The Lost Village

by Sten, Camilla

  Birgitta is tied to the pole.

  Thick ropes run around her waist, binding her to the trunk. The ropes cut into the soft, tender flesh around her midriff, which, so soon after giving birth, is still bulging. It must be terribly painful. Her arms have been pulled back and bound behind the pole, and her head is lolling. Elsa can’t see Birgitta’s face, but she can see her bare feet and swollen ankles below the loose shift she is wearing. Blood has run down the inside of her legs, drying on her feet and pooling underneath her.

  “Birgitta,” Elsa repeats, this time scarce more than a whisper.

  She doesn’t move.

  “Elsa,” the pastor’s soft voice greets her.

  Until this point he has blended into the crowd, but now he takes a small step forward, out into the empty space that has formed around Birgitta.

  “At last,” he says.

  His face is calm and peaceful, and this scares Elsa more than anything else so far.

  “What have you done to her?” she asks. Her voice is hardly more than a croak, her tongue dry and rough. The August sun has started to drop below the horizon, but the afternoon heat is still heavy and oppressive.

  “It is time now, Elsa,” Pastor Mattias says softly. “It is time to take the next step. Too long have we allowed evil to live among us. To corrupt us. But no more.”

  Elsa wants to tell him that he’s insane, out of his mind. But when she looks into his gray eyes she sees a cold light shining from within, one that silences her before she can even say a word.

  If Kristina was born yesterday she must have been conceived last winter. In December. Just a few weeks after he arrived.

  When had he started to whisper into his followers’ ears that she was evil? That she was possessed by demons?

  Even if she could speak, who would believe her? Would it not sound just like the vicious lies one might expect of one who served the devil? Just as he has always said.

  Speechless, Elsa looks around at those standing closest to her. Her neighbors. Her friends.

  Who of them would believe her if she tried to tell them the truth?

  “You are evil,” Elsa says to the pastor, her voice shaky and hoarse.

  He doesn’t get angry, doesn’t get agitated, simply shakes his head sadly.

  “Do you hear that?” he asks the congregation around them. “Do you hear how evil spreads like venom? It infects like a disease, passing from one to the other, mangling the soul until there is nothing left to save.” The pastor turns his cold, calculating gaze on Elsa.

  “Is there anything left in you to save, Elsa?” he asks.

  She wants to spit in his face, but she can’t. She’s too afraid, too thirsty. Too weak. Too defeated.

  “We’ll soon see,” he says, and it’s as though none of the others are there, as though he is whispering quietly in her ear.

  He looks out at the crowd.

  “It is time,” he says, his voice louder now, more resounding. It jangles out over the square, making even the last of the hubbub die down.

  “Time to drive the evil from our midst. To receive God’s light. It is time to choose—and to choose the light.”

  He pauses.

  “Are you willing to choose the pure way?”

  It starts as a whisper, uncertain and hesitant, but then it grows to a raging tempest, a preposterous cheer that verges on hysteria.

  He raises his arms. The sight of his beautiful white palms immediately silences the crowd. They are as though entranced, a swaying delirium that runs like waves through the whole village.

  “Kaj?” he says, and, though it’s hardly louder than his normal speaking voice, in the silence it carries regardless. Elsa sees a movement in the crowd, sees it part once again.

  Kaj Andersson leads the ranks. He is tall and strong now, with curly, sandy-blond hair and a square jaw, but Elsa remembers him as he used to be, when he and Margareta went to school together. All elbows and grazed knees.

  There are four of them in all, all tall boys and men, with broad shoulders and bulging arms. Each of them carries a large wicker basket filled with stones.

  The stones are smooth and round, water buffed. They look like they have been collected from the riverbed. Kaj and the other three put the baskets down in front of the pastor and straighten up. The pastor smiles warmly at them and gives them a small nod. Kaj nods in response and disappears back into the crowd.

