The Key (89 page)

Minoo let them die. She let
Viktor
die.

She closes her eyes to escape those memories but, beneath her eyelids, she can still see the bloodstains on Walter’s shirt. Clara’s blood.

Clara. What happened to her? Did she survive?

Minoo knows that she must tell the others. But not now. Not yet. She is too afraid about how it will affect her if she says it out loud.

Then she remembers the explosion in the centre of town. It caused the deaths of an old lady and her neighbour. What has happened in Engelsfors while they’ve been away? Have more people been injured? Killed?

Gustaf
.

‘We must go and find the others,’ she says.

‘Yes.’ Vanessa looks worried. ‘Shit, I hope everyone is OK …’

She suddenly stops talking. Stares at the clock on the wall. Minoo follows her eyes.

It feels as if they have been away for perhaps a couple of hours, at most. But it must have taken them a whole night. It’s ten to eleven now.

‘One thing,’ Linnéa says. ‘All the windows exploded in the earthquake …’

Minoo grasps at once what she means. She had watched the earth portent from the vantage point of the guardians and saw the broken glass shower the schoolyard.

But the panes in the dining area windows are all in one piece.

‘Maybe these ones weren’t affected,’ she says.

‘Maybe,’ Linnéa says. ‘But doesn’t everything look quite freshly painted?’

* * *

Anna-Karin scans the big room and has to admit that Linnéa is right. It does look freshly painted and the walls are several shades lighter than they used to be.

An unpleasant suspicion begins to make itself felt.

‘How long have we actually been away?’ she asks.

‘If they’ve had time to put in new windows and paint the place …’ Vanessa begins, but she doesn’t complete the sentence.

‘Does anyone have a mobile?’ Minoo pats her jeans pockets.

Anna-Karin checks, too. But of course she didn’t bring it. When she left home in the morning, the networks were still down in Engelsfors.

This morning. It can’t have been this morning.

Her heart beats faster now. Grandpa. He will have worried so.

If he is still alive.

She isn’t fast enough to block the thought.

‘There are so many people in the yard their thoughts just add up to a headache,’ Linnéa says. ‘But they seem to be waiting for something to happen.’

‘I must go to Grandpa,’ Anna-Karin says.

She quickly leaves the dining room. The others follow her upstairs to the entrance lobby.

There are wooden boards across the windows and the glazed parts of the front doors. The air smells strongly of paint. The floor looks new. And so do the lamps in the ceiling.

Anna-Karin hears the buzz of voices in the yard and opens the front doors.

* * *

The cheering hits Vanessa full force. Whistles, horns, applause and shrieks echo across the schoolyard.

It is crowded with people in light summer clothes. Above their heads, a forest of boards with messages in bright colours. Blue and yellow streamers. Pictures of children. Vanessa recognises several. Michelle, still in nappies, has covered herself with blue finger paint. Liam is blushing sweetly, wearing a princess dress and with his feet stuck into a pair of large, high-heeled shoes.

It’s graduation day.

It should have been Vanessa’s graduation too.

Then, the noise dies down. Everyone looks at the Chosen Ones standing on top of the steps. Now, the only sound is the rustling of the sheets of plastic that enclose the scaffolding along the façade of the school.

Eight months
, Linnéa thinks.
We have been away for eight months
.

‘It’s them!’ a girl’s voice screams from somewhere in the crowd. ‘They’re back!’

The noise grows again. People press close to the steps and some stretch to see better, waving their mobiles and cameras in the air to get good shots.

Vanessa is sweating in her thick winter jacket. She just stands there, as if paralysed.

It was October when they went into the cave. And now, it’s June.

Eight months.

She glances at Minoo, Anna-Karin and Linnéa and sees the shock in their faces.

There is the sound of running feet inside the school. Raucous voices, louder and louder.

’Cause we have graduated! ’Cause we have graduated!

The doors behind them are opened wide and the band of white-capped graduates rushes out and surrounds the Chosen Ones. Vanessa is pushed, stumbles, but grabs the handrail. She turns and searches for a glimpse of Evelina and Michelle.

’Cause we have gradua-a-ated!

The first ones catch sight of the Chosen Ones and stop in their tracks. It causes a multiple pile-up among the white caps and irritated shouting from further back. Inside the school, those who haven’t yet noticed the blockage carry on singing.

