The Darkest Room (32 page)

Henrik Jansson was fighting
his way through the blinding snow. He tucked his head down toward his chest in the roaring wind, and had only the vaguest idea of where he was.

He guessed that he had reached the meadows by the shore to the south of the lighthouses at Eel Point, but he couldn’t see them. The snow scratched at his eyes.

Idiot
. He should have stayed inside. He had always stayed indoors when the blizzard came.

One January weekend when he was seven years old and staying in his grandparents’ cottage, he had had a nightmare: a pride of roaring lions had been stalking around in his room during the night.

When he woke up in the morning, the lions were gone. Everything was silent in the house, but when he got up and looked out, the ground between the buildings was sparkling white.

“There was a blizzard overnight,” his grandfather Algot had explained.

The undulating snow was almost as high as the window ledges—Henrik couldn’t open the front door.

“How can you tell, Grandfather … that it’s a blizzard?”

“You don’t know when the blizzard is coming,” Algot had said. “But you know when it arrives.”

And Henrik knew, there on the Baltic shore. This was the blizzard. The gales before it started had been nothing more than a premonition.

Algot’s scythe swung in the wind, weighing him down. He was forced to drop it in the snow, but hung onto the ax. He took three steps over the solid, frozen ground, hunkered down, and rested. Then three more steps.

After a while he had to rest after every other step.

The thin ice cover out at sea was smashed to pieces by the strengthening waves. Henrik heard the long drawn-out rumbling, but could no longer see the sea—he could see nothing in any direction.

The pains in his stomach had abated. It might have been the effects of the icy wind, reducing the bleeding, but at the same time he felt as if his entire body were slowly becoming numb.

His consciousness began to drift away—sometimes it was so far away that it felt as if he were hovering next to his body.

Henrik thought about Katrine, the woman who had drowned at Eel Point. He had enjoyed sanding and replacing the floors with her. She had been small and blonde, just like Camilla.

Camilla
.

He remembered her warmth as they lay in bed. But that thought quickly disappeared in the wind.

It was too late to turn back toward to the boathouses at Enslunda, and he didn’t even know where they were any longer. And where were the fucking lighthouses? Henrik peered up into the wind and caught a brief glimpse of a faint
flashing light in the distance—so he was heading in the right direction.

Breathe in, move forward, breathe out.

Then came a hard shove from the direction of the sea that stopped him in the middle of a step. The wind had increased in strength yet again, although Henrik had thought that was impossible.

He sank to his knees. At the same time he dropped the ax in the snow, but managed to pick it up again with enormous difficulty, and tucked the shaft inside his jacket. The ax was meant for the Serelius brothers, and he mustn’t lose it.

He crept north, or at least in the direction he thought was north. There was nothing else he could do; if he stopped to rest in the storm, he would soon freeze to death.

Thieves deserve to be thrashed
, he could hear his grandfather saying.
They’re good for nothing but fertilizer and fish food
.

Henrik shook his head.

No, his grandfather had always been able to trust him. The only people he had ever deceived were his teachers, some of his friends, his parents, and John, his boss at the flooring company. And the people who owned the houses. And Camilla, of course; he had sometimes lied to her when they were together, and in the end she had grown tired of him.

A screwdriver in the stomach, perhaps that was what he deserved.

Suddenly someone was clawing at him. Henrik panicked before he realized it was just long leaves from the reeds, whirling around in the wind.

He stopped, closed his eyes, and curled up in the icy blast. If he just relaxed and stopped struggling, he would soon go completely numb, in his stomach and right through the rest of his body.

Was death warm or cold? Or somewhere in between?

Somewhere in his head were the Serelius brothers with their broad smiles. That got him moving again.

Joakim stood in the barn
listening to the wind roaring over the huge roof. He could feel its power through the beams and the sheets of asbestos, but at least he was out of its reach.

He had climbed the ladder a few minutes earlier and was back in the room behind the hayloft.

