Harbor

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Anna-Greta pointed to the east.

  ‘Do you know about the wreck? On the rocks on Ledinge? There were bits left when I was young, but it’s all gone now. That was his boat. I don’t know what he did to…annoy it. But at any rate his boat was found there eventually. Way inland, up on a hill. Smashed to pieces.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Simon. ‘Did you say he was from the western part of the village?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘That’s what I’m getting at. His house and all the houses around it…disappeared. A storm came from the west. And as you know perfectly well: storms don’t come from the west, from the mainland. It’s not possible. But this one did. It came in the night, blew up to hurricane force in a moment. Eight houses were… smashed to kindling. Five people died. Three of them were children who didn’t get away in time.’

  She uttered the last sentences with her gaze firmly fixed on Anders. ‘Plus the man who set out in the first place. The one who started it all.’ When Anders didn’t say anything she added, ‘And you know what happened to Domarö even further back in the past. We told you that yesterday.’

  Anders grabbed the bottle and took another couple of swigs. He didn’t respond. Anna-Greta’s face was distorted into an expression somewhere between sympathy and rage—more of a grimace, really.

  ‘I understand how you feel,’ she said. ‘Or at least…I can guess. But it’s dangerous. Not only for you. For everyone who lives here.’ She reached across the table and placed her hand on the back of Anders’ hand, which was ice cold. ‘I know this sounds terrible, but…I saw you standing looking at the anchor yesterday. In Nåten. There are many people who have drowned, who have disappeared…naturally, if I can put it like that. Maja could have been one of them. You could look at it like that. And forgive me for saying this, but…you have to look at like that. For your own sake. And everyone else’s.’

  The handover (we are secret)

  Anders was sitting on the edge of the bed in the guest room. Among all the pictures that had flashed through his mind during the course of the evening, there was one that wouldn’t go away, that left him no peace.

  She hasn’t got her snowsuit.

  He had brought it up from the kitchen and hung it carefully over the back of the wooden chair by the window. Now he had it in his arms as he rocked back and forth.

  She’ll be freezing, wherever she is.

  If he could only dress her in her snowsuit, if he could only do that. He caressed the slightly worn fabric, the patch with Bamse and the jars of honey.

  Simon and Anna-Greta had gone to bed an hour ago. Anders had offered to sleep on the sofa downstairs if they…wanted to be alone on their wedding night, if they didn’t want anyone nearby. The offer had been met with an assurance that it was absolutely fine to have someone nearby, that as far as the wedding night was concerned, this was a night like any other. A quiet night.

  Anders hugged the snowsuit, torn between two worlds. A normal world, where his daughter had drowned two years ago and become one of those lost at sea, a world where you could talk about sleeping on the sofa and receive an indulgent reply, where people got married and put on a buffet.

  And then there was the other world. The one where Domarö lay in the arms of dark forces that held the island in an iron grip. Where you had to watch every step and be prepared to be torn away from relationships at any moment. So that not everything will disappear.

  Bamse, Bamse, Bamse…

  That was probably why Maja had always liked the stories about Bamse so much. There were problems, there were baddies and there were those who were stupid. But it was never really dangerous. There was never any real doubt about how you ought to behave. Everybody knew. Even Croesus Vole. He was a baddie because he was a baddie, not because he was splintered and anxious.

  And Bamse. Always on the side of good. Protector of the weak, unfailingly honest.

  But he really loves fighting…

  Anders snorted. Bamse was much more interesting in Maja’s version. A bear who means well, but can’t help getting into a fight as soon as he gets the chance.

  Just like Maja.

  Yes, perhaps. Perhaps it was because she broke the songs that she broke things as well. They had to become splintered, to become like her. But more interesting.

  Anders took out one of the Bamse comics he had brought with him and found that the story was ridiculously appropriate for what was going on. Little Leap wins a holiday in a ski resort. The hotel turns out to be haunted. The ghost seems to be after Little Leap, but Shellman understands, as always.

  He builds a machine that makes a Little Leap costume drop down over the invisible ghost. The ghost sees himself in the mirror and stops being horrible. He wasn’t after Little Leap at all. He just wanted to be like him.

  Anders felt something switch off inside his head while he was reading the story; he came back to himself only when he put the comic down.

  I am the costume. The apparition.

  He wanted to sleep. He wanted Maja to take over and give him some kind of guidance. Before he undressed he placed the chair next to the bed. On the chair he placed a pen and an open notepad. Then he drank three gulps of water, got undressed, climbed into bed and snapped his eyes shut.

  It didn’t take many minutes of keeping his eyes screwed tightly shut to realise that he was wide awake. There was absolutely no chance of falling asleep, however much he wanted to. He sat up and leaned back against the wall.

  What shall I do? What can I do?

  The paper on the chair glowed white, and his eyes were drawn towards it. The clarity of his vision shifted. He was seeing in a different way. For a fraction of a second he managed to think: I am seeing through my eyes, and then he was no longer a part of himself.

  A creaking sound brought him back to his body. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but he found himself sitting on the floor with the Bamse comic in front of him and the pen in his hand. The quilt was in a heap on the bed.

