I Am Behind You

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Majvor would never have thought she was capable of what she has done, and she would never have done it if she hadn’t come to realise that God does not exist here. This place is silent and empty. Therefore, she had to make a choice: stay in this silent, empty reality, or for once follow what her fantasies and her body are telling her to do.

  Will Lockhart’s spurs jingle as he walks beside her, his warm hand holding hers, and she is aware of the manly smells of desert dust, sun and leather. Maybe a touch of horse as well. She glances sideways at him, and when his blue eyes meet hers, she makes up her mind.

  Not Will Lockhart. She will stop thinking of him as Will Lockhart, a vengeful and not particularly nice man. He is James Stewart. James Stewart and no one else.

  ‘James?’

  His hand squeezes hers. ‘Call me Jimmy. Everyone does.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Jimmy?’

  ‘Mmm, Majvor?’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Does it matter?

  Majvor looks towards the horizon. They are heading away from the direction in which the camp lies, away from the rest of the group. She is alone with Jimmy Stewart in a place where no one else exists. Somewhere deep down she knows that this is not real, that she is making this happen.

  But does it matter? If Donald believed the whole thing was a dream and therefore dismissed it, Majvor has decided to embrace the idea instead. Her dreams have come true, so she would be pretty stupid if she didn’t choose to regard them as reality.

  She stops. The jingle of the spurs falls silent as Jimmy stops too. They look at one another. Majvor decides to see how realistic this fantasy is. She takes a step towards him, lifts up her face to be kissed, and he kisses her. She just has time to think it’s a good job the dream isn’t realistic, because Jimmy Stewart would never…

  Then she feels his hands on her body, and she stops thinking, gives herself up to the moment. They undress one another and she lies down on her back on the coarse grass. He kneels between her legs, and when she looks down at his stiff cock she catches sight of her sagging breasts spilling to the sides, the pallid rolls of fat. Tears spring to her eyes.

  This can’t happen.

  Has she ever even dreamt of this? No, this is not part of her fantasy. She might have thought it was—it felt that way when his hands were caressing her, undressing her—but when he parts her legs and she feels his manhood rubbing at her dry labia, seeking a way in, she knows that it was never about this. In fact it is about something completely different.

  She is about to lift her head and tell him when Jimmy, with the help of a little saliva, penetrates her anyway.

  Oh!

  Eventually it will no doubt become clear what it’s all about, but meanwhile….it’s been a long time, and it’s nice to feel that hard, slippery warmth pushing deep inside her. When he begins to thrust, she wraps her arms around his back, opens her eyes wide, looks into his face. Jimmy Stewart. Blue eyes, blue sky.

  A few seconds pass. Something shuts down in her head. She hasn’t dreamt about this; to tell the truth she’s never been all that keen on the sexual side of things. Perhaps she is naive, but her image of romantic love is more like the stories she reads in her magazines. ‘He takes her in his arms, kisses her tenderly, then dot dot dot’, or ‘their hungry bodies found nourishment at last’ or something along those lines. A paraphrase.

  What she and Jimmy Stewart are doing is definitely not a paraphrase. It is thrusting and sweat and her pale, wobbly flesh and it is ugly. She tries to shove Jimmy away, but that makes him push harder, and she feels like crying.

  At last he stops and leaves her lying on the ground, spread out like a flayed rat. And ugly, ugly, ugly. As she crawls around naked, gathering up her clothes, she feels like the ugliest woman in the world. She has given up everything for this.

  By the time she is dressed and on her feet, Jimmy Stewart is several hundred metres away. Only now does Majvor notice the band of darkness resting on the horizon. She turns around and sees her caravan far, far away. She cannot go there.

  She winces as her hand brushes against her aching pudenda. ‘Oh, why is everything so terrible?’

  So what is it you want, Majvor?

  It’s not Jimmy Stewart’s voice. Her innocent fantasy has lost its value now that it is no longer innocent. She could almost weep when she realises she doesn’t even have that any more.

