The Lost Village(29)

“We looked in two of the row houses,” Emmy says. “We had some spare time. It was insane—they really are completely identical, like the village just bought four hundred houses from IKEA and threw them all up next to each other.”

“But isn’t that pretty much how it was?” Max asks, looking at me. “Didn’t the people who owned the mine build cheap housing for all the manpower they brought in during the war?”

“Yeah,” I say, before a sudden smell of burning brings me back to my task at hand, and I turn the bread slices just before they catch fire. They’re a bit burned, but it’s probably OK. At least they’ll taste of something.

“We got some awesome shots,” says Emmy. “One of the houses had an apple tree growing in through one of the windows. It had taken half of the wall down. Really unsettling. In a good way.”

I can’t let it go:

“But the houses weren’t on our schedule.”

I feel like Emmy’s about to clap back, but it’s quiet Robert who says:

“It was my idea. I wanted to see how they looked.”

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

“Hard not to be curious,” he says apologetically, scratching his neck. He has very big hands and feet. It adds to the clumsy, slightly awkward impression he gives. He looks like a teenager who hasn’t quite grown into his body, even though Emmy’s said he’s only a few years younger than us. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to get annoyed at him.

“You can’t help but wonder what happened,” he goes on. “There was a cup on one of the kitchen counters. Like someone had just put down their coffee, gone out to pick up the paper, and then…”

“Disappeared,” says Tone quietly, finishing his sentence.

“Yeah,” says Robert. “Exactly.”

I take the toast off the fire, coax the slices off the skewer and hand them to Tone. She looks at them and says, “Mmm, well-done,” before taking a bite. Though the toast is practically charcoal, it comes as something of a relief: she sounds like herself, however tired she is, however much pain she’s in. Sardonic rather than beaten.

“Are there any theories?” Emmy asks me. I pull my sweater sleeves over my hands and sit back down on one of the camping mats.

“It’s in the packs,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, “it’s all in the packs. But you know everything about this place. Can’t you tell us something about them?”

I clench my teeth, but then I see that both Max and Robert are watching me closely. I puff out the breath I’ve been holding in and relent.

“OK,” I say. “Sure. Of course I can.”

I search for a natural entry point, somewhere to begin. Scan my mind for the best thread to pull at. As I do this, I’m once again very aware of the square around us: the glaring, empty windows; the cold cobblestones beneath us; the impossibly high sky overhead. So many stars. Before Silvertj?rn I’d never seen the Milky Way.

“The police investigation didn’t really reach any conclusions,” I say, fumbling around for the words. “You know that, it’s in the…”

I see a pull at Emmy’s lips, but then she purses them instead.

“Yeah. But anyway,” I say. “Obviously there are theories. Most people seem to think it was some sort of mass suicide. Like Jonestown—you know, that cult in South America with the insane leader who forced almost a thousand people to commit suicide.”

“If he forced them it sounds more like mass murder to me,” Emmy mutters.

I ignore her.

“You can see the similarities,” says Max. “A sect, an isolated location, a charismatic madman…”

“Except I don’t know if you could call this a sect,” I say. “I think most people have described it as a free church, if that. They never broke away from the Church of Sweden, so technically it was just a normal parish.”

“There’s no need to split hairs,” says Emmy. “It was a sect—whatever they called themselves.”

Before I can respond, Tone speaks up:

“Yeah, there are definite sect elements there. That comes through in the letters, if nothing else.”

“Aina’s letters, you mean?” I ask, and Tone nods.

“Anyway,” I continue, “we don’t know much about what happened in Silvertj?rn in the final months. The last letter we have from Aina is dated May 1959. Except the very last one, that is. I’ve tried to track down other letters from the same period—there must have been other people who had relatives out of town—but I haven’t found anything. People probably didn’t save them, or else they’ve just been misplaced over the years. Some relatives gave witness statements to the police, but none of those give us much to work with. So all the theories about the church and the pastor are based on complete speculation.”

“But it’s got to have something to do with them,” says Emmy. “Right? It can’t be coincidence that they build up some fanatical movement around this guy and then just disappear.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says Tone, stony-faced. “Some people claim they were all abducted by aliens.”

I smirk.

“I have to say, that one gets my vote,” I joke. “So if anyone spots any UFOs tonight, be sure to let me know.”