The Circle (24 page)

She walks up to a little wooden table standing next to a well-worn leather armchair. A circular, dark red wooden box is lying on the table. Minoo shines her torch on it. The lid is divided into two halves by a vertical line. Depicted on one half is an ingeniously carved city with strange architecture that looks like nothing Minoo has ever seen before, and on the other, swirling galaxies and unidentifiable slithering shapes. In the middle a man holds his hands straight out at his sides as if he were forming a bridge between the two halves. The line cuts his body in two. His eyes are closed.

‘Minoo …’

Vanessa’s voice comes from just behind her. Minoo turns. Vanessa is visible again.

‘Look down,’ she says.

How had she missed those lines when she entered the room? Or have they appeared while she and Vanessa have been in there?

A big white circle is drawn on the floor. In the middle of it there is a smaller circle, approximately half a metre in diameter. Inside the smaller circle, there is a strange symbol. Minoo and Vanessa are standing inside the bigger circle.

Minoo bends down and runs her finger across the outer line. It feels greasy and warm. She snatches her hand away.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Vanessa mutters.

The air above the smaller circle starts to shimmer, as it does over tarmac on a hot summer day. Minoo tries to run, but she can’t move. She hears a dull pulsating sound in the ceiling above them.

A wave of hot air shoots through the room. The heat makes it difficult to breathe. The muffled pounding grows louder, causing a vibration in their chests like a heavy bass line.

‘I can’t move,’ Vanessa squeals.

Minoo struggles, but it’s as if her feet are glued to the floor. The heat causes sweat to trickle from her hairline over her forehead. Vanessa stretches out her hand. ‘I can’t fucking move!’ she shouts, over the din.

The moment they touch the pressure pinning their feet to the floor eases – enough for them to move.

‘Run!’ Vanessa yells.

As they race out of the room Minoo glances back and sees something unbelievable before she flees towards the stairs.

The muffled pounding grows in intensity as they race along the corridor, down the stairs and through the lower rooms. The windowpanes are rattling and a painting crashes to the floor in the living room. Vanessa throws open the front door and they burst out into the night air. Minoo tears after her towards the open gate.

Out of the corner of her eye she spots Linnéa, who doesn’t ask questions, just joins them.

The three girls stumble into each other as they throw themselves into Nicolaus’s car.

‘Did you see it, too? In the light?’ Vanessa says to Minoo, when they’re sitting in the back seat.

Minoo nods. She knows what Vanessa saw: a human form taking the shape of a pillar of light.

23

WHEN MINOO AND
Vanessa tell the others what they saw at the principal’s house, Anna-Karin feels unexpectedly closed off. It’s as if she had to see it to believe in it. She should be the last person who needs convincing that the supernatural exists. But their account of what happened sounds like an old ghost story she’s heard a million times.

She’s sitting on the stage, looking out across the dance floor. Her parents had met here many years ago. She doesn’t know much more than that. Her mother usually describes her father as a handsome man and a good dancer. But she ends the story with a bitter laugh, saying, ‘If I had known how bad he was at everything else, I would have run away as fast as my legs could carry me.’ It sounds as though her mother wishes she had run away, even though that would have meant Anna-Karin had never been born.

A mild rain has started to fall and is thrumming gently against the dance pavilion’s roof. It’s leaking and little pools are forming on the wooden floor. The one-eyed black cat has puffed itself up at Nicolaus’s feet. He seems to have grown used to it and has even given it the imaginative name of Cat.

‘So now we know that the principal is the killer,’ Vanessa says.

‘Not quite,’ Minoo adds.

‘How much proof do you need?’ Linnéa asks.

‘Excuse me,’ says Ida, ‘but you three are, like, missing the point here.’

‘Which is what exactly?’ Linnéa snaps.

‘Well,’ says Ida, her voice dripping with sweetness and venom, ‘the point isn’t that we know it’s her. It’s that she knows we’ve been there.’

