Later that evening she had suddenly popped up again at the student bar, a beer in her hand and a mildly apologetic smile on her lips. She introduced herself as Emmy Abrahamsson and apologized for what had happened in the seminar. Said that she could “get a little enthusiastic at times.”
I’m still not sure if I regret accepting that beer.
I’ve never been the same since that night on the bridge. I learned something about people that night. And something about myself.
Seven years have passed since then, almost a quarter of my life. And all this time she’s been like a half-healed wound, a scab I can never quite seem to stop myself from scratching.
It was naïve of me to think I’d be able to put that to one side here.
I shake my head, try to focus on the images in front of me. They’re good. The shots from the school are strong. Not all of them are completely in focus—Tone still doesn’t seem to have completely gotten the hang of that camera—but the ones that are are crisp and striking. There’s something so familiar, so Swedish about those classrooms: those chalkboards and desks, all broken and abandoned. A childhood memory contorted beyond recognition.
When I suddenly come to a video it takes me by surprise. I didn’t even know these cameras could shoot videos.
“How’s it going?” a voice asks, and I jump and look up. Max is looking down at me, his eyebrows raised.
“Shit, you scared me,” I say, laughing to take the edge off.
“You looked pretty hypnotized,” he says with a grin. “I was just going to say the food’s almost ready.”
“Oh, great,” I say.
“Shall we wake Tone?” he asks, but I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “Let her sleep. It’s probably what she needs.”
Max nods, and I turn my attention back to the computer. I click the small PLAY symbol on the video.
It looks as though Tone hadn’t meant to film anything; the camera is swinging back and forth above the floor, capturing cracking, splintered wooden boards, shards of glass from the windows. Then I hear the soft tap of shoes against the floor, and turn up the volume. The camera is still pointing at the floor when the footsteps suddenly stop, and I jump when I hear my own voice say:
“Ready?”
The camera is pointed at a skirting board, above which the wallpaper is peeling away from the wall.
“OK,” I hear myself say.
It’s when the camera moves again to reveal a glimpse of steps and rotting carpet that I realize when it must have been filmed. It’s from when we started climbing the staircase inside the school. That fucking staircase.
The video is almost over; only twelve seconds left. I see the camera swinging back and forth as Tone climbs the steps behind me, catching flashes of my clumpy sneakers and those treacherous steps.
Four seconds.
Then I hear something.
I frown and press PAUSE. I pull the video back a few seconds and press PLAY again.
The camera swings back and forth. Red carpet, splintered wood, damp walls.
There.
At four seconds.
There it was again.
I pause. Hesitate. But then I turn up the volume as high as it can go and rewind again.
Now I hear Tone’s breaths on the recording, the creak of steps under our feet. And then …
Is that a cough?
Could I have coughed? It doesn’t sound like a cough, not really. The sound seems to come from far away. It’s tinny and muffled. And quiet, like … a chuckle.
It doesn’t sound like a cough, no; it sounds like laughter. Husky and stifled, like a child hiding in a closet, trying to repress a snigger.
The evening chill has descended upon the square. I rub my arms, trying to ignore the shivers running down my spine. It’s absurd.
And yet I’m suddenly, irreversibly aware that the school is just fifty yards away on the other side of the square, its doors hanging open like a gaping mouth.
It’s all in my head. I’m probably just hearing my own breaths on the tape. These laptop speakers aren’t particularly good, and you can make yourself hear anything if you want to enough. Like seeing faces in clouds.
But I still can’t let it go.
I make to rewind and listen once more.
Then the screen dies.
I flinch and shout:
“Shit!”
“What is it?” Max calls from over by the fire.
I slam the laptop shut.
“Laptop died. Out of battery.”
“Just as well,” says Max. “Dinner’s ready.”
“Coming,” I say and put it away in my bag.
I take one last, lingering look at the school and then walk over to the others to eat, doing my best to ignore the prickling sensation at the back of my neck.
NOW
The first stars are already shimmering as we finish eating, which is when Tone opens the van door and hops out gingerly.
“Tone!” I say, getting to my feet. “How are you feeling?”
Tone gives a cautious smile and rubs her face.
“Pretty hungry,” she says.
Her eyes are puffy and heavy with sleep, and her short hair is unkempt. She takes my arm and I help her over to the fire.
“How’s it going?” Max asks, throwing a travel rug over one of the cooler boxes so that she can sit down.
“I’ve felt better,” she says, taking the bowl of soup I hold out to her. She tastes it and pulls a face.
“Canned minestrone?” she asks.
“Only the best,” says Emmy, rolling her eyes.
I can’t bite my tongue.
“I’m afraid we don’t have the budget for the luxury catering you’re more accustomed to,” I say. “Sorry if you’re missing your crayfish sandwiches.”
Before she can respond, I turn to Tone and add:
“There’s bread, too. I can toast some over the fire, if you want?”
Tone nods.
“Yes please. Thanks.”
