The Lost Village

by Sten, Camilla

  “Has the witch given birth to her devil-spawn?” he asks again, calmly and quietly. As though enquiring when lunch would be served.

  His eyes. Those damned tempest eyes.

  They are laughing at her.

  “Did you think we didn’t know?” he asks.

  She doesn’t understand—doesn’t understand how they could possibly know. They had done everything right. Has somebody told them—Dagny? Ingrid?

  Elsa can’t believe that of either of them. She refuses to.

  A sound outside the church makes her jump, and she looks around. The sound is familiar, as familiar as her daughters’ voices.

  “Ah,” says Pastor Mattias. “They have returned.”

  It’s Birgitta, and she’s howling in panic. Elsa can hear it through the church and the closed door.

  She whips around. The pastor has stood up, and their faces are level. Something terrible is lurking in the corners of his eyes.

  “I’m afraid we can’t let you leave for Stockholm just yet,” he says to Elsa. “Not while you’re so upset. It would be better if you calmed down a little first.”

  “You can’t stop me,” she says, trying to find strength once again in her rage. But all she can find is the start of a bottomless fear.

  The pastor doesn’t reply. He just smiles. A small, cruel smile.

  Fear snatches hold of her, and Elsa feels herself give way to it. She looks at Aina, begs her:

  “Aina, don’t do this, don’t let them do this to Birgitta. She’s innocent, she hasn’t done anything wrong. Let us go, please.”

  Aina just looks at her. There is no life in her eyes.

  And then she smiles. The carbon copy of his little grin.

  Elsa flies around and tears open the door, but the Sundin boys are waiting outside. Frank and Gösta, standing silently side by side. They both have the same straggly brown hair and small eyes. Broad shoulders, big hands.

  Behind them the congregation is waiting. A sea of staring eyes. Panic floods into Elsa’s pumping blood, merging them all into a single, malevolent mass before her eyes. An impenetrable wall of hate.

  She backs into the room, looking around wildly. There’s no other exit in there, only the shell of the girl who had once been her daughter, and the pastor.

  One of his hands is resting on the table, where a few stray sheets of paper lie. Elsa’s eyes catch on the top one. It’s a drawing, in crayons. Clumpy figures in different colors. And then spirals, jagged and uneven, running into each other.

  The room starts to spin.

  Elsa looks up.

  “It was you,” she says, but hardly any sound comes out. It’s no more than an exhalation.

  “Frank,” the pastor says softly, “Gösta. Would you please take Fru Kullman to the cellar under the parsonage? So that she can calm down.”

  All that Elsa can see is little Kristina. Little Kristina and her newborn, cloudy dark-blue eyes.

  Will they darken to Birgitta’s bottomless brown? Or will they slowly but surely fade to her father’s light storm-cloud gray?

  “It was you,” Elsa says again, and this time it’s audible. But it makes no difference. Rough hands have already locked on her arms, restraining her.

  Elsa’s eyes flit across the horde of faces, angels no more. They look like evil spirits, quiet and glaring.

  For a second she finds Staffan in the crowd.

  Her lips form a mute: “Please.”

  He looks down.

  She hears Birgitta’s cries grow to a scream outside the church.

  Then it cuts off abruptly, and silence is all that’s left.

  NOW

  I’m still bent forward on the seat when I hear a knock at the door.

  I sit up quickly and throw a glance at Tone in the corner. She doesn’t seem to have paid it any notice.

  “Come in,” I say.

  It’s Robert. He looks around the room and then at me.

  “Alice,” he says. He stops in the doorway, a touch too big for it, and I get up and walk over to him.

  He herds me out of the room and carefully closes the door behind him.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Max has been gone a really long time,” he says.

  “OK,” I say.

  “The church is only five minutes away.” The corners of his mouth draw stiff lines that will one day be etched permanently into his cheeks.

  “He’s probably just…” I shake my head. Think of the look on Max’s face. The disappointment verging on disgust.

