The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  He thought he remembered representatives from two other households there, beyond Nathalie’s family and those who still lived there today. Texas and Laila had been in their thirties at the time and hadn’t taken over their respective farms yet, but their parents usually attended the meetings.

  One year it had all been about a new culvert over in the creek; another it was winter upkeep for the road. This last time, they had been planning to discuss the potential construction of a new hunting stand. But as their alcohol intake increased—and there was sometimes quite a bit of the stuff at those meetings—the conversation turned to everything that had happened that summer.

  “We started talking about the bog body, and what happened to Tracy, of course. It was all so painful,” Göran said. “I guess I’ve probably repressed most of it. Plus I was pretty drunk.”

  “But an argument broke out, didn’t it?”

  Maya had read the police report from the night in question, and the description sounded more like a drunken brawl than an orderly neighborhood meeting.

  Göran was quiet. She sensed calm resignation somewhere deep inside him.

  “We talked about all sorts of things, but I remember the others tried to push me on my knowledge of the undead; the trouble they could cause. Whether it could have been the undead that caused Tracy’s death. If anyone should know, it was me, they said, since my wife had disappeared too.”

  “Who said that? Everyone?”

  “No. Some of them didn’t believe my theories at all, and they got angry. Yes, we started arguing, that’s true. I remember arguing. But then we broke up the meeting.”

  “But what did you say, exactly?”

  “I don’t remember. Why do you want to know?”

  “It might be important.”

  “Sorry. You’ll have to ask the others.”

  “But you told them that the undead exist; don’t you have any recollection of who agreed with you, and what you decided should be done?”

  “No, I don’t remember. You have to keep in mind that this was many years ago. All I recall was saying that there wasn’t much you could do, except be careful. I suppose I told them how to protect themselves.”

  “And then you didn’t have any more meetings?”

  “No, but it’s funny you should mention it. Because Agneta invited us all to one tomorrow; I think she wants to get some sort of sense of community in the middle of all this misery.”

  “I’m going to that meeting too.”

  “You are?” Göran asked, looking at her in surprise.

  “Yes, just for a little bit. Agneta promised I could take some photographs inside the manor house, and a group shot of all of you. It might turn into something for my project,” she said. “But what was I going to say…? Yes, what do you think actually happened to Nathalie’s parents?”

  “What do I think happened to them?” He raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “You know… why did her dad shoot her mum and then himself? The same night as your meeting. You must have wondered, didn’t you?”

  Göran shook his head. “All I can say is that the family had problems that must have led to what happened. Nathalie came over sometimes when the screaming and shouting were at their worst. I think they were usually kind to her, but they certainly could fight. And Jonas got aggressive sometimes when he drank. So… I don’t know. Sometimes everything just goes to hell.”

  He gave a huge yawn. “Well, it’s getting to be bedtime for this old man. I’ll make up the bed in the guest room.”

  Just as Maya was crawling into bed in Göran’s guest room, her phone rang. She looked at the screen. It was one thirty, and the number was one she didn’t recognize.

  “Is that Maya Linde? Hi, it’s me, Nathalie Ström. The biologist. Sorry to call so late, but I had to. There’s something I’m worried about.”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  “I… I just have to ask, is it true that you found a shovel with Johannes’s DNA in Alex’s shed? That it’s the strongest evidence you have against him?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I read it online.”

  Maya sighed to herself. “Why do you ask?”

  “Is it red? I mean, really red? And basically brand new?”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking, if it is. If the shovel is red,” Maya said.

  “The thing is, I borrowed a shovel from Alex when I went out in the bog to take samples. And Johannes was with me; I even think he was carrying the shovel!”

  “Okay, Nathalie,” said Maya. “That’s no problem. No problem at all, but I’m glad you told me. Try to get some sleep, and Leif will give you a call tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Maya texted Leif the new information.

  Well, hell, she thought afterward, almost relieved. There goes that evidence. Alex might be eccentric, and he might be able to see patterns and order and variances in nature, but there’s no way he’s the guy we’re after.

  All at once, her exhaustion was gone. She lay awake in the guest room, thinking about Alex, thinking about the conversation she’d had with Göran about the neighborhood meeting. Then she looked at the artwork on the walls. Surprisingly meaningless landscape paintings. They didn’t match Göran’s personality.

  She grew thirsty and got up for a drink.

  A beautiful old secretary desk stood in a corner of the room outside the bathroom. Göran had placed the folder containing his own investigation into the disappearances on top of a stack of documents.

  She picked it up, and just as she was about to open it she noticed a photograph underneath. It was of a woman she recognized.

  Tina Gabrielsson from Trollhättan. The woman who had gone missing in Karlstad in 2004, during a business trip.

  Göran had photos of everyone he suspected had vanished in the mire, so it wasn’t strange that she should find this one. But he hadn’t shown her this particular photo. It was also different from the others, which were all Photostat copies or newspaper clippings. The photo of Tina Gabrielsson was an original from a photo studio in Gothenburg. Maya turned it over and read the back.

