by Stefan Spjut
She turned round to face the house, pointing.
‘He was sitting there on the steps with his hands on his backpack, as if he was afraid someone would take it from him. Then he looked over here, and when I came out I saw him. The little man. Here. Where we are standing now,’ said Edit.
Susso took out her snus tin and opened it without taking her eyes off Edit.
‘He wasn’t at all shy, and that was unexpected. You’d think a thing like that would be. That’s what it’s like – you want them to run away, given that they’re so secretive people don’t even know if they exist.’
Susso put a pouch of snus under her lip and nodded.
‘But this one,’ said Edit, sharply, ‘he didn’t run away and hide. Do you understand what I’m saying? He didn’t run away. And it felt as if, I don’t know, as if he wanted me for something.’
‘Okay,’ said Susso.
‘But I certainly didn’t want to find out what he wanted. I dragged the boy with me into the house and locked the door. Then we went into that room to watch him through the window.’ She nodded towards the side of the house.
‘And then guess what he did? You won’t believe it. He came even closer. He was standing right below the window, looking at us. He was staring at us so intently I closed the curtain. I couldn’t bear him looking at us like we were looking at him.’
‘So you saw him close up?’
‘Oh yes,’ Edit said. ‘I had a good look at him. He was wearing a jacket with a hood over his head. And his eyes … they were the worst thing about him. It was like looking at an animal’s eyes. They were yellow, bright yellow, with pupils like slits.’
‘Like a cat?’
‘Yes,’ said Edit. ‘Just like a cat.’
Susso nodded and looked away to the trees.
‘And it was obvious that he was thinking,’ Edit continued. ‘He was standing there planning something.’
After a few moments of silence she added:
‘He had some kind of business here, you could tell that a mile off.’
She shook her head.
‘We didn’t know what to do so I phoned Carina – that’s Mattias’s mother – and when she pulled into the drive he ran off immediately. Straight over there, towards the Westmans’.’ Edit pointed towards the neighbouring house. ‘And since then I haven’t seen him.’
‘And Mattias’s mother,’ said Susso, ‘did she see anything?’
‘Carina? No, no.’
Edit leaned towards Susso.
‘And she didn’t believe us either. That was the worst part. She insisted we had made it up, all of it. Me and the boy. Even though I showed her the tracks he had left when he ran. Well, they’re gone now. But I took pictures of them.’
Susso looked at her. This was something new.
‘But you can’t see anything,’ Edit said, waving her hand. ‘When you take pictures in the snow they don’t turn out very well. It’s all white. Anyway, when I wanted to show her the tracks she got angry. She put Mattias in the car and drove home. And they haven’t been back since. He doesn’t want to, Carina says. And Per-Erik, my son, won’t say anything at all.’
‘And the neighbours?’ asked Susso. ‘The Westmans, wasn’t it? Have you spoken to them?’
‘I have,’ said Edit. She shivered. ‘But I know what he’s like. He just shrugged his shoulders. And that’s just it,’ she said. She fixed her gaze on Susso, who had turned to face the Westmans’ house. ‘If you don’t know what he looked like, how strange his face was with those eyes, and how little he was – hardly a metre tall, I would say – then it’s hard to be interested. Hard to take it seriously.’
Susso put her hand in her pocket and pulled out her mobile. It was almost half past two and soon it would be completely dark.
‘You know what, Edit?’ she said. ‘I think this sounds very interesting, and that’s why I’d like to set up a camera. If that’s okay with you. It senses when anyone gets close to the house.’
Edit looked a little uncertain but did not protest, so Susso waded off and fetched her backpack from the car. The camera she dug out had a camouflage pattern. Two Velcro straps were wrapped round it.
The downpipe was the obvious choice. She positioned the camera about a metre off the ground, with the lens aimed at a spot between the birches and the drive. She attached the top strap over the wall mounting that held the pipe in place so that the camera would not slide down. As she fixed the straps she explained to Edit how the sensor worked, how to check if the batteries had run out or the memory card had become full. Edit listened silently, leaning forwards in concentration, her eyebrows wrinkled sternly.
‘Because he was here in the daytime,’ said Susso, ‘I’ll set it to take pictures day and night. Remember that, so that you don’t walk over there and we get masses of pictures of you.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Edit, taking a quick step backwards.
‘But you can walk there now,’ said Susso.
‘Now?’
‘Yes,’ she said, rubbing her hat where her scalp had started to itch. ‘So I know the camera is working as it should. Walk around the cars and come from that direction.’
Edit walked off and disappeared behind the Opel, and the second she came into the camera’s field of vision the movement indicator began to flicker.
‘Good!’ shouted Susso. ‘You’ve been detected!’
*
Out of his pockets he pulled a pair of work gloves that had dried into stiff knots. Snow met his face as he walked down the veranda steps. There was a yap from the dog enclosure and a low growling from one of the dogs, but no barking. He hit the chicken wire and the snow fell away, revealing the dogs. Two Swedish Elkhounds, a Finnish Lapphund cross, and the little Laika with her bushy arc of a tail. They all stood up and watched him.
‘Were you up on the roof last night?’ he said, and the dog put her head on one side.
