The Shapeshifters

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘It wasn’t until later that evening,’ Mats went on, ‘after the shock had worn off, that we realised how incredibly lucky we had been, and what an unlikely rescuer he was. What kind of creature was he, actually? The following day he was wandering around here on the edge of the forest. It was Monika who saw him. We ran up to him to say thank you. We were overwhelmed, naturally, and happy to have the opportunity to thank him. It wasn’t until then, as we stood there looking at him, no longer in shock, that it occurred to us what a remarkable person he was. And it wasn’t just that he was a dwarf, or whatever you call it, and that he had such an unusual appearance. It was those eyes. And even though it was the middle of the summer he was wearing a thick winter hat and it looked . . . well, it didn’t look normal. He was wearing gloves too, stiff with dirt and mud, and a fingernail was sticking out through one of the fingers. It was absolutely black, that nail. I remember it.

  ‘We invited him for dinner. That was the least we could do. He ate greedily and was totally lacking in table manners. It was as if he had never seen food before. He kind of panted between each mouthful. The children couldn’t take their eyes off him and wanted to know what he was called, which was a reasonable question under the circumstances. I asked him, but he didn’t answer. It seemed like he was mute. We thought he was homeless and asked if he would like to stay with us for a while. He agreed to that, but only if he could stay in the storehouse. So I carried a mattress up here. It was right there,’ he said, pointing. ‘That was his sleeping place.’

  ‘Didn’t he leave anything behind?’ asked Gudrun, looking around. A few of his possessions or anything?’

  Mats shook his head. ‘He didn’t have anything, as far as I know.’ He nodded at the flattened cardboard boxes on the floor. ‘The only thing he left behind was that hole, in the flooring here. But don’t ask me why he did that.’

  ‘A hole?’ repeated Susso.

  ‘There’s a hatch there,’ said Mats, ‘or an opening, rather. The actual lid is missing. That’s probably where they brought up hay in the old days, or grain, I’m not sure. There are planks there so no one falls through, and some old cork flooring underneath. He made a big hole in it.

  ‘Can I have a look?’ asked Susso.

  They knelt down and moved planks, boards of various sizes and a piece of window frame coated with cracked linseed oil. Underneath there was a folded sheet of cork flooring and in the middle was an oval hole with ragged edges. The opening looked down on the top of a dirty wardrobe on the floor below.

  ‘I didn’t discover it until after he left.’

  Susso crouched down and looked.

  ‘As I say, he had no belongings. We let him borrow a torch and Emma gave him a doll, but he left that behind. It sat in the window afterwards, and we thought that looked a bit sad. Like a reminder.’

  Then he added, in a low voice:

  ‘And he left the torch behind too, in fact.’

  Torbjörn had walked warily over to the stairs and was looking at the contents of the plastic boxes stored there.

  ‘What did he do about food?’ he asked. ‘Did he eat with you?’

  Mats shook his head and said in a raised voice that could be heard the length of the loft:

  ‘He really didn’t like to go into the house. We left the food at the bottom of the stairs because that was how he wanted it. He brought the basket up here with him and then put it back on the bottom step when he had eaten the food. It was as simple as that. On Christmas Eve I put a little bottle of schnapps there, but he didn’t touch it. Otherwise he ate everything, even the skin on the potatoes.’

  ‘And how long did he live here?’ Susso asked, brushing her knees after standing up. Mats looked up as he worked it out.

  ‘From summer ’79,’ he said, ‘until spring 1980. May. So it was almost a year. But we hardly saw him. Only a light shining in the window here in the evenings. It seemed he didn’t just use the torch for light but also for entertainment. He would sit here flashing it on and off for hours. When the batteries finally ran out he gave it back and I put in new ones.’

  Mats rubbed his mouth before carrying on.

  ‘Time passed and we . . . well, we didn’t have the heart to turn him out, to be honest. It didn’t feel right when we thought about what he had done for us. So he was allowed to stay. But it had its drawbacks, as I’m sure you understand.’

