Stallo

by Stefan Spjut

  ‘It happened further south, outside Stockholm.’

  Yngve looked puzzled.

  ‘How would he have taken himself all the way down to Stockholm? That’s impossible.’

  ‘They can wander long distances,’ Susso said, but Yngve found that hard to believe.

  ‘He left, when was it, Sunday? Sunday afternoon, two days ago. So you’re saying he travelled almost a thousand kilometres in two days? And when did he get shot, did you say? Today?’

  Susso slowly shook her head.

  ‘On Sunday,’ she said. ‘In the afternoon.’

  ‘Then it can’t be him,’ Inger said. ‘Because he was here then. He was at home. Yes, that was when he went berserk, or whatever it was.’

  Susso looked over her shoulder and wondered if she ought to call the others, but she was afraid Yngve and Inger would clam up.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, you can see what the garage looks like,’ Yngve said. ‘I was standing there, clearing the snow, when suddenly he started growling and banging on the door. We had never seen him get angry before.’

  ‘Oh yes we had,’ Inger said.

  ‘But not like that,’ Yngve said. ‘He was wild with rage. And for no reason at all. Before I knew what was happening he made firewood of the door and stormed out. And then I saw what he had turned into, although just at that moment I didn’t realise it was him. I only saw a bear and I thought, This is it, I’m going to die. But he paid no attention to me. He didn’t even seem to see me. His eyes were almost white and he ran past me and into the forest over there. And since then we’ve been waiting for them to say on the news that a bear had been shot. Of course, we didn’t understand any of it …’

  ‘But then it can’t have been him,’ Inger said.

  By this time Gudrun had walked up to them. She had let go of her collar and her arms were crossed as she jumped from one foot to the other, surveying the red brick house.

  ‘You might as well come in for a while,’ Yngve said. ‘So we can talk.’

  It took them almost an hour to get down to the house and it was dark by the time they reached it. The walls looked black and the Advent lights were shining between the open curtains of Ejvor’s room. Lennart was standing inside his camper van, watching the procession as it came out of the trees. He was bareheaded and his mobile was pressed to his cheek. There was no sign of Börje. On the other hand, the Volvo was there, parked beside the Isuzu, and when Seved saw it he was filled with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

  The snowmobile fell silent and Jola climbed off and turned his cap round. He walked towards Lennart, dragging his feet in his heavy boots, and spoke softly to him. He had slung his rifle over his shoulder like a moose hunter. Lennart nodded, pulled out a handkerchief and began wiping his mouth, and after replacing it in his pocket he nodded again. He looked tired. White streaks of stubble fell into folds as he lowered his chin to his chest, where his dark glasses hung from a cord.

  ‘Makes no difference,’ he said loudly, and then he disappeared into the camper van, which swayed under his weight.

  ‘Go in,’ Jola said. He waved the rifle barrel. Towards Hybblet. Seved walked a few steps before asking over his shoulder what they were going to do in there, his voice trembling.

  Jola told them to empty their pockets. Only the tip of his blond stubbly chin showed below the peak of his cap as he spoke. Seved placed the keys to the Volvo and his torch on the veranda railing, which was dotted with footprints. Amina said she had nothing in hers.

  ‘Jola,’ Seved said. ‘He’s not down there, is he?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

  The staircase dropped steeply down into a dense darkness. The hide lay deep underground to maintain the correct temperature. Seved listened for any sounds but heard none, and he was not sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. There was no bannister so he went slowly with his knees bent, feeling his way with his fingers along the cold, damp concrete lining. Amina was close behind him. Her breathing hissed against his neck and she was gripping his shoulder tightly.

  ‘Down!’ commanded Jola, standing in the doorway.

  At first Seved held his breath, a reflex action, but when he had come halfway down the stairs he had to take a breath. The fermenting, acidic stench of decay and excrement that filled his nostrils was so sickening that he threw himself backwards and retched violently, emptying his stomach of its contents. The vomit splashed down the steps and his eyes stung with tears. He had one hand on Amina’s boot and the other on the rough wood. Then it went dark around them. Jola had shut the door, and when the lock was turned it felt as if the darkness itself was being locked.

