Handling the Undead (34 page)

After five minutes it started to abate. The horrible thoughts dissipated and ebbed away. After ten minutes she dared to open her eyes, and realised that she had been overlooked. A couple of police officers were just leaving the courtyard. A man was sitting outside a door, weeping. He had scratches in his face and splotches of blood on his shirt collar. As Flora watched, an emergency worker came over to attend to the man's cuts.

Flora lay absolutely still. In her black clothes she was a shadow on the bench. If she moved she would become a human, and humans had to leave.

Once the wounds had been dressed, the paramedic supported the man under an arm and led him away. The man walked as if there was a yoke across his shoulders and he was thinking of his mother, her love, and her nails-polished and painted a cherry red. She had always been particular about her nails, even during her years of illness. When all other dignity was taken from her bit by bit she still insisted that her nails be groomed and painted cherry red. These nails. One of them had been broken off when she scratched him.

Flora waited until they had left the courtyard and then peeked out. The Power told her there was no living being close by, but everything was so

strange here she could not be sure.

No person in sight. She crawled out and ran through the passageway to the next courtyard. She had to wait a couple of minutes there for a few more people to leave. One of them was a psychologist or something like that, and she was seriously considering suicide when she got home. Inject herself with an overdose of morphine. She had no family. Neither here nor anywhere else.

It was a quarter to two when Flora gently knocked on Peter's window and was let in. By that time there was not a single living consciousness left in the area.

[
Daily Echo
14.00J

... have no explanation for the events at the Heath. Police and medical personnel were forced to evacuate the area shortly after one o'clock. Twelve people sustained injuries-three seriouslyafter having been attacked by the reliving. The Heath will remain closed to the public for the time being ...

Summary [Dept. Soc. Affairs; CLASSIFIEDJ

... in short, it is our conviction that the reliving are using up their intracellular resources at a rapid pace. If the present rate is taken as a guideline, it can be predicted that the resources will be exhausted in at most a week, in certain cases significantly earlier.

That is to say, if nothing is done, the reliving will be burned out in one week-for want of a better terminology.

At present we have no solution.

It may be added that we wonder if such a solution is to be wished for.

[
Daily Echo
, 16.00J

... have placed the Heath under a similar quarantine. A few medical personnel will remain in the area, but at present there are no plans for continued rehabilitation.

17 August II

The Fisher

Labbskar Island 16.45

The shadows had grown long by the time Mahler rose from his bolt-hole and walked back to the cottage. His body ached from the extended period of sitting on rock. He had stayed away longer than it took him to calm down. He had wanted to make a protest, to give Anna a taste of how it would be if he, superfluous as he was, were gone.

On the rocks outside the house there was an old drying rack for nets, three large T-shapes with hooks. Anna was standing under one of them, humming and hanging up Elias' clothes, which she had washed with soap and salt water. She looked thoroughly content, not anxious as Mahler had hoped.

She heard his footsteps on the rock and turned around. 'Hello,' she said. 'Where have you been?'

Mahler waved vaguely with his hand and Anna tilted her head, taking stock of him.

As if I were a child,
Mahler thought and Anna chuckled, nodding. The low sun gleamed momentarily in her eye.

'Have you found any water?' he asked.

'No.'

'And that doesn't worry you?'

'Yes, of course, but ... ' she shrugged and hung up two tiny socks

on the same hook.

'But what?'

'I thought you'd go and get some.'

'Maybe I don't feel like it.'

'Well, in that case you'll have to show me how the motor works.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

Anna shot him a look, don't be ridiculous yourself, and Mahler stomped into the house. The largest lifejacket was too small for him, he looked like a giant baby when he pulled the strap across his tummy, so he decided to forgo the vest. Everything seemed to matter less, all of a sudden. He looked in on Elias, lying in the bed under the troll painting. He felt no particular desire to go to him. He picked up the water container and walked out.

'Well then,' he said. 'I guess I'm off.'

Anna had finished hanging up the washing. She crouched down with her hands on her knees.

'Dad,' she said in mild tone of voice. 'Stop it.'

'Stop what?'

'Just stop. You don't have to.'

Mahler walked past her down to the boat. Anna said,

'Drive carefully.'

'Sure, sure.'

When the sound of the engine had died away between the islands, Anna lay on her back on the sun-baked rock, shifting around so the warmth would reach as much of her skin as possible. When she had lain like this for a while she went in and got Elias, putting him next to her on the rock, wrapped in the blanket.

She turned on her side, cradling her head in her hand and focusing on a point in the middle of his black-brown blotchy forehead.

Elias?

The answer she received was not articulated in words. It wasn't even an answer, more of a mute affirmation: I am here. It had happened a couple of times recently that Elias had actually talked to her, the last time when she was mowing the lawn as her father was doing his meaningless exercises.

She had been picking a pebble out of the handmower when Elias' clear, high-pitched voice filled her head.

Mummy, come! Grandad is angry. I am going to ...

Elias did not get any further before his voice was drowned out by a piercing, whining sound. When she reached the house Elias was lying on the floor with the chair on top of him and the whining sound vanished just as the contact with him was severed.

The time before, it had been in the middle of the night. She was not sleeping much and when she did drop off it was from sheer exhaustion. It was difficult to sleep when she knew Elias was lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling; that she was leaving him alone when she disappeared into the closed room of sleep.

She had been lying on the mattress next to Elias' bed when she was awakened by his voice. She jerked, sat up and looked at him as he lay in bed, his eyes open.

'Elias, did you say something?'

Mummy ...

'Yes?'

I don't want to.

'What is it you don't want?'

Don't want to be here.

'You don't want to be in this cottage?'

No. Don't want to be ... here.

