Tone tilts her head to one side.
“There aren’t any insects,” she says. “On the windowsills. No dead flies, no mosquitoes…” She looks around, her eyebrows raised.
I shrug.
“We’re still coming out of winter,” I say. “Maybe they got washed away by the snow.”
Tone turns away and nods.
“I guess,” she says. “Maybe.”
She lifts the camera and takes a picture of the windows, while I try to shake the feeling coming over me.
“Shall we see if we can get upstairs?” I ask.
“Sure,” says Tone.
Once we’re back in the lobby, she looks up at the staircase with pursed lips.
“Ready?” I ask.
She gives a silent nod.
Having the rucksack on top of my jacket has made me start to sweat, so as I walk toward the stairs I unzip the jacket to let some air in. I look over my shoulder at Tone. She’s standing still, watching me. Her gaze is steady, which should make me feel calmer.
“OK,” I say, more to myself than to her.
I place one foot on the bottom step and slowly lean into it. The step creaks a little, but it doesn’t sound like it’s about to cave in. When I take my other foot off the ground I’m half-expecting the wood to give way beneath me, but now it doesn’t make a sound.
“Seems stable,” I say, still facing forward.
I take another careful step. My shoes sink into the carpet like mud, and the reddish fibers break away with my soles as I lift them.
I look over my shoulder.
“I think it’s OK,” I say, and Tone nods.
“Be careful,” she says. “Stay near the wall. That’s where it should be strongest, structurally.”
“I know,” I say.
The staircase spirals up to the second floor. I go first, and it feels as though I’m holding my breath the whole way up, half-expecting the floor beneath us to cave in with each step, for us to fall several feet onto the hard, warped wooden floor. But it holds. Some of the tension dissipates once I reach the second-floor landing, but my eyes stay glued to Tone as she slowly works her way up the stairs behind me. It’s only when she’s standing next to me that I actually relax.
“Be careful,” I say. “Keep near the walls. We don’t know how stable the floor is.”
I expect her to say that she knows, but she just nods.
The floor is dusty and very worn, but you can tell that at one point the wood must have been beautiful. To our right there is a pair of large carved oak doors. Not only do they look miraculously undamaged; they are also still closed. I put my hand on the brass door handle and press it down, and the doors swing open on a creaking hinge.
Inside the room there are eight tall, narrow desks in rows, with a lectern and a slate chalkboard at the front. There are no chairs. The walls are lined with shelves, most of which are packed with neatly organized test tubes, glass bottles, and other equipment for basic chemistry experiments. The top shelf, however …
I step slowly into the room, my eyes glued to the jars lining the top shelf. They are filled with some sort of brownish preservative, giving the objects within them a sepia tone. Some contain plants and roots, others formless clumps that could be either fungi or organs. But at the far end of the shelf stand three jars of what can only be some sort of fetuses.
I hear something click behind me and glance over my shoulder. Tone takes a few photos of the shelves, then steps closer and zooms in, ensuring that the three far jars are in focus.
Then she lowers the camera and stares at them.
“Those are really gross,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.
A frown line appears between Tone’s eyebrows.
“Why would they even have these?” she asks.
“To teach kids about … anatomy and stuff, I guess.”
One of the jars has cracked—or even split in the cold—and its dull, syrupy brown contents have dripped onto the shelves below. It must have happened a long time ago, because the stains have long since dried. I can’t see what it might have contained.
She goes on staring at them so long that I say:
“I think we’re done in here.” My voice is louder than it needs to be. It seems to fill the whole space.
“We should come back at dusk,” she says. “To film here. The light will be perfect then. Powerful images.”
I can feel the timeless, hunched, unformed beings in the jars still pulling my eyes toward them, and a chill runs down my spine. But that has to be a good thing, really. Tone’s right: it is powerful.
Once out of that room, we walk toward an identical set of doors to the left of the staircase. These ones are slightly aslant. One of the hinges on one side has come away from the wall, leaving that door slanting sharply toward the other. A golden streak of light shines through the gap between them.
