This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  “They won’t be rid of me easily.”

  “No, I didn’t think so. But listen, I’m serious. You should leave off, pack your bags, return home. It wouldn’t be a failure, only a reasonable decision. I see deep waters ahead for you.”

  “Being reasonable isn’t my strong suit,” Brand said. “I feel as though I’ve got to follow this thing through. But I certainly wouldn’t blame you for deciding it’s not your battle to fight.”

  At that, Hammar had placed his hand on Brand’s arm. “The evidence is in,” he said. “It’s clear you need someone to look after you.”

  Brand felt a twinge of irritation over the comment, perhaps because of the truth of it. A typical male sentiment, after all. Hammar’s soft smile managed to disarm her. With elaborate politeness he had opened the driver’s side door of the Saab.

  “Unless you’d consider the strange idea of the owner driving his own car?”

  “I’ll drive,” Brand said, climbing in. “You navigate.”

  “To Västvall, then,” Hammar said. “Voss country.”

  They had left the church behind and drove west on empty highways, climbing into a wild upland region Hammar referred to as the fjäll.

  “‘Fell’, is how you would say it in English,” he said.

  A half hour later, on their approach to Västvall, the road ran fairly straight, a gradual incline with snow-laden pines on either side. All patches of blue sky had disappeared. A few random snowflakes floated suspended in midair, pretty portents of more to come. The turn-off to the village allowed for a good view from the top of a hill.

  Brand counted four farmhouses scattered on the downside of the slope, with good spreads of land in between each of them. They were built in the same style she had seen at the Dalgren homestead, two-storied and homely looking, with square windows set in their small peaked gables. Everything was painted falu red. Stock pens, loading ramps, and gnarled wooden sheds clustered around the structures, everything looking sad and deserted.

  Hammar pointed towards the hillside behind them. “There’s more farmland up there, meadows for grazing. In the summer the cows were herded further up the mountainside. A young girl, a fäbodjänta, stayed with the cows, a cow tender, you could say. Fäbod is the word for the houses up there.”

  “Fah-bawd,” Veronika tried.

  Hammar smiled. “There were small compounds built of logs. The cow tenders lived in them for the summer. You’d hear their songs echoing up and down the mountains. Something like a Swiss yodel, but more romantic, poetic. She called the cows home.”

  “Sounds like a great summer job,” Brand said. “Where do I apply?”

  “Heavy work,” Hammar said with a sideward glance. “Milking those cows, churning butter.”

  “I’m familiar with all that,” Brand answered.

  “There are probably more houses on the property,” Hammar continued. “Down below, a few grand lodges exist, homes for the modern-day family members, hidden off in the woods. And that makes up the entirety of Västvall.”

  There was something moody about the look of the village, sunk in the darkened upland valley. It was as if the sun never penetrated and the mighty Scandinavian light finally had to retreat in defeat.

  “Even today, the locals around here honor the old traditions,” Hammar said. “On Saturday nights the young fools in these little villages get drunk and make raids on each other. The town in the next valley over is always enemy territory. They get into brawls or race their cars. Everyone laughs it off as simple country innocence. What else is there to do during the long winters?”

  “From my experience as a cop, I’d say innocence is more a matter of luck rather than virtue.”

  “Luck and a good lawyer,” Hammar agreed, laughing. He indicated the village below them. “Shall we go amongst them, Detective Brand?”

  The faded, storm-filtered light on the mountainside turned to murk as they descended into the valley. Brand was distracted for a moment by the stark reality of the surroundings. She realized they were about to enter the home territory of people that had, directly or indirectly, figured into her family’s destiny in tragic ways.

  Just as that thought occurred to her, the ancient woods closed in on both sides of the little two-lane road. They entered a tree-lined vault that felt almost subterranean. Huge pines soared upward to become an overhead tangle of interlocking branches. Downed tree trunks the size of tanker trucks studded the dense undergrowth.

  The forest would have blocked all sunlight, had there been any left. The winter storm they had first noticed back in the churchyard had now moved in. A heavy sky lowered on this part of Sweden, stone-black and impenetrable. The looming clouds above mirrored the dark of the woods below.

