by Shining in the Dark- Celebrating 20 Years of Lilja's Library (retail) (epub)
But still, he signed the financial paperwork and went home. What other option was there? He loved his mother, and she loved him, and he would do whatever she needed him to do. He understood there was nothing in the world like a mother’s love. No girlfriend, no wife, not even another member of your family could love you the way your mother loved you, and you had to love her back just as much, maybe more.
Now Andrew was consumed by a different kind of waiting. The time of his mother’s death—her moving on, to use Miss Clarence’s term—was drawing nearer. He loved his mother so much and he needed to be there when her last moments on Earth came to pass. Being with his mother as she died, to keep her from being alone, was his responsibility.
Andrew walked down the bright and cheerful hallway, wincing whenever his shoes squeaked on the gleaming buffed floor. A television blared Jeopardy from somewhere, but many of the rooms were silent. The almost-dead didn’t make much noise.
He neared the last doorway on the right, where the hallway terminated with a window overlooking a grove of trees. The sun was setting beyond the mountains in the distance and the sky blazed red and orange and shades of purple as if the air had caught fire.
Andrew stopped outside the door.
Could he really do what he had come here to do?
After all of these years of being his mother’s only son, her best friend in the entire world, and the only person who loved her as much as she loved him, could he really do what needed to be done?
He had to, of course, he just had to, but self-doubt weighed heavily on his heart. He had decided on the way here that the best approach would be to think as little as possible once he was in the room. Forget emotions, forget humanity, forget the rules of nature, and become like a machine for a few minutes. Be cold, follow through, and then go home and force himself to forget his actions as soon as possible.
Andrew opened the door with those thoughts looping in his mind. The fiery sky bled in through the window and washed across the hospital-style bed where the old woman slept. Her skin was wrinkled and her teeth were yellowed. Her withered chest rose and fell. He leaned in to hear her wheezing. He could smell the cigarettes on her breath. The familiar stench was unmistakable.
Andrew stood motionless, just watching, and he realized he had to move or he would lose his nerve.
He put one shaking hand across her dry mouth. She snorted. He froze again.
Be cold, Andrew told himself, be cold cold cold cold.
He squeezed her nose closed with his index finger and a thumb. Her head tilted and her eyes blinked open. She was groggy and confused, and she rolled onto her side as if to get out of the bed, but he leaned forward to block her.
Reacting with surprising quickness, she reached up and clawed at his face with her brittle nails. The pain was intense. Blood trickled from his pierced skin. He hadn’t planned on there being any blood; he hadn’t expected her to wake up. He had assumed she would peacefully go to sleep forever.
Andrew doubled the pressure with his hand and fingers, turning his head away and closing his eyes to avoid her wild, perplexed, angry gaze.
Her torso bucked and she swatted at the back of his head with those calloused and bony fingers. There was so much life bursting from inside her in her final moments!
Then her body stilled, her jaw slackened, and the fight seemed to empty out of her as quickly as it had arrived.
She was silent.
Andrew kept his eyes closed as tears welled up. He had done it. He had really done it.
He slipped out of the room and hurried home.
* * *
When Andrew entered the tiny house where he had lived his entire life, he didn’t bother turning on the lights.
How many times had he walked that hallway at Sunny Days, planning what he would do and then chickening out? How would his life change now that he had finally gone through with it? And how would he deal with a memory he knew would haunt him until his own death?
Andrew sat at the kitchen table and waited for the phone call. He would need to act surprised at the news. He felt hollow inside, as if his mother’s cancer had actually been eating away at him, too, but he was sure his mother would be proud of him. She had always loved him so much, and he had always tried to return her love twice over or even more, doing whatever she needed him to do, going above and beyond to make her happy and comfortable, especially as her health deteriorated and the end grew closer.
When the phone finally rang, Andrew answered with a meek, barely audible: “Hello?”
“Hello? Mr. Smith? This is Miss Clarence from Sunny Days Hospice Home.”
“Yes, Miss Clarence?”
“I’m glad I could reach you personally, Mr. Smith. One of our guests has moved on and we have a bed ready for your mother.”
“Well, that’s just swell,” Andrew said, barely feeling like himself. “I’ll go tell her.”
He hung up the phone and made his way to the bedroom where his mother slept, where she had spent the last six months while her body weakened and death patiently waited for her to give up the fight.
Andrew loved his mother so much and he was relieved to finally have some good news to share with her.
THE KEEPER’S COMPANION
JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST
1
ALBERT WAS BORN to be a game master. Even when he was a little boy he was the one who guided his friends through fantasy worlds where they hunted for treasure and battled against monsters. He had the authority, he had the imagination. And he had the language.
His mother was a comparatively well-known writer of children’s books, and his father taught Swedish at high school. As long as Albert could remember he had been part of an ongoing conversation where his views were taken seriously. He was able to read and write by the time he started school, and he had a vocabulary not far behind that of his teacher.