I carefully pull at the door hanging from one hinge. I’m met by a cool puff of wind that, along with the sudden sunshine, makes my eyes water. I blink.
The room is big and almost empty, but the walls are covered in posters: everything from big printed letters like the ones they use in eye tests, to cross sections of the human body, and more detailed anatomical images of the eye and heart. The nurse’s office.
By the wall next to the door stands an oak desk with a matching Windsor chair beside it. There’s a dainty little corner cabinet to one side and, on the other side of the door, a heavy white porcelain sink with cobweb cracks in the enamel and a rusty tap.
Near the far wall stands a bier-like bed with a rumpled sheet that has yellowed with age. The window above it is the only open window in the room, and it hangs open in a way that looks intentional. As if it were opened to give whoever wrinkled up those sheets some air and sunshine.
Besides the old posters, desk, cabinet, and bed, the room is empty. It seems too big a space for so little furniture, and its emptiness makes it feel even bigger.
“This must be where they found her,” I say. Without thinking, I’ve taken a few steps into the center of the room. I’m vaguely aware that my heart is beating hard, pounding in my chest.
“This must be where they found the baby—your mom,” I say, looking over my shoulder. “Don’t you think?”
Tone has stopped in the doorway. Her pupils have contracted in the bright sunshine, and there are beads of sweat on her forehead.
“Tone?” I ask uncertainly.
She lifts the camera to her eyes, but then lowers it again. Then she says, quietly:
“You take this one, Alice. I can’t…”
She squats down, so quickly and so weightlessly that it catches me off guard, and places her beloved system camera on the dusty floor. Then she stands up and walks back into the hallway.
“Tone!” I call after her. I’m about to follow her, but then hesitate.
She wants some time alone, to compose herself, calm down. She isn’t like me—she doesn’t want hugs or attention in her weaker moments.
“OK,” I mutter to myself. “Fine.”
I pick up the camera and look through the lens. Tone has taught me the basics of how to use it, but if I’m honest, I never expected to need to.
I turn back toward the doors. Should I go after her, just in case?
I should have known this would be hard for her. Should have asked. But sometimes she can be such a closed book.
No, I tell myself. Take some pictures and leave her be. That’s what she wants. In a few minutes she’ll have calmed down and we can head over to the church.
I go further into the room and take a few random shots, knowing all too well that when Tone looks at them later she’ll find fault with all of them.
The light is elegant and dainty, and bounces off the dancing dust particles that my footsteps have stirred up. No one has set foot in here in almost sixty years. The team the mining company sent here in the nineties were under instructions to survey the land and perform tests, but not to go inside any buildings. We have thei
r findings on the state of the bridges, roads, and bedrock back then, but nothing about the village itself.
The April sun has started to climb to its peak. I hold the camera up to my eyes and take a picture of the village outside, breathing in the scent of the approaching spring. And something else, beneath it. Something like rust, but not quite.
When I tilt the lens to take a shot of the bed, I do a double take. My hand hesitates above the yellowing sheets. The top of the sheet has a simple lace edging, stiff and paper thin.
I pull it down sharply.
Beneath the sheets, the mattress is soiled with layer upon layer of rusty stains. Blood.
For a few seconds, I just stare at them, but then the resounding silence is broken by a sudden crash behind my back and the sound of something breaking. And a prolonged, ear-splitting scream.
NOW
“Lean into me more,” I say to Tone. “Don’t put any weight on that foot, I can support you.”
Tone gives a steely nod. Her mask is pulled down so it dangles around her neck, and I see the muscles in her jaw tense up with every short, limping step her injured foot has to make across the cobbles.
Max sees us coming from afar. I wonder if he’s been looking out for us, because he’s with us in just a few seconds.
“What happened?” he asks. His question is directed at me, but Tone is the one who answers.