‘We don’t know if she saw us,’ says Vanessa. ‘Even if it was her.’

Ida rolls her eyes.

‘We’re not completely helpless,’ says Minoo, sounding unconvinced.

‘Against her you might very well be, I’m afraid,’ says Nicolaus.

He’d been flipping silently through the photos on Vanessa’s mobile. Now he was staring vacantly into space. ‘I suspect that the principal is in league with the demons.’

Minoo takes out a little notepad and starts scribbling feverishly.

‘Demons? Where the hell did that come from? Do you, like, know something all of a sudden?’ Vanessa says.

‘God have mercy on your souls,’ Nicolaus mumbles, and staggers.

Minoo lowers her notepad. ‘Are you all right?’

The confusion is back in Nicolaus’s eyes. ‘What was it we were talking about?’

‘The principal,’ Anna-Karin answers. ‘And something about demons.’

‘Ah, yes! Demons. The principal.’ His gaze moves back to the photos. ‘I’ve seen this device before. God help us.’

‘Okay …’ says Vanessa.

Anna-Karin gets up and walks closer to him when he holds up the mobile to display one of the photos: the one of the iron object with the big screw in the middle.

‘I thought I recognised it. It’s a tongue tearer,’ Nicolaus continues.

‘A what?’ Ida asks shrilly.

‘You force the victim’s tongue through this opening, screw it fast, then pull out the tongue like this …’ He demonstrates by sticking out his tongue as far as it will go. ‘Then you turn a crank so that the tongue is pulled out further and further. You continue until the root splits and the tongue comes off. The human tongue is surprisingly long.’

Anna-Karin looks at the image, unconsciously pulling her tongue as far back in her mouth as she can, as if to protect it. Now she has no trouble in believing the ghost story.

‘She saw us,’ Minoo says faintly. ‘I’m pretty sure of it. Do you think she’ll do something at school?’

‘That was where Elias and Rebecka died,’ says Linnéa.

‘I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see which of us it is on Monday,’ Vanessa says.

Perhaps it was an attempt at a joke, but nobody laughs.

24

ON MONDAY MORNING
, Vanessa briefly considers not going to school. The events of Saturday scared her, but the prospect of sitting alone at home and waiting for something terrible to happen seems far worse.

She hasn’t heard Nicke mention any break-ins at Lilla Lugnet. If the police had been called out for something that exciting he would definitely have talked about it at the dinner table. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. Vanessa can’t imagine that a person who’s in league with demons would bother calling the police if someone broke into her secret torture chamber.

Her mother is reading a thick book about how to cast your horoscope. It’s her day off and she’s humming as she sits there, taking notes while flipping through the book. Her face is calm, which makes her look younger. She was only seventeen when she had Vanessa, and thirty-three is still pretty young. Sometimes Vanessa thinks her mother has thrown away her life. She wears herself out, and for what? Mother of two and a care assistant at an old people’s home. Is that all she’s going to do with her life? Doesn’t she have any ambition? Vanessa isn’t going to make the same
mistake
. She’s going to be young for as long as possible. She wants to savour life. Real life. The one that exists away from Engelsfors. If she survives long enough.

‘I’m going now,’ she says.

Her mother smiles. For someone who’s thrown away her life, she looks very content. ‘Hey, I almost forgot,’ she said. ‘How did it go at Mona’s?’

Why does her mother have such a knack for bringing up the very thing Vanessa doesn’t want to talk about? ‘Good,’ she mumbles.

‘I was really impressed,’ her mother says. ‘What did she say to you?’

‘It’s private.’

‘That’s okay, Nessa. I understand if you don’t want to tell me everything. Maybe I don’t want to know.’

She says it with a knowing smile, as if she knows what Vanessa’s going through, that she understands what it’s like to be a teenager. But her mother has no idea what Vanessa is going through. And Vanessa can never tell her.

‘No, you don’t,’ she says quietly, and gives her mother a quick hug.

