The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  When a sacrifice is desired, the weather becomes enraged.

  When a sacrifice is chosen, the rage turns to peace.

  One evening, a week or so after she received the book, she found Göran in his kitchen. Potatoes were boiling on the stove; steam rose from the pot and drifted out the open window. Göran himself was sitting at the kitchen table and invited Nathalie to join him.

  “As you may have realized,” he said, “there is reason to believe that Mossmarken is one of these sacrificial bogs, where… lost souls hunger for fresh sacrifices.”

  At first she couldn’t make a sound. “Why?” she whispered, her voice cracked. “Why do you think that?”

  “People have vanished from here without a trace,” he said, his voice solemn. “Throughout time.”

  Then he told her about an old farmer in the nineteenth century who never returned from the autumn harvest. But there were also more recent stories of tourists who had disappeared after a visit to the area.

  She wanted to ask about Göran’s wife, but she didn’t dare—she was scared of how he might react.

  “The German in Tösse,” Göran said, gazing at her for a long time.

  According to the book, it was important to be on the alert if a storm subsided suddenly. It could mean that the undead had selected a victim, so it was crucial to find a safe place. Above all, it was crucial to avoid being out in a sacrificial bog.

  The book was written in a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone. As if there could be no doubt that this was the way of the world, or at least the way of the bog.

  According to Göran, people in this area had lived with that knowledge for centuries. It had been passed on from generation to generation, and there were even stories of how the inhabitants had desperately tried to appease the undead. To keep them satisfied. But of course, it wasn’t the sort of thing people discussed out loud. Because it meant sacrificing others. Sacrificing strangers, visitors. There was talk, for example, of how locals had together taken the life of a persistent tax collector and buried him in the mire.

  As a child, Nathalie considered that book more valuable than all her toys put together. She lay under the covers reading by flashlight at night, and hid the book as soon as her parents appeared. The only person she told was her friend Julia.

  Julia lived with her family on the other side of the bog. They were in the same class and played handball together. And Julia was there the first time she experienced something strange out on the bog. A particular sort of presence, something… different.

  It happened one afternoon when they were in sixth year. They had agreed to meet at the hut they’d built out on the bog. Their parents didn’t know about it—had they known, the girls would have been forbidden to play there.

  On that day, a Saturday, they were sitting quietly among the trees, eating cold hot dogs and drinking chocolate milk.

  After they ate, they each leaned against a pine tree and Nathalie dozed off.

  When she woke up, the wind was blowing hard in her face and at first she didn’t know where she was. When she turned around, Julia was gone.

  Nathalie gazed out across the landscape and got the feeling that… well, she couldn’t put it into words at the time, but it had felt like she had dissolved and become one with her surroundings. She sensed an energy filling her, an energy that wasn’t entirely benevolent.

  And then, just as it said in the book, the wind died down as suddenly as it had come up. At that instant, she caught sight of Julia walking off across the mire. She called and called, but Julia didn’t seem to hear; she just kept moving toward an area that was far too marshy to walk on.

  “Julia!” she screamed. “Stop!”

  She ran after her friend and caught hold of her arm, yanking it with all her strength.

  “Wake up!”

  Julia blinked. “Wake up?” she mumbled. “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t walk there. It was… it was like you were asleep.”

  “I must have been… I don’t know what was happening,” Julia said.

  It was at the very beginning of that summer, the summer that changed everything.

  That last summer.

  When she was twelve.

  One week later, the Lingonberry Girl was found in the bog.

  Larsson’s peat quarry had enjoyed its heyday in the seventies, but up to twenty-five men were employed there during the brief, intense harvesting period even into the twenty-first century.

  A young worker from town had happened upon the ancient body, and he called for Julia’s father. They all started digging together. The police were called, archeologists arrived, and the circus was under way.

  It turned out to be a body from the Iron Age. Researchers would later guess that the woman had been sacrificed to the fertility gods in the hope of a good harvest. Hazel wands and clay pots were also found nearby.

  Nathalie had felt a certain amount of pride. Göran was right—people really had been sacrificed and buried there once upon a time.

  Shortly thereafter, near the end of summer, came the tragedies.

  First one, then the other.

  Before it was all over.

  Leif and Maya were sitting in the café at police headquarters, deep in thought. The sound of clattering dishes and pots came from the kitchen, and on the other side of the frosted glass they could see the vague shadows of passers-by on the pavement.

  The corpse in the bog was a man, Stefan Wiik, forty-eight, from Brålanda. He had disappeared in the early hours of 15 March 2012, after a visit to his girlfriend, who lived only a few hundred meters away.

  It was remarkable enough to have found a body in the bog, but the fact that the body was from the current day and had been poled had brought an extra dimension to the case. What’s more, a cloth bag of ten-kronor coins, identical to the one found on Johannes, had been discovered in Stefan Wiik’s clothing.

  Ten-kronor coins, again.

  In other words, Johannes Ayeb and Stefan Wiik were not two isolated incidents. Although four years separated the crimes, they had probably been committed by the same person, or people.