  Thanks for a wonderful weekend.

  Tina

  She stood stock-still, paralyzed. As if every movement, starting now, involved risk. As if she were in a gaping maw, in a cage.

  Göran knew Tina Gabrielsson.

  Had she been naïve? Was Göran actually insane?

  Maya rapidly and silently gathered her belongings and hurried downstairs. Too fast. She tripped over the sleeve of a sweater she was carrying and fell headlong down the stairs.

  She landed with a thud, raised her head and listened.

  “Hello?” came a sleepy voice from Göran’s bedroom. “Maya, is that you?”

  She stood up, pulled on her shoes and jacket, and rushed out of the house. When she got into the garden, all the energy inside her died away. The car. She didn’t have a car here.

  At that instant, the hall light came on behind her.

  She staggered around the corner as fast as she could; she came to the road and hid behind a hedge.

  She watched as the front door opened: the fog of Göran’s breath.

  “Maya,” he called into the night.

  His voice blended with the sounds from the mire, a vague wail from a bird in the distance and a shattering wind that cut through the trees.

  She heard him again, or was it him? It was as if the words suddenly sprang from the landscape, as if they rose from the fen.

  “Where are you, Maya?”

  She kept running, afraid that a car would come, that she would see the glare of headlights. As she ran, she called Oskar.

  He didn’t pick up. She called again. And again. At last she heard his sleepy voice.

  “Hello?”

  “You have to come and get me,” she said. “Now.”

  Nathalie could not fall asleep. The knockings seemed to come from every angle,
from inside her head, outside on the door, from the mire. She curled up under the duvet to hide from the echo but it only grew stronger. So she rose and dressed.

  I give up. The words rang through her. I don’t care any more. I don’t care about anything.

  She went out of the cabin and into the chilly darkness, faltering between late night and early morning. She didn’t close the door properly, or button her coat. Her feet steered her aimlessly forward. Along the footbridges, slippery from the night dew, over the vigilant landscape, open as the invitation to an embrace.

  Somehow, she just wanted in there. Into the darkness and the damp void, as if it were the womb from whence she came.

  Walking further into the mist, her borders felt blurred, the perception of who she was, where she was. What everything was about.

  Then, a shout cut through the air.

  The sound rattled her awake, brought her back to full consciousness. Fear prickled her arms.

  Natalie stood still for some time, but heard nothing more. Maybe she had imagined it? She began to move her feet again, slowly. Suddenly, another sound. Much closer this time. A branch cracking, followed by sinister silence.

  Hello? she said, voice thin.

  And then she saw it. A shadowy figure in the distance, body crouched over the mire as if ready to spring. At first she thought the darkness was playing tricks on her, or that her own mind was, but it seemed too real: someone was standing there, not responding to her call. And then the figure began moving toward her. It looked like a man, and he was holding something in his hand, a stick or a pole.

  As the panic exploded through her body, she turned around and ran. In the back of her mind she knew how dangerous it was to run over the mire in the dark, but the instinct to get away drove her forward. Her feet flew over the moss, finding stable ground with remarkable agility, as if it were her second nature; a skill planted early. When the footbridges split, she veered left, and soon thereafter she noticed the trees were getting taller, so she dared to step beyond the path and ran into the woods, hoping that the ground would carry her.

  She ran without looking back for several minutes, then she came across a hut of some sort and jumped in behind it for cover. She couldn’t see anyone, so she caught her breath for a moment, still not sure what the darkness was hiding. When she looked around she realized where she had actually ended up.

  It was her hut. She’d run into the place where she’d spent endless hours as a child. She gazed around in astonishment, as if she could not believe her eyes, reached out and let her fingertips trace the rough planks, and then quickly crouched to crawl inside. She sat down where she’d sat down a hundred times before, peering out through the glassless window. The wind outside picked up, fierce, sudden. Nathalie stared out into the darkness, on the lookout for her pursuer, but no one came. She waited in silence, heart racing. Minutes went by, an hour passed.

  And then, slowly, something stepped forward.

  But not from the darkness outside.

  It came from the darkness within.

  If she had not been so exhausted in every part of her being, maybe she would have resisted. But now, instead, she surrendered to the force of memory that overtook her as she crouched in her childhood hideout.

  It was the last day. The last summer. She was at home. Twelve years old.

  Late summer had seeped the last color from the tired plants in the garden; her dad stretched out on the sofa after dinner while her mum cleared up. Nathalie was mostly just wondering why Julia never called any more. After all, Julia was her best friend.

  She wandered over to Göran’s house and peered through the kitchen window. Someone was sitting inside, as usual. The curtains were drawn, so only a silhouette was visible. The figure seemed to be listening attentively, nodding now and then, and asking the occasional question. Someone was taking notes.

  She decided to make the rounds of the gravel path outside the house and look for cigarette butts. Her parents gave her one krona per butt instead of an allowance.

