Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (13 page)

Lennart shakes his head. “It’s better to stay here until you have learnt the art of the art, as it were. The survival skills. Making messes like that,” he says and gestures at John’s canvas, “will only get you in trouble. You’ll be rewarded with friction instead of ease. Is that what you want?”

“What I want,” John says and swallows, “is to get the hell out of here.”

John feints a dash to his right. Lennart moves to intercept him, his pen slashing downwards in a diagonal arc so close to John he can smell the sharp reek of the ink. At the last moment, John pulls back, grabs the easel, and shoves it at Lennart, who stumbles backward and crashes into another student’s painting, sending the canvas clattering onto the floor.

John runs for the window. He ignores the upturned jars of paint and the toppled chairs he leaves behind him. The window is a way out. Nothing else matters. Nightmare or not, another moment in the classroom and he is certain he will lose his mind, and maybe more.

He reaches the closed window, digs his fingers under the frame to slide it up, and cries out when he sees in the glass the reflection of Lennart standing behind him and stabbing down with the pen. The teacher had followed him impossibly fast.

An instant before the pen will hit, John hurls himself sideways, and the pen slices through the closed window as if it were made of paper. The glass gives off a faint
ping
and shatters in a cloud of shards. Lennart spins to John, who cowers on the floor.

“No,” John chokes as Lennart leans down.

“You brought this onto yourself,” Lennart says. “All I had in mind was a simple correction. A well-meant navigation mark on this wide sea, to keep you from losing yourself. Given your behaviour today, I have to mark you down quite severely. You’re too stubborn, too undisciplined. I will set an example for the rest of the class and go to the heart of the problem, as it were.”

As the pen plunges down towards John’s face, his hands shoot up and clutch Lennart’s wrists. The pen hovers near John’s eyes. John wheezes and spits as he struggles to keep the pen from digging into him; he saw what it did to the window, and he can imagine what it can do to his body.

Blistering panic makes his mind spin. Were there any justice, any reason to what was happening, Lennart should not have been able to move so fast, or the pen should have slipped from where Lennart held it between his stumps. If there were any logic to this outlandish place, there would not be a room here, let alone windows, school yards or teachers.

Sweating, crying and gasping, John struggles to push the pen away, but Lennart forces it closer. Searching for an escape, John looks left and right. A short boy is looking at John’s painting on the floor, where it fell from the easel. The boy pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, tilts his head, and reaches out to touch the canvas with the three fingers remaining on his hand.

“Hey,” the boy says over his shoulder. “There’s something in there. Check this out.”

The boy presses his fingers at the black crack in John’s painting and pushes his fingers into the colour, continuing down until his elbow is lost beneath the black surface. He laughs. “It’s warm in here.”

The boy pushes at the door on the painting, and the painted door swings open. Smiling, the boy dips forward and disappears into the painting. Nearby students gasp and close in on the canvas, crowding and elbowing each other.

“No,” Lennart roars. “That’s not allowed.” The teacher lets go of the pen and rises up from the floor. “Get away from the painting. Back off, all of you. You’re not ready.”

John gazes at his painting. The exit was right in front of him all the time. His mind, refusing to accept the absence of logic, had filed away the impossible wind as another freak phenomena. His way out is within reach.

The moment Lennart lets go of the pen, John scrambles towards the window and presses himself up along the wall. Shivering and bleeding, he stands with the pen held in both his hands. Across the room, another boy slips inside the door on the canvas. A girl follows, then one more.

The teacher struggles to push his way through the students to reach the painting. “Everyone stays here,” he roars. “No one escapes. You are not ready to go through. You’ll never be.”

“Whatever is in there,” a girl says and puts her feet inside the dark rectangle, “can’t be worse than you and your fucking pen.” She smirks at Lennart, slides down into the black paint, and vanishes.

Transfixed by the disappearing children, John draws a shuddering breath. He has to choose a way out. One path leads into the mist on the school yard, the other into a painting. Both are equally unreal, but the window is the easy option; the entire class mill around the canvas while Lennart tries to force his way through to the painting. Once the teacher reaches it, he will tear it apart.

Then again, the breeze from the canvas had been warm, while the school yard outside is a darkening landscape of frozen asphalt and fog. Cold means suffering and hurt. Warmth has to be the way forward.

Holding the pen over his head in a double-fisted grip, John charges at the teacher.

The students look up as he rushes over the floor and leaps over toppled chairs. Lennart’s back fills his world until the teacher becomes a mountain, an animated block of granite that no doubt will break the pen. John shuts down the notion and instead pictures what the pen did to his chest. He has one chance.

With all his strength, John rams the pen into Lennart’s back like a spear, then lets go and stumbles backwards.

Everything and everyone falls silent. Stares drift between Lennart and John. The teacher stiffens and turns around, leisurely, as if gyrated by invisible strings. His face is uncomprehending.

“This changes nothing,” Lennart mumbles. “I’ll be–”

Lennart falls sideways over a bench and drops to the floor. His head thuds on the carpet, and he goes motionless, staring at the ceiling with eyes blank as buttons.

The wind outside picks up. Curtains flutter as a breeze enters through the broken window. Beyond the trees and the fog, an oily murkiness rolls in like liquid charcoal. Soon the breeze grows stronger, more intent, pushing at the glass in hard gusts. The few trees in the school yard bend and nod in the gale as if pulled by ropes.

Under the rising wind is another sound, a subtle distortion of the gale. A sound he has heard earlier: the furious wail he had heard when he woke up. It has reached him again, borne by the wind from the depths, trying to snare him with its melody.