I take two slices of over-processed bread out of the bag, tie it up again, and skewer the bread slices while listening to the others.
“How did it go this afternoon?” Tone asks, eating the soup in tiny spoonfuls.
It’s Emmy who replies.
“Good,” she says. “We worked our way through the ironworks, and managed to squeeze in a few houses, too, just to scout them out.”
“You did what?” I ask, whipping my head around.
“We looked in two of the row houses,” Emmy says. “We had some spare time. It was insane—they really are completely identical, like the village just bought four hundred houses from IKEA and threw them all up next to each other.”
“But isn’t that pretty much how it was?” Max asks, looking at me. “Didn’t the people who owned the mine build cheap housing for all the manpower they brought in during the war?”
“Yeah,” I say, before a sudden smell of burning brings me back to my task at hand, and I turn the bread slices just before they catch fire. They’re a bit burned, but it’s probably OK. At least they’ll taste of something.
“We got some awesome shots,” says Emmy. “One of the houses had an apple tree growing in through one of the windows. It had taken half of the wall down. Really unsettling. In a good way.”
I can’t let it go:
“But the houses weren’t on our schedule.”
I feel like Emmy’s about to clap back, but it’s quiet Robert who says:
“It was my idea. I wanted to see how they looked.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.”
“Hard not to be curious,” he says apologetically, scratching his neck. He has very big hands and feet. It adds to the clumsy, slightly awkward impression he gives. He looks like a teenager who hasn’t quite grown into his body, even though Emmy’s said he’s only a few years younger than us. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to get annoyed at him.
“You can’t help but wonder what happened,” he goes on. “Th
ere was a cup on one of the kitchen counters. Like someone had just put down their coffee, gone out to pick up the paper, and then…”
“Disappeared,” says Tone quietly, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah,” says Robert. “Exactly.”
I take the toast off the fire, coax the slices off the skewer and hand them to Tone. She looks at them and says, “Mmm, well-done,” before taking a bite. Though the toast is practically charcoal, it comes as something of a relief: she sounds like herself, however tired she is, however much pain she’s in. Sardonic rather than beaten.
“Are there any theories?” Emmy asks me. I pull my sweater sleeves over my hands and sit back down on one of the camping mats.
“It’s in the packs,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, “it’s all in the packs. But you know everything about this place. Can’t you tell us something about them?”
I clench my teeth, but then I see that both Max and Robert are watching me closely. I puff out the breath I’ve been holding in and relent.
“OK,” I say. “Sure. Of course I can.”
I search for a natural entry point, somewhere to begin. Scan my mind for the best thread to pull at. As I do this, I’m once again very aware of the square around us: the glaring, empty windows; the cold cobblestones beneath us; the impossibly high sky overhead. So many stars. Before Silvertjärn I’d never seen the Milky Way.
“The police investigation didn’t really reach any conclusions,” I say, fumbling around for the words. “You know that, it’s in the…”
I see a pull at Emmy’s lips, but then she purses them instead.
“Yeah. But anyway,” I say. “Obviously there are theories. Most people seem to think it was some sort of mass suicide. Like Jonestown—you know, that cult in South America with the insane leader who forced almost a thousand people to commit suicide.”
“If he forced them it sounds more like mass murder to me,” Emmy mutters.
I ignore her.
“You can see the similarities,” says Max. “A sect, an isolated location, a charismatic madman…”
“Except I don’t know if you could call this a sect,” I say. “I think most people have described it as a free church, if that. They never broke away from the Church of Sweden, so technically it was just a normal parish.”
“There’s no need to split hairs,” says Emmy. “It was a sect—whatever they called themselves.”
Before I can respond, Tone speaks up:
“Yeah, there are definite sect elements there. That comes through in the letters, if nothing else.”
“Aina’s letters, you mean?” I ask, and Tone nods.
“Anyway,” I continue, “we don’t know much about what happened in Silvertjärn in the final months. The last letter we have from Aina is dated May 1959. Except the very last one, that is. I’ve tried to track down other letters from the same period—there must have been other people who had relatives out of town—but I haven’t found anything. People probably didn’t save them, or else they’ve just been misplaced over the years. Some relatives gave witness statements to the police, but none of those give us much to work with. So all the theories about the church and the pastor are based on complete speculation.”
“But it’s got to have something to do with them,” says Emmy. “Right? It can’t be coincidence that they build up some fanatical movement around this guy and then just disappear.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says Tone, stony-faced. “Some people claim they were all abducted by aliens.”
I smirk.
“I have to say, that one gets my vote,” I joke. “So if anyone spots any UFOs tonight, be sure to let me know.”
Emmy rolls her eyes, but I think I see a twitch at the side of her mouth. It gives me a strange feeling in my gut, an echo of a certain intimacy.
“No, of course it has to all be linked, somehow,” I say. “The most banal theory is that it was some kind of voluntary migration; that the pastor convinced them all that God had commanded him to take them north, or something like that, but that they died along the way. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened; the history blog Our Dark Past compares it to the Children’s Crusades in the thirteenth century. Religious fixation can make people do very odd things.”
