We Know You Remember (2)

That look as she turns onto the trail. Is she smiling at him? Did she just wave? Come on then, Olof! Come on! Was that really to him?

Then their voices are all around him, the tang of petrol from their souped-up mopeds, cigarette smoke keeping the mosquitoes at bay.

Seriously, Olof, you’re practically in already. Go after her. Lina’s no tease. Come on, man, you can see she wants it. Maybe he’s a fag? Are you a fag, Olof? Have you ever even kissed a girl, or just your mum?

Come on, Olof! You’ve never done it, have you? Just get your hand under her top, do it all quick, that’s what you need to do, get them horny before they have time to think too much.

Their voices are still in his head as he walks along the trail. Her skirt flutters up ahead, her yellow cardigan between the tree trunks.

Lina.

Velvety smooth arms, laughing, nettle scented, burning tangles around his calves, clouds of mosquitoes and bastard horseflies, blood on her arm where he squashed a horsefly, pow, just like that, and her laughter, Thanks Olof, my hero. There are her lips, right up close. He imagines how soft they must be, like moss, damp, sinking, sucking him in. Tongue in before she has time to speak, he hears them say. Some just want to talk all night, but watch out for that, you’ll end up in the friend zone. Nope, get your hands on her boobs, squeeze ’em and play with ’em, they like it when you suck on their tits, you do that and you’re home free, I swear, just don’t fucking hesitate, girls learn all that shit about saying no and keeping their legs together even though they’re wet and horny and dream about it too, but you can’t just pound away at them; you’ve got to do it their way. Fingers in, poke her pussy, then go full throttle, pedal to the metal, yeah?

Suddenly Olof is falling headlong into the nettles and he feels her all around him.

There was no air in the car, just humidity and heat. He had to get out.

Thin veils of mist swept over the bay down below. On the other side of the river, the eternal mountains loomed in the distance, columns of steam rising from the paper mill. It was so quiet he could hear the leaves of the aspen trees rustling in a breeze so soft he couldn’t feel it, the buzz of the bees toiling away on the lupins and mayweed. Then he heard the whimpering. Pitiful, as though it was being made by something that was injured, unhappy.

It was coming from inside the house. Olof tried to cover the short distance back to the car without making a sound, before the dog noticed him, but that was impossible with a body like his; the grass and twigs broke under his weight. He could hear his own heavy breathing over the buzzing of the insects, and the dog could too. It started barking like crazy. Howling and scratching, throwing itself against the wall or the door. The sound made him think of the wild barks of the hunting dogs, the way they leapt at the mesh in their cages when you cycled by. The police dogs. When they were brought down to the river to track Lina’s scent, their distant barks when they found her things.

He knew he should get back in the car and drive away, fast, before the old man woke up and saw someone outside. Would he grab his hunting rifle, the one Olof had been allowed to hold, the one he was never old enough to fire? Colors and furniture tumbled around in his memory. The painted green stairs, the floral pattern on the wallpaper, his old bed beneath the sloping roof.

Then he saw the water, trickling slowly down the side of the house. Had one of the pipes sprung a leak? And why was the dog shut in? Olof could hear that it wasn’t in the hall by the front door, the natural place for a hunting dog, for any dog; the sound was farther back. Possibly in the kitchen, at the far end of the hallway. Olof pictured pale blue panels, white-painted cabinets, something cooking slowly on the hob.

The dog must be home alone. Surely no one could sleep that deeply.

His thoughts turned to the rock, the round one, by the corner of the house. A couple of wood lice scuttled away as he picked it up. The key was still there.

His hand was shaking so much that pushing it into the lock proved difficult. Olof had no right to unlock the door. You should know that they have declined all contact.

The particular scent of the house hit him, a sense of being a child again. The painting of the old man with a big mustache that used to look down at him from the wall, some prime minister from a hundred years ago, was now at eye level. And there was the bench with the cushion where they took off their shoes, the rag rugs his grandmother had weaved. They were barely visible beneath the things dumped all over the place, tools and equipment leaving only a narrow passageway down the hall, bags of empty cans and bottles. His mother never would have allowed the place to get into this state.

He heard claws scrabbling against wood. Olof had been right: the dog was shut in the kitchen, a broom wedged against the door. No one should be allowed to do that to a dog, he knew that much, despite the tangle of thoughts swirling through his mind.

He yanked the broom away and took cover behind the door as he turned the handle. Broom still in hand, in case he needed to ward off the dog’s jaws. But it shot straight past him, a black blur, darting outside. The stench of urine and shit followed it out, awful, the poor bastard had made a real mess in there.

That was when he noticed the water coming from the bathroom. It was seeping out beneath the door, washing over the rag rugs in the living room and forming small rivers and lakes on the brown linoleum floor.

The little indicator on the lock was white, not red, as it was when someone was in the bathroom. Olof had learned to lock himself in there with his comics. That was what you had to do when you had an annoying older sister screaming to let her in.