But how many times has Mother said no to you and me? Thousands! Because she has never seen us—not you, nor me, nor even Father. Why do you think he was driven to the bottle? Because he slumped into godless depths, and because she wasn’t there for him.
Perhaps you would understand had you seen it, Margareta. I know you remember Mother as a good person, for you are a good person yourself. But you haven’t seen her now! All she does is scold Father and try to undermine the church. She hardly wants me to go there anymore. How can you call her a pious person when she doesn’t even want me to visit the house of God?
You’ll see. When you come here.
Pastor Mattias has explained it all. He’s helped me to see why I always felt so lonely. He’s given me answers I never even knew I wanted!
You may not believe what I’m saying about Birgitta, but you will understand once you hear Pastor Mattias. He told me that pure, blessed people are more sensitive to evil than others. That’s why I’ve always felt so uncomfortable around Birgitta, for I’ve sensed the darkness within her. Pastor Mattias says that the demon inside Birgitta may be what has corrupted Mother. But he says he will try to save Birgitta nonetheless—and Mother, too.
Now do you see what a good man he is? That he lives his life for God? That’s how much he is willing to sacrifice to save the rest of us. He has shown us the way. He is our light in the darkness.
Just come home, Margareta. I would dearly love to show you our new church. Then you will see. You will understand it all.
Aina.
NOW
The air upstairs is still. I’m in a small hallway, barely more than a landing, that leads to two doors. Both are shut.
I hear the creak of Robert’s steps behind me and turn around, nervous that he’ll go straight through them. He may be slim, but he’s still heavier than me.
At the top of the stairs is a small window, with four panes that let the dusky light inside. Dust particles are dancing around in the air. I’m uncomfortably aware that we don’t have our respirator masks, but push the thought from my mind. Asbestos and black mold will have to be another day’s concern.
Robert takes the last step, and gives a curt nod when he reaches the landing. I take a deep breath, hold it, step forward, and open the door on the right.
“Tone?” I say quietly as I scan the room.
It looks like a sweet girls’ room from a classic film. It’s sparingly furnished, with two beds, each less than three feet wide. Grandma must have shared the room with Aina before moving south.
The wallpaper has yellowed, and it’s impossible to tell what color it must have once been. The pattern, however, is still clear: plump little rosebuds on supple vines.
There isn’t much else in the room: a bookshelf and a desk, and a ceramic flowerpot full of dried earth on the windowsill. The window is one of the few that has simply cracked, rather than shattered completely. Through it the sun sinks over the forest in the distance. Its flame-red light makes the cracks in the glass gleam.
I take a few steps into the room and look around. Empty as it seems, it still feels like there’s a presence in there. The short, sweaty hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, and the skin on my exposed wrists feels more sensitive than normal.
“Tone?” I say again.
She isn’t here. There’s no one here.
I gulp, then quickly kneel down next to one of the beds and look underneath. A split-second vision of a piercing gray eye staring out at me from the darkness makes my heart skip a beat, but in reality there’s nothing under either this or the other bed.
“No one here,” I say, hushed, to Robert.
He nods and steps back into the hall, but I don’t follow him. Instead I get up and walk further into the room.
The desk is calling me to it. It’s small and dainty, with carved wooden knobs on its oblong drawers, and slender white legs. I slowly open each of the drawers, afraid that they might stick.
There isn’t much inside: blank sheets of paper, an almost completely used-up pencil. Not the diary I now realize I’ve been subconsciously fantasizing about—the slender volume filled with Aina’s neatly handwritten musings.
“Alice,” Robert says quietly, a clear request.
“Coming,” I say, though I can’t quite tear myself away. I want to stay in here, soak up the house. Sleep on these mattresses, and wander these rooms.
They’re like mythical figures to me, Elsa and Staffan and Aina. I’ve grown up with them like with a fairy tale. Even in the midst of everything else, it’s almost impossible to believe I’m actually here.
I lift one of the mattresses. It breaks in my hand, spilling hard stuffing out onto my fingers.
“Alice,” Robert says again, slightly louder this time. I nod, let go of the mattress, and follow him out.
I think he’s going to tell me off, but instead he just puts his hand on the other door handle and pushes it down.
The other bedroom is larger. The windows in here have shattered inward, spewing glistening shards across the floor. The wooden planks around them are rotten and splintered. There are two narrow beds beside one another in here, too—no double bed—which strikes me as strange. I wonder if that’s just a fifties thing, or if the drinking and the joblessness drove Elsa and Staffan apart. Or if Elsa was just as cold and distant as Aina describes her in her letters. I find it hard to know what to make of Elsa. Grandma always said she was strong and driven, tenacious in a way that wasn’t always the norm for a woman of those times. The sort of person—and mother—whose love was brusque and pragmatic, but also sincere, and deeper than most people’s.
But that image doesn’t fit with the woman in Aina’s letters.
I’ve always believed Grandma’s version, seeing Aina as a confused teen, but perhaps that’s wrong of me; perhaps Grandma’s memories were just muddied by time and loss.
I’ll never know. They’re all long gone, and with them the truth.
