I Am Behind You (11 page)

He slows down and digs his reading glasses out of the glove compartment. When he sees what the GPS screen is telling him, he takes his foot off the accelerator and stops the car, sits there with the engine ticking over.

Åkerö, Gillberga, Lilltorp.

When he drove away, the GPS had claimed that they were in the same place as on the previous evening: the campsite ten kilometres south of Trosa. Then the arrow kept on moving west until the screen turned blue. Now it is saying that he is in the area where he grew up,
one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north.
It is physically impossible for him to have driven that distance. He puts the car into first gear and edges forward. He should now be crossing Norrtäljevägen and driving through the forest towards Åkerö and…Riddersholm.

A chill runs down Donald's spine. He pushes his glasses up onto the top of his head and gazes out across the field—towards Riddersholm, according to the GPS. There is nothing to see, but it feels as if the air has grown thinner, and it is difficult to get enough oxygen. Donald takes a few deep breaths to ease the pressure inside his skull. He studies the screen again. There is something wrong with Norrtäljevägen.

When the E18 was extended at the beginning of the 1970s, the route between Norrtälje and Kapellskär became five kilometres shorter, as a straighter motorway sliced through the landscape. But the road on the GPS map winds its way through the villages, and judging by the width, it isn't even a motorway.

Donald scrolls up and down, zooms out. There is no doubt whatsoever. The route on the screen is the
old
road, large sections of which have been forgotten and overgrown for almost forty years.

Donald rubs his eyes and breathes, breathes.

What the hell is wrong with the air?

Then he opens the car door and gets out.

It is colder now, and he gets gooseflesh on his arms when he leaves the interior of the car with its controlled temperature. There really
is
something strange about the air. Donald opens his eyes wide, relaxes, opens wide again, relaxes, but the phenomenon remains.

It's just like when you stand up too quickly after bending down, and tiny pinpricks of light seem to be floating in front of your eyes. Kind of like that, but the dots of light are smaller and there are more of them. The air is
shimmering
, as if it has a light of its own.

Donald rubs his arms as his eyes sweep the horizon. The movement of his pupils stops. He screws up his eyes. A shudder like a bolt of low-voltage electricity passes over his skin, and it is not the cooler air that is making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He thinks he can see something. A figure.

He squints, trying to focus, but what he is seeing still doesn't make sense. Suddenly he knows what to do. The shudder runs down his back as he opens the car door and takes out his shotgun. He places the butt against his shoulder, looks through the sight and slowly traces his way along the line between earth and sky until he finds the figure.

Judging by its shape it must be human, but when Donald gets a closer look he almost fires, his index finger, resting on the trigger out of sheer habit, twitching in an involuntary spasm. The gun slips out of his hands and falls to the ground as Donald stands there with his lower lip trembling. It is one specific detail, a mutilation, that makes his stomach turn. He almost collapses, and leans on the car for support.

The car.

He has the car.

Donald lets out a sob, grabs the gun and throws it on the back seat. He catches his shin as he scrambles into the driver's seat and slams the door. His teeth are chattering as he turns the key, and for one dreadful moment he thinks the car isn't going to start, that he will be stranded here with

the Bloodman

but the car starts with a roar because he has floored the accelerator. He tells himself to ease off and manages to put the car in first without wrecking the gearbox.

A second later he floors the pedal again and spins the wheel all the way round. He daren't even use the clutch to engage a higher gear. He just has to get away from here as quickly as possible. Away from the Bloodman.

*

Benny has been lying in wait for a long time. The door of Cat's caravan is open, and Cat's masters have gone. Benny's master has gone too. It is an interesting state of affairs. Cat is no longer visible in the window. Benny is waiting.

Behind him his mistress is singing, the same thing that is coming out of the box on the table. It doesn't sound good, and Benny turns his head towards the field to spare his ears.

He remembers the smell of Grandchildren and the strange feeling. The field is not good. In here among the caravans it is fine. This is his place. That is what he intends to make clear to Cat, if he gets the chance.

And what do you know—here comes Cat!

Cat is weird. Cat
runs
out of the door and starts washing herself without glancing in Benny's direction. Dog would have behaved in a completely different way. Been more alert. Benny fires off a short bark. Cat raises her head and gives him a look, then goes back to washing herself, as if Benny were of no interest whatsoever.

Benny takes a few steps towards Cat as a growl forms deep in his throat. Cat freezes. Benny moves closer and the growl feels good, makes him stronger. He will show Cat who is boss.

Cat turns to face him and grows. Benny stops. Cat is now almost as big as he is. He has seen the phenomenon before, but it doesn't make it any less alarming. How does Cat do that? But it is too late now.
Benny moves forward, the growl interspersed with little barks. He is angry.

At this point Cat does something unexpected, something Benny has not experienced before. She starts to come towards him, making her noise and showing her teeth. Benny isn't sure what to do. He stops. The growl fades away. Cat is not doing what she is supposed to do.

Before Benny has time to work out what is going on, Cat is standing in front of him. She hits him across the nose with her claws out. Cat has sharp claws, and it really hurts.

The capacity for thought leaves him completely and his body takes over. Benny lets out a howl, turns around and runs as fast as he can, back to the awning and into his basket.

When he raises his head he sees Cat stalking around the open space without giving him so much as a look. Benny buries his sore nose in his blanket and closes his eyes.

*

Stefan and Carina have lots of photograph albums. In this digital age they still take the trouble to order prints of their pictures, then they sit side by side at the kitchen table, cropping them manually with a craft knife and sticking them in. They find great satisfaction in the activity itself, reliving their memories, then sorting and cataloguing them. Creating an archive of their lives, concrete objects they can hold in their hands. Images stored on a computer can never be the same; there is no weight in a pdf file.

