The Lost Village

by Sten, Camilla

  Elsa’s heart starts to pound.

  “A din?”

  “Late in the evenings and at night—we can hear it all the way from our house,” says Dagny. She purses her lips, turning them into a plum-colored line across her thin face.

  “Well, you know I’m not one of those who—I’m not one to run around spreading nonsense about Birgitta,” she says. “And I daresay some of the things people in the parish are saying about her are outrageous. She’s sick. It’s not her fault she’s the way she is.”

  Dagny looks so pious as she says this, so sanctimonious that Elsa almost wants to give her a piece of her mind, but she forces herself to bite her tongue.

  “But please, do try to make her understand that she must keep the noise down,” says Dagny. Then she lowers her voice and looks around.

  “The way people are talking…” She shakes her head. “I think it would be good for her to be careful,” she says, casting a long, anxious look in the direction of Birgitta’s hut.

  NOW

  Emmy doesn’t stop running until we’re almost three blocks away. She takes a right behind some buildings, and I follow her. All I can hear are the hard slap of soles against the cobblestones, the ringing in my ears, the swish of Emmy’s jeans, and her hair flicking with every step.

  She stops a little further down the side street, then bends double and starts hacking and whooping. The smoke has embedded itself like a film across my tongue and down my throat, but the coughs don’t want to come. My lungs feel constricted, pressed to shriveled kernels in my chest.

  I hear Max’s and Robert’s footsteps behind me and stop. I bend double and allow myself to close my eyes for a second. To make the world stop. Ground myself in my body. Everything feels so far away. Numbed.

  A strange tingle runs up through my rib cage. In detached curiosity I let it rise in my throat, until it comes out as a shrill giggle. I open my eyes and put my hand to my mouth to hold it inside, push it back down. Kill it.

  “What happened?” Max asks.

  Something about his flat, reasoned tone helps me to get my insane giggle under control, and I drop my hand again. I see Emmy cough one last time, then spit on the ground before straightening up.

  What happened?” I hear someone ask. In the distance I realize it’s me.

  “How could it just explode? Vans don’t just explode!”

  I want somebody to do something. To take me by the shoulders, shake me, slap me. Force me to get a grip.

  But none of them move. We just stand there, speechless and breathless, staring at each other.

  “The lighter fluid,” Emmy says quietly.

  I look up to see her staring at the wisps of smoke still coiling their way up over the rooftops.

  “What?”

  “The lighter fluid,” she says again. “There were containers of lighter fluid in there, for the campfire. And we had an extra can of gas for the vans. It was on the list.”

  Oh, right.

  “Someone must have set fire to them. Somehow. It’s the only explanation.”

  We all look at each other, one of those rare moments when three or four people are hit by the same thought at exactly the same time. I look at Robert, and then Max, who says:

  “Emmy was with me,” just as Robert says:

  “I was with Alice.”

  “It wasn’t one of us,” Emmy says. “It can’t have been one of us four.”

  There’s an added weight to the final word.

  “Tone.”

  It’s Max who says it.

  I stare at him, fear and surprise forming a sickening whirlpool in my belly.

  “Max…” I start.

  “Come on, Alice. They have a right to know.”

  “Know what?” Emmy asks sharply.

  Max gives me a lingering look. His lips are narrowed, his asymmetrical features tense. When he turns to Emmy, I already know what he’s going to say.

  “Tone’s mom is the baby they found in the school,” he says. “That’s how she and Alice first met. Alice found her two years ago while she was doing research for the film.”

  “Is that true?” Emmy asks, her voice subdued but sharp.

  “You didn’t need to know,” I say. “Tone didn’t want to say anything, and I respected that. It was up to her to tell you, not me.”

  “But that wasn’t the only thing you didn’t tell us, Alice,” Max says.

  The smell of fire, soot, and burning steel still hangs in the air; a sharp, piercing odor that makes my eyes water. We’ve carried it with us, haven’t made it far enough to lose it. It clings to our clothes and makes my nose itch.

