The Shapeshifters: A Novel

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  Susso reached out for his snus tin, shook off the used pouches and opened the lid.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said quietly.

  It was not even half past five in the morning when Seved was woken up by the loud flush of the toilet. Almost immediately there were two heavy thumps on his door, so he got up, nauseous with exhaustion.

  Börje had been right. Barking dogs, grunts and tormented bellowing had kept them awake for most of the night. The car chassis had squealed and he had heard a window being smashed.

  Freezing cold, Seved got dressed and went down to the kitchen, zipping up his fleece jacket. He saw through the window that the rear lights of the Volvo were on and Börje was standing out there, scraping the windows. The Isuzu was lying on its side, its roof a white wall.

  Börje and Seved sat more or less in silence for the entire journey, and it was a long one: three hundred kilometres to Jokkmokk, and then maybe ten more on the road that curved alongside the river. The atmosphere in the car was strange. They had never spoken before about anything other than practicalities, and although neither of them wanted to admit it, something had changed between them since Börje had told Seved about Signe. Seved had been coming to his own conclusions during the night, and Börje knew that, of course. But he probably thought it was just as well, that it was about time. Either that or he had reached a point where he no longer cared. He didn’t bring it up, and Seved did not ask. Deep inside, he wanted to know nothing about it.

  So nothing was said.

  The humped peaks of the mountains that had been huddled gently on the horizon were now increasing in height, and Seved realised they were getting closer. A peculiarly thick fog had drifted up from the lake, which was half covered in ice, and it lay ghostlike across the road that wound down the steep fir-clad slopes of the mountains. When they turned off the main road the pallid mist followed them a short way into the trees.

  The forest road was narrow, and after a couple of hundred metres it was blocked by a barrier. Seved ran out and opened it. Torsten knew they were coming and so he had left it unlocked.

  The tyres crunched on the crusty snow as they steered through the forest, with tall starved spruces on each side. It was a deep, wild forest, ancient and full of dead wood.

  Soon they saw the farm: a collection of white-hatted blocks against a dark fringe of fir trees whose tops had all been blow-dried in the same direction. A few silvery-grey wooden sheds were keeping their distance from the other buildings. A thin band of smoke was rising from the house’s chimney.

  Börje pointed to the barn, and Seved leaned forwards to see.

  The frost had edged its way far up the unpainted timber. It looked as if someone had started applying white paint to the logs but had stopped halfway up. There was a window with four panes on the side wall, and that was also white, blinded by the cold. Where the panes met it resembled a faded cross.

  Up on the roof’s ridge something was standing.

  A small figure in a green anorak with the hood up.

  Puzzled, Seved wondered if a child had climbed onto the roof.

  But naturally it was no child.

  It was only that Seved wasn’t used to seeing the shapeshifters wearing clothes.

  ‘How many are there exactly?’ he asked, without taking his eyes from the little figure on the roof.

  ‘Lots,’ answered Börje, and changed down a gear before the final uphill stretch.

  Then he added:

  ‘And they live in the house. Well, not Luttak, of course. But the others.’

  ‘They have the shapeshifters indoors?’

  ‘Only the small ones.’

  ‘That one doesn’t look very small,’ said Seved, nodding at the roof, where the creature had now moved back along the snow-covered tiles on the ridge so it could watch the approaching car.

  ‘Yes, well, that one’s a different matter,’ Börje said, darting a look at the barn as he turned the wheel, letting his hands cross. ‘He comes and goes as he likes.’

  Seved looked away and faced rigidly ahead, taking care not to stare.

  They parked between an old van and a large yellow tractor with frost-covered, studded ice chains draped around the wheels. Inside a compound the dogs were leaping around each other. Their barking and howling was deafening, and to make himself heard Seved was forced to shout as they got out of the car.

  ‘How long will it take, do you think? Shall I connect the engine warmer?’

  A tall and slightly crooked man in oil-splattered overalls came walking stiffly towards them from the barn. Seved realised it was Torsten, whom he had heard about all his life but had never met. He had thin grey hair and unshaven cheeks, and the skin under his eyes was darkened by wrinkles. Without greeting them he asked tersely if they had locked the barrier after them, and Börje nodded.

  He was alone. The others had gone to the village, he said, opening the door that led to the kitchen. The doors were unpainted and had old-fashioned locks and doorknobs. There was no electric cooker, only a wood-burning stove with a pearl-white microwave standing on it, and a coffee machine perched on top of that. The old floorboards were grey and covered with narrow rag rugs. Across the ceiling ran a fabric-covered flex, hanging in deep loops and leading to a lamp that hung low and had a thin shade made of what looked like hand-blown glass. On the wall above the wooden sofa was a wall hanging with the embroidered text: PEACE THROUGH THE BOND OF UNITY.

  Torsten put on the coffee and then sat down at the kitchen table, where there was a Jokkmokk telephone directory. He licked his thumb and flicked through the pages to the maps at the back, and when he found the one he wanted he scrupulously smoothed it out with the palm of his hand. Then he picked up a ballpoint pen and circled a house.

  ‘It’s here,’ he said.

