The Shapeshifters: A Novel

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘I was there yesterday,’ she said.

  ‘Yesterday?’ he said. ‘No . . .’

  ‘I was there,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘Yesterday. I met someone who had seen a little old man in her garden. Really little, I mean. About one metre tall. She thought he might be a gnome.’

  Lars nodded.

  ‘I set up a wildlife camera. So with a bit of luck I’ll get a picture of him and then I can show you what a real gnome looks like. If he comes back, that is.’

  ‘Oh, he will.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  She reached out for the coffee pot and filled the cups.

  Horizontal lines filled the old man’s forehead.

  ‘You’ll get to the bottom of it,’ he said, adding: ‘Ossus.’

  Susso raised her eyebrows, met his gaze and saw the twinkle in his eyes.

  Then she looked down at her jumper and the swell of her left breast. She gave a lopsided smile. The flesh under her chin fell in folds as she undid the small safety pin on the yellow woollen jumper and turned her name badge the right way round.

  ‘So you can read from that angle after all,’ she said. ‘Well then, we don’t have to carry on with this boring sudoku.’

  She leafed through the newspaper, folded it and flattened down the page containing the crossword.

  ‘Let’s get going!’

  Seved stood on the veranda with his hands in the pockets of his down jacket, looking in the direction of Hybblet. It looked the same as usual: unlit windows with closed curtains, the long palisade of fir trees behind and the bulging drift of snow on the porch roof that formed the same shape every year. That was both strange but not strange.

  The fact that Ejvor was sitting inside there, staring at the wall, was impossible for him to grasp, even though the sight of her lifeless body had been etched so deeply into his memory that he would never forget it. She ought to be in the kitchen now, or standing in the bathroom, pulling washing out of the machine and complaining about how badly it rinsed the clothes. Or leaning over the kitchen table with a small cup of coffee, reading the paper. Humming a Christmas song. All those songs she had inside her! Who had taught her? He didn’t know because he knew nothing about her. He realised that now. And it was too late. She would fade away and be nothing more than an imprint inside him. An imprint alongside the one he already had, one that he had never mentioned to anyone.

  He had almost made it across the yard when his legs refused to carry him any further. Later, when Signe and Börje had returned, the headlights of the Isuzu had picked him out slumped in the snow. Signe had hurried to help him up, but he had not wanted her to touch him and had wrenched himself free.

  Afterwards Börje had come up to him, his ski hat pulled down over his ears and his mouth grim. He had left the engine running because he knew he might have to drive off immediately. When he had managed to get enough out of Seved to grasp what had happened he stood for a while, glowering at Hybblet, before cutting across the yard and walking up the steps to the veranda. He did not venture any further.

  He leaned forwards and, after peering in through the doorway, he set off back to the car, opened a door and took out a box, which he carried in both hands to the house. A few seconds later he came out, shutting the door after him, quietly but securely.

  ‘She can stay there,’ he said.

  ‘Aren’t you going to bar the door?’

  ‘No, that’ll make it worse. We’ll sleep in the car tonight.’

  She can stay there.

  Seved knew why. Of course he did. He knew it was a safety measure and nothing else. Börje was no coward. His desire to get Ejvor out of the house was at least as strong as Seved’s.

  But he did not want to take the risk. The risk of being inside there now.

  The only thing they could do was keep out of the way.

  They had driven down the drive and parked on the other side of the barrier. Wrapped in quilts over their jackets they had shivered through the night, Börje in the front with his large hooked nose pointing up at the roof, and Seved and Signe in the back.

  He had heard Börje crying on the other side of the mesh panel, muted and almost silently. Seved had pressed his face hard against the cold plastic of the truck and had held a clenched fist to his ear. He had never heard Börje cry before and he didn’t want to hear it. Not this close. Not now.

  They hadn’t been able to sleep much. As it began to get light he had no memory of being anything other than awake, but he must have slept because there had been dreams. He had seen things, but most of all it was the sound that lingered. The noise. As if someone had been bellowing continuously inside his head.