They had not been able to get any further before the whining sound had gotten louder. Until it started to get painful, she could feel physically how Elias drew back, disappearing into himself. Something left him for a moment as he talked to her; as soon as he pulled it back they could only communicate without words, weakly.

Another thing.

Every time Elias Withdrew, it was from fear. She felt it. What Elias was afraid of was connected with that whining sound.

Out in the sunshine on the rock, with his mummified face sticking out of the blanket, it was clear, terribly clear, that Elias' body was just the shell that people always spoke of. A skin, dried and shrivelled, that enclosed something else, unnameable and not of this world. The boy Elias who had liked the swings and loved nectarines no longer existed and would not Come back She had understood this even in those first minutes in Mahler's bedroom in Vallingby.

And yet, and yet ...

She was standing on her own two feet now. She was hanging up laundry and humming songs, which she would never have done a week ago. Why?

Because now she knew that death was not the end.

All those times that she had gone to Rkksta and sat by the grave, lain on the grave, whispered to the grave. At that point she had known that his body was down there but also known that he could not hear her, that nothing of him was really left. That Elias had only been the sum of swings, nectarines, Legos, smiles, grumpiness and 'Mummy, give me another goodnight kiss.' When all that had gone, only memories were left.

She had been wrong. Completely wrong, and that was the reason she was humming. Elias was dead. Elias wasn't gone.

She opened the blankets a little, letting in a bit of air. Elias still smelled bad but not like in the beginning. As if whatever it was that . smelled bad had been ... used up.

'What is it you are afraid of?'

No answer. She flapped the pyjama top Over his stomach and a puff of stale air was released. When the clothes had dried she would change him. They lay on the rocks until the Sun sank into the sea of Aland and the cooler breezes began to blow in. Then Anna carried Elias inside again.

The bedclothes smelled mildewed, so she took them out and hung them in an alder tree close to the house. She found an empty kerosene lamp and filled it with fuel for the evening. Checked the fireplace by lighting a sheet of newspaper, placed it on the hearth. The smoke came in. The chimney had probably been closed off. Maybe a bird had built a nest.

Anna made a couple of caviar-spread sandwiches in the kitchen, poured a glass of lukewarm milk and walked out and sat on the rock. When she had finished eating the sanwiches she walked down to the water's edge to examine the large, silver-coloured object, halfconcealed in the grass, that had caught her eye a couple of times.

At first she did not understand what it was. A large cylinder covered in holes. Something you tossed into the air, took a picture of and claimed it was a UFO. Then she realised it was the drum of a washing machine, that it had been used as a fish safe.

She walked along the shore, found an empty tube of shaving cream and a beer can. The clouds were starting to get pink and she thought Mahler would be coming soon.

To get a better view of the sunset, as well as her father, she walked to the cairn on top of the hill behind the house. The view was fantastic. Even though the hill was only a couple of metres higher than the house, it gave her a clear view over all of the nearby islands.

Seen from the side, the mass of evening clouds became one big fluffy blanket draped over the low islands, reflected in a sea of blood. To the east there was nothing between the watcher and the horizon. She understood perfectly why people had once believed that the world was flat, that the horizon was an edge beyond which the great Nothingness lay.

She listened. No engine sounds.

When she stood here like this with a view of the whole wide world, it seemed incredible to her that her father would even be able to find his way back here. The world was so infinitely vast.

What is that?

She trained her gaze on a cluster of trees and bushes in a hollow on the other side of the island. She thought she'd seen something moving there. Yes. There was a rustle, and a flash of something White that disappeared again.

White? What kind of animals are white?

Only animals that live where there's snow. Except cats, of course.

And dogs. Could it be a cat? Forgotten or inadvertently left behind. Maybe it had fallen off a boat, managed to make its way to land.

She started to walk toward the hollow, then stopped.

It had been larger than a cat. More like a dog. A dog that had fallen off a boat and ... gone wild.

She turned and walked quickly back to the cottage. Paused outside the door and listened one last time. It had to be past eight o'clock, why didn't her father come?

She went in, closing the door behind her. It slid open. The lock was gone. She took a broom and threaded it through the handle, jamming the end up against the wall. It was worthless as a lock, but an animal would not be able to get in.

The more she thought about it, the more anxious she became.

It wasn't an animal. It was a person.

She stood at the door and listened. Nothing. Just a lone blackbird trying to sound like a lot of other birds simultaneously.

She could feel her heart, insistent, pumping faster and more emphatically. She was getting worked up Over nothing. It was just that she was alone with Elias and couldn't get away from here-it was putting ghosts in her head. There's no problem balancing on a piece of wood ten centimetres wide when it's lying on the ground, but hoist it up ten metres off the ground and sheer terror sinks its claws in. Even though it's the same piece of wood.

It was a gull, probably. Or a swan.

A swan. Yes, of course. It was a swan that had nested on land.

Swans are big.

She calmed down and went and checked on Elias. He was lying with his head turned to the wall and appeared to be looking at the troll painting, just a dark rectangle against the wall in the dusk. She sat beside him on the bed.

'Hello sweetheart, how is everything?'

The sound of her own voice filled the silence, chasing it away. The anxious feeling in her chest stilled.

'When I was little I had this kind of painting by my bed. Except it had a troll-daddy and his daughter, fishing. The girl was holding the rod and the father who was-this big-and clumsy, and covered in warts, he was teaching her how she should hold it, holding her arm carefully like this to show her. I don't know if my mum knew how I stared at that picture and how I thought or fantasised that I had a father who would do that with me. Who showed me what to do and who was so close, standing behind me and was big like that and looked kind. All I know is that when I was little I wanted to be a troll. Because everything seemed simple for the trolls. They had nothing, and yet they had everything.'