After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  But murdered?

  No, it’s not possible. If that had happened, I would have remembered it. Some snippet would have stuck fast. Surely such a life-altering event wouldn’t pass by me unnoticed?

  I look at the woman, meet her small button eyes.

  Why did she bring me up to the mountain anyway, to the edge of a cliff? Could there be something in what the boy says after all?

  The woman nods slowly toward me.

  “Hanne,” she says softly, as if speaking to a child. “Surely you hear how crazy this all sounds?”

  The boy pulls on one of my arms, and the woman pulls on the other.

  I rock back and forth between them in the snow.

  Slowly, we’re getting closer to the edge of the cliff.

  Malin

  We’ve been following the footsteps for almost an hour when we arrive at the cairn. We haven’t walked that far, but the snow is deep, and the woods are littered with fallen branches and holes. Every meter was an ordeal; every step burns in your thighs.

  The clearing is empty and quiet. Blue-and-white police tape still flutters in the breeze. The snow has been trampled in every direction.

  “It’s impossible to follow the tracks from here,” Andreas says. “Too many people have been walking around. And now it’s snowing again.”

  I look down at the snow-covered tracks of the police officers and technicians and curious onlookers. Then I brush the snow off one of the rocks of the cairn and sit down. My legs ache from the climb.

  “Where do you think they went?”

  I say “they” because Andreas and I had quickly realized Hanne wasn’t alone in the woods—there were the tracks of at least two people, maybe three, in the snow.

  Andreas trudges over to me, leans forward, and puts his hands on his knees.

  He looks around. His breath is like a plume coming from his mouth, and his cheeks are red from the cold. Small clumps of ice have formed on his stubble.

  “No idea,” he says.

  The cold sneaks into my thick coat. As long as I kept moving I was fine, but now I’m shivering. A layer of cold sweat sits under my coat, and the stone I’m sitting on feels cold as well.

  Orm Mountain rises like a dark giant behind us. In the distance I hear the sound of a branch cracking, perhaps beneath the weight of a deer or moose.

  As always when I visit the cairn, I think about the skeleton we found. About that and all the times I came here in the summer with my friends, sat around drinking beer waiting for the Ghost Child to appear—though it never did. I think of all my friends who left for Stockholm, Katrineholm, or Örebro.

  And of Kenny, who went even farther than that.

  Ormberg is full of things that never happened and people who didn’t stay.

  Mom’s stocky figure flashes before my eyes.

  What made her stay? Why didn’t she move, like all the others? I can understand why Margareta and Magnus stayed here—they wouldn’t fit in anywhere else; they’re both so odd. But Mom could have made a good life for herself in Stockholm.

  She didn’t need to rot away in Ormberg.

  There’s a thud in the forest.

  “What was that?” I ask, and peer between the snowy trunks of the trees.

  Everything is quiet, and nothing moves among the trees. No humans, no animals.

  Andreas shrugs.

  “A deer, maybe.”

  I look at him out of the corner of my eye.

  We haven’t talked about what happened between us. I don’t know what he feels, and I definitely don’t know what I feel. The only thing I’m sure of is that there will never be a wedding with Max, and strangely enough, I don’t feel sad about that.

  Returning to Ormberg had taken its toll.

  There are so many memories here, so much to remind me of what I don’t want to do with my life. And yet Ormberg has also given me some perspective on Max. And the more time I’ve spent here, the more strongly I feel I don’t want to marry him.

  I don’t even know if I want to move to Stockholm anymore. It feels too far away from Mom. And if there’s one thing I’ve realized these last few weeks, it’s that I want to be closer to her.

  As for studying to be a lawyer—why would I need to do that? I love being a cop.

  Just as I stand up, my phone rings.

  I stop, take off my mittens, and fumble in my pocket. My hands are so stiff from the cold I almost don’t manage to answer.

  It’s Manfred.

  “Have you found Hanne?”

  “No. The tracks led to the cairn, just as we suspected. But there are so many tracks up here it’s impossible to say where they lead. And now it’s snowing again.”

  “Okay. Apparently someone called in a tip, claiming that there was going to be a murder at the cairn.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes. Just a little while ago.”

  “Who called?” I ask.

  “They didn’t want to give their name, but according to our colleague who took the call, it sounded like a child, so it could be some kind of joke. In any case, we’re headed out there now, but you’ll keep your eyes peeled, too?”

  “Absolutely. But it seems calm here.”

  “Okay. Well, well.”

  Manfred sounds distracted, as if his thoughts are elsewhere.

  “Yes,” he says. “One more thing. That piece of jewelry that Hanne was wearing, Azra’s medallion. The one that contained hair.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you touch it? The hair, that is.”

  I try to remember when Andreas and I were sitting in the car outside Berit’s house. How the medallion stood open like a golden clam in Andreas’s hand, and how I put my fingertip on the dark hair.

  “Yes,” I say. “I think I did touch it. I wanted to know what it was.”

  I turn around and meet Andreas’s eyes. He mimes a “What?” to me, and I raise my hand for him to wait a little.