  You’re so fucking selfish.

  “I think he just wanted to be alone,” I manage to squeeze out. “To process everything. Calm down.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Robert says, but that stressed, anxious look doesn’t shift from his face. “I just thought…”

  He shoves his hands deep into his pockets.

  “We can go look for him anyway,” I say. “If it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Yeah,” he says and nods. A hint of relief. “I just think … it’d be better if we were all here. Together.”

  I put my hand on his arm and nod.

  “Let’s go get him, then,” I say.

  “What do we do with her?” Robert asks, nodding at the door.

  “We can … lock the door,” I say, even though the thought of locking Tone up makes my stomach turn. “It’s not like we’ll be long. Like you said, the church is just around the corner.”

  I turn the doorknob carefully and open the door.

  “Tone?” I say. “We’re stepping out for a little while. But we’ll be back soon, OK? With something to eat.”

  She neither moves nor responds.

  I swallow.

  “Birgitta,” I say.

  This gets a response. A flash of eyes through her fringe. A short, vague sound that seems to come from deep in her throat.

  My stomach turns. I remember what she said about those weeks when reality was shut off, like a drape pulled over her mind, when she disappeared inside herself, into her own world.

  I thought I was in Silvertjärn. I heard voices. Sometimes I heard Birgitta.

  Her grandmother, though she didn’t know it at the time.

  Is she hearing her voice now, too?

  Or does she think she’s Birgitta?

  The question vibrates on my lips, but the moment passes.

  I close the door again and turn the key.

  “OK,” I say to Robert. “Let’s go.”

  He hangs back slightly, a small furrow between his light eyebrows.

  “What did you just call her?” he asks.

  I meet his gaze for a second and then look away.

  “Come on,” I say.

  * * *

  The sun is almost skimming the horizon as we take the road down to the church. The air is cold, despite the warm light, and it feels like there’ll be frost overnight. Some of the most pioneering clusters of the newly budded spring flowers seem to be wilting.

  When we reach the church the doors are ajar.

  “Max?” I call into the darkness, though my voice doesn’t really want to carry.

  No reply.

  I look at Robert, who slowly pushes the heavy doors. The hinges grate as they swing open.

  The pew we shoved in front of the door is still standing diagonally across the entrance a few feet in. One of our water bottles is sitting next to the remnants of our fire, and the thick, mildewy blankets we slept on are strewn over the floor. It looks as though we’ve come in, occupied, and desecrated the church. The only thing missing are a few empty beer cans.

  “Max?” Robert calls out. His voice echoes off the high ceiling, seemingly expanding in the emptiness and yet, paradoxically, made smaller by it. Weaker.

  “It’s us,” he goes on. “Alice and Robert. We just wanted to check if you needed any help.”

  Still no reply.

  I walk further into the church, even though my whole body is screaming at me to leave. The Jesus above the altar seems to be grinn
ing mockingly. How could I ever have thought he looked like he was in pain? His eyes are cruel, there’s something all-knowing and menacing in his gaze, and that thin mouth looks twisted into a frozen, self-satisfied parody of a smile.

  “Maybe he’s already gone,” I try. “Maybe he couldn’t find anything so went to find food somewhere else. Down to the square or something.”

  A walk to clear his head. To get the taste of me out of his mouth.

  The thought sends a stab of sorrow through my chest. I’m losing everyone, one by one. But maybe it isn’t Silvertjärn I’ve lost them to; maybe it was me all along.

  “Maybe,” Robert echoes. He walks forward at the same cautious, restrained pace as me.

  The sun is shining through the open doors from above the distant treetops behind us, making our shadows stretch out in front of us. They turn the entire church into an eerie imitation of life. Spindly limbs extending and moving in slow motion.

  “Max?” I call again, my voice curdling slightly. “Are you here?”

  Robert squats down next to the extinguished fire, then stands up again.