  Mats raised his brows and sighed.

  ‘We couldn’t invite people round, for example, at least not at night because they might have seen the light out here and started asking questions. We had no idea what we would say. It all sounded so odd.

  ‘Then one day Tomas’s babysitter asked us if we knew there was a little gnome living in our loft, an old man with cat’s eyes who stood looking out of the window all day. She thought it sounded rather frightening and wondered if perhaps Tomas had been watching something unsuitable on television. We realised then that the situation had become unsustainable. So one evening I banged on the door and climbed up here. He was sitting on the mattress, looking at me. Staring, actually. I had never come up to where he lived before. I had quite a shock I can tell you, because it stank. It stank of piss. And he had carried in a load of sticks which he had laid on the floor, and he had even been in the room underneath here and brought things up. Toys. Plastic pots. Old ornaments. I told him it was time for him to move and I offered to drive him wherever he wanted to go. He said he wanted to go to Gränna, and that was the first and only word he ever spoke to me.’

  ‘Gränna?’ Gudrun said.

  Mats nodded.

  ‘He had a slight Finnish accent.’

  He looked down at his shoes, battered deck shoes with dry leather laces that he had tied in loops so big they brushed the dusty floor.

  ‘I thought it was a bit odd that he wanted to go there in particular. But he was very determined about it. I asked if he knew anyone there, and he nodded. We set off the following day. I tried talking to him, because it’s quite a long drive to Gränna. Once it was obvious he could speak, I tried to get him to tell me a little about himself. But all he did was sit in the back and look out of the window. It was like driving a car with a dog. I heard him sitting there panting, and from time to time he moved, or sighed deeply and yawned. When we reached Gränna I let him out on the outskirts of the town. He knew exactly which way to go. I opened the door for him and he leapt out, ran down a path and disappeared onto a headland there, without saying goodbye or even turning round. He just ran. And after that I never saw him again.’

  Mats shrugged his shoulders to indicate the end of his story.

  ‘But where did you drop him off ?’ Susso asked. ‘What was the address?’

  ‘No special address, it was only a bus stop. And then he ran out to the headland. That’s all I know.’

  ‘A headland?’

  ‘Yes. It was close to a lake.’

  ‘But were there any houses there or was it open country?’

  Mats shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. It was so long ago. Almost twenty-five years.’

  ‘You don’t remember the name of the bus stop?’ asked Torbjörn, who was holding onto a roof beam in the middle of the loft space.

  Mats smiled.

  ‘No. I didn’t look. I just wanted to be rid of him.’

  ‘Could you point out on a map where it was?’ Gudrun asked.

  ‘I think so. More or less.’

  Susso pulled her laptop out of her bag. While it was starting up she looked for the cable for the video camera. She rummaged about in her pack, until she felt the plastic against her fingers.

  ‘Right, you can run it now,’ she said, and switched on the camera.

  Mats started the projector. She watched the film through the video camera’s small flip-out screen to avoid having to see the old man directly on the projector screen.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine that he’s mixed up in this kidnapping,’ said Mats. ‘I can’t understand it. After all, he saved Tomas and was al
ways kind to the children—well, he was never directly unkind, anyway. I know he was a bit scary but I simply can’t understand how he could be capable of such a thing.’

  Susso transferred the film to her laptop and saved it on a memory stick, which she inserted into Mats’s laptop and sent to the police inspector.

  ‘Shall we look at a map?’ Gudrun said. ‘So you can show us where you let him out?’

  Mats sat with his neck bowed, clicking the mouse.

  ‘Now let’s see,’ he said slowly. ‘Gränna. Örserum. The 113. Right. Bunnström . . . there’s a beach there. Now then . . . Ekhagen. It has to be there. Can you see where it says Ekhagen?’

  He hovered the cursor over a light-brown headland.

