Handling The Undead

by John Ajdive Lindqvist

  The southerly breeze was slowly moving them farther and farther out. Gaskobb Island floated past and soon Soderarrn’s lone blinking eye was the only thing that could be seen between space and the sea.

  The Heath 22.00

  Flora stood there gazing at the mass of tangled bodies.

  That evening in Elvy’s garden she had wished-she had known that something was going to happen. Something that would change Sweden forever. Now it had happened, and what was the change?

  Nothing.

  Terror gave birth to terror, hatred begat hate and all that was left in the end was a pile of burnt bodies. As everywhere; as always.

  Something was moving among the bodies.

  At first she thought it was fingers that had managed to survive the blaze somehow and were now struggling to make their way out. Then she saw it was caterpillars. White caterpillars burrowing their way out of some of the bodies. The stench from the bonfire was unbearable despite her face mask and she shuffled back a couple of metres.

  Only seven caterpillars had emerged, even though there had been around fifteen people to start.

  She took the others.

  She knew the caterpillars were people… no, the caterpillars were the human element in the people, given a visible form it was possible to comprehend in this world. Not even her twin was really her twin-she wasn’t anything that could be understood in human terms. Flora had known that in the second they had stared into each other’s eyes.

  The other Flora, the one wearing her best sneakers, was only a force: one that manifested itself in a way that made sense to each individual. The only constant was the hooks, since the task of the power was to catch, to collect. And not even the hooks were anything real, simply an image people could understand.

  The caterpillars that had emerged from the black mass wriggled, nowhere to go now that their host had been destroyed.

  Lost, Flora thought. Lost.

  There was nothing she could do. They had turned away in fear and were now lost. As she watched they swelled up, becoming first pink, then red.

  Faintly, faintly, Flora could hear screams of anguish as the caterpillar-people realised what she already knew: they were now being pulled inexorably to the other place. The place of which nothing can be said. Nothing.

  The caterpillars swelled even more, the thin membrane stretching, and the screams grew stronger. Flora’s head spun because she knew that none of this was really happening. Only the fact that she was watching made it visible, it was an invisible drama that was enacted before her eyes, as old as the human race.

  With a plop-audible yet inaudible-the caterpillars burst one by one and a viscous, translucent fluid ran out, evaporating in the heat of the scorched bones as the screams faded away.

  Lost.

  She backed away from the bonfire, sitting down on the bench a couple of metres away, trying to think. She knew too much, much too much. The knowledge that had flooded into her head during that second of eye contact had been too much, she was not able to bear it.

  Why? Why has this happened?

  She knew. She knew everything. It could not be put into words, but something had happened in the greater order of things. And one of the minor effects, here on our little planet, was that within a certain circumscribed area, the dead had awakened. A hurricane had led to the beating of a butterfly’s wings. In the greater scheme it was nothing, one of those things that happens from time to time. A footnote, at most, in the book of the gods.

  Suddenly she sat up straight on the bench. She remembered something Elvy had said outside the gates earlier… was it today? Was it still the same day she had gone for a walk with Maja and… yes, the same day.

  She took out her phone and dialled Elvy’s number. By some miracle it was not any of the ladies or that repulsive guy who answered, but Elvy herself. She sounded tired.

  ‘Nana, it’s me. How’s it going?’

  ‘Not so good. Things are… not so good.’

  Flora could hear raised voices in the background, people quarrelling. The events of the day had caused ructions in the group.

  ‘Nana, listen to me. Do you remember what you told me today?’ Elvy sighed.

  ‘No, I don’t know…’

  ‘The woman in the TV, you showed her to me…’

  ‘Yes, yes. AlI that, it…’

  ‘Wait. She said to you that they must come unto me, isn’t that right?’

  ‘We are trying,’ Elvy said. ‘But…’

  ‘Nana, she didn’t mean the living. She meant the dead.’

  Flora told her what had happened in the courtyard. The gang of young men, the fire, her twin, the caterpillars.

  As she was talking, she could feel in another part of her mind that people were approaching the area. These ones were not of a friendly mind-set either. Rage and hatred were approaching. Perhaps the guys had fetched some of their buddies, or there were others with the same idea.

  ‘Nana, you’ve seen her too. You have to come here. Right now.

  They… they’ll disappear otherwise.’

  The other end went quiet for a while, and then Elvy said with an entirely new strength in her voice, ‘I’ll take a taxi.’

  As Flora hung up she realised that they had not arranged a meeting place. Still, that would take care of itself. Their minds were so in tune that it was like having walkie-talkies, at least while they were in this area. More problematic was the question of how Elvy would get in. But that was something they could deal with later.

  Flora stood up. Hard people with minds bent on evil were coming.

  What do I say, what do I do?

  She ran out of the courtyard. She knew that somewhere in this complex there was a reliving whose thinking approximated her own, who thought in the same images. She was looking for 17C.

  While she ran, dead people were coming out of the buildings and gathering outside. No dancing now. There were still faces that simply watched from the windows above, but with each passing minute they were getting fewer. The whining, piercing sound of the dentist’s drill was growing. In the distance she felt more living people approaching-the gates must have been opened.

