The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  It’s not that it was in itself a serious betrayal of our friendship. I’d seen similar scenarios in films, and it usually worked out okay. Sometimes it didn’t, in which case it would usually end in disaster.

  Grim might be okay with it, and then it would be fine. It might be weird and uncomfortable at first, but that might pass. He might, on the other hand, think that it was unacceptable, and he wasn’t going to blame Julia. They were brother and sister. It was as though I would be forced to choose between them. If I even got the chance to choose. It was possible that Grim might disown me, and make it impossible for me to see her. Then I would have lost them both.

  It hadn’t actually been going on for that long — not more than a month — but it felt as though time were being stretched, slowed down, making every day special.

  I’d never been with anyone before, but a classmate had a long-distance relationship with a girl he’d met on holiday in Skåne. He went down there every other weekend, and I thought to myself that this was what it must be like for him, those days when he was with her. Simply because they were so few, because they would soon be gone, they were more precious, and to carry on as normal would seem like a waste.

  If something had been wrong when we visited Grim at Jumkil, there was no sign of it now. Julia was back to normal. We went swimming. I held Julia’s hand on the way there, and in the water her skin became strangely smooth and light. When we got back to Salem, Julia asked if I wanted to come in. She was home alone, she said. When we got to their floor and Julia opened the door, it was obvious that we weren’t alone at all. There was a strong cooking smell in the flat. In one of the armchairs in the living room was a woman with curly hair and a beautiful face. She didn’t look up when we came in. I could hear the clattering of dishes being washed by hand coming from the kitchen. Julia froze next to me, letting go of my hand.

  Her dad’s face peered round the doorframe. It was tough and severe, the skin slightly red, and he was swollen around the eyes, as though he had just woken up. He looked surprised. He was holding a plate and a tea towel.

  ‘I didn’t think you were home,’ said Julia.

  ‘But we are.’ He tried to smile, and looked at me. ‘Have we met?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘No point,’ said the woman’s voice. It was monotonous, but had a slightly husky quality that was attractive. If she’d varied her inflection she could’ve worked in customer service for a company with angry customers. ‘She never sticks to anything anyway.’

  ‘Mum,’ Julia said, carefully, but I saw that her teeth were clenched.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Leo,’ I said. ‘I’m Leo. I live in the next block.’

  ‘Leo,’ Julia’s dad said, as though he was trying to place the name.

  ‘I’m friends with Gr—, with John. We go to the same school. Not in the same class, but the same school. We’ve been friends for a while.’

  I couldn’t stop talking, and I could feel my cheeks going red. Julia might have noticed, because as she was taking her shoes off, she carefully put her hand on my shoulder for support, giving it a gentle squeeze.

  ‘I understand.’

  That’s all he said. The plate he was holding was dry, and he disappeared back into the kitchen.

  ‘Would you like some food?’ he called. ‘It’ll be ready in a few minutes.’

  ‘Maybe, Dad,’ Julia said, grabbed my arm, and quickly dragged me into her room.

  ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Klas and Diana. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondered. Neither you nor Grim have ever said.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘I really didn’t think they’d be home. They’ll tell John.’

  ‘Not if we just say I was here to pick something up, or that you were showing me something, or … Yes.’

  ‘Would you be okay with that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m no good at lying,’ she said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  Klas and Diana Grimberg. I’d heard so much about them.

  ‘They aren’t like I imagined,’ I said.

  ‘Mum and Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you expecting?’

  That’s just what I was trying to work out. That they were always shouting, never spoke to each other? A visual recollection popped up: seeing Grim’s CD player being thrown out the window and falling to the ground.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  A gentle knock on the door.

  ‘We’re eating now,’ Klas said. ‘Want some?’

  Julia looked at me, and I shrugged.

  The table was laid simply. It was just another weekday evening, and my being there was of no significance whatsoever. They weren’t trying to make an impression, at least not in that sense. There was something appealing about doing it this way, especially in comparison to my parents, who always tried to impress people on those occasions when we did have guests, which I found hugely embarrassing.

  ‘Spaghetti bolognese,’ her dad said. ‘You do eat meat, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s not that simple anymore,’ he muttered. ‘People’s eating habits are getting stranger and stranger.’

  The sound of footsteps came from the living room, and Diana Grimberg came to sit at the table, opposite her daughter. As she passed Julia, she stopped, looked at her, and stroked her cheek tenderly.

  ‘You look so pure, do you know that?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And you.’ She looked at me. ‘Don’t forget she is a catch.’

  The corners of Diana’s mouth twitched, and her expression was one of surprise, as though it was something that didn’t happen very often. Eventually, her lips separated, and a laugh squeezed through — a laugh that I didn’t know how to take.

