I Am Behind You (54 page)

A shudder runs down Majvor's spine, and as if he can read her mind—perhaps he
can
read her mind—Peter Himmelstrand says: ‘No idea. Maybe, maybe not. But it's yours now. Do you know what you want?'

The words stick in Majvor's throat, so she merely nods.

‘Excellent. Off you go, then. Life is short.'

He starts to laugh, and once again the laughter turns into a bout of coughing, much worse this time. Majvor turns and walks away. When the coughing subsides, she stops and says: ‘By the way, I love “This Is How Love Begins” by Björn and Agnetha. Fantastic song. Thank you.'

‘Yeah, yeah,' Peter Himmelstrand's voice says from the darkness. ‘Didn't help much, did it? Good luck.'

Majvor takes a few steps and finds herself back in the light. She clicks open the cylinder, ejects the two spent cartridges and puts them in her pocket, flicks the cylinder shut and spins it so that there is a bullet in front of the hammer. It is as if she has never done anything else.

*

Carina is slumped in the passenger seat, her hands resting limply in her lap. When Stefan strokes her head, she doesn't react. He glances at her left wrist, which is covered in angry red bite marks, and asks: ‘What were you thinking?'

There is no response, and Stefan looks towards the horizon, where a dark cloud is growing bigger and bigger, as if a gigantic black disc is being inexorably pushed up out of the green grass.

Hurry.

He doesn't know if he is doing the right thing, if this was what Emil meant, but he can see no alternative. He turns to the back seat, where Emil is lying quietly, surrounded by his cuddly toys. His ribcage is moving and his feet are twitching.

‘Get rid of me,' Carina says. ‘Get rid of me and everything will be fine.'

‘What are you talking about?'

Carina's voice is a monotone as she goes on: ‘It's what I've been thinking. All day. That I have to go. All the bad stuff I've done. I'm the one who's marked us. I'm the one who has to pay.'

‘Carina, we don't know that.'

‘It was a bet.'

‘What was?'

‘When I kissed you. My friends scraped together two hundred kronor. Which I would get if I kissed you.'

The darkness is growing fast, and already covers such a large part of the sky that the light inside the car is beginning to fail. Stefan thinks back to that evening by the jetty. How it began, how it ended. He clears his throat and says: ‘In that case I'd better write and say thank you.'

‘Who to?'

‘Your stuck-up friends. Who would have thought something good would come from them? I'll send them a postcard.'

‘But Stefan, you don't understand…'

‘I understand perfectly. I also understand that if they hadn't scraped together that money, I would never have stood on the stairs
watching you and Emil in the kitchen.'

‘What? When?'

It is like dusk now, and Stefan can see that the darkness has a clearly defined edge approximately twenty metres in front of the car. He pulls up, turns to Carina, takes her head between his hands and says: ‘God
did
make the little green apples. We're sticking to that, okay? I love you.'

Together they lift Emil out of the car, still lying on the sofa cushion, and carry him towards the darkness.

‘Stefan,' Carina says. ‘Why are we doing this?'

Stefan really wishes he had a good answer. Something else about little green apples, about faith, hope, love, or the road we have to travel. But when he looks down at his son's broken, struggling body, there are no such answers. They must go into the darkness because they are already in darkness. Because there is nothing else left.

*

Jimmy Stewart is standing on the field with his chin raised as if he is checking out the lie of the land. Or sniffing the air. As Majvor walks towards him he turns and sets off in the same direction from which they came.

‘Hey you!' Majvor shouts. ‘Stop right there!'

She has a real weakness for cowboy films. She has seen all of Jimmy's, of course, but also everything featuring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. She knows this scene.

The two men meeting in the middle of nowhere. Eyes locked, getting the measure of one another. Who will draw first? Majvor daren't risk that kind of confrontation. For a start she doesn't have a holster, and even if the figure in front of her isn't Will Lockhart, she knows that Jimmy Stewart was also a competent marksman in real life.

In real life?