Everything was silent here. The angular roof high above gave him the feeling of having stepped into a church.

The batteries in his flashlight were almost done, but he could still make out the old church benches in the darkness. And all the old objects lying on them.

This was the prayer room for those who had died at Eel Point; this was where they gathered every Christmas.

Joakim was sure of it. Would they come tonight or tomorrow? It didn’t matter, he would stay here and wait for Katrine.

Slowly Joakim moved forward along the narrow aisle between the benches, looking at the possessions of the dead.

He stopped by the front bench and shone the flashlight on the denim jacket lying there, neatly folded.

He had left it exactly where he found it—he had hardly dared touch it that night. He had taken the book Mirja Rambe had written into his bedroom and started to read it, but he didn’t want Ethel’s jacket in the house. He was afraid that Livia would start dreaming about her aunt again.

Joakim reached out and felt at the worn fabric, as if touching it could provide answers to all his questions.

When he got hold of one sleeve, something rustled and fell on the floor.

It was a small piece of paper.

He bent down and picked it up, and saw a single sentence written in ink. In the faint beam of the flashlight Joakim read the words, which had been pressed hard into the paper:

Slowly he moved backwards, the note in his hand.

That junkie whore
.

Joakim read the six words on the note several times, and realized this was not a message to Ethel. This had been written to him and Katrine.

Make sure that junkie whore disappears
.

But he had never seen it before.

The paper had not been damaged by damp and the ink was black and clear, so the note couldn’t have been in the pocket the night Ethel fell in the water.

The note had been placed there later, he realized. Presumably by Katrine, after she had got hold of the jacket from Joakim’s mother.

Joakim thought back to the nights when Ethel would stand and scream out in the street at the Apple House. Sometimes
he had seen the neighbors’ curtains being pulled aside. Pale, terrified faces had peered out at Ethel.

A note with an exhortation from the neighbors. Katrine must have found it in the mailbox one day when she was home alone, and she had read it and realized that this couldn’t go on. The neighbors had had enough of the yelling, night after night.

Everybody had had enough of Ethel. Something had to be done.

Joakim was very tired now, and sank down on the bench next to Ethel’s jacket. He kept on staring at the note in his hand, until he heard a faint scraping noise through the wind.

It was coming from the opening in the floor behind him.

Someone was inside the barn.

When the northern lighthouse is lit, someone is going to die at Eel Point. I have heard that story, but that evening when I got home from Borgholm and saw the white light from the northern tower, I didn’t think about it. I was too shocked at seeing Ragnar Davidsson carrying Torun’s paintings down to the water, without taking the slightest notice of my cries
.

He had dropped a few rolled-up canvases in the snow, and I tried to gather them up, but they scudded away in the wind. All I had in my arms were two paintings when I got back to the house
.

—
MIRJA RAMBE

WINTER 1962

With the wind at
my back, I race into the outbuilding’s porch and on into the middle room, despite the fact that I know what I will see there.

Empty white walls.

Almost all of Torun’s blizzard paintings have gone from the storeroom—there are just a few rolled up on the floor, but there are several piles of fishing nets.

The door to our end of the house is closed, but I know that Torun is sitting in there. I can’t go in to her, can’t tell her what has happened, so I sink down onto the floor.

Over on the table are a half-full glass and a bottle. They weren’t there before.

I quickly go over to them, stick my nose in the glass, and sniff at the clear liquid. It’s schnapps—presumably Davidsson’s ration to keep him warm.

Here and there around the house are similar bottles with different contents, and when I think about them I know what I am going to do.

There is no sign of Davidsson as I hurry across the inner
courtyard, open the barn door, and slip into the darkness. I can find my way around in there among the shadows without a light, and go further inside to the garbage and the hidden treasures. In a corner stands a special metal container—a container on which someone has drawn a black cross. I take it back to the outbuilding with me.

