The Shapeshifters (10 page)

‘Have you eaten breakfast?' she asked, pinching off a geranium leaf.

After thinking for a moment Lars held up the ginger biscuit. Only one corner of the star remained.

‘What would you like?' Susso asked, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge. When there was no reply she called:

‘Shall I fry a couple of eggs?'

While she stood by the stove under an extractor fan roaring away at storm force, the old man sat at the kitchen table with the palms of his hands resting flat on the
Norrländskan
newspaper, waiting. When the silence had gone on for too long Susso had to bring it to an end.

‘Well, Lars?' she said, knocking the spatula against the frying pan.

‘Why not?' came the reply.

Susso put salt and pepper on the eggs, slid the two glistening eyes onto a plate and, after moving the newspaper out of the way, placed them in front of him on the table.

After the coffee had been brewed and poured into the cups she read the newspaper out loud to Lars. Slumped at the table, the old man studied his fingers. They were well worn, gnarled and the colour of bronze, with cracks around the nails. He had owned reindeer once and also worked as a reindeer herder for many years.

Susso soon tired of her voice, which was nasal from her blocked nose, and put down the paper. What about doing the crossword? Lars nodded and Susso turned the newspaper so that they could both see the puzzle. They sat for a while, thinking, Susso wiping her nose repeatedly on sheets of kitchen roll. Eventually she sat up straight. This was not a good idea. She could pass on her cold to him if they sat like this, almost cheek to cheek. They would have to do the sudoku instead because numbers were not as hard to read upside down, or so she thought, and they could sit opposite each other. Lars had the paper the right way up, but to compensate it was closer to Susso. It was a compromise.

From time to time the old man's hand came inching over the paper and his index finger scraped against a square where he thought a number might fit, but he never said which number he was thinking of, so it wasn't much help. It confused her even more.

After a while she said:

‘Have you ever been to Vaikijaur, Lars?'

She had to repeat her question, and he slowly shook his head and whispered something she couldn't hear. Perhaps it wasn't even in Swedish.

‘I was there yesterday,' she said.

‘Yesterday?' he said. ‘No . . .'

‘I was there,' she said, raising her voice. ‘Yesterday. I met someone who had seen a little old man in her garden. Really little, I mean. About one metre tall. She thought he might be a gnome.'

Lars nodded.

‘I set up a wildlife camera. So with a bit of luck I'll get a picture of him and then I can show you what a real gnome looks like. If he comes back, that is.'

‘Oh, he will.'

‘Do you think so?'

She reached out for the coffee pot and filled the cups.

Horizontal lines filled the old man's forehead.

‘You'll get to the bottom of it,' he said, adding: ‘Ossus.'

Susso raised her eyebrows, met his gaze and saw the twinkle in his eyes.

Then she looked down at her jumper and the swell of her left breast. She gave a lopsided smile. The flesh under her chin fell in folds as she undid the small safety pin on the yellow woollen jumper and turned her name badge the right way round.

‘So you can read from that angle after all,' she said. ‘Well then, we don't have to carry on with this boring sudoku.'

She leafed through the newspaper, folded it and flattened down the page containing the crossword.

‘Let's get going!'

 

 

Seved stood on the veranda with his hands in the pockets of his down jacket, looking in the direction of Hybblet. It looked the same as usual: unlit windows with closed curtains, the long palisade of fir trees behind and the bulging drift of snow on the porch roof that formed the same shape every year. That was both strange but not strange.

The fact that Ejvor was sitting inside there, staring at the wall, was impossible for him to grasp, even though the sight of her lifeless body had been etched so deeply into his memory that he would never forget it. She ought to be in the kitchen now, or standing in the bathroom, pulling washing out of the machine and complaining about how badly it rinsed the clothes. Or leaning over the kitchen table with a small cup of coffee, reading the paper. Humming a Christmas song. All those songs she had inside her! Who had taught her? He didn't know because he knew nothing about her. He realised that now. And it was too late. She would fade away and be nothing more than an imprint inside him. An imprint alongside the one he already had, one that he had never mentioned to anyone.