  What do you want?

  Nor is it the voice of God, which has never been this clear. No, it is just Majvor, talking to herself in this empty place where there seems to be nothing left for her.

  What?

  Perhaps she knows something, perhaps she doesn’t. In any case there is only one thing to do. Majvor smoothes down her sweatpants, fastens her sandals and sets off after Jimmy Stewart, heading towards the band of darkness.

  *

  Peter has driven fast this time; he knows where he is going, and even if he had no idea of direction, the pull in his blood would guide him.

  However, when the wall of darkness becomes visible on the horizon, a feeling begins to sprout within him, getting stronger as the wall grows higher and the pull increases. He is empty. He is finished. Everything has been taken away from him, and anything he might have had has been left behind. There is a strange serenity in this knowledge. He allows himself to rest in this serenity, and discovers that he understands Isabelle.

  To disappear. To escape.

  To relinquish one’s will is hard, and requires a particular kind of strength. Under normal circumstances it is virtually impossible, but normal circumstances do not apply here. Help is available here. A weight lifts from Peter’s shoulders as he gives himself up to the pull of the wall, which now fills the entire windscreen. He feels…at peace.

  With only a hundred or so metres to go before he reaches the wall, Peter switches on the radio. After a couple of seconds of silence Jan Sparring starts to sing another Peter Himmelstrand composition. It’s the one about life being good to him; Sparring sings about how much it has given him, everything he ever wanted.

  Peter pulls up but doesn’t switch off the engine. He leaves the radio on and gets out of the car. He tips his head back and gazes at the wall, which reaches right up to the sky.

  He hears Sparring singing still, about how his troubles have been small, quickly passing by, never more than ‘shadows in the sun’.

  Peter takes a few steps forward and the grass in front of him begins to blur. At first he thinks it’s because he is almost inside the darkness, then he realises that his eyes are filled with tears. He knows the song, knows what message it is trying to convey. He keeps on going as Sparring reaches the chorus. Somebody up there must like him, he sings—somebody who gives him all he has.

  Peter lets out a sob and wipes his eyes; the tears are pouring down his cheeks now, dripping onto his shirt. He covers the remaining distance and is immediately embraced by the darkness.

  Just as the glow of a lamp can linger on the retina after it has been switched off, so Jan Sparring’s voice continues to echo in Peter’s ears, even though it was cut off as soon as he stepped into the darkness.

  It is silent here. Pitch black. The only sound is his own breathing. He clicks his fingers, claps his hands. The noise spreads in all directions without bouncing off anything. This place is empty.

  He spins around in a circle, then does another half-turn so that he is facing in the direction from which he came. He thinks. He isn’t sure. He can see nothing. He walks forward a couple of steps without coming out into the light. Goes back. Tries a different direction. Nothing but darkness. With no concept of left and right, backwards and forwards, it is difficult to be sure, but after a minute or so he thinks he has investigated every direction without finding his way out. It could easily be five minutes. The concept of time is also fluid, meaningless. He is lost. He is in the darkness.

  He sits down on the grass which is still grass, but when he runs his hand over the surface it is metal. Or plastic, flesh or st
one. It could be any material at all, depending on what he chooses to believe it is.

  I am in the darkness. Not a darkness which is the absence of light, but the darkness.

  He folds his arms across his chest and rocks back and forth. He is frightened. What is he frightened of? The darkness. Why is he frightened of the darkness? Because of everything it can hide. But this is not that kind of darkness.

  Peter relaxes, manages to take a deeper breath. Then another. He blinks. It makes no difference. Another deep breath. He runs his hand over the tiled floor on which he is sitting. He has come here, he chose to come here, to complete his journey. Free falling. Yes. It is a darkness that resembles free falling.

  He stands up and slides his foot across the smooth floor. Then he begins to walk. He no longer believes that the direction has any relevance. After a dozen or so steps the quality of the sound around him changes, as if it is bouncing off walls close by. He is in a tunnel. At the mouth of the tunnel far away in the distance he can see cars driving along…Sveavägen?

