Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  If Anders had had the energy to be surprised, he would have been surprised by what happened next. Elin exhaled, a long, deep sigh, and her body slumped, relaxed. She nodded slowly and said, ‘I knew it. Deep down.’

  Anders put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. The white flashes flared up and disappeared.

  It’s better to know. It’s better…

  He must have fallen asleep for a few seconds, because he only woke up when he was about to fall over sideways. Elin said quietly, ‘Go to bed.’

  Anders stood up, took one step and collapsed on Maja’s bed. He laid his head on the pillow, scrabbled for the quilt and managed to pull it over him. As he was falling asleep he heard Elin say, ‘Thank you. For coming after me. For helping me.’

  He parted his lips to answer, but before the words had time to emerge he was asleep again.

  A child was screaming. A single long, wailing note.

  Screaming is the wrong word, wailing is the wrong word. Child is the wrong word. It was the monotone sound of pure fear that a human being can produce when it is trapped in a corner, and the thing it is most afraid of in all the world is approaching inexorably. The tongue is not used, the lips are not used, it is only air being forced out of the lungs and resonating through a closed-up throat. A single note, the primeval note that quivers through the breastbone as death approaches.

  Anders woke up and saw everything through a fog. The room was still dark, and the sound was coming from the big bed. It was so horrible that he was terrified as well. He curled up inside himself, pulled the quilt more tightly around him. The sound continued to pour out of Elin. Something was frightening her out of her wits.

  He heard steps on the porch, then someone was banging on the door. Three hard, sharp blows. Elin’s long drawn-out scream became a little louder and penetrated Anders’ body like a vibration, transmitted itself to him and made him start shaking.

  Something sensible within him stared at the axe propped up by the door, told him he ought to dash over and grab it, but blind fear anchored his body to the bed.

  It’s the GB-man. The GB-man is coming.

  The outside door was smashed open and Anders pulled the quilt over his head. His teeth were chattering and he pulled his feet up, not one tiny part of him must be visible outside the quilt.

  The axe! Get the axe!

  Heavy steps moved through the hallway, but he was incapable of movement. Through a tiny gap in his cocoon he looked at the axe and his will reached out for it, but his body refused. Elin’s song of horror went up another notch and Anders’ buttocks suddenly felt warm as he shat himself.

  Steps through the living room and then Henrik’s voice, ‘Hellooo? Anyone home?’

  Do something! Do something!

  He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. Silence fell. The footsteps stopped as well. There was the stench of excrement under the quilt. Despite the fact that he didn’t want to, he opened his eyes again and peeped out through the gap.

  Henrik and Björn were standing in the room. Henrik had his knife in his hand, Björn was holding a bucket, a white plastic bucket full of water.

  I’m dreaming. This isn’t real. If it were real I’d do something.

  Like a child Anders pinched his arm hard so that he would wake up, but Henrik and Björn were still standing there. They were facing the big bed, from which Elin’s note of terror continued to pour out into the room.

  Anders stayed put as they dragged Elin out of the bed and said, ‘Sorry, darling, this can’t go on any longer. You know what they say about pretty girls, don’t you? They make graves.’

  He bit his knuckles as they dragged her into the middle of the floor and forced her head down into the plastic bucket. Björn grasped her legs while Henrik held the back of her neck in an iron grip, pushing her head further down into the bucket so that the water surged over the sides. Her legs jerked, but Björn held her ankles firmly, pressing them against the floor.

  A muffled scream could be heard from the bucket and bubbles rose up, making the water splash on to the floor. Elin’s body suddenly arched, then slumped and lay still. Henrik wound her hair around his hand and yanked her head up out of the bucket. He looked at her face and said regretfully, ‘Fifteen minutes…I don’t think I would have said no,’ at which point he let go. Elin’s face hit the floor with a wet crunch.

  As if on a given signal they turned towards the little bed. Anders curled up into a tighter ball and gnawed the skin off his knuckles. ‘Please,’ he whimpered. ‘Please. Don’t hurt me. I’m so little.’