  “He’s been here, at least,” he says. “This is where we left the honey and the last tin of sardines this morning, and now they’re gone.”

  I look over toward the chapel. The door is closed. Did we leave it like that, or was it open when we left?

  I can’t remember.

  I don’t say anything, but Robert’s eyes follow mine. He nods.

  The fear starts to dawn within me—a ringing in my ears, a film over my tongue.

  We make our way past the rows of pews toward the small wooden door. Our shadows swell over it, merging together as a many-armed monster by the time we reach it. I deliberately avoid looking up at the crucifix; I’m too scared I might see the figure turn and pull a face.

  Everything is too still; a sort of stillness that only comes with the subtle vibration that sets into your skin when you sense a presence.

  Robert opens the door.

  It’s the very image of a quiet, frozen peace. The yellowed lace curtain across the window. The little table, unassuming Windsor chairs. The small, blue-and-white-striped rug by the kitchen counter. The lovely evening light that paints the room in lacy shadow patterns.

  The honey jar stands, prim and proper, on the table. The glass is thick and solid, with a faint tint of green, and the odd tiny air bubble along its heavy base. One of its edges is lined with blood and hair, like sticky oil paints smeared on with clumsy fingers.

  He is lying facedown, which is some sort of blessing. One of his legs is pulled up under him, his stained jeans dragged up over his pale, thin calf, and his arm is reaching out to the corner. As though he were trying to crawl away.

  I don’t need to wonder what has happened this time; there’s no need to study faint bruises on his neck, or the color of the whites of his eyes. The back of Max’s head is one big slop of blood, bone, hair, and something gray, spongy and gleaming. It wasn’t one well-aimed blow, or two. No: someone stood astride his struggling, lurching body and methodically hammered the honey jar onto him until he stopped moving.

  I don’t scream. I’m expecting to, but it never comes.

  I think of how his face had looked back at the train station, open and curious, as he had gazed down the tracks into the forest. Of his swinging gait when we first met, the awkwardness in his elbows, the oversized, ironic T-shirts he always wore. Of how his face had looked an hour ago, his eyes filled with rage, his tense lips pressed against each other.

  Of how beautifully those last rays of sunshine bounce off the blond hair on the crown of his head, the part that heavy jar didn’t reach where the skull has retained something of its shape.

  Far, far away I hear Robert lean over and puke on the floor, a shaky, abstract shape.

  The smell of his vomit pierces my haze. It’s sharp and offensive, and with it comes something else; the scent of what used to be Max.

  The scream builds in my chest but turns into something else, leaving my mouth as a dull groan.

  I don’t understand. How can he be dead? How can he be lying there with a smashed skull if Tone is locked in the house? How can he … Nobody could have …

  The figure in the rain.

  Emmy’s sea-green eyes looking straight into mine:

  “You saw somebody, didn’t you?”

  Tone’s pain-choked voice:

  “I heard something below us.”

  The laugh on the video.

  The scream over the walkie-talkie.

  Tone’s hand drawing a stick figure with long, straggly hair and a black-hole mouth.

  Something is very wrong.

  I back away, stumble, fall out of the door, and look up, up and left, at the crucifix. Jesus hasn’t turned to look at me. His dark, painted eyes are still staring straight ahead, out over the village. Out over Silvertjärn.

  Robert’s hand is covering his mouth. He follows me back into the church, his movements dazed and jerky, the shock written on his face in big, soundless letters.

  “She was right,” I say, my lips numb. “You were right. We’re not alone here.”

  THEN

  Elsa had heard the distant whistle of the train as it pulled out of the station.

  She should have felt something at her last hope leaving Silvertjärn, but she found nothing. There’s nothing left in her.

  It’s so dark down here that she can’t make out anything at all. She has already felt her way along the cold, damp earth, around the rough stone walls and up the small staircase; she has pounded on the door and screamed, but it did nothing, and her pounding hands had felt weak and useless.

  Where would she even go if she did manage to get out?