  Brand peered out the side window of the Saab. She had heard about such a landscape but had never really encountered it. Here was the great, deep, enduring Swedish forest, a sacred realm that supposedly lodged itself near to the heart of the national soul.

  “The forest primeval,” she murmured.

  “What was that?” Hammar asked.

  “Nothing,” Brand said. “I was just noticing that this is all old-growth woodland around here.”

  “Urskog,” Hammar said. “What you call virgin forest. Never logged.”

  “Beautiful,” Brand said, but she didn’t mean it. What she meant instead was terrible, alien, suffocating.

  Without thinking, Brand moved her foot off the Saab’s accelerator to ease on the brakes. Encountering the arboreal landscape slowed them as surely as if they had driven into a patch of mud. Even the air inside the car seemed to have gone dense.

  Turning to examine the brushy understory on the passenger side, she noticed the snow was marked by what looked like human footprints. Either that, or clumps of snow falling from the immense trees had dotted the forest floor below.

  Brand thought later that her brief turn of head made all the difference. Had she been looking forward, she probably would not have hit the young child.

  21.

  The boy sprang from the woods on the driver’s side of the Saab. He ran slantwise into the road. Brand glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye. She thought at first that it might be some woodland animal. She didn’t have time to react.

  The hollow thud of the child’s body hitting the Saab’s front quarter-panel felt like a punch to Brand’s gut. He rolled onto the sloped hood and slammed against the windshield with a dull crack. Instinctively, Brand jammed on the brakes. Her body lurched forward and her chin grazed the steering wheel.

  For an instant the boy’s face and Brand’s were inches from each other. He had entered into an odd crouch, like an Olympic gymnast, his arms out as if searching for balance. But the force of impact broke his precarious pose. The little body seemed to bounce upward into the sky and disappear.

  The Saab’s brakes dragged to the left. Beneath its snow-glazed surface, the roadway was scattered with fine gravel. The car entered into a greasy five-meter skid. It wound up skewed toward the opposite, uphill shoulder of the road.

  Hammar had also been thrust forward by the abrupt stop. His nose clipped the unpadded dashboard, not sharply, but hard enough. When he rocked backwards blood spurted from both nostrils.

  Brand found herself caught in a tangled seat belt. She couldn’t get her breath. She wanted to cry out. She wanted to ask Hammar if he was all right, wanted to sit still for a moment and gather her wits. Her thoughts were overwhelmed by the unreality of what had just happened.

  “Oh, fucking hell,” she said.

  Having trouble operating the unfamiliar door handle of the Saab, finally freeing herself from the stubborn seat belt, Brand staggered out onto the snowy surface of the road. Hammar had already managed to emerge from the car.

  “What was that?” Brand said. Hammar exclaimed, “Var är han?” at the same time.

  The broken boy had vanished. He was a phantasm. A vague imprint of his head left behind a spider-web crack in the ancient Saab’s windshield. That seemed t
o be the only sign he really existed. Then Brand saw a single cheap plastic boot lying in front of the car.

  “Vilket jävla sätt,” Hammar hissed. In the crisis he had unconsciously switched over to Swedish. He had said either “where is it?” or “what happened?” Brand didn’t know which.

  She and Hammar had both left their car doors completely open. The modern, retrofitted key alarm Hammar had installed in the Saab dinged solemnly. Other than that, all was silent.

  To the left, the road sloped away into a shallow, snow-filled gully. Brand first saw a thin brown arm. She had a terrible thought that the boy’s body had somehow come apart. The arm lay twenty feet away. Could he really have been thrown that far?

  “He’s here,” Brand said. To her ears, her own voice sounded cold, emotionless.

  Hammar and Brand moved across the road to the ditch. Beneath the Saab’s annoying robotic ding-ding-ding something else sounded, the voice of a bird, a small animal.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” it said.