  ‘Watch out,’ gasped Seved, wiping his lips. ‘Mind you don’t slip where I puked …’

  There was no answer and that made him irritated, but also afraid.

  ‘You’ve got to answer me, Signe!’ he said, tugging at her boot. ‘Otherwise I won’t know where you are.’

  She mumbled something inaudible.

  When he had found his feet he stood rubbing his mouth to get rid of the remains that had fastened to his beard.

  ‘We’ll sit here,’ he whispered, climbing back up.

  He sat on the top step, leaning his shoulder against the door, and soon he felt Amina’s fingers touching his face. He took hold of her hand and helped her.

  ‘Sit here,’ he said.

  The smell of vomit lingered and he regretted wiping his mouth because the smell of his digestive juices was preferable to the hideous fumes that came from below. They sat still, listening, and Seved was convinced that any shapeshifters that were in the hide were doing the same thing. He did not believe Skabram was down there. They would have heard him by now, especially if he was angry. So that left only the little ones. He knew there was a badger in the hide, he had even seen it bolt past in the darkness early one morning, but no one really knew whether it was a shapeshifter or a normal badger that one of the big fellows had taken a liking to.

  We’re supposed to sit here and feel scared, he thought. That’s all. Börje would never allow anything to happen to us. We’re his children, almost.

  ‘Seved.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I’ve got to pee.’

  ‘You’ll have to go down a few steps and sit there. But watch out you don’t slip.’

  He heard her make her way down, very slowly, her thick-soled boots scraping on the stairs. Then she swore sharply through gritted teeth and he knew what she had put her hand on.

  ‘Seved!’ she hissed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something’s shining down here.’

  Surely not. Or was there a source of light down there he knew nothing about? Mystified, he stood up and crept down the stairs.

  ‘Where are you?’ he whispered.

  ‘Here,’ she said, and soon he caught hold of her thin, cold hand.

  Seved stared out into the darkness. A light flashed. Once. Twice. He twisted his head and could hear that each flash was followed by a faint clicking sound.

  Someone was playing with a light, switching it on and off every few seconds. And it was far away. Clearly the hide was not nearly as confined as he had thought and the unanticipated size of the cellar frightened him more than the strange light signals in its depths.

  ‘Let’s go up,’ he said, grabbing Amina’s jacket.

  ‘But I’ve got to pee,’ she said.

  ‘Do it then, but come up afterwards. We’ll sit up there, it’s safest.’

  ‘I can’t! I’m scared! You’ve got to stay here!’

  ‘Well, hurry up then.’

  He heard her fumbling with her clothes.

  ‘Promise you won’t go!’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘You mustn’t go!’

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  She felt for his hand and grasped it hard, and shortly afterwards he heard a splashing against the wood. When she had finished they crawled up to the door and sat down. Seved
looked at his watch. The hands were pale but he thought it was seven fifteen. He shut his eyes. Then the stench returned. It had been lying there, in wait.

  Inger and Yngve Fredén told them the troll had been with them since 1982.

  ‘And during all that time you never saw the bear in him?’ Susso asked.

  She was standing in the garage, waiting for her eyes to get used to the gloom. There was a sofa covered in grey floral fabric, and blankets and fir-tree branches on the concrete floor, which was brown with old pine needles. Empty plastic bottles lay everywhere. Sheets of cardboard were tacked over the window and there was a smell of dog and rotting food.

  Yngve shook his head.

  ‘It came as a complete surprise. I mean, he was like a bear, I admit that, but we never imagined he could turn into a bear. I know it sounds strange. And I think it’s strange, now he’s no longer with us, that we never really talked about him.’

