Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  Now they had to rest for a while. He broke off some spruce branches, snapped them into pieces and made a lining for a crater they had trampled in the snow. They sat down. He scraped with the heel of his boot and uncovered a frozen black crowberry bush in the powdery snow. He uprooted the bedraggled little bush and stripped it of its berries.

  ‘Here,’ he said, tipping a few black globes into Amina’s glove, which was covered in clumps of snow.

  When he dug in his pocket for his gloves he found something warm and soft. Alarmed, he pulled back his hand, and in the split second before he realised what it was the mouseshifter emerged. After sticking out its nose and looking around, it crawled out and sat on his knee, where it turned round a few times, its long tail whipping around behind it. Irritated, Seved brushed it aside and watched as it sat perfectly still on the spruce branches, as tiny and grey as a pine cone.

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’ Amina said after a while. ‘Is it cold?’

  ‘I don’t think it likes the needles,’ Seved said. ‘They’re sticking into it.’

  Together they watched the mouseshifter.

  ‘Why has it got such a long tail?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a birch mouse. That’s what they look like.’

  Unexpectedly the little creature started to make a sound, an intermittent razor-sharp squeak. Seved kicked the branches to make it stop but that had no effect. It carried on squeaking with increasing strength.

  ‘Cut it out,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps he’s wondering where Mattias is?’ Amina said.

  Seved nodded distractedly, looking towards the trees. It was light now and he knew more or less where they were. The Råvojaure shack was only a few hundred metres away.

  *

  Soon the forest thickened on all sides. It was as if the spruce trees were coming forwards to greet them. Before long the shack came into view, a section of a greying timber wall not enveloped in snow. Grimacing with exertion, Seved turned round and watched Amina labouring towards him, followed by her shadow. Her lips were moving silently.

  The door opened inwards so getting into the shack was no problem, but of course it was freezing inside. The frost had etched so many white roses on the windowpane that it was impossible to look out except through a thin strip around the edges.

  There were whisky bottles on the table, holding candles. A radio hung from a beam, its antenna extended. The battery compartment was empty and its lid was missing.

  Seved looked at the logs and wondered if he could risk it. The smoke would be noticed from far away, and the smell too, but sometimes trekkers stayed overnight in the shack. Mainly in the summer, of course, but even so. They needed to get warm. Amina had found an old blanket and wrapped it around herself, but still she looked blue with cold and was slow to reply when he spoke to her. He picked up the axe, gripping it high on the shaft, and kneeled down to split a few smaller logs, then rolled up some sheets of newspaper, pink ones from the sports supplement, and pushed them into the stove. Beside the log basket was a box of matches, and he took out a match, struck it and put it to the paper. Then he sank down and felt the warmth from the stove spread across his face.

  *

  He must have fallen asleep because all of a sudden he threw out his arm and shouted something. He did not know what, only that he had shouted out loud because he was afraid. The fire had almost gone out and Amina was sleeping. Her eyelids were swollen and her mouth looked cross. The birch mouse was running around in the wan light that filtered through the frosty window onto the tabletop, its long tail trailing behind it. It looked demented and Seved did not understand how it had so much energy. He put more logs in the stove and looked at his watch.

  He did not feel thirsty but he knew he ought to drink, so he found a blackened saucepan and opened the door. After he had filled it to the top with snow he stayed where he was, bent over.

  The wolverine was standing between the branches of a fallen spruce. At first Seved thought it was a bear because of its shaggy pelt, but then he saw the wide bushy tail, the greying, almost white forehead and the curved claws buried in the bark.

  He had never seen a wolverine before, but Ejvor had once shown him a chain of tracks outside Hybblet. She had spread her fingers and laid her hand over one of the prints, but had only just been able to cover it.

  But this one was smaller than a real wolverine, and because it was in animal disguise they still had a chance to escape. But Seved wanted to know why it had come. Perhaps the mouse had led it here?