  ‘That’s where it was. By the road here.’

  There were two properties on the headland, but no addresses or telephone numbers.

  ‘You’re going to have to phone National Land Registration,’ said Mats. ‘Or the council.’

  ‘Or a neighbour,’ Susso said. ‘We could phone someone who lives close by, someone whose number we could get hold of.

  ‘There’s no point,’ Gudrun said.

  ‘Why not?’ Susso asked, straightening her glasses.

  ‘If it’s true he isn’t human, or whatever you want to call it, and he knows someone who lives on the headland, do you think they are going to tell you where he is?’

  Susso folded her arms.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘If they hear what he might be mixed up in.’

  Gudrun shook her head.

  ‘We have to go there.’

  ‘To Gränna?’ said Torbjörn, looking at Gudrun.

  ‘An unannounced visit is our only hope,’ she said.

  ‘But how far away is it?’ Susso said.

  Gudrun shrugged.

  ‘Three hundred kilometres,’ said Mats.

  Gudrun’s mouth was pursed and ringed with deep lines.

  ‘We can’t turn back now.’

  Animals were not allowed in the hostel, Seved was pretty sure about that, so he left the cage in the car, hidden under a blanket. He would have to get it later, after reception closed. There was a girl sitting behind the glass, no older than twenty, if that. He mumbled the false name he had used to book the room and paid. The girl gave him a key with the room number engraved on a plastic tab. He took the lift up to a narrow corridor with green vinyl flooring and found his room at the far end on the right.

  It was considerably bigger than he had expected. A bunk bed of white-painted steel stood on one side of the window and a single bed on the other. He felt relieved as he put his bag down on the table. The thought of having to sleep in the same room as the shapeshifting lemming had been worrying him ever since Lennart had ordered him to drive to Kiruna. For a while he had even considered booking two separate rooms, but this room was big enough for him to stash the cage far from the bed. On the table lay a pile of folders. Tourist brochures. He sat down and opened one of them. It showed a map of the town surrounded by advertisements. Hotel Kebne: the hotel that raises your expectations. Cafe Safari. The Nanking restaurant. He turned the map over. Kiruna is special, it said.

  Gunnar Myrén Ltd. There was a picture of a light aircraft, which made him remember what the newspaper had said, that Susso Myrén’s grandfather had been an aerial photographer.

  He had no plans to go and see the shop. Lennart had said there would probably be too many people there. He had written down the sister’s address on a piece of paper, and also the address of her fiancé. If she was not at one address, he would be sure to find her at the other.

  He ought to get going straight away. According to Lennart, this was an urgent matter. But he knew, as he sat in the silent, spartan room, that he was going to wait a while. He had to prepare himself mentally. Brace himself. That was what he told himself, anyway. In reality he wanted to put it off as long as he possibly could.

  Until he no longer had any choice.

  What the shapeshifter was going to do to the sister was unclear to him, nor did he know how much he would have to do to her himself. And what could he resort to if he failed to get anything out of her? He had seen what the little creatures in the box had done to the policemen in Årrenjarka, but he was not nearly as good at handling them as Torsten was. But of course Lennart knew that. He would not have allowed him to take the thing with him unless he had been confident of its influence over human beings.

  Or was Lennart getting desperate? Was he allowing himself to be controlled by something other than the objective common sense he was always guided by? Was he afraid? Or had someone else told him to deal with Susso Myrén? That bloke Erasmus, perhaps?

  And why was there such a rush? She would be home again all in good time. Börje made him believe that it was something else, that there was more at stake than simply shutting her up.

  There was someone further south she must not come into contact with.

  But who?

  He looked at the clock. It was nearly eight. Reception closed at ten. That meant he could rest for a while. He needed that. The snow was piled up in a huge drift outside the window and the light from the street lamps was falling in strips through the slats of the Venetian blind. Without removing his jacket or his shoes, he lay down on the bed with his hands clasped over his chest and stared up at the ceiling. For the first time in ages he would be able to sleep without the worry of being woken up by the old-timers. He appreciated the murmur of voices coming through the hostel wall. Unfamiliar voices. Indistinct. Soon he was asleep.

