The Lost Village(8)
“Birgitta Lidman’s house,” I say. “It has to be.”
I would love to stop and take a look, but we should really try to get camp set up before nightfall. According to our schedule, we start exploring the village first thing tomorrow. We won’t start shooting any footage until day two or three, but we’re going to need every minute of the five days we’ve budgeted for.
There’s a lot to prepare: we have to figure out where we’re going to shoot, and the scenes that will best convey how we want the finished documentary to look.
The short trailer we’ve uploaded to the Kickstarter site is surprisingly slick, given we had hardly anything to work with. Tone managed to get a freelancer from her advertising days to do it for mate’s rates. But, slick as it is, it’s still only forty-five seconds of generic sweeping shots of nature, spliced with old documents and an ominous voice-over. A real trailer with dramatic images of Silvertj?rn itself would do a lot to get our Kickstarter going.
We should have hired a drone, I think, as I scan the small houses and cottages we’re approaching. What an opener that would have been: Silvertj?rn as seen from above—a picture-perfect village bathed in golden spring light—before swooping in toward the houses to shatter the idyll, reveal the decay: the collapsing walls, the sinking houses, the perfect little porches left to rot and crumble.…
I thought it wasn’t essential at this point, that we could save the drone for the real shoot, but now that we’re here I’m regretting that decision. I mean, there might never be a real shoot. Truth is, everything hangs on this trip; we only have one shot. If we can’t get this to work then I can hardly expect Max to pay for another bite of the cherry.
“There,” says Tone.
At first I don’t get what she’s pointing at, but then I suddenly see it: a wider gap between two of the houses ahead of us. A road. It isn’t paved, but I hadn’t expected it to be, either.
“Must be the main road,” I say.
“One of them, at least,” Tone replies.
Driving on the road is much easier going, although it’s overgrown and full of potholes. Neither of us says a word. We’re both too engrossed by the village we’re entering.
The houses stand like accusatory skeletons, windows glaringly empty. Most of them are simple row houses painted white, yellow, or red, like the mummified ghosts of the Swedish welfare state dream.
Heather and shrubs have taken over most visibly, but there’s also the odd thin, gnarled pine shooting up through cracked front steps and split fences. I wonder how long it will take before the foliage swallows up the village completely—another sixty years? One hundred?
For a moment I’m struck by an image so powerful it feels more real than the decay around us: these same houses, only with fresh layers of bright paint and lush little gardens; kids playing on the road we’re driving down, without having to worry about cars or even bikes; women hanging stiff, freshly scrubbed sheets out to dry outside their homes; and sweaty, unshaven men heading back from the mine at day’s end, washing themselves at a tap in the garden, and going inside to their bare but homely kitchens, to take their seat at a rustic wooden table with dinner ready and waiting. They would have eaten dinner early in a village like this—no later than five.
The van lurches as we drive over a rock, and I shake off my reverie, trying to focus on what is as opposed to what once was.
We drive across what must once have been a crossroads, and Tone silently points. I curse and stop the van, but leave the engine running. By now the last of the sun has disappeared behind the trees. We don’t have much time before nightfall.
I quickly wind down the window and wave at the others, who have stopped behind us.
“What is it?” Robert shouts out of his window. In my wing mirror I can see the blue Volvo behind him. I can’t see Max through his windshield, but his car seems to have made it down the bank without any major issues.
“The bridge,” I say.
The mining company’s report had led me to believe that the western bridge was made of stone, but it must have been made of wood. It seems incomprehensible to me that only twenty years ago it could ever have been deemed safe; all that remains of it are rotting blackened stumps on either side of the river. The water has burrowed down deeper than I’d imagined, and it surges down to the lake in a way that belies its dark, languid appearance.
“Shit,” I mutter.
“What do you want to do?” Tone asks. She, too, has wound down her window, to get some shots of the remains of the bridge.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“We could set up camp somewhere else?” she suggests. “Just for tonight. Then we can find a way across tomorrow.”
I shake my head.
“No,” I say, “I don’t think so.”
I feel a shiver run down my spine. Out of the corner of my eye I can feel the houses watching me through their dark eye sockets.
“No,” I repeat. “Let’s check if the other bridge is still standing. If not we’ll have to figure something out.”
Tone raises an eyebrow.
“Didn’t the report say that one was unstable?”
“I know what the report said,” I say, cutting her off. “But it was wrong about this one, so it could just as well have been wrong about that one, too. Or confused the two.”