In the storeroom
I empty out most of Davidsson’s schnapps onto one of his piles of nets that stinks of tar, then top it up with the same amount of the equally clear and almost odor-free liquid from the can.

There is a wooden cupboard in the corner; I hide the can in there.

Then I sit down on the floor again and wait.

Five or ten minutes later there is a rattling at the door. The howling of the wind increases in volume, before the noise is cut off with a bang.

A pair of heavy boots step into the porch and stamp up and down to shake off the snow; I recognize the smell of sweat and tar.

Ragnar Davidsson comes into the room and looks at me.

“So where have you been?” he asks. “You just took off this morning.”

I don’t reply. The only thing I can think of is what I’m going to say to Torun about the paintings. She can’t find out what has happened.

“With some guy, of course,” says Davidsson, answering his own question.

He walks slowly around me on the cement floor, and I give him one last chance. I raise my hand and point toward the shore.

“We have to go and fetch the paintings.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is. You have to help me.”

He shakes his head and walks over to the table. “They’re
already gone … they’re on their way to Gotland. The wind and the waves took them.”

He fills up the glass and raises it to his lips.

I could warn him, but I say nothing. I simply watch as he drinks—three good gulps that almost empty the glass.

Then he puts it down on the table, smacks his lips and says, “Right, little Mirja … so what do you fancy doing now?”

Henrik woke up to find
his dead grandfather standing over him like a shadow in the whirling powdery snow. Algot leaned forward and raised his boot-clad foot.

Move yourself! Do you want to die?

He felt hard blows striking his legs and feet, over and over again.

Get up! Thieving bastard!

Henrik slowly lifted his head, wiped the snow out of his eyes, and screwed his eyes up as he peered into the wind. His grandfather’s ghost was gone, but in the distance he could see a searchlight sweeping silently across the night sky. The blood-red glow made the veils of snow above him sparkle.

A little further away he thought he could see another light. A steady white light.

The light from the twin lighthouses at Eel Point.

Henrik had struggled along in a daze, yard by yard through the snow, but in the end he had made it.

His jeans were soaking wet; it was the water that had woken him up. The storm waves were so high by now that they came crashing in over the shore, sluicing his legs with foam even though he was lying a long way up on the grass.

He got up slowly with his back to the sea. His hands had gone to sleep, as had his feet, but he was able to move.

There was a little strength left in Henrik’s trembling legs, and he set off again, his arms dangling at his sides.

A rectangular wooden object shifted inside his jacket, and ice-cold steel was poking up by his throat.

It was his grandfather’s ax—he remembered tucking it inside his jacket, but not why he was carrying it around.

Then it came to him: the Serelius brothers. He took the ax out and kept on going.

Two gray towers took shape through the storm. The sea below them was boiling, hurling glittering lumps of ice onto the islands where the lighthouses stood.

Henrik had arrived at Eel Point. He stopped, swaying in the wind. What should he do now?

He would go up to the house, it must be somewhere on the left. He turned off in that direction, away from the lighthouses.

With the wind at his back everything was suddenly much easier. It helped to nudge him along, up over the hard crust of snow covering the meadow. He had begun to recognize the different gusts of wind by now, how the weaker bursts were followed by sharper squalls.

After a hundred or two hundred steps he began to get an impression of broad shadowy shapes ahead of him.

A wooden fence suddenly blocked his way, but he found an opening. On the other side the buildings of Eel Point rose up like great ships in the night, and Henrik moved into the shelter between the gable ends.

Made it.

The manor house enfolded him in its dark embrace. He was safe.

The wind in the courtyard was like a caress compared with the way it had been down by the sea, but there was a lot more snow between the buildings. It came swirling down from the roofs like powder, melting on his face, and the drifts were almost up to his waist.

Henrik could just glimpse the veranda of the main house through the curtains of snow, and he plowed over to it and eventually reached the steps.

He stopped on the bottom step, caught his breath, and looked up.

The door had been broken open. The lock was smashed and the frame appeared to have been split.