  “And when we found Azra at the cairn—was that when they swabbed you?”

  “Yes. It was indeed. Why?”

  “We can discuss it later,” Manfred says. “I got a call from the technicians and they wondered, well…Eh. I’ll explain when we meet. There’s been a snafu.”

  “Okay,” I say. “We’re waiting at the cairn.”

  “Good. We’ll see you soon.”

  We hang up, and I put my phone back in the warmth of my pocket. Put on my gloves and meet Andreas’s eyes. They’re black, and the frost glitters in his stubble.

  “What was that?” he asks.

  “Some kid called in claiming there was going to be a murder here. Backup’s here in fifteen.”

  “Okay. And the other bit? You said something about how you touched it.”

  “Oh, that. Manfred wondered if I’d touched the hair in Azra’s medallion.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. The technicians must have called and asked.”

  Andreas wrinkles his forehead and adjusts his hat.

  “Strange,” he says.

  I nod.

  We hear a stifled bang, and turn around at the same time.

  Voices are audible in the distance; it’s so quiet it feels like you could have imagined them. It sounds as if they’re coming from Orm Mountain. And at the same time, branches can be heard cracking from the other direction.

  Andreas sinks down and whispers:

  “Goddamn, there is somebody here.”

  He’s right. Someone or some people are up on Orm Mountain. And someone else is headed straight for us from the road.

  I hunch down next to Andreas and hope the small, snowy bushes will keep us hidden. I put my hand on his back for support.

  The voices from Orm Mountain can be heard more clearly now. It sounds like two people talking
to each other, arguing about something. And the steps coming from the road are getting closer.

  I do my best not to move, hold Andreas’s shoulder tight. A few seconds later, I see a person walking through the spruce trees.

  It’s a large man. He’s walking hunched over, with slow, heavy steps, and he’s holding something in his hand, but I can’t see what it is.

  I blink and hold my breath.

  It’s Magnus.

  Ballsack-Magnus. My cousin.

  Hanne

  The edge of the cliff is just a step or two from my feet.

  I try not to look, but still catch a glimpse of the ground far below. The trees and bushes look so tiny, as if I were staring down at a miniature panorama, the kind you’d find around an old-fashioned toy railway.

  “I read your diary,” the boy pulling on my arm says.

  “What?” I say.

  “I found it in the woods.”

  “Bullshit,” the woman hisses, and pulls on my arm even harder, so that I stagger and end up another step closer to the edge.

  The boy doesn’t give up:

  “I know all about you and Peter. That you visited the Inuits in Greenland. And that you and Peter have a colleague named Manfred who eats too many buns, and Peter thinks he needs to lose weight. I learned a lot of new words, too, like ‘anomaly,’ ‘fetishist,’ and ‘schizophrenic.’ ”

  I turn away from the woman and meet the boy’s eyes. He wipes blood from his face with the back of his glove. Snow is stuck to the edge of the deep wound.

  Is it possible? Could he have found my diary in the woods?

  It would make sense. How else would he know about Peter and Manfred? He even knows about our trip to Greenland.

  “And Ajax,” the boy says. “Your puppy. Who fell through the ice and drowned. I read about him.”

  The ground rocks beneath me.

  Ajax?

  The boy must have read my diary.

  “How do you know what happened to Peter?” I ask.

  “Because in the diary you wrote about finding a hidden door in Magnus’s kitchen. I went there. The secret door leads down to a basement. Peter was murdered there. I…”

  The boy blinks several times and looks unhappy.

  “…found him,” he says quietly.

  He’s telling the truth.

  I just know it, with devastating certainty. No fifteen-year-old would make that up.

  I look at the boy again, and now I’m sure I’ve seen him before. I just don’t remember where. Images of a dark forest and a glittery dress flicker through my mind.

  The woman pulls my arm.

  “He’s lying,” she hisses, and pulls me again. “Don’t believe a word he says.”

  The boy pulls on my other arm.

  “No, she’s lying. She’s a murderer.”

  They both pull on me.

  I’m stuck in the middle and can’t get free. The woman is small, but surprisingly strong. She’s pulling us ever closer to the edge, slowly but surely. The boy and I do our best to pull the other way.

  Below us, Ormberg spreads out.

  I glimpse a figure moving through the clearing. It’s a man, a large man making his way clumsily through the snow.

  Something about the way he moves is familiar, something about his shapeless and hunched-over body, and the way he puts his hands on his knees when he’s trying to catch his breath.

  And suddenly, I remember; a flood of memories washes over me. They’re only fragments, but it’s enough for me to understand.

  That man chased me through the woods the night Peter disappeared, I remember that now. Me and the woman Peter and I found in the basement. Because…there was a woman?

  Yes. Yes!

  I remember her long gray hair and her terrified expression when Peter kicked down the door to her prison.

  I don’t know if she ran because she was free or because she was afraid of us, but she did flee. And I followed her. But just as we ran up the basement staircase, the man arrived.