A shadow moves in the school yard and becomes more distinct as he watches, twisting and solidifying into a concrete form. The wind rattles the window frame and makes papers inside the classroom dance in wild circles. Around him, the other students cover their ears to shut out the piercing song.

Something is coming. Something immeasurable, vicious, and ravenous. He still does not know what it is, but he knows for whom it is searching.

Staggering, he steps over the teacher and runs to his painting. The students step back to give him room. Some grin, others frown, someone cries. They all look at him.

The girl who had stood next to John when he started painting looks up at him with a pensive smile. She raises her voice to make herself heard over the wind and the song.

“We knew you’d go,” she says. “No one ever told you, but we’re going to miss you. We’ll be jealous. You’ll be free, but fragile. Remember that.”

Distracted by the wail, John nods even though he does not understand. Snowflakes shoot in through the smashed window and whirl around the room in a glittering cyclone. The lights in the ceiling grow dim. Outside, the wail rises.

He turns to the canvas and prepares himself. His painting only vaguely resembles a door, but he has seen people disappear through it. The path is clear. There is a sense of depth to the colours, as if they form the liquid surface of a vertical tunnel.

He puts one foot on the canvas and watches it pass through as easily as if the colours were shadows. The other side is slightly warmer, though not much. He cannot feel any floor or ground. A girl nods encouragingly as he sits down and slowly lowers himself into the canvas.

When his arms cannot support his weight any more, he drops down and away. Looking up, he sees the diminishing light from the classroom: a bright square fading to a distant glow, and then nothing.

*

Curled up in the shadows at the bottom of the stairwell, John sleeps, breathing gently while the hushed sounds of the suburban winter night echo around him: TV sets on cautious volumes, water rushing through pipes, crying children refusing to go to sleep.

But he is not entirely at rest; deep in his determination is a persistent disturbance, a nuisance that refuses to go away: a spark of remorse and grace, steadily gaining in strength. It is only an insignificant speck of trouble, but trouble nonetheless. One loose thread can be enough to unravel his carefully woven path towards justice and revenge.

That must not happen.

He needs a tool that can extinguish this small flame.

John visits the most distant reaches of his soul, the remote corners where the most hurtful memories have been brushed away, and soon finds what he needs: A resurrected memory brought back from the grave. Bringing it to life is easy; after all, it is what the nuisance inside him is looking for.

All John needs to do is give it a voice.

*

John

The darkness is whisked away, and John looks up.

He is in Molly’s kitchen, back in her flat, in another world. Wrapped in a green wool blanket, Molly sits across the table from him. The autumn chill leaks through the window, spills onto the floor, and pools around their bare feet. Sunshine tilts through the glass and turns her skin to freckled marble. Her eyes are never still; they dance, wink, promise and hint to the tune of her smile.

And her smile is for him.

“I know this is strange,” she says. “A dream inside a memory. Or vice versa. But whichever is the case,” she adds, “the tea is good. No one can take that away from me.”

Between John and Molly are two cups, a large kettle, and the first painting he gave her: a small, framed canvas in bright oils. The motif, a lean woman’s neck against a backdrop of smudged clouds, is full of flaws; John had been pleased with it before, but now every angle and stroke look off, as if the drive to Molly’s flat had skewed the image.

John remembers what had happened. Molly had unwrapped the painting while he hid his trembling hands under the table, and she had loved it. John wanted to open the window and shout victory and defiance at the blue sky. The
slightest frown from Molly would have been acid on his confidence.

Her eyes are wet as she looks at the painting.
Thank you
, she mouths.

“Do you like it?” John looks troubled. “I’m not sure the light is right.”

“It’s beautiful. Like you.” She turns her eyes to him. Her smile shines. “Just like you.”

John’s cheeks burn. He knows he is not beautiful; he is the epitome of average. Overweight, overworked, stuck in the strands of his past. Beauty and painting have been his lifelines for years. Now he has found to what the lines are anchored, and he will never let go.

She gently puts the painting down on the table. “I’ll put it next to the bed.”

John looks horrified. “It’ll stare at me, begging for corrections.”

“Don’t be silly. I want it close to me. It’s the first painting someone’s ever given me. And you made it.”

“You’re making me blush.”

“And the painting is of a neck. No eyes, no mouth. So it’ll be quiet. No begging.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“It’s a compliment. All this painting begs for is for you to keep painting. You’re gifted.”

John is silent while he rides the crest of the moment.

“Bedroom it is,” Molly says and makes a satisfied sound. “Tea’s ready.” She lifts the kettle and fills John’s cup.

Outside the window, the light is weakening faster than it should. Shadows in the room deepen as he watches. The temperature is dropping, too; a web of frost is forming on the windowpane.

Glancing at the window, Molly rises up. She is still holding John’s hands. “I was hoping we’d have more time, but no luck. We haven’t got long. Come.”

“Where?”

“Where do you think?” she asks, her smile a warm beacon in the rising cold.

In the swirl of Molly’s purple sheets, John learns the literal meaning of making love: They wring an essence into existence, a river of belonging that fills his veins and washes away the grey. Molly and John force themselves tighter and closer to each other until there is no room between them for loneliness.

The room is freezing and the apartment is dark, but he doesn’t care; the two of them are a painting come alive, a wild sea of strokes, dales and rises. Her touch burns right through his prudence and his shyness. With Molly, only honesty matters.

Moments before he climaxes, she grabs his thinning hair and pulls him close. “Hurry,” she whispers. “Follow her, and be quick. Before you lose us.”

“Follow whom?”

Molly holds John close to her. “She’s all you’ve got now,” she says. “Don’t lose her. You must run, or–”

Darkness closes around them like a glove of night.

*