The Circle (Hammer)

by Elfgren, Sara B. ,Strandberg, Mats

  Gustaf bends forward so she can no longer see his face. His words crumble into inconsolable sobs. It’s unbearable. It’s far too private. But she daren’t sneak away in the squeaking snow.

  ‘You’ve got to forgive me, you’ve got to …’

  Gustaf repeats the words in a drawn-out wail.

  Vanessa lowers her eyes and tears run down her own cheeks. When she looks up again, Gustaf is standing. He lays something on the gravestone before he walks away. She watches him until he’s some distance away. Then she goes up to the grave. Lying on the black marble is a necklace set with little blood-red stones.

  It’s actually really good for everyone that Ida found a pattern in the book, Minoo tells herself. And of course I must have a power, too. After all, Linnéa’s got an element with out having any powers. That must feel even worse to her.

  It’s so dark that it could be the middle of the night. She tries to avoid slippery patches of ice as she walks. The ground is still strewn with the remains of spent fireworks from New Year’s Eve. Electric candlesticks and Christmas stars glow from windows she passes.

  She hasn’t met anyone since she left the fairground. In this town it’s easy to gain the impression that you’re the last person on earth.

  She stops and listens. It’s deathly silent. Nothing but darkness, snow, and drab, featureless houses.

  Despite that, she doesn’t feel entirely alone.

  She turns and thinks she can discern a figure, black against black, further down the street.

  She walks faster. Tries to make it look natural. Doesn’t want to show she’s afraid.

  When she passes under the viaduct by the railway station, she hears footsteps that aren’t hers echoing off the stone walls of the tunnel.

  A lone car drives past. When it disappears the world feels even more desolate. No one lives on the other side of the viaduct. There’s just a string of closed-down petrol stations that Minoo can barely make out in the darkness. The streetlamps are spaced wide apart here and she thinks of the black smoke, how it could float towards her unseen, suspended in the darkness.

  She is walking even faster now, almost running.

  The other footsteps draw closer.

  And closer.

  ‘Minoo, wait!’

  It’s Gustaf. She stops and turns.

  ‘Sorry, did I scare you?’ he says.

  There’s no point in trying to run. Minoo forces a smile as if it were a nice surprise to see him there. She feels she ought to say something, but when she tries, all that comes out is a hawking sound. ‘No,’ she finally croaks, when he’s just a few metres away.

  It’s Gustaf. And yet not Gustaf. There’s something about the way he’s looking at her – as if he finds her fascinating.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, and tries to make it sound like an innocent question, as if she isn’t suspicious in the least.

  She has the feeling it didn’t work.

  ‘I was out for a walk,’ Gustaf says. He continues to look at her intently. She feels like a lamb with a hungry wolf.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ he says. ‘When we spoke on the steps … it was as if all the pieces fell into place.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  It’s like being in a strange dream, one in which everything is familiar, yet feels totally wrong. Gustaf moves closer until their puffa jackets brush.

  ‘I think about you all the time,’ he says. ‘At first I thought it was because you remind me so much of her. But now I finally understand. I understand.’

  This can’t be happening. She’s more convinced of that with every passing second. She’s ended up in one of those parallel worlds that the principal was talking about.

  ‘I like you,’ he continues. ‘A lot.’

  When he bends forward and kisses her, she doesn’t realise he’s doing it at first. She has time to notice that his lips feel soft and warm and sort of melt into hers. That even though his mouth is new to her, it doesn’t feel strange. And a tiny part of her misses it when she shoves him away. ‘What are you doing?’

  He shushes her and grabs her jacket to pull her to him.

  Minoo breaks free and Gustaf loses his balance, slips on the icy pavement and drops to his knees. He looks at her with an expression of desperation. ‘Can’t you get it into your head that Rebecka is dead? We have to move on!’

  She’s disgusted by what he’s said. It rouses her from her dreamlike state and makes her wipe her mouth. She wants to remove any trace of that kiss.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe I said that.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ she says, and backs away.

