The Lost Village(49)

“And now she’s gone,” I finish, both a judgment and statement of fact.

“Maybe we’re overreacting,” Max offers. “You know, she might have just needed the bathroom.”

“Then she would’ve heard us,” I say. “We’ve been here almost half an hour.”

“But her foot’s hurt,” says Max. “What if she just went to pee somewhere, lost her balance, and can’t get up again? That wouldn’t be so strange.”

He puts his hand on my arm.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go look for her. I’m sure we’ll find her in no time. I’ll go with you.” He cups his hand gently around my elbow, as if to hold me up.

I shake my head.

“No,” I say, nodding at Emmy. “Go with her. Keep an eye on her. Someone has to stop her from taking off with one of the vans again.”

I’m expecting anger, but Emmy just stands still. Then she looks at Robert.

“It’s OK. You go with Alice,” she says. “The important thing is that we find Tone before she does herself any harm.”





NOW



“Tone!” I shout, turning off down an alley. Robert takes my arm. His grip is cautious, but I still feel myself recoil.

“It’ll be easier if we do it systematically,” he says. “Check street by street. Otherwise we might miss her.”

His voice is mild. It feels like a provocation.

I stop and look at him.

“Did you know Emmy was going to take off?”

He hesitates, shifty-eyed. His pupils look tiny in his hazelnut irises.

The feeling that comes over me is something close to disgust.

“Of course you did,” I say.

If only Emmy hadn’t offered to stay. Max or I could have stayed with Tone. If only Emmy had just told me she wanted to go call somebody, told me she was worried. I would have said yes.

Wouldn’t I?

The sunlight stings my eyes. The walls of the buildings feel like they start to close in, tightening and contracting. Soon we’ll be completely swallowed up. We’ll sink down into the soil, grow into the walls, coalesce with the decay and the silence. Like Tone. Like Aina, and Elsa, and Staffan.

There won’t be any trace of us.

I try to shake off these thoughts. They’re morbid; they won’t help.

“Tone!” Robert shouts. His voice is clearer and less desperate than mine, but maybe that’s a bad thing; maybe that means it doesn’t travel as far.

My nerves feel brittle as singed hairs, shriveled and tender under my skin. My ears seem unnaturally sensitive. It’s as though each distended second is the one before I’ll suddenly hear her cry: “Here!” weakly and pitifully, her voice flecked with pain.

She must have fallen on that foot and hurt it even more; she’s probably lying on the ground somewhere, tears in her eyes, teeth clenched.

As soon as we find her we’re getting the hell out of here. Getting her to a hospital. Leaving this damn place behind.

The buildings rise up on either side of us, deceitfully idyllic. I scamper across the road, ruthlessly trampling down the shoots of blue scilla and crocuses that have painstakingly set their roots in the dusty, compressed earth. The rusty mailboxes stand crooked and warped on thin wooden posts, like speared shrunken heads with metal numbers for faces. 16. 17. 18.

“Tone!”

My voice has started to falter. Do I really think she’s going to respond?

Where could she be?

Against my will, I hear that strange laugh from the video echoing softly in my head; see the figure in the rain in my mind. And there it is—the thought I don’t want to acknowledge.

We’re not alone here.

I can’t even approach the idea that Silvertj?rn, my desolate, deserted Silvertj?rn, may not be so deserted after all. That something has been lying in wait here. That that something—or someone—has taken Tone and is lurking in the shadows, perhaps even watching us right now.

The exposed skin on my arms starts to prickle.

Robert catches up with me, and I stop outside a grayish white cottage. The white plastic window box that once hung from the windowsill is cracked and lopsided.

When I close my eyes, the frenzied April sun shines straight through my eyelids.

Robert puts his hand on my shoulder. I flit it off and shake my head.

“No,” I say.

“She didn’t mean any harm,” says Robert, and I open my eyes.

“What?”

“Emmy and I did talk about it before,” he says, quietly. There’s a hesitancy in his voice.

“I knew what she was going to do. She was worried. She said she didn’t know if you’d listen to her, so … She was just worried about Tone, I swear.”

He looks so sincere, so nakedly honest. I don’t know if I believe him, but he has the sort of face that makes you want to trust him, want to believe him.

I don’t reply. Instead I look up at the street, take a deep breath, and shout:

“Tone! Tone, can you hear me? It’s Alice! TONE!”

Not a sound; nothing but the wheeze of my breaths and the whistle of the wind through the broken windowpanes.

I can’t keep still. I look up and down the street, and then start heading back toward the crossing. When the sun hits my eyes I shield them with my hand, then stop and squint down the other street.