  Mats had recommended the Mas Grill when they asked him if there was a place nearby where they could get something to eat. When Susso and Torbjörn walked in and went to look at the illuminated menu board above the counter, the man working there glanced at them and then went back to watching television. Susso thought he was probably on his tea break. In front of his feet, under the table, was a pair of slippers. A second man quickly appeared, ready to take their order.

  Susso pushed her hands into her pockets and realised that she was not really that hungry after all.

  The door opened and Gudrun came in.

  They all sat down at a table at the back of the restaurant. The tablecloth was flattened under a sheet of glass that reflected the wall lamps and the lighting above the petrol pumps outside. Susso studied the gaudy pattern of the tablecloth with its small birds sitting on snow-covered branches and star-shaped ginger biscuits hanging from red ribbons.

  They sat in silence for a while. All Susso had was a can of soft drink.

  ‘Have you told the police we’re going to Gränna?’ asked Gudrun.

  ‘I put it in the email,’ Susso said. ‘When I sent the film.’

  ‘Has he answered then?’

  ‘I don’t know about the email. But they’ve got your number.’

  ‘Perhaps you ought to ring Edit as well?’

  ‘Not yet. There’s no point if we can’t get hold of anyone who knows who the Vaikijaur man is. I don’t want her to say anything to Mattias’s parents, either, in case they start getting their hopes up.’

  ‘It’s lucky we’ve got Torbjörn with us,’ Gudrun said. ‘This isn’t entirely risk free, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, finishing off his hamburger.

  ‘He might have relatives down here, or accomplices, and here we are, snooping around. We already know what they’re capable of.’

  ‘They won’t still be living there,’ Torbjörn said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not usual for a house to have the same owner for a quarter of a century,’ he answered. ‘It’s more likely someone else lives there now.’

  ‘It’s not that unusual either,’ Gudrun said, wagging her head. ‘And even if it isn’t the same owner now as it was in 1980, they’re certain to know who lived there before and can give us the name. I’m sure that we’ll find them sooner or later. And then, as I said, who knows what might happen.’

  Susso sat with her hand around her drink
can, looking at the television.

  ‘Have you ever been to Gränna?’

  Gudrun wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she nodded. ‘It’s at such an angle it drives you mad.’

  ‘What do you mean, angle?’

  ‘It slopes,’ Gudrun said, moving her hand in a diving gesture towards her plate. ‘Everything is built on a steep slope. If you fall over at the top of the town, you won’t stop until you’ve rolled all the way down into Lake Vättern.’

  Did it get into his mind? Could it really radiate that far?

  It seemed impossible, but that’s what he was thinking as he sprinted down the corridor towards the lift. It felt as if the little creature had been inside him, as if it had tunnelled into his head from far, far away.

  Why else would he have woken up?

  It was almost one thirty and he must have slept heavily.

  The car windows were white and opaque and the roof glittered. What the hell was he going to do if it had frozen to death? When he opened the door, which had stuck to the frame in the extreme cold, he was relieved to hear signs of life coming from the cage. After only a second or two, the shapeshifter had forced its vibrating fear into his consciousness.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

  He took the blanket-covered cage in his arms, shut the car door with his foot and walked swiftly to the entrance. His head was pulsating. It felt as if it would split open.

  The little shapeshifter must have calmed down a little because once they were in the lift the pressure in Seved’s forehead eased. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall.

  They had taken the left exit at the roundabout south of Gränna and knew they were close now. Susso sat up and looked from side to side through the car windows. A lake appeared on the left-hand side of the road, widening out in a southerly direction towards an expanse of water beyond the sound. There were small islands out there, clusters of forest that had torn themselves away and were drifting to the far side.