He looked at Annika and made a move to get up, but the chains prevented him from doing so. One around each wrist, one around each ankle. Without taking his eyes off Annika, he said, “Do you really think this is going to help you? I’m going to eat that child out of your belly now.”
“Maybe not, Herr Tomte.”
Erik glanced around, and for the first time she saw fear in his eyes. At the end of each chain stood a horse. Annika had had to tack them up very quickly, and had only managed to slip on a simple harness to which she had attached the chains. To compensate for this she had allowed several meters of slack for each horse. So that they would have time to pick up speed. So that there would be a violent jerk.
She looked Erik in the eye. And yelled, “Haitch!”
The horses weren’t perfectly coordinated. Only one arm and one leg were ripped off. The other arm looked completely undamaged, while the other leg was bent at an impossible angle. The horses whinnied and increased their efforts; one of the smaller ones fell over due to the sudden stop.
Erik opened and closed his mouth, trying to formulate a command as green foam bubbled out. Annika called the two horses that were attached to his remaining limbs, allowing them to come so close that they almost trampled him.
“Haitch!”
The undamaged arm was ripped off. Only the distorted leg was left. The horse chained to that limb took a few steps, and what was left of Erik was dragged across the yard. His head jolted from side to side as Annika stood there watching him.
The green foam disappeared and Erik’s black eyes stared at her. “Do you really think—” he managed. “Do you really think—”
From the ragged surfaces where his arms and legs had been ripped off, where grayish flesh was visible through the torn remnants of clothing, new limbs were slowly beginning to grow. Ill-defined lumps pulsated outward, finding their shape. Rudimentary fingers tentatively emerged from the shoulders, and the embryo of a foot pushed its way from the pelvis.
Annika called the mare and led her over to Erik. “Yes,” she said. “I really do. Densch!”
The mare reared up and her hooves smashed into Erik’s forehead. His skull bulged out at the sides.
“Densch!”
“Densch!”
“Densch!”
Only when Annika was certain that there was absolutely no sign of regrowth and Erik’s body was completely motionless did she lead the horses back into the stable. She poured oats into their mangers and stroked their necks.
She went outside and saw that Erik had disappeared. His clothes were still there, lying flat on the ground, but where his body had been there were only worms, starting to dig their way into the earth.
Annika was halfway back to town in the car when the first contractions began. She clenched her teeth and bent double over the wheel, screaming with pain. In the interval that followed she put her foot down and tensed her body, as if to ward off the next spasm.
She reached the car park at Danderyd Hospital before it came. She left the car and staggered toward the entrance; she just managed to make it through the doors before the pain brought her to her knees.
“Oh, little one,” she whimpered. “Is it time?”
She was lifted up, laid on a trolley and wheeled along corridors. Kind voices spoke to her, and at last she wept. For all the children who had not been allowed to live, for this child who would live.
“Goodness me, what’s happened to you?”
She was undernourished, smeared with excrement and her body was covered in bedsores. She was washed, put on a drip and ointment was applied to her sores as the contractions came and went. It took many hours, and she gradually returned to the real world before she was hurled into the insanity of giving birth.
It was unbelievably painful. It took a very long time. She was given gas and air while soft hands stroked her forehead, and she screamed in agony as her child forced its way into the world.
And then it was over. Everything slipped out of her body, the world regained its colors and only a sharp, stabbing pain remained as the midwife held up a chubby, slippery little body. A son. Annika had given birth to a son.
A special child.
The midwife jiggled the boy up and down and he opened his mouth to let out his very first cry.
The stench of rotting flesh filled the room.
JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST was born in 1968 and grew up in Blackberg, a suburb of Stockholm. He is probably the only Swedish person who makes his living from writing horror. A former stand-up comedian and expert at card tricks, Lindqvist’s first novel, Let the Right One In, has sold more than half a million copies in a country of nine million inhabitants. The book has been published in thirty countries and been made into two movies, one Swedish and the other American (under the title Let Me In). The author’s other novels include Handling the Undead and Harbor, both of which are in the process of being turned into films, and Little Star. A collection of his short fiction, Let the Old Dreams Die and Other Stories (which includes sequels to both Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead), was recently published in the UK by Quercus. As the author explains: “A tomte is a creature in Scandinavian folklore who is responsible for the care and well-being of animals on a property; he also ensures that both people and animals are fertile and successful. In return, he requires a regular supply of porridge.”
The Shroud
There was once a mother who had a little boy of seven years old, who was so handsome and loveable that no one could look at him without liking him, and she herself worshipped him above everything in the world.
Now it so happened that he suddenly became ill, and God took him to himself, and for this the mother could not be comforted and wept both day and night. But soon afterward, when the child had been buried, it appeared by night in the places where it had sat and played during its life. And if the mother wept, it wept also, and when morning came it disappeared.
But as the mother would not stop crying, it came one night, in the little white shroud in which it had been laid in its coffin. And with its wreath of flowers around its head, it stood on the bed at her feet and said, “Oh, Mother, do stop crying, or I shall never fall asleep in my coffin, for my shroud will not dry because of all your tears, which fall upon it.”
The mother was afraid when she heard that, and wept no more.
The next night the child came again, and held a little light in its hand, and said, “Look, Mother, my shroud is nearly dry, and I can rest in my grave.”
Then the mother gave her sorrow into God’s keeping, and bore it quietly and patiently, and the child came no more, but slept in its little bed beneath the earth.
STEPHEN JONES lives in London, England. He is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, four Horror Writers’ Association Bram Stoker Awards, and three International Horror Guild Awards, as well as being a multiple recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television producer/director and genre movie publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Nightbreed, Split Second, etc.), he has written and edited more than 120 books, including A Book of Horrors, Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M. R. James, Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books (both with Kim Newman), and the Dark Terrors, Dark Voices and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series. A Guest of Honor at the 2002 World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the 2004 World Horror Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, he has been a guest lecturer at UCLA and London’s Kingston University and St. Mary’s University College. You can visit his website at www.stephenjoneseditor.com.
ALAN LEE studied at the Ealing School of Art and went on to become a commercial artist, illustrating dozens of paperback book covers. With Brian Froud he created the groundbreaking illustrated volume Faeries (1978). Lee’s other books include The Mabinogion, Castles, and Peter Dickinson’s Merlin Dreams. After illustrating the centenary edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, artist and author became inextricably linked, l
eading to his Oscar-winning conceptual work on Peter Jackson’s acclaimed The Lord of the Rings. He is currently working on the Hobbit movies for the same director. Alan Lee’s work has won him the Kate Greenaway Award and the World Fantasy Award.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jo Fletcher, Nicola Budd, Alan Lee, John Howe, Marlaine Delargy, Sheelagh Alabaster, Peter Robinson (Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd.), Merrilee Heifetz and Sarah Nagel (Writers House Literary Agency), Mandy Slater, Dorothy Lumley, and all the authors for all their help and support.
Fearie Tales Page 45