The Shapeshifters (51 page)

He doubted he had the courage to tell Börje the truth, so he had a story prepared at the back of his mind: that Signe must have taken the car and escaped with the boy. Once, Börje had sat beside her in the Volvo and shown her how the gears worked and which pedal to use to brake and which to accelerate. The engine had roared and cut out alternately as she searched for the right gear. So in a way it would be his own fault. He had given her the knowledge she needed to get away, and maybe, Seved thought, maybe that was just what Börje wanted. He was the one who had snatched her, and as far as he could tell that act had tormented
him for many years. Was it so strange, then, that he wanted to let her go?

The television droned softly on the upstairs landing and it was almost 2 a.m. before it fell silent. The remote thudded onto the coffee table. A glass knocked against a plate and the sofa springs groaned. The floorboards creaked and then the stairs. There was the sound of running water in the handbasin, the flush of the toilet. Then, with heavy steps, he came upstairs again. It would not be long before he fell asleep. Seved listened carefully but instead of Börje's heavy breathing he heard the front door close.

Someone had come into the house. He lay there anxiously, listening. He had made sure the door was locked, so it could only be one person.

Fully dressed in their outdoor clothes, complete with hats and scarves, Amina and Mattias stood squashed together in the small entrance hall, alert and wide-eyed with fear as he came stealthily down the stairs.

‘Shit!' he hissed as he shoved them into the kitchen and shut the door behind him. ‘I was going to come down to you! He isn't asleep yet.'

‘We thought you had forgotten us,' said Mattias.

Slowly Seved opened the door and listened in the direction of the staircase. If Börje had been awake, he would probably have heard the door by now and come down to see what was going on.

The boy pressed his mittens to his chest and Seved knew what was inside them. He was not sure how much the mouseshifter understood but he did not want it to realise they were doing something forbidden. It could very easily run off and tell the others, just to make mischief. So he said in as loud a voice as he dared:

‘Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat before we go?'

The key to the Isuzu would have to be hidden. Börje might be able to start the car anyway but that would take a long time—he would never be able to catch up with them.

A deep silence met them as they stepped out onto the veranda and hurried towards the Volvo. The sky was starry and it was bitterly cold. A low yelp came from the dog enclosure but as long as the dogs didn't start barking too loudly there was no danger. The car windows were covered in a crystalline layer of frost but he would have to scrape it off later.

Seved unplugged the engine-heater cable and opened the back door. Mattias was allowed to jump in and sit down, but Amina had to help push.

‘You'll have to push from the back,' he said softly to Amina, who nodded. She was wearing Ejvor's old knitted mittens and a woollen hat which was so loose she had to keep pushing it up her forehead.

He put the engine into neutral and with one hand on the wheel pushed the frozen car. Sluggishly it moved forwards, its tyres creaking in the dry snow. He changed his grip and grimaced. The Volvo rolled unwillingly.

Behind him he heard Amina mutter something.

‘It'll get easier soon,' he said over his shoulder.

But she went on muttering.

It was a while before Seved caught sight of it because it was small and its coat was as white as the snow. A weaselshifter. It was crouching on the rear of the car roof, watching the girl's dark face with interest while also keeping an eye on its surroundings. No doubt it was the first time it had ever ridden on anything.

Releasing his grip and chasing the shifter away was not an option for Seved because then they would lose momentum.
Instead he increased his speed, thinking that would make the weasel nervous and it would jump off. But it stayed where it was and rose up on its hind legs, looking around. Then it ran to the front and slid down the windscreen onto the bonnet.

In his eagerness to get the weasel off the bonnet Seved had not noticed that the car was moving of its own accord over the brow of the slope, and now everything was starting to go wrong. He had to make the car stop. As he pushed his elbows back against the doorframe and dug in his heels, he called to Amina to stop pushing. When he realised that was pointless he tried instead to leap onto the seat and grab the wheel, but tripped and almost fell.

The car rammed into the wall of ploughed snow where the road went round a bend. The chassis squealed and the snow grated as the radiator grill slid along it, but otherwise it was a silent collision. The door was still open.