  “Max, please,” I say. Like a prayer.

  “I saw the pills, Alice,” he says.

  I don’t even recognize him. Max, my Max, my friend. The guy who’s always put a smile on my face, who’s always up for getting a beer, listening, shooting the breeze. Who always has my back, in every situation.

  He doesn’t look like he’s enjoying this. He looks like I feel: about to burst into tears. Maybe he really means it when he says he thinks they have a right to know.

  Maybe he’s right.

  “I saw them in your tent,” he goes on. “In the toiletry bag, when I was borrowing your toothpaste. Abilify.” He pauses. When he goes on, his voice is heavy. “Abilify is an antipsychotic. Right? That’s what it said on the packaging.”

  I don’t reply, so he says, both clarifying and aggravating:

  “Tone has a psychotic disorder.”

  I shake my head.

  “No, it’s not like that,” I say, blinking frenetically against the tears that are about to brim over. “She’s just had one episode, and that was over a year ago. She’s not psychotic and she’s not dangerous! She’s depressed, and she’s had one psychotic break, once, it’s not like she experiences it the whole time. And she’s feeling much better now. She didn’t want anyone to know—and no, I didn’t think it was my place to tell. So long as she takes her medication she’s…”

  I want to finish my sentence, but can’t.

  The silence expands.

  “But is she taking her meds?” Emmy asks slowly.

  My throat contracts.

  Maybe you should take some painkillers anyway?

  I see the small packet of Advil in her hands. That staring, inscrutable look in her eyes as she swallowed two pills and then pursed her lips.

  I knew why she didn’t want to take any painkillers—that she didn’t want to take anything that might interact with her medication. But I didn’t get it. I didn’t know what might happen.

  Tone’s an adult. She knows what she’s doing.

  But she was in pain. So much pain. And she knew I didn’t want to leave, knew how much this meant to me. She could see it in my eyes whenever I asked if she wanted to go to hospital.

  “When did she stop taking her meds, Alice?” Emmy asks, her voice thin and clear.

  And then it dawns on me, light and brittle and clear, like day-old ice.

  This is my fault.

  I visited her at the hospital. Once a week. In the run-up to the break, Tone had stopped responding to my calls and messages. I never dropped by her place to check in on her, as I took her silence as a sign she just didn’t want to talk to me. It hadn’t even occurred to me that something might be wrong, even though I, of all people, should have known. I, who knew how impossible it can feel to so much as open an email when anxiety has its spindly black fingers around your neck.

  At the hospital Tone was quiet, even quieter than normal. She hardly even responded to my chatter. Which of course made me talk even faster than normal, trying to fill every second to avoid hearing the silence. At times I wondered if she even wanted me there.

  But then whenever I left she would always hug me tightly, as though I were a lifebuoy and she were drowning. So I kept on coming back, until one day she called me on her cell and said she was home. Like nothing had ever happened.

  I never saw her during the episode itself, and she ne
ver said much about it. The few times it did come up she just said she had felt “… confused. And scared. Sometimes I thought I was my mom and I was in Silvertjärn. Sometimes I heard voices, voices trying to tell me secrets.”

  But she hadn’t mentioned it in forever—other than to check I wasn’t going to tell anyone, that is.

  I mean, she felt better. She was doing well.

  So long as she just took her meds.

  The image of Tone at Birgitta’s table lumps in my throat, forcing those nasty, unwanted tears back to my eyes. I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to understand what it might mean.

  She said she was OK.

  She said it.

  Why didn’t I listen to her?

  No one says anything for a while. I try to bite back my tears and find my voice, wishing one of them would say something, fill the space.

  “We need to get out of here,” says Emmy. Her voice is flat. “We can’t stay here, we need help.”

  “How?” Max asks. “You saw the vans and the car—what was left of them.”

  “We can walk,” says Emmy, but Robert clears his throat.

  “It’s at least twenty miles of rough terrain to the nearest road. And there were no cars there. Where was the nearest gas station? Another ten, twenty miles, right?”