  By now it was one o’clock, and Börje was in the leather armchair in the sitting room, his eyes closed. His head, with its combed-back greying hair curling at the nape, was lolling slightly to one side and his lips had fallen apart. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, black with silver-grey stripes. It was unbuttoned at the throat and a tuft of long, wiry chest hair poked out. Around his wrist he wore a leather strap with plaited pewter and a reindeer-antler button. He was clasping his left wrist and his sharp elbows stuck out on either side of the armrests.

  Seved stood for a moment, watching him. He did not know whether to let him sleep or not. Leave him in peace. No doubt he was deeply distressed. But he felt they ought to be doing something because soon it would be dark again. One of the hares was lying asleep on the olive-green velour sofa, and Seved shoved it roughly to the floor before he sat down. The animal, afraid, scuttled away across the wooden floor, and the sound made Börje open his eyes.

  His forehead was shiny, with sweat at the hairline.

  ‘What’s the time?’ he mumbled, rubbing his face with the palm of his hand.

  ‘She can’t be left sitting there any longer,’ said Seved.

  Börje’s nostrils flared as he filled his lungs with air, which he immediately exhaled in a snort. He righted himself in the chair. It was incomprehensible that he had chosen to sleep sitting up after spending all night in a car, although the intention had not been to sleep. He grabbed a half-litre plastic bottle from the floor. It had once been filled with Diet Coke but now it contained something else.

  ‘Börje,’ said Seved, ‘she can’t be left there.’

  Börje unscrewed the cap and held it as he drank. After he had swallowed and cleared his throat he said:

  ‘Go in and get her then.’

  Seved folded his arms.

  ‘It’s light now,’ he said. ‘There’s no danger.’

  Börje snorted. Or it could have been a laugh.

  ‘If only it was that easy,’ he said, digging out his mobile from the pocket of jeans that were too tight on him. He pressed the keypad a few times with his thumb and then sat with his eyes fixed on the dusty television screen. It was almost as if he had fallen sleep again, because his eyelids were closed.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Without opening his eyes Börje said slowly:

  ‘We don’t know why they did it. Hopefully it was an accident, a game that went too far, and they put her there because they didn’t know what else to do with her.’

  Then he sat up and threw the mobile onto the smoke-coloured glass tabletop.

  ‘But it could also mean they want to keep her.’

  ‘Keep . . .’

  Börje nodded.

  ‘And that would make it dangerous to move her.’

  Seved had to think for a while before he understood what Börje meant.

  Keep her. A corpse to eat as required.

  That made him feel intensely nauseous and he tried to push the idea to the back of his mind.

  ‘What shall we do then?’ he said, sounding defeated.

  ‘Nothing,’ answered Börje. ‘Lennart will be here in an hour or so. Before three, he said. And until then we won’t do a single damn thing. Have you got that?’

  Seved nodded and lowered his eyes.

  ‘What about the little shapeshifters t
hen? Won’t that help?’

  Börje shrugged.

  ‘A little, maybe. But it’s not a long-term solution.’

  ‘I don’t understand it. Why would they do such a thing? To her?’

  ‘It’s what happens,’ said Börje. ‘When they don’t get their own way. When we don’t give them what they need.’

  And he looked at Seved with sleepy, red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘It’s all our fault, this is.’

  It had been dark for a long time when the dogs started barking. Seved stepped out onto the veranda and soon he could see the headlights down on the road, nosing their way through the darkness. He hadn’t thought he could be filled with anything other than apprehension at the sight of Lennart’s car, but now he was. If it wasn’t gratitude he felt, then it was not far from it. He pulled the door shut behind him and called out:

  ‘He’s coming!’

  Börje sat in the kitchen eating spaghetti, a sticky, pale-yellow skein that he was jabbing with a fork. He hadn’t even put any sauce on it and he was drinking strong beer directly from the can.

