The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  “Is that true?” Maya asked.

  “It’s true.”

  “What a sight.” Maya laughed and started down a new track: “By the way, have you by any chance been digging out in the bog?”

  “No, for God’s sake. Why do you ask?”

  “There was a pit. But then it disappeared.”

  “A disappearing pit?”

  “Yes, you could say so.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  “I… also work as a police photographer,” Maya said reluctantly, bracing herself for a negative reaction, but Texas just raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  “Oh, I see. There you go.”

  Almost an hour later, after a cup of coffee and an apology that he didn’t have any whisky or beer to offer, she was ready to leave.

  “Great music, by the way,” she said. “My dad listened to Kris Kristofferson when I was little.”

  “Yes, you know, a person needs some Kris at least once a day. Otherwise you’ll never get anything done. But you hardly do anyway, as I like to say.”

  He held up a tin of snuff and offered it to Maya, who shook her head. He took some and tucked it inside his lower lip.

  “Otherwise I mostly listen to country. Waylon and Willie and the boys. Townes. Sometimes I listen to other stuff, Lars Demian for a while. But then you have to go right back, back to reality, so to speak.” He began to head up toward the house. “Have to make sure you don’t get too far from the stock price of a pig, as a Center Party MP once said.”

  “The stock price of a pig?”

  “Sure, you know. What use are you in real life, if you forget the market value of a pig?”

  He placed his hand on the stair railing.

  “Well, listen, I suppose I need to get back to my cleaning before my lady gets here. So I have something to show for my day. But what was I going to say? Right, if you want to know more about Mossmarken you should talk to Göran Dahlberg. He’s got lots to say. More than I do, anyway.”

  They were too late.

  Nathalie stood in the upstairs window, watching as Peder and Yvonne ran out into the marsh after Tracy, in only their underwear. Their cries of despair, the way they tripped and fell and got back on their feet, but at last were forced to watch as their daughter vanished under the surface. They threw themselves right into the water and they too nearly went under.

  Nathalie closed the window as she watched Julia fall to her knees; she looked like she was screaming. But she couldn’t hear anything any more. It must be the new windows they’d put in last year. Triple-glazed, she remembered her dad had said. That if they could have afforded it, they would’ve got the same. That they could really make a dent in the electric bill.

  Nathalie cautiously walked down the hall and dialed her home number. Her dad picked up, half asleep.

  “Something happened,” she whispered, a sob in her throat. “You have to come and get me.”

  Later, her parents turned their black Volvo on to the gravel drive just as the police and ambulance arrived; they ran into the house and embraced her as if she were the one who’d been in danger.

  Then came divers, and some relatives of the family. Peder and Yvonne had to show them where their daughter disappeared. For a few, quiet hours, the divers battled the cloudy water.

  But they didn’t find her.

  Yvonne rushed about, apparently trying to get the mud off her body with persistent, rough strokes. Peder crouched nearby, his back to them and his head drooping between his drawn-up knees.

  Nathalie experienced all this as if reality were behind glass. As if she were watching it all on a screen with no sound. She didn’t come to until one of the police officers started asking questions about what she’d seen.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a thin voice. “Tracy was walking around, and then she fell in. She was pretty far off. I couldn’t see very well. She just walked right in.”

  She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t quite want to say how determined Tracy had seemed. Maybe because it seemed too inconceivable.

  “She fell in?” the officer asked. “Do you think she could have tripped?”

  “Yes, I think so. It looked that way, almost.”

  Then the short, silent drive home in the car. Her dad’s desperate grip on the wheel, her mother Jessica’s deep, gasping sighs, and the air that didn’t seem to be sufficient.

  When they got home, they held one another for a long time and then fell asleep snuggled close in the double bed.

  But Nathalie couldn’t stop thinking about Julia. Who would hold her? What would happen now?

  Tracy’s body was never found. It was assumed to have vanished into the dark marsh. It had been difficult for the divers to see and move, and although they expressed surprise that they didn’t find the body, it wasn’t entirely unexpected given the tricky circumstances.

  Later, a collection would pay for further searches, private ones, since the authorities no longer considered it possible to continue in any meaningful way. In the end, the family would be forced to realize that these efforts wouldn’t lead anywhere either.

  Weeks passed before Nathalie and Julia spoke. She never understood why. She wanted to go over there, or call, but her parents said that Julia’s family needed time alone.

  And then handball camp started; both of them had planned to attend, but Julia never showed up. This gave rise to a great deal of talk about what had happened to her sister. No one seemed to know that Nathalie had been there when it happened, and she didn’t mention it.

  When Julia finally called and they started hanging out again, Nathalie did her best to make her feel as comfortable as possible. They tried to get together and just talk; they went running together, did all sorts of things. But nothing was the same between them.

  She knew they were both thinking that their ghost stories and games out on the bog had become reality.

  The memorial service was so sad that Nathalie couldn’t eat for several days afterward. Tracy’s friend Angelica’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” made even the pastor weep.

