Let the Old Dreams Die (53 page)

Roland said, ‘Glad to be of service…’ and Kalle made his way down the aisle and followed the others. Through a combination of luck and skill the plan had worked: the bus was so close to the wall that it was blocking the entrance to the building, and the only way in was now via the bus.

As Flora walked down the steps, an icicle plummeted through Kalle’s stomach. The one thing he hadn’t thought about was which way the main door opened. If it opened outwards, they were fucked.

But luck was still on their side. The door opened inwards, and after a couple of seconds they were all standing inside the entrance hall. Kalle and Flora wound the chain they had brought with them several times around the handle, and fastened it with a padlock. It would take a while for anyone to get that door open.

‘How’s Roland?’ asked Hagar.

‘Fine,’ Kalle lied. ‘He just didn’t want to come in with us, that’s all.’

Hagar nodded and clutched at her head.

‘I can understand that. This is just dreadful.’

There were no words to describe the din that filled their heads now they were so close to the source. It was like the moment when Sweden scores a goal in a crucial World Cup match, that moment when thousands of people leap to their feet and let out a roar—but this was long, drawn out, endless. And it was exactly the opposite of that moment. Not joy and celebration, but mass pain and horror.

At the same time, because the din was so overwhelming it was almost easier to deal with than previous experiences. There were no individual sounds, it was like being part of an agonising disease. Their bodies shook and their heads were full of black, screaming mud, but they kept on moving and stuck to their plan.

Hagar stayed by the door to warn them if it looked as though their blockade might be breached. Kalle, Flora and Elvy carried on into the next room, the big hall.

The benches that had filled the room on Kalle’s previous visit had been cleared away. Now there was only empty floor space, and here the reliving had been gathered together. All of them. There must
have been several hundred people, or what had been people. They were packed close together, pressed up against the walls.

Grey skin, skeletal arms, expressionless faces and sunken eyes. Dead people. There was the same veil over all the eyes; the only variation was in the state of decay of the bodies. Dried-up skin or swollen skin, a mummified face or a face marked with liver spots. Dead people. Corpses that should be at rest, lying down, released into death, instead of standing tightly pressed together, screaming their silent screams, all with their eyes fixed on the empty space in the middle of the room.

A reliving person had just been led into the circle. Three men were standing there. The reliving was a hunchbacked old man whose fingers were bent around something that wasn’t there. He was brought forward. Clumps of grey hair stuck out from his head.

One of the men held a box up to the old man’s throat. There was a faint crackling sound and the old man fell to the ground, face down. The man with the box stepped back, and the second man stepped forward. He was holding a pair of bolt cutters in his hands.

Elvy took two strides towards the group.

‘Stop!’ she yelled. ‘Stop that! What are you doing?’

The man with the bolt cutters stopped. The third man turned around, and Kalle recognised him. It was the same man who had been in Kalle’s bedroom. The Visitor. The same suit, the same tie. There was only one difference: his stomach was even bigger now. He smiled and said, ‘
That
explains all the racket.’ He turned to the wall beside the door. ‘Sture. Your son is here. That’s nice, isn’t it?’

Kalle looked across. His father was indeed there, along with four other men who were walking towards Elvy. Two of them were holding pistols, pistols that didn’t look like anything Kalle had seen either in a film or in reality; they looked more like crazy toys.

One of the men pointed his weapon at Elvy.

‘Stop right there. Back off.’

Elvy stopped, looked at him and asked, ‘What are you doing?’

The man waved his weapon to indicate that Elvy should move away, and she stepped back a couple of paces. Kalle couldn’t work out what kind of weapon it was—was it actually a weapon at all?

The Visitor nodded to the man with the bolt cutters and held up a warning finger to Kalle, Flora and Elvy. ‘Now don’t do anything stupid.’

The handles of the bolt cutters were opened to their full extent and the man wielding them pressed the twin blades into the back of the motionless old man’s neck. Pressed again so that the points penetrated the skin. Then he brought the handles together. There was a moist, crunching sound as the blades cut through the vertebrae in the neck and a small amount of viscous blood trickled out. The Visitor gestured to the man with the pistol, exhorting him to remain on his guard. Then he slid his foot under the old man’s stomach and flipped him over onto his back.