  “We don’t need to find anyone,” says Emmy. “We just need to get out of the dead zone.”

  “How far was that?” Robert asks.

  “Forty-five minutes,” says Emmy. “But I had to drive really carefully through the forest, so it was slow going. I don’t know how far it is as the crow flies.”

  I look up long enough to see her fish her cell out of her pocket. She tries to turn it on but shakes her head.

  “That call took the last of my battery,” she says. “What about yours?”

  Robert just shakes his head. I don’t need to check mine to know it’s dead.

  “Mine’s out,” says Max.

  “Where was your charger?” asks Emmy. “In the Volvo or the van?”

  “The Volvo,” says Max.

  “Do you have a car charger?” Emmy asks him nervously. “One that you plug into the cigarette lighter?”

  Max’s eyes flicker.

  “I think so,” he says. “In the glove compartment.”

  Robert shakes his head.

  “But the engine’s shot,” he says. “You saw the car, there’s no chance—”

  “But not the generator,” Emmy interrupts. “That was in the other van. It could still work. If we can plug Max’s charger into that outlet then we can charge his phone. Then hike twenty, twenty-five miles till we get signal.”

  “Is it safe though?” Max asks. “We don’t know if the other van could blow.”

  Emmy looks up over the rooftops.

  “It’s stopped smoking,” she says. “And vans don’t just explode. If it’s the gas can that blew then there’s no reason the other van would be dangerous.”

  “Not the van, no,” Robert says quietly. He doesn’t need to say anymore.

  “There are four of us,” says Emmy. Her face is tense, won’t accept any arguments. “What’s one against four? We don’t need to be there long. We’ll just go there, find the charger and generator, plug in the phone and let it charge. We’ll keep a lookout. And we can get whatever we need from the back of the van—food, water, whatever’s left.”

  I know I should keep quiet, but I can’t.

  “It wasn’t Tone,” I say, my lips cold. “It can’t have been. She isn’t crazy. She isn’t violent, never has been. She’s just … sick.”

  Max, his voice subdued, asks the question:

  “But Alice, if not her, then who?”

  I can tell he doesn’t mean it as a question so much as a way of shutting down my rambling, but it hits me straight in the chest. I think of the figure in the rain, of the shadow of a laugh on the film, of Tone whispering:

  I heard something below us.

  Of Emmy and her probing green eyes.

  You saw somebody, didn’t you?

  It’s to her I turn now.

  Emmy’s lips are so pinched that they’re practically just a dash on her face.

  “That doesn’t matter,” she says, to my surprise. “What matters is that we get help and get out of here. And to do that we have to get back to the square.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Max asks. His mint-green cable-knit sweater is flecked with soot.

  Emmy scratches her neck.

  “Worst case, we wait it out,” she says. “My mom was worried, so I told her that if she hasn’t heard from me in forty-eight hours then she should send in the police. That was when I thought I’d just be coming back here to put Tone in a van and take her to the hospital, but now…” Emmy shrugs.

  “It’s best if we try to charge one of the phones and call for help today,” says Robert.

  My voice dull and subdued, I say, “We have to get back to the square.”

  NOW

  I lag a few feet behind the others as we slowly but surely make our way back to the square. My eyes stray down the alleys, search the shadows, the heavy clump in my belly making me slow and lethargic.

  Tone. Tone. Tone.

  I want to believe she didn’t set the van alight; want to be as sure as I’m trying to make myself sound. But however hard I think about it, I can’t find a better explanation.

  Could it be spontaneous combustion? Some kind of manufacturing flaw? A leak, an engine left running, a spark at the wrong time?

  Maybe.

  Maybe it’s the curse of Silvertjärn. Or ghosts, or aliens.

  Or maybe it was my friend, my friend who’s sick, who hasn’t been taking her meds. My friend who’s paranoid, and confused, and who thought she was defending herself against something that isn’t there.

  My anxiety is cold, and its nails are sharp.

  I don’t want to believe it.

