Eighteen Below

by Stefan Ahnhem

  “No, just at first he didn’t want to let me sit down, even though he’d had the chair for a long time, and so I sat on him, but only a little.”

  Fabian sighed, picturing how their squabble had gotten out of control. “Okay, I promise I’ll talk to him.”

  “Threaten to take away his allowance, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Well, as luck would have it, I’m the parent here and not you. Right?” He let go of her and stood up. “And Theodor doesn’t mean that, I’m certain of it. Okay?”

  Matilda shrugged.

  “If you see Mom, can you tell her I’m looking for her?” he went on as he took two beers from one of the serving tables.

  “Are we going to give her the present?”

  Fabian nodded and went back to the others as Berit walked up with a fresh bottle of sparkling wine and began to fill everyone’s glasses.

  “It’s one thing that he can tell the body has been frozen. I’m with him on that,” Lilja said, taking the beer. “But whether it was frozen for two months or just a few days…” She shrugged.

  “Heavens to Betsy! Don’t tell me that Brise guy was frozen?!” Berit exclaimed, taking a sip of her wine.

  Cliff sighed. “Berit, how many times do I —”

  “That’s right,” Lilja interrupted him. “But we haven’t released that information yet.”

  “No, and you know you can trust me. I’ll take it to the grave. I just get so curious. Especially since Cliff never tells me anything.”

  “And you’ve never wondered why?” Cliff rolled his eyes.

  “So you’re also thinking Braids might have made a mistake,” Tuvesson said to Lilja, holding out her empty water glass to Berit for a refill. “Just a splash.”

  Berit’s eyes filled with uncertainty and she turned to Cliff, who gave a brief nod, so she poured Tuvesson a little wine.

  “Anyone can be wrong on occasion,” Lilja said.

  “Not Braids,” said Molander. “At least not according to him.”

  “One thing that occurred to me about this Brise guy since I heard about it on the radio,” Berit said. “It’s just like what happened with that shipowner’s son out by us in Viken. Isn’t it, Cliff? You know, that Johan Halén. The one with the supposed sex dungeon. Didn’t he kill himself a few years ago?”

  “We’ve already been over that, and it has nothing to do with this,” Cliff said. He was starting to look seriously annoyed.

  “But he was filthy rich too, wasn’t he? Or at least, his house had the best view in Viken. You know, he was the sole heir and he took over the whole —”

  “For Christ’s sake, Berit!” Cliff turned to her. “How would it look if I stormed into your beauty salon and started cutting your clients’ hair? Huh? What do you think the ladies would say? You have two options: you can either go out with Einstein, or he’ll go out with you.”

  “I thought we were here to see Sonja’s exhibit. And don’t you talk to your wife like that. Not even when you’re being a stuck-up little shit who’s trying to impress his colleagues.” Berit turned on her heel and left.

  Cliff sighed as if the air in his lungs would never run out. “Dammit…” He hurried after her. “Berit, wait.”

  The scene was set for a bad joke about how Cliff would have to sleep in the guest room for the rest of the month. But not even Molander tried to be funny.

  “Dad! I found Mom!” Matilda ran up. “She’s in there!” She took Fabian’s hand. “Come on.”

  Fabian let Matilda navigate him through the crowds of people and up to Sonja, who was telling Elvin how the grey floor sculpture with its hundreds of arches of various sizes had been inspired by the protruding roots of mangrove trees.

  “I think there’s someone here who’s looking for you,” Elvin said, nodding at Matilda, who was standing right behind Sonja.

  “Well hello!” she exclaimed as soon as she noticed them.

  Fabian nodded his thanks to Elvin, who gave him a thumbs up and moved on toward the enlarged Øresund pictures.

  “Are you getting tired?” Sonja bent down to Matilda’s eye level.

  Matilda didn’t respond; she turned instead to Fabian. “What are you waiting for? Give it to her.”

  Fabian took out the card and handed it to Matilda. “To celebrate this fantastic exhibition and all the work you’ve put into it, Matilda, Theodor, and —”

  “Hey! Sonja!” It was Alex White, shouting and waving from a group of people nearby. “Here are some folks you need to meet.”

  “Mom, wait, this will be really quick.” Matilda held out the card.

  “Honey, it’ll have to wait. Mom needs to —” She kissed Matilda on the forehead and hurried off toward White.

  Fabian took the card back and put it in his pocket. “Hey…she didn’t mean to be…she’s been putting so much work into this so it would go well — and so many guests turned up that she has to make sure to talk to everyone. I think it will be better if we do this at home instead, in peace and quiet. What do you say?”

  “Okay. But I think we should go home now,” Matilda said, taking Fabian’s hand.

  16

  Chris Dawn shortened the reverb time on the saxophone and routed the master output through the compressor. He loved his new mixing console. Forty-eight channels, with so many buttons, faders, and lights that it would take hours to count them all. Not to mention the effects track, all the old analogue synths that had been refurbished and MIDI-linked, and the new computer with its huge retina display, where both the virtual instruments and the recording program responded to his commands without any lag time at all, no matter how many tracks he was using.