  The Brunkeberg tunnel.

  He carries on with his hands stretched out in front of him, because he is expecting to bump into a wall, but there is no wall, and when he looks over towards Sveavägen he sees only darkness. He keeps on walking.

  Once or twice he catches a glimpse of another place, a way out, but as soon as he tries to focus on it or to move towards it, it is no longer there, perhaps because his efforts are half-hearted. He doesn’t really want to get out. What he is looking for is here.

  Sometimes he thinks he is aware of movement in the darkness, other bodies, but there is nothing to see. Perhaps he is going around in a circle, but he doesn’t think so, because he has started to follow the only trail he can sense: the smell of disinfectant and shower gel, which grows stronger and stronger, until he can just make out a single point of light.

  He stops, rubs his eyes. When he opens them again the light is still there, a lone firefly in the darkness. Perhaps it is very small and very close, or very large and far away. When he starts walking again the light quickly gets bigger, forming a rectangle the size of half a sheet of A4 paper, and after just a few steps he is close enough to read the words written on it.

  ‘Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights!’

  The white paper has an internal glow of its own, enabling Peter to see the worn tiled floor beneath his feet. He falls to his knees and breathes in deeply through his nose, inhaling the smell of the showers, lingering steam and human perspiration. After a second he hears her voice:

  ‘Come on then.’

  She is sitting below the sheet of paper. Sitting or lying. It is impossible to tell, because her body is so immense. She is naked and her white skin flows out across the tiled floor in rolls of fat, oily with sweat, slipping and sliding over one another like whales in a pod. It is difficult to form an impression of her face, because it lies buried in layer upon layer of fat, billowing as she nods invitingly to Peter.

  Somehow it is Anette, but in the guise of the Fat Lady, something way beyond what Anette could be. Something that belongs to the darkness and to Peter’s real desire, which he would never have been able to put into words in the light.

  He shuffles over to her and crawls onto her lap. She wraps her enormous arms around him and he sinks into her flesh. He wants to make love to her, and he will—all in good time. There is plenty of time, an infinite amount of time.

  *

  The campsite is far behind them. When Carina turns around, the caravans and cars look like toys. For a moment she thinks that something terrible will happen as a punishment for turning around, but what could be worse than everything that has already befallen them? She carries on following the tiger, walking two metres ahead of her with its tail swinging from side to side.

  The tiger is my punishment.

  She didn’t understand what Emil meant when he said she had to go, she didn’t know where or why, but the only available guidance when she wanted to do what he said was to follow the tiger. So she followed the tiger.

  To fly. Into the sun. To disappear from the picture.

  All day she has been haunted by images relating to her obliteration. Perhaps it is time to complete the eradication of herself that she attempted in her teenage years, the process that Stefan prevented. Maybe those years with Stefan were merely a pause, and she was on her way here all along.

  These are Carina’s thoughts as she follows the tiger out into the field. That must be the case. There is no one and nothing here but herself and the creature that is the symbol of all the bad stuff she has done. They are walking along together, and it must involve a sacrifice, what else could it be? She is to be sacrificed so that Emil may live.

  She puts one foot in front of the other, her eyes firmly fixed on the tiger’s powerful thigh muscles, rippling beneath the skin, on the tail swishing across the grass like a pendulum measuring out time. They keep on walking, and nothing else happens.

  ‘What do you want?’ Carina asks, and the tiger pricks up its ears. ‘What do you want from me? What do I have to do?’

  The tiger keeps on walking, following the track that leads off into the distance as far as the eye can see. The image of Emil’s broken body comes into Carina’s mind, and she cannot bear it any longer. He might have taken his last breath while his mother is engaged in this seemingly pointless excursion. She spreads her arms wide and yells: ‘What do I have to do, what do I have to do, what do I have to do?’