  He soon found out.

  The splutter of an engine reached him from behind the shack. He peered around the corner and saw that a snowmobile had cut a line in the slope on the fell and was on its way down to them. It was his own snowmobile and in front of it ran a cluster of hares. He counted five. But it was not Börje coming towards him. It was Jola.

  It was pointless trying to run away, so Seved waited with the saucepan in his hand.

  The mobile came up to the shack, and when Jola stopped he immediately shrugged off the rifle he had been carrying over his back. He rested the butt over his thighs, switched off the engine and looked at Seved. His cheeks and the edges of his ears were bright red, and he was breathing heavily through his open mouth. A snus pouch, damp and dark, was showing beneath his lip.

  ‘Bring the boy out,’ he said.

  Seved did not answer.

  The hares had spread out in front of the shack, round-eyed and silent, and Seved felt all his resistance leave him, to be replaced by a paralysing nausea. All he wanted to do was lie down. Numbly he backed to the door and spotted two other shapes detaching themselves from the darkness surrounding the fallen spruce tree.

  One of them sat partly concealed by the tree. It was an owl. At least, that is what Seved thought until it occurred to him that the wolverine shapeshifter had taken the head of an eagle owl and made it into a mask. The hooked beak hung down like a claw in the wide-open jaws of the predator, and the tufts projecting from the crown of its head looked frozen and rigid.

  The other one was standing upright on bowed, dark furry legs and was jutting out the bony lines of his ribs as if it wanted to flaunt its unnatural manifestation. The slimy lump of gristle that bulged above the groove that was its mouth was not a nose or even a snout, and with every breath a fleshy flap of skin on each side of it flapped. It was trembling and panting with excitement. Around its neck was a strap with something metallic dangling from it that clinked as the creature expanded, and Seved realised they were ring pulls from old aluminium cans.

  ‘Bring him out!’ Jola roared.

  By now he had raised the barrel and was aiming the black dot of its mouth directly at Seved.

  ‘He’s not here …’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘He’s in Sorsele,’ Seved blurted out. He took a step backwards and one leg sank into the snow, forcing him to sit. ‘We dropped him off there. At the hotel.’

  Jola spat. Then he climbed off the snowmobile and lowered his head to walk into the shack and take a look. Amina was sitting up and staring at him, still half asleep. There were not many places to hide so he soon came out again and asked when they had left the boy.

  ‘Early this morning,’ Seved mumbled. ‘About four, I think. I’m not sure …’

  Jola put down the rifle and rooted around under his jacket. There was a rasping sound as he ripped open the cover of his mobile. He pressed the keys hard with his left thumb and it was clear he was agitated. Through his tight little mouth he drew sharp intakes of breath, and when the call went through he turned his back and in a tense voice said he had found them but they had let the boy go.

  ‘In Sorsele,’ he said. ‘This morning.’

  Jola pointed the rifle at them and ordered them to start walking, and Seved thought, Now, now he is going to shoot us. He even closed his eyes and stopped breathing for a few seconds, to prepare himself. I’ll hear a bang, he thought, or I’ll hear nothing, and everything will go black.

  B
ut there was no shot. They tramped through the snow, its surface rippled from the tread of the snowmobile. The engine spluttered at a low speed behind them. Amina walked in front, wrapped in the blanket she had taken from the shack. Occasionally one of her legs sank deep into the snow and a couple of times she fell over. The hares kept disappearing behind the trees but they never strayed too far from the procession.

  Seved wondered what had happened to the wolverines and whether they were following at a distance, padding on their large paws. But he did not turn round to look. He did not want to know.

  They had left the E4 at Luleå and driven in the direction of Boden, travelling south along the 356 towards Älvsbyn. The road was a narrow corridor through forests made dim by clouds of snow sweeping off the fir trees. Up ahead glowed the rear lights of a car and every time there was a bend in the road the red dots disappeared from view only to reappear almost immediately.

