I Am Behind You

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  He didn’t even bother trying to perform or to hold out. He had no idea how much time had elapsed when everything that he was flowed inwards from his limbs, from the very tips of his fingers, was concentrated in his crotch and then exploded into the darkness. His arms fell away from his body, his head went back, his eyes flew open, and as if his pleasure really had created light, he found himself staring at an upside-down sign that said, ‘Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights!’ before he floated away on a cloud of sweat and shower gel and became one with the darkness and the moisture.

  Twenty-two years ago. Twenty-two years and ten months. They had got dressed in the darkness, parted in the darkness, and the following day they had barely looked at one another. It was a few years and quite a few girls before Peter realised that the first time had been the best, and would always be the best.

  On the Sunday he had gone back to the changing room to check. On the wall by the door, just above the light switch, was a handwritten sign: ‘Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights!’ He had torn it down and taken it, but at some point during all the subsequent moves it had disappeared.

  Sitting in Donald’s car right now, his fingers clutching the wheel, his feet braced against the floor, he can smell spilt whisky mingled with shower gel, disinfectant, and the thick odour of aroused bodies. Out there in the darkness is what he wants. The place where he wants to be.

  He nods to himself and starts the engine. As he is about to put the car in gear, something changes. The light dims, and he hears a noise. When he leans forward and looks up at the sky, he sees that the top of the wall of darkness is shifting. Thick black plumes rise up, as if the darkness has turned into clouds, hiding the light of the sky. The clouds grow and come away from the wall, turning into heavy rain showers, moving towards him as the noise gets louder, and he realises that it is the sound of screaming. Screams of pain, many voices.

  ‘What the fuck….?’

  Just as the darkness in the sky has metamorphosed into clouds, it has also taken on a physical form on the ground. A hundred metres or so ahead he can see a number of distorted figures running towards him. They are moving rapidly but jerkily, as if they are suffering from painful cramps, and the agonised screams now make sense, because the flesh has been virtually burnt away from their bones, with only scraps of blackish-brown leathery skin remaining to shield their skeletal bodies. They are screaming with pain and running towards the car.

  *

  When Stefan, Carina and Emil return from their tour around the camp, the others have gathered outside Isabelle’s caravan. They have laid Isabelle on her bed, after establishing that her condition does not seem to have deteriorated.

  ‘Mind you, it would be good if Peter came back before too long,’ Lennart says. ‘That would help…’

  What he would really like to say is that he’s not very keen on the idea of leaving Isabelle alone with Molly. Since the four figures got up, she has finally taken an interest in her mother, announcing that she wants to sit beside her and hold her hand. Of course it is impossible to say no, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

  Another thing that doesn’t feel right is those four travelling salesmen. Their old-fashioned suits ought to be covered in blood from lying on the grass, but this is not the case. On the contrary; the jackets that looked slightly shabby before are now glowing with a new freshness, and the limp trousers are now sporting a razor-sharp crease. Four diffuse, faceless figures have become four separate individuals with their own characteristics. One has prominent ears, another a long, straight nose. And so on.

  The blood that was spattered all over the grass has disappeared, and it is not difficult to draw the obvious conclusion. Lennart looks over at the group of travelling salesmen, who are now waiting quietly once again. He rubs his eyes.

  Yes, it is possible to draw conclusions, but what is the point of those conclusions when you don’t understand what they mean? It’s just like the old days, when Gunilla used to come home with her maths homework, asking for help with her equations: x and y and z. Lennart never even went to high school, and he wasn’t exactly a star pupil in maths in junior school. He said as much to Gunilla, and she explained: ‘Yes, but if 2x plus y equals z…’ But by then he was already lost.

  What does it matter how these letters relate to other letters, when you have no idea what those letters mean? You could just as easily say that one Gupp plus two Hupps make eight Plupps. Where exactly does it get you?

  That’s how he feels now. There are a number of variables, and when you put them together, they make this or that. But he doesn’t understand the system.