  After sitting down in the kitchen Inger explained in a trembling voice that they had lost their son. They had moved to Kramfors to start again, and that is when the troll came to them. He had been sitting naked in the forest beyond their garden, looking at their house with small moist eyes. In his hand he held a birch twig that he slowly waved about him to keep the mosquitoes away, but also perhaps to wave at them. They had never been afraid of him, despite his appearance. It had seemed obvious from the very beginning that they would look after him. There had been no discussion about it either, and as the years passed they hardly mentioned him. He had simply been there, and they accepted him as he was. They had given him food and cleaned up after him, but never even tried to talk to him. It was not until now, after he had gone, that they realised how peculiar that was. They had not even given him a name!

  ‘Can you understand that? Over twenty years and not even a name!’

  They had no idea what he did all day because the windows were always covered. Presumably he slept a lot, on the floor on top of a heap of blankets and branches that he carried in. Roughly every third day he came out and lumbered up to the forest to answer a call of nature, leaving behind a huge stinking pile of faeces, and they were only too grateful he was house-trained, so to speak. Sometimes the radio would be on for an hour or so, always very quietly. They heard him sing sometimes too, but never any words, only a low humming as if he was trying to lull himself to sleep.

  Occasionally he came into the house and sat for a while on the sofa and fell asleep, but they were never very comfortable with that because he smelled, and even if they were not exactly afraid of him, they never dared get too close. Some days he wanted to play. Couronne, for example. At those times he would appear at the window and tap on the glass with a stick that looked so tiny in his hand. They used to take turns playing with him. He knew he had to get the rings into the holes in the corners, but he never realised he had to shoot with the red ring, or that the rings had to be knocked into the holes. Instead he either pushed them with the stick or threaded them onto the stick and moved them slowly to the holes. Taking turns did not seem to bother him and it was never clear who had won, nor was it important. That is what he was like: quiet, sleepy and incomprehensible.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t him who took Magnus Brodin?’ Gudrun asked.

  No, they knew nothing about what he had done before he came to them. He had never said a word.

  ‘We know for certain there are at least two of these giants,’ Gudrun said. ‘And there might be even more. So it wasn’t necessarily him.’

  ‘Have you got a picture of him?’ Susso asked.

  Inger shook her head.

  ‘Take a photo of him? That was out of the question.’

  Yngve agreed.

  ‘The very thought of getting out a camera would never have occurred to us. That’s probably hard to understand unless you have met him.’

  Yngve asked about the giant they had shot in Stockholm and the circumstances surrounding his death. Gudrun explained what had happened on Färingsö and she told them about her father and the website and the photograph of the Vaikijaur man, about John Bauer’s Lapland journey and his meeting with the stallo folk. Finally Susso was obliged to show them the squirrel. The sight of the animal curled up in Susso’s pocket left them speechless and Yngve had to stand and walk up and down the kitchen because he did not know what to do with himself.

  ‘All this,’ he said. ‘All this …’

  They had let Torbjörn use their laptop and he sat with it at a kidney-shaped coffee table in the sitting room. He clicked on the trackpad and stared intently at the screen.

  ‘Here,’ he said suddenly, and started reading: ‘“The police are giving out a warning about an aggressive bear. A man was attacked by a bear when he was out walking in Storuman on Tuesday morning. He was scratched and bitten and now the police are warning the public not to go out in that area. The thirty-nine-year-old man was alone when, according to the information he has provided, he was subject to an unprovoked attack by a bear in Stensele, south of Storuman. The bear hit the man and bit him before he could get free, run away and climb a tree. The bear chased him as far as the tree but then ran off. The man climbed down, went home and raised the alarm, says Tomas Wretling of the Västerbotten police’s communication centre.”’

  Susso and Gudrun had walked up behind him and were reading over his shoulder.

  Torbjörn continued: ‘“Västerbotten police have sent a specially trained bear-tracking unit to the area. They advise the public not to go out of doors in Stensele for the time being. The man was taken to hospital to receive treatment for his wounds, which are not life threatening. Are they shooting to kill? ‘Yes, they will destroy the bear,’ says Wretling. ‘That decision was made by the police authority and is based on the fact that the bear has injured someone and therefore constitutes a danger to the general public. We are presently waiting for our dog handlers and then we will set off.’ When asked how common it is for a human to be attacked unprovoked, Wretling explained: ‘This bear has quite literally woken up on the wrong side of bed. And you don’t mess around with a fractious bear.’”’

