I Am Behind You

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  He doesn’t look up until he reaches the caravans. Stefan has put a folding chair on top of his caravan, and is in the process of clambering up onto it while holding his mobile phone above his head.

  The field is endless.

  The words keep going round and round in the back of Peter’s mind like a mantra. It’s as if there is some hidden meaning that he doesn’t yet understand.

  Lennart and Olof are sitting on the ground next to their caravan, and the mere sight of them makes something hard inside Peter soften slightly. He relaxes and walks over to them.

  *

  The folding chair is rickety even when someone sits on it. Stefan feels like an incompetent circus artist as he cautiously places one foot at a time on the frame while attempting to stabilise the structure of thin metal tubes with both hands. He daren’t stand on the fabric.

  Forty-nine kronor at Rusta. Serves you right.

  At last he manages to straighten his legs. When he holds the phone at stomach height, the bar occasionally flickers into life; when he lifts it up to his face it becomes more stable, and when he raises it above his head, the bar is there almost all the time. He presses the button and hears a continuous dialling tone.

  So? Now what?

  There is one thing he definitely wants to do: call his parents and tell them that he and Carina and Emil are okay. That they might not be home tomorrow as planned. The opportunity to save his parents any anxiety would make this project worthwhile, even if nothing else comes of it.

  But what next? Who else should he call?

  The first thing that occurs to him is the distribution centre. That pallet of herring. He hears a grinding sound beneath his right foot, the chair moves slightly and Stefan almost loses his balance. He panics and jumps down, landing with a crash on the roof. He sinks down onto the warm metal, glaring at the telephone in his hand.

  Who should he call?

  Stefan moistens his lips with his tongue. There is one aspect of all this that he hasn’t considered. If he manages to ring his parents and they answer…what exactly does that mean?

  It means they are not lost. It means they are in a place that is in contact with the normal world, and that the normal world still exists. That makes a huge difference, if you think about it carefully.

  Suddenly Stefan is afraid to make the call. It has become far too critical. He juggles the phone from one hand to the other as if it is a hot potato that needs to cool before he can deal with it. There isn’t much battery left, and he ought to switch off the phone if he’s going to sit here wavering.

  Pull yourself together.

  What is he so scared of? His parents will either answer, or they won’t. If they don’t answer he can ring the emergency number or something, just to check if he is able to contact another human being. Or even the speaking clock, for goodness sake.

  There is, however, another possibility, and perhaps that is why he is still playing around with the phone. What if he calls…and someone else answers? Someone who is neither a person nor a machine? Someone who has been wanting to make contact with him ever since that day on the bottom of the lake.

  Stefan stands up, picks up the binoculars and traces the horizon, looking particularly closely at the route he took with Emil. Nothing.

  What was it he actually saw? A white figure, far away in the distance. How can he be so sure that this figure has anything to do with the one that beckoned him when he was six years old? What evidence is there? None. Nothing except that icy sensation in his chest; he felt as if he had swallowed several litres of cold water from the lake when he caught sight of that figure through his binoculars.

  Stefan rests his forehead on his wrists, closes his eyes and goes back to the memory of his sixth birthday. The bike, the jetty, the dark water. The cold in his lungs, the field opening out before him, the beckoning figure. He fixes it with his internal gaze and examines it carefully.

  It is not dangerous to make the call. As he remembers it, the figure had no mouth. It’s not going to say anything to him. It had only eyes, as far as he recalls.

  Without any further deliberation, he climbs up on the chair once more, trying to distribute his weight differently this time. Then he keys in his parents’ number while holding the phone just above his head.

  He hears it ringing at the other end of the line. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Please pick up. Please.

  He pictures the push-button phone on the kitchen window ledge, its old-fashioned ring echoing through the house with every electronic beep in Stefan’s ear. He sees his mother put down her knitting and get up from the sofa in the living room. His father is too ill to be up and about.

  On the fourth ring he hears a crackling sound, then a voice. His mother’s voice.