  The others have stopped ahead of me at the edge of the square. I catch up with them, and we still ourselves. Listen.

  “OK?” Emmy says to us.

  I look at the others. None of them says a word, but Robert nods.

  For a second I’m struck by the absurdity of the situation, how impossibly cinematic it is.

  I’m not ready for this. I don’t want this.

  It makes no difference.

  Emmy steps out into the square, and we follow her.

  Most of the fire has waned and died out, leaving only the blackened remains of the vegetation on the sooty cobblestones. There are no alarms, no spinning wheels; the wreckage of the vans lies where we left it, the remains of our equipment still strewn across the square.

  I can’t remember if our insurance covers bizarre accidents. Or arson. Surely this must count as arson?

  I creep across the square, trying to go as quietly as possible. I can’t explain why I’m doing this: anyone close enough to hear my footsteps would surely be able to see me, too. But my primal instincts aren’t interested in logical arguments. Their primary concern is to make me as small and quiet as possible; to crouch, sneak away, disappear.

  Prey.

  The Volvo is standing on the far side of the square. It was set back slightly to begin with, which is probably why it wasn’t as badly affected by the explosion as the vans. The force of the explosion has pressed it into the wall, but it hasn’t been flipped or burned, or marked by the fire. It looks more like the work of a drunk driver who’s made an unfortunate turn off the road. Crumpled and by no means roadworthy, but still in one piece.

  “Do you hear something?” Emmy asks quietly, her face tense. I shake my head.

  “Nothing,” Robert says, just as quietly.

  Max stops beside me when we reach the car, but I hold back. I can’t even bring myself to look at him. I step back as he reaches for the door handle, and then turn away as I hear the click of the door.

  “OK,” says Emmy. “Great. While you get the charger I’ll try to fish the generator out of the van.”

&n
bsp; I don’t want to stay with Max, so my feet follow Emmy over to the van: the least bad alternative. Its position makes it look vaguely menacing, a wounded animal lying on its side to regain its strength.

  “I don’t know how we’ll get inside,” says Emmy, her voice flat but pragmatic.

  I know what she means. The van had been parked with its rear angled toward the other van, so its back doors took the brunt of the explosion. It’s so dented and blackened that I’m seriously doubting if we’ll ever get them open.

  “I can try,” I say, against my better judgement. “If not I can try to climb in from the driver’s seat.”

  Yes, the one up in the air.

  I’m expecting a protest, but she just nods.

  I reach tentatively for the handle, which is still hot. I try to pull it, but it won’t budge.

  “OK,” I say to Emmy—no more, no less. No more is needed.

  I walk around to the front of the van. The side is higher than I’d expected. There’s no chance I’ll be able to get up there myself.

  I look for something to stand on, but Emmy is already lugging a semi-charred tire my way. Once she’s next to me she turns the melted clump of rubber onto one side and holds out her hand for me to take.

  “Thanks,” I say, my eyes lingering on hers a second too long. I hadn’t meant to; I just get stuck, somehow, and she does, too.

  I don’t know what we’re saying to one another.

  I put my foot on what’s left of the wheel and lift myself up. I almost lose my balance, but manage to get a hand on the door handle. Then I pull myself up, kicking the tire for an extra push. The side of the van is smooth and covered in soot, which smears itself all over my clothes as I somehow manage to haul myself up so that I’m sitting next to the driver’s door.

  I get onto my knees and pull at the door. With gravity working against it it’s surprisingly heavy, but at least it isn’t stuck in its frame. Using both my arms, I lift it high enough for the door hold mechanism to kick in, then worm my way down inside.

  It’s like a fun house for grown-ups in there: a normal, familiar setting turned ninety degrees the wrong way. There are things scattered everywhere, and the hatches have flown open, sending trash and debris raining down in the van. The passenger door is strewn with old stumps of pencils, and the coffee cup from the journey up. And there, beside them, lie the papers I found in the church. For just a second I hesitate, but then I fold them up as carefully as I can and stuff them into my back pocket to take with me.