  ‘Minoo …’

  ‘Leave me alone.’ She walks away, more scared than ever of slipping on the ice.

  She wants to scrub her mouth with steel wool and rinse it with chlorine. She hears him call her again.

  Fucking creep, fucking creep, fucking creep.

  She’s not sure whether she’s referring to Gustaf or herself.

  Then she remembers Vanessa. Gustaf’s invisible tail.

  She must have seen the whole thing.

  Vanessa has almost reached the cemetery gates when Cat pops up. It scowls at her with its one green eye. Apparently both dogs and cats can see her when she’s invisible. They don’t even need two eyes to do it.

  ‘What do you want?’ Vanessa asks in irritation.

  It miaows and turns down a very narrow, virtually snowed-over path that disappears between the old gravestones. It turns to look at her, as if to make sure she’s following.

  Vanessa looks at Gustaf, who is waiting for the bus some distance down the road. She deliberates with herself as to what she should do.

  The moment in front of Rebecka’s grave has made her feel uncomfortable. Gustaf isn’t guilty. She’s sure of that. Enough of this crap. She wants to go home and forget the whole thing. Warm her frozen body in a hot bath, read Sirpa’s Harlequin novels, and eat sweets left over from Christmas Eve, even though only the disgusting ones are left.

  The cat is miaowing loudly and persistently. Just then Vanessa’s mobile vibrates in her pocket. She struggles to pull it out and hits answer with her thick-gloved finger.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I just wanted you to know that it’s not what you think.’

  It’s Minoo. She sounds out of breath and worked up.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With Gustaf.’

  ‘I know,’ says Vanessa. ‘Or –what are you talking about?’

  Minoo falls silent. Eventually she says, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I followed him to the cemetery.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now. A few minutes ago.’

  Minoo is silent. Then she says, ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m lying?’

  ‘I saw Gustaf. Just now. By the viaduct.’

  It takes Vanessa a while to understand what she means. It’s as if her brain has frozen. She looks down the road to where Gustaf is climbing on to the bus. ‘But that’s on the other side of town,’ Vanessa says flatly. ‘Are you sure it was him?’

  ‘Believe me, it was him.’

  ‘But that is impossible,’ Vanessa says, as if that wasn’t already obvious.

  43

  IT’S HOT IN the barn. Anna-Karin has just helped Grandpa with the morning milking. He’s gone back into the house, but she’s stayed behind. She’s moving from stall to stall, looking at the cows, hoping their calm will rub off on her.

  Her mobile vibrates in her pocket, but she ignores it. She knows it’s Julia and Felicia. They won’t leave her alone, even though Anna-Karin has told them she’s ill.

  It’s the last day of the Christmas break and, for the first time since she left nursery, she doesn’t know what awaits her at school.

  Before, at least, she had known who she was. There was a certain purity about that. She’d known the deal. There was security in having nothing to lose –
things could only get better; she could dream of being freed one day from the role assigned to her in this loathsome town. Now she’s more frightened than ever, afraid of reverting to the person she’d been before, afraid of continuing to be the one she’s become.

  She had stopped using her power after Jonte’s party, and the change had been immediately apparent. Her mother might start baking in the middle of the night, then not have the energy to take the trays out. She’d just sit smoking at the kitchen table while the cinnamon buns burned to a crisp. One moment she was hugging Anna-Karin so hard it hurt, and at the next she was saying she wished Anna-Karin had never been born. She switches back and forth between new and old mother – and both have become much worse.

  Anna-Karin can’t imagine what’s going to happen with all the hundreds of people she’s been influencing at school. Will Julia and Felicia alternate between kissing her feet and pushing her head down the toilet?

  She hears a car pull up in front of the house. The doors slam and Grandpa shouts his usual cheerful greeting. Anna-Karin walks up to a grimy window and peers out.

  It’s Jari’s father. He’s talking to Grandpa, who hands him an electric screw gun.

  Jari is sitting in the car.

  Anna-Karin doesn’t have time to duck. He’s already seen her. And his eyes are wide with fear. As if he’s terrified of her.