  Börje and Seved both looked, and when Torsten was sure they had seen the right house he tore the page out of the directory and slid it across the table.

  ‘Of course, most little kids go to nursery these days,’ he said. ‘But this one doesn’t. He plays outside on his own and he doesn’t seem scared. We’ve seen him many times on the other side of the road, the side where the lake is, building grottos in piles of snow or whatever it is he gets up to. And for a long time we’ve thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to snatch him, if we needed to. And it looks like you need to.’

  He stood up to fetch the coffee jug and filled the cups.

  ‘I heard about your sister,’ he said.

  Börje sat in silence for a moment, lost in his thoughts.

  ‘It can’t be easy,’ Torsten continued.

  ‘Of course, you do wonder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, if she really was that stupid.’

  Torsten looked at him carefully and licked his upper lip with the tip of his tongue.

  ‘You mean, you’re thinking she found a way out of it?’

  Börje shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

  ‘It was hard for her,’ he explained. ‘I know that. She didn’t want another child in the house. Having to go through all that again, comforting it, making it understand. She didn’t want to have to do it.’

  He took a drink of his coffee and then said:

  ‘And now she doesn’t have to.’

  Seved could hear Torsten and Börje talking, but he could not take in what they were saying. His thoughts had drifted far away and he heard their voices only as a distant murmur. His field of vision shrank: it zoomed in on the embroidery on the linen tablecloth, the splashes of red paint on the sleeve of Torsten’s overall, the steaming china cups, the telephone directory and the broken clip of the ballpoint pen. The plates on the painted wall shelf too, and the blackened glass chimney of the paraffin lamp.

  Sister.

  Were Ejvor and Börje siblings?

  He had always thought they were married.

  Well, that explained why they had no children. That explained why he had ended up
with them. And Signe. It explained everything!

  Trying to work out what Börje meant when he suggested Ejvor had found a way out of it was beyond him, but it occupied his thoughts, and that was why it took a while before he realised that Torsten was talking to him.

  ‘The lemmingshifters,’ the old man repeated. ‘Did that work out?’

  ‘It was calm the first night,’ Seved answered, confused. ‘But last night they were out again, carrying on, so I don’t really know.’

  ‘Then maybe you need more?’

  Torsten stood up, rubbing his index finger in a shadowy groove above his upper lip. He looked at them enquiringly.

  ‘I’m sure we can manage with what we’ve got,’ said Börje.

  Clearly it was not meant to be a question because Torsten had already opened the door to the hall. He walked up the staircase, and they could hear the floor creak as he walked backwards and forwards upstairs. Seved shot a look at Börje, who was sitting with one elbow resting on the back of the chair and staring unseeingly at the floor. There was no point asking him about Ejvor; it would only make him withdraw into himself.

  He thought about Ejvor’s behaviour before she went into Hybblet that afternoon. She did not seem to be depressed. She had actually joked with him. But perhaps that kind of thing never shows on the outside.

  Seved drank the last of his coffee, ran his eyes over the tongue and groove on the kitchen walls and then out through the window, where he caught sight of the little man who had been standing on the roof. Now he was sitting in the raised bucket attachment of the tractor, leaning back casually and looking towards the kitchen window. His clear yellow eyes were surrounded by creases and shadows that gave them a troubled look. His face was leathery brown and wrinkled, and the thin white beard pointed in all directions.

  And he was reaching out. Seved felt that immediately. It was like a fleeting caress inside his forehead. Swiftly he leaned back so that the old man could no longer see him—usually it was enough to get out of their line of vision—but to be on the safe side he pushed the chair back from the table half a metre.

  ‘Him,’ he said. ‘The one that was on the roof. He’s up to something.’

  Börje peered through the window.

  ‘Yes, he’s a nosy little bugger, that one.’

  He had no time to say more before the stairs creaked and Torsten walked into the kitchen holding a wooden box. It was a little chest, made from painted planks. The lid had a brass lock. He put the box down on the table and looked at them.

  ‘I could only get hold of four but that’s better than nothing. And they’re small and entertaining. The old-timers like that. You have to take these with you, you understand. I’ve got a wood mouse and a few other things. A couple of shrews.’

  He opened the lid of the chest and poked around in the hay. After a while he pulled out his hand. A grey-brown tuft of hair stuck up out of his fist. Torsten pressed his thumb against the little creature’s chin and unwillingly it lifted its head. Its eyes were screwed up tightly and the mouth with its pin-like teeth was gaping open. It seemed as if it was trying to open its mouth as wide as it could to show how big it was.

  ‘See?’ said Torsten, grinning. ‘See how he’s laughing?’

  ‘A week or so ago,’ said Susso in a low voice, ‘I got an email from a woman in Vaikijaur who had seen a little man outside her house. He just stood there, looking at her. Vaikijaur is relatively close, so I drove up there. And she seemed pretty credible, so I set up a camera—you know, the one I got from Tommy, Cecilia’s bloke.’

  Torbjörn changed position on the sofa without taking his eyes off her.

  ‘Then the other night, or morning it was, she phoned to tell me she had seen him again. He had been looking into her kitchen.’