Honestly, a person could die laughing. Majvor doesn't even wait
for Jimmy to turn around; she simply raises the revolver, pulls back the hammer, aims at his back and fires.

BANG!

She was expecting the recoil, and made sure she was holding the gun firmly. It was nowhere near enough. The impact that travels from her wrist and all the way up her arm makes the barrel jerk upwards. It feels as if someone has punched her hard, and she staggers.

Her ears are buzzing as she straightens up and rubs her shoulder. Jimmy is facing her now, taking his time as he draws his gun and aims at Majvor, his arm outstretched. This is no duel. It is more like an execution.

Fate gives her one last chance as she throws herself to the ground a fraction of a second before the gun goes off.

If she had thought that none of this was real and therefore she couldn't be shot here, that idea is swept away by the sound of the bullet whining past just above her ear. The next one will find its mark, and as Majvor lands painfully on her belly, she knows that essentially she is already dead. Shot by Jimmy Stewart.

However, she is determined to play this lethal game to its conclusion. She grips the revolver with two hands, supporting herself on her elbows, and aims at Jimmy, who is slowly lowering the barrel of his gun in her direction. A smile plays across his lips as he pulls back the hammer.

Majvor doesn't have time for such niceties; she simply pulls the trigger as hard as she can. The hammer is pushed backwards and slams down on the bullet.

BANG!

As soon as she fires, she knows that her aim is true. Jimmy Stewart's eyes widen and he clutches his chest.

She doesn't know what she was expecting. Did she think he would drop to his knees, fall backwards, whisper a few last words? That's not what happens. Jimmy's face begins to dissolve. His clothes become as transparent as gossamer, and the revolver which was so lethal just seconds ago fuses with his hand and disintegrates.

In no time the Man from Laramie has disappeared, and in his place a smooth, white, only vaguely humanoid creature is standing looking at her. It is still wearing a hat, which means the hat must be similar to the gun in Majvor's hand. Something that actually exists.

As Majvor gets to her feet and walks towards the white creature, revolver at the ready, the last vestiges of shape and colour disappear, and there is nothing left of Jimmy Stewart.

‘The hat,' she says, pointing the gun at the creature's head. This time she allows herself time to pull back the hammer. ‘The hat, if you don't mind.'

If her bullet really did penetrate the heart, there is no longer any sign of a wound. The skin is just as white and smooth as over the rest of the body. Presumably the white creature cannot be killed, but perhaps it still has the capacity to feel pain, because it grabs the hat by the brim and throws it on the ground in front of Majvor.

They look one another in the eye, whereupon the creature turns and sets off along its eternal track. Majvor bends down and picks up the hat.

What do you want, Majvor?

The feeling she had turns to certainty as she puts on the hat, and finds that it fits perfectly. It's just a shame the gun belt disappeared like that. It would have felt good, buckling it around her hips.

How stupid. How wrong can you be.

For more than half her life, Majvor has sighed over James Stewart, indulged herself in half-baked fantasies about what it would be like to be with him, just once.

Typical woman
, she thinks.

Because her longing wasn't actually about being
with
James Stewart, it was about
being
James Stewart.

Now she has won that right. Won it fair and square, with the smell of gunpowder and her skill with a gun. Majvor tips back her hat and allows the hand holding the revolver to dangle by her side as she heads out into the wilderness.

*

Emil doesn't know how long he has been walking when the darkness thickens and begins to solidify. It is becoming harder to breathe. When Emil waves his arms he can feel the darkness touching his hands, like millions of tiny strands of gossamer or candy floss, getting more and more dense. He is gasping for air and he can feel something being
pressed down
, just like in
Star Wars
when they are in the trash compactor and the walls are closing in so that they will all be crushed to death.

The darkness is tightening around him, and an image comes into his mind. He gets the idea that he is about to be
squeezed out
. That there is another Emil in here, and there isn't room for both of them. One of them will have to be squeezed out.

Emil doesn't want to be squeezed out, it's bound to hurt, just like being
run over by a caravan
. He remembers now. Molly, Darth Maul, his shirt getting trapped, the wheel rolling over his chest.