  In the knee-deep snow by the roadside sprawled a young boy. He wore not enough clothes for the weather, a pair of flimsy pants and a hoodie. He looked twelve years old. The body landed in a crumpled, abnormal posture, a single thin arm extended backward. The match to the boot on the road hung off the boy’s right foot.

  “Följ med!” Hammar spoke with panicked urgency. Come along!

  They both stepped off the road to reach the child. He’s not dead, Brand thought. If he’s moaning that means he’s alive.

  “Oh, oh, oh.”

  Brand’s police training kicked in. “We shouldn’t move him,” she said to Hammar. “There might be…damage to the spine.”

  “Skitsnack,” Hammar said. Nonsense. He kneeled to take the boy in his arms.

  Blood blossomed on the child’s face. For a sick second Brand thought of a hemorrhage, but she realized Hammar’s nose was dripping bright vermilion drops whenever he moved.

  “Lilla vän,” Hammar said, still favoring Swedish. “Säg något!” Can you say something?

  Brand looked over at Hammar. His face was smeared with blood. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Hammar said. “Näsblod.”

  The child in his arms would not quit moaning. “We need a…” Hammar said.

  “A blanket?” Brand said.

  “A phone,” Hammar said. Brand felt like an idiot. She could only conclude her cop competence had been left behind when she had flown across the Atlantic. She wondered about the effects of shock, for the child as well as for her and Hammar.

  She dug into her pocket for her cell phone.

  Hammar began delicately probing the limbs of the whimpering child. “I’m not sure, but I can’t find anything broken.”

  “No coverage,” Brand said, staring dumbly at the cell phone screen. Her phone had been failing to connect ever since she arrived in Sweden.

  “I’ve got a phone in my—” Hammar began to say, then he cut himself off. His face expressed alarm.

  Brand followed the direction of his look. A sneaking clutch of children had crept around the Saab, ten meters back along the road. They displayed the same unseasonably skimpy clothes as the injured boy. There were four or five of the waifs. Brand couldn’t tell exactly how many. One halted at the open passenger door. Another ducked inside. A third was already dashing away from the car, dragging a leather satchel belonging to Hammar.

  Brand couldn’t think straight. Evidently the Saab had been set upon by a gang of thieving street urchins who for some reason chose to inhabit the woods. Forest urchins.

  “Hey!” she called. From her kneeling position she pulled herself upright.

  The key-alarm dinging abruptly ceased. The child who was reaching inside the car had snatched the ignition keys.

  “Fuck!” Hammar exclaimed. “Era små djävlar!” You little devils! He lurched forward, causing the boy in his arms to moan afresh.

  The looting of the Saab went along like lightning. Before Brand could step back onto the roadway, she saw the children gather up Hammar’s camera and cell phone.

  Seeing Brand emerge from the ditch back onto the road, one of the gang of lost boys, an older, taller one, emitted a sentinel-like alarm, a quick, chirp-like whistle.

  The children scattered. Dragging their treasure—Brand’s sweater, a bag of potato chips, Hammar’s leather satchel—they disappeared, crowing, into the shelter of the woods. Brand realized that they weren’t all lost boys. One was a tiny girl in a ragged black dress and tattered leggings. She had crawled out from somewhere, seemingly from beneath the car.

  Behind Brand, Hammar had straightened up also. He still dripped blood and still cradled the injured boy in his arms.

  With a violent animal-like twist of his body, the child slipped out of Hammar’s grasp. He ducked away and ran again out onto the roadway. He displayed no apparent injury from his recent impact with the Saab. Scooping up his wayward boot, he hopped along while slipping it onto his bare foot. Then he staggered off on the trail of his partners in crime.

  The boy flung a middle finger behind him as he fled.

  Cursing volubly, holding up the sleeve of his jacket to his streaming nose, Hammar lurched after the boy at a run.

  “Wait,” Brand called to him. Then she stopped. My pistol, she thought.

  “There’s a loaded weapon in there,” she murmured aloud to no one. The awful truth served to stun her as sure as if she had just received a sharp blow to the head.