“Went through a step,” she says sharply. “In the school. The wood was rotten.”
“Is it her foot?” he asks.
I nod.
“Can you find her something to sit on?”
Max sprints off in the direction of the vans before I’ve even finished my sentence. He roots around in the back of our van and pulls out a cooler box that he sets down on the cobbles. I help Tone to sit down. Her forehead is shiny despite the cool air, and a twisting blue vein has emerged on her temple.
I sit down on the cold cobblestones in front of her.
“We need to get your boot off,” I say. She closes her eyes and nods.
“Wait,” says Max behind me, and I turn around. He pulls a small, silvery pack of pills out of his pocket, then presses two out into his palm and hands them to Tone.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Tylenol,” Max says.
Tone shakes her head and hands them back to him, the movement making her grimace in pain.
“We have to get the boot off now,” she says firmly. “It won’t kick in fast enough, anyway.”
“But—”
“Could you fetch the first aid kit?” I ask, cutting him off. “It’s in Emmy and Robert’s van. Check the front seat.”
Max is thrown for a second, but then he nods.
“Sure,” he says. “I’m on it.”
The moisture from the moss between the cobblestones has started to soak through the knees of my jeans. I look at Tone’s chunky boot and then up at her face. Her lips are pale.
“We can check if there’s anything else you can take,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“I don’t know what painkillers will work,” she says. “Just get it off.”
I start untying her tightly laced bootlaces, trying to ignore the short, choked sounds she makes when, despite my best efforts to be gentle, my movements cause her pain.
After loosening the bottom laces, I take the boot with both hands and look up at her.
“Ready?” I ask.
Tone nods.
I start slowly pulling the boot, and though she doesn’t make a sound, her teeth are clenched so tightly that her jaws have gone completely white. But then, just as I’m coaxing the foot itself out of the boot, she can’t hold out anymore. She lets out a long, drawn-out moan that’s almost worse than the scream she made when her foot went through the step. I can still taste the adrenaline in my mouth from that moment; the fear still has my body in an iron grip. It hangs in my joints, like an ache.
I put the boot down and look up at Tone. Her eyes are wet, and when I wipe my face I realize my cheeks aren’t dry, either.
“That’s the worst of it over,” I lie, and she tries to respond with a faint smile that, in its own way, is worse than the tears.
I peel the sock off her foot. She isn’t bleeding, which is a relief, at least, but I can see that her ankle has already started to swell. The skin around it is crimson.
“I heard something,” says Tone.
“It’s probably just Max looking for the first aid kit,” I reply.
“No,” she says quietly, “in the school. I heard something below us. That’s why I was on the stairs.”
I look up.
“What did you hear?” I ask.
Her gaze is steady, but her lips are pale.
“Footsteps,” she says. “There was someone walking around down there.”
“But there was no one else there,” I say, and Tone purses her lips.
“There shouldn’t have been, no,” she says.
Something inside me lurches. I think of Emmy’s pale face last night, and can’t help but ask:
“Are you sure that … I mean, are you sure what you heard was … real?”
Before either of us can say anything more, Max comes running back from the van with a white box.
“Here,” he says, putting it down beside me. “It had fallen behind one of the tripods, so I had to move things around a bit.”
“Thanks,” I say as I open the box, and then pull out a roll of gauze. I am just winding it around my hand when, out of the corner of my eyes, I see Emmy and Robert running across the square. Robert is carrying their things, so Emmy reaches us first. She stops breathless in front of us, small spots of perspiration visible under her arms. Like Tone, her mask is dangling from her neck like a macabre necklace.
“What is it?” she asks, before her eyes land on Tone’s rolled-up pants and swollen ankle. “What happened?”
“They’re saying she went through a step,” says Max.
“Were you the one on the walkie?” Emmy asks Tone.
Tone’s eyes are shiny and confused.
“I haven’t touched mine,” she says.
“Someone was calling into their walkie-talkie. Moaning in pain.” She looks at Robert.