  The comic was open at a short story, just two pages, which was called ‘Brumma’s Secret Friends’. Brumma hid in the cupboard under the sink and made friends with the brush and shovel. When Mummy shouted for Brumma, the brush was terrified; it said, ‘We are secret, secret’, and turned back into an ordinary brush.

  There were drawings on the pages. Lines and shapes on every available surface. No letters. The only thing Anders could in any way interpret as meaningful was a zigzag line across several frames, which looked more like a temple than anything else.

  Was there a reason why this particular story had been chosen, or was it just a coincidence, like the story of the haunted hotel? Had Maja just been reading and drawing, as she used to do sometimes?

  The creaking sound came again, this time just outside the door. Anders gave a start and pulled the quilt towards him, threw it over his head and curled up, lay as still as still could be. The handle was pushed down tentatively and the door opened. Anders stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  ‘Anders?’ Simon’s voice was no more than a whisper. The door closed behind him. ‘What are you doing?’

  Simon was standing in front of him in his dressing gown as Anders crawled out from under the quilt. ‘I was scared.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Anders waved in the direction of the bed, but stayed where he was on the floor with the quilt round his shoulders. Simon sat down on the bed and looked at the comic. ‘Have you been drawing?’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ said Anders. ‘I don’t know anything about anything.’

  Simon linked his hands together and leaned forward. He took a deep breath. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking things over. There’s a lot to say, but I’ll start with a question. Would you like Spiritus?’

  ‘The insect? In the matchbox?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it might protect you. The thing is, Anna-Greta and I are going away tomorrow. I don’t like the idea of you being… unprotected.’

  ‘Didn’t you say
it involved some kind of pact?’

  Simon took the matchbox out of his dressing-gown pocket. ‘Yes. And I don’t know what that really means. But I think something pretty awful happens when you die.’

  ‘And you want to give it to me.’

  Simon turned the box over in his hands. A faint sound of scraping and ticking could be heard from inside as the larva shifted its position.

  ‘I have been afraid. You enter into some form of pact with what is deep and dark in the world. I have regretted doing so. But I couldn’t help myself. I was stupid, to put it mildly.’

  Simon fingered the unfamiliar wedding ring and went on, ‘But I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t believe it could help you. Whatever is after you has something to do with water, and this…can tame water.’

  Anders looked at the box in Simon’s hand; his eyes moved up over the green towelling of the dressing gown and stopped at Simon’s face, which suddenly looked immensely old and tired. The hand holding the box was almost touching the floor, as if the insect weighed a hundred times more than its appearance suggested.

  ‘What shall I do?’ asked Anders.

  Simon drew the hand holding the box towards him and shook his head. ‘Do you know what you’re getting into?’

  ‘No,’ said Anders. ‘But it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. At all.’

  Now Simon had got what he wanted, he seemed to be struck by remorse. Perhaps he didn’t want to expose Anders to the risks involved after all. Perhaps he didn’t want to be parted from his magical Spiritus. He ran his thumb distractedly over the boy on the box.

  ‘You have to spit,’ he said eventually. ‘Into the box. You have to give it saliva. And you have to keep on doing that every single day for as long as you live. Or until you…pass it on.’

  Anders gathered saliva in his mouth. After a while he nodded to Simon and took the box from him, pushed it open. Anders allowed the gob of saliva to emerge from his lips, to drip down…

  ‘No, wait!’ said Simon. ‘Let’s not—’

  But it was too late. The tear-shaped, bubbling gob had already left Anders’ mouth and fell straight on to the insect’s leathery skin just as Simon’s hand reached out.

  Anders had thought nothing could taste more disgusting than the wormwood concentrate. He was wrong. Whatever penetrated his mouth now and spread throughout his body had a non-physical dimension that a taste could never match. As if he had bitten into a piece of rotten meat and at the same moment become the meat.

  He opened and closed his mouth in a series of dry retches and his body shook in small convulsions, causing the box to fall from his grasp. Simon sat on the bed with his hands covering his face as Anders slumped sideways, clutching his stomach. He vomited and vomited without anything coming out of him.

  The box was lying roughly twenty centimetres in front of him. A round black shape appeared over the edge, and the next moment the whole insect was out of the box. It had grown. Its skin was shiny and its body was moving smoothly across the floor, heading for Anders’ lips. It wanted more of this manna, directly from the source.

  Even though he felt so ill, Anders managed to sit up so that the insect couldn’t find its way into his mouth. With trembling hands he placed the box over it and slid it shut without harming the insect.

  There was a great deal of activity inside the box, and it moved across the floor in jerks and thrusts. Anders swallowed a bubble of vileness and asked, ‘Is it angry?’

  ‘No,’ said Simon. ‘Just the opposite, I should think.’

  He looked into Anders’ eyes. For a long time. Something happened between them, and Anders nodded.

  Before Simon left the room he said, ‘Take care of yourself.’ He pointed at Anders, at the matchbox. ‘That only happens the first time. The taste.’