  From the front pocket of her parka Susso brought out a printout of the photo. It was the seventh picture, the one where the wrinkled little face could be clearly seen. Torbjörn took a gulp from his can, and after putting it down again he wiped his mouth and leaned forwards, looking at the figure. His nostrils tensed and flared, but he said nothing. After studying the picture he leaned back in the sofa. It looked as if he was trying to stop himself from laughing. His eyes were glittering dark slits. One arm was stretched along the back of the sofa and he was drumming his fingers on the frame of shiny polished wood.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I’ve posted it on the website.’

  ‘Will it lead to anything then?’

  ‘Probably not. I suppose I ought to promote it somehow. Do you know any journalist who would want to write about it?’

  She meant the last sentence mainly as a joke.

  ‘No, but you ought to go to Jokkmokk and ask around. A person looking like that—well, someone ought to know who he is, don’t you think? If he lives in that area.’

  Susso stood up and walked to the window. A wind had started blowing and it made the globes of the street lamps move slightly. The snow that had settled on the pale-green facade of the house opposite looked as if it had attached itself like lichen.

  ‘What if it’s just a dwarf?’ she said. ‘That would be embarrassing.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to ask what the hell is he doing running around in that old woman’s garden in the middle of the night,’ Torbjörn replied. ‘He’s not supposed to be doing that.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I know one or two people in Jokkmokk. I could ask them if they know of a dwarf living in the area. People normally know about that kind of thing. There’s a dwarf up in Haparanda, and you can ask anyone you like about him. Everyone knows who he is.’

  The snowsuit stood out like a red dot against the piles of snow.

  Börje and Seved said nothing to each other but they both knew.

  This had to be the boy.

  He was walking along the other side of the road. Towards them.

  Börje slowed down to give himself time to think, and then he stopped. The wipers swept across the windscreen. He sucked his teeth and looked reflectively in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘We could run him over,’ Börje said. ‘And then get him in the car to take him to hospital. If anyone sees us, that’s what we could say. That we only wanted to help him.’

  Seved stared: was he serious?

  ‘Well, he is walking on the wrong side of the road,’ said Börje.

  ‘Yes, if you’re coming from that direction,’ said Seved, pointing. ‘You can’t run him over from this direction.’

  ‘I’ll just have to turn round and do it then!’

  Seved rubbed his forehead hard and looked in the wing mirror, in the star-shaped hole left by the ice crystals. Could Börje really consider doing such a thing?

  The boy was not far away now. Soon he would reach the cones of light radiating from the car, picking out the streaming snowflakes.

  ‘So what shall we do then?’ Börje said loudly.

  Seved pretended to think and eventually he said, with lips that had turned dry:

  ‘We wait. Until we have another car.’

  ‘Nothing shows,’ said Börje. ‘The car’s completely covered in snow.’

  ‘But Torsten told us we weren’t to do it with this car. Someone could have seen us when we drove up to his place. Then they’ll come here looking. It’s too risky.’

  Börje shook his head.

  ‘We’ll do it now,’ he said, and pressed the button so that the window began to go down slowly with a scraping sound. ‘Give me one of those.’

  Börje leaned out of the open window. He was holding his hands cupped against his chest.

  ‘Happy Christmas!’ he called.

  The boy carried on walking for a few steps before he stopped and looked at the car.

  Then he started walking again. Faster.

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘We want you to help us with something,’ Börje said, turning to Seved, indicating he wanted him to play along. ‘Your mum
just phoned and told us.’

  Seved leaned forwards and nodded.

  ‘We’ve got something for you,’ he said. ‘A Christmas present.’

  The words aroused the boy’s interest and he stopped walking. After looking both ways he crossed the road. A few metres away from the car he stopped. He was wearing a hat with a spider-web pattern and his cheeks were red. It was cold, as low as minus fifteen, and clouds of snowflakes were being buffeted around in sudden gusts of wind.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Börje, sounding tense. ‘Are you going home?’

  He had already asked that, and it was obvious that the boy had become scared but without exactly knowing why; a feeling told him something was not quite right. He screwed up his eyes against the wind. Snow fastened in his eyelashes and the thumb of his mitten came up to rub it away.

  ‘Your mum said you don’t have to go home,’ said Börje. ‘She said you could help us with something, if you like. But we’ve got to make sure you’re the right boy. What’s your name?’

  ‘Mattias.’

  Börje nodded.

  ‘Mattias. That’s right. Then it’s you we’re looking for. That’s lucky.’

  Börje turned to face Seved.

  ‘Shall we show him then?’

  Seved nodded.

  Börje lifted up his cupped hands slowly and secretively until they appeared in the open window, like a puppet show. He gradually opened his fingers, and from between them poked a tiny delicate snout, although to be exact it was not a snout. It was a nose. A smile spread across the boy’s face and he quickly approached the car door, pressing himself against it to get a better view. But then Börje pulled his hands away.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re very nervous.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked the boy. ‘Is it a gerbil?’

  Börje took his hand away as if he was sliding back a screen and revealed the agile little shapeshifter shivering in the cold air streaming into the car. Its grey furry tail lay coiled in the hollow of Börje’s palm.