  They heard the car pull up and the six-cylinder engine fall silent. After a couple of minutes had passed and no heavy footsteps had been heard on the veranda, Seved walked over to the window. The car, a large Mercedes with a snout of additional lights, was parked outside Hybblet. The rear section of the champagne-coloured roof shimmered in the glow from the barn’s lamp. He had gone straight in. Totally unafraid. But then there was no time to lose.

  ‘Did you say where she was sitting?’

  Börje didn’t answer. Without looking up from his plate he said:

  ‘Tell Signe to come down.’

  Seved went into the hall to shout, but Signe was already on her way down the stairs. She had taken a shower and her body exuded the sweet fragrance of aloe vera.

  He had made a clumsy attempt to talk to her during the day but had not got very far. He had only heard the sound of his own voice, the tremulous uncertainty of it, the empty words he had managed to stutter. Afterwards he wondered if she blamed him, if she thought he ought to have stopped Ejvor from going into Hybblet. That was probably what he was fishing for: confirmation that it was not his fault. It might be something of a consolation to hear those words. But she had said nothing. Now she was looking at Börje with a blank expression. The groove in her dry lower lip looked like a cut. She had been crying. Her eyes were swollen.

  ‘We’ll be talking down here for a while,’ said Börje, ‘so stay up there. Do you hear?’

  She went back up without saying anything, thumping her feet on the stairs as she went.

  Seved rinsed out the percolator and filled it with water, and because he couldn’t find the measure he scooped up the coffee with a tablespoon. He pressed the switch with his thumb. There was some spaghetti left in the yellow plastic strainer standing in the sink on top of a pile of unwashed plates and cups. He had eaten nothing himself all day. The very thought of food made him feel nauseous. The memory of the smell of rotting meat kept threatening to well up inside him, and it made him gag.

  The tall, heavy man stood in the door frame with his head bowed, glaring at them from behind his tinted glasses. His snow-white hair was combed in a sweaty side parting. His military-green thermal jacket was unbuttoned and the pocket flaps were creased. His left hand, which was wrapped inside a grubby light-blue sleeping bag case, was pressed to his chest.

  Not until Lennart had stepped into the kitchen did Seved realise he had someone with him: a stooped man who hung back in the hallway. The top of his head was completely bald but his brown wavy hair streaked with grey fell down at the sides to join a beard that had turned white at the tip.

  Seved recognised him. Lennart had brought him once before, along with the woman in the wheelchair. But he had no idea who he was. Seved could not help staring back because the bastard was wearing Ejvor’s jacket.

  Lennart pulled out a chair, but before he sat down he thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and groped around for something. When he found what he was looking for he slung them on the table in front of Börje’s plate. Two dead mice.

  ‘How many did you get?’ the big man said, sitting down.

  Börje put his fork on the plate and then pushed it to one side, away from the mice. He rested his elbows on the table.

  ‘Eight, I think.’

  ‘Eight? I said fifteen. At least fifteen is what I said.’

  ‘They couldn’t collect any more. Didn’t have the time, they said.’

  Seved studied the shapeshifted animals. There was a wood mouse with close-set eyes like peppercorns, and a shrew that looked as if it was squeezing its eyes shut in despair.

  ‘I never thought they’d kill them,’ he said.

  Lennart looked at the mice for a while before answering.

  ‘They haven’t,’ he said, laying his covered hand over the wood mouse. Using the fingers of his right hand he pinched the tiny head and bent it back. The white fur at the throat parted to reveal a shiny, fleshy slit.

  ‘You see? They’re killing each other. And I imagine these two poor little buggers are not the only ones. It’s like a battlefield in there.’

  The coarse fingers kept hold of the mouse, stroking its shiny coat, gently prodding the eyes. The thumb made its way into its mouth and felt the teeth.

  ‘You weren’t very old.’

  His voice was tender, gentle.

  ‘Ejvor,’ Seved said softly. ‘Have you brought her out?’

