Harbour

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Henrik waved the knife in Elin's direction and said, 'Come on, old woman.'

  Elin went and stood between them. She was moving like a sleepwalker, just as she had done the previous night, and her eyes were empty. The cold had made her skin deathly pale, and it was difficult to tell where the skin ended and the fabric began. As Anders looked around for the bag containing Elin's clothes, Henrik ran his hands over her breasts and stomach and said, 'Have you earned it, baby? I don't think so. Not yet.'

  The carrier bag was lying by the fence a couple of metres away from where Anders had landed after the crash. Whether Henrik and Björn were ghosts or crazy or both, this couldn't go on. Elin would freeze to death.

  Anders pulled her sweater out of the bag and went over to the group. Despite the impossibility of Henrik and Björn's presence, and despite the knife in Henrik's hand, Anders was not afraid. In the same way as a school reunion tends to cast everyone in their former roles once again, he regarded Henrik and Björn as nothing more than the slightly ridiculous boys they had been in the old days; he had no respect for them. He held out the sweater to Elin. 'Here. Put this on.'

  Elin didn't move, and her gaze was turned in on herself. When Anders rolled the sweater up to put it on her, Henrik took a step forward and placed himself in the way. He looked Anders in the eye and said, 'What's changed? Nothing, I just love you less. Slightly less than I did, anyway.'

  As he uttered the last word he swept his hand in an arc over Anders' legs. It felt as if he had been lashed with a whip, and when he looked down he saw that his jeans had been slashed across both thighs; there were two cuts the width of a hand in the fabric. For a second he could also see the pink flesh in the cuts. Then came the blood. It filled the gashes and dark stains spread over the fabric.

  Before Anders had time to think the thought: I've been cut, his chin was hit by the metal knob on the end of the knife's handle. Everything went black and he staggered backwards for a couple of steps before he fell over and hit his shoulder on the platform of the moped. The adrenaline was running riot in his body, and he started shaking.

  Henrik pointed the knife at him and mused, 'What do you think the knife wants?' He grinned and made a slitting motion.

  Björn laughed as though he had heard an unusually funny joke. Without taking his eyes off Anders, Henrik extended the palm of his hand. Björn gave him five and said, 'That was good.'

  Anders had drawn up his knees and warm blood was pouring down his thighs, tickling its way over his groin and gathering under his bottom. His head was reverberating with a sound like the lingering echo of a church bell, and he was too weak to get to his feet. Henrik continued lecturing him.

  'Elin here,' said Henrik, placing an arm around her shoulders, 'she was a great girl, wasn't she? Looked after herself. If anyone came too close, she started screaming. Times have certainly changed.'

  Incapable of doing anything more than lifting one arm in an impotent attempt to put an end to all this, Anders leaned against the moped and watched as Henrik grabbed the blade of the knife and pushed the metal knob on the handle inside Elin's pants. He glanced at Anders, nodded, then pushed the whole of the handle inside Elin's vagina.

  She didn't make a sound. The blade was sticking out of her pants like a metal penis. When Anders looked up at her face, he saw that she was smiling. A big, ugly smile. His stomach turned over and sour vomit spurted out between his lips, all over the gravel beside him.

  He wiped his mouth and took a deep breath. Through his burning throat he managed just one harsh word, 'Elin!'

  Elin's eyelids flickered and she looked at him. Her eyes came back to life, and when she looked down below her belly she screamed. Henrik snorted, grabbed the blade and pulled out the handle. Björn grabbed her from behind, locking her arms as Henrik caressed her skin with the blade. He turned to Anders.

  'You still haven't answered the question,' he said.

  A tiny amount of strength was beginning to return to Anders' body. Soon he would be able to stand up, and he thought: A weapon, where can I find a weapon? as he said, 'What question?'

  'The one about the disco,' said Björn, adopting a pedagogical tone, as if he were addressing a particularly stupid pupil, 'Why are we burning down the disco?'

  'I don't know.'

  The fence post. The one that came loose.

  Elin was screaming wordlessly and writhing in Björn's grip. Henrik put his arm around her neck with his hand over her mouth, then turned to Anders again, nodded briefly and slashed her stomach.

  A muffled scream escaped from beneath Henrik's firmly clamped hand and Elin's legs kicked out as she tried to free herself, while a trickle of blood spread horizontally along a crease in her stomach. Anders staggered to his feet and Henrik pointed the knife at him.

  'Calm down,' he said. 'Chill. That was worth a clue.'

  Anders wasn't sure his body would obey him if he tried to rush over to the fence, so he stayed where he was and tried to gather his strength as Björn said, 'For the same reason as we're hanging the disc jockey.'

  Henrik nodded and loosened his grip on Elin's mouth, dug his hand inside her bra and grabbed one nipple, pulled it out and rested the blade of the knife against it. Elin was now dangling helplessly in Björn's grasp, too frightened even to scream.