He had almost made it across the yard when his legs refused to carry him any further. Later, when Signe and Börje had returned, the headlights of the Isuzu had picked him out slumped in the snow. Signe had hurried to help him up, but he had not wanted
her to touch him and had wrenched himself free.

Afterwards Börje had come up to him, his ski hat pulled down over his ears and his mouth grim. He had left the engine running because he knew he might have to drive off immediately. When he had managed to get enough out of Seved to grasp what had happened he stood for a while, glowering at Hybblet, before cutting across the yard and walking up the steps to the veranda. He did not venture any further.

He leaned forwards and, after peering in through the doorway, he set off back to the car, opened a door and took out a box, which he carried in both hands to the house. A few seconds later he came out, shutting the door after him, quietly but securely.

‘She can stay there,' he said.

‘Aren't you going to bar the door?'

‘No, that'll make it worse. We'll sleep in the car tonight.'

She can stay there.

Seved knew why. Of course he did. He knew it was a safety measure and nothing else. Börje was no coward. His desire to get Ejvor out of the house was at least as strong as Seved's.

But he did not want to take the risk. The risk of being inside there now.

The only thing they could do was keep out of the way.

They had driven down the drive and parked on the other side of the barrier. Wrapped in quilts over their jackets they had shivered through the night, Börje in the front with his large hooked nose pointing up at the roof, and Seved and Signe in the back.

He had heard Börje crying on the other side of the mesh panel, muted and almost silently. Seved had pressed his face hard against the cold plastic of the truck and had held a clenched fist to his
ear. He had never heard Börje cry before and he didn't want to hear it. Not this close. Not now.

They hadn't been able to sleep much. As it began to get light he had no memory of being anything other than awake, but he must have slept because there had been dreams. He had seen things, but most of all it was the sound that lingered. The noise. As if someone had been bellowing continuously inside his head.

By now it was one o'clock, and Börje was in the leather armchair in the sitting room, his eyes closed. His head, with its combed-back greying hair curling at the nape, was lolling slightly to one side and his lips had fallen apart. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, black with silver-grey stripes. It was unbuttoned at the throat and a tuft of long, wiry chest hair poked out. Around his wrist he wore a leather strap with plaited pewter and a reindeer-antler button. He was clasping his left wrist and his sharp elbows stuck out on either side of the armrests.

Seved stood for a moment, watching him. He did not know whether to let him sleep or not. Leave him in peace. No doubt he was deeply distressed. But he felt they ought to be doing something because soon it would be dark again. One of the hares was lying asleep on the olive-green velour sofa, and Seved shoved it roughly to the floor before he sat down. The animal, afraid, scuttled away across the wooden floor, and the sound made Börje open his eyes.

His forehead was shiny, with sweat at the hairline.

‘What's the time?' he mumbled, rubbing his face with the palm of his hand.

‘She can't be left sitting there any longer,' said Seved.

Börje's nostrils flared as he filled his lungs with air, which he immediately exhaled in a snort. He righted himself in the chair.
It was incomprehensible that he had chosen to sleep sitting up after spending all night in a car, although the intention had not been to sleep. He grabbed a half-litre plastic bottle from the floor. It had once been filled with Diet Coke but now it contained something else.

‘Börje,' said Seved, ‘she can't be left there.'

Börje unscrewed the cap and held it as he drank. After he had swallowed and cleared his throat he said:

‘Go in and get her then.'

Seved folded his arms.

‘It's light now,' he said. ‘There's no danger.'

Börje snorted. Or it could have been a laugh.

‘If only it was that easy,' he said, digging out his mobile from the pocket of jeans that were too tight on him. He pressed the keypad a few times with his thumb and then sat with his eyes fixed on the dusty television screen. It was almost as if he had fallen sleep again, because his eyelids were closed.

‘What do you mean?'