  ‘No,’ grunted Lennart in his normal gravelly voice. ‘And unless you want to join her I advise you to leave her where she is. You don’t set foot in Hybblet, understand? Someone has tidied up in there—was it her?’

  Seved nodded.

  ‘Well, you can damn well forget about that,’ said Lennart. ‘Stay indoors as much as possible and under no circumstances go out at night. Keep all the lights on in here. Start up the car from time to time, even if you’re not going anywhere. Keep everything the same as normal.’

  ‘And if they call out?’ said Seved.

  ‘Let them! Turn up the television or use earplugs or do what the hell you want. They won’t be coming in here.’

  Börje had been sitting silently, his thoughts elsewhere. But now he said:

  ‘And how long can you guarantee that?’

  There was a pause before Lennart answered.

  ‘It will take a while,’ he said eventually, ‘before they go that far.’

  Seved pressed his thumbs against the rim of the coffee cup. He was aware it was getting close now. That they were getting close to explaining why Ejvor died. He would find out now.

  ‘So she has to stay inside there?’ asked Börje.

  ‘For the time being!’ The man with the long beard had shouted from the hall. But he stayed out there. He did not even look inside the kitchen.

  ‘Until the child comes,’ he added, in a singsong voice.

  Seved felt a stab. So that was why. Then it was his fault. But did they mean she would have to sit in there until then? Even if he slept with Signe it could take months before she conceived, and then another nine months on top of that. How would they be able to put food in the kitchen? She had probably started to smell already. Börje couldn’t agree to this, surely?

  Oddly enough, Börje said nothing. He just looked down at his hands, at the bracelet with its button of reindeer antler. He was worn out. It looked as if he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

  Lennart got to his feet. Slowly he dropped first one mouse and then the other into his jacket pocket.

  ‘Tomorrow I’m driving up to Torsten and his aunt’s,’ he said, pinching his nostrils together. ‘We’ll see what we can come up with. But if you move her, then you’ve only got yourselves to blame. Just so you know.’

  The water that flowed through the heating system in Susso’s flat kept it at a constant if only mildly warm temperature, although the radiator in the bathroom was usually freezing cold, and that was yet another reason why she pu
t off having a shower. With a pair of thick socks on her feet she went into the kitchen and put on the coffee machine. When the coffee was ready she sat down in front of the computer and wondered how to formulate her words.

  It was not exactly straightforward.

  It would be best to wait until she saw the photographs from the wildlife camera. At least then she could account for the measures she had taken, if nothing else, and compare the results with what Edit had told her. That would have to be enough.

  She had poured too much milk into her coffee, so she returned to the kitchen and put the cup in the microwave, which was a robust appliance, almost as old as she was. It resembled an old-fashioned television.

  She took out her cup, sat down again at the computer, opened a new file and wrote:

  Edit Mickelsson, living in Vaikijaur in the municipality of Jokkmokk, states that on Wednesday 16 November at approximately three in the afternoon she observed an unknown and abnormally short male person outside her house . . .

  She then erased Edit’s name and took a mouthful of coffee, which was now far too hot. She drummed her thumb on the edge of the keyboard and glanced at the clock. It was almost ten forty. She went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and put in her contact lenses, relieved at not having to write anything.

  It had taken Seved just over an hour to drive to Arvidsjaur and now he sat in the car, waiting for two o’clock.

  Using his index finger he pushed back the cuff of his jacket to look at the scratched face of his watch. It was now one fifty. There was a car park to the rear of the pizzeria but there was no sign of the motorhome or the Merc. He breathed in deeply and then exhaled white air through his nose. The temperature in the car had dropped fast. The seal on one of the Isuzu’s doors had fallen off, so it was always perishing inside. The clothes he had put on were not warm enough and he had not bothered with a hat or gloves.

  He climbed out of the car, crossed the street and walked into the restaurant. Furthest in, where the chilled drinks cabinet hummed, an overweight man in a cap and knitted jumper sat staring into his coffee cup, but otherwise the tables were empty.