“Still, it’s weird they never found anything,” says Max. “You’d think they would leave some sort of tracks. Nine hundred people migrating would leave its mark—on the immediate surroundings, if nothing else.”
“And it doesn’t explain the baby,” says Emmy. “Right?”
I shake my head.
“No, it doesn’t,” I say. “Nor the dogs and cats. Or the murder of Birgitta Lidman. Or why no one seems to have taken anything with them. Like you said, Robert: there are still coffee cups on kitchen counters, pots on stovetops. The police report said there was even laundry hanging out to dry on lines outside the houses. Whatever it was, it seems to have happened fast. If it were a mass migration, you’d think they’d have taken something with them.”
“There are theories about mass hysteria,” Tone adds.
I nod.
“There are historic examples of that: in the sixteenth century there was something called the ‘dancing plague’ in Strasbourg, where hundreds of people danced on the streets uninterrupted for over a month. Many of them died of exhaustion. They think it was a form of stress-induced psychosis, caused by starvation and general anxiety. If you think about how hopeless people here must have felt after the mine shut, it could have been something similar.”
“But it still doesn’t explain where they went,” says Tone. “Just like the migration theory.”
“No,” I agree, “if they just took off then a lot doesn’t add up. Some people have suggested it could have been a gas leak of some sort—methane gas in the earth’s crust released by mining activity. But the mining company that came here in the nineties checked the air quality and found nothing. And, even if that did explain why everyone died simultaneously, it doesn’t explain the baby, or why the only body they found here was Birgitta’s, who clearly didn’t die of suffocation. It was a hot summer that year, so if it had been a gas leak then there would have been corpses rotting on the streets when the police arrived.”
Max grimaces slightly at the thought.
I look at Tone.
“Have I forgotten any?” I ask.
“Those are all the big ones,” she says. “But I’ve always had a soft spot for the Russian invasion theory.”
“Oh! Yes!” I say. “That’s hilarious. Apparently the Soviet Union were doing some sort of dress rehearsal for a Swedish land invasion, and kidnapped the entire village.” I shrug. “Though, I have to say, I can’t pinpoint any actual holes with that one. I almost hope it’s true. Just imagine the scoop!”
Emmy laughs. That same flash of recognition, of warmth.
I push it down.
“So what we’re saying is there’s no good explanation?” Robert hums.
“Yeah,” I say. “Hence the mystery. Almost nine hundred people, lost without a trace. No one knows if they’re alive or dead, or if they killed themselves, got sick, or left the place voluntarily. No one knows why poor Birgitta Lidman was stoned to death. And no one knows whose was the baby in the school, or why she got left behind.”
A strange, heavy silence falls after I say this, as if the reality of the mystery hits us all at once. The wind that sweeps over the square isn’t a spring breeze; it’s still cold and raw from winter. It runs straight through my clothes, makes the hairs on my neck stand on end.
“But they must be dead, don’t you think?” Emmy asks quietly, in a tone of voice at odds with her usual loud, defiant self.
I swallow.
“I think so,” I admit. “But I don’t know how or why. So I’m hoping we can find something. Some sort of indication.”
A half truth. I’m hoping we can find more than some small indication: I want an answer. We aren’t a courtroom, I don’t
need proof, just something that points in one direction. An unsent letter, fossilized tracks leading out into the forest …
I doubt we’ll find it, but I can’t quite bring myself to give up hope.
Max nods. Tone doesn’t make a sound. When I look at her ankle, I can see that her pant leg has traveled up slightly, and that the skin above the support bandage is red and swollen. She hasn’t eaten her toast; a sad, half-eaten slice of charred bread lies cooling on the ground next to her.
“So then we have a goal for tomorrow,” Emmy says, sounding more like her usual self. She stands up and holds out a hand to Robert, who takes it and pulls himself up.
“I’m gonna hit the sack,” she says. “See you tomorrow.”
Robert nods at the rest of us and follows her off toward the van.
Max looks at me, his eyebrows raised.
“Jeez,” he says, quietly, so that it doesn’t carry to Emmy and Robert. “It’s not even nine o’clock.”
I look at Tone. Her mouth is a taut line, the dark circles under her eyes like the sweep of a dirty fingerprint.
“You know, maybe we could all do with some sleep?” I say. “It’s been a long day.”
Tone says nothing.
“What do you think?” I ask her, and she looks up, confused, as though hearing me for the first time.
“Sleep?” she repeats. “Yeah. That might be an idea.”
I get up, roll up my camping mat and hold my hand out to Tone. It’s not enough: I have to put my arm around her waist and hoist her up. It’s harder than I had expected, and she leans into me heavily.
“Good night, Max,” I say over my shoulder, to his lone silhouette by the fire. “Sleep well.”
I see him watch us as we go, then put another log on the fire.
The Lost Village Page 9