  Henrik walked over to him and ripped off the quilt. ‘Little children, how they suffer.’ He raised his eyebrows as if he were pleased with himself, and clicked his fingers. ‘That’s just perfect, isn’t it?’

  He grabbed hold of Anders’ shoulder, but withdrew his hand as if he’d had a shock. An expression of revulsion distorted his face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Björn. ‘He’s shat himself, has he?’

  Henrik contemplated Anders as he lay there with the only weapon he had left: his pleading eyes. Henrik gazed into them as if he were searching for something. Björn came over to the bed and put the bucket down. There was something in it, something that was making the small amount of water that was left move around. Something invisible.

  Björn looked at Henrik and said, ‘Is he hidden?’

  Henrik nodded and squatted down by the bed. Anders exhaled in a trembling, panting breath, and Henrik looked as if he was about to throw up when the smell hit his face. Without speaking to Anders, he said, ‘So how did you find out?’

  ‘What shall we do?’ asked Björn.

  ‘Nothing we can do,’ said Henrik. ‘Just at the moment.’

  He glanced down into the bucket and seemed happy with what he saw. Something was whirling around down there, splashing about. Henrik stood up, towering over Anders. He leaned down and whispered in his ear, ‘You can’t be here either, little Maja. We’ll take you too, in time.’

  Björn picked up the bucket and they left the room. Anders heard their footsteps moving through the living room and the hallway. Then the outside door closed. He lay there motionless, staring at Elin’s lifeless body on the floor, the strands of her wet hair radiating out from her head like black sunbeams.

  His fear of the GB-man. The way he’d recited words from Alfie Atkins, the fact that he had started making bead pictures, that all he wanted to do was lie in her bed reading about Bamse. I’m so little.

  He finally understood what it meant: Carry me.

  2

  Possessed

  As long as the little boat can sail

  As long as the heart can beat

  As long as the sun sparkles

  On the blue billows

  EVERT TAUBE—AS LONG AS THE LITTLE BOAT CAN SAIL

  Bodies in the water

  Beware of the sea, beware of the sea

  The sea is so big, the sea is so big…

  Taking care of business

  The dawn came creeping behind the eastern islands and a glimpse of the sun was just appearing between the windblown pine trees on Botskär. Anders was standing right on the end of Simon’s jetty, squinting into the approaching light. Despite his scarf and padded jacket he was frozen, and couldn’t stop his body from shaking. He jumped as Simon dropped a chain in the boat behind his back. He tried to find a point of warmth inside himself, tried to find Maja. There was nothing there, and he felt like the sloughed-off skin of a human being. He turned around.

  The chain lay in a heap in the prow of Simon’s boat. In the stern lay Elin. He couldn’t remember why they had decided to wrap her in two black plastic sacks with parcel tape wound around them. He wished they hadn’t done that, would have preferred her empty, staring eyes to the person-shaped package on the deck. It looked horrible, and he didn’t want to go anywhere near it. ‘Are we really going to do this?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I think it’s the only thing we can do.’

&nbs
p; With half-dried excrement smeared over his legs, Anders had crept to the telephone and called Simon. Simon had come, placed a tea towel over Elin’s face and helped Anders to wash himself. Then they had sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, staring out of the window until a lone pink cloud drifted across the sky, a starting flag for the new day.

  There were two possible courses of action.

  Nobody would believe that two dead teenagers had turned up and drowned Elin in a bucket. On the other hand, as far as everybody was concerned, there had been no sign of Elin since the fire.

  Therefore, one possibility was to come up with a different story: a story that would be closely scrutinised under interrogation, since this was a murder. Would Anders be able to stick to a made-up story when the police started questioning him? Probably not.

  Which left the other possibility. To get rid of Elin and pretend it had never happened.

  After Simon had argued back and forth for some time, mostly with himself, they agreed that this was the lesser of two evils.