‘Vanessa is back!’ screams some guy she has never exchanged one word with before.

Several people start calling out their names. The singing inside the school stops. Vanessa sees Linnéa’s head disappear under Tindra’s black and purple dreads. Behind them, Julia and Felicia watch the chaos, obviously upset that their dream of the perfect graduation is going up in smoke.

Vanessa picks up the familiar smell of Michelle’s hairspray and perfume a fraction of a second before she is jumped.

‘You’re back!’ she yells. Vanessa notices that she’s quite drunk.

She doesn’t have time to say anything before Evelina has pushed through the mass of bodies. She is crying black mascara tears and her white cap falls off her head as she throws her arms around Vanessa’s neck.

‘Nessa!’ she sobs.

They are both hugging Vanessa so hard she can’t breathe. Michelle is snivelling damply in her ear. Vanessa is pouring with sweat under her winter jacket. People are crowding in from all directions.

‘Evelina said you’re witches,’ Michelle whispers. ‘But I haven’t told anyone, honest.’

Vanessa thinks about Mum. Mum and Melvin. They must think that she’s dead.

‘I must get out of here,’ she says. Evelina nods.

Tommy Ekberg has turned up on the top of the steps. He wears a brilliantly blue shirt with a pattern of ice-cream lollies. He stretches his arms up in the air and is shouting to the graduates to calm down and stay where they are.

Come to the parking lot
, Linnéa thinks to Vanessa.
See you at Rickard’s car
.

* * *

Minoo is pushed back and forth by the people on the steps. They all want to talk to her, touch her, and the light is so strong. So terribly strong. She is sweating in her black sweater.

She saw Linnéa just moments ago but now she can only see her friend with the dreads. Anna-Karin and Vanessa have vanished, too. She is alone with her fear and her thoughts about Mum and Dad and Gustaf.

They’ve been waiting for her for eight months.

‘Anybody got a phone?’ she shouts.

But nobody listens; they only carry on yelling things like, ‘Where have you been?’ and other questions Minoo can’t answer.

‘Minoo!’ Rickard calls to her.

Just at the bottom of the steps, she sees the sun glint in his glasses. She needs to get to him and doesn’t care who she annoys as she elbows her way through the crowd. She reaches out her hand and he pulls her down the last bit. Linnéa stands next to him, without her fake fur coat. She has swept her fringe from her sweaty face.

‘Let’s go. I’ve got my car parked round the back,’ Rickard says.

Vanessa will meet us there
, Linnéa thinks.
Anna-Karin has gone to see her grandpa
.

Minoo clutches Rickard’s arm as they plough on across the schoolyard. She stares fixedly at the ground. Mobiles are clicking around them.

‘Minoo!’ calls a voice that sounds like Ylva’s, but she ignores it.

Eight months.

When they are clear of the throng, she starts running to the back of the school, together with Rickard and Linnéa.

‘What do they think happened to us?’ she asks Rickard.

‘The authorities claimed that it was an unidentified gas leak that made the whole town fall asleep,’ he replies. ‘The police thought you were involved in some kind of accident at the time. But there have been loads of rumours. And your parents have kept searching for you.’

Vanessa, Evelina and Michelle are already waiting near an old red Nissan. Vanessa has taken off her jacket and folded the sleeves of her top so that it looks like a tank top.

‘What shall we do?’ she says. ‘I must phone Mum, but we’ve got to agree on a story!’

Minoo glances nervously at Michelle.

‘No problem,’ Michelle says slowly. ‘I know that you do spells and stuff.’

Minoo wonders if more people have learned the truth while they’ve been away. And then it strikes her that it’s only a matter of time before
everyone
will learn it.

‘What the hell do we say, Minoo?’ Vanessa says.

There is only one option.

‘We’ve got to tell them,’ Minoo says.

The others look baffled.

‘Everything will change now,’ Minoo continues. ‘We must tell them the truth so that they’re prepared.’

But she has no idea how to go about it. How can she convince her parents? Get them to believe the unbelievable?

‘I don’t think I can deal with that on my own,’ Vanessa says. ‘Can’t we do it together?’

‘Yes, that’ll probably be best,’ Minoo agrees. Linnéa nods.