  ‘Leo just came to borrow a CD,’ Julia said, as she spooned big dollops of sauce onto her plate.

  ‘I understand,’ Klas said.

  ‘But I couldn’t find it,’ she went on, without looking up at them. ‘Maybe it’s in John’s room.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  I poured myself some water from a jug, and Julia and her dad pushed their glasses over towards me. I filled their glasses, and looked at Diana, who hadn’t touched hers. She was sitting looking at something out the window. I took the glass and poured her some water, then put it back.

  She was startled by the noise, and looked at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about something.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How long have you and Julia,’ Klas began, and interrupted himself to finish chewing and swallow, ‘how long have you known each other?’

  ‘A couple of months,’ I said. ‘About as long as I’ve known John.’

  ‘He calls himself Grim,’ Diana said, and drank some water. ‘Strange. Or is it just me who thinks so?’

  ‘No, it’s not just you,’ Klas said. ‘But he’s seventeen. You never have such funny ideas as you do when you’re seventeen. Isn’t that right, Leo?’

  Klas smiled, and something was behind his words — something that didn’t come out.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘He’s going places,’ he said. ‘Anyone can see that.’

  ‘Yes, but which places?’ Diana said, and looked at me. ‘Don’t you hurt her.’

  ‘Mum!’ Julia said sharply, and I felt her hand on mine, under the table.

  ‘Diana, keep cal— ’

  ‘Is it surprising that I get worried?’

  Julia put her fork down next to her plate and looked up.

  ‘I’
m sitting here. You don’t need to talk about me in the third person.’

  Diana looked at Klas’s tumbler.

  ‘Are you drinking water?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But you’re on holiday now. You don’t have to put on a front because they’re here. I’m sure Leo already knows, don’t you, Leo?’

  ‘I, no, I …’

  ‘Stop it now, Diana.’

  ‘Shall I get the bottle then?’

  She looked at Klas’s hands. It was only then that I noticed them trembling slightly.

  ‘I can see you want it.’

  ‘I’m drinking water.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘He blames it on you,’ Diana went on, in a monotone as before, and she glanced at Julia before turning her gaze back to the window, fixing it on something outside. ‘You know that, he needs it to cope with living with you after t— ’

  ‘Diana.’ Klas’s voice was so sharp that I tightened my grip on the fork, and Julia’s hand disappeared as she straightened up with a jolt. ‘That’s enough.’

  I left the Grimbergs’ flat confused and CD-less, which was hardly surprising.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, I met Julia at the water tower, which stretched up towards the sky, and in the gloom seemed darker than usual — rougher than it normally did. I’d always thought of it as mushroom-shaped, but now it looked more like a courtroom gavel. Julia threw her arms around me in a way she’d never done before. It felt more urgent, almost desperate, and I let her do it. I asked her something she didn’t hear.

  ‘Eh?’ she mumbled, with her warm breath against my upper lip.

  ‘Is it always like that at home?’

  ‘More or less.’ She looked up at the tower. ‘Come.’

  Julia made her way up the tower, climbing in the darkness above me. I followed her until we got to the highest ledge.

  ‘This is where I first met Grim,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  She lifted her hands up inside her dress, and something small and black fell to her ankles.

  ‘Unbutton your jeans,’ she whispered. ‘And sit down.’

  Julia’s breath was burning hot on my neck. Over her shoulder, I could see Salem stretched out beneath us, and the sky, which was getting darker and darker. I strained to keep my eyes open.

  I’m sitting in the car outside your place. I can see you at the window, but you can’t see me. That makes me sad. I want you to know. The incident tapes are flapping, lonely in the wind. The first time you see them, they make you feel bad. Do you remember that? But back then we were pretty much still just kids, and we saw a lot of them. We got used to them.

  Just before Dad dies we spend a lot of time talking about Mum.

  ‘I only really remember her from photographs,’ I say, which makes him angry, even though he’s very weak. I try and tell him that it’s good that I remember her that way, and that the other memories are things you want to forget, even though there must have been good times. But he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t have the strength.

  Did I say how they met? I should have, because I remember you told me about yours. It was at a bar in Södertälje. She worked in a music shop and apparently all the guys there wanted to sleep with her but she only went with two before she met Dad. She was in the bar with a few friends from the local music scene, and he was there with a couple of welder mates after work. At the bar she asked him what sort of music he liked and Dad said:

  ‘I don’t listen to music.’

  Mum smiled and said: ‘Perfect.’

  That’s how Dad tells it anyway. When I arrived it was without complications, and Dad says they were extremely happy, that their only worries were financial. They’d always lived on the edge of their means and they carried on doing so, even though Dad was already drinking quite heavily. Then Mum got pregnant again. I don’t remember any of this, I was too young of course, but I understood some of it later. How Mum had fallen into a coma after the birth, for some reason, and how she had changed by the time she woke up a couple of days later: passive and apathetic with sudden unpredictable outbursts. Dad tells me that, after a while, when they started to worry that she might never get better, he cried every night over losing the one he loved.