  She ran with panic in her chest, an approaching catastrophe, a river of terror that she was not capable of damming. She found number 17 and ran in, then paused.

  A dead person was on his way down the steps. An old man whose legs had been amputated was dragging himself down, down on his stomach. On each step his chin smacked into the concrete with a thud that hurt Flora’s mouth. He was near the surface, she could hear him:

  Home… home… home…

  When Flora passed him, he reached for her but she twisted herself free and continued up to apartment C, flinging the door open.

  Eva was standing in the hallway, on her way out. Her face was simply a pale blotch in the weak light from the stairwell that filtered through the door and illuminated the bandage over half her face.

  Without thinking, Flora stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. At the moment the link between them was established Flora knew what to say. She closed her mind to everything going on outside and thought:

  Come out. Listen to me.

  The body struggled in her grip. What was still Eva in Eva answered:

  No. I want to live.

  You are not going to live. That door is closed. There are two ways out.

  Flora transmitted the two images of souls leaving their fleshly bonds. The ones who were collected, and those that disappeared. The words were not her own, they were simply voiced through her.

  Allow it to happen. Give yourself up.

  Eva’s soul neared the surface; the whining intensified somewhere behind Flora’s back. Like a sea swallow that has been searching across the ocean for a long time, the Fisher now let itself swoop down to the glinting flash of silver, toward its catch.

  I just want to.… say goodbye. Do it. You are strong.

  Before the Fisher had time to take its shape, before Eva’s soul had time to take th
e shape of the Fisher’s catch, Eva leaped out of her chest and flew with the speed only disembodied spirit can command. A whisper brushed Flora’s skin as a life flitted past her, the flame of a consciousness flickered in her head, and was gone. Eva’s body collapsed at Flora’s feet.

  Good luck.

  The whining grew more distant. The Fisher took up the chase.

  Svarvagatan 22.30

  David slept, and was dreaming. He was locked in a labyrinth, running along corridors. Sometimes he reached a door, but the door always turned out to be closed. Something was chasing him. Something that was always following, just behind a corner somewhere. He knew it was Eva’s face, but it wasn’t Eva. It was something that had assumed her form the better to get at him.

  He tugged at door handles, screaming, feeling all the while the encroachment of something wholly the opposite of love. The worst thing was that he felt he had left Magnus behind; he was back in some room in the dark where the terrible thing could get him.

  He ran along an endless corridor, towards a door he knew would be closed. As he ran he noticed something happening to the light in the corridor. All the passages he’d been running through had been lit by cold neon, but now there was another light. Daylight, sunlight. He looked up as he ran. The ceiling of the corridor was gone and he saw a summer sky.

  As he laid his hand on the door handle he knew this door would open, and it did. It opened, all the walls dissolved and he was standing on a lawn by Kungsholm shore. Eva was there.

  He knew what day it was, felt the moment. A big orange motorboat was approaching along the canal. Yes. He had looked at it, there was an orange spot on his retina, and then he turned to Eva and asked, ‘Do you want to marry me?’

  And she said yes. ‘Yes! Yes!’

  And they tumbled onto the blanket and embraced and they made plans and promised For Ever and For Ever and the man in the orange boat wolf-whistled at them and it was that day now and the boat was approaching and in a moment he would ask his question but right before the words left his lips Eva took his face between her hands and said: ‘Yes. Yes. But I have to go now.’

  David shook his head. His head turned back and forth on the pillow and he said, ‘You can’t go.’

  Eva’s mouth smiled, but her eyes were sad.

  ‘We’ll see each other again,’ she said. ‘It will take a few years, that’s all. Don’t be afraid.’

  He shook off his blankets, held his arms out to the bedroom ceiling, he reached out his arms for her on the lawn and a piercing cry came between them.

  The lawn, the canal, the boat, the light and Eva were sucked up, shrinking to a single point and he opened his eyes. He was lying in Magnus’ bed with his arms outstretched. From his right he heard a whining sound almost loud enough to deafen him; he was not permitted to look in that direction. A white caterpillar lay curled up on his stomach.

  The scent of cheap perfume filled the room and he knew it, he recognised it. He saw a hint of pink out of the corner of his eye. His head was locked, he could not turn it to see his own image of Death, the woman in the grocery store. A hand reached into his field of vision. Colourful bracelets hung from the wrist and at the tips of the fingers there were hooks.

  No! No!

  His hands flew out, cupped over the caterpillar. The hooks halted, some ten centimetres from his hand. They were not permitted to touch him, he was a living. The caterpillar wriggled, tickling the palm of his hand and through the skin of his hand, in through the flesh and into his bones, there came a plea:

  Let me go.

  David shook his head, he tried to shake his head. He wanted to jump out of his bed with the caterpillar cupped in his hands, escape the house, get away from the Earth, the very world where things must be this way. But he was paralysed with fear as Death stood by his bedside. And he refused to let go.