Panting, Seved and Amina stood looking at the rear of the car. It was shining faintly in the darkness. Neither of them said anything. After a second or two a back door opened and the boy climbed out slowly, his hands clasped to his chest.

The right front wheel had ridden up the ridge of snow but not too far for Seved to be able to reverse it out, he thought. It might wake Börje, but he had no choice. He glanced back at the house, sat down behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition.

As usual the Volvo spluttered a few times before starting. He put the engine in reverse and gently depressed the accelerator. The beam from the headlights struck the compacted snow and made it glow. They were on a slope, so he would have to accelerate quite hard, but not too much otherwise the wheels would skid, and it would be as slippery as glass beneath them. The car moved slowly but steadily backwards, and when the front wheels had noisily
freed themselves from the snow and he had turned the wheel he waved to Amina and Mattias that they should leap into the car. They both sat in the back.

Seved bent over the wheel and tried to calm himself.

‘The weasel,' he said to Amina. ‘Did you see where it went?'

She shook her head and he could hear her hat rubbing against the hood of her jacket.

‘That bloody weasel,' he said. ‘I only hope it doesn't tell.'

‘Who would it tell?' she said quietly.

She was right. The hide was empty, of course, and it would hardly be able to get into the house and Börje's bedroom. Even so, he could not shake off the anxiety. It had begun badly and that did not bode well.

The road to the barrier had never felt so long. It was as if it had found new bends in the forest. He dared not put the headlights on full beam, so he could see only a few metres ahead. In his thoughts he was still inside the house. Had Börje woken up by now? Was he running around looking for the keys to the Isuzu?

He stopped at the barrier, got out, and after pulling his glove off with his teeth he unlocked the padlock. He moved the barrier to the side and jogged back to the car. He sat down, shut the door and looked at the clock. Almost two thirty. That meant they would arrive in Sorsele at 3 a.m.

He had thought he would just drop Amina and Mattias off at the first house they saw, knock on the door and leave, but when they got to Sorsele and saw the dark frozen buildings he felt unsure. The cold was intense and it would be a few hours before anyone was up and about. If no one let them in, they could very easily freeze to death.

He drove up to the hotel on the river bank but carried on slowly past. There were too many eyes in there. Someone would see the Volvo and he wanted to avoid that, even though the number plates were covered in snow. After driving around aimlessly without catching sight of a single person, he finally turned into Strandvägen, where he pulled up by the bus station. It felt safe somehow and he needed to think. To wait. Amina and Mattias sat in absolute silence on the back seat, wide awake and staring.

‘Someone will come along soon,' he murmured.

The waiting room was not open at this time of night, he knew that, otherwise they would have been able to sit inside until someone found them.

Mattias whispered something in the back and he heard the mouse moving about, scratching at the child's snowsuit. That mouseshifter was clearly harmless. He had been lucky there. But he would still have to get rid of it.

He looked at the clock. It was four.

He had to drop them off somewhere. But where? It would have to be the hotel. There was surely someone awake in there. It was the safest option as far as Mattias and Amina were concerned.

He started the car and drove slowly along the riverside and over the bridge to the Norra Esplanade. The snowdrifts shimmered from within and in the darkness the lamp posts looked like columns of light. He passed the hotel and parked about fifty metres from the entrance.

‘You'll have to go in here,' he said, nodding towards the illuminated building. ‘It's a hotel. Tell them it's Mattias, the one who . . . who went missing. They'll look after you.'

Then he reached into the darkness of the back seat.

‘You'd better give that to me now.'

But Mattias did not want to hand over the mouseshifter, wherever it was. He was quiet and sitting still, looking down at his hands.

‘You have to!'

‘He's not like them. He's just a mouse.'

‘No, he isn't. He looks like it, but he's not.'

‘Mattias,' said Amina hoarsely.

The boy raised his hand to his shoulder and then held it out to Seved, who took hold of the wriggling object. It liked the boy and had no doubt lodged itself deep inside him.