  Once she’d gathered a small pile she switched to practicing handball jump shots on the lawn. They had a tournament the next weekend: the Summer Cup in Åmål. She wanted to get in some good goals. Maybe she could impress someone in the stands.

  She picked up a rock, ran, jumped and threw. She really had the technique down.

  After she went back inside the house, it didn’t take long for the guests to start appearing. Agneta and Gustav, Yvonne and Peder. Göran arrived soon after, and someone else. Everyone was in high spirits at first: cheese, cookies and wine were served. Nathalie was given a bag of chips to take to her room.

  She sat on her bed and opened the latest issue of Buster. She made believe that she was a goalie, saving every last shot. That she was a hero.

  She grew tired and dozed off. She might have slept for a couple of hours or more.

  “Come on, for Christ’s sake, get your head out of your ass. How fucking stupid can you get?”

  Someone was shouting; they sounded drunk. A commotion ensued.

  “But this is serious!” someone else cried. “You have to listen!”

  She heard her father trying to calm the quarrellers down. “Okay, it’s time for you all to go home. We’ll talk about this another time.”

  A short time later, Nathalie went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Bottles and glasses scattered the table. She saw a few guests crowding in the hall among jackets and shoes; she met Göran’s gaze and cautiously nodded hello.

  Then she sneaked back up to her room and crawled into bed. She heard the guests leaving and the footsteps on the stairs as her parents went up to their bedroom.

  “I fell asleep again,” she whispered as if she were sitting next to Johannes, talking to him again. “I slept for a while. Then I heard…” She put her hand to her mouth and realized that she was shaking. “A sound woke me up. It wasn’t the shots that woke me up… I always thought they did, but I woke up before that. I woke up because of a… different sound. Someone came over.”

  It felt like the sounds in her head were being tapped out by a hammer.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Someone came over. Someone knocked at the door before the shots rang out.

  I heard the knocking. I heard the voice.

  Nathalie stepped out of the hut. The morning had broken, a soft light spreading across the mire. She needed to get back. She needed to remember everything.

  The wild grapes had sent long fingers through the cracked pane to squeeze the back door from every direction; years of patience had broken it open.

  It was like the house had been waiting for her. As if it took a breath as she arrived, drawing her through the door. She remembered how frequently she’d come in this way when she wanted to avoid attracting attention. It led straight to the narrow staircase to the first floor, where the den and the big bathroom were. Plus she could get to her room without passing the kitchen.

  Now it was dark and smelled of moisture and decay. Her past was literally disintegrating. Fading away. Hazy contours wherever she turned. The large sideboard in the hall; its drawers were closed but she knew: the old phone books in the bottom drawer. Then mittens, hats, bottles of hairspray and tubes of hair gel.

  She looked into the mirror, past all the moisture and all the spider webs, through all the cracks. She saw the picture of herself as a twelve-year-old. She was back in the house.

  She was home again.

  She wanted to remember. She had always wanted to forget, but now she wanted to remember. There was a truth in what had happened that summer, and it hadn’t come out. But she knew; somehow, she knew. And now the images needed to surface.

  The sound of the coffee-maker that came on automatically at seven; the smell of food cooking in the afternoon. The fan, always broken.

  It all flowed together. Drifted apart.

  Nathalie moved through by the glow of her mobile phone.

  She went down the hall tha
t led to the kitchen and her bedroom.

  The bottles and glasses were still on the kitchen counter, from that last night. Deserted, abandoned, enveloped in years of moisture.

  She went to her room and sat on the bed. The hardwood floor, stained dark; the wallpaper she’d chosen, with little red cherries. The bed with its beige velvet bedspread, a Christmas present. Next to that, the desk. Posters on the wall: the Ark and Kajsa Bergqvist.

  Now the animals lived here. A veil over everything.

  But she couldn’t see the decay any more. She was twelve years old; she was there again. It was dark outside her windows. And the knocking woke her up.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  She heard the quick steps down the stairs. She got up, opened the door a crack, and sat down on the floor. Her gaze aimed straight into the hall, past chairs and table legs.

  She heard her dad: It’s them again. They’re back.

  Silence, for a moment. And then her mum’s voice: Jonas! What are you doing?

  I’m only going to scare him. I’m going to give that bastard a scare.

  The front door opened.

  At first she couldn’t tell who it was; she could only hear muffled voices, forced whispers.

  “You two are sensible folks; you two, at least. We can’t lose more of our own. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean, lose?” she heard her father say.

  “We all know what happened to Tracy. The mire is hungry; we have to feed it. And save what we have left.”

  The silence that followed.

  Then, her father’s voice: “You’ve totally lost it. You can’t seriously be saying that we should—”

  “Listen to me,” the other voice interrupted. “You know the mire; you know what it’s capable of. If we’re going to keep living here, we have to do something!”

  “What happened happened,” her dad said. “It was a terrible tragedy. But it won’t happen again.”