  ‘Hello? Ingegerd Larsson.’

  Stefan wobbles and almost falls off the chair, but manages to steady himself without damaging it. He doesn’t know what to say. He would like to press the phone to his ear instead of holding it above his upturned face, but he daren’t risk it. The connection is fragile.

  ‘Hi Mum,’ he says. ‘It’s me, Stefan.’

  ‘Stefan?’ His mother’s voice is so faint. ‘Where are you?’

  Stefan is looking up at the sky. He blinks a couple of times and realises that there are tears in his eyes. Where is he? If only he knew.

  ‘I’m…I’m a long way away. But we’re all fine.’

  The bar flickers and Stefan picks up only disjointed words: ‘… worse…home…’

  ‘What did you say, Mum?’

  He raises the phone a little higher. The signal stabilises, but his mother’s voice is now so distant that he can’t hear a word.

  ‘Sorry, Mum—say that again?’ He brings the phone down a fraction, and just about manages to hear her this time: ‘Your father is much worse. You need to come home.’

  There is a loud crack as the crossbar of the chair snaps and the whole thing collapses. Stefan holds the phone close to his chest as he falls sideways and crashes down onto the roof, landing on his shoulder.

  There is a certain amount of give in the metal and he doesn’t break any bones, but when he looks at the screen, the contact has been lost.

  You need to come home.

  Stefan draws his knees up to his chest and whispers: ‘Oh fuck.’

  *

  Lennart and Olof have dug three holes of differing sizes next to their caravan. When Peter comes over they are just removing a house plant from its pot in order to place it in the largest hole.

  ‘Hi there,’ Peter says. ‘Are you making a garden?’

  ‘Not really,’ Olof says. ‘We just wanted to see what’s going on with the soil around here.’

  ‘The thing is, we have our suspicions,’ Lennart adds.

  Peter sits down cross-legged beside them and looks at the items laid out on the ground. A trowel, an almost empty bag of compost, a bucket containing several litres of water, a wrinkled potato with two or three eyes protruding from the skin, a packet of dill seeds.

  Olof follows his gaze: ‘You use what you have, as Kajsa Warg said.’

  Lennart pours a little water into the hole and Olof inserts the plant, a pelargonium, then both of them backfill with compost before watering it again. Peter watches the procedure and allows himself to forget that the field is endless. There is something restful in watching the two men work steadily, as if the world were normal, and all you had to do was carry on pottering as usual.

  However, as Lennart and Olof place the wrinkled potato in the ground and begin to fill in the hole, Peter can’t help asking: ‘What kind of suspicions?’

  Lennart looks up at Peter as if he doesn’t understand what he’s referring to, but then he remembers his last remark. ‘We think that something isn’t quite right about the soil here. It seems to be full of nutrients, yet nothing is growing. Apart from the grass.’

  ‘So what do you think that means?’

  Lennart shrugs. ‘It could be toxic in some way.’

&n
bsp; ‘Or it doesn’t work like any soil we’ve ever come across,’ Olof says.

  Peter has the impression that there is something they’re not telling him. They are very pleasant, yet there is a part of him that is frightened by them. They are so impenetrable; theoretically, they could be sitting on all kinds of secrets.

  He pushes the thought aside and tentatively asks: ‘Listen, guys, I don’t suppose you have any sweets I could buy? My wife…’ Peter stops, blinks and corrects himself. ‘Isabelle suffers from an illness which means she needs sugary things.’

  Lennart and Olof look at one another, and after a silent conversation Olof raises his eyebrows meaningfully at Lennart, who sighs. ‘Yes, we probably have.’

  Olof leans on Lennart’s shoulder for support as he gets to his feet and moves towards the caravan. Lennart glances shyly at Peter before calling after Olof: ‘Just half, okay?’

  Olof holds up a hand to reassure Lennart, who nods and turns back to Peter. ‘I’m sorry to be so mean, but it’s our Friday treat, so to speak.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The thing is, we have a packet of Twist and we always…’ All at once Lennart seems embarrassed, and pokes at the soil around the pelargonium as he goes on. ‘It’s a bit of a special occasion.’