He stared at the old man’s ribcage, waiting.

‘This was a particularly demanding situation,’ he said. ‘It was necessary to carry out research in order to find the correct method.’ He looked up for a moment and said in an exaggeratedly high voice, like a small child, ‘Even I didn’t know what to do, can you imagine that?’

And then it happened. A white caterpillar emerged from the old man’s chest. The Visitor crouched down and gazed with delight at the little grub as it twisted and turned, naked and defenceless. After a few seconds it began to change colour. It turned pink. It swelled up. It turned red. It swelled even more. Then it burst. At the very moment when the thin membrane burst, the man quickly bent down and opened his mouth over the caterpillar. It was sucked in, a little clump of red tissue, and it was gone. The man licked his lips, got to his feet, nodded to the man with the box. ‘Next.’

He opened his arms wide to Kalle, Flora and Elvy.

‘This is what we’re doing.’

The next victim was brought forward. A woman this time. She was wearing only a nightdress, and underneath it you could sense the loose skin, falling in folds and wrinkles. The skin on her face was also loose and grey, sagging towards the floor. A greater sorrow than the whole world lay in her empty eyes.

As the box was held to her throat, Kalle realised what it was: an electric stun gun. It paralysed the victim, making the operation easier. Elvy stood there with her fists clenched, and Kalle could feel a lethal contempt crackling in her mind. Flora wasn’t there. Kalle quickly looked around.

Flora was standing in front of the wall of the reliving, sending thoughts to them. Kalle felt it in his own head when he turned his attention to her: she was communicating. She was trying to convince them that they should give themselves up; she was sending the image of death into their heads and Kalle saw the shadowy figure, a hand with hooks on the end of the fingers flickering by, different-coloured butterflies, a light.

But the black shadow smothered everything, and she couldn’t get through. They were too frightened. They were like a group of animals, waiting patiently to be slaughtered instead of fleeing en masse. Flora wrapped her arms around her body and tried to make the images more beautiful, but her efforts struck a jarring note and she felt it, Kalle felt it, the reliving felt it.

The crackling noise came again, and Kalle gave a start. The woman had fallen to the floor.

I can’t be here any longer.

The cacophony of the terror of the reliving, the repulsiveness of the whole situation…he didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted to sink through the ground, run away, cease to exist. His lips were trembling and his body felt like a windscreen about to shatter into a thousand pieces. He would break soon if nothing happened.

Elvy suddenly ran forward beside him. He opened his mouth to say something, but she had passed him before it came out. She ran over to the reliving, shouting, ‘Tore!’

Elvy pushed her way through the front row and reached a man who didn’t look any different from the rest in Kalle’s eyes. A big, heavy body, broad shoulders and a colourless, expressionless face, which Elvy took in her hands.

‘Tore,’ she said. ‘Tore, you mustn’t…you have to…’

She shook his head from side to side, but got no reaction. She pressed her forehead against his as if to gain a better surface contact, and Kalle could feel her sending virtually the same message as Flora. Tore’s eyes burned with emptiness.

One of the men with the strange weapons was on his way over to her. He raised the weapon.

‘Move away immediately!’

He stopped a few metres away from Elvy, who ignored him completely. Kalle knew the man was about to shoot, and he moved quickly to stand in front of Elvy. He pointed at the pistol.

‘What kind of fucking toy—’

That was as far as he got. He heard a faint report and felt a burning sensation in his thigh. He looked down. There was a dart sticking out of his thigh, with a metal cable attaching it to the pistol. He looked up and the second before the man pressed the trigger, Kalle realised what it was. He’d read about it somewhere. The police in the US had—

A quivering stream of lava flooded his body in a fraction of a second; his arms shot out, his fingers spread wide, and it felt as if someone was pulling his hair as the electricity destroyed all muscle control. He was hurled to the ground, incapable of moving; it was as if something warm and solid had been poured over his skin and set fast. Wax, perhaps. His whole body hurt, and a strange calm came over him.