The Volvo lay with its bonnet and windscreen on the ground, and the rear wheels were some way above Seved’s head. He rested a hand on one tyre and rocked the car gently.
One of the wing mirrors was hanging loose, but luckily all the windows were undamaged. If any invisible damage had been done, they wouldn’t know about it, of course. He had asked Ejvor whether the old-timers had picked up the car and thrown it or whether they had only overturned it, but she was unsure. Probably they had only tipped it over. It was doubtful the windows would have stayed intact otherwise.
He crouched down in front of the bonnet. There were no traces of oil as far as he could see, but water had leaked out, smelling strongly of antifreeze.
The front door of the house slammed shut and Ejvor came walking towards him with the hood of her down coat covering her head. The fur circled her small face like a fluffy crown.
‘How the hell did you do it last time?’ he asked.
‘We just tipped it back,’ she answered, making a pushing gesture with her hands. ‘But then it was lying on its right side. And Lennart was with me.’
‘I’ll have to use the tractor.’
‘Shouldn’t you wait until Börje comes home?’
‘It can’t be left like this. What if I fasten a strap between the front and back wheels and hook the chain in the middle? Then I ought to be able to turn it upright with the tractor, don’t you think?’
Ejvor stood silently and tried to work out what he meant.
‘As long as the car doesn’t drag along behind you like a plough.’
‘I’ll have to pull slowly.’
‘I honestly think you should wait. It won’t hurt the car.’
‘What if something happens and we need to get away?’
He threw the question over his shoulder as he strode off to the barn. He knocked the bar across with his fist and opened up both doors. One door always swung shut, so he propped it in place with a pointed stake.
The chain and hook hung on a wall and rattled heavily when he laid them in the tractor’s snow bucket, where patches of snow still linge
red. He climbed up into the cab, took the headphones off the steering wheel and put them over his head. They were painfully cold on his ears but would soon warm them up. The engine spluttered a couple of times before it rumbled into life, spewing out exhaust fumes which rose to the roof of the barn.
After bringing out the tractor he jumped down. He pushed the strap’s tapered end in behind the front axle, lifted the chain out of the snow bucket and placed the hook at the centre of the taut strap. He wound the other end of the chain around the arm of the bucket, then climbed up into the cab and put the tractor in reverse.
*
They ate Mekong soup that Edit had cooked from a packet. The taste eluded Susso, whose nose was streaming, but it was scalding hot and she liked that. It almost burned her palate. It was no more than thirteen or fourteen degrees in the house. She ate with her face over the bowl, strands of her hair hanging loose. Her skull felt worryingly heavy.
The old woman talked slowly but almost uninterruptedly. Carrying an experience like that had been unbearable, she explained. She had tried talking to her son but he did not know what to believe. Normally he always trusted her.
‘But he’s too scared,’ said Edit. ‘Afraid of conflict, as they say these days. He doesn’t dare go against Carina, and she will absolutely not hear a word about … these things.’
Edit had phoned her sister, but had detected a sneering hostility. Talking about mythical beings and supernatural happenings was all right, it could even be amusing, but only as long as they were joking. When it was serious, the mood changed.
Edit sighed.
‘So in the end I kept my mouth shut,’ she said.
‘So you haven’t told anyone else?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she replied. ‘I phoned the Kuriren, of course.’
‘You’re joking?’ said Susso, smiling.
Edit shook her head.
‘They thought it was an amazing story and said they might send a reporter.’
‘They said that?’ said Susso, wiping her nose and still smiling. ‘They said they would send someone?’
‘Yes,’ said Edit, and looked out of the window. It was completely black out there now. All that could be seen in the glass was the reflection of the candles and the white oval of Edit’s face. ‘But nobody came.’
And then she added:
‘It’s too far to come for something like this, I suppose.’
‘Haven’t they got a local reporter in Gällivare?’
Edit was not listening. She pushed her bowl aside and looked at her fingers before continuing.
‘Hockey they can write about, and basketball, day after day. But the kind of thing Mattias and I experienced, something downright unbelievable? They won’t touch it.’
They sat in silence for a moment.
‘Was it a troll?’ Edit asked.
Susso looked up and met Edit’s clear eyes. They were asking her for something.
She sank down heavily, rested her elbows on the table and started picking at the cuticle of one thumb with the tip of the other.
‘I presume you’ve asked the other neighbours?’
Edit nodded.
‘I’ve gone to Randi and Björkholmen to ask, but it …’
Edit shook her head.
‘What?’
‘Same as with the Westmans. People just laugh at me.’
‘Yes,’ said Susso. ‘That’s what usually happens.’
*
Edit’s bathroom was off the hall. The sludge-green wallpaper had begun to come loose and was bulging in places, making the large floral pattern come alive. When Susso carefully pushed the shower curtain to one side there was a soft scraping from the curtain rings. She stared at a row of plastic bottles of various colours neatly lined up on a little shelf.
The toilet was fitted with support rails. So she had not been on her own for very long. Surely no one would hang on to support rails for sentimental reasons?