  Anders took the torch and went out to the shed to fetch a couple of plastic sacks. Once inside he stopped, and his knees gave way. He had a bowling ball stuck in the middle of his chest. A black, shining sphere of guilt. He had done nothing when they were murdering Elin, he had just stayed in his bed and watched.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ he whispered.

  Say it once, twice, a thousand times. Eventually you might believe it.

  He was finding it difficult to breathe, because the bowling ball was in the way, pressing on his lungs. Stiffly he swept the torch over the walls of the shed, and caught sight of the plastic bottle.

  Wormwood…

  He unscrewed the top, raised the bottle to his mouth and took two swigs. If there was a thought in his head it was burn away. What was to be burned away he had no idea. Maybe it was the ball, maybe it was he himself. The liquid coursed down his throat and he waited for the fire, but the fire did not come.

  This wormwood was not dissolved in alcohol but in something else, and the substance running down into Anders’ stomach had a thick, slippery consistency. Like oil. Only when he had finished swallowing did the taste come. It didn’t explode on his palate as it had at Anna-Greta’s, but came creeping along and squeezed his tongue, his palate, his throat, his chest.

  Anders sank down into a crouching position as the upper part of his body was turned inside out. He lost all feeling in his fingers, and his breathing stopped.

  Cramp. Cramp in my lungs. I’m going to die.

  Poison. Not the instantaneous shock of a toxin that compels the body to spit it out immediately, but the treacherous effect of something that slips down and takes root, spreads through the bloodstream and kills.

  Anders pressed his hands to his temples and his brain crackled with discharging electricity. He took a deep breath, and discovered that he could do it. His lungs were not paralysed, he had actually been holding his breath. The air he inhaled brought his tastebuds to life, and he was wormwood. It tasted so vile that it wasn’t a taste at all, it was a state of being. He grabbed hold of the workbench and pulled himself to his feet.

  I am wormwood.

  The ball in his chest was gone. The revolting taste had encased it, and it had shrunk and disappeared. He blinked and blinked again, trying to focus his gaze. He fixed on a piece of rope with a frayed end. He shone the torch on it and he could see every single fibre. There were fifty-seven threads.

  Fifty-seven. The same age as Dad was when he died. The same number of screws and plugs as there were in the cupboard Cecilia and I bought from IKEA for the bedroom. The same number of centimetres as Maja’s height when she was two months old. The same…

  The outlines of everything perceived by the eye of the torch were blurred, yet at the same time all too clear. He wasn’t seeing the objects, he was seeing what they were. He reached out for the roll of plastic sacks and knew there were eight sacks left on the roll and together they would hold one thousand six hundred litres.

  One thousand six hundred litres of things. Leaves, twigs, toys, tins of paint, tools, gramophones, pairs of glasses, pine cones, microwave ovens. One thousand six hundred litres of things…

  As he picked up the roll he found a still point inside his head, a rock in the river where he could stand and think clearly as everything flowed past and around him.

  Take the bags. Go to the house.

  That was what he did. As the world continued to come adrift, dissolve and pour through him, he stood on the rock and watched his hands helping Simon to dress Elin’s body in plastic for this final journey. Then the perception grew weaker and he began to shiver.

  Anders crouched down in the prow, as far away from the plastic bundle as possible. Simon had to sit with his feet pushed underneath Elin’s thighs in order to fit in the driving seat.

  How can he do this.

  Simon’s lips were clamped together and his forehead was furrowed, as if he were concentrating hard the whole time. But he was doing it. Anders realised he ought to be grateful, but he had no room for any such emotions. The world had frayed like the rope in the shed.

  Simon started the engine and they set off from Domarö, rounded North Point and set their course for the bay between Kattholmen and Ledinge. There was a light breeze, and Anders fixed his gaze on the horizon as the rising sun warmed his cheek.