  The caterpillar swelled under his hand. The hooks slowly pulled back out of sight. The plea grew weaker, Eva’s voice faded away, layer upon layer of darkness was coming between her and the part of him that could hear her. Only a whisper:

  If you love me…. let me go.…

  David let out a sob and lifted his hands. ‘I love you.’

  The caterpillar on his stomach was swollen now, pink. It looked sick. Dying.

  What have I done, what have I.…

  The hooks were there again, the hook on the index finger drilled into the caterpillar, lifted it up and David’s mouth shaped around a scream but before it came something happened.

  Where the hook had entered the caterpillar, a crack opened. The hand lingered before his eyes, as if to show him what was happening now. The crack widened and he saw that the caterpillar was not a caterpillar but a pupa. A head was emerging from the crack, no bigger than the head of a pin.

  The butterfly made its way out of the pupa and the dry shell fell away, dissolving. It sat motionless on the hook for a moment, as if to dry its wings or display itself, then it lifted, flying upward. David followed it with his eyes and saw it disappear through the ceiling.

  When he looked down again the hand with the hooks was gone and the whining noise had abated. He stared up at the ceiling, toward the point where the butterfly had disappeared.

  Disappeared.

  Magnus moved next to him. In his sleep he said, ‘Mummy… ‘ David got up out of bed, careful not to wake Magnus. He closed the door behind him so he wouldn’t hear. Then he lay down on the kitchen floor and cried until the tears dried up and he was empty. The world was empty again.

  I believe.

  There is a place where happiness exists. A place, and a time.

  The Heath 22.35

  Flora had changed her mind.

  She found it natural, now, that the body must require a soul even for a simple act like standing up. Even more remarkable, the soul required a body. What remained here of Eva was something that could be burned, or buried like so much rubbish.

  Why are we born? What is the point?

  That was the great mystery and of this Flora knew nothing. It was not included in the science of Death. Flora remained kneeling for a couple of minutes beside the vacated body and heard the whole area in uproar around her.

  1 can’t go on…

  It was absurd. This morning she had been smoking and chatting with Maja as usual, now she was supposed to be saving souls…

  Saving?

  She didn’t know anything about it. The only thing she knew about the Place they were going was that it was a place you couldn’t know anything about unless you were there. And that there was Another Place, about which nothing could be said, ever.

  Why her? Why Elvy? Nana…

  It was at least twenty minutes since she had called Elvy. She might already be standing at the gates. Even though Flora was afraid to go out, she ran down the stairs. All at once she felt like a little girl again. Nana would tell her, Nana would know what had to be done.

  But I am the one who knows…

  Life would never be the same after this.

  The courtyard was deserted. No. The man without legs, the one she had encountered on the stairs, had got no further than the main entrance and was still dragging himself along by the arms. All around her there was calm, but the clamour inside her head was indescribable. An insane cacophony of cries, prayers, anger, pleas for help, howls of hatred.

  She ran over to the man, crouched down and put her hand on his back, sent her knowledge into him, but the man resisted. He did not want to leave his wreck of a body. Instead he turned around and struck out at her hand, tried to grab her, baring his teeth.

  Come on, you idiot. Don’t you get it…

  Impotent rage bubbled up inside her; she jumped back as the man’s wrath and bitterness clicked in with her own, each feeding the other’s. She measured a kick at his face but managed to control herself; she left him there.

  She reached the other side of the courtyard entrance and stopped abruptly.

  All of the dead had left their yards and were moving toward the
fence. The field was boiling with people. The gates were wide open and a number of police SWAT teams had already driven in, more arriving as she watched. Police officers jumped out with weapons drawn. The dead were trying to move toward the gates but were being held at bay by the police. As yet no shots had been fired but it was only a matter of time. There was maybe one police officer for thirty dead.

  Have to…

  Flora ran toward the seething mass. When the legless man had turned to her and bared his teeth she had seen something inside him. Hunger. He had used up his own flesh and needed more to sustain his non-existence. It was possible he would have let himself starve to death if he had not been met by this anger from the outside, driving him to satisfy himself. Now he was crawling as fast as he could toward the source of the anger.

  Flora reached a young police officer surrounded by the dead and threw herself forward-a second after she felt his consciousness give way-to avoid the gunfire he was pumping into the bodies around her.

  He might as well have been using a cap gun. The effect was the same even if the bangs were louder. There were small tugs at the flesh of the dead as the bullets hit, but they didn’t miss a step. Within a couple of seconds the policeman had disappeared in a mass of thin arms, legs, blue clothes.

  Now there were shots from several directions. Flora reached the gates and ran past a SWAT unit where a policewoman in the front seat was shouting something about back-up into her radio. Flora ran on down the road and after a hundred metres saw Elvy hurrying along the muddy path.

  The pistol shots were now distant, muffled cracks as if there was a New Year’s Eve party somewhere far behind her. She caught up with her grandmother, took her hand and said, ‘Come.’

  As they walked quickly, hand-in-hand, back toward the gates an insight blossomed up inside Flora: It’s too late.

  Elvy pressed her hand harder, said, ‘Someone. If only we can… how could 1… 1…’

  We didn’t know, Flora sent.