  Before that whistle of the train, she had had no idea how much time had passed. It had felt as though she had spent several days down here in the parsonage cellar, but that shrill whistle had brought some of her senses back to her. A few hours have passed since then. It must be around five or six in the afternoon now.

  What is going to happen to her?

  Elsa has been trying not to dwell on that. Nor on what will become of Birgitta and Kristina. But down here her thoughts spin beyond her control. She’s just as powerless to stop them as she is to break down that impenetrable door up there.

  Sometimes the odd shard of hope glimmers before her.

  Perhaps they’re just keeping her down here until evening; perhaps Margareta will start to wonder why their letters have stopped; perhaps Staffan will listen to reason.

  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

  Hunger has already come and gone. All that remains now is the thirst, which has gone from a dry sensation in her throat to a steady, prolonged pain in her head and stomach. It’s cooler down here than out in the sun, but the August heat has nevertheless forced its way inside. When she closes her eyes now she sees silver lightning bolts before her.

  The creak of the door makes her start. Dazzled by the light of the rectangular opening, she shields her eyes with her hand.

  “Fru Kullman,” says a young man’s voice. It’s dull and monotonous, unfamiliar to Elsa’s ears.

  Elsa tries to peer through her fingers, but against the light it’s impossible to make out who it is.

  “Fru Kullman,” the voice repeats. “Don’t make me come down there to get you.”

  Her ears may be unused to human voices, but Elsa can still tell a threat when she hears one.

  Her legs aching, Elsa gets to her feet and climbs the staircase. They don’t want to carry her, but whether that’s down to the thirst, hunger, or darkness, she can’t tell.

  When Elsa reaches the top of the staircase she has a wild urge to try to run, but the young man—who in the light turns out to be Frank Sundin—takes a steely, painful grip of her arm. He hardly looks at Elsa before he starts walking. She feels dazed and confused, but she does her best to keep up with him and not to fall.

  It seems hopeless, but she has to try:

  “Frank,” she begs
him, “you don’t have to do this. If you let me go now you can say I broke free and ran off into the forest. You don’t have to…”

  He neither replies nor looks at her. Instead he jerks her arm so hard that her shoulder almost pops out of its joint and, with a yelp like a kicked dog, she goes quiet.

  Elsa can’t tell where they’re going. They have already passed the church, and are now walking down toward the square. Where is he taking her? The streets are eerily empty. Elsa doesn’t spot a single person on the way. The windows gape darkly, and the doors stand shut, despite the hot, dry afternoon.

  When they pass her house she looks away.

  The murmur swells up ahead of Elsa before she sees the horde. By now she is faint from thirst and hunger, her throat is swollen, and her head is throbbing. It’s only when they start to near the square, when the country lane is met by the cobblestones, that she realizes where all of Silvertjärn is.

  They are all thronging into the square, spilling out into the surrounding streets and houses. When Elsa and Frank approach, the horde falls silent and makes way for them. Elsa searches for a familiar face, someone to hold on to, but by now they are all as good as strangers to her. These faces that she has known her whole life: the young men and women she cradled in her arms as babies; the friends she comforted and advised; the people who one month, one week, even one day ago would have chatted happily to her in the street, who would have asked after Margareta’s news down south, and if she’d be bringing the little one up to visit anytime soon.

  All of them watch Elsa in silence. All of them let them pass.

  After a few steps Elsa lowers her eyes to the cobblestones and stares at her feet. The shame envelops her like a heavy blanket. It’s those staring eyes. She’s unsure if it’s her own shame she feels or theirs; if she’s ashamed of herself for letting them lead her like a dog, or of all of them. Of what they’ve become.

  When Elsa hears the sound she looks up. She can’t contain the scream that tears from her throat.

  “Birgitta!”

  The cobblestones in the middle of the square have been torn from the ground, exposing the earth beneath them like a sore. In the soft gash of soil stands a thick pole, a birch shorn of bark and branches.