  His new studio made him feel genuinely and thoroughly happy. The recessed lighting, the oak-panelled walls, and the skull-patterned, wall-to-wall carpeting. He had spared no expense, and he hadn’t rested until everything was just as he wanted it. It had taken him five months, and this was the first time in ages he was able to sit undisturbed and just work.

  He raised the volume, pressed play, and leaned back in his perfectly adjusted leather chair, which had cost a ridiculous amount of money. As always when he was listening, he closed his eyes and let down his hair, which hung below his shoulders. He may not have much more than the pumping rhythm, the bass line, and the hook yet, but he could already hear that it had potential. It had been a brilliant idea, if he did say so himself, to sample and splice the guitar riff and then dub in the sax notes.

  Now all he had to do was lay down some backing chords and sing a sketch of the melody and his demo would be ready. And he’d only been working since this morning. If the inspiration stayed with him, at this rate he would have time to write at least three more songs before Jeanette and the kids were back on Sunday.

  Of course, the studio was so well soundproofed that he wouldn’t even notice if Sune and Viktor invited their respective preschool classes over for a joint party. His phone was off, and he hadn’t been on Facebook or checked his email for the past few hours. He was off the grid for the moment, and he loved it. Alone in the studio — there was nothing better.

  When he’d finished listening, he rose from the leather chair to walk over to the recording booth. On the way he stopped at the monitor that was recessed into the wall; it cycled through images from all the security cameras both inside and outside the house. It was a sheer pleasure to see the technology working as it should. It was obvious that he hadn’t gone for the cheapest solution. Not only was the picture in HD, it was possible to zoom in and pan any of the cameras, which also had night vision.

  The picture switched from the kitchen to the dining room, and then to the west hallway on the ground level. Aside from the bedroom, the bathrooms, and the studio, every part of the large manor house was under surveillance. Jeanette was the one who didn’t want cameras in those rooms, for fear that their sex life would leak onto the Internet. If it h
ad been up to him, they would have had cameras absolutely everywhere.

  It wasn’t that he was paranoid. He just wanted to be in control. He always had. Even as a little boy, chaos had been his worst enemy, and his parents had taken such a serious view of this that they forced him to keep his Lego bricks unsorted in one big bin. But this had made Chris feel so awful that in the end they had no choice but to let him organize them.

  The garage, too, looked as it usually did: all his cars parked inside, and —

  As if from nowhere, a dark shadow passed over the foreground. And just as quickly, it was gone, as if it had never been there. Chris gasped and felt his pulse start to race. What was that? He swallowed, tucked his hair behind his ears, and stared at the monitor as if he could make the shadow show itself again using just the power of thought.

  Instead, the image flipped over to the laundry room, where the exterior door was open…What the hell? Trying to move back to the camera in the garage, Chris grabbed the remote and began frantically to press buttons. But he’d never managed to do more than glance through the thick manual, and soon the whole system was frozen.

  Logic told him that this was nothing, that there was no reason to worry. And yet worry was exactly what he was feeling as he rushed out of the studio. When he reached the laundry room, he found that the door to the backyard was indeed ajar. Maybe he had forgotten to close it properly after his jog that morning?

  He pulled it shut and locked it before moving on to the adjoining garage. The Ferrari, the Jaguar, and all the other cars were in their proper places. He looked up at the camera mounted on the ceiling and found nothing wrong with it. But he had seen something on the monitor; he was sure of it.

  The driver’s-side door of the black Camaro wasn’t closed all the way. Why would he have left that open? Someone had definitely been in here.

  Chris hurried over to make sure everything was okay. It seemed to be. Or, wait…the remote for the garage door and the gate at the end of the driveway. He always put it in the console in front of the stick shift. And now, mysteriously, it was on the passenger seat.

  Then again, it had been a long time since he’d put the top down and taken the Camaro out for a spin. Could he have been in such a rush that he’d accidentally tossed the remote onto the other seat? But he would never have left the driver’s-side door open. He wasn’t that absent-minded.

  The sound came from right behind him as Chris reached for the remote. He managed to catch just a glimpse of the shadow across the windshield before he hit his head on the roof as he got out. Everything went black and he had to grab the car door to keep from losing his balance. It took a few seconds for the worst of the pain to pass, before he could once again open his eyes and look around.

  “Hello!” he called, but of course there was no response. He didn’t give a shit how many of them there might be. He wasn’t going to give up until he found them, even if all he could hear at the moment was his own breathing and a distant humming sound from some other part of the house.

  Should he be worried? He had no idea what was happening, and he had nothing to defend himself with. Even his cell phone was back in the studio. And what’s more, he hadn’t even been close to a fight since he was little.

  But he was furious. His anger was like the flash of a fucking welding torch. Each muscle in his body was so tense that it felt ready to snap as he continued along the Camaro with his eyes sweeping across the room and back over each shoulder.

  Yet he was totally taken by surprise as the shadow came from below and fluttered right up at his face. Out of sheer terror, he tried to knock the dark bird out of the way as he threw himself aside and landed on the hood of the Camaro. Only then did he realize it must have come in through the open door in the laundry room. Of course, that was it.