The Serelius brothers had been here.

Henrik was too cold to be cautious now; he staggered up the steps, pulled open the veranda door, and more or less fell headlong over the threshold onto a soft rag rug. The door closed behind him.

Warmth. The storm was shut out, and he could hear his own wheezing breath.

He let go of the ax and began to move his fingers tentatively. At first they were like ice, but when the warmth and the feeling slowly began to return to his hands and toes, the pain came. The wound in his stomach started to throb again.

He was wet and tired, but he couldn’t just lie here.

Slowly he got up and staggered through the next doorway. It was dark around him, but here and there he could see the glow of small yellow lamps and candles. The wallpaper was fresh and white, the ceilings had been repaired and painted—a lot had happened since he was last here.

He turned left and suddenly found himself in the big kitchen. He had replaced and polished the floor in here last summer.

A gray and black cat was sitting looking out of the window, and the faint aroma of fried meatballs lingered in the air.

Henrik spotted the faucet and the sink and staggered over to it.

The water was only lukewarm, but still it burned his frozen hands. He gritted his teeth as the nerves warmed up, but after holding his fingers in the running water for a few minutes, he was able to move them.

The cat turned to look at him, then returned its gaze to the snowstorm.

On the counter stood a block containing stainless steel kitchen knives. Henrik grabbed the handle of the biggest one and pulled it out.

With the carving knife in his hand he went back into the main house.

He tried to remember the layout of the rooms, but had difficulty in picturing it. Suddenly he was standing in a long corridor, in the doorway of a small room.

A child’s room.

A little girl of about five or six, with blonde hair, was sitting up in bed. She was holding a white cuddly toy and a red sweater in her arms. A small television stood on the floor in front of her, but it was switched off.

Henrik opened his mouth, but his head was completely empty.

“Hi,” was all he said.

His voice was hoarse and rough.

The girl looked at him, but said nothing.

“Have you seen anyone else here?” he asked. “Any other … nice men?”

The girl shook her head. “I just heard them,” she said. “They were clomping around and they woke me up …I was scared to go out.”

“Good,” said Henrik, “you need to stay in here. … Where are your mom and dad?”

“Daddy went out to Mommy.”

“And where’s your mommy?”

“In the barn.”

Before Henrik had time to think about that response,
the girl pointed at him and asked, “Why have you got a knife?”

He looked down. “Don’t know.”

It felt very strange to see himself clutching a big knife. It looked dangerous.

“Are you going to cut some bread?”

“No.”

Henrik closed his eyes. The feeling was beginning to return to his feet now, and it hurt.

“What are you going to do?” said the girl.

“I don’t know … but you need to stay here.”

“Can I go into Gabriel’s room?”

“Who’s Gabriel?”

“My little brother.”

Henrik nodded with some effort. “Sure.”

The girl quickly jumped out of bed, still holding the cuddly toy and the sweater, and scampered past him.

Henrik gathered his remaining strength and turned around. He heard the door close in the next bedroom along. He went in the other direction, to look for the Serelius brothers. Had he been along here before? He must have been.

Down along a corridor, back to the front of the house.

He listened for noises apart from the wind, and for a few seconds he thought he could hear a rhythmic banging from the upper floor—a loose shutter, perhaps. Then the house was silent again.

A dark, flat object was lying in a corner out in the hallway. Henrik went closer.

He saw that it was the Ouija board, thrown onto the floor, split across the middle with considerable force. The little glass lay beside the board like a cracked egg.

Henrik went back out to the veranda where the air was cooler. The snow was sticking to the windowpanes, but he could just make out movements in the courtyard.

He bent down in silence and picked up his grandfather’s ax.

Two shadows were moving out there. They slowly came closer through the snow, and Henrik could see that one of them was holding a dark object. A gun?

He wasn’t sure if it was the brothers, but raised the ax anyway.

By the time the outer door was opened, he had already swung it.