During both elementary school and junior high he positively devoured books, mainly fantasy and horror. Sport had never interested him, and he had only a small number of friends. So he read. He played on his Xbox too, but it wasn’t really his thing, so to speak. Over the years a vague feeling of dissatisfaction began to grow within him, as if there were something to be achieved, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
He was twelve years old when he was introduced to the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, and suddenly he knew exactly where to put that finger. The books accompanying the game contained knowledge that could be used even though it wasn’t factual: detailed maps of an imaginary continent,
produced purely for the purposes of the game.
When Albert became a game master after several weeks of preparation, it was as if pieces of himself that had lain strewn around unused since his childhood finally fell into place. Sitting at the head of the table he verbally conjured up the dangers and pleasures, the characters and monsters of The forgotten realms, while the three boys with whom he was playing sat spellbound. Albert knew: this was his thing. The authority, the imagination, the language. This was what he was born for.
* * *
Albert had never been popular in school, but he had never been bullied either. He had two friends, Tore and Wille; admittedly their classmates called them geeks when they quoted lines from The Lord of the Rings, but that was as bad as it got.
The dark energy of the class was principally directed towards Oswald, a spotty, podgy boy who didn’t smell too good, on top of everything else. In fact, he was the one who was closest to Albert in terms of his linguistic and educational ability, but hanging out with Oswald was the mark of a loser, so when Oswald became a target, Albert wasn’t slow to join in. He had the facility to come up with nicknames that stuck; for example, he was the one who decided to call Oswald the Whoopee Cushion in a nod to the boy’s bulk and the unpleasant odor that surrounded him. It was an epithet that Oswald carried for years.
Albert had a high opinion of himself. He knew that he was more intelligent than most of his peers, better able to e
xpress himself, and that through his intellect he could gain power over others. Someone like Oswald had nothing in his locker to match Albert.
And yet it was Oswald who initiated the next leap forward in Albert’s development. By this time, they were fourteen years old and in eighth grade. Oswald had lost some weight and didn’t smell quite so bad. He was still called the Whoopee Cushion, of course, but he and Albert did chat occasionally, because after all they shared the same literary interests.
It was during one of these conversations that Oswald hauled out the book he was currently reading: Necronomicon—The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft. It was the size and weight of a doorstop. Albert knew enough to be able to fake a deeper proficiency. He flicked idly through the thick volume while Oswald enthused over the dark universe Lovecraft had created, and the enormous amount of literature surrounding it.
That same evening Albert asked his father to order the book for him from Amazon. All his life things had been the same: if Albert wanted a book, he got it. While he was waiting for his new acquisition to arrive, he looked up Lovecraft on the internet and eventually discovered Chaosium and the role playing game Call of Cthulhu. After a few hours’ surfing Albert’s father was asked to supplement his order with the basic rule book, plus the accompanying paperback The Keeper’s Companion. His parents had always encouraged Albert’s role playing too.
* * *
One Friday evening in February Albert was the Keeper as the Game Master was called in CoC for “The Haunting”, a beginner’s adventure from the rule book. As usual he and three friends had gathered in the cellar of Albert’s house, which had been set up as a hobby room with a table tennis table, a workbench and a big dining table, perfect for just such an occasion. Tore and Wille were there, plus Linus, a boy from another class who often wore a T-shirt with the slogan “Winter is coming”.
The characters were introduced and their background stories invented, then Albert led the others through the investigation of Mr Corbitt’s haunted house. He outlined the rumors that were circulating, played the various people they came across, built up the atmosphere. The dampness, the darkness, the smell of mold in the old house.
Call of Cthulhu had something that was lacking in Dungeons and Dragons: suggestion. Okay, there was a certain amount of tension as you prepared to enter a cave where you knew a monster was hiding, but this was something else. The pattern of the game, the whole world where insanity constantly lurked, seemed to have been designed to create the perception of an underlying threat, of terrifying suspicions. They had been playing for several hours and were just about to go down into Mr Corbitt’s cellar when Albert’s mother tapped on the door. All four of them leapt in the air and let out a scream. That was when Albert really began to love Call of Cthulhu.
When it was all over one character was dead and another was in the lunatic asylum. It was five o’clock in the morning, the boys had consumed twelve cans of Celsius energy drink and couldn’t stop talking about how fucking fantastic it had been. The atmosphere was one of exhausted euphoria, and if they had been a little younger they might have raced out into the forest to do some live role play in order to work off an excess of emotion. Instead they talked. Talked and talked until the sun came up and Albert’s three friends staggered homewards. Dungeons and Dragons had been the thing, yes, but this was the thing!
* * *
As the months went by rumors spread about the unbelievable game playing experiences in Albert’s cellar. Linus in particular couldn’t help boasting about their adventures. Things went so far that the two toughest boys in the class and the second-prettiest girl made a tentative approach: could they come along some time?
