The Lost Village(40)

But Tone’s sleeping soundly, and I’m the only one awake.

It’s a very lonely feeling.

I can’t help thinking about Grandma. Grandma, alone in a narrow bed in Stockholm, heavily pregnant and beside herself with worry. What she said about the last letter.

It arrived at the end of August, just before my due date. It had been a cool summer, but a heat wave had swept in at the end of July, and August had been just terrible. The air felt completely static, and I could hardly breathe, let alone move. It had been almost a month since I’d heard anything from Aina or Mother, which had worried me, but the pain and the heat had taken up more of my attention.

The letter was short. The handwriting wasn’t Aina’s usual style, which everyone had always praised for its elegance. It was written in a jerky, slipshod hand, on ink-stained paper, and was both incoherent and incomprehensible. She wrote that the hour was nigh, and that I must return to them before it was too late.

This made me frantic with worry, as I’m sure you can imagine. I begged and pleaded with your grandfather to let me go to Silvertj?rn. Even he started to worry when he read the letter, but I was in no state to travel: I was in my ninth month, and practically bedridden.

So your grandfather went there himself.

He roped his best friend into going with him, in case he should need any help. They took the 09:13 from Stockholm Central Station to Sundsvall, where they changed to the train for Silvertj?rn. It took them eleven hours to get there in all. Trains were slower back then.

It was already dusk when Grandpa and Nils got off the train, and the station was completely deserted. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

They made their way toward the center of town, the shadows drawing in, the houses empty. They knocked at doors here and there for directions—your grandpa hadn’t been there in a long time and couldn’t find my parents’ house, especially with the cottages looking so alike—but no one opened up.

It was only when they crossed the river to the main square that they saw it.

A pole had been raised in the middle of the square, and from it hung a limp body bound by ropes. Gitta must have been there for many long days, for the flies were swarming around her, and she had swollen in the late summer heat. Her face was bloody, beaten beyond recognition, and the stones they had used to execute her lay strewn around her body. Smooth, round river stones that had been gathered from the riverbed and blunted of any jagged edges. They were peppered with blood and hair.

Your grandfather and Nils were petrified. They had no idea what to do. At first they wanted to try to get her down, but it was soon clear that Birgitta was beyond saving. She had been dead for days. So they ran into the nearest house, in search of someone who could help.

It was empty. As was the next one, and the next. The doors all stood ajar, the rooms vacant.

By this point they were so scared that they were at their wit’s end. They ran back out into the square. Darkness had started to fall, and Birgitta’s body was still hanging from the pole. But when they looked at her, your grandfather swore—on the name of God the Father himself—that he saw her turn her head to look at them.

They ran all night through the forest to reach the nearest town, some sixty miles away. Nils collapsed from exhaustion on the edge of town, but your grandfather held out. He told them something terrible had happened in Silvertj?rn and that they had to send help, before he, too, collapsed.

When the police arrived they found Birgitta’s body in the middle of the square, just as your grandfather had said. The village was completely silent. But in the midst of that silence they heard a baby’s cries.

They found the baby naked on the floor of the school nurse’s room. It was no more than a few days old. There was no trace of whoever had left it there—nor, indeed, whoever had given birth to it.

The police searched every building, cottage, and villa, but they couldn’t find a single soul. It was as though every one of the 887 residents of Silvertj?rn had disappeared into thin air. Doors had been left open, windows ajar. The river ran peacefully down to the lake. And the village was empty.

They combed the forest but found no one—not a single track. Aina, my mother, and my father were gone, like the rest of our neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. Gone. As though they had never existed.





FRIDAY





NOW



The morning that dawns is clear and almost lavishly beautiful. The air zings with that fresh smell of pine and wet earth that comes only after a real spring downpour, and the sky feels enormous overhead. Light blue, without a cloud in sight.

The river water is freezing but surprisingly clear. From what I’ve read, it comes straight from the mountains. We’ve washed with an all-in-one shampoo that the woman in the camping store assured me was organic and biodegradable. I stand up and wring out my hair, watch the current carry the small white bubbles off toward the lake. Its glassy surface sparkles in the morning light. Perhaps we should have washed down there instead—the water would probably have been marginally warmer—but Emmy said it probably wouldn’t be as clear, as it’s still. To be honest, I was relieved when she said it. Those unfathomable depths look anything but inviting.

By the time I climb back up onto the riverbank and wrap myself up in my ugly, burled Coca-Cola towel, I’m so cold I can barely feel my feet. The air feels almost warm after the ice-cold water, and despite my long, anxious night I feel wide awake.