The Book of Lamps and Banners

by Elizabeth Hand

  It wasn’t a mask but a skinned bird, its boneless torso soft and pliant as a glove. I set it aside to examine another bird, with a long slender black bill and dangling twiglike legs. In addition to dozens of birds, there were skinned rabbits, squirrels, voles, shrews, bats. A tiny hedgehog; mice. All eyeless.

  I picked up a rat, its jaws parted in a toothy snarl, and sniffed. It smelled musty, but it wasn’t the source of the fetid odor that permeated the shed. Neither were the birds or small mammals.

  I glanced out the window and did another lap around the room. A dead raven lay on a small table, its outstretched wings pinned to a piece of cardboard and exuding the stink of decay. A recent kill. The eye staring up at me had shriveled to a dull gray seed. When I grasped the raven’s beak and gently turned it, flies rose in a dizzying swarm.

  In the raven’s other eye was a minute hole, as though an insect had burrowed to the skull beneath. I lifted my camera and zoomed in, tightening the focus until I could see a telltale black pinprick in the iris, then let the camera fall back against my chest. The raven’s eye had been penetrated by a dart’s tip, just like Harold’s, and Tommy’s.

  Chapter 50

  I searched the room, pushing aside coils of wire, boxes of nails and thumbtacks, fine-gauge screens. At the back of one shelf, I found plastic containers plastered with FARA! labels—enough toxic preservatives to take out a small household:

  ARSENIK. ALUN. SVAVEL SYRA FORMALDEHYD

  On the next shelf was another box. Inside were ziplock bags full of empty darts, identical to those I’d discovered in the woods.

  I continued searching until I spotted a knee-high refrigerator nearly hidden behind a large carton. A nautical chart was taped to the fridge door, along with a list of names and phone numbers, several curling photographs, and a Swedish flag magnet.

  I stooped to open the fridge. On the top shelf were three bottles of Falcon beer, a box of milk, and a plastic container filled with earthworms. On the lower shelf was a large plastic bottle:

  IMMOBILON: ETORPHINE HYDROCHLORIDE

  I whistled softly. Whenever you see documentary footage of an elephant or rhino getting nailed by a dart, etorphine’s what got the job done. Thousands of times as powerful as morphine, it’s toxic to humans in even small amounts, and extremely difficult to obtain anywhere in the world—including the U.S. and, I assumed, Sweden. That hasn’t stopped people from snorting or injecting it. My old dealer Phil got his hands on some a few years back. I didn’t buy any, but others did, resulting in a spike in fatal ODs that week. Narcan can reverse the effects, but etorphine’s so powerful that cops and EMTs weren’t toting around enough of the antidote to bring anyone back.

  The warning label on this bottle was in English. It had been imported from the UK. Why? As far as I knew, there were no rogue rhinos roaming Kalkö.

  I took a photo of the bottle, closed the fridge, and got back to my feet. I photographed the table with its macabre menagerie, also the dead raven, focusing on where its eye had been before an etorphine dart turned it to jelly. Then I quickly turned to leave.

  As I stepped away from the table, I bumped against one of the dirt-filled cartons on the floor and swore as my boot’s steel toe poked a hole in the side of the box. I reached to push the torn cardboard back into place, then recoiled.

  Inside the box, dirt rippled like water, as though a wave was building beneath the dark surface. I watched as a minuscule yellow finger thrust through the dirt and began to writhe. Then another, and another emerged—dozens of them, hundreds, maybe thousands—until the entire box seethed.

  Maggots.

  I could hear them moving against one another, a sound like rustling paper. I backed away as they wriggled through the soil, attempting to crawl up the sides of the carton. A few escaped and I crushed them beneath my boot, but within seconds most had burrowed back into the dirt.

  I grabbed a screwdriver from the table behind me. Taking a deep breath, I used the screwdriver’s tip to probe the quivering mass inside the carton, flicking aside maggots and dirt as a storm of blowflies whirled up around me.

