. As I said. With yourself.’
I went over to the shower room and inserted the key in the padlock. Before I opened the door there was a question I had to ask, however feeble it might sound. ‘Is it dangerous?’
Elsa shrugged. ‘I’m sure it can be. That depends on you.’ She sat down on the only chair. ‘I’ll wait here. You can lock the door behind you if you want.’
I turned the key, removed the padlock and opened the hasp. As I reached for the doorhandle, Elsa said, ‘You have to give it blood. You decide how much, but I’d recommend a small amount to start with. There’s a knife in there.’
‘You give…blood?’
Elsa pushed up the sleeve of her blouse. Her arm could have belonged to a self-harming teenager. A network of healed and more recent scars crisscrossed her wrinkled skin, and an image flashed through my mind. The child in the tree house pushing up his sleeve. Blood. Whoosh, whoosh. Evil. Elsa gave me a wan smile and said, ‘Nothing’s free, is it?’
I opened the door, thinking in passing about AIDS, but I was far too preoccupied with what I was going to see to let myself be afraid. I was already embarrassed because I’d asked if it was dangerous, so without further ado I stepped into the room, closing the door behind me and turning on the light.
The room was still lit by a naked bulb, but it was brighter than before. There was nothing to illuminate but the bathtub and a stool beside it, with a clean handtowel and a fruit knife lying on the stool. I took a step forward and looked into the bathtub.
So there it was. The other. From where I was standing, the bath appeared to be half full of pitch-black paint. That was all. I glanced up at the crack in the ceiling. Whatever it was had forced its way out, landed in the bath, and was now lying there. Okay. I put the towel and the knife on the floor, sat down on the stool and stared at the shiny black surface. I can’t deny that I was disappointed. When I had had my fill of gazing at the nondescript substance, I reached out and dipped my fingertips into it.
The consistency was thicker than paint. At the risk of making an utterly ridiculous comparison, I have to say it reminded me of Slime, the jelly-like stuff you can buy in a plastic tub that doesn’t stick to your skin when you play around with it. Firm but fluid at the same time. When I pulled them out again, my fingers were unmarked. Okay. This amount of slime was definitely an experience, but not the one I had been expecting.
I picked up the knife, tested the blade on my thumbnail and found that it was as sharp as a cutthroat razor. A thin white scar had run across my right palm ever since the incident in the forest. I placed the blade along the line of the scar, took a deep breath and made a shallow cut. As the blood welled up I had to force back my fear of infection to make myself push my bleeding hand into the bath.
Something touched me down in that dark mass. When I reflexively recoiled and tried to withdraw my hand, it was held fast—as if another, much stronger hand had seized my own. But it wasn’t a hand, unless you can imagine a hand that is simultaneously a tongue—a soft, inexorable muscle whisking over my palm while holding it in an iron grip.
My guts churned in terror as my head was filled with light and knowledge: I can do magic. My hand, down there in the slime, was a magical hand, able to manipulate physical reality. I saw it close around an egg, only to open a second later and release a fully grown hummingbird. I’m not talking about a vision, like seeing a film pass before your eyes—no, this really happened, and I was consumed by the glorious feeling that I could perform miracles with that hand.
All the hours I had spent making sure Han Ping Chien flowed smoothly were nothing more than a memory now that I could make coins dissolve, hover and appear from thin air with only the strength of my own willpower. Effects I had spent years of my life simulating could be made a reality, and I had never been happier. Have never been happier. Magic existed, and I was the master of it.
When I widened my vision I saw that I was standing in a field. Cropped green grass stretched towards the horizon in al
l directions, and high above was a clear blue sky. The last time I was in this place it had seemed sketchy and washed out. Now the colours were strong, the contours sharp.
There were other people here too. Diffuse echoes of my neighbours lingered on in the field, and I perceived them as upright shadows. I raised my hand in greeting—here I am—and found myself back in the shower room with my arm outstretched, my hand resting a couple of centimetres above the black surface.
The ecstasy drained from my body like a fading orgasm and disintegrated in the cold, harsh light. My right palm was as clean as if it had been washed with white spirit, and only a tiny drop of blood seeped out of the cut. I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, but the muscles in my arm were aching. I stood up on unsteady legs.
*
‘The knife,’ was the first thing Elsa said when I emerged from the shower room. ‘Each person washes it when they’ve finished.’
I went back in and fetched it; thin streaks of blood could be seen on the short blade. Half of me was still in the field as I went over to the sink. I scrubbed the knife and dried it on a tea towel that had been placed there for that very purpose, while trying to drag myself back to the reality in which I now found myself. Happily I didn’t quite succeed. Bright, living fragments of the other place were still floating around in my body, and I felt almost weightless, as if my veins were filled with helium instead of blood.
Elsa produced a half-full bottle of whisky and two glasses, which she placed on the floor. I returned to the shower room and put the knife on the stool, then I came and sat cross-legged in front of Elsa. She poured a drop into each glass, handed me one and asked, ‘So? How was it?’
I took a sip of whisky and the golden yellow spirit ran down my throat like liquid sunshine, suffusing my whole being with warmth. ‘It was everything I could possibly wish for.’
Elsa nodded, and at the time I couldn’t understand the fleeting look of sorrow in her eyes as she said, ‘Mmm. And this is only the beginning.’
*
With a thick felt pen I wrote THE OTHER PLACE on a clean page in my notepad, in which I’d already written the story of the child in the forest, thereby confirming the link between what had happened when I was twelve and what was happening now. Chance had once again brought me into contact with the field, and I intended to keep a diary and write down what there was to see there. Shouldn’t I have been questioning my sanity instead? Many people would have done.
I Always Find You Page 14