  Whatever they put in the ground grows unnaturally quickly, in spite of the fact that the sun is gone. Okay. And yet there is only grass here. The four figures he can see look different to different people, and these figures clearly benefit from absorbing blood. Okay. Lennart felt considerably more optimistic a few hours ago, when he and Olof sat gazing out across the empty field. Emptiness is only one concept, and in some ways it is quite normal. But now there are all these other aspects that need to be interpreted.

  Carina’s account of what she has noticed hasn’t improved the situation. Apparently they are at a crossroads, where two tracks intersect. In the middle of a cross, just like the ones painted on their caravans. What does that mean?

  The whole thing is insane; he has experienced nothing like it since the moment when he opened the door of his mother’s room and found that the perspective had shifted. It makes him uncomfortable, and he has some sympathy with Donald. The best and most sensible explanation is that the whole thing is a dream. Unfortunately he doesn’t believe that, but it would be nice.

  ‘How are you?’ Olof asks. ‘You don’t look too good.’

  ‘I don’t feel too good either,’ Lennart replies. ‘Isn’t all this making your head spin?’

  Olof glances around. ‘Yes, but I’m sure it will sort itself out, one way or another. We’ve been in tricky situations before, haven’t we?’ Olof laughs and shakes his head. ‘Do you remember that summer when a thunderstorm knocked out the power? All the stock got out because the fence was no longer electrified, and we had to round them up in the dark and the pouring rain? But we got them in. Every single one.’

  Lennart looks at Olof with a measure of scepticism, but his friend’s expression is open and honest. He really does think that the two situations are comparable.

  Lennart remembers that night very well. He and Olof were out in the rain until daybreak, searching for their cows, driving them back to the barn in small groups or one by one. After only a couple of hours normal life had been washed away in the wind and rain, and they both ended up wandering around like restless spirits, with just enough strength to persuade the cows to go home. Then they were off again, hunting for the next one.

  It was a very difficult situation, which made everyday concepts disintegrate. But still. However tricky it was, they had a job to do. A job that might have seemed impossible at times, but it was clearly defined. Find the cows, get them inside the barn. But here? What is their job here? What is it they’re supposed to do?

  No, however much Lennart would like to share Olof’s confidence, the innate unnaturalness of this place has begun to chafe at him like the sight of a fly trapped between two panes of glass that cannot be opened. There is nothing you can do except wait for the buzzing to stop. Or smash the glass, which of course you don’t do.

  Under normal circumstances Lennart is not much of a one for brooding, but now he finds that he has been so lost in his own thoughts that he has no idea why Majvor is standing in front of the group holding out her hand, palm upwards. She has said something, but he missed it. He moves closer and sees that she is showing them several objects made of gold: a chain, rings, and some irregularly shaped lumps.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘I found them,’ Majvor says, pointing. ‘Spread out over there. The wedding ring is from 1904.�
��

  They all look over at the spot where Majvor’s caravan used to be, as if that might somehow help them.

  ‘Could I have a look?’ Stefan says, and Majvor hands over the items with a certain amount of reluctance. As Stefan examines the rings, Majvor says: ‘I think the small lumps are fillings.’

  ‘Why are they here?’ Emil wonders, standing on tiptoe so that he can see what is in his father’s hand.

  Everyone else looks enquiringly at Stefan and Carina to check what they think about discussing such matters in front of Emil.

  ‘Well,’ Lennart begins, ‘the obvious explanation is that they used to belong to people who are no longer with us. But…’ He turns to Majvor. ‘You didn’t find any bones?’ When she shakes her head, he frowns. ‘Not even teeth?’

  ‘No,’ Majvor replies. ‘I did look, but I couldn’t find anything else.’

  Lennart thinks about the deer skull nailed to the wall at the back of the old brewery. It was hung up by his great-grandfather, and because it has been there for so long, it has just been left. Exposed to wind and weather, it is still intact, and if there is one thing that the passage of time has barely touched, it is the teeth.