  A pale dome appeared inside the carton, flecked with writhing black threads—more maggots. With the screwdriver, I moved aside as many larvae as I could, until I exposed what they were feeding on. A ram’s skull, shreds of flesh peeling from its jaws. Fine white dust adhered to its coiled horns, lime, maybe, or some kind of enzyme powder.

  I shoved the screwdriver through its empty eye socket and lifted the skull, yellow larvae raining from the rows of square teeth. I lowered the skull back into the carton and picked up my camera. I trained it on a beetle crawling along the skull’s lower jaw, its black wings holding a glint of iridescence, each antenna topped with a minute onyx bead.

  The beetle paused, wing carapaces unfolding as I snapped the picture, and then it scuttled into the skull’s mouth cavity. I lowered the camera and used the screwdriver to smooth out the dirt, hoping the box’s contents would appear undisturbed.

  I went to the next carton and prodded at the soil. Again the screwdriver struck something hard. This skull was much smaller—a lamb’s. Only a few larvae emerged from the soil. The maggots had been at work longer here.

  I checked two more boxes. One contained another ram’s skull, the other that of some kind of carnivore with long incisors, a small dog or fox. I hurriedly swept the dirt back with my hands and stepped over to the window, pulling aside the curtain a fraction of an inch.

  Outside, woods and road seemed unchanged beneath the curdled gray sky. The sun had crept a finger’s width closer to the horizon. I had no idea how much time had passed. An hour?

  I turned and counted six more boxes in the shed, but I didn’t dare take any longer to examine them. I replaced the screwdriver where I’d found it, flicking off a larva that still clung to the handle. Despite the cold, I’d broken into a sweat.

  I turned to leave, flies buzzing around my face. I swatted at one, stepping over a carton near the back door. Something glinted in the soil inside the box: a copper coin, like an oversize penny. I hesitated, crouched to get a better look, and saw several long black filaments protruding from the earth.

  Hair.

  I brushed at the earth to reveal more hairs, one twisted around a writhing maggot. I snatched my hand back, then gingerly plucked the copper coin from the soil.

  It was smooth and almost weightless between my fingers. Not a coin, but a small amber disk threaded with wire, a hook that had been twisted out of shape. Two long hairs clung to it, electric blue. When I held it to the window, it glowed in the wintry light, a golden eye that winked at me as it turned. Tindra Bergstrand’s earring.

  Chapter 51

  I fought nausea even as my free hand grabbed my camera to take a picture of the earring. Before I could, another sound joined the flies’ buzzing inside the shed: car wheels on gravel, approaching from the direction of the main road. My fist closed around the earring as I drew alongside the window to peer outside.

  An old blue Volvo drove slowly past, expertly navigating around potholes. Someone familiar with the road. The sheep glanced up, then lowered their heads and continued to graze. I held my breath, waiting to see if the Volvo would stop. The car continued on at a snail’s pace, avoiding ruts. Eventually it rounded a curve and disappeared from sight.

  I slipped the earring into the pocket of my leather jacket and swallowed, tasting bile; opened the back door; stepped outside; and began to run through the trees paralleling the road. My boots skidded on the wet ground and I barely kept myself from falling, desperately clutching my camera.

  In the field, the ram gave a warning snort that sounded more like a growl. As one, the sheep raised their heads to stare at me, the black slits of their pupils glistening in eerie golden eyes. I froze, but they didn’t move; just fixed me with their unwavering gaze, as though willing me to stay. I backed away, turned, and continued to walk through the forest, careful to keep the road in sight. When I glanced back, the ewes had returned to croppin
g grass, but the ram continued to stare after me.

  By the time I reached the car, my face and fingers were numb. I could barely feel the plastic bag of crank when I dug it from my pocket, jabbing my pinkie into the white powder, then snorting it. It might last me another day if I rationed it carefully. I sat, waiting for the rush to explode behind my eyes. Finally I shoved the key into the ignition and drove back to the hotel.

  At one point, a van’s silhouette appeared in the road behind me. I kept my face down, lifting my foot from the accelerator to let the Jetta slow to a crawl. The van passed me in a spray of grit. Once it was out of sight I touched my jacket pocket, reassuring myself that the earring was still there, hit the gas, and kept going.