  Elsa catches sight of Dagny behind the pastor’s back. She is standing stock-still, her eyes glassy. Frank’s brother, Gösta, hovers behind her like a warning. He doesn’t need to restrain her, though; she doesn’t seem to be in any condition to attempt an escape.

  Ingrid is standing immediately in front of Dagny. The red lipstick she always wears has been smeared around her mouth—or at least that’s what Elsa thinks, until she realizes it’s a nosebleed. Gösta has a tight grip on both of her shoulders, and her hands are bound before her with a tightly wound string. She is staring at the baskets of stones, eyes wide in horror.

  “Who among you would like to help to cleanse our congregation?” comes the pastor’s voice, and now it’s a pounding waterfall, thunder rumbling across the square. “Who among you are prepared to act as Christ’s hands? Step forward. Step forward and act.”

  At first nothing happens. But then they start to move, crowding and flocking around the baskets. Hungry, grasping hands reach like claws for the stones, at first hesitantly, then heatedly. They push and shove to get their hands on them.

  “We must dare to bleed, and to spill blood,” the pastor sermonizes over their free-for-all. “We must choose the light. We must choose God. We must crush the devil among us, for otherwise we shall never be whole.”

  The stones have started to run out. Those standing at the front start to edge back, most with two or three stones in their hands. Young and old, men and women, Elsa knows them all. One of the girls is no more than twelve years old. Greta Almqvist. She has a round, flat stone in each hand, each so big that her fingers can’t close around it.

  The silence envelops and swallows them. For one eternal second, nothing happens. They all stand still, waiting. The only sound is the swish of nine hundred breaths, like the soft flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

  “Sing with me,” the pastor says calmly.

  Around him they begin to sing as one. The melody is familiar.

  “A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing;

  Our shelter He, amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing…”

  Birgitta twitches when the first stone hits her thigh. When the second meets her waist over the ropes, she raises her head and howls. Elsa glimpses two swollen black eyes through her hair, a broken lip.

  The howl rises to a scream when little Greta Almqvist hits her in the face with one of her stones, splitting her eyebrow so that the blood starts to flow down her face.

  Her screams are swallowed by the ever-swelling hymn; they become part of the chorus. Elsa screams along with her, only vaguely aware that she is doing so.

  “STOP! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP!”

  She fights to free herself, but Frank has her in an iron grip. His melodyless voice echoes in her ears.

  “And tho’ this world, with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us;

  We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us…”

  The stones are raining down on Birgitta now. A few merciful stones miss, but most of them hit their target.

  Her cries have turned into an exhausted moan, a wordless prayer, fleshy and thick.

  The tears are running down Elsa’s face. She can’t. She can’t watch.

  She closes her eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forgive me, Birgitta. I’m sorry.”

  NOW

  Through the silence of the church comes a sound.

  It’s that same humming rise and fall of our walkie-talkies.

  They are lying in a pile on one of the pews. I pick up one of them, a light, ugly littl
e device in black-and-yellow plastic. It sits in my hand like a huge, distorted wasp, ready to sting.

  It’s turned off. The light isn’t on.

  I drop it to the ground, hear the plastic crack against the stone floor with a satisfying clap.

  I fumble clumsily for the other walkie-talkies, my fingers hysterical. None of their lights are on. None of them are on.

  The sound continues to grow in volume, until there’s no more rise and fall. This isn’t interference. It’s the pure tone of a song on the wind, a song that seems to rise from the ground itself in the blazing sunset.

  “That word above all earthly pow’rs—No thanks to them—abideth:

  The Spirit and the gifts are ours Thro’ Him who with us sideth.

  Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also;

  The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

  His kingdom is forever.”

  “We’re going to die here,” Robert mumbles. “We’re going to die here.”

  “No,” I say.

  My mouth tastes of iron and blood, the hymn is ringing in my ears, and the noose that is Silvertjärn is about to strangle us.

  “We’ll have to go through the forest. We can’t wait for the police.”