  The biologist who was staying in the cabin next to the manor house had probably spared Johannes from meeting the same fate as Stefan. The pit she thought she’d seen was apparently meant to be Johannes’s grave—but someone had had enough time to fill it in again.

  Leif had a grim look on his face.

  “We’ve asked Trollhättan to find out who Stefan Wiik was. All I can imagine is that this has to do with some sort of underworld deal; it’s the only thing that would explain this type of brutality. But the question is, how does Johannes fit into the picture? Drugs? Are there lots of drugs at the school?”

  “Not that I know of,” Maya said. “And like I said, Johannes seems to be a perfectly normal student. You really should talk to that girl, Nathalie. I heard she’s been keeping vigil at his bedside.”

  “Yes, I suppose we do need to have a real conversation with her,” Leif agreed, scratching the back of his neck. “And all those coins,” he said in a low voice as he distractedly watched the blurry movements outside the window. “What’s the deal with those?”

  Maya leaned back. She wondered if she should say what she was thinking. But Leif beat her to it.

  “Say it,” he said. “I can tell you’ve got some idea.”

  She looked across the café, then back at him.

  “I’m not sure you’re going to like it; I’m not quite thinking along the same lines as you.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sacrifices,” she said.

  Leif looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that’s what people did a long time ago,” Maya said. “Made sure what they buried was as valuable as possible, to satisfy the gods. Food, tools and that sort of thing was furthest down the list. Number one in the ranking was people. To really be on the safe side, you made sure to bury them in really nice clothes, too, or…”

  “Or?” Leif tried to get
his index finger into the handle of his cup, but at last he gave up and gripped it with his whole hand.

  “Or else maybe you filled their pockets with items of value.”

  “Did you learn that at the museum?” Leif asked. “You’re not just letting your imagination run away with you?”

  “Well, it’s only a guess,” Maya admitted. “But Stefan Wiik’s grave looks like it belongs to a sacrifice.”

  Leif nodded. “So you’re suggesting we’re dealing with a… superstitious individual? Someone who believes in sacrificial gifts?”

  “Yes, someone with a specific goal in mind. Just like in the past, when sacrifices were made to win wars or have good harvests, or to escape evil powers. Someone who’s prepared to kill for it.”

  They fell into silence once more.

  “What are you really saying, though?” Leif looked like he would prefer to avoid coming to the obvious conclusion. “That people are sacrificing to the gods still today? Is that what you mean?”

  Maya looked at him. “Someone is, anyway,” she said. “We can’t turn a blind eye to the obvious link.”

  “You mean the Lingonberry Girl?”

  “Yes.” Maya took a sip of her coffee. “I mean the Lingonberry Girl. After all, she was poled. It can’t be a coincidence that we found a modern-day corpse poled in the same bog.”

  The Åmål marina looked just as she remembered. They had come to the café there to celebrate the end of each school year. Waffles and ice cream. She always chose the same flavors: blueberry, chocolate, pistachio. Or strawberry. Never vanilla.

  Back then, she was a perfectly average girl.

  Someone completely different.

  In a different time.

  Mum and Dad got coffee, poured milk out of tiny, round plastic cups with foil lids. Dad always had trouble opening his.

  Could you give me a hand, sweetie?

  There had been tenderness in that. It was in his voice, that broad, patient voice that emerged sometimes. She remembered wishing she could lie down and rest inside it.

  And the emotion in her mother’s eyes, because Nathalie had completed another year of school, because they were a family that stuck together no matter what. It was a warm, loving gaze—but it also contained something left unsaid. As if, through her eyes, she were giving Nathalie space to fill with her own possibilities.

  And the sun. Always the sun. That was how she remembered it.

  It was the same now, as the autumn sun made fireworks in the water between the anchored boats. They had moved the ice-cream counter to a different corner, but otherwise everything was the same. The chairs and tables were probably new, though; she didn’t recall.

  The marina. The pride of the city. “The loveliest in Sweden,” someone had once written somewhere, and since then it had just been true. This was where you came in the summer, here or Örnäs, the nearby swimming beach.

  Summer was over now. But this was the only place Nathalie considered when she decided to visit Åmål and have coffee. She had no idea if there were any other cafés—there probably were, probably ones with milk steamed in shiny espresso machines rather than poured out of tiny, round plastic cups with foil lids. But she didn’t know about them.

  So she ended up here, in the city where she’d gone to school and where she might have lived now if what happened had never happened. Or maybe not.

  She probably would have moved anyway.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Not now.

  Be calm, breathe.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when she felt a shadow approaching her table.

  “Nathalie? Is that you?”

  She looked up. It was that police photographer, Maya.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Maya was wearing black jeans, red trainers and a beige T-shirt under a tailored black jacket. She was holding a tray with a bottle of water, an enormous Danish, a mug and a carafe of coffee.

  “Nice to see a familiar face,” Maya said. “I used to live here, but now it feels like all the residents have been replaced.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Nathalie said.