They have also produced a condensed version. They selected the best pictures over all the years, ordered copies, then stuck these in a special album that they always take with them on their travels. A little security measure, holding on to the very best moments.

Right now Carina is leafing through this best-of album.

Stefan and Carina in front of a waterfall in Norway, the year before Emil was born. Emil as a newborn, as a baby, his very first steps. Stefan
in an impressive elf costume, Carina with the giant chanterelle she found behind the shed, the three of them together on that wonderful little beach on the island of Gotland. Stefan teaching Emil to use the binoculars. Stefan and Carina with the new sign for the store.

Carina glances over the pictures, her mind adding details, smells and feelings that cannot be seen in the photographs. Taken all together, these fragments form a composite of the last six years of her life.

A dog barks outside the caravan, and she looks up. The dog barks again, then suddenly whimpers and falls silent. As Carina returns to the album, she is struck by an unpleasant thought.

What if I had never existed?

What if she had actually managed to kill herself in her teenage years, or if she had never been born? Who would have been standing next to Stefan by the waterfall, who would have given birth to Emil and found that chanterelle? Someone else? No one at all?

She tries to place another woman beside Stefan, to give Emil a new mother, the store a new part-owner. It is impossible. The only thing she can do is to erase herself from the photographs and to add in a ghostly figure without a face, a non-Carina.

She carries on looking through the album, and the thought is actually not unpleasant at all, merely unaccustomed. When she was a teenager she often played with the idea:
I don't exist
. The last few years have been so hectic, so filled with practicalities that there has been no space, but it doesn't scare her. In fact it's a kind of consolation. A person who doesn't exist carries no guilt.

Carina closes the album and sneezes. Enough. She decides to make herself a cup of coffee.

She takes out the jar of instant, pours some water into a pan and switches on the gas stove. Or rather she doesn't. She presses the ignition button a couple of times and the little blue spark flashes, but nothing else happens. No sound of hissing gas. She tries the other ring, which is equally silent. She opens the door of the refrigerator, which also runs on gas, and sticks her hand inside. Only the faintest hint of a chill remains, so she quickly closes the door.

Stefan checked the cylinder before they set off, and it was half full. More than enough for a week, which means something else must be wrong. A blockage in the pipe, or God forbid, a leak.

Carina goes around the back of the caravan and sees that the door of the box housing the cylinder is partly open. If there's one thing Stefan is particularly careful about, it is making sure that door is kept shut. Carina opens it and gasps.

The hose that connects the cylinder to the pipe inside the caravan is broken. Only a short section remains attached to the cylinder itself. It doesn't make sense. Only last year they fitted a new hose in order to avoid this very situation, because rubber has a tendency to perish over time.

She checks the raw edge to see if the rubber is dry and crumbly to the touch. No. It is soft and pliable, just as it should be. When she pulls the two ends towards her, she realises that they are too short to meet, and therefore cannot be repaired. A fairly large section is missing, and the problem has not been caused by age or wear and tear. The ends are clean and smooth. As if the hose has been cut.

*

Peter has grabbed several garden canes and got out of the car. Now that he has deciphered the new map on the GPS screen, he feels it is absolutely essential to try to orientate himself, maintain some sense of direction, some kind of foothold.

He looks around. Nothing but grass, in all directions. Nothing to indicate that he is where the GPS claims he is: in Vällingby, to the west of Stockholm. Nothing except the feeling.

To what extent can we make our memories into a reality? If an event has been imprinted on us with the violence of the branding iron, or the joy of sheer bliss, if it is encapsulated within us like a moment that will live forever, does that also mean that we can really go back there, to some degree?

Maybe, maybe not. But we carry every defining moment of our
lives with us like an intangible perception, impossible to describe to anyone else. We think about that moment and there is something special there, a sensory label that applies only to that moment.

However much Peter pats the bonnet of his great big smart grownup car that he was able to afford by playing grown-up football, the GPS does not lie. On some important level Peter is in Vällingby right now, on the evening when he was seven years old and started to believe in God.

When he was only five years old his mother had already taught him to say evening prayers, and she would sometimes tell him bedtime stories from the Bible. He liked it. She was a good storyteller, and he enjoyed the cosiness of sharing prayers, though he didn't believe in God. He would have liked to, but his father loathed everything to do with religion.

His father was often angry and unpleasant, especially when he was drunk, and sometimes he hit Peter's mother. Peter didn't want to be like him, and thought it would be nice to believe along with his mother, but he didn't have the courage. He could have believed in secret, but then again it did all sound a bit odd: God and Jesus and the mystery of the cross and the loaves and fishes, and it really,
really
is impossible to walk on water.

His father grew worse over the years. No job, friends who let him down, and more and more bottles in the pantry. Peter didn't understand why he and his mother had to stay; his mother said it was hard to explain, but they must trust in God and everything would be all right.

Until one evening when Peter was seven, and his father came home roaring drunk. Peter had gone to bed after half-heartedly saying his evening prayer when he heard the front door open. He could tell from the sound of the movements, the coughing, the way his father was breathing, the way he put down his feet: his father was extremely drunk and very angry. Peter pressed his hands over his ears before it started.

It took a couple of minutes, then came the usual noises. The thuds, the muffled cries, things falling on the floor. Peter shut his eyes tight to prevent any of it getting to him. Behind his eyelids he assembled an arsenal of weapons: machine guns, pistols, grenades and axes. He seized them in his dream hands and used them against his father.

It didn't stop. It usually stopped. It went on for a little while, then he could uncover his ears. If his mother was crying, he would cover them up again until that stopped too.

But not tonight. It just went on and on. And his mother was
screaming
. She didn't normally do that. An atom bomb fell through Peter's head, landed right on top of his father and obliterated him forever. His mother screamed again.