He lay there staring into space and saw the man take a step towards him, pull the dart out of his thigh and press a button to retract the cable. The man bent over him.

‘Nice and quiet now, aren’t you?’

Kalle would have nodded if it had been possible. He felt utterly calm. He wasn’t at all surprised, didn’t even jump when something black suddenly came into his field of vision and the man’s head disappeared with a thud. He just thought about it calmly, logically, and guessed that it was Flora’s boot he had seen, on its way to kick the man in the head.

He looked down and saw that he had guessed correctly. The man was lying on the floor holding his head; Flora picked up his pistol and pointed it at him. Kalle wanted to say something, something appreciative, and his tongue did actually move in his mouth. He scrabbled on the cement floor. His fingers moved. He blinked. He could blink.

The man was so preoccupied with the kick he had received that Flora felt able to leave him; she came over to Kalle.

‘How are you feeling, are you OK?’

‘I…yes…yes…’

Flora slid a hand under his armpit and helped him up into a sitting position. It felt as if he were a few centimetres outside his body, as if he were slowly moving back into it, discovering it afresh. He nodded at Flora and saw a movement just behind her. He thought:
Look out!
and Flora heard him. She threw herself to the side and the dart missed her by a fraction, hitting the leg of one of the reliving behind them.

Flora turned to the man and raised the pistol. Then they heard Elvy’s voice:

‘Give that to me.’

Flora looked at her grandmother, standing with her hand outstretched. ‘Give it to me. Now.’ Flora did as she asked, shaking
her head in bewilderment. The man with the second pistol was just retracting the cable, and Kalle managed to summon up enough strength to put his foot on the dart. The man who had been lying on the floor had got to his feet and was swaying. Blood was pouring from one ear.

The Visitor had followed events with amused interest. He said, ‘You might as well give up now. This is going nowhere. The one you are seeking will not come.’

The man waved to his other henchmen to take care of the disruption. Three men, including Kalle’s father, approached. The dart was jerked from under Kalle’s foot and quickly retracted. Suddenly he felt afraid. He might have been calm after the electric shock, but he certainly didn’t want another one. He moved slowly backwards, away from the man who was fixing the dart back in its place.

We’ve had it. We’re going to end up in…his belly too…

Kalle heard a muted report behind him, and Flora screamed, ‘Nana! No!’

He turned his head and saw Elvy standing there with a faintly surprised expression on her face. She was holding the pistol in her hand, with the cable running straight into her chest. She had fired it into her heart at close quarters and the dart had gone in between a gap in her ribs, penetrating deeper.

‘Nana, no, no! No!’

Elvy gave a little smile, then blew Flora a kiss before pressing the trigger. As if she had been a marionette whose puppeteer had suddenly jerked all the strings simultaneously, a spasm passed through her body, all her limbs shot outwards in a convulsion and she collapsed at Tore’s feet.

Flora was by her side before her hand fell to the floor. ‘Nana, Nana, you can’t…’

But Elvy’s eyes were already unseeing. The electric shock had stopped her heart, and her body did not react to Flora’s kisses and
caresses. Kalle felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up. His father was standing there, his face contorted with conflicting emotions, but the main impression was one of shame. Not shame at his own behaviour, but at the fact that he had a son who was behaving in this way.

‘Come on, damn you!’

Kalle thought the buzzing and whining inside his head was coming from his own hatred, but in that case it should have been impossible to locate the noise. But it was possible. It was coming from his left, from the spot where Elvy lay.

He placed his hand on top of his father’s, as if he were a penitent son in need of support. He got hold of his father’s index finger and snapped it straight back.

His father’s screams were drowned out by the shrieking inside his head. It was still coming from the left, and he must not turn his head in that direction. But he did. He was so stunned by the electric shock and by the fear emanating from the reliving that more pain was of no significance.

He saw the white caterpillar on Elvy’s breast. He saw Flora, curled up beside it shaking her head. And he saw the shadow. A slender figure, almost attenuated, drawn from the darkness itself, with flowing black hair.