  ‘Where does it say that?’ asked Inger. ‘In Västerbottens-Kuriren?’

  Torbjörn shook his head.

  ‘Dagens Nyheter. Posted two hours ago.’

  They carried on searching and it was not long before Gudrun placed a hand on Torbjörn’s shoulder and pointed. In the ‘LATEST LOCAL NEWS’ column on the Norrbottens-Kuriren site was an item with the heading: ‘Let Sleeping Bears Lie? Not in Glottje.’

  Torbjörn clicked on it and read:

  ‘“A roused bear” – that’s what it says – “has been sighted in a forest clearing beside the Västra Kikkejaure lake about five kilometres northwest of the village of Glottje in the municipality of Arvidsjaur.”’

  ‘Glottje,’ Susso said. ‘How far away is that?’

  ‘It’s just over a hundred and twenty kilometres to Arvidsjaur,’ Yngve replied.

  ‘And to Storuman?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe three hundred, by car. But the 94 runs in a straight line westwards and so does the 45, so it is more or less the same for a bear. Say two hundred and fifty then, as a bear travels.’

  ‘The Kuriren article was posted at 15.09,’ said Torbjörn, ‘so it can’t possibly be the same bear.’

  ‘There are more of them, Torbjörn,’ Susso said. ‘I know there are more.’

  Torbjörn kept his mouth shut when he saw the look Susso gave him.

  ‘Right,’ was all he said.

  ‘There are four,’ Susso said, looking down at the floor. ‘Or rather, there were four.’

  ‘Four?’ said Yngve. ‘How do you know there are four?’

  Susso looked down at her pocket.

  ‘Four bears,’ she said slowly, looking the squirrel in the eyes. ‘There have always been four bears, but now there are only three. And … that’s not good.’

  He could not sleep, of course, but it was not the fear of being woken by hefty footsteps on the veranda
that kept him awake. It was the painful position he was sitting in and the fear that he would tumble down the steep staircase in his sleep. And then there was the cold. It was so cold he was shivering. Amina was not asleep either, he could tell, because from time to time she sniffed loudly.

  She had asked him if he thought that Mattias was with his parents by now, and he had nodded and said yes. She had more questions but he was too tired to answer. Or rather, he did not want to, because he had picked up muted whisperings from down in the darkness. It was a shifter of some kind that could form words and was imitating them in a thin, hollow pitch.

  Promise. Prrromise. We’ll sit up there. It’s safest. Promise you won’t go. Promise, promise, promise. It’s safest. Pee. I’ve got to pee. Pee, pee, pee. Where are you, where are you. Where aaare you.

  After it had gone on for a couple of minutes Seved had been close to shouting at it to shut up, but he controlled himself. Shouting was guaranteed to make things worse, and it could also be dangerous. He had no idea who was down there. The little creatures mainly, he thought, but he could not be sure. At least one of them was big enough to use a torch.

  They had been sitting in the darkness for several hours and he thought it was odd that Börje had not persuaded Lennart to let them out. Börje went along with most things but Seved knew he could refuse orders if he had to.

  They must have locked them in the hide because they had discovered that Seved had chained the escape hatch shut.

  There was a certain psychology to it. He had locked himself in. What he did not know was whether they had detected the smell of petrol he had poured on the floor of the jumping room, or whether they had worked out why he had blocked the emergency exit. There could not have been many reasons for doing that. Lennart had understood what was going on, without a doubt, and that was a double betrayal by Seved. He had not only let the boy go, he had also been working on a plan to burn Skabram to death. Attacking the old-timers was like attacking Lennart himself, or even worse. He must be beside himself with fury, and the more Seved thought about it, the more intense the fear inside him grew as he sat blinking in the darkness.