Vanessa hugs Michelle and leaps into the back with Evelina and Linnéa. Minoo settles down in the passenger seat and Rickard hands her his mobile.

She draws a deep breath before phoning home.

* * *

Anna-Karin pulls off her jacket as she cruises between the festive graduate carriages. There are all sorts, cars and trailers and trucks, all decorated with balloons and birch branches covered in green leaves. The decorations sway in a gentle breeze and Anna-Karin enjoys the cool wind against her overheated body.

Just ten minutes from here to Sunny Side if she runs.

So, she starts running. And while she’s running, she reaches out for the fox.

She finds him at once. He has waited for her. Pure joy flows through their link, a joy that should surely be too great for a small fox. She shares it and promises him that she will soon meet him in the forest.

Just now, she is running along the streets of Engelsfors.

The sun is shining strongly from a clear blue sky that is arching high above the town. She smells the warm tarmac, the newly mown grass in the gardens, the lilac. Hears the buzz of the insects dancing among the Queen Anne’s Lace and forget-me-nots. A dog barks somewhere in the distance; the owner shouts at it but it doesn’t stop.

Anna-Karin is breathing, her heart is beating. Her feet run lightly on the ground.

She is alive.

The world is alive.

It will become magical and Anna-Karin can’t begin to imagine what this will mean. But it is still here.

She hopes that Grandpa is, too.

Minoo ends the phone call and wipes the tears off her cheeks. The air conditioning in Rickard’s car makes her shiver. She looks out at the gardens in their June greenery. Several doors are decorated with birch leaves, flags, ribbons and balloons, welcoming a graduate home. How the sight of every such door must have pained her parents.

Dad hadn’t been able to get a word out when he first heard Minoo’s voice. She said she’d be back home soon, that she was well and that she’d explain everything. Then Mum wanted the phone but she simply wept. And Minoo began to weep with her. Just as Vanessa does now, speaking to her mother.

‘I love you,’ she says. ‘See you soon.’

She hands the mobile back to Evelina and meets Minoo’s eyes in the mirror.

‘Mum will be along at once. She says she has seen a lot of your parents since we disappeared. They’ve tried to support each other …’

She cries even harder and Evelina puts her arm around her.

‘Sweetie,’ she says.

Minoo runs through Rickard’s contacts, and selects Gustaf’s number. The recorded voicemail answer is new, more grownup and formal.
Hello, you’ve reached Gustaf Åhlander. Please leave a message and I will call you back as soon as I can
.

‘Hi,’ she manages to say. ‘I’m using Rickard’s phone … I’m back.’ She doesn’t know what she should say next and ends the call.

‘He must keep his mobile switched off at work,’ Rickard says.

Minoo wants him to explain.

‘He has got himself a job in a hotel in Borlänge while he does a distance-learning course in law,’ Rickard says. ‘You mustn’t feel bad about him. He has known all along that you’ll be back.’

‘How could he?’ Minoo asks.

‘Rickard had this vision,’ Evelina says behind her.

‘Just after the town had woken up,’ he says, ‘I saw that you had succeeded and that you would be back. But there was no warning that you’d take so long.’ He smiles.

Minoo’s fears are calmed a little. At least Gustaf had hope to cling to during all these months. Unlike her parents.

‘How long was the town asleep?’ Linnéa asks.

‘A few hours,’ Evelina replies.

It had taken them roughly that long to close the portal. It had been the saying goodbye afterwards that had lasted for eight months.

‘It was pretty bad,’ Rickard says. ‘We drove around and tried to help where we could. But there were loads of things we couldn’t do anything about … thirty-four people died or disappeared, not counting you guys.’

But Minoo is hardly listening. Rickard has stopped outside her house and her parents are waiting for her on the drive.

* * *

Vanessa watches as Minoo rushes out even before Rickard has had time to turn the engine off. She is almost hit by a cyclist who shouts angrily at her.

Minoo and her parents are running towards each other.

Vanessa doesn’t want to see them fall into each other’s arms; doesn’t want to start crying again.

‘In that vision of yours, did you
see
us as we closed the portal?’ she asks Rickard.

‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘But Mona did.’

‘Mona?’ Vanessa exchanges a glance with Linnéa. ‘So, she came back?’