  'Last chance,' said Henrik. 'Why are we going to hang the DJ and burn the disco?' He made a couple of sawing movements with the knife a centimetre above Elin's stretched, pink flesh, and said, 'Come on Anders, you know this.'

  There was no possibility that he could reach the fence post before Henrik let the knife fall. Anders pressed his wrists against his temples. Hang the DJ, hum the discotheque.

  Something clicked. He switched the words around and then blurted out the name of the song that was so relevant to his present condition.

  'Panic!' he cried. 'Panic!'

  Henrik stiffened. Then he let go of Elin's nipple and lowered the knife. He made a gesture not unlike applause. 'There you go! That wasn't so difficult, was it?'

  Anders ignored the question. 'Why are you doing this?'

  Henrik considered for a couple of seconds. Then he shook his head and turned to Björn, who was still holding on to Elin. Björn said, 'Mmm.. .because.. .we are human and we need love just like anyone?'

  'No,' said Henrik. 'Try again.'

  Björn frowned. Then he brightened up. 'We're clinging because we know it's over, but we don't know where else to go.'

  Henrik nodded. 'Close enough,' he said. 'And so true.'

  The cuts in Anders' thighs were not as deep as he had first thought. They had stopped bleeding, but his trousers were soaked and the cold was starting to get to his legs. 'Can we stop this game now?' he said. 'Let Elin go.'

  Henrik looked surprised.

  'That's not possible. We're going to drown her.'

  Elin started screaming again as Henrik and Björn used their combined strength to drag her towards the water, her bare feet scoring a track in the gravel. Anders stumbled over to the fence and tugged at the loose post until it came out.

  When he turned around Elin had been dragged twenty metres down towards the sea, forty metres to go. He let the adrenaline take over, desensitising him to his physical problems. He ran to catch up with them. When he was a couple of metres away, he yelled, 'Let her go!'

  Henrik turned, and Anders hit out at his head with the metre-long post. Henrik's arm came up in defence, and the post struck his elbow. The sensation of two hard objects meeting should have carried on into Anders' hands, but that wasn't what happened. When the wooden post hit Henrik's body it felt more like hitting a big sponge full of water. Henrik's arm curved around the post and a shower of water hit Anders in the face.

  Henrik tore the post out of his hands and hurled it to the ground. 'I don't think it's time for you to die. Yet. So pack it in.'

  Anders stood there with his arms dangling by his sides as they continued to drag Elin towards the water. Then he turned and ran up towards their moped as he fumbl
ed in his pocket. Let me have, let me have...

  Yes. In his pocket he found both cigarettes and matches. He ran over to the moped, unscrewed the petrol cap and yelled to the group, who were now very close to the shore, 'Listen! Let her go, or else...' He lit a match and held it over the hole.

  They stopped. Anders shook the box of matches and discovered it was half-full. He had no plan, couldn't work out what to do next. He had been forced to find a way to stop them, and so far it had succeeded. But what next? He could stand here striking matches until the box was empty, but then what?

  In any case, they must be able to see through him. He had no desire to be blown up along with their moped for Elin's sake. He looked at the match, which had almost burned down.

  Besides which...

  Besides which it wouldn't work, he now remembered. He couldn't think who it was or in what context, but somebody had once dropped a lighted match into a petrol tank to impress the others. It had simply gone out. Petrol needs air in order to burn. It might even have been Henrik, that summer when they were kings with their new moped.

  Maybe it had been, because they were unimpressed by his threat and were still dragging Elin, who was now screaming at the top of her voice, down towards the shore.

  Air...

  Anders grabbed the edge of the platform and tipped the moped over. It rolled and came to rest on the handlebars as the petrol gurgled out of the tank. He looked up and saw that they were now down by the shoreline with Elin. There was no more time for threats. He moved back a couple of metres, just as far as the petrol had trickled down through the gravel, struck a fresh match and threw it, jumping backwards at the same time.

  The flames shot up from the ground like a blue and yellow wall, and Anders screamed, 'Listen!' as loud as he could. Through the fire, which was now licking at the wooden planks of the platform, he saw

  Henrik and Björn let go of Elin and come racing up towards him.

  He had done what he could and given Elin a chance to escape, now it was up to her. He ran to the bike and the denim was ripped agonisingly from his legs as he threw himself on to the saddle and pedalled towards the forest as hard and as fast as he possibly could. He didn't even turn around to see if they were following him.

  The enemy of the water

  Anders' legs pedalled as if they had been disconnected from his body and were being controlled by another will. The darkness around him was dense, but he didn't give a thought to the fact that he could end up in the ditch at any moment, and perhaps that was why it didn't happen. Instinct kept him on the right track, and he managed to drive himself on right through the forest without falling off.

  For the last part of the journey he was guided by the faint lights from the village, and at that point he wobbled for the first time and almost went over. He managed to brake and get one foot on the ground before the bike tipped sideways. He looked back at the forest path. They didn't seem to be following him.