  She walks away from the window.

  If she wasn’t sure before, she is now. She made the right decision. She’ll never again use her magic to change her life. Controlling her power is no longer the issue. She’s terrified of being unable to control herself.

  Minoo climbs down the embankment and trudges on through the deep snow. The sun, which has barely mustered the energy to rise, shines low in the sky, forcing her to squint. Soon it’ll disappear behind the firs.

  Her breath billows out of her mouth in great plumes as she steps on to the dirt track and walks along it. It’s the last day of the Christmas break. At the start of each term, Minoo usually feels a mixture of fear and expectation. Now the stakes are much higher. Now their lives are on the line. If she survives, her heart is sure to be torn apart. Just a few weeks ago Minoo had never been kissed. Now she’s kissed her teacher and her dead friend’s boyfriend, who might have murdered her but definitely has a doppelganger and is probably in league with demons.

  Barely twenty-four hours have passed since Gustaf kissed her, and she hasn’t told anyone. She’s so ashamed that she can’t bear to think about it. How could she ever explain something like that? As soon as she even considers telling the others, she sees Linnéa’s look of contempt.

  I suppose you and Rebecka weren’t such good friends after all.

  To top it all, Nicolaus had a go at her this morning. He’s refusing to let them use his apartment unless they invite Ida to their training sessions.

  ‘She deserves the same chances as you. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If you don’t tell her soon, I will.’

  I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her today, she thinks. No matter what the others say.

  She reaches the frozen stream when she catches sight of something black moving along the ground. She knows who it is before she looks down.

  Cat mews glumly and Minoo looks at it with a warmth that takes her by surprise. Nicolaus didn’t want to come, but his familiar is here. A part of him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Minoo says.

  They’re such a motley crew, Minoo thinks, as she walks through the fairground gates.

  Vanessa, who looks as if she’s freezing in her far-too-thin jacket; Anna-Karin, like an overgrown child, with her brightly coloured woollen hat pulled low over her forehead; Linnéa, hidden inside a leopard-print fake-fur coat; and Ida in her white down jacket.

  Minoo puts her backpack on the stage and pulls out some sheets of paper she’s printed from the Net. She’s nervous. But when she catches sight of Cat, who jumps up and lies down next to her –she feels a little stronger. She meets Ida’s gaze.

  ‘Ida,’ she asks, ‘have you found anything in the book?’

  Ida shakes her head and smacks loudly on a piece of gum – Minoo gets a whiff of synthetic watermelon. ‘Nothing about G and a mysterious twin anyway,’ she says, with a secretive smile that’s intended to hint she’s found other things – things she has no intention of telling Minoo.

  Minoo swallows her irritation and looks down at her papers. ‘I may have found something,’ she says.

  The others wait. It’s quiet, except for the wet smacking from Ida’s mouth.

  ‘So, the question is how could Gustaf be in two places at the same time?’ Minoo begins.

  The smacking stops.

  ‘No,’ Ida says. ‘The question is why we don’t go to the principal.’

  ‘You know the answer to that,’ Linnéa says. ‘Because she won’t do anything, except stop us.’

  ‘Maybe she can help us if we just as—’

  ‘We have to help ourselves,’ Linnéa says.

  She gives Ida such a look of contempt that Minoo can’t help but be impressed. But Ida just scoffs and starts chewing her gum again. ‘Can you imagine what the principal would do if she found out about this?’ she says.

  ‘But she’s not going to,’ Linnéa says. ‘Is she?’

  Ida doesn’t answer, just goes on chewing.

  ‘Is she?’ Linnéa repeats.

  Ida shrugs her shoulders. ‘I guess we’ll have to see about that.’

  Minoo fingers her papers. She’s already lost control of the situation. She clears her throat. ‘Ida,’ she says. ‘We have to know we can trust you.’ Even though we lie to you, she thinks, and feels sick.

  ‘I’ve no reason to feel any loyalty towards any of you.’