  She noticed herself feeling as she had last time—Maya somehow made her feel at ease.

  “Would it be a bother if I joined you?”

  “No, no, that’s fine.”

  Maya put down her tray and sat in one of the chairs. The background noise was commercial radio: top forty and insistent sales jingles.

  “Did you hear what…” Maya appeared to be choosing her words carefully: “… what we found out in the mire?”

  “You mean the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  Maya looked at her. “A lot has been going on out there recently. And I don’t think you were seeing things or making a mistake; I think you really did see that grave.”

  Nathalie lowered her head. “Thanks. That’s nice of you to say.”

  Maybe, she thought, Maya is serious. Or maybe she just wanted to be nice and make sure Nathalie didn’t feel so silly for dragging the police out to the bog for no reason. Seldom had she felt so embarrassed.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve spoken more with Leif Berggren?” Maya asked.

  “No, not since the last time I saw you, although he called and said he’d like to meet me. It’s just that I don’t quite understand what he wants.”

  “Leif has been speaking to Johannes’s friends too… we’re a little curious about him, ever since we found this new body. We’d like to know what sort of life he lived.”

  “I don’t really know what to say,” Nathalie said. “I don’t actually know much about his life. We only met a few weeks ago, so we don’t know each other very well.”

  “But you’ve been sitting with him at the hospital?”

  “Yes, it sort of just happened, I don’t know… so he doesn’t have to lie there all alone.”

  Nathalie’s body felt heavy, as if something were dragging her down. Why hadn’t she stayed home in Gothenburg and let everything be? Why hadn’t she chosen another site, any other wetlands? She should have stuck to the scientific world, where everything could be classified and a wetland was a collection of well-documented chemical and biological reactions that behaved according to established patterns.

  Where wetlands were just wetlands.

  Not seas of dead and lost souls.

  People disappear out there.

  Was she the one who’d said it? Or had she only thought it?

  She realized that Maya was leaning forward and resting her chin in her hand. Gazing seriously at Nathalie.

  “Disappear?”

  “What?”

  “You said people disappear out there.”

  “I did?”

  “Do you know something, something you should tell us?” Maya asked.

  Nathalie squirmed. Could she handle a discussion about what was gnawing at her?

  “There are folks who say people have always disappeared out in the mire.”

  Maya’s eyes were fixed on her.

  “If that’s true, wouldn’t people have realized it earlier?” Maya said.

  Nathalie felt a pressure in her chest, a sudden flare of anger mixed with deep exhaustion and possibly a certain amount of confusion.

  “You’re thinking about that little boy who disappeared—when was that? Ten years ago?” Maya asked.

  “Yes, but it’s not just him. There are more…”

  Silence fell between them.

  “Folks, you say,” Maya repeated. “Like who?”

  “There’s someone you should talk to. He’s given several tips to the police, advising them to search Mossmarken for missing people. But nothing has come of it. Until now.”

  “Is that true?” Maya asked.

  She nodded. “His name is Göran Dahlberg. He lives up there. You can tell him I sent you.”

  “Okay,” Maya said, looking surprised.

  She took a bite of her Danish, bending suddenly over her plate when crumbs r
ained down.

  “Where do you live?” she asked then, as if the topic of Mossmarken had become too touchy. “When you’re not renting that cottage, I mean.”

  “I live in Gothenburg,” Nathalie said. “But I’m from here, originally…” She hesitated before pressing on. “Or at least, I grew up in Mossmarken. Göran is our old neighbor. Was our neighbor, for many years.”

  “I see,” Maya said. “Did you go to school here in Åmål, then?”

  “Yes, until I was twelve.”

  “Which one?”

  “Södra. Then I moved to Gothenburg.”

  Maya smiled. “I went to Södra too. But that must have been twenty-five years before you did. And I stayed here, at least for a while. My parents still live in Åmål—I was actually visiting them right before I came here.”

  Then came the reaction. Maya’s face froze; her gaze cut through the air.

  “Hold on, you lived in Mossmarken… you weren’t the one…”

  Nathalie didn’t respond.

  “The one whose parents…?” Maya looked at her, eyes wide.

  Nathalie nodded slowly. “You might be thinking of my dad,” she said with surprising ease. “How he… shot my mum. And then himself.”

  Maya closed her eyes. “Oh my God. I remember it so well. I was just about to move to New York. I think it was that same year. I thought about you a lot back then, how you were left all on your own. I thought a lot about what that was like for you. And wasn’t there some accident out there too, right before what happened with your parents? A young woman died?”

  “Yes,” Nathalie heard herself saying. “That was Tracy. My best friend Julia’s older sister.”

  She really didn’t mean to sound so emphatic. Suddenly she found herself standing up, taking her jacket, and leaving the café, Maya’s frantic apologies drifting after her like a cloud.

  Ellen was speaking to a colleague when Maya stepped through the entrance of the art school. The building had originally been the People’s House, the local meeting place, and consisted of an auditorium, offices and some classrooms.