  Robert looks almost sleepy. I realize that this is what shock must look like. I’m sure I’m shocked, too, but I feel wide awake—perhaps more than I’ve ever felt before.

  “We can’t,” he says. His body seems to fold in on itself, his broad shoulders slump, and his hands dangle uselessly at his sides.

  “Yes we can,” I say. “We’re getting out of here. We’ll head to the highway. Fast—now. I don’t know who’s doing this, but I’m not sticking around and waiting to die. OK?”

  His eyes meet mine, and he nods.

  “OK.”

  * * *

  As I run between the houses, it feels like the village itself is trying to swallow us up, as though every single house were a trap, every open door a set of gaping jaws. The quiet, distant hymn echoes through the alleys and streets.

  There’s something deeply wrong with this place, but I no longer have any desire to stay and try to figure out what that is.

  The green door is hanging ajar. I throw it open and stumble inside.

  “Tone!” I cry as Robert comes in behind me, still jittery and empty-eyed.

  “Try to find something we can fill with water,” I say. “Look in the kitchen. If there’s anything edible left then take it.”

  He nods and goes into the kitchen, and I run upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  “Tone?” I say, and open the door.

  The dying sunlight filters in through the window, tinting the room a fiery red. The ripped bedspread, the desk, the floorboards. Tone’s terror-stricken face.

  The knife blade flashes red-hot in the light, trying to blind me.

  The figure holding the knife to Tone’s neck isn’t much taller than she is. Its face is covered by tangles of gray-white hair. One veiny, white, bony hand is clutching at Tone’s hair with sinewy, gnarled fingers, while the other is pressing the long, thin kitchen knife to her neck.

  “Close the door,” comes the figure’s squeaky, light voice.

  I turn slowly, weighing up whether to scream, but my thoughts must be obvious, because the same voice says:

  “One sound and I slit her throat.”

  It’s calm and direct, with a hint of a bite. Like the sun shining through the clouds.

  I shut the door, which closes with a small click.

  “Are there more of you?” she asks when I turn back to them.

  I swallow, unable to find my voice.

  “Just us,” I say eventually.

  “You and the other one downstairs?”

  The flicker of hope I’d harbored that she didn’t know about Robert dies. I nod.

  She stands still, apparently thinking. I hardly dare look at her, so afraid I am of what she might do to Tone. Instead I look at Tone, desperately searching her eyes, trying to find some trace of her in there.

  I just want someone to tell me what to do.

  Then I hear footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Alice,” I hear Robert call. “Are you ready?”

  The woman in front of me presses the knife even harder to Tone’s neck.

  I hear the door open behind me.

  “I couldn’t find a water bottle, but I…”

  He goes quiet.

  NOW

  All I can hear are Tone’s shallow, panting breaths.

  “Good,” the woman says, and I hear something of a perverse approval in her voice. “Very good.”

  When she looks up, her tangle of hair falls to the side to reveal a face like carved bark, something frozen and contorted. Sun-damaged skin lying in folds over blunted features; thin lips cut by deep wrinkles flapping over yellow teeth; and, in the middle of it all, a pair of glinting, deep-set gold-brown eyes.

  It isn’t hard to put a word to what blazes in her eyes.

  It isn’t fear or worry; it’s excitement. An intoxicating, radiant excitement that makes her hand tremble.

  “You,” she says, nodding at me. “Bind his hands.”

  That girlishly shrill voice again; that same rounding off of her words.

  I clear my throat, afraid that my voice won’t carry.

  “I have nothing to tie him with,” I say, trying to sound as calm as possible, keeping my voice even so as not to scare or anger her.

  “There’s a rope on the bed,” she says, sounding almost amused.

  And yes, there it is, I see, as I slowly lower my eyes. It looks old and worn.

  I bend over cautiously and pick it up. The fibers scratch at my hands.

  “Good,” she squeaks. “Now. Bind his hands.”

