The Lost Village(20)

NOW



I wish we had recordings of Silvertj?rn as it looked in its heyday, before the mine shut. All we have are a few dim, shaky images in black-and-white and sepia. I plan to post them all on Instagram later, and to use them in any pitches to possible sponsors and grant applications, but it’ll be hard to incorporate them into the documentary itself in a slick way. We’ll have to hope that the material we get on this trip is strong enough to speak for itself. It should be.

The school’s rough plasterwork has acquired a sickly, grimy, grayish hue, and the window frames are chipped and splintered, most of them gaping empty. It’s hot and stuffy under my respirator mask, and the band chafes over my ears. I feel claustrophobic wearing it, but when we stop at the top of the crumbling front steps into the school I’m glad I have it.

Light floods into the hallway through the giant windows, revealing whirling specks of dust. Even through the air filter I can tell it smells of mold and old paper in here. We step cautiously into the little lobby, which, with its cream walls and sturdy wooden floor, is anonymous enough to belong to any Swedish institution. Were it not for the clumps of peeling paint and the bulging, warped floorboards, this could just as well be a dentist’s waiting room.

I hear a jittery laugh and turn toward Tone. She’s looking straight up at the imposing staircase leading up to the second floor.

“What are you laughing at?” I ask.

“Huh?” Tone asks, peeling her eyes away from the staircase to look at me.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I didn’t laugh,” she says. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh. I thought I heard something,” I say, and her eyes narrow from the smile under her mask.

“Ghosts,” she says, and I roll my eyes.

“Max was going on about ghosts earlier, too,” I say. “Maybe we should forget about the documentary and make a horror film instead.”

“You do look like you could be in a slasher film in that mask,” she says, her teasing tone of voice audible even through her mask. “Michael Myers meets Darth Vader.”

“That can be plan B,” I say, taking in the staircase in front of us. “If we don’t find anything interesting enough for a documentary.”

“I doubt you’ll have to worry about that,” she mutters.

In the stillness of the abandoned building I can almost hear Grandma’s voice again.

It was only a village, but it had everything you could need. There was a church that held services every Sunday—which was where my parents got married—a little grocery store, and a pharmacy. Twice a month a doctor passed through town to tend to any scratches or scrapes, but for anything more serious you would have to drive to the general hospital down in Sundsvall. And there was a school, of course.

The staircase before us is made of wood, not stone, which is a bad sign. On the other hand, it does look in better shape than the rest of the building. The steps are lined with what must once have been a thick, burgundy carpet, but which years of sun and rain and snow have faded and thinned to the extent that only a few ruffled patches remain, like the pelt of a mangy animal.

“Let’s start down here,” I say to Tone.

In preparation for this trip, I’ve spent many a long night on a forum for urban explorers. Most of them seem to be based in the United States and Germany, and they spend their nights and weekends exploring abandoned houses and buildings on the outskirts of cities. It’s their tips I’ve used on which respirator masks to wear, what equipment we need to carry, and the safety rules to live by, namely: never take a staircase without checking how stable it is; always tread carefully; and keep an eye out for patches of damp or mold that could have weakened weight-bearing beams and walls.

The lobby gives out onto two corridors, one to the left and one to the right. I gesture to the corridor on the right with a quick jerk of the head, and Tone nods.

The first door we come to leads to a bathroom with four compact cubicles. Tone has the camera in her hand and takes a few quick snaps, but there’s nothing too noteworthy here: tiles with dirty grouting; old-fashioned sinks in cracked porcelain; cubicle doors hanging off their hinges. I touch one of them but the hinge is more rust than metal, and the wood disintegrates beneath my fingers.

We move swiftly on into the first classroom. There are rows of desks with tiny Windsor chairs. For some reason the size of the chairs make the whole sight even more disconcerting. Some of the desks have lost their legs and collapsed, but most of them seem to be more or less intact. There’s a large slate chalkboard on the far wall, but nothing is written on it.

The next two doors lead to an identical classroom and a small broom closet. Then the corridor ends. Tone takes a shot of the dead end without a word, and then we wander back along the row of shattered windows.

The corridor on the other side is exactly the same. In one of the classrooms the chalkboard has fallen from the wall and shattered into large black chunks on the floor. Tone lifts the camera to her eyes, but then lowers it again.

“Isn’t it kinda weird?” she asks, without turning around. She takes a few steps into the room, toward the windows.

“What?” I ask from the doorway.

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.