After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  “It’s like that in many places,” Manfred says curtly.

  “Yes. But in Ormberg it’s been like that for generations. Before the textile crisis and the Brogrens bankruptcy there used to be an ironworks here, and a sawmill. Now there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. People feel betrayed. So of course when the refugees come here and get everything served to them on silver platters people feel provoked. Plus they demand a lot of special treatment. Arabic-speaking staff at the health center in Vingåker, special times for women at the pool…”

  I fall silent when I see Andreas’s eyes. They’re full of both disbelief and fear, as if he’s run across some rare and dangerous animal, or maybe a child playing with a loaded gun.

  “What are you getting at?” he asks.

  “I’m just saying I understand how they think. Even if I don’t agree with everything they say. Because I don’t. I’m not racist, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Andreas asks. “Do you really hear how you sound…Malin, it could have been you.”

  “Excuse me? What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean it could have been you who had to flee from war and starvation.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s exactly my point. I am from Ormberg, and nobody helps us. You have to clean up your own messes before you help the rest of the world.”

  Manfred slams a large hand so hard against the table the papers lift up and flutter down onto the floor. Coffee splashes out of his paper mug.

  “Jesus Christ! What is it with you two? Whatever your problem is, save it for your free time.”

  Then he stands up and starts pacing the room.

  “But,” I say, turning to Manfred, “I’m just trying to explain what motivates people around here. They’re disappointed because they never got any help. Because Ormberg never received a tenth of the resources the refugees get. What do you think? Haven’t you thought about it before?”

  Manfred stops and turns with ominous slowness toward me. He’s as still as a stone.

  “It doesn’t matter one whit what I think about the refugee camp. It’s fucking irrelevant what my opinion is about special pool times for Muslim women. We are here to investigate a murder. And now it’s two murders. At least two murders, because if Peter’s dead, then it’s three.”

  I turn to the picture on the wall. Of the Ormberg Girl’s skeleton and the body of the faceless woman in the snow.

  Manfred doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he continues:

  “If you two can’t put your political disagreements aside, I’ll send you home. In addition, I’ll contact both of your superiors and tell them how unprofessional you’ve been. Is that clear?”

  He sinks down into one of the chairs, sighs deeply, and stares up at the ceiling.

  “No fucking way I’m going to keep pampering you two like this,” he says with exaggerated slowness. “Get it the fuck together.”

  He sighs again, rubs his temples with his thumb and index finger. Then he continues:

  “Go to the refugee camp tomorrow and talk to the staff, find out if the woman from the cairn came from there. And then go visit Nermina’s aunt, Esma, in Gnesta. She came home from Gran Canaria today. We need to find out more about Nermina Malkoc. And we have to find her mother.”

  Jake

  Saga and I are sitting in her bed watching a horror film on her computer. The movie is about a girl who’s become possessed after having sex with a guy who had a demon inside him. And now she has to have sex with a new guy to get rid of the demon.

  “I think they’re afraid of sex in the US,” Saga says emphatically, as though she knows everything about sex, and also the United States.

  “Mmmm,” I say, while digging around in a bag of sugary candy.

  Saga bought it for me after what happened with the Eiffel Tower. She felt sorry for me. I know that’s why, but it still makes me happy.

  I think about Vincent, Muhammad, and Albin. Remember Albin’s bored expression when he shrugged his shoulders and stomped on the Eiffel Tower. Destroying weeks of work in just a few seconds.

  The two of us gathered up the remains of the Eiffel Tower afterward, me and Saga. Saga’s pyramid made it through relatively okay. She was able to put back the matches that had come loose, and it almost didn’t look like it had been broken.

  But the Eiffel Tower couldn’t be saved. It was flat as a pancake and so slanted that you couldn’t see what it was supposed to be.

  I brought it to school anyway. Turned it in and explained what happened. Our teacher Eva’s throat turned red as Saga told her what Albin did. She was going to talk to the principal right after class, she said.

  Maybe she did, but it doesn’t change anything.

  The Eiffel Tower is destroyed, and Vincent and Albin and Muhammad will always be twisted assholes.

  That last is something Saga says; she loves calling Vincent a “mental asshole” when he can’t hear.

  Dad says Vincent and his friends will settle down, that they’ll be fine when they grow up. He says he feels sorry for Vincent, that puberty’s tough, that the body and head don’t really cooperate with each other.

  He says it’s just a “guy thing.”

  Vincent has been taken hostage by his own body, I think. By the muscles and the pimples and everything else.

  Yet another reason not to become a man.

  Saga’s eyes meet mine.

  “On a scale?” she asks, and nods to the laptop.

  I look at the demon girl shuffling through the woods with her mouth hanging open.

  “Eight, maybe. I think it’s pretty good. You?”

  “A definite nine,” Saga says emphatically, and scoots a little closer to me.

  The heat spreads through my chest, and my heart starts to race when I feel her arm against mine. I sense more than feel the fine hair on her forearm against my skin.

  Of course I’ve thought about it a thousand times: that it might happen again. That we might kiss again.