  He set off again and pedalled through the village, feeling slightly protected by the pale street lamps. Only when he had passed the hostel did he allow his thoughts to come belching out. A cloud of horrible, incomprehensible pictures filled his head, and suddenly he felt as if he had a temperature of forty degrees. His body lost all stability and he just wanted to let himself fall. Down on to the track, down into the darkness. To rest.

  However, he managed to whip himself on to the point where the track split in two, and headed off to the left. The slight slope down towards Anna-Greta's house meant that he could simply roll along, his legs dangling. As he wobbled on to the drive leading to the house, he saw that there was still a light in the kitchen window.

  He dropped the bike on the grass and dragged himself to the door, his legs heavy. He was sweating and shivering, managed to miss the handle once before he grabbed it and pulled open the door.

  Simon and Anna-Greta were sitting at the kitchen table, bent over a whole lot of photographs spread all over the surface. When Simon saw Anders his face lit up for a moment, then his expression changed to one of horror.

  Anders, whatever have you done?'

  Anders leaned against the stove and waved in the direction of Kattudden, but no sound emerged from his lips. Simon and Anna-Greta reached him and he let his body fall into their arms, let himself sink down on to the rag rug. When he was lying on his back and had taken a couple of breaths he said; 'Just need to...have a little rest.'

  He stayed where he was while the kitchen lamp was lit, while Simon and Anna-Greta fetched water and placed a pillow under his head. By this stage the shivering had stopped and he might possibly have been able to get up, but he stayed where he was and let them take care of him, just because it was so utterly blissful to leave everything to someone else for a while.

  They took off his trousers and washed the cuts on his legs, dressed them with compresses and gauze bandages. Simon gave him two painkillers and some more water. After a couple of minutes of drifting blissfully in the care of others, Anders hauled himself up on to a kitchen chair. He tried to gather his thoughts and looked at the photographs, spread out across the table.

  They were old photographs, very old. They showed houses and farms, people working, close-ups. Many of them were yellow with age, and the people in them wore that expression of grim concentration that is so common in old pictures, as if the very act of being photographed demanded a special effort.

  Directly in front of him lay a close-up that made him give a start. It was taken outdoors, and printed on something that looked like matt card. Across the picture ran a couple of flames of patchy yellow, as if someone had splashed urine over it. The picture showed a woman of about sixty, staring angrily into the camera.

  'Yes,' said Simon. 'I thought I recognised her.'

  On the table in front of him Anders found another picture of the same woman, this time taken from further away. She was standing in front of a scrubby little house on a headland.

  'Who is she?' asked Anders.

  Anna-Greta came to stand behind him, and pointed. 'Her name was Elsa Persson, and she was a cousin of Holger's father. She used to live in that house. On Kattudden. Until Holger's father sold the lot. She was evicted and the house was torn down. Then the summer visitors came.'

  'It was your great-grandfather who took the pictures,' said Simon. 'Torgny. He took photographs of all the houses on the island, according to Anna-Greta. I like to sit and look at them from time to time. That's why I recognised her.'

  The stubby chin, the flat nose, the deep-set eyes and the thin lips. The woman in the photograph was the image of Elin as she looked now. Or rather, Elin was a somewhat clumsily executed image of the woman in the photo. All the details weren't there yet, but just as it's obvious that a cheap plastic mask of George Bush is meant to represent him and no one else, it was obvious that...

  .. .that this is the woman Elin is meant to look like.

  Anders pointed to the house behind the woman. He recognised the location, the position of the island of Kattholmen in the background, but still he asked, 'This house. It was where her house, Elin's house is now, wasn't it?' He corrected himself. 'Where Elin's house was. Until the other night.'

  Simon nodded. Anders sat with his mouth open, staring at the photographs. Then he said, 'Let me guess. She drowned herself?'

  Anna-Greta picked up the photograph of Elin looking furious and sighed. 'This all happened before my time, but.. .Torgny said she threatened to drown herself if they took her cottage away from her. Then they took her cottage away from her. And then she disappeared.'

  If you can imagine that all the impressions that have poured into Anders since he came back to Domarö have been collected in a kind of container, then this last drop of information was the one that made the container overflow.

  The words just came flooding out of his mouth. He told them everything. From the first sense of Maja's presence to the growing conviction that she was in the house. The bead picture slowly growing, the photographs he had had developed and
the letters scratched on the kitchen table. From the first blows on the door in the middle of the night and the feeling that he was being watched to tonight's encounter with Henrik and Björn. It all finally came pouring out.

  Simon and Anna-Greta listened attentively, without any interruptions for questions. When Anders had finished, Anna-Greta pulled out a kitchen chair and climbed on it so that she could reach the top cupboard. She took out a bottle and placed it on the table. Simon didn't seem to know what it was either, as he was looking enquiringly at Anna-Greta.

  Whatever was in the bottle looked like some kind of infusion. Twigs and leaves filled the entire space, surrounded by a liquid that half filled the bottle. Anna-Greta fetched a shot glass and filled it with the cloudy liquid.