“Tone?” Robert says.
Not a sound.
He looks at me.
“There’s no one here.”
The desk in here is bigger and clearly more expensive, made in a dark, lacquered wood with a green leather inlay. The lacquer has developed an ugly white sheen from exposure, but it clearly must have once cost a lot of money. Elsa’s pride and joy, surely. Or Staffan’s. A first step toward a life that never came.
“Seems not,” I say, opening the desk drawers.
It’s full of papers I don’t immediately recognize. I don’t know what they are, but their official appearance makes me think they’re some sort of bills, important documents that mean nothing to me. Still, I pick them up.
I should turn around now. We should go. But instead I walk to the wardrobe on the other side of the room and open the doors. They’re stiffer than the drawers, must have set in their frames, and I have to give them a good pull to get them open.
Inside, damp-stained clothes lie in disarray, in crisp fabrics that have slipped from their hangers and been soiled by time and water.
“Did you think she’d be hiding in there?” Robert asks. I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. In any case, I start opening drawer after drawer, rifling through coarse wool and thin underwear in horrible, synthetic fabrics, feeling around for something, anything—
And then I feel it.
Sheets of paper at my fingertips.
I pull them out, and for a split second I think the sound I’m hearing is the rustle of old paper on dry fabrics, but then it continues, gains in volume. Confused, I turn around to see Robert pick up his walkie-talkie.
It’s a strange, dissonant noise that sounds like interference yet isn’t. It rises and falls, then ascends in key until it starts to sound both cleaner and rougher at once. I almost think I can make out words—babbling, distorted words—but then it intensifies to a bellow, one so loud and so unexpected that it makes me shrink away and Robert drop the walkie-talkie.
It thuds to the floor and goes abruptly
quiet.
Robert and I stand rooted to the spot, staring at the innocent yellow-and-black device in the shards of glass between us.
When it crackles to life again, I instinctively want to cover my ears, but the voice that comes out of the speaker is Emmy’s. It sounds tinny and shaken.
“What the fuck was that?” she asks.
Robert picks up the walkie-talkie and presses the talk button, his pale fingers trembling slightly.
“You mean that wasn’t you?”
“No,” she replies, almost before he’s even released the talk button. “We thought it was you.”
Robert looks at me, his eyes dark holes in his white face. I just shake my head.
“I have no idea,” I say. “Not a fucking clue.”
Robert raises his walkie-talkie again.
“We’re on our way,” is all he says.
We take the steps quickly and carelessly, faster than is safe, but my heart’s rattling in my chest, and suddenly I want nothing more than to be back behind the church’s heavy brick walls with the others. The sheets of paper are still under my arm, and Robert grabs his rucksack as we go. We race out onto the porch and down onto the street.
Darkness has started to fall, the sky a velvety-soft shade somewhere between indigo and blue. The first stars have started to twinkle to life above us, pinpricks from another world.
We start walking up toward the church, going as fast as we can without running. I hug the papers to my chest like a security blanket, feeling the bite of the cold air against my cheeks. The blood is roaring through my veins.
Then something makes me stop short. Robert makes it a few steps down the overgrown road before he realizes I’m not beside him.
“Alice?” he says, his voice half an octave higher than usual.
“Did you hear that?” I ask.
Robert looks around, then shakes his head.
“Hear what?”
I scan the houses. The collapsed walls and peeling paint look soft and cuddly in the falling dusk. The windows seem to be calling out to us.
“It sounded like…” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
Robert shakes his head.
“She isn’t there, Alice,” he says, in a tone that suggests even his apparently endless patience is beginning to wear thin. “And even if she is … Just come! We have to get back to the others.”
I don’t protest, simply nod and follow him. When Robert breaks into a jog, so do I.
The words I don’t say.
It didn’t sound like Tone.
It sounded like someone else.
It sounded like someone … singing.
SATURDAY
NOW
I can see through my eyelids when the light begins to change.
I don’t think I’ve slept at all. Dozed, yes, but I’ve barely slipped beneath the surface of my consciousness all night. Each time I have done, the delicate patter of drizzle on the roof has woken me up with a start.
It doesn’t help that the floor is cold and hard, or that the few blankets we’ve managed to find are scratchy and paper thin. All of me feels raw and tender. I’ve heard each of the others get up to take over at the lookout: we agreed to keep watch in shifts, and drew lots to decide who went when. I got the last one.
The silver-gray dawn light turns my eyelids into networks of thin veins. I open my eyes, and sure enough, darkness has started to recede. The rain has stopped, and the fragment of sky that’s visible from where I’m lying has that washed-out non-color that comes between night and morning.
I sit up, grimacing at the stiffness of my body and the rank taste in my mouth. Turns out a dinner of water, honey, and tinned fish makes for some pretty spectacular morning breath.
I look toward the doors. Emmy is sitting on the floor, her back to the pew that’s serving as our barricade. One leg is pulled in to her chest, and her hair is falling in stiff, red tufts over her head and collarbone.
“Emmy,” I say quietly, walking to her. “I can take over.”
Emmy looks up through her tousled hair. Her eyes are bright and focused.