  That’s what you do when you’re together.

  The idea is both exciting and intimidating. A little like standing at the top of the diving tower by the lake, staring down at the mirror-blue surface of the water, hesitating—even though you know it’s not dangerous, you’re still afraid something might go wrong.

  Saga pauses the movie with the touch of a button. Blinks and stares at me seriously. The mascara has left a dark shadow under her eyes. The blush on her cheeks glitters in the dim light of the screen.

  “Do you think there are ghosts in the cairn?” she asks.

  “You mean do I believe in the Ghost Child?”

  She nods and licks her lips, and her eyes widen a little.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I say. The moment the words leave my mouth, I remember the bony, pale face outside Berit’s window. The black holes where eyes should be and the thin line of a mouth.

  “Neither do I. But it is weird.”

  Saga runs a fingertip over the keyboard.

  “What’s weird?”

  She hesitates, then seems to decide she can trust me.

  “That they keep finding corpses there. I mean, it can’t just be a coincidence. Two people were found dead there. Even if there was twenty years between the murders.”

  I think of Nermina, who fled to Sweden only to die. About all the things I can’t tell Saga.

  Everything is The Sickness’s fault.

  If I hadn’t gone out in Mom’s dress that night, I could have taken the diary to the police immediately. Then I wouldn’t need to lie.

  Saga looks at me, hesitating. Then she says:

  “The woman they found on Tuesday. She’d been shot. And she was barefoot.”

  “What? Barefoot in the snow?”

  Saga nods seriously.

  “How do you
know all this?” I ask.

  “Mom’s sister’s ex-husband, who lives in Brevens Bruk, has a son who is together with a girl from Kumla. She works at the front desk at the police in Örebro. But you can’t tell anyone. Promise!”

  “I promise. What else did she say?”

  Saga plays with the ring in her nose.

  “That she looked like a ghost. With long scary gray hair.”

  “Dad says she probably came from the refugee camp. The murderer, too.”

  “How could he know that?”

  Saga lifts her perfectly drawn eyebrows a bit.

  “Who else would have killed her?” I ask. “Gunnar Sten? The Skog family? The Ghost Child?”

  “Nathalie says she’s heard the Ghost Child wailing at the cairn,” Saga says. “Two times. One time it even talked to her, whispered for her to come closer.”

  “Nathalie’s full of shit.”

  Saga looks embarrassed.

  “Yeah, but…”

  Her voice dies away, and she leans toward me. Her eyes are big and black in the dim light, and her face is serious.

  I sit there, petrified: don’t dare to move.

  Don’t want to move.

  Then she kisses me again, and I kiss her back. It’s easier this time, as if our lips know what to do.

  She tastes like chewing gum, and I close my eyes without knowing why. It’s as if there are too many impressions otherwise, as if I’m not capable of taking in everything that’s happening.

  Steps approach outside, and we immediately pull back from each other.

  “Your mom?” I ask.

  “Oh. She’s on tranquilizers. She won’t bother us.”

  But just as she says that there’s a gentle knock on the door.

  “Saga, you have to come clean up after yourself in the kitchen.”

  “Later,” Saga shouts, and rolls her eyes.

  “No, now! And I want to talk to you about something.”

  Saga sighs and stands up. Runs a hand through her pink hair.

  “I’ll be right back,” she says as she leaves.

  But Saga doesn’t come right back. Instead, minutes tick by and nothing happens. I hear raised voices coming from the kitchen, but can’t make out the words.

  I glance at the laptop, but I decide I have to wait to watch the movie until Saga gets back. Finally, I take my history textbook out of my backpack, the one that has Hanne’s diary hidden inside, and start reading.

  The first few pages are about various interrogations conducted by Hanne and P. It’s super boring, so I flip forward a few pages.

  ORMBERG, NOVEMBER 28

  P’s changed the code to his cell phone. I discovered it while he was showering. I was just planning to check the weather. I punched in the old code, the one he’s had forever, and couldn’t unlock the phone!

  He’s never changed it before. The only person who uses P’s phone, besides him, is me.

  There must be something on there he doesn’t want me to see. I remember when he was texting from the bathroom with his pants around his knees.

  He’s hiding something.

  I have to find out what it is!

  Early afternoon at the office.

  Malin and Andreas just visited Rut Sten, who was the director at the refugee camp in Ormberg in the early nineties.

  She remembers Azra and Nermina, but can’t recall that there was anything of note about them. They left the camp voluntarily on December 5, 1993. Rut thought it had something to do with their residence permits.

  Manfred’s eating buns.

  I don’t begrudge him that. P asked him if he really SHOULD be eating them. I felt so sorry for Manfred. (He’s overweight, but he’s also a grown man, capable of deciding what to put in his mouth.)

  If P had been sitting next to me I would have given him a poke, but he was near the door looking at his phone.

  That phone.

  I’ve decided not to say anything. If I accuse him of secrecy, he’ll turn it against me. You’re the one keeping secrets, he’ll say.