  They were travelling on a straight stretch when Torbjörn braked so violently the seat belts jerked and Gudrun, now sitting in the back, cried out.

  The car in front of them was stationary.

  As they drew closer they saw it was inching forwards and then stopping again.

  ‘What’s going on …?’ Susso sighed.

  Torbjörn was craning his neck.

  ‘A reindeer,’ he said.

  In the headlights they saw the animal’s pale-grey rump as it ran in front of the car, its legs pumping and its hoofs slipping.

  ‘You can’t just bloody well stop like that!’ Susso said, leaning across and honking the horn. ‘You’d think they’d use their hazard lights!’

  The reindeer had bounded into the deep snow at the side of the road and was leaping off into the birch trees, but the car in front didn’t pick up speed. Instead, the engine was switched off. The exhaust fumes drifted like a veil through the headlights of the Passat. Torbjörn was about to pull out and pass it when the driver’s door opened and a man stepped out. His dark beard circled his mouth and he was squinting. The next second the door on the passenger side flashed as a second man got out. He was older and also had a beard, but his was longer and stuck out in a wiry grey frizz.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Torbjörn said to Susso through gritted teeth.

  The driver stood for a while looking in at them, before knocking on the window with the knuckle of his index finger. Torbjörn pressed the button and lowered the window. The man bent forwards but before he could open his mouth Susso leaned across Torbjörn’s legs.

  ‘You know that button with the red triangle?’ she said. ‘If you’ve got to stop on a road with a ninety speed limit, you might like to use it!’

  The man said nothing. Taken aback by Susso’s angry tone he had straightened up and stepped away from the car. Now he was slowly stroking his beard.

  ‘We almost ran into you!’ she went on. ‘Don’t you realise that?’

  ‘I braked. You saw the brake lights …’

  ‘Yeah, well, because you drive like a little old lady your brake lights have been on more than they’ve been off for the last few miles, so that was no help.’

  ‘It’s because of the reindeer,’ the man muttered. ‘You’ve got to take it easy.’

  The older man was standing with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised. He was carrying a small knife with a horn handle on his belt. He said something but it did not carry into the car, and his friend shook his head and spread his hand across his chest. Then he walked swiftly off without looking back, the second man following him, but more slowly. They both got in the car but did not drive off, so Torbjörn swung out and overtook them.

  The squirrel was awake and lively and clung to Susso’s hand. Playfully she tried to shake it off but it hung on tenaciously. She inspected its front paws, stroking its claws with her thumb, bending them and feeling how sharp they were.

  ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Torbjörn said.

  ‘Two stupid hillbillies, that’s what,’ Susso said, without looking up.

  ‘But don’t you think they were a bit suspicious?’

  ‘Hillbillies are suspicious. That’s what hillbillies are all about.’

  ‘But it was almost as if they were afraid. Of me.’

  He held out his arms.

  ‘And I’m not exactly a big guy.’

  ‘There are four of us in this car,’ Gudrun said hoarsely from the back seat. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Torbjörn, glancing at the squirrel, which was sitting on Susso’s lap with its head on one side. ‘But he’s not very big either.’

  ‘You saw what he did with the troll out there on the ice,’ Susso said.

  Torbjörn was quiet.

  ‘He held it back just by looking at it,’ she continued.

  ‘But I thought that was something between them,’ he said. ‘Because of what they are. If he can also affect people, then it’s like Gudrun said – he’s dangerous.’

  ‘So what shall we do?’ said Susso. ‘Throw him out?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘He’s dangerous, that’s all. So you’ve got to watch out.’

  Susso nodded, looking out of the window.

  ‘But he’s nice as well,’ Torbjörn added, grinning. ‘Isn’t he?’

  *

  Shortly before six that evening they arrived at the village of Rackvattnet. It consisted of a few weather-beaten houses clustered together on each side of the road. A boarded-up shop with lining paper taped over the windows slipped past in the car headlights and on a gentle slope they came across a man pushing a kick sledge. He walked with small shuffling steps and in the rearview mirror Susso saw that he had stopped and was watching the car go by.