Without opening his eyes Börje said slowly:

‘We don't know why they did it. Hopefully it was an accident, a game that went too far, and they put her there because they didn't know what else to do with her.'

Then he sat up and threw the mobile onto the smoke-coloured glass tabletop.

‘But it could also mean they want to keep her.'

‘Keep . . .'

Börje nodded.

‘And that would make it dangerous to move her.'

Seved had to think for a while before he understood what Börje meant.

Keep her. A corpse to eat as required.

That made him feel intensely nauseous and he tried to push the idea to the back of his mind.

‘What shall we do then?' he said, sounding defeated.

‘Nothing,' answered Börje. ‘Lennart will be here in an hour or so. Before three, he said. And until then we won't do a single damn thing. Have you got that?'

Seved nodded and lowered his eyes.

‘What about the little shapeshifters then? Won't that help?'

Börje shrugged.

‘A little, maybe. But it's not a long-term solution.'

‘I don't understand it. Why would they do such a thing? To her?'

‘It's what happens,' said Börje. ‘When they don't get their own way. When we don't give them what they need.'

And he looked at Seved with sleepy, red-rimmed eyes.

‘It's all our fault, this is.'

 

 

It had been dark for a long time when the dogs started barking. Seved stepped out onto the veranda and soon he could see the headlights down on the road, nosing their way through the darkness. He hadn't thought he could be filled with anything other than apprehension at the sight of Lennart's car, but now he was. If it wasn't gratitude he felt, then it was not far from it. He pulled the door shut behind him and called out:

‘He's coming!'

Börje sat in the kitchen eating spaghetti, a sticky, pale-yellow skein that he was jabbing with a fork. He hadn't even put any sauce on it and he was drinking strong beer directly from the can.

They heard the car pull up and the six-cylinder engine fall silent. After a couple of minutes had passed and no heavy footsteps had been heard on the veranda, Seved walked over to the window. The car, a large Mercedes with a snout of additional lights, was parked outside Hybblet. The rear section of the champagne-coloured roof shimmered in the glow from the barn's lamp. He had gone straight in. Totally unafraid. But then there was no time to lose.

‘Did you say where she was sitting?'

Börje didn't answer. Without looking up from his plate he said:

‘Tell Signe to come down.'

Seved went into the hall to shout, but Signe was already on her
way down the stairs. She had taken a shower and her body exuded the sweet fragrance of aloe vera.

He had made a clumsy attempt to talk to her during the day but had not got very far. He had only heard the sound of his own voice, the tremulous uncertainty of it, the empty words he had managed to stutter. Afterwards he wondered if she blamed him, if she thought he ought to have stopped Ejvor from going into Hybblet. That was probably what he was fishing for: confirmation that it was not his fault. It might be something of a consolation to hear those words. But she had said nothing. Now she was looking at Börje with a blank expression. The groove in her dry lower lip looked like a cut. She had been crying. Her eyes were swollen.

‘We'll be talking down here for a while,' said Börje, ‘so stay up there. Do you hear?'

She went back up without saying anything, thumping her feet on the stairs as she went.

Seved rinsed out the percolator and filled it with water, and because he couldn't find the measure he scooped up the coffee with a tablespoon. He pressed the switch with his thumb. There was some spaghetti left in the yellow plastic strainer standing in the sink on top of a pile of unwashed plates and cups. He had eaten nothing himself all day. The very thought of food made him feel nauseous. The memory of the smell of rotting meat kept threatening to well up inside him, and it made him gag.

The tall, heavy man stood in the door frame with his head bowed, glaring at them from behind his tinted glasses. His snow-white hair was combed in a sweaty side parting. His military-green thermal jacket was unbuttoned and the pocket flaps were creased. His
left hand, which was wrapped inside a grubby light-blue sleeping bag case, was pressed to his chest.

Not until Lennart had stepped into the kitchen did Seved realise he had someone with him: a stooped man who hung back in the hallway. The top of his head was completely bald but his brown wavy hair streaked with grey fell down at the sides to join a beard that had turned white at the tip.