  And he’d be right.

  So: I say nothing. I don’t ask why he changed the code. It could be just a coincidence, mere chance, and nothing to do with me, THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE.

  No, that was ironic. I’m not the center of the universe. Not for P, nor anyone else. Barely even to myself—it feels like I’m slowly crumbling into tiny pieces that float off in every direction, bobbing away like autumn leaves on the cold, black waters of the Ormberg Creek.

  This is the diary of my disappearance.

  Not physically but figuratively—because I slide further into the fog as each day progresses.

  What will I do when I’m no longer Hanne? When what makes me, me—my memories, my stories—fades, ground to dust by this disease? What will I be then? A body with no soul? A soul without a functioning body? A piece of meat, with blood pulsing through its veins?

  I think about it all the time.

  I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of losing myself.

  That’s why this diary is so important. As a document, but also as a tool to remind me who I am.

  I exist! For a little while anyway.

  P has checked the police records. There aren’t many criminals in Ormberg and the surrounding areas. Mostly people who got in fights when they were drunk & did drugs.

  However, there are two of interest:

  Björn Falk: born and raised in Ormberg, but lived in Örebro from 2009 to 2016. Recently moved back to Ormberg after inheriting his parents’ house. Convicted of battery, assault, and criminal harassment. Beat his former partner almost to death on two occasions—once by throwing the woman into a hot sauna and then blocking the door. The woman needed three skin transplants to repair burns to her upper body. Björn Falk has had two restraining orders filed against him by former girlfriends whom he’s harassed.

  My stomach cramps up when I read about Björn.

  That’s Saga’s mom’s new boyfriend, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know he’s an abusive piece of shit. I really should tell Saga, so she can warn her mom.

  But I can’t.

  I can’t tell anyone about the contents of the diary.

  The back of my neck tingles, and I realize once again that there are things in Hanne’s diary I shouldn’t, and maybe don’t want to, know. Things that should remain secret.

  Maybe it would be better if I stopped reading. But just as that thought occurs to me, my eyes catch something in the next paragraph and my heart starts to pound in my chest.

  The other one is Henrik Hahn: a pedophile who’s assaulted children in Örebro (at the school where he worked). Hahn was sentenced to criminal psychiatric care in 2014 and is at Karsudden Hospital outside Katrineholm. His wife Kristina and son Vincent live in Ormberg.

  I drop the book on the floor in shock.

  Vincent’s father is a pedophile?

  Vincent says he works on an oil rig in the North Sea.

  Says he’s responsible for all the computers and IT systems, and almost never makes it home to visit.

  Is he in Karsudden with all the lunatics?

  Is he a perv? A way bigger perv than even I am. Last I checked it wasn’t illegal to like girls’ clothes and makeup.

  Vincent Hahn.

  Ormberg’s King of Assholes.

  Maybe Dad was right after all—I really should feel sorry for Vincent.

  Malin

  The century-old brick buildings are rather magnificent: The main building is huge, with a row of high vaulted windows running down its long side. Warm light streams out into the blue-gray December gloom and paints the nearby snow gold.

  Light also shines from the manager’s villa, which lies fifty meters from the main building. A lonely Christmas Star hangs in
one window.

  The snow crunches under our feet as we walk the short distance from the parking lot to the main entrance.

  “Goddamn it’s cold,” Andreas mutters.

  I nod.

  The thermometer read minus nine this morning when Mom and I were eating breakfast.

  I stop for a moment to take in the palatial building. More than two hundred people worked here until TrikåKungen went bankrupt in the early sixties.

  I think about what it must have been like during its glory days, in the late fifties. At that time the factory supported entire families. Parents worked in shifts and relieved each other here in the courtyard. The children waited at home, probably occupied by the newfangled technologies made possible by their parents’ double income: a television, an Ericofon, and a record player. And far above these endless forests, in the quiet blackness of space, the Sputnik satellite flew by.

  Progress, a belief in the future.

  Then the darkness fell over Ormberg like a wet blanket.

  We knock on the small brown door located to the right of the large main entrance.

  A woman opens the door. She has short gray hair, and she’s wearing a poncho knitted from natural-colored wool. Her blue eyes are framed by thick eyeliner, and her mouth, which is painted a dark red, looks like a bloody wound in the middle of her face. Around her neck hangs a large piece of jewelry. It looks like a beetle, maybe a dung beetle, made out of enamel.

  The woman smiles and the wound on her face cracks open, and she introduces herself as Gunnel Engsäll, social worker and director of the refugee housing facility.

  Her handshake is surprisingly firm, and her laughter when Andreas stumbles over the threshold arrives with an unexpected rumble—like a thunderstorm on a sleepy summer day.

  “Giddyup!” she says. “You’re not the first to fall on your nose there. Come in!”

  We walk down a corridor, pass an open door. Catch a glimpse of a large room, maybe a dining hall or a meeting room. A few children are playing on the floor. One boy runs by with a hockey stick in his hand. Two teenage girls are giggling together on the sofa.