  Tears spring to Peter’s eyes: ‘I’m sorry, of course you must keep your sweets. Isabelle will be fine.’

  ‘No, no,’ Lennart insists. ‘We’re happy to share. One sweet can make a special occasion, after all, if Isabelle needs our help.’

  The tears are no longer pricking, but Peter has a lump in his throat, and that lump is made up of loss. When he was a little boy, a packet of Twist was a treasure worth waiting for, and he could make it last for days, but that has been replaced by pleasures that cost a thousand times more, yet give him only a fraction of the satisfaction. He has lost something that Lennart and Olof have managed to hold on to.

  ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ Lennart says, ‘but you look upset. What’s wrong?’

  Peter has a sudden urge to tell him everything. If Olof had asked, he might well have done so. Lennart somehow has a thicker skin and a less inviting embrace, so Peter merely shakes his head and thinks: Nothing exists and the field is endless.

  Packets of Twist and the memory of packets of Twist and the feeling evoked by the memory of packets of Twist and the thoughts arising from the feeling evoked by the memory of packets of Twist—it’s all essentially meaningless if nothing exists and the field is endless. Peter straightens his shoulders and when Olof returns he takes the plastic bag holding a dozen or so sweets that Olof offers him.

  ‘I hope that will be enough,’ Olof says, getting down on his knees once more.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Peter says, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, but Lennart pulls a face and waves his hand dismissively.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says. ‘It would be silly to accept payment for such a little thing. And anyway, what use is money out here?’

  Peter aborts the unnecessary gesture; his wallet is in the caravan anyway. He sits there in silence as Lennart and Olof scatter the dill seeds in the smallest and shallowest hole. Their movements are so much in tune, their closeness so self-evident. When they have finished, Peter says: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry, but…how come you’re camping together like this?’

  Lennart and Olof look at him with raised eyebrows, and Peter feels obliged to elucidate: ‘I mean, it’s a bit unusual, that’s all.’ Perhaps he has destroyed the warm atmosphere; he doesn’t know how sensitive the issue might be.

  To his relief, Lennart simply says: ‘Our wives, Ingela and Agnetha, went on holiday together. To the Canaries. And when they came back…after a week or so…they just zoomed off. Both of them.’

  The expression is so odd that Peter feels the need to repeat it: ‘Zoomed off?’

  ‘Yes. They must have talked it over while they were down there, and decided that was what they were going to do. And so they zoomed off. In different directions.’

  ‘Seven years ago,’ Olof chips in.

  ‘But…You don’t just…zoom off, surely?’ Peter says.

  ‘Well, no,’ Lennart agrees. ‘I don’t suppose you do. But that’s what they did.’

  ‘That meant we were both on our own,’ Olof says. ‘And gradually we decided that…how shall I put it? That we didn’t need to be alone. Not when we got on so well.’

  Lennart doesn’t seem to have any objections to this explanation; he nods thoughtfully, and Peter finds himself doing the same. He has more questions, but can’t think of a way of asking them without overstepping the mark, so they all sit there quietly for a while, nodding in unison, until they are interrupted by the crash as Stefan falls off his chair.

  *

  The bread bin is a sorry sight. It contains nothing but three dried-up slices of white bread, the kind that tastes good only if it is toasted. Carina considers making French toast instead. Then she remembers that they need to save the camping stove for essentials, in case they don’t get the gas hose back.

  She butters the bread and slices cheese, glancing over at Emil, who is sitting at the kitchen table playing with his Lego. Carina has realised that she must proceed with caution. The issue of the hose is sensitive in a way she doesn’t yet understand.

  As she places the sandwiches in front of Emil with a glass of lukewarm milk, there is a thud on the roof as if Stefan is jumping on it. Emil looks up.

  ‘What’s Daddy doing?’

  ‘He’s trying to get his phone to work.’

