The Shapeshifters

Copyright © 2012 by Stefan Spjut

English translation copyright © 2015 by Susan Beard

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

First published with the title
Stallo
in 2012 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Faber & Faber Limited

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
.
ISBN
978-0-544-08408-7

Map by Don Larson/Mapping Specialists, Ltd.

Cover design by Mark R. Robinson

Cover photograph © Jan Stromme/Getty Images

e
ISBN
978-0-544-08404-9
v1.0715

 

The worm glued to the tarmac is as long as a snake. No, longer. It reaches all the way to the grass verge beside the main road. The boy's eyes follow the slimy ribbon and notice that it stretches across the ditch and curls into the belly of a grey animal. A badger. Dead but still looking. Its eyes are black glass and one paw has stiffened in a wave.

The car door opens and his mother calls, but he cannot tear himself away from the animal.

Then she gets out.

She stands beside the boy. Wrinkles her nose so her glasses ride up.

‘It's been run over,' she says.

‘But why does it look like that?'

‘Those are intestines. A bird pulled them out. Or some other animal.'

He wants to know which bird, which animal.

‘Come on now,' she says.

‘But I haven't peed yet.'

‘Well, do it then.'

He presses his cheek against the window but the pine trees are so tall he can hardly see where they end. His knees are gripping a large Fanta bottle and from time to time he blows into the neck.
The glass is warm and the last few mouthfuls have also been warm. They have been driving for almost three hours, and he has never travelled for such a long time in a car before.

When they stop he does not understand that they have arrived, because they are right in the middle of the forest. There is no sign of a cabin. Only trees.

‘Are we there?' he asks.

His mother sits motionless for a while, lost in her thoughts, before pulling the key from the ignition and climbing out. She opens his door.

It is as if the mosquitoes have been waiting for him. They come from all directions and land on him in such a teeming mass that his legs look mottled. He makes no attempt to brush them away but instead stiffens and lets out a plaintive yell.

His mother heaves the bag onto the bonnet and finds a bath towel, which she wraps around him like a cape. After she has tied it round his neck she starts running, with the bag in one hand and the plastic carrier from the supermarket in the other. She leaves a kind of furrow behind her in the long grass. She is wearing a short-sleeved top in green velour, and an oblong-shaped sweat mark is spreading out between her shoulder blades. Her flared jeans flap around her ankles.

He follows after her and the little figures in his backpack rattle inside their plastic box. He holds the shoulder strap with one hand and uses the other to grip the towel to stop it from flying away. Running is difficult and soon his mother's back disappears in the dense greenery in front of him. He calls out to her to wait, but she carries on, calling over her shoulder for him to hurry up.

The ferns have formed tight, thick clumps, and beyond them the fir trees tower above the pitch-black ground. All around him
the spiky stalks of the grass hum and tick with insects, and his cloak flies behind him as he runs.

The forest is a silent reflection on the windowpanes. Pine cones, thin twigs and drifts of old pine needles are piled up on the metal roof. The fir trees sway high above against a sky that has grown pale.

His mother has reached the door. Pulling a face she leans forwards, feeling under a windowsill.

‘Oh, please,' she says, bending up the metal and forcing her fingers underneath while blowing puffs of air to each side to keep the mosquitoes away.

The boy has untied the towel and pulled it up over his head like a headscarf. He spins around in pirouettes and his trainers thump on the veranda. Grass has grown up in places between the planks, and he stamps it under his feet. There is an ashtray filled with water resting on the wooden railing, and a fly is floating on the surface. Or could it be a beetle? All he can see are crooked legs sticking out. But when he looks closer he notices more insects. The water is thick with them. It looks like a disgusting soup, the kind witches make.

His mother has knelt down and is trying to look under the windowsill.

‘I don't believe it,' she says.

Then she starts hunting in the grass below the window.

The boy watches her for a while. Then he tries the door handle.

‘Mummy,' he says, ‘it's open.'

She pushes him in front of her, lifts in their luggage and slams the door shut behind them. The boy stands in front of a wall hanging
of dark swirls and hard, staring eyes and he wonders what it is supposed to be. An owl? Then he gets another push from the hand holding the plastic bag. The bag is cold from the milk cartons at the bottom.

‘In with you then!'

The words leave his mother's mouth and seem to fasten in something inside, a web left behind by the silence that has reigned for so long inside the cabin. The boy feels it and is hesitant. He would prefer to stand where he is for a while.

‘Go in!'

With wary eyes he walks inside and looks around.

The walls are covered in unpainted pine panelling below and woven wallpaper above. Small pictures and copper pans hang here and there. Through a door he sees a bunk bed with fringed bedspreads. He peers in. The room is very small. Beside the bed is a stool with a book on top of it. Outside the window stands a tree. Its pointed leaves almost touch the windowpane.