  It was also the first and last time Nathalie saw her father cry. It frightened her and made her feel like the end of the world was coming. And in some ways it was, at least for her, although she had no idea at the time.

  Instead of a coffin, a table stood at the front of the church, displaying a photo of Tracy. Peder and Yvonne had trouble walking; they seemed to have trouble even breathing and had to support one another. Julia walked several steps behind them. She looked so lonely. As if she were expected to make it on her own, in contrast to her parents, who had each other. They had been given sedatives, Nathalie had heard. To make it through the service. She wondered what would help Julia make it through.

  “There he is,” Nathalie heard a man next to her in the pew whisper as a man of around thirty approached the photograph to say good-bye. “The one in the dark green shirt. That’s who she was dating. Apparently he met someone else, but she doesn’t seem to be here. Thank God.”

  The guy was the only person up there who didn’t cry; his pain seemed to be of a different variety.

  After the memorial service, Julia pretended they didn’t know each other. She spent more and more time with a different girl, who seemed overjoyed to have become friends with Julia. Nathalie saw them on their bikes together sometimes.

  Nathalie grieved. For the first time in her life she felt truly alone. It was as if her life had turned its back on her, as if something huge were blocking the light of the world and turning everything cold and dark.

  She didn’t know that the tragedy of Tracy was only the beginning.

  She didn’t know that this was only a foreshock, a distant rumble.

  Maya was already exhausted when she woke up. The previous day had been a long one. Today she would pay another visit to Mossmarken—to see Göran Dahlberg. Finally.

  Last night, nine of them had sat around Laila Börjesson’s kitchen. Aside from Laila, her husband Johnny, and their chi
ldren plus partners, there was an acquaintance from the next town who was helping lay gravel in the garden. Apparently one of the many favors Laila had earned throughout the years.

  Maya had brought a kringle from the bakery in Fengerskog and they gathered around it. Then they let her take some pictures and after just over an hour she headed back home. Laila and Johnny got up at five every morning to take care of the animals, and then they went to their regular jobs, and then it was time for the animals again. That was their life.

  Maya reached across the bedside table and checked her phone. She thought she’d heard it vibrate a few times during the night. She had four texts from Tom.

  She sighed.

  The first contained a quote from Susan Sontag’s book On Photography.

  Thought of you when I read these. Feels like something you might have said.

  She probably knew every important line in that book by heart, but she read it anyway.

  Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality… One can’t possess reality, one can possess images—one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.

  The other two texts questioned her silence with rising degrees of accusation.

  She leaned back. She simply hadn’t had time.

  What do you want with me? Why are you acting like this? he wrote in the last one, which had been sent at 3.14 a.m.

  Maya composed a response.

  Sorry, there’s been a lot on my plate. Want to make it up to you. Maybe you can come over some night for a glass of wine? Just the two of us?

  Just the two of us. She knew he would eat that right up. She knew he would interpret those three words as some sort of promise, as a whole world of meaning to his own advantage.

  Maya hadn’t gone grocery shopping for weeks, but others had filled her fridge. It contained various spreads, fresh veg, cooked beans, aged cheeses and preserved delicacies from spontaneous late-night parties.

  She toasted a piece of bread, spread it with olive tapenade, and placed it on a plate along with a sliced avocado and alfalfa sprouts. Then she poured a cup of espresso, topped it with frothy milk, and sat down in the living room with the newspaper.

  Man Ray came slinking across the room—he was a Norwegian Forest Cat Ellen had given her as a housewarming present. She found that the cat made her happy.

  An hour or so later, she packed her equipment in the car and took off for Mossmarken.

  Just before she reached Göran Dahlberg’s house, she slammed on the brakes and reversed.

  A letterbox. She could easily have missed the drive. One had once existed here, but now it was overgrown with scrub. Yet beyond it she could see a house. And a rusty car. Nature had taken over.

  The name “Nordström” was painted on the letterbox in faded script.

  This must have been where Nathalie had lived; her name had been Nordström as a child. Maya had read the police report on what happened, the murder-suicide that had occurred in the house. She’d read about how Nathalie was sitting in the car outside when the patrol arrived. How her mum and dad had been lying, shot and bloody, on the kitchen floor. How her father had had a rifle in his hand.

  The event had been described by the newspapers as a family tragedy, with no further details. But Maya still recalled the shock and the aftermath the story caused throughout the region. People had wondered what could cause a father to make the devastating decision to take the lives of himself and his wife—and leave a little twelve-year-old girl behind.

  She put the car in first gear and continued to the next driveway. Mossmarken is a tormented place, she thought. Stories like that one never leave the people who experienced them, especially not if they were children. That sort of thing must shape a person. Blast new paths into one’s consciousness.

  Göran Dahlberg lived in a dark brown, two-story wooden house with a large garden full of wilting growth. A white van stood in the drive, and a bike leaned against a post.

