The Lost Village(87)

I don’t understand. How can he be dead? How can he be lying there with a smashed skull if Tone is locked in the house? How can he … Nobody could have …

The figure in the rain.

Emmy’s sea-green eyes looking straight into mine:

“You saw somebody, didn’t you?”

Tone’s pain-choked voice:

“I heard something below us.”

The laugh on the video.

The scream over the walkie-talkie.

Tone’s hand drawing a stick figure with long, straggly hair and a black-hole mouth.

Something is very wrong.

I back away, stumble, fall out of the door, and look up, up and left, at the crucifix. Jesus hasn’t turned to look at me. His dark, painted eyes are still staring straight ahead, out over the village. Out over Silvertj?rn.

Robert’s hand is covering his mouth. He follows me back into the church, his movements dazed and jerky, the shock written on his face in big, soundless letters.

“She was right,” I say, my lips numb. “You were right. We’re not alone here.”





THEN



Elsa had heard the distant whistle of the train as it pulled out of the station.

She should have felt something at her last hope leaving Silvertj?rn, but she found nothing. There’s nothing left in her.

It’s so dark down here that she can’t make out anything at all. She has already felt her way along the cold, damp earth, around the rough stone walls and up the small staircase; she has pounded on the door and screamed, but it did nothing, and her pounding hands had felt weak and useless.

Where would she even go if she did manage to get out?

Before that whistle of the train, she had had no idea how much time had passed. It had felt as though she had spent several days down here in the parsonage cellar, but that shrill whistle had brought some of her senses back to her. A few hours have passed since then. It must be around five or six in the afternoon now.

What is going to happen to her?

Elsa has been trying not to dwell on that. Nor on what will become of Birgitta and Kristina. But down here her thoughts spin beyond her control. She’s just as powerless to stop them as she is to break down that impenetrable door up there.

Sometimes the odd shard of hope glimmers before her.

Perhaps they’re just keeping her down here until evening; perhaps Margareta will start to wonder why their letters have stopped; perhaps Staffan will listen to reason.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Hunger has already come and gone. All that remains now is the thirst, which has gone from a dry sensation in her throat to a steady, prolonged pain in her head and stomach. It’s cooler down here than out in the sun, but the August heat has nevertheless forced its way inside. When she closes her eyes now she sees silver lightning bolts before her.

The creak of the door makes her start. Dazzled by the light of the rectangular opening, she shields her eyes with her hand.

“Fru Kullman,” says a young man’s voice. It’s dull and monotonous, unfamiliar to Elsa’s ears.

Elsa tries to peer through her fingers, but against the light it’s impossible to make out who it is.

“Fru Kullman,” the voice repeats. “Don’t make me come down there to get you.”

Her ears may be unused to human voices, but Elsa can still tell a threat when she hears one.

Her legs aching, Elsa gets to her feet and climbs the staircase. They don’t want to carry her, but whether that’s down to the thirst, hunger, or darkness, she can’t tell.

When Elsa reaches the top of the staircase she has a wild urge to try to run, but the young man—who in the light turns out to be Frank Sundin—takes a steely, painful grip of her arm. He hardly looks at Elsa before he starts walking. She feels dazed and confused, but she does her best to keep up with him and not to fall.

It seems hopeless, but she has to try:

“Frank,” she begs him, “you don’t have to do this. If you let me go now you can say I broke free and ran off into the forest. You don’t have to…”

He neither replies nor looks at her. Instead he jerks her arm so hard that her shoulder almost pops out of its joint and, with a yelp like a kicked dog, she goes quiet.

Elsa can’t tell where they’re going. They have already passed the church, and are now walking down toward the square. Where is he taking her? The streets are eerily empty. Elsa doesn’t spot a single person on the way. The windows gape darkly, and the doors stand shut, despite the hot, dry afternoon.

When they pass her house she looks away.

The murmur swells up ahead of Elsa before she sees the horde. By now she is faint from thirst and hunger, her throat is swollen, and her head is throbbing. It’s only when they start to near the square, when the country lane is met by the cobblestones, that she realizes where all of Silvertj?rn is.

They are all thronging into the square, spilling out into the surrounding streets and houses. When Elsa and Frank approach, the horde falls silent and makes way for them. Elsa searches for a familiar face, someone to hold on to, but by now they are all as good as strangers to her. These faces that she has known her whole life: the young men and women she cradled in her arms as babies; the friends she comforted and advised; the people who one month, one week, even one day ago would have chatted happily to her in the street, who would have asked after Margareta’s news down south, and if she’d be bringing the little one up to visit anytime soon.