‘Amina,' he said, ‘no one is going to believe you, you know that, right?'

There was no answer so he went on:

‘They will think you're making it all up, that you're lying. So there's no point in saying anything, at least not straight away. Then you can tell someone you trust. But be prepared for no one to believe you.'

She nodded.

‘You've got to go in,' he said.

Amina opened the door and climbed out. She turned and reached for Mattias, who had scrambled across the seat. Without saying a word she shut the door and in the rear-view mirror he saw them cut across the street and disappear round the corner of the hotel.

The mouseshifter would not stop squirming in Seved's fist, so he dropped it onto the seat and it darted off instantly. It was impossible to know where it had gone. He drove on for a short distance before turning left, and as he passed the hotel on his way back he slowed down. Hopefully they had already been let in.

Mattias was standing inside the entrance doors and someone
was crouching down in front of him. But it wasn't Amina, because she came running straight up to the car with her hat in her hand. Seved stopped and wound down the window.

‘What's up?' he asked. ‘What's happening?'

‘I don't want to go in there!'

 

 

It took time to find a garage that could repair the car window while we waited, so it was Tuesday before we got away, and we were at the Statoil filling station in Gävle Bro when Roland phoned to ask if we had heard. Heard what? I wondered. That Mattias had been found. In Sorsele.

Naturally I wanted to know where he had been and if he had been taken by the Vaikijaur man. But Roland didn't know and eventually he tired of my questions.

I had immediately gestured to Susso and passed on the news. She put the car radio on but was unable to find a news bulletin. Torbjörn sat with his head bent over his mobile but for some reason he couldn't find anything either.

Susso phoned Edit but no one answered.

‘Ring his parents then,' I suggested.

But she didn't want to do that. She thought it would be an intrusion.

A few miles north of Sundsvall Susso finally got hold of Edit Mickelsson, but she had no more to add to what Roland had already told us. She had not seen Mattias yet, she had only spoken to Per-Erik, and the only thing the boy had said was that he had been given a TV game and no one had been unkind to him. As far as the Vaikijaur man was concerned, Per-Erik was unclear, but as Edit understood it he was not the one who had taken the boy.

After hearing that news we were quiet in the car for a long time.

If all that was true, there was nothing that clearly indicated that Mattias had been held captive by trolls. The attack in Holmajärvi and the bear troll that came out of nowhere on Färingsö could be related to the fuss surrounding Susso's website. It stunned us into silence.

A few kilometres further along the motorway the yellow bear logo of the Preem service station shone in the darkness through the snow.

‘Let's stop here for coffee,' I said. ‘I'm feeling a bit tired.'

I diluted my coffee with three mini Tetra Paks of milk, stirred, tasted it and opened a fourth.

I was the only one drinking. Torbjörn was standing chewing a wooden stirrer and Susso had bought a bag of nuts for the squirrel and an evening paper, which she spread out so that we could all see. It said Mattias had knocked on the door of the River Hotel in Sorsele at four o'clock in the morning. He was cold but in good spirits. His parents were overjoyed. The police were satisfied. A huge relief, said head of investigations Kjell-Åke Andersson.

Torbjörn's mobile buzzed.

‘Rackvattnet,' he said, reading the display. ‘The Skarfs live in Rackvattnet.'

Susso looked up and straightened her glasses.

‘Where's that?' she asked.

‘Don't know. Just got the address from Matti.'

He tapped the keys and soon a new text came in.

‘It's between Boden and Älvsbyn.'

‘Have they got a son?' I asked, without looking up from the paper.

Torbjörn held out the phone.

‘All I've got is the address. Rackvattnet 4.'

 

 

He trudged on through the thin light of daybreak. The snow had forced its way into the shafts of his boots and lay there like cuffs of ice around his ankles, stinging his skin. Amina walked a few metres behind him, with snow up to her thighs. When he turned round she looked away because she thought he was angry with her. She might as well think that, though in actual fact he wasn't. He was grateful she had returned. It meant he did not have to be alone in the forest.