  ‘That’s what it felt like at least,’ he says. ‘But then maybe we’d lost each other long before.’

  I tell him he’s wrong, that they hadn’t at all, although I realise deep down that I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Dad probably feels the same way, but he doesn’t say so, he just puts his hand on top of mine and says it’s hard to know with families, and he gives me a confused smile.

  They were so alike, her and Mum. He screamed at her and hardly ever gave her praise when she did something good. It tormented him, because he knew why he did it, yet couldn’t stop himself. He tried to avoid drinking around her because he didn’t trust himself.

  He didn’t just start to turn on Julia, everyone got it. He could never leave Mum, she was too dependent on him for that, she needed him too much. He was unhappy, chronically unhappy, and found it harder and harder to get up in the morning and go to work at the welding company.

  Dad exhales, weakly. He asks for water. I give it to him. He asks how I am. I say he’s all I’ve got left. He smiles and says that’s not true, but he knows nothing.

  XV

  POLICE OFFICER SUSPECTED OF MURDER.

  Sam has her phone out, and is showing me Expressen’s latest headline. I look from her phone to mine.

  I think you should watch the news

  Annika Ljungmark’s article is short but succinct. As of ten o’clock this evening, several sources within the city police have confirmed the latest developments in the investigation into Rebecca Salomonsson’s murder. Police are now pursuing a specific line of enquiry, one in which a police officer is implicated. ‘He can be placed at the crime scene around the time of the victim’s death,’ claims a source.

  It will only be a matter of hours until the police officer’s identity is revealed. That’s always the way. I lean against the bar, and look up from my phone. My head starts spinning. Sam looks at me, worried.

  ‘Leo, it …’

  ‘It’s not me,’ I manage to say.

  ‘I know that.’

  I look at her, unsure whether she has understood what I mean.

  ‘Good.’

  Sam looks down at my phone.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Someone’s been sending me messages.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure.’

  What happens next is strange and yet it feels so familiar, so obvious: Sam grabs hold of my arm. From the corner of my eye, I see how Anna is watching us.

  ‘Be careful,’ Sam says.

  ‘I’m doing my best.’

  ‘No you’re not.’ She doesn’t let go of my arm. ‘You have always been so careless.’

  As though she realises what she’s about to do, Sam lets go of my arm. And there it is; I can see it in her eyes because I know just how it feels: for a second, she sees a flash of Viktor in my face.

  ‘Unless there’s something else, I have to go,’ she says.

  I follow her to the door. It’s still raining outside. The black streets shine and sparkle, and above us the clouds race across the sky. She leaves without saying anything, but she looks back over her shoulder. I light a cigarette and stare after her until she disappears round the corner.

  ‘Absinthe, please,’ I say when I get back in and stand by the counter.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘What?’

  Anna puts down a glass and pours my drink.

  ‘That. Her, you?’

  ‘We were together once.’


  ‘You said.’

  ‘We were expecting a son. We even had a name.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I drink from the glass. The knots under the skin by my temples start to loosen.

  ‘A car accident.’

  ‘He died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anna is standing with her elbows on the bar, holding her face in her hands. The edge of the bar pushes her breasts up, making her cleavage deeper than it is normally.

  ‘You’re a psychologist,’ I say.

  ‘Psychology student.’

  ‘What do your books say about me?’

  ‘No idea.’ She looks at the clock. ‘I can close up if you like.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You look like you need … distracting.’

  She smiles. I’ve drunk the absinthe too quickly. It has already reached my head, and is starting to make things murky.

  ‘I think you’re absolutely right,’ I mumble and glance at the door. ‘But it’s not … sorry, but it’s not you I w— ’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I don’t care.’

  So I allow myself to go along with it, just this once.

  Anna walks over to the door and locks it. On her way back, she calmly unbuttons her shirt and takes it off, lets her hair down. She sits down on the barstool next to me, and I take a step forward, between her legs, and she puts her hand on my chest, strokes carefully down my stomach, and starts unbuttoning my jeans. I need this, and when I close my eyes I notice to my surprise that the inside of my eyelids are in fact not black, but dark, dark red.

  AT SOME POINT — maybe during, maybe after — the memories seep in, unexpectedly, like when someone you haven’t seen for ages comes up to you in the underground and you chat for a bit, and after the brief meeting the past sweeps by.

  I am thirteen years old. I’ve had enough of getting hit by Vlad and Fred, and I start to pay it back, but to someone smaller than me. His name is Tim. Above us, the sky is heavy, like wet snow. I punch him in the guts.