“OK,” she says. She stands up and walks over to the bundle that is Robert, kneels down behind him on the blanket, and then curls up into his back. The pew isn’t any softer than the ground, but at least it’s marginally more ergonomic. I lean forward and grab the water bottle, which still has an inch or two left at the bottom. I hesitate for a second, but then drink the last of it, reasoning that I can go and refill it once the others have woken up. I savor the feeling of rinsing away the rank taste of night. Then I put the papers I’ve been holding onto my lap, lean back, and wait for the light. If I’m going to sit here awake, I’d rather do it with the papers from Grandma’s house than alone with my thoughts.
In the light of day, the top few pages turn out to be pretty much what I had expected. They’re bills. Someone has annotated them with a “paid” in a narrow, compact hand—that someone probably being Elsa—and I find myself staring at them longer than is probably reasonable. My great-grandmother.
I’ve only seen one picture of her before: a family portrait that Grandma took with her to Stockholm. In it, Aina is still just a sulky little girl on the verge of puberty, with straight, dark eyebrows and short, dark blond hair, wearing a checkered dress that makes her look younger than she probably is. She’s squinting at the camera defiantly, a stiff and unconvincing smile on her lips. Under her left eye she has a birthmark that almost looks painted-on, like a French lady-in-waiting or a silent movie star. It must have given her an air of glamour when she got older. Perhaps she filled it in to accentuate it—or else powdered it over so it wouldn’t be seen.
Grandma—sixteen or seventeen in the photo—is no surprise beauty, as elderly relatives can so often seem in photos of them from their youths. She has a square jaw and slightly flyaway hair, as well as that powerful, competent look that she would still have in her seventies. What always surprised me about that photo is that beautiful smile; how she seems to be laughing straight at the camera. She has the open aura of a teenager with boundless self-confidence and a future that seems to promise the world.
Staffan and Elsa stand behind them, in a classic familial pose. He is tall, with a fairly undistinctive face except for his wide, charming smile. His arm is wrapped around Elsa in a way that feels surprisingly affectionate, and his head tilts in toward her, as though his entire being is striving to be near her. He isn’t a handsome man, my great-grandfather, but he definitely has a certain charm. Elsa is the photo’s unmistakable axis, the person the entire family seems to be built around. Like my grandmother, she doesn’t seem a great beauty: a stout woman of just over forty, she is wearing a skirt and blouse which, with their girlish fifties silhouette and mismatched florals, make her look like a child playing dress-up. She looks as though she would be more at home in pants and practical shoes, clothes to help her where she had to be going.
Her face has the same distinctive squareness as Grandma’s, with surprisingly full lips in the middle of her face—the same lips that, on closer inspection, you can see an inkling of in Aina’s. A small, almost mischievous smile plays on Elsa’s lips, which stands out because it feels so at odds with the rest of her appearance. Her hair is styled in stiff curls that seem to be there for the sake of the photo alone, and below her fluffy fringe her light, steady eyes look straight down the camera, firm and direct. Her hands sit on Aina’s shoulders. My great-grandmother’s hands, almost identical to my grandma’s, with a simple, silvery wedding ring on one finger.
Those very same fingers marked every bill paid with a neat little “paid.” May 1958. July 1958. November 1958.
Then other notes start appearing.
“Late.”
“Deferred.”
“Deferred.”
“Cancelled.”
On the final two bills there are no notes at all.
I sit and stare at the thin, sepia-brown sheets of paper spread out on my lap. My fatigue is mak
ing reality throb.
Below the bills are the three sheets of paper I found in the underwear drawer. They’re in pristine condition.
The handwriting on them is the same as the small notes from the bills, but it looks different. The letters are smaller but more spaced out, the lines are flurried and uneven, and the ink is smudged in a few places.
There’s no date at the top of the page, nor any greeting, so it’s only when I hunch over to squint at the words that I realize it’s a letter.
Margareta, I’m writing this to you for I feel I must. I see no other option.
I know that you are busy and have a lot on your plate, with a baby on the way. I know that you don’t have much space. But please: take your father, your sister, Birgitta, and me in with you in Stockholm. I hope it will only be for a short while, but I am asking you, as your mother, to help us in our time of need.
The situation here is worse than I could ever have imagined. The entire village is all but entranced, your sister included. They are treating the pastor as though he were God the Father himself, although I’m starting to suspect he’s more a demon in human guise. He has stirred up the congregation to the brink of madness. I have heard them speaking in tongues during services, and every evening at sunset the drone of their songs rings through town.
There are only a few of us left who have not fallen in thrall to him. Your sister is his right hand. I’m losing her. She has moved in to the church, where she now sleeps. I fear that the venom he has filled her ears with has turned her against us completely. I must get her out of here before it is too late.
I understand that you must have your concerns about Birgitta. I know that it’s an additional burden, especially given the way she is, but I refuse to leave her here. Pastor Mattias and his congregation hate her. They say that she is a witch and succubus, that she is possessed by demons and serves the devil. I fear what they will do to her if I leave her here. She would never be able to defend herself. God knows if any of the rest of us could.
The Lost Village Page 19