Harbour

P
RAISE FOR
J
OHN
A
JVIDE
L
INDQVIST

H
ANDLING THE
U
NDEAD

‘Horror fans will rejoice…A macabre and strangely affecting tale, at once compassionate, witty and deliciously gruesome.'
Age

‘Unsettling and shocking.'
Who Weekly

‘In the end it is its compassion, not just for the dead but for the wounded living, that lends Linqvist's haunting postmodern fairytale its power.' James Bradley
Australian

‘Horror is the genre du jour…Lindqvist is one of the best practitioners around.'
Sunday Telegraph

‘So clever that perhaps it could be the one horror novel not to be missed this year…Lindqvist isn't afraid to touch nerves and violate taboos.'
Courier-Mail

‘You'll be leaving the bedside light on after reading this.'
West Australian

‘I would have said his strengths were more cinematic than literary— until I read this. Haunting.'
Weekend Herald
NZ

‘Unerringly explores the nature of family relationships, how to cope with loss and literally the nature of life and death.'
Canberra Times

‘Lindqvist's dark star continues to rise with
Handling the Undead
, a subversion of the zombie genre whose strange glow is proving similarly mesmeric.'
Listener
NZ

P
RAISE FOR
L
ET THE
R
IGHT
O
NE
I
N

‘A genuinely gripping read. If you read only one gore-filled, vampire love story complete with rich, dark humour and strong cinematic possibilities this year, make sure it's
Let the Right One In
.'
Age

‘Brilliant and unexpected…not simply shock and gore, but an offbeat exploration of fear and the meaning of violence.'
Weekend Australian

‘Like all good vampire books, you want to gulp it down in one go.'
Bulletin

‘Reminiscent of Stephen King at his best.'
Independent on Sunday

‘A terrifying supernatural story yet also a moving account of friendship and salvation.'
Guardian

‘An unsettling and durable horror tale from the mind of a dangerously imaginative man.'
Herald Sun

‘A surprising and sometimes delightful reading experience… Lindqvist manages to maintain a light touch in an otherwise bleak landscape.'
Sunday Times

‘Don't miss it.'
The Times

‘An energetic, noisy, highly imaginative novel that blends the most extreme kind of vampirish schlock-horror with a complicated love story.' Kerryn Goldsworthy,
Sydney Morning Herald

‘A compelling horror story, but it's also a finely calibrated tale about the pain of growing up.'
Sunday Telegraph

‘Lindqvist has reinvented the vampire novel and made it all the more chilling…Immensely readable and highly disturbing.'
Daily Express

J
OHN
A
JVIDE
L
INDQVIST
was born in 1968 and grew up in Stockholm. Before becoming a bestselling novelist, he was a stand-up comedian and a writer of plays and TV scripts. He lives in Sweden with his wife and children. His first novel,
Let the Right One In,
has been filmed twice: in Swedish and, in English, as
Let Me In
.

M
ARLAINE
D
ELARGY
is based in the UK. She has translated novels by Swedish writers including Åsa Larsson, Ninni Holmqvist and Johan Theorin—with whom she won the CWA International Dagger 2010 for
The Darkest Room
.

HARBOUR

John Ajvide Lindqvist

TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY
MARLAINE DELARGY

TEXT PUBLISHING MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William St
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia

textpublishing.com.au

Copyright © John Ajvide Lindqvist 2008
Translation copyright © Marlaine Delargy 2010

Published by agreement with Ordfront Förlag, Stockholm,
and Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency aps, Copenhagen.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published in Sweden as Människohamn by Ordfront 2008
First published in English by The Text Publishing Company 2010

Cover design by WH Chong
Page design by Susan Miller
Typeset in Stempel Garamond 11.25/15.75 by J & M Typesetting
Printed in Australia by Griffin Press

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Lindqvist, John Ajvide.
Harbour / John Ajvide Lindqvist ; translated from Swedish by
Marlaine Delargy.

ISBN: 9781921656675 (pbk.)

Other Authors/Contributors: Delargy, Marlaine.
839.738

To my father
Ingemar Pettersson (1938–1998)

He gave me the sea
The sea took him from me

Welcome to Domarö.

It's a place you won't find on any maritime chart, unless you look really carefully. It lies just about two nautical miles east of Refsnäs in the archipelago in southern Roslagen, a considerable distance in from Söderarm and Tjärven.

You will need to move some of the islands out of the way, create empty expanses of water between them in order to catch sight of Domarö. Then you will also be able to see the lighthouse at Gåvasten, and all the other landmarks that arise in this story.

Arise, yes. That's the right word. We will be in a place that is new to people. For tens of thousands of years it has been lying beneath the water. But then the islands rise up and to the islands come the people, and with the people come the stories.