Tone puts her hand into her back pocket, as though searching for something.
“No—I don’t even have mine,” she says. “It must have come out when I fell.”
Emmy looks at Robert again.
“Could that have been it? Maybe she landed on the talk button when she fell.”
Robert shrugs, his squirrelly brown eyes downcast.
“I guess,” he says. “That or it broke. It could have sent out interference, or something.”
Emmy steps forward and sits down at Tone’s feet, so close that I have to shuffle back, thrown.
“All right if I take a look?” she asks.
Tone’s voice is thin and exhausted:
“Alice was just—”
“I’ve had training.”
My skin is rippling in irritation, but I can hear the pain in Tone’s voice. Her ankle is now so swollen that it hardly looks like a leg anymore.
I swallow my pride.
“Go on, take a look.”
Emmy carefully sinks her fingertips into Tone’s swollen, red skin, then glances up at her, muttering a “sorry” when Tone whimpers.
“Have you taken anything for the pain?” she asks.
Tone shakes her head, and I add:
“She’s allergic to painkillers. It’s her stomach.”
“Is that true?” Emmy asks.
Tone nods without hesitation.
“I have a little whisky,” says Emmy. “You can take a few swigs, if you want. It’s an old-school kinda painkiller, but it works.”
Miraculously enough, this draws a wry smile from Tone. Emmy looks around at Robert, who sets off toward their van without a word. Then she picks up another roll of gauze and starts winding it tightly around Tone’s ankle.
“I can’t t
ell whether it’s broken or sprained,” she says. “But this should keep everything in place for now. It’d be better if we had something cold to put on it, but…”
She looks at me. “Did you bring any frozen foods we don’t know of?”
I shake my head.
“Then we’ll just have to make do with good old pressure and elevation,” she says, securing the gauze with a small safety pin from the roll.
“How does it feel?” she asks Tone.
“I’ve felt better,” she replies. She’s still pale, but is now regaining some color in her face, at least. She isn’t sweating anymore. “But I’ll survive.”
Emmy smiles up at her.
“Great,” she says.
Seeing the two of them interact gives me a strange feeling I wouldn’t exactly call pleasant, a mix of anxiety and something uncomfortably close to jealousy. I bite the inside of my cheek.
Robert comes back with Emmy’s small, chipped hip flask from the night before. Tone accepts it gratefully and takes a few big swigs. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but I don’t want to say anything.
“OK, guys,” says Emmy, standing up and brushing off her knees. “Why don’t we take a break, settle our nerves a little? We can have something to eat and discuss what we want to do.”
“Sounds good,” says Robert.
It feels like those should have been my words, like she’s taken something from me. I’m running this project, not her. But Emmy’s already on her way to get us some food, and Robert has gone with her. The moment has passed.
I watch her walking toward the van, unease still festering in my stomach.
I don’t recall hearing anything on my walkie-talkie—certainly not Tone moaning.
But if they hadn’t heard something, what would bring them running back to camp like that? How could they have known she was hurt?
I heard something below us.
Could Tone really have heard something?
And could it have been Emmy and Robert?
But if so, why?
December 1, 1958
Dearest Margareta,
Wishing you a happy first day of advent! Or perhaps I should say second? After all, by the time you read this, the day will have already come and gone.
Ours was so lovely this year. Mother baked saffron buns for breakfast, and—you would have been so proud of me—I suggested we take one to Birgitta in the afternoon. It was all my own idea—Mother hadn’t dropped a single hint! But then Mother said that Birgitta wouldn’t eat it, advent or not: all she’ll take is her cold chicken, gingerbread, and black-currant juice. But Mother smiled and stroked my cheek, and said that it was a lovely thought all the same. Besides, the gingerbread we normally take her is still rather festive. We went down to see her together. Even Birgitta seemed chirpier than usual. And when Mother and I sang her some Christmas carols, it almost sounded as though she was trying to hum along.
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