Susso turned on the tap in the basin and opened the bathroom cabinet slowly so that the hinges would not creak. Inside there was dental floss, cosmetics, creams, nail clippers, toothpaste and a necklace with orange-coloured stones that could have been amber. But no pills. Not even a painkiller.
*
By the time Susso returned Edit had laid out coffee cups on the glass table in the sitting room. Susso took a cup and sat down on the beige leather sofa, which exhaled under her weight.
‘How long have you been alone?’
Edit stood beside the coffee machine. The answer came immediately. It was as if she had been waiting for the question.
‘Two years. At Christmas it will be two years.’
Susso told her she worked occasionally in homecare, so she knew how hard it was, being the one left behind. It was the worst thing.
‘Everyone says so,’ said Susso.
Edit disappeared out of sight, so she called after her:
‘And how would they know!’
Edit came back into the room almost immediately with the coffee thermos in her hand. Susso smiled at her, but Edit did not seem to realise that Susso had been trying to be funny. With a pensive expression she poured coffee into the cups, which were decorated with small frosted sprigs of flowers.
‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot that can’t be proved.’
Susso agreed: there were philosophers who said that nothing at all could be proved, not even a thing like sitting at a table and drinking coffee, although that was taking things a bit too far, of course. If you carried on like that, you would end up crazy.
‘Like me, for example,’ said Edit, looking up and winking at her.
Susso had her cup to her lips but stopped. Had Edit heard her looking in the bathroom cabinet?
‘You think I’m imagining things.’
‘I don’t think that at all.’
‘Yes, you do. You think I’ve lost my marbles.’
‘If anyone’s lost their marbles, it’s me,’ said Susso, trying to force a conciliatory smile that somehow turned into a grimace. She sipped the strong coffee and then replaced her cup on the table.
‘I’ve read it,’ said Edit. ‘On your website. About hoaxers and all the trouble they cause. The people who dug up that wraith burrow, or whatever you want to call it.’
Susso nodded.
‘But I’m no hoaxer,’ Edit said.
‘No, of course not.’
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the fire.
‘We’ll have to wait and see if anything happens with the camera,’ Susso said. ‘You said that Mattias hasn’t been here since it happened?’
‘No. I don’t know if Carina’s stopping him or if he just doesn’t dare. He was really frightened. But I’ll phone and talk to Per-Erik.’
‘Well, you needn’t say anything about the camera. If that’s their attitude, I mean.’
Edit snorted.
‘Oh, no. That’s our little secret.’
Seved had driven the tractor into the barn and switched off the engine, but he had no desire to climb down from the cab. He sat there, holding the headphones. The snow streamed down outside the door. The Volvo was a black mass in the pool of lamplight outside. It had dragged along after the tractor, just like Ejvor said it would, so he had decided to wait until Börje came home. If it turned out the car had been damaged, then he was likely to get the blame.
Why didn’t they keep the cars in the barn, as a precaution? There was certainly room. But who knows what that might lead to. If the cars were missing, they might get anxious and agitated. They never liked being left alone, especially during the winter months. And what if they got into the barn and discovered the cars? That would confuse them, of course, and if the worst came to the worst they would also work out that the cars were being kept in the barn out of their reach. Then anything could happen.
He hung the chain on the wall and barred the doors again. Then he trudged back over the yard, stopping beside the car.
He tugged off the broken wing m
irror and inspected it. He would probably be able to stick it back on with gaffer tape. Then he realised how stupid that was. It would just come loose again when they put the car upright.
As he stood there with the mirror in his hands, he stiffened.
He had heard something.
Bellowing.
He stood completely still for a moment or two before shaking his arm to reveal his watch. It was only three. Surely he wasn’t hearing right. Thinking about the noise they had made the past few nights, and how badly he had been sleeping, it was not impossible that the noise was inside his head.
It came again.
First a muffled groaning.
Then a whimpering that gradually increased until it culminated in a melancholy, drawn-out howl.
*
Ejvor had also heard it. She was standing in the hall, putting on her jacket, her head bowed. She was fiddling with the zip, trying to fasten it at the bottom. Seved noticed that her red, roughened hands were shaking. In his hurry he had brought the mirror in with him, so he laid it on the hat rack.
‘Are you sure you ought to go in?’
‘It’s not dangerous,’ she said, pulling up the zipper. ‘But if I get thrown up onto the barn I would appreciate it if you came and got me down.’
From one of the pegs on the hat rack she took down the head torch. She checked that it was working and fitted it so that the elastic strap lay under her knot of hair at the back.
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Seved. He had walked into the kitchen and opened the larder door, scanning the shelves, where everything stood tightly packed. ‘It might do you good to sit up there for a while.’
‘Then you’ll have to make your own food.’
‘I thought I’d heat up some beef soup. Do you want beef soup?’
‘Beef soup?’ she said, taking the tin out of his hands and turning it round and round. ‘The use-by date was last century.’
She slipped it into her pocket and said:
‘But the trolls won’t know that.’
*
It was time to set off for home. If Susso did not get the car home in time, there would be hell to pay from Cecilia, although that would probably happen anyway. She had not told her she would be taking the car all the way to Jokkmokk. She stood the cups and saucers in the sink, put in the plug and turned on the hot-water tap.