  When I walked into the hotel room, I found Quinn in a chair by the window, his mouth a grim line.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere.” My fist tightened around the car keys, hoping he hadn’t noticed they were gone. “Just out.”

  “Don’t lie to me, I know you took the car.” Before I could blink he was in front of me. He pried my hand open, and the keys fell to the carpet.

  “I didn’t lie.”

  He snatched up the keys, pushing me roughly aside. “Goddamn it, you’re not signed on as a driver. You could have gotten us both arrested.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  He stared at me, his face livid. I stared back, daring him to touch me again, the crank boiling inside my veins, behind my eyelids. When he didn’t move, I let my breath out and sank onto the edge of the bed.

  “Where’d you go?” he repeated.

  I shrugged off my satchel and camera, withdrew the amber earring from my pocket, and held it up. “I found this.”

  Quinn barely glanced at my hand. “What is it?”

  “Her earring. Tindra’s. There’s a shed further down that road where we saw the dead fox, it must be some kind of farm. There were sheep. This was inside the shed.” I held the earring out toward him, and he reluctantly took it. “That’s her hair, see? I told you she has a blue dreadlock.”

  “Where was it?”

  “In a cardboard box in the shed. There were all these boxes filled with dirt. And dead animals, like a taxidermy shop, only it was just their pelts and skulls. That’s what was in the boxes—skulls and maggots. Someone’s cleaning the skulls, using maggots or some kind of beetles to eat the dead flesh. That’s where I found the earring, in one of those boxes. Not buried, it looked like it might have just fallen there. Or…”

  I stared, mesmerized by the amber disk pinched between Quinn’s thumb and forefinger. It rotated slowly, the long blue strands wisps of cloud around a tiny sun.

  “I saw hair in the box, too,” I went on. “Black hair coming out of the dirt. It might have been from one of the sheep, or a goat. But it might be hers. But the earring—that definitely means she’s here, on the island.”

  Quinn scrutinized it, handed it back to me. “No. It means the earring is here. She might or might not be, just like she might or might not be dead.”

  “Maybe she’s dead, but…”

  “Why would she come here? If Erik is the same guy who assaulted her—and somehow he’s also the same guy who stole the book and killed Harold and her bodyguard—why would she come here? She’d have to be crazier than you. And that’s a stretch.”

  “Why would she come here? The book, for starters. And revenge. She told me what she planned to do when I met her, only I didn’t understand what she was talking about. But now I do.

  “She came back to find the man who raped her when she was a kid. She told me she wasn’t afraid anymore. That when the code was finished, she’d make him disappear completely. She wasn’t kidnapped. She came here of her own free will. She came here to confront him.”

  Quinn clapped a hand to his head. “Can you even hear yourself? You met her for what, ten minutes? Five? Enough to scramble your brain, that’s for sure. This makes no sense.”

  He pointed at the earring. “Put that fucking thing someplace safe. Or lose it. Your prints will be all over it.”

  “I’m not going to the cops. We need to go back and see what else is in that box.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s someone’s private property. You’ll get popped for trespassing. And that’s the best-case scenario. Even if you’re right, I’ve seen enough heads in boxes for one lifetime.”

  He stormed to the closet, yanked his leather jacket from a hanger, and jammed on his watch cap. “Come on, we’re going into town to get something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if you’re hungry or not, you’re coming with me. You think I’m gonna leave you alone? You’re running around like a lunatic—breaking into buildings, digging up shit, skulls in boxes. How can I even know if you’re telling the truth?”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “This sounds seriously delusional, Cass. Look at yourself—”

  He dragged me into the bathroom and held me in front of the mirror. “If someone saw you inside that shed, they’d shoot on sight. I would have.”

  I stared at the gaunt creature in front of me, black leather jacket hanging from it like a shroud. Nearly as tall as Quinn, the pale gray eyes now gas blue, fired by blood behind the iris; a corona of blond hair and one skeletal hand lifted as in greeting. I am the one who will make a serious woman of you; come, let us embrace.