  Emil takes a bite of his sandwich. ‘So he can make calls.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is he going to call the police?’

  Carina doesn’t know what to say. Who should they ring? The person who marked their caravans with a cross. It’s a pity whoever it was didn’t leave a number.

  ‘The fire brigade,’ Emil says and Carina smiles, which makes him add: ‘The bank. And the hairdresser.’

  Carina knows that Stefan’s main aim is to call his parents and reassure them. She has no one to call. No one at all. Both of her parents are dead, and she no longer has anything to do with her friends from the past. In any case, quite a lot of them are either dead or in jail. The people she has in her life are right here with her.

  Emil manfully chews the dry sandwich. He can’t help pulling a face when he takes a sip of the tepid milk, but he doesn’t say a word. There is one slice of bread left, plus half a packet of crispbread.

  We have to find a way out of here.

  Carina’s thoughts return to the impossible. To the fact that they are here at all, that they have been removed. Deleted. She picks up a piece of Lego, then three more. She stares at them in the palm of her hand, imagining a hand that lifted the caravans in just the same way, then dropped them on this incomprehensible field.

  It is so counterintuitive that another possibility flashes through her mind: that she has got it wrong. That in fact it’s all very simple; it’s about a way of looking at things. An ant can grasp only two dimensions; if it is placed on a ball, it cannot understand that it will return to its starting point if it just keeps on walking. Something along those lines. Grasping the concept of a ball when a ball is an unknown entity. But how can you imagine something that you can’t imagine?

  ‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’

  Emil has finished his sandwich, and Carina realises that she must have been out of it for a few minutes. Her hand is tightly clamped around the Lego pieces, and when she tries to put them down, they stick to her skin for a couple of seconds before they drop, leaving red marks behind.

  ‘Nothing, sweetheart. I’m just thinking, that’s all.’

  ‘Shall we build something?’

  There isn’t a sound from the roof, so Carina assumes that Stefan is still trying to get through. She doesn’t want to go anywhere until he comes back and is there for Emil, so she nods. ‘What shall we make?’

  ‘A fortress. A strong fortress,’ E
mil says, placing the base in the middle of the table. He begins to construct a square frame. ‘With thick walls so it can withstand the attack.’

  Carina selects pieces of different colours and adds them to the base. She leaves a space on one side, but Emil pushes in a couple of pieces and closes the gap.

  ‘Don’t we need a door?’ Carina asks.

  Emil shakes his head. ‘We’re not having a door.’ He picks up three knights, puts them inside the square and carries on building up the walls.

  Carina points to the trio. ‘So how did they get in, if there’s no door?’

  Emil looks at her, raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, as if he can’t understand how he has ended up with such a silly mummy. ‘Obviously there was a door,’ he explains. ‘But they’ve sealed it up.’

  ‘Okay. And why have they done that?’

  Emil sighs. ‘I told you. Because of the attack.’ His voice takes on a pedagogical tone beyond his years as he adds: ‘The door is the weakest point.’

  Carina slots in a few more pieces so that the frame is two bricks high before she asks another question: ‘What kind of attack are we talking about here?’

  Emil stops building and twists a Lego brick between his fingers. ‘They don’t know. That’s what’s so terrible.’ His expression is grim as he resumes construction.

  ‘What…?’ Carina begins, but Emil interrupts her. ‘No, Mummy. We have to finish the fortress. Keep building.’

  They work in silence until the frame is four bricks high and the knights begin to disappear behind the walls. Carina points to them again: ‘Won’t they have problems in there? What about food and water? How will they manage?’

  ‘It will be hard,’ Emil confirms. ‘But if they stick together, everything will be all right.’ He leans forward and peers over the wall, then suddenly looks up at Carina. ‘Mummy, what lives on blood?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘Well…you know about vampires.’

  ‘Mmm. Like in Twilight. But in real life?’

  ‘There are various insects, I suppose. And there’s a species of bat that…’

  ‘Bigger. Is there anything bigger that actually lives on blood?’