He lays his rucksack on the kitchen table, unzips it and takes out the plastic box. It is an old ice cream container with BIG PACK written on a wrinkled label on the lid. Carefully he pulls off the elastic band because he knows it might snap, then tips the figures out onto the table. The ones that came free in boxes of biscuits are all tangled up as if to show they belong together. He also has Smurfs. A hippopotamus with a gaping mouth. A gorilla beating its chest. A galloping horse unable to stand up. A man who is sitting down. He is blue all over, even his head.

Opposite the wood-burning stove is a little sofa, and he sits down on it with a Smurf in each hand. A floor lamp with a pleated shade leans over him. There is no light bulb in it, only a gaping hole. They have borrowed the cabin from someone his mother
works with, and the boy wonders why the owner has not put in a bulb. Perhaps for the same reason that there is no television.

He runs his hands over the sofa's upholstery, which is mustard yellow and knobbly. He knows if you play about wildly in a sofa like this you can burn yourself.

There is a small kitchen area, and he walks over to look. The fridge is so small he has to bend down to open it. It is empty inside; no light comes on and it does not even feel cold. He has to push the door firmly to make sure it stays shut. The wall above the draining board has the same cork covering as the floor—reddish brown with a hexagonal pattern.

There is a string of plastic garlic hanging from a nail. He points at it and asks if he can take it down, and she says he can. By climbing on a stool he can get onto the draining board and reach the garlic. Not that he can do much with it, but it is only pretend anyway. He pinches the stiff plastic leaves, testing to see how well they are attached, while his mother walks around opening cupboards and drawers. She opens the fridge too, and shuts it again.

The boy says there is floor on the walls.

‘Yes,' she sighs. And walls on the floor.'

His mother brings in flowers, a large bunch, which she pushes into a vase and places on the table. They have a powerful, spicy fragrance and are called camomile. The boy notices that the white petals are covered in tiny, tiny insects, but she tells him not to mind. Some of them fall like snow onto the table, and so that he can see them against the grain of the wood he has to lower his head and look closely. The creatures are in a hurry and know exactly where they want to go. He tries to stop them and make them change direction, but he fails.

‘Do you know how small these insects are?' he says.

‘I'm sure they're minutely small.'

‘They are so small they die when I touch them.'

Later that evening they lie on the bunk bed under a quilt patterned with huge fantasy flowers and spiralling stems. They have fitted an insect screen to the window and the whole cabin echoes to the chirping of grasshoppers.

‘Listen,' she whispers, her lips against his hair. ‘It sounds as if they are indoors, don't you think? As if they are here, in the cabin, playing for us. Under the bed perhaps?'

The boy nods and asks about the shielings she had been talking about in the car.

‘Where are they?'

‘In the forest.'

‘Can we go there?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Can we?'

‘We'll see.'

In the early morning the rain comes and does not stop. The raindrops are hitting the ashtray on the veranda rail so hard that the water looks as if it is boiling. Now the witch is cooking her soup, he thinks. The wooden seat of his chair is cold and he crouches on it, pulling his sweatshirt over his knees. He is waiting for breakfast. Once more he asks about the huts. Are they far away?

‘We'll do it another day,' she says.

He protests loudly and is told they have no rain clothes with them. That disappoints him and he complains. He has his boots, after all. He whines until she strokes his hair.

She looks at him, her thick, shiny brown fringe falling over her large glasses. Her forehead is completely hidden.

They eat cold rosehip soup and bread spread with margarine.

‘Boring sandwiches,' she says.

‘When-it's-pouring sandwiches,' he replies.

Afterwards they play cards, Beggar My Neighbour. He is an expert at Beggar My Neighbour. You have to be especially careful when you lift your card in case the other person sees it. His mother does not understand that. She sits with her chin resting heavily on her hand, studying the cards that she turns up—she does not stand a chance. The boy triumphs again and again, slapping his palm hard on the tabletop and giggling every time he wins a pile of cards.

Finally she gives up, moves away from the table and curls up with a book on the little sofa. In her bag she has a whole pile of books. She rests her feet on the armrest and curls her toes. Her nails are squares of red varnish. She is wearing a chain around her neck, and as she reads she slides the pendant backwards and forwards, making a rasping noise. There is no point now in trying to talk to her. He knows that only too well.

The wood burner is a cavern and he puts his little figures in there, kneeling down and making the doors creak, and then shouting in a high-pitched voice. The stove is a prison and the figures hate being shut in. It is terrifying in there, dark and with only ash to eat. But they have only themselves to blame! Goofy tries to escape but is caught near the log basket and returned to the sooty cell, howling in protest.

His mother smiles at him.

He dislikes that, so he keeps quiet.