  He screamed something, grabbed the woman by her hair, and dragged her over the floor. But she got free, continued toward the front door. And the man stood in the kitchen with his hand full of long gray hair.

  Then everything is blurry again, but I think the man and Peter fought, because I remember the sound of dishes breaking and muffled moans coming from the basement.

  My next memory: the man chasing me and the woman up from the basement and through the woods. Rain whipping against my face. The storm roaring.

  The man was clumsy and slow, but he had…

  A rifle!

  The man had a rifle!

  I remember the loud crack of a shot, and then another. Then a bloody woman on the ground.

  The woman from the basement?

  A new image appears: I remember the woman on the ground grabbing the necklace. Wrapping her fingers around the medallion and trying to say something.

  I shudder and blink.

  Look again at the large man headed our way, suddenly very aware of the drama taking place here and now.

  The boy looks at me. He seems completely terrified, but still determined.

  He turns to the woman who’s holding my arm.

  “You know, Magnus is going to leave you?” he says.

  And then:

  “He wants to leave you, just like Lill-Leffe did. I read it in the diary. He thinks you’re a mean old bitch who does nothing but nag.”

  For a second, the woman seems to lose control. She stares incredulously at the boy, her eyes wide. Her grip on my arm slackens a bit. I take the opportunity and wrench my arm free.

  The woman totters, stumbles backward, but manages to grab the boy’s coat. Takes a step toward the edge and pulls him toward it, bit by bit.

  My stomach turns to ice as I realize what’s happening.

  I close my eyes and send a silent prayer to a God I don’t really believe in. Ask Him to tell me what to do. But all I hear is the icy breath of the forest, and my own heart pounding in my chest.

  When I open my eyes again, I see the boy and the woman teetering on the edge of the cliff. The boy opens his mouth as if he wants to say something, but remains silent. Then they fall down toward the ground. I hear branches cracking and several loud thuds.

  Then silence.

  It’s almost as if they were never here.

  Malin

  There’s a thud from inside the forest, followed by a cracking sound, as if someone were breaking a bundle of sticks with a well-aimed kick.

  Andreas’s grip on my arm tightens, and he whispers in my ear:

  “Shit. I think somebody fell down from that cliff.”

  “Ättestupan?”

  “Yes, I think I saw someone or something falling.”

  “Oh God,” I say. “No one could survive that fall.”

  We run toward the cliff.

  “But what about the man?” Andreas pants. “Your cousin.”

  “Magnus? I don’t know what he’s doing here, but he’s harmless. We can talk to him later.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I think of Magnus. Of his big body and thick red lips. Of how he keeps his eyes glued to the ground whenever I try to talk to him.

  “He’s as gentle as a lamb.”

  We trudge between the trees, in the direction of Orm Mountain and Ättestupan. The snow flurries around our legs as we do our best to hurry.

  The body is lying on top of a bush, next to the vertical mountain wall. The legs are bent backward in an unnatural position. A twig sticks out through one pants leg, at knee height. One foot is turned upward, revealing the yellow rubber sole of a boot. In the middle of the sole, I see the outline of a five-pointed star.

  It looks just like the star in the footprint outside Mom’s f
ront door. I know it’s important, but my reasoning goes no further than that. I’m not capable of understanding its significance right now.

  “Fuck,” Andreas murmurs, and stops mid-step. “Fucking hell.”

  I follow the contours of that small, sinewy body in the snow—the outdated coat, the hat with little hearts on it that Mom gave her last Christmas. The reflective tag in the shape of an owl dangling from one of her pockets. My eyes fasten on the twig sticking out of her snow pants, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is.

  That’s no twig—it’s bone.

  I turn around to vomit, but nothing comes out. Just dry heaves and something bitter that I spit into the snow.

  “Malin!” Andreas says. “She’s alive!”

  I bend down, take a fistful of snow, and rub it around my mouth. Then I turn back and rush over to Margareta.

  “It’s my aunt,” I say, and feel tears arriving.

  Andreas gapes.

  “What? Is this her? Magnus’s mother? What’s she doing out here?”

  I don’t respond.

  “Look after her,” Andreas says. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  I nod and squat down next to Margareta. Take off my gloves and search for a pulse on her throat. Do all the things I was taught to do during first-aid training.

  Margareta opens her eyes and looks at me. Her mouth forms a silent word: “Malin.”

  I stroke her cheek, trying to keep her calm. Trying to push away my own panic.

  Margareta.

  She’s always been there, like Ormberg. I’ve always taken her for granted—Magnus, Mom, and Margareta.

  They’re the only family I have.

  Will I lose her now?

  “Don’t move,” I say, stroking her cheek. “We’ve called for help.”

  Margareta opens her mouth again, but this time there are no words, just a string of saliva mixed with bloody bubbles. It drips down onto the snow. She coughs.

  “Shhh,” I whisper. “What in the hell were you doing up there on Orm Mountain?”

  Margareta closes her eyes.

  My tears arrive, and I wipe them away with the back of my hand.

  “Malin,” she whispers, and turns her head back and forth a little.