  He exhaled and discovered that sweat had soaked through his old Black Sabbath T-shirt and made his black jeans stick to his legs. He had not yet recovered from his shock; he had to wait for his pulse to slow before he could approach the Camaro, grab the remote, and aim it at the garage door, which rolled up toward the ceiling, allowing the blackbird to fly out and vanish into the evening sky.

  17

  “Dad, what does ‘unfaithful’ mean?”

  Matilda’s question hit him like an unexpected left hook, and Fabian had to collect himself before he could come up with an answer. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Esmaralda says that’s what her dad is,” Matilda said as she pulled on her nightgown and crawled under the blankets.

  “This Esmaralda, she sure says a lot of things, doesn’t she? Wasn’t she the one who said our basement was haunted?”

  “Yeah, but it is haunted. Mom said so too, you know.”

  “Know what I think?” Fabian sat down on the edge of the bed, relieved that the conversation was going in a new direction. “I think Esmaralda has a pretty active imagination. And I can promise you, there is not one single ghost in here. See for yourself.” He gestured at her tidy desk and her open bedroom door.

  “See what?” Matilda looked around.

  “That’s right. There you go. Not a single ghost.”

  Matilda rolled her eyes. “That’s not how it works. They’re invisible, and you can only see them if you have the gift.”

  “And this Esmaralda has the gift, does she?”

  Matilda nodded, as if this were incredibly obvious. “But what does it mean?”

  “What?”

  “Unfaithful?”

  “Matilda. I think you are a little too young to understand. Anyway, I’m really tired.”

  “Try me. Maybe I’m not too young at all.”

  There was no way out of it. The realization struck him and he looked her in the eye. “It’s when two people are together, like Mom and me, and one of us is with someone else without telling the other person.”

  Matilda looked away, as if she needed time to understand. Then she turned back to him. “Dad. Have you been unfaithful?”

  “No, I haven’t.” He chuckled, surprised at how easy this answer had come. To be perfectly honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what had happened that night a few years earlier with his colleague Niva up in Stockholm. “Now go to sleep so you aren’t too tired for school tomorrow.” He kissed her good night on the forehead, then turned out her bedside lamp and left the room.

  He wished he could go to bed too, even though it was only ten thirty. On his way to the bathroom he stopped outside Theodor’s door, and as usual his music was too loud. On the plus side, he had finally left Marilyn Manson behind and had moved on to Nirvana and other groups that were actually tolerable.

  He was struck by how easy it still was to just pass by the closed door and pretend no one was inside. As if the door led to nothing more than an extra room full of old furniture and other stuff they hadn’t yet taken to the dump. Back then, almost two years ago, Fabian had never given it a second thought. He’d considered it perfectly natural to communicate with his son by text to avoid being confronted with his own failures.

  Failures. He tried out the word.

  That was how the therapist put it, and it had taken him a whole year before he could admit to himself that it was totally accurate. He had written his own son off as a complete loss — something that would do the least damage if it was kept behind closed doors and placated with computer games. This realization of his betrayal of Theodor had hit him so hard that he’d been on a downward slope toward depression.

  He had started taking antidepressants and followed the doctor’s advice to start running again. Slowly, the pressure in his chest began to subside, and in the end he’d managed to gather enough strength to knock on the door, step into the room, and look his son in the eye. To tell him how he felt and try to explain, in honest terms, why he felt that way. To promise that, no matter what, from now on he would always be there for him.

  Theodor nodded and they hu
gged, but his eyes had revealed that he didn’t consider Fabian’s words to be anything but empty. So, to prove that he meant them, he had begun to call Theodor at school every day to check in. Except for today, when Tuvesson delayed the morning meeting by half an hour. But he almost never knocked on the closed bedroom door. The fact was, it still took effort for him to just stand there instead of walking by and pretending nothing was wrong.

  Three sharp knocks were enough for the music to be turned down, which he took as a sign that it was okay to come in.

  “Hey,” Theodor said; he was half lying on his bed and paging through his math book.

  “Hi there.” Fabian stepped into the room and let his eyes roam the teenage mess. “Just wanted to check and make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Well, you disappeared without saying goodbye, and according to Matilda you two had a fight.”

  Theodor sighed. “Do you know what a pain she can be as soon as you and Mom aren’t looking?”

  “Yes, I know.” Fabian removed the clothes from the desk chair and sat down. “It’s not that I’m angry. Like I said, I just wanted to see how you are.”

  The silence that followed made him want to stand up, leave his son in peace, and keep pretending everything was fine.

  The first chords of “Drain You” began to play, and he recalled that it was his favourite track from Nevermind.

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t listened to any of Nirvana’s albums since Theodor discovered them. As if, for some strange reason, he couldn’t listen to the same music as his teenage son. Why was that?

  “Good song, isn’t it?” he said, as he decided to put Nirvana on repeat in his headphones as soon as he got the chance.

  Theodor nodded.

  “You know, I didn’t get it when that album came out.” Fabian shook his head at the memory. “I thought it was just messy guitars and shrieky singing.”