No, they couldn’t. Six players was far too many to maintain the atmosphere, so Albert made an investment for the future. Instead of the usual group, he invited the two boys and the girl one Friday evening and reprised “The Haunting”. Since he had already led the adventure once, he was able to fine tune the details.
The three of them were nowhere near as good as Tore, Wille and Linus when it came to playing the game; they didn’t have the same breadth of imagination, and weren’t as adept at remaining in tune with their characters, but they couldn’t help being gripped by the power of suggestion. Daniel, who competed in MMA and had once given Albert a wedgie back in sixth grade, sat there wide-eyed and open-mouthed drinking in every word that fell from his lips. When it was time to go down into Mr Corbitt’s cellar, Olivia was so scared that she started to cry.
They left Albert’s house at around four in the morning, all in agreement that this was one of the most fantastic things they’d ever experienced. A successful investment, one could say.
* * *
It would be an exaggeration to say that Albert became king after this, but his status was certainly boosted. A games evening round at Albert’s was highly desirable, and he made a point of arranging sessions for the less initiated occasionally, just to keep his reputation alive.
Oswald kept asking if he could come along, but Albert said no. By this time he had suppressed the fact that it was Oswald who had introduced him to Lovecraft, and he saw no reason to waste his talents on someone who would actually lower his status. Besides which Oswald had a deeper understanding than anyone else, including Albert.
Albert had forbidden Wille, Tore and Linus from reading Lovecraft. The characters in the game didn’t know what they were battling against, and therefore the players shouldn’t know either. The idea of Oswald, with his encyclopedic knowledge, playing the role of a completely uninformed individual just wouldn’t work, and Albert told him so. What he didn’t tell Oswald was that he was afraid of having his authority challenged. He did, however, mention the odor surrounding Oswald.
* * *
During the summer vacation Albert tackled something he had been planning for a long time, but as a conscientious student he hadn’t had the time: he wanted to create his own adventure. With his three core players he had worked through Spawn of Tsathogghua, The Fungi from Yuggoth and half of Masks of Nyarlathotep, but now he was going to create his own world within the Cthulhu universe, preferably something located in Stockholm.
Albert began to build a narrative centered on the construction of Stockholm’s City Library, a room containing forbidden books where Ludwig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis was the principal treasure, an unpleasant cult led by the library´s architect Gunnar Asplund, and a crescendo that would coincide with the inauguration of the library in 1928.
He searched the internet for pictures of the city around that time, studied the tram routes, the role of the police, smuggling, and the political situation. When he started ninth grade in the middle of August, he had created an adventure that, in his opinion, was as good as anything Sandy Petersen had come up with, and he had ambitious plans to translate it into English himself and sell it to Chaosium. He had thought of a title—The Lurker in the Library—but found it was taken, and had to settle for the less catchy The Shambler of Stockholm.
* * *
As the time to play the adventure grew nearer, Albert was once again approached by Oswald, and in the end it was Albert’s vanity that made him give in. He had created his own world with laws that to a certain extent deviated from the conventional and would therefore be unfamiliar to Oswald, but in many ways the norm still applied in a way that made sense. Oswald was the only one with the knowledge that would enable him to fully appreciate Albert’s achievement, so Albert said “Okay”.
“Okay what?” Oswald asked, with a look on his face not unlike that of a dog whose master has just reached for a box of treats.
“Okay, you can play.”
The dog analogy became even more appropriate when Oswald began to tremble, and appeared to be dribbling with excitement when he opened his mouth. Before Oswald could spray him with saliva, Albert held up his hand. “Once. On a trial basis. Then we’ll see.”
Oswald nodded eagerly, assuring Albert that he wouldn’t show off, but would be a complete ignoramus. “Wh
at was it called again?” he asked. “Catullu?”
Albert smiled graciously and told him to be there on Friday at seven.
* * *
The rest of the gang weren’t happy about Oswald’s inclusion. They had gone from puberty to raging hormones, and Linus’s T-shirt now bore a picture of Tyrion Lannister and the words “I am the god of tits and wine”. Oswald’s presence was like having an outsider observing their game, which was possibly way too childish.
However, all their reservations were blown away when they began to play. Albert’s narrative worked beautifully, and Oswald’s character was soon an indispensable part of the group. He was an arms expert who could read and write Latin, and the adventure involved confrontations with armed henchmen, and a number of texts in Latin. Oswald also managed not to show off, just as he’d promised. Admittedly the corners of his mouth could be seen twitching when Albert talked about Ludwig Prinn, but he said nothing.
And there was no denying it: Oswald was an exemplary player, one hundred per cent attentive to everything Albert said, and so receptive to suggestion that his lips trembled when the situation became particularly critical. He also offered plenty of ideas, and was incredibly lucky with the dice.
They stopped at four o’clock in the morning, having reached a natural break in the story. As usual, the atmosphere was one of high excitement. De Vermis Mysteriis was within reach, and once they had acquired it the next phase would begin. They decided to resume playing the very next evening. As they were about to leave, Albert said: “Okay, see you tomorrow”.