  Then again, it doesn’t take a genius or any knowledge of his ancestor’s macabre idea of what constitutes a decorative object to be aware that skeletons and teeth have a tendency to stay around when everything else has gone. At least after a relatively short period such as a hundred and ten years. And of course there is nothing to say that it happened then, whatever it might have been. It could have been considerably later.

  ‘Erik,’ Stefan says, reading the inscription. ‘His name was Erik.’

  The group falls silent. At some point long ago there was a person called Erik who also ended up in this place, together with some other people. Something befell Erik and his companions, and as a result all that was left of them was their jewellery and the fillings from their teeth. That is the first thing that occurs to everyone; it creates a moment of reverence, hence the silence.

  But it doesn’t stop there. The reverence metamorphoses into something far less pleasant as they all draw the obvious conclusion: whatever happened to those other people could also happen to us. Or even worse: whatever happened to those other people is going to happen to us.

  They all look at one another, then out towards the field.

  The crossroads, Lennart thinks. Just like us, they were at the crossroads. And that’s where they stayed.

  *

  Isabelle is lying on her back on the double bed, her arms by her sides. Her face is swollen, her tongue is throbbing, and the pain in her forearms feels like an army of vicious, biting ants. She is a piece of meat wrapped in plastic, but fortunately she is not here in the moment and she is not in her body.

  She is in the past. She is ten minutes ago, running towards the white figures with the knife in her hand. She knows they want blood, and she intends to give them blood. Her guts are so full of black, surging shame

  I kicked my daughter, I wanted to kill my daughter

  that she feels nothing but relief when the blade slices into her skin and lets out some of the

  bloodshame

  the pressure that grows and grows, threatening to make her explode from the inside. She falls to her knees, holding out her arm to the white figures, offering them the blood gushing out of her body. She wants them to take her, embrace her, carry her away and suck her dry. But they simply look down at the ground where her blood is staining the grass dark red.

  She changes hands and cuts open the other arm. The relief is diminished this time. It is merely a task, a series of movements which must be carried out to get this out of the way. The white figures do not deign to look at her. Their dark eyes are focused on the grass, where the blood…

  Isabelle sways, down on her knees with her arms outstretched. She doesn’t understand. The blood is vanishing. As it spurts out of her arms, it is absorbed by the ground the second it lands. There is blood on the grass, but only a fraction of the amount she has already sacrificed and

  More. More.

  continues to sacrifice.

  More.

  Clearly it is not enough. The arteries in her arms are too thin, she must give them more

  All of it.

  and she raises the knife to slice open her jugular vein. As she tilts her head to one side to get a better angle, two things happen in rapid succession.

  She looks up at the white figures hoping for confirmation before she makes the ultimate sacrifice, but suddenly her attention is caught by a movement in her peripheral vision.

  Up and down. Up and down.

  Someone is bouncing. A child. Bouncing on a trampoline. And right alongside is an overweight guy in a Hawaiian shirt, raising his arms in triumph as his long putt rolls into the hole on one of the mini-golf courses. The smell of fried food from the kiosk wafts past Isabelle’s nostrils, and she hears someone say something in Finnish from a nearby mobile home.

  For a second she is able to grasp that she is back on the campsite, the place she hated so much, then something enormous comes flying towards her and crashes into her. She falls backwards, drops the knife, and she sees nothing but blue sky. Then everything goes dark as her consciousness gives up.

  Little mummy, little mummy, the sweetest little mummy.

  Isabelle opens her eyes a fraction, lets in a glimmer of light. Molly is sitting cross-legged beside her on the double bed, singing as she strokes Isabelle’s fingers, her bitten nails.

  She grew claws, long sharp claws, because she was a whore.