The first thing Vanessa sees when she arrives at school is Jari. He’s standing with Anna-Karin, who is tossing her hair and laughing exaggeratedly.

‘You’re mad.’ Anna-Karin giggles at something Jari has said, and Vanessa quickens her pace so she doesn’t have to hear any more.

She sits through her morning classes on tenterhooks,
flinching
at every movement in the classroom. Evelina and Michelle look at her as if she should be strapped into a straitjacket and pumped full of tranquillisers. They’re probably right.

When she comes down to the cafeteria she sees the principal at the salad bar. Adriana Lopez is piling a mountain of grated carrot on to her plate. All of a sudden everything seems silly and unreal.

Maybe the principal is a demon. But an entire morning marks the upper limit of how long Vanessa can feel afraid – especially of a demon who loves carrots.

Monday drags on into Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday and finally Friday. Nothing happens. They meet at the fairground once to decide on a strategy. Linnéa wants them to use Anna-Karin’s powers to get the principal to expose herself. Minoo objects: Rebecka had some pretty potent powers, which didn’t save her.

Vanessa wants to scream with frustration. There’s nobody they can ask for help or advice. Now they’re just waiting their turn to die, like animals to the slaughter, without even
trying
to fight back. One afternoon when she watched the principal getting into her car, she felt like running up, yanking open the door and shouting, ‘Go on, do it! What are you waiting for?’

She had intended to spend the weekend with Wille, to try to forget everything, but he’d said he had to help Jonte with ‘this thing’. Michelle and Evelina are in Köping for a concert, and Vanessa can’t afford to go too.

On Saturday the storm hits. The last of the autumn leaves are torn from the trees, and there’s a howling wind that pummels the town with rain.

Vanessa is a prisoner at home. By the afternoon claustrophobia is creeping in. It feels as though Nicke is everywhere. If she goes into the kitchen, he’s there making coffee. If she wanders into the living room, he’s lying on the sofa, reading a crime novel, muttering about bad research. In the end Vanessa starts tidying up her room for something to do.

‘Can you do the rest of the apartment, while you’re at it?’ her mother says, in a way that suggests she’s being funny.

But Vanessa actually does it. If nothing else, it’s fun to irritate Nicke with the sound of vacuuming. He can hardly complain.

Afterwards, Vanessa sits in front of the computer. Nobody’s logged in. She tries calling Wille. No answer. She walks up to the window.

Engelsfors is best viewed in darkness, from a bit of distance, when all you can see is streetlamps and lit windows. Vanessa catches sight of the church spire. That’s where Rebecka is going to be buried on Monday. Vanessa wishes she could be there, but it’s out of the question. Nobody can know that she and Rebecka were friendly.

Frasse scratches at the door and she lets him in. He lies down on the bed and sighs contentedly. Vanessa glances at her mobile on the desk. Then she picks it up.

Linnéa sounds out of breath when she answers. ‘Has something happened?’

Vanessa is a little confused. Then she realises that Linnéa was hardly expecting an ‘ordinary’ call from her. ‘No, I just wanted …’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Forget it,’ says Vanessa, and hangs up.

Unease wells up in her chest. She calls Wille. The phone rings at the other end. He doesn’t answer.

Frasse yawns so widely that it looks as if his jaw is going to pop out of joint. Vanessa puts down her mobile and downloads a horror movie. It’ll be nice to look at some imaginary monsters. Anything to stop her thinking about the ones already living inside her head, whispering that her boyfriend is cheating on her at this very moment with Linnéa Wallin.

The windowpanes rattle in the wind.

Minoo is searching the Net for information about demons. Again. As usual she gets nowhere. The stories she finds are more like fairy tales. She tries to compare them with each other, but draws no useful conclusions other than that evil creatures figure in most religions and cultures. But originally the word demon had nothing to do with evil. It stems from the Greek word
daimon
which simply means ‘spirit’, ‘god’ or ‘being’. Evil demons didn’t appear until the arrival of Christianity.