  A dozen or so metres ahead of the boat a gull took off from the surface of the water and soared away with a scream. Anders followed it with his eyes, saw it cross the disc of the sun and disappear in the direction of Gåvasten.

  Daddy…

  How many early mornings had Anders lain in the prow of his father’s boat as the sun rose, on their way to the fishing grounds to lift their nets? Forty? Fifty?

  Daddy…

  He hadn’t thought properly about his father for a long time. With the fleeing gull and the rising sun, it all came back. Including that time.

  That time…

  Fishing for herring

  The summer Anders turned twelve he was saving up for a radio-controlled boat. He had seen it in the toy shop in Norrtälje, and had been seduced by the fantastic picture on the box. The white hull racing across the water, the blue go-faster stripes along the side. It cost three hundred and fifty kronor, and it would be his before the summer was over.

  It wasn’t impossible. He and his father would lay their net twice a week, then Anders would sell the fish outside the shop. Six kronor a kilo, and he got half. So the boat represented one hundred and seventeen kilos of herring, he had worked out. With one krona left over.

  He was no Uncle Scrooge, saving every krona he earned, but he had managed to put away one hundred and ninety kronor. Every catch brought between thirty and forty kilos, but by the time it got towards the end of June and the herring were beginning to move further out to sea, each catch was slightly smaller. He still needed to sell fifty kilos of fish, and they were unlikely to put the net out more than twice before the end of the season.

  So that was the first thing Anders thought about when he woke up that morning: fifty kilos.

  He got out of bed and dug his fishing clothes out of the bottom drawer. The smell alone would have given his mother palpitations. Both his jeans and pullover were covered in old scales and dried roe, and had approximately the same aroma as the dried pieces of fish you give to dogs.

  Finally he put on his cap. It was a cap with a logo from the shipyard in Nåten where his father worked, and it too was so full of scales and solidified herring gunge that a dog could probably have eaten it just as it was.

  Anders liked his outfit. When he put it on he was no longer Anders-nobody-in-particular, he was Anders the fisher boy. This was not something he could share with his friends from the city, and he made sure he changed his clothes before he sat down outside the shop. But in the mornings when they were all still sleeping, he was just his father’s son, the fisher boy, and he liked that.

  It was a fine morning. Anders and his fathe
r sat opposite each other at the kitchen table with a cup of hot chocolate and a cup of coffee respectively, looking out towards the bay, which was dead calm. The reflector in Gåvasten lighthouse was bouncing back the first rays of the sun. The odd cloud drifted across the sky like swansdown on a puddle.

  They each ate a sandwich and finished their drinks. Then they put on their lifejackets and went down to the boat. Dad cranked up the compression ignition engine, and it started first time. At the beginning of the summer Anders had asked to have a go, and had been frightened by the recoil in the crank handle when the engine didn’t fire. He left it to Dad after that.

  Fine weather. The engine started straight away. Good omens. Fifty kilos.

  He knew they wouldn’t get fifty kilos today, that had only happened to him once, last summer, and that had been right at the beginning of June. But thirty. Thirty would do. From now on he was going to save every single krona.

  They rounded North Point and came out into the sunlit stretch of Ledinge Bay, where a slight breeze was blowing from the east. The low-lying sun had just freed itself from the tops of the pine trees on Ryssholmen, and was celebrating by spreading its light across the rippling surface of the sea. Anders sat by the gunwale, trailing his fingers in the water. It was already warm enough to swim, varying between seventeen and nineteen degrees depending on the wind.

  He moved into the prow and lay down full length on the wood warmed by the sun, gazing towards the spot where they had laid their net, in the narrow inlet between Ledinge and the Ledinge skerry. When he screwed up his eyes he thought he could make out the flag marking the location of the net.

  The gentle chugging of the engine was making him sleepy, so he rubbed his eyes and thought about the radio-controlled boat. How far could it go before it lost contact with the remote control? Fifty metres? A hundred? How fast did it go? Probably faster than Dad’s boat at any rate, he thought as they glided towards the inlet.