  Anders sat on the floor watching Spiritus bounce around in his little prison like some kind of morbid toy.

  He still didn’t know what he was going to do or how he was going to do it, but one thing he did know: during that long look, Simon had given his approval. Do what you have to do.

  Anders conquered his revulsion and cupped his hand over the box. The insect calmed down as it felt the warmth of his body, his presence, and he became aware of everything that flowed.

  His body was an immense system of larger and smaller channels, where water ran in the form of plasma. He had learned about this in school: the plasma carried corpuscles, thrombocytes, but he could neither see nor feel those, he could see only cloudy water being pumped around by the heart, out into his arteries, and he saw and knew that he was a tree, all the way out to the most fragile twigs. A tree made of water.

  He was also able to feel very clearly all the water flowing or standing still in the house, although this feeling did not have the same intensity of revelation. The network of water pipes was visible through the walls, just like an X-ray, and the bottles of water he had brought with him…

  Now…now…

  He curled his hand around one of the bottles on the floor as he held his other hand over the matchbox. Yes, he could feel the water in the bottle. But nothing else. It was just the same as with his blood: he could feel only the water, but he felt that all the more strongly.

  He looked at the hand cupped over the box and a couple of lines by the poet Tomas Tranströmer came into his mind. He didn’t really read much poetry, but he had made a start on Tranströmer’s collected poems so many times that he knew the first one by heart.

  In day’s first hours consciousness can grasp the world

  As the hand grips a sun-warmed stone.

  That was exactly how it was, with the reservation that the world his consciousness grasped was the part that consisted of water. He could follow it through the cold-water pipes, feel the drips from the leaking kitchen tap where he lost contact with it for half a second until it joined the thin film of water finding its way into the waste pipe and continuing downwards, out and eventually into a larger body of water that lay outside his range.

  He let go of the box and the perception faded as he moved his hand away, centimetre by centimetre. When the hand reached his face and moved across it, the feeling was gone. He was a person, not a tree.

  It would take less than this to make you lose your mind.

  Once when he was about twenty he had been at a party and had ended up next to a guy who had just swallowed a blue pill. They were sitting at a glass table, and the guy had stared at that table. After a couple of minutes he had started to cry. Anders had asked him why he was crying.

  ‘Because it’s so beautiful,’ he had replied, his voice thick with emotion. ‘The glass. I can see it, do you understand? What it’s made of, what it really is. All the crystals, the strands, the tiny, tiny bubbles of air. Glass, you know? Do you understand how beautiful it is?’

  Anders had looked at the table and had been unable to discover anything special about it, apart from the fact that it was an unusually ugly and clumsy glass table, but he had decided not to mention this. The guy might well have taken something else, because he was found later in a snowdrift into which he had dug his way. The reason he gave was that his blood had begun to boil.

  You could lose your mind.

  Perhaps a human being has the ability to see through glass, as it were, to experience water if we have a tool to help us use our brains and sensory perceptions to the full. But we don’t do it, because of the toll it takes. We refrain, so that we may live.

  Anders took a couple of swigs of water and got back into bed. The powerful experience of becoming aware of the water’s secret life had made him feel exhausted but not sleepy, and for several hours he lay curled up, staring at the wall opposite where the pattern on the wallpaper formed itself into the molecular structures of unknown elements.

  Only when the first light of dawn began to seep in through the window, painting the wallpaper grey, did he begin to drop off. As if from far away he heard the alarm clock ring in Simon and Anna-Greta’s room, and he could see them in
his mind’s eye, getting up and dressing for their short honeymoon.

  Enjoy yourselves, my darlings.

  There was a faint smile on his lips as he fell asleep.

  Those Who Have Turned Away

  Staircases that go upwards although in fact they’re going downwards…

  KALLE SÄNDARE

  Maja

  ‘Let go of me! Let go of me!’

  I don’t like him. He looks horrible. I scream. The other one comes and puts his hand over my mouth. I bite him. It tastes of water. Why don’t Mummy and Daddy come?

  They’re carrying me somewhere. I don’t want to go. I want to go to Mummy and Daddy. I’m too hot. My snowsuit is too hot. We’re going down some steps. I scream again. Nobody can hear me. That’s when I start crying. There are a lot of steps.

  I try to look so that I can remember the way back. There is no way back. There are only steps. And they don’t work.

  I’m crying. I’m not as frightened anymore. I don’t want to scream any more. Just cry.

  Then it gets warmer and something smells nice. They’re not holding me as tightly any more. I’m not struggling. I stop crying.

  The moped

  Anders was already sitting up in bed when he discovered that he was awake. His body was drenched in sweat and his heart contracted; he thought for a moment that he was in a cell. Then he recognised the walls, the pattern on the wallpaper, and realised he was still in the guest room at his grandmother’s house.

  But he had been there, inside Maja’s memory.

  He had felt the fear, the heat, and screamed from the depths of own lungs. He had seen the incomprehensible flight of steps and he had seen Henrik and Björn. Henrik had carried him and Björn had put a hand over his mouth when he screamed.