  She moistens her lips with her dry, pointed tongue.

  I turn to look at Robert. His eyes meet mine. Paradoxical as it is, he looks calmer now than he did in the church, as though he’s regained his composure in the eye of the storm.

  When I turn back around, I see it isn’t me she’s looking at, but Tone. She flashes her stained teeth in something resembling a smile.

  “You thought you’d do it this time, didn’t you?” she asks, and it’s as though Robert and I aren’t even here. “You thought you’d be free to spread your poison now, that there’d be no one left to stop you. But I’m still here. Oh, yes, I’m here.”

  She makes a crackling, broken sound that must be a laugh.

  “I could tell who you were, even from far away. I knew you’d returned. Did you enjoy my song? Remember it? It was the hymn you died to, witch. I wanted to remind you.”

  The entire world is balanced on her knife-edge.

  She twists her head so that her eyes land on me. Slightly more of her face is exposed now, giving me a clearer view of her. Her nose must have once been fine and chiseled, but now seems to sink down into her slack skin. Her eyelashes are short and thin. And she has a birthmark under one eye—dark, oddly elegant, like the painted-on beauty spot on an old beauty.

  “It’s time,” she says. “This ends tonight.” Her eyes pin me down as she tugs at Tone’s hair, tautening her neck against the blade.

  “You’ll give them back to me, you hear? I know it was you,” she hisses in Tone’s ear. “Do you hear them singing? They’re waiting for me. They’re going to come back to me. I’ll take you there, and then you’re going to give them back. You whore.” She spits out the last word, and it sounds unnatural, like how a child would say it—someone testing the waters, trying it on for size.

  Does it dawn on me slowly, or is it those oddly childish words that peel away the years? The features start to fall into place: that intense stare; some familial likeness in the way the years have flattened and eroded the bones beneath her thin skin; something that reminds me of Grandma’s sagging, thin lips after her stroke.

  Or maybe it’s just the birthmark. Maybe that’s what makes the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. />
  “Aina?” I say.

  NOW

  Aina’s eyes rivet me to the spot. I think I see something like surprise on her face, but it vanishes just as quickly as it appeared.

  “You’re infected,” she mutters to herself, then she repeats it, drawing out the syllables: “In-fec-ted.”

  What we’re supposedly infected with I don’t know, but I assume it’s nothing good.

  I gulp. The muscles in my throat feel sore and strained.

  “I’m Margareta’s granddaughter,” I say. “Margareta is my grandma.”

  She licks her lips again, almost compulsively.

  “Margareta?” she repeats.

  “Your big sister,” I whisper.

  She seems to go still, and for a second I think I’ve reached her.

  But then she clenches her jaw and bares her teeth. Her heavy eyebrows pull together, the furrow between them forming a fissure down her face.

  “She left me here,” she says, with a whininess that soon turns to fury. “She left me here! She abandoned me. I wrote to her, but she never came.”

  The last part is a scratchy whisper that ends as a sigh.

  “I’m here,” I say. “I came here. To find you.”

  There is something of a sadness about her now, a helplessness that doesn’t fit with her appearance. She looks at me, and in that haggard face with its sickly, yellowed eyes, I see my own light-brown eyes staring back at me.

  “I’m here,” I say again.

  I hold my breath. Force myself not to shrink back, but to look at her.

  Her face hardens to a mask of carved wood.

  “Infected,” she hisses again. “You’re all infected. By her.” Her knife presses even harder against Tone’s neck, and I see the skin beneath it give way, see a hypnotically red drop of blood make its way down her neck. A broken whimper leaves her throat.

  “It’s not her,” I start to babble, “it’s not Birgitta—Birgitta’s dead. She’s been dead for sixty years. That’s not her, Aina, her name’s Tone, and she’s sick—”

  “One more word and I slit her throat and send her back to the one she serves,” Aina says, cutting me off. That eerie calm has returned to her.