The Lost Village(93)

The pastor starts walking down into the darkness. Elsa hurries to find her feet, stumbling after him as fast as she can into the blackness and bedrock. Anything to not lose the light; anything to not be left in the darkness with the silent hordes behind her.

Elsa has seen their true faces now. She has seen the saliva frothing at their mouths; the glint in their eyes at the sight of blood; the intoxicated joy of their breathless gasps at the crack of bones.

The dancing cone of light ahead of them moves deeper and deeper underground; he is the light they follow in darkness. Elsa can see that as a symbol it must be seductive. Surely he knows that. It must be intentional.

Although Staffan worked in the mine some twenty-four years, Elsa has only been down here twice in her life, and never this deep. The air feels thicker and heavier, and the walls seem to press down onto them. She can feel the weight of the bedrock above her; thousands of tons of rock and ore, all held up by flimsy structures, mathematics, and goodwill.

Elsa wonders how they knew where to dig to reach the tunnels. But perhaps that’s no great wonder: of all the villagers behind her, how many hundreds used to work at the mine? They knew where the tunnels ran, where it would be safe to dig and blast.

Then the tunnel opens up before them, expanding to form a cavern.

The torch isn’t powerful enough to reach its furthest corners, but it’s bright enough for Elsa to see that the space is large—some fifteen feet high—and long. Elsa doesn’t doubt that the entire village will be able to fit in here. Whether it’s a natural air pocket or one of the older shafts from when the mine was new and Silvertj?rn no more than a few farmsteads out in the forest, she can’t tell.

In the middle of the cavern is a shallow body of water, hardly more than a pool. That’s what they are now approaching, Elsa and Ingrid and Dagny and Pastor Mattias, with the congregation behind them. He stops at the water’s edge and raises the torch. At first he says nothing, just lets the light speak for itself.

Frank grabs her shoulders again, hard—so hard that her bones rub. But the pain can’t reach her. He’s probably expecting her to launch at the pastor, to attack him in some way. He needn’t worry.

“Where will you go?” Elsa asks Pastor Mattias, and her voice sounds almost like normal. “Where will you go after this?”

It’s like speaking to a statue, a quiet, forbidding monolith. But he looks at her and smiles mildly.

“Go?” he asks. “Why should I go anywhere?”

Behind her Elsa hears the steps and breaths of those who have started to throng into the cavern and push out toward the walls. Those who are watching them at a distance. Those waiting.

His voice is hardly more than an exhalation, yet still Elsa hears every word.

“I have created my Heaven on Earth,” he says. “Every one of these people sees me as their prophet. Their guide. Their master. They drink the words from my lips. I have created Silvertj?rn in my own image. No, I am not going anywhere. We have many lovely years ahead, Silvertj?rn and I.”

The light of the torch dances in his gray eyes.

“Down here I am God.”





NOW



In this darkness I am blind.

With every step I take, my knee sends small streams of pain up my leg, and my back is one single aching knot. I can’t tell if it’s the lack of light or the blow to my head that’s affecting my balance, but I keep on bumping into walls, having to catch myself with grazed palms.

I hear Robert staggering behind me. He sounds like he’s doing better than me, but that isn’t saying much.

When I feel the water start to seep into my shoes I don’t realize what it is, I just take another step. It’s the splashing sound that makes me stop.

“What…” I begin, but I’m cut off by Aina’s hoarse, excited voice as it creeps over my shoulder.

“Here,” she says, and I hear her approach, hear Robert grunt as she shoves past him, her hands still fixed on Tone.

The light dazzles my sore eyes, and I blink hard, trying to get my vision to clear.

The tunnel is small and cramped. It’s a transport tunnel: behind us it’s straight, but ahead it looks like it starts to dip down into a bend. The mine itself must be further down. The water has flooded the passageway up to the bend, forming a sinkhole, some sort of underground lake. It’s impossible to see how deep it is, or how far down it goes.

When I turn to look at Aina and Tone, I see that Aina is holding an old kerosene lamp made of glass and steel. It looks basic, and the kerosene container is almost empty, but it’s more than enough for the small tunnel. In the light of the burner the dark surface of the water looks like oil, sleek and black.

I back away from the water’s edge and into Robert.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

I wish I could apologize for so much more; that I could make him understand everything I regret. But my voice is broken and faint, and “sorry” will never be enough.

The hymn seems to ooze from the passage walls, trickling down the rock with the damp. Aina hums along, then sings, her voice surprisingly sweet:

“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide…”

Her voice sounds solemn despite the high-pitched hymn. It gets multiplied by the tunnel’s cracks and nooks, fragmented and hurled back at us like thousands of soulless whispers. She is one of a choir.