  Susso studied the map in the dim light of her mobile’s screen. She told Torbjörn to carry on and then pointed at a building standing behind a row of young birches.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘It has to be that one.’

  As they approached the solitary house, a red brick single-storey building, they saw a tarpaulin stretched across the garage doors. The wind blew small waves in the sea-green plastic covering, and when Torbjörn pulled up and put on the handbrake they caught sight of a face through a gap.

  ‘There’s someone there,’ Gudrun said.

  A door swung open in the side wall of the garage and a tall, older man in a fleece jacket came out. The front door of the house had also opened and the man exchanged a few brief words through the crack with whoever had opened the door before walking up to them. Judging from the look on the face that peered through the car window he was not pleased to see them.

  Susso stepped out. Black pine forest towered behind the house, and from the treetops came a faint whispering. The wind tugged at the tassels on her hat as she asked if the man was Yngve Fredén.

  He said he was.

  By this time Gudrun and Torbjörn had climbed out of the car, and Susso stared up at Yngve.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you happen to know a giant, Yngve?’

  Yngve did not answer but neither did he look away, and Susso thought a look of sadness spread across his face. There was a tension in it that quickly disappeared. He had a strong, sculpted nose and the shadow it cast lay like a black fin over his cheek. Underneath his jacket she could see the collar of a checked shirt.

  ‘A giant …’ he said.

  Gudrun was standing behind the car on the road, stamping her heels against the hard packed snow. She was holding her coat collar closed and hiding her mouth behind it.

  ‘Oh, it’s so cold,’ she said. ‘Can we go in and talk?’

  ‘Well, I still don’t know what you want,’ Yngve said.

  Still stamping her feet, Gudrun nodded towards the house.

  ‘We wonder if you’ve had a giant living with you, because if you have, that giant is now lying in the freezer at the National Veterinary Institute. As a bear.’

  A rectangle of light fell on the snow as the front door
opened and then closed.

  A woman walked towards them, and Susso realised it was Yngve’s wife, Inger. Her down jacket was hanging crookedly from her shoulders and on her head she was wearing a cap. Her glasses glinted under the flat peak. With her hands in her pockets and without greeting them, she stood half a metre behind Yngve, who threw a look over his shoulder when he heard the snow crunch under her boots.

  ‘And why’, he said, ‘would you think we have had a giant …’

  ‘Because your neighbour saw him,’ Susso said. ‘When you lived in Kramfors.’

  Yngve muttered something to his wife about going in and they began to walk. Susso ran after them with her hand on her stomach.

  ‘Wait!’ she said, and they both stopped immediately. The squirrel that was weighing down her front pocket was very still but she was sure it was not asleep.

  ‘It’s important,’ she said.

  ‘I think we want to go inside now.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Magnus Brodin? The boy who vanished in 1978? Down in Dalarna?’

  They shook their heads and she knew they were telling the truth.

  ‘I presume you have heard about Mattias Mickelsson,’ she said. ‘The boy who disappeared at Christmas. The one they found in Sorsele today.’

  ‘Yes,’ Inger said. ‘We saw it on the news.’

  ‘We think the stallo folk might have taken him. And that they took Magnus too. Some of them are big, big as giants, and we have been told you had a giant living with you.’

  ‘We’ve never kidnapped anyone.’

  ‘But what about the giant? Did you have one staying with you?’

  They exchanged a look, as if to agree on an answer.

  ‘He’s not here any more,’ Inger said. ‘He … he turned into something else and left.’

  ‘A bear?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because I shot him. He attacked me and so I shot him. But what I don’t understand is how he could have found me.’

  ‘We’ve been waiting to hear this,’ Inger said. ‘That he’s been shot or something like that. But we haven’t seen anything on the news yet.’