  Isabelle feels dizzy, and she is falling back into the memory that is playing on a loop inside her head. The fat man on the mini-golf course appears. The bottom buttons on his brightly coloured shirt are undone, and when he raises his arms a pale, hairy belly is revealed, spilling over the waistband of his trousers.

  Ugly people. All these ugly people. Where do all these ugly people come from? From Finland. Fat ugly Finns. Fat ugly Finns from Finland.

  A shudder runs through her body. She is shaking and her teeth are chattering as she picks up the smell of that hairy belly; she can taste the salty tang of sweat mixed with beer fumes just as strongly as if she had licked that belly and felt the curly hairs against the papillae.

  Are you awake, Mummy dear, are you awake?

  Your teeth are chattering, chattering.

  Molly’s voice brings her back to the caravan. Isabelle opens her eyes a little wider and sees that Molly is smiling at her, wagging her head from side to side. Isabelle is finding it difficult to focus. Molly’s face is blurred, like a pencil drawing that someone has gone over halfheartedly with an eraser. The memory of a face.

  Isabelle assumes she is having a problem with her vision because of her dazed state, but in that case how come the princess on Molly’s T-shirt is crystal clear?

  Molly leans closer, but her face remains blurred. More so, in fact. What Isabelle had thought was her mouth looks more like a dirty mark that disintegrates when Isabelle looks at it.

  ‘Mummy,’ Molly says. ‘Do you remember the tunnel? It was dark in there. Really, really dark.’

  *

  Peter was once responsible for Lazio losing a vital league match against Milan. In the final minute of play he raced towards the left post just as a perfectly executed lob curved over the goalie’s head. A gentle tap and the matter would have been resolved. Instead Peter caught the ball with his shin, and it landed just outside the goal. Thirty seconds later the game was over. He had to put up with a lot of ribbing from his teammates, but it didn’t really affect his position within the squad. These things happen; it was just unfortunate that it came at such a critical moment.

  The newspapers had a different view. It was all Peter’s fault, and they borrowed the Spanish expression hacerse el sueco, which means to act like an idiot.

  A few of Lazio’s more fanatical supporters read the articles and took the criticism very seriously. One evening when Peter was on the way hom
e to his apartment, he heard a drunken yell from a bar: ‘Lo svedese! Guardate lo svedese!’ Seconds later four guys were running towards him. Nobody had told them that ‘these things happen’, and they intended to teach lo svedese a lesson.

  The memory flickers through Peter’s mind as he sits in the car watching the distorted figures approach. For a moment he had stopped dead in the middle of the piazza. There was something hypnotic about the sight of the four men coming at him with the intention of beating him up. To be the quarry, alone and exposed to the hunters’ thirst for blood.

  The paralysis soon passed, and Peter turned and fled. He had no difficulty in getting away from four drunken louts, and he suffered no lasting damage, apart from the unpleasant feelings that the incident aroused: the sense of being the focal point to which violence is drawn with the aim of smashing him to pieces, crushing him.

  Something of that same fascination has gripped Peter now, and all he can do is stare open-mouthed. The figures are running, but not particularly fast, since every step seems to cause them pain. The screams Peter can hear are coming out of mouths that have been robbed of their lips, white teeth gleaming in charred faces. When they are close enough for him to see that the reason why their eyes are wide open is because they have no eyelids, he comes to his senses and lurches towards the passenger door to lock it, but there doesn’t seem to be a button.

  The blackened figures are now only a couple of metres from the car, and their screams slice through Peter’s chest like ice-cold knives.

  Central locking! Central locking!

  Donald’s car is fairly new, as is Peter’s, and somewhere there must be a button that locks all the doors from the inside. In case of carjacking. In case of a zombie attack. Peter’s fingers flutter over the instrument panel, desperately seeking the right symbol. He glances outside; this isn’t the time to consult the manual. The expression on the face of the figure whose hand is already on the car bonnet lacks any vestige of human sanity. Those eyes convey only one thing: hunger.