Let us begin.

Contents

1 Banished

The sea has given and the sea has taken away

About the Shack

Love in the archipelago

Driftwood

Old Acquaintances

Nobody loves us

2 Possessed

Bodies in the water

Find the one you love

Strange Ways

Those Who Have Turned Away

1
Banished

Where the waves thunder and the storms cry.

Where the breakers crash and the salt water whirls,

that is where the place that is ours rises from the sea.

The legacy that passes from father to son.

L
ENNART
A
LBINSSON
—R
ÅDMANSÖ

The sea has given and the sea has taken away

Who flies there in the feather-harbour, who climbs up there out of the black, shining waters?

G
UNNAR
E
KELÖF
—T
JÄRVEN

Sea buckthorn

Three thousand years ago, Domarö was nothing but a large, flat rock sticking up out of the water, crowned by an erratic boulder the ice had left behind. One nautical mile to the east it was possible to glimpse the round shape that would later rise out of the sea and be given the name Gåvasten. Apart from that, there was nothing. It would be another thousand years before the surrounding islets and islands dared to poke their heads above the water, beginning the formation of the archipelago that goes under the name of Domarö archipelago today.

By that time the sea buckthorn had already arrived on Domarö.

Down below the enormous block left by the ice, a shoreline had formed. There in the scree the sea buckthorn worked its way along with its creeping roots, the hardy shrub finding nourishment in the rotting seaweed, growing where there was nothing to grow in, clinging to the rocks. Sea buckthorn. Toughest of the tough.

And the sea buckthorn produced new roots, crept up over the
water's edge and grew on the slopes until a metallic-green border surrounded the uninhabited shores of Domarö like a fringe. Birds snatched the fiery yellow berries that tasted of bitter oranges and flew with them to other islands, spreading the gospel of the sea buckthorn to new shores, and within a few hundred years the green fringe could be seen in all directions.

But the sea buckthorn was preparing its own destruction.

The humus formed by its rotting leaves was richer than anything the stony shores could offer, and the alder saw its chance. It set its seeds in the mulch left by the sea buckthorn, and it grew stronger and stronger. The sea buckthorn was unable to tolerate either the nitrogen-rich soil produced by the alder, or the shade from its leaves, and it withdrew down towards the water.

With the alder came other plants that needed a higher level of nutrition, competing for the available space. The sea buckthorn was relegated to a shoreline that grew far too slowly, just half a metre in a hundred years. Despite the fact that it had given birth to the other plants, the sea buckthorn was displaced and set aside.

And so it sits there at the edge of the shore, biding its time. Beneath the slender, silky green leaves there are thorns. Big thorns.

Two small people and a large rock (July 1984)

They were holding hands.

He was thirteen and she was twelve. If anyone in the gang caught sight of them, they would just die right there on the spot. They crept through the fir trees, alert to every sound and every movement as if they were on some secret mission. In a way they were: they were going to be together, but they didn't know that yet.

It was almost ten o'clock at night, but there was still enough light in the sky for them to see each other's arms and legs as pale movements over the carpet of grass and earth still holding the warmth of the day. They didn't dare look at each other's faces. If they did, something would have to be said, and there were no words.

They had decided to go up to the rock. A little way along the track between the fir trees their hands had brushed against each other's, and one of them had taken hold, and that was it. Now they were holding hands. If anything was said, something straightforward would become difficult.

Anders' skin felt as if he had been out in the sun all day. It was hot and painful all over, and he felt dizzy, as if he had sunstroke; he was afraid of tripping over a root, afraid of his hand becoming sweaty, afraid that what he was doing was
out of order
in some way.

There were couples in the gang. Martin and Malin were together now. Malin had gone out with Joel for a while. It was OK for them to lie there kissing when everybody could see them, and Martin said he and Malin had got as far as petting down by the boathouses. Whether or not it was true, it was OK for them to say—and do—that kind of thing. Partly because they were a year older, partly because they were good-looking. Cool. It gave them licence to do a lot of things, and to use a different language too. There was no point in trying to keep up, that would be embarrassing. You just had to sit there staring, trying to laugh in the right places. That's just how it was.

Neither Anders nor Cecilia was a loser. They weren't outsiders like Henrik and Björn—Hubba and Bubba—but they weren't part of the clique that made the rules and decided which jokes were funny, either.

For Anders and Cecilia to be walking along holding hands was utterly ridiculous. They knew this. Anders was short and borderline spindly, his brown hair too thin for him to give it any kind of style. He didn't understand how Martin and Joel did it. He'd tried slicking his hair back with gel once, but it looked weird and he'd rinsed it out before anyone saw it.