  Maya felt a chill as she stepped out of the car. Soon autumn would fade into winter.

  “Hi.”

  Maya was startled. He had been standing beside the house all along: a tall, thin figure in an old knitted cardigan and trousers the same shade of brown as the house.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” She approached with her hand outstretched. “Maya.”

  “Göran,” he said, taking a step forward and separating himself from the background.

  “I’m a photographer and I’m taking some pictures in the neighborhood,” Maya said. “I’m going around and introducing myself to the people who live here.”

  “Okay,” Göran said.

  “It’s so lovely here,” Maya said, looking around.

  “It is what it is. The end of the road. The end of the world, some would say.”

  “Seems like lots of people have moved away?” She nodded at the road. “Lots of boarded-up houses.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Anything else would be strange.”

  She looked at him, perplexed.

  “This is no place to live,” he clarified.

  “But you live here.”

  He shrugged. “Yes, I do. I’m like my garden—run wild. I wouldn’t be able to function anywhere else.” He observed her. “How come you’re interested in photographing out here?”

  “I work part time as a police photographer and I recently came out here on assignment. You know about what happened, I assume.”

  “Of course. But as a police photographer, surely you have no reason to go on house calls like this.”

  She felt her cheeks burn and immediately regretted bringing up her side job. She was too used to moving forward unhindered with a relatively vague motive.

  “No, that’s true. But I’m also an artist and I’m working on a project. I find Mossmarken intriguing, and all its history too. I’ve been to the museum in Karlstad to check out the Lingonberry Girl, and I wanted to know more. So you were the right person to talk to.”

  “And you don’t have me confused with Peder Larsson, who found the Lingonberry Girl…?”

  “No, I spoke to Nathalie and she tipped me off about you.”

  His gaze sharpened. “You know Nathalie?”

  “I wouldn’t say that; I only met her a few times. Nice girl.”

  He nodded, apparently debating with himself. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Maya flashed him her friendliest smile. “I’d love some.”

  Göran showed her into the house, into a room with dark wood-paneled walls and substantial bookcases.

  “Have a seat.”

  He went to the kitchen and Maya soon heard the sound of a coffee-maker. She looked around, her eyes exploring the spines of books. She spotted titles in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish and Russian; she also saw English titles like The Anatomy of a Ghost and A Study of the Unknown.

  After a while, he came back with two mugs and a plate of biscuits.

  “You know that Nathalie lived just next door?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you know what happened to her parents?”

  “Yes. I lived in Åmål at the time. There was a lot of talk. But you knew them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, at least a little—we were neighbors, after all. But Nathalie was the one I talked to the most.”

  “Pardon me for asking,” Maya said, “but were you at home that day? Or night?”

  “When it happened, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sleep soundly,” Göran said, “I always have. I didn’t wake up until the next morning, when it was all over. Nathalie had already been taken into care and she never returned, until now.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  She would have liked to ask more about Nathalie and the incident, but she didn’t want to risk destroying the affinity that was building between them. Instead she kept talking about her photography project and her meeting with the Larssons. They discussed the importance of collecting or shedding belongings. Then she nodded
at his bookcases.

  “So you’re interested in… the supernatural?”

  “Oh, I suppose you could say so,” he said curtly, taking a bite of a biscuit.

  “Have you always been?”

  He cocked his head. “No, not always. Once upon a time I was a professor. Of theoretical physics.”

  “Aha,” Maya said in surprise. “What was your specialty?”

  “String theory. Quantum mechanics.”

  “Exciting,” she said. “Is it true that at least 99.99 percent of matter is empty space?”

  He smiled. “You’re in the know.”

  She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Well, you know more than most, anyway,” he said, setting down his mug. “But the fact is, it’s closer to 100 percent empty space. Not even the atomic nucleus, which I imagine you’re making an exception for, has any real volume on a fundamental level. But perhaps it’s important to point out that it isn’t an empty void. It’s boiling, bubbling, fluctuating; stuff is happening all over the place all the time. The so-called empty space contains unlimited potentiality for particles to arise. It contains everything and nothing all at once. But it’s a little hard to… relate to. In everyday life, so to speak.”

  Maya smiled. “I think I understand. Emptiness not as the desolate nothingness our rational mind likes to think about, but an aliveness at the core of all things. All beings. Of everything. As if our entire existence is an expression of this one seamless, constantly transforming emptiness.”

  Göran went quiet.

  “That sounds like quantum mechanics in a nutshell,” he finally said. “Although better than I could put it.”

  “Actually, it’s my description of emptiness as fundamental reality,” she said. She paused. “In Buddhist philosophy.”

  “Ha, ha!” He pointed at her and laughed. “You got me!”

  “And you can get in touch with that reality by quieting your senses,” she continued. “With meditation, for instance. So maybe you have to look inside yourself to have a direct experience of the laws of quantum mechanics and the basis of existence.”