The pressure is coming from all directions. Emil can't even get enough air to scream. He falls to the ground and wraps his arms around his body as the vice tightens still further. He can't hear a thing, and he rocks back and forth, until suddenly he is not hugging himself, but his cuddly toys. He is no longer rocking himself, he is being rocked. Back and forth. Whatever he is lying on is rocking. A cushion.

‘Mummy?' he says. ‘Daddy?'

At long last they are with him in the darkness, patting him, stroking him, kissing him. He can't see them, but he can hear their voices; he recognises their hands and their smell.
Dark soon.
Emil gets up from the cushion and says: ‘We have to go. Before it gets dark.'

Mummy and Daddy's hands, which have mostly been caressing his face, are now moving over his body. There are tears in Daddy's voice as he says: ‘Sweetheart, you're…you're whole again.'

‘You were injured,' Mummy says. ‘You were very badly injured, you were…' Then she starts crying too.

‘That was the other one,' Emil says. He knows what he means, but it's hard to explain, and there isn't time. ‘Stop crying,' he says instead, tucking his cuddly toys inside his shirt. ‘We have to find the door.'

Emil has no idea which direction to take. There are no directions here. But they set off. Mummy is holding one of his hands and Daddy the other. It's nice. The darkness is terrible and they are as lost as it is possible to be, but it is better to be in the darkness with Mummy and Daddy than to be alone in the light. Emil tells them about the campsite, about the Beetle and the Egg. About the door that was closed, and the faint light around the opening. He knows it sounds really weird, but Mummy and Daddy believe him.

They walk and walk, and even though Mummy and Daddy are with him now, a lump forms in Emil's throat. He doesn't know how much time has passed, but he is afraid it is far too long. What was it the man said?
I was thinking of packing up and moving on.
Emil has no idea what that means, but he fears the worst and the lump grows.

‘There,' Daddy says. ‘What's that?'

It is impossible to see in which direction he is looking. They stop.

‘Where?' Emil asks.

Daddy places his fingers on Emil's temples and gently turns his head to the left. Emil screws up his eyes. He can just make out something red, a faint glow like the dying embers of an open fire.

Emil grabs Daddy's hand again and drags him and Mummy towards the glow; as they get closer it takes on the form of a rectangle, flickering at the edges as if it is about to sink into the darkness. When they are standing right in front of it, Emil lets go of Mummy and Daddy's hands and gropes until he finds the handle. He pushes it down and the door opens.

The campsite is burnished by the last moments of twilight, a dark red band across the top of the pine trees. Emil pulls Mummy and Daddy out of the little caravan. They stagger a short distance, then stop and blink in the light, which grows dimmer as their eyes become accustomed to it.

Mummy and Daddy can't even speak. As they look around they
are making noises that mean nothing; they don't seem to hear the caravan door closing behind them. Only Emil turns back.

It isn't the same man this time, the one who was knitting. It's the man with the big caravan, the one who was horrible to his dog. He looks nastily at Emil and says: ‘You were lucky there.'

Now Mummy and Daddy turn around too. ‘Donald?' Daddy says.

Donald shrugs and folds up the camping chair. In spite of all the strange things that have happened, Emil still can't help being surprised when Donald walks over to the car, opens the
bonnet
, and puts the chair inside, where the engine ought to be. Then he remembers: it's a Beetle. The engine is at the back.

Donald is just about to get into the car, but Daddy takes a few unsteady steps towards him.

‘Hang on,' he says. ‘Wait, what…was it
you
that…?'

‘Nope,' Donald says. ‘But I'm in the driving seat now. Until further notice.'

Daddy's mouth is hanging open like a fish on dry land. Emil understands; he has so many questions that it's like searching for water when there isn't any water. The only words Daddy can manage as Donald settles down behind the wheel are: ‘But why?'

Donald shakes his head. ‘Good luck with working that one out.' Then he closes the door and starts the engine; they can hear it humming away in the boot, which probably isn't called the boot in this instance. The car moves away, towing the caravan along behind.