  ‘We promised each other we’d work together and look out for each other.’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Ida says, throwing out her hands. ‘But I’m going soon if you don’t get started.’

  ‘God, we’d really miss you,’ Linnéa mumbles.

  ‘As I was saying,’ Minoo breaks in, before they start squabbling again, ‘I’ve tried to find an explanation for how Vanessa and I could have seen Gustaf at the same time. I started searching under “doppelganger” on the Net and it turned out you can find them in pretty much all mythologies.’ She looks up, as if to make sure that the others are paying attention.

  ‘I thought the principal’s Soviet-style censorship machine had removed all truth from the Internet,’ Linnéa says.

  ‘But she also said that traces remain,’ Anna-Karin counters.

  Minoo looks at her in surprise.

  ‘Well, that’s what she said,’ Anna-Karin mumbles.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Minoo, feeling like a teacher giving praise. ‘Doppelgänger is German, meaning literally ‘double-walker’. The old Irish myths mention a creature known as a fetch. There are Norse myths about vardøgern, a kind of ghost-like premonitory apparition of a person who hasn’t been there yet. In the far north of Finland it’s called an etiäinen. All the mythologies agree that the appearance of a doppelganger is a bad omen. If you see your own doppelganger it’s usually a sign that you’re going to die.’

  Minoo flips through her pile of papers.

  ‘But I’m not sure that’s what we’re looking for. I stumbled on some references to a kind of sister phenomenon known as bilocation. It appears throughout the world. There are references to it in early Greek philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, Jewish mysticism—’

  ‘So what is it?’ Vanessa asks impatiently.

  ‘It’s the ability to be in two places at the same time,’ Minoo says. ‘You create a double that can gather information while you’re somewhere else. I haven’t really understood if the double has a will and intelligence of its own, or whether it’s sort of on remote control. But that’s the best explanation I’ve been able to find.’

  ‘So only one of the Gustafs we saw was the real Gustaf,’ Vanessa says. ‘What was your Gustaf like?’

  ‘There was defini
tely something wrong with him,’ Minoo says. ‘You must have been following the original.’

  ‘It must have been the double that killed Rebecka,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Because it sort of wasn’t him.’

  The urge returns to rinse her mouth out with chlorine. There’s no doubt any more. The Gustaf Minoo saw, the one who kissed her, was the same Gustaf who had killed Rebecka.

  ‘That makes sense,’ Linnéa says, deep in thought. ‘If Gustaf is such a thoroughly nice guy, like you say, he’d never be able to murder someone. Why not create a double to do your dirty work for you?’

  Minoo feels her ears heat. Why did Gustaf kiss her?

  ‘Minoo,’ Linnéa says, ‘you heard two voices when he was trying to kill you. Could Gustaf and his double have been talking to each other?’

  ‘One wanted to kill you and the other didn’t,’ says Anna-Karin, thoughtfully.

  ‘That would mean the double has a will of its own,’ Vanessa points out.

  Everyone falls silent for a moment.

  ‘So Gustaf isn’t dangerous. His double is,’ Anna-Karin says.

  ‘The double that he created,’ Linnéa says. ‘So he’s definitely not innocent.’

  ‘How do we know he created it?’ Anna-Karin asks. ‘I mean, maybe it came into existence on its own.’

  ‘The only one of us who can find out any more about how this works is Ida,’ Minoo says, and hears resentment in her voice.

  ‘All right, I’ll give it another try,’ Ida says. ‘But what do you think the principal would say about Vanessa stalking G all day?’

  ‘You can ask her,’ a familiar voice responds.

  In a perfectly synchronised movement, everyone turns to see her walking towards the dance pavilion, her long black coat sweeping across the snow.

  Cat hisses viciously at her raven, which caws as it glides through the air and alights on the railing of the dance floor.

  ‘I tried to tell them!’ Ida shouts. ‘You heard that, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ the principal says, ignoring Ida. She glares accusingly at Minoo. ‘Especially you. Didn’t I expressly tell you not to do anything on your own?’