  “Cassie, please.” Quinn touched my face and flinched: I knew that he no longer saw me, only the thing in the mirror. “Come with me. We’ll go to Norderby, there’s a good restaurant there, I think it’s open in winter.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I stalked into the bedroom and paced between the window and the desk. Quinn followed, his fingers laced behind his neck, and watched me without speaking.

  At last I stopped and picked up the copy of Skalltrolleri from the nightstand, opening it with enough force that the spine cracked and pages flew everywhere. I snatched up a color photograph of a goat’s skull with spiraling horns, perched atop a triangular rock that formed the prow of one of the stone ships. Wildflowers surrounded the stones—hawkweed, black-eyed Susans, some sort of flowering ivy—so that the stone boat floated in a sea of blossoms and green. I stared at the image, feeling my eyes burn through the cheap paper, and thrust the page at Quinn.

  “I’m not delusional. Someone took these photos. Someone on this island.” I scrabbled through loose pages until I found the book’s cover photo, a man’s torso as intricately encoded with symbols as any page in The Book of Lamps and Banners: swastikas, lightning bolts, skulls, flaming wheels. “This person! Whoever he is, he has Tindra. And the book.”

  Quinn’s tone grew almost pitying. “Cass, you don’t know that. You can’t know that.”

  “Why not? Because it’s too crazy? Because I’m crazy? Crazier than this place?” I pointed out the window to the black heap that gave the hotel its name. “Crazier than refugee kids living in a fucking ship container? Crazier than someone shooting people in the eye with a tranquilizer dart?”

  “Baby, listen to me.” Quinn tried to grasp my shoulders and I pushed him away. “Even if you’re right about what you saw back there, and this guy has her, there’s a good chance she’s dead now.”

  “What if she’s not?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself back into the place Tindra had shown me, the place where I’d died and never left.

  Cass, Cass.

  A car drove slowly down the dark alley, a man’s hand extended from the window. He had a knife. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop what had happened once and never stopped happening since.

  Cass, Cass…

  Someone pounded my breast. “Cass! Cassie, can you hear me?”

  I opened my eyes and looked into Quinn’s. I was slumped on the floor. Quinn knelt in front of me, holding my chin. He lifted his other hand, pointed at the ceiling, and moved his finger back and forth. “Can you
see that?”

  I tracked the finger, nodded. He lowered his hand. His face had grown so pale that the lines tattooed there appeared to glow.

  “You were gone,” he said. “You stopped breathing, it was like a candle blew out. I was right in your face and you couldn’t see me.”

  “I see you now.” My voice came out in a hoarse whisper. It hurt to talk, and my chest ached. “What’re you doing?”

  “You blacked out. I was scared maybe your heart stopped. I punched you.” I winced when he pressed his hand gently against my left breast. “It’s all I could think of, I don’t have any Narcan.”

  “Shit.” I stared at him, dazed.

  “We should find a doctor, or—”

  “It was just another blackout. I’m okay, I’ll be okay.”

  “Jesus Christ, Cass! ‘Just another blackout’?” He took my hand and placed it on my chest, so I could feel my heart pounding like a mallet. “Know what that is? That’s you, dead, if you don’t get straight. Here…”

  He sat me on the bed, got a glass of water from the bathroom. “Drink this. Then we’re going out. I don’t care if you’re not hungry. I am.”

  “Isn’t it late for lunch?”

  “So it’ll be early dinner. You wanted a vacation.” He pulled me to my feet, holding me up as he kissed me. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 52

  Norderby felt like a medieval-themed LARP where all the players had gone home. The walled city would have fit inside a football stadium. Timbered buildings with stone foundations, cobblestoned streets, a warren of arched passageways that led to shops selling tea, coffee, souvenirs, upscale housewares, designer clothing, blown glass, woolens. Lots and lots of woolens, all from Kalkö sheep, a heritage breed supposedly dating back to the island’s first settlers and known for producing wool that had a remarkable ability to resist water and cold. Their wool had its own advertising campaign. Nearly every shopwindow featured a beautifully composed photo of someone facing blizzard conditions—atop a cliff, on an empty beach, in the shadow of a pine forest—their only protection from the elements a bulky, neutral-tone knit sweater and knit cap.