  The tiger takes no notice of her, and the swishing of the tail does not falter, not even for a fraction of a second. Tick-tock, time is passing. Carina darts forward and grabs hold of the tail, tugs it hard and drops to her knees. The tiger stops, turns around and growls.

  Their faces are level now. The row of sharp white teeth is exposed as the tiger draws back its lips and growls again. Carina holds her breath. Instinct tells her to run! run! run! as the killing machine that is the tiger’s head comes closer, and she tenses every muscle in her body to stop herself from giving in to the impulse.

  The tiger looks at her. She looks at the tiger.

  ‘What?’ Carina shouts. ‘What!’

  The tiger tilts its head on one side as if it is trying to understand what she is saying. Then it sits down and starts meticulously washing its coat.

  *

  The sun is going down and Emil has goose bumps on his arms as he leaves the campsite and follows the track out into a field which is now in shadow. In the middle of the field is a caravan hitched up to a car. Emil has seen cars and caravans like that before, but never together.

  The car is a little round one, the same model as Herbie. Daddy says it’s called a Beetle. The caravan is also small and round, and you could fit two of them inside Emil’s caravan. They turn up on campsites occasionally, and Emil usually stops to have a look at them. They make him laugh, and he thinks it’s funny that this model is called the Egg.

  That is where the track is leading. To the Beetle and the Egg. They are both silver-coloured, and there is a man sitting outside doing something with his hands. As Emil approaches the man looks up and nods to him. This is the first adult who has paid any attention to him, and Emil edges closer. When he is a couple of metres from the man, he stops and says: ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi yourself,’ says the man, who is wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. He is slightly older than Daddy and he has less hair; he looks neither nice nor nasty. He’s just an ordinary man. He shows Emil what he is working on, and Emil sees that it is a piece of knitting. Not an ordinary man after all. Men don’t usually knit.

  ‘It’s getting too dark to do this,’ the man says, putting down the knitting. He looks at Emil. ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was supposed to come here, I think.’

  ‘I see,’ the man says with a sigh. ‘I was actually thinking of packing up and moving on, but…’

  The chair creaks and squeaks as the man gets up and goes over to the door of the caravan. Emil s
ees a glass under the chair, with the dregs of some kind of dark liquid in the bottom and the handle of a paintbrush sticking up above the rim.

  The man is about to open the door when Emil asks: ‘Was it you who painted the crosses? On the caravans?’

  The man shrugs. ‘Of course. That’s what I do.’

  Even though it makes him feel like a little kid, Emil can think of only one question: ‘Why?’

  ‘How should I know? The flaws are there. I paint the crosses, I drive around with the caravan. That’s what I do. Are you going in?’

  He opens the door and at first Emil thinks there is a black curtain hanging just inside. He moves forward, and when he is only a metre or so from the opening he sees that it is not a curtain. Whatever is inside the door isn’t flat, somehow.

  The man leans against the frame. His eyes narrow; he is listening. Then his features soften and he smiles, nods to himself and actually rubs his hands together.

  ‘Well, what do you know,’ he says. ‘It seems as if I need to go in there as well.’

  The man eagerly beckons Emil, but Emil hesitates. Even if he thought really hard, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with a situation that was a more perfect match for everything his mother had warned him against. Unless of course the man said he had sweets or a fluffy bunny rabbit inside the caravan. Something to tempt him. The man isn’t doing that; on the contrary, he seems totally uninterested in Emil, and is completely focused on whatever it was that he heard. When Emil doesn’t move, the man says, ‘Please yourself,’ and turns to go inside.

  ‘Hang on, I’m coming.’

  Emil doesn’t think the man is dangerous, and even if he doesn’t seem all that nice, Emil is glad of some company as he enters whatever is behind the door. His chest is starting to hurt again, so he takes the last few steps up to the caravan.

  No, it’s not a curtain. Behind the door is a darkness so compact that it ought to seep out like runny chocolate mousse. But it stays where it is, and nothing happens to it when the man walks in. However, the man is immediately swallowed up. Emil hurries after him, up the step and into the blackness.