The Lost Village(50)

That’s when it happens. Right then, in that saturated silence.

For one instant, reality freezes. Time shatters into milliseconds. One frame where I stop. One where I raise my hands to my ears. One where I crouch down low, hunch my back. One where I screw up my eyes, trying to close off my senses to the overwhelming noise. A bellow resounding through the village.

It’s an explosion. And it’s in the square.





NOW



I smell the smoke before I see it.

The harsh, piercing odor makes me cough as we run. I’m pretty fit, but I’m soon left breathless and lagging behind, and Robert isn’t waiting for me.

Up ahead of us the thick, black smoke is soaring up over the square.

Robert doesn’t care about me, or Tone, or himself. He’s running to Emmy.

I take a few deep breaths, cough into my hand as the smoke sinks deep into my lungs, then try to catch up.

The square looks like something out of a war film. The sooty, black remains of one of the vans lie strewn across the square.

Our things are still burning; it’s from them that the puffs of smoke are surging up into the sky. The second van has flipped onto its side. Its white body is flecked with black soot, and the wheels appear to have melted in the heat.

The shock waves have thrust Max’s Volvo into the side of the village hall. Its crumpled blue body looks like it’s been squeezed by a giant’s hand.

Most of the heather has caught fire, and it burns in shifty, slight flames that seem to be gasping for air.

My ears are still ringing.

Across the square, I see Emmy and Max run up and then stop in their tracks. Emmy’s hair has fallen out of its ponytail and sprawls, red and ruffled, around her head. Even from across the chaos, I can tell when her eyes meet mine.

Our things are still burning steadily, but by now they have started to blacken and shrivel in the flames. I can barely make out what’s what.

“Emmy!” Robert cries, her name tearing out of his throat.

Emmy takes Max’s arm and says something to him. Then they cautiously start edging around the square toward us, keeping their distance from the flames still licking the cobblestones.

When they near us, Robert runs forward. He hugs Emmy so hard that it looks like she’s about to snap. Emmy hugs him back, her eyes closed. Neither of them says a word.

I feel a strange ache inside me, made only worse when Max gives me a hug. It feels weird, and wrong, and I pull back.

Emmy lets go of Robert and locks her eyes on me.

“We can’t stay here,” she says. “The other van could blow.”

“What the fuck is happening?” I ask. I don’t know if I’m directing this at Emmy, one of the others, or at Silvertj?rn itself.

“I don’t know,” says Emmy. “But we’ve got to get to safety first. Then we can try to figure it out.”

She sweeps her hair behind her ears and looks at Robert, who nods.

There’s a sound of metal cracking as something in the burning van gives out.

I don’t know how explosions work. All I know is I that want away from that van. I’ve heard that it isn’t the fire you need to worry about but the shock waves; that they can make soup of your internal organs.

I don’t let myself dwell on that thought.

Emmy starts running, and I follow her.





THEN



“Elsa!” she hears Dagny calling behind her. She hesitates, almost considers pretending she hasn’t heard, but plain, simple good manners get the better of her. She turns around.

Dagny is, as usual, rather well dressed for a stroll through town, wearing a tight skirt, an ostentatious brooch on the collar of her coat, and dark lipstick that has smudged slightly at the corners of her mouth. She used to be the village beauty—and is of course still very elegant—but the years have taken their toll on her. She and her husband have no children, and Elsa suspects that it isn’t for want of trying. Sadness has made its mark, giving her a hard, lacquered appearance, like a beautiful vase in brittle porcelain.

“Good afternoon,” says Elsa when Dagny catches up with her. “How are you?”

Dagny gestures at the cold gray sky, more fitting for January than April.

“Oh, you know. The weather’s just frightful,” she says, as though it were a personal affliction, rather than one felt by the whole village. “And how are you?”

Elsa isn’t sure what to say. How is she, really? Her youngest daughter is refusing to speak to her, her husband has turned to the bottle, her firstborn is laid up with preeclampsia hundreds of miles away, and she can’t be at her side because she doesn’t dare leave her charge alone, not even for a few days.

“Fine,” she says. “Just fine.”

“Have you seen the Axelssons’ dog?” asks Dagny. It appears she’s planning to walk with Elsa all the way back to her house.

“No,” Elsa says. “Should I have?”

Dagny shakes her head.

“Ran away a few days ago, apparently,” she says. “That’s what they’re saying, at least. Personally, I think we have bears in the forest.”

“Bears?” Elsa asks.

“Yes.” Dagny nods insistently. “Klaes Ekman’s dog disappeared a few weeks ago, too. Ran away, he says. Not so cut up about it all, though, is he, as it was mainly to keep the rats at bay, but I think the bears took them. I have a cousin up in Lapland who lost a dog to bears last winter. Because they’re short on food, you see.”