  Had she really seen what she thought she had seen? The girl in the shabby black dress had grabbed Brand’s backpack. Now the child scampered down the slope with it, thirty meters away and disappearing fast.

  With her went Brand’s smuggled firearm.

  22.

  The blizzard hit full force while Brand struggled through the deep drifts in the forest outside Västvall village. She had left the disabled Saab behind to follow the tracks of the fleeing kid thieves. Once she stumbled across the blood-spattered trail of Hammar and his quarry. She almost instantly lost that track, too, becoming increasingly disoriented.

  “Hammar,” she called out, only to hear her words swallowed by storm winds that had risen quite suddenly to a howl. Soon the human footprints on the forest floor became obscured by blowing snow. The air around Brand filled with swarms of glistening crystals, sharp and stinging. Darkness dropped with a velocity that astonished her. Any leftover daylight became eclipsed by the blizzard.

  Brand’s only possible choice was to follow the sloping ground downward. She assumed that eventually she would come to the floor of the low-land and the village.

  If I don’t freeze to death first, she thought morosely.

  She knew the Swedes believed or pretended to believe in spirits loose in the forest. The urskog, as Hammar had called the woods she found herself in. On the night of the Dalgren family reunion, Lukas had told ghost stories about the forest spirits, entertaining the numberless nephews, nieces and grandchildren that had gathered.

  “Huldror, pretty ladies of the forest who will lead you to your doom,” he had said, using a dramatic, woo-woo voice. “From the front, they appear to be beautiful maidens. From behind they’re hideous, and sometimes they have a tail!”

  The children screamed with frightened delight.

  Now Brand was in pursuit of a huldra of her own, a tiny girl in a black dress, dragging a backpack with a loaded weapon in it.

  She felt enveloped in a dream. The larcenous children certainly hadn’t seemed real to her. They were wood imps summoned forth by the trespass of a citified foreigner, an intruder who had dared to enter the depths of the urskog. They were here to bedevil her.

  Such mythical creatures never came unaccompanied. Not only huldror haunted the forests, but evil dwarves, trickster sprites, as well as nattmaror, or nightmares, a species of enormous she-wolves that tormented victims in their sleep.

  “And trolls,” Brand muttered to herself, staggering along. “Don’t forget trolls.”

  No
doubt she would soon be meeting up with trolls and whatever other varieties of folkloric horror the Swedes cooked up to scare children and American detectives. The whole pantheon would emerge by nightfall, which was being hurried briskly along by the storm.

  Frostbite was probably a more concrete danger, but in the current environment Brand’s mind tended toward spooks. She thrust an ungloved hand into the pocket of her vest for warmth, and found the small stone charm that Moro Part gave her. Whatever positive vibe the dingus supposedly had wasn’t helping much.

  As she plunged forward, her feet froze slowly upward from the toes. The snow infiltrated her clothing and then melted, making everything wet and miserable. Deep drifts alternated with treacherous stretches of bare, wind-swept ground, strewn with trip-hazard roots and rocks. She soon felt as if she were stumping along on twin blocks of ice.

  Climbing a four-meter ridge of hardened snow, Brand abruptly realized she was out of the woods. The big drift had been piled high along the side of a roadway by a snowplow.

  The Swedish urskog had released its American victim. Visibility still sucked. Brand followed the road to the right instead of the left, toward the little village instead of who-knew-where. Her breath came hard. She thought of tragic anecdotes told by her Dalgren relatives at the reunion, who seemed to relish the idea of a cold so vicious that it froze a victim’s lungs.

  “Hammar!” she shouted again. She was wary of attracting the attention of the pint size gangbangers-in-the-making. They might descend and strip her naked as they had the Saab. But she had no choice. To lose a handgun represented a cop’s cardinal sin. To lose a handgun to a child? That had to be a capital offense.

  Then the blizzard howled her name.

  “Vuh-raahhh-nee-kah.”

  Was she hearing things? Quite possibly, considering the shape of her mind in the wake of the assault. The fifteen-minute slog through the urskog had taken its toll.

  “Hammar!”