Chapter 46
On that Christmas Day, Sten Persson went to see the Soderstroms. Exactly what happened between Sten and Karl-Henrik never became clear, although both of them came out of it unscathed—at least outwardly.
Sten rang the doorbell unannounced. When no one answered, he walked around the house and down the cellar stairs. That door was closed but unlocked. From upstairs, Lillemor could hear the two men’s voices, agitated but muffled. She couldn’t make out any words. After a while, they stopped.
According to Karl-Henrik, Sten accused him of causing Killian’s death.
Everyone knew that what had happened to Killian had to do with the Soderstrom family, that it was because of the tension between Karl-Henrik and Madeleine, and the way Mikael looked up to his father.
Jesus Christ, he was crazy, Karl-Henrik said, so angry that he almost went at Sten with his fists.
Like Karl-Henrik wasn’t grieving too? Like he wasn’t grieving?
For fuck’s sake, his son was the one who was murdered.
Killian, Sten’s stupid fucking boy, had gotten in that car of his own free will and sped off on the icy roads.
None of this was true, according to Sten. Sten claimed that he had come to the Soderstroms’ because he was seeking reconciliation. He had found Karl-Henrik down in the basement, so drunk he had to hold on to a shelf to stay upright. He patted the dynamite and said, “If worse comes to worst.”
If worse came to worst, what?
They talked about what had happened over the past few days, and Sten, still in shock over losing Killian, said he didn’t know what to do with himself. He wanted support, he said. But Karl-Henrik fended him off, accused Sten of trying to interfere in Mikael’s murder investigation.
Interfere? How the hell did he mean?
By running his mouth about things that had nothing to do with Sten, things Sten didn’t even have a clue about.
“My son is not a fucking murderer,” Sten said.
“Well, he’s dead, in any case. Same as mine,” was Karl-Henrik’s response.
This retort was the one thing they agreed happened. That, and the fact that upon hearing it, Sten had stormed out in fury.
—
A curse. That’s what some people figured.
The previous year, an old woman in the village had died smack-dab on Christmas Eve.
She had grown roses, the most beautiful roses in the area, and each summer they bloomed bright red and thriving all around her house.
People said the death of the gardener would turn the roses white, and certainly no one really believed this—until last summer when astonished neighbors flocked to the garden.
You could see it with your own eyes as you walked by: the crisp petals gleamed white as snow in the sun.
Maybe it was a sign, or a warning that greater and more incomprehensible events waited in the wings.
A year to the day later, the woman’s daughter visited the cemetery to light a candle and leave a frozen Christmas flower next to the gravestone.
While she was there, she noticed that the lawn and the paths seemed neglected, uneven and covered in footprints.
She complained to the caretaker, who shook his head.
“We do upkeep here every week. But it’s like the dead walk around out there at night. Restless, I imagine. It’s understandable.”
He said it with warmth, as though he were more fond of the dead than the living.
The thought of village ghosts roving aboveground at night was both frightening and fascinating. And then there was Mikael, the will-o’-the-wisp in the dark when people talked about him, like a sudden mirage. Just a flash, then it was gone.
That was the kind of thing that came to mind upon hearing the news of Killian Persson’s death. Curses, roses, the dead returning at night; visions and reflections in the dark. You couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
“Someone is trying to kill the boys of Skavboke.”
So people said that Christmas. Little did they know the worst was yet to come.
The worst? If it’s even possible to rank such tragedies.
Well, but it is.
—
Day had slowly given way to night, and Christmas dinners were over. While the rest of the country made their way to pubs and bars to get drunk now that they’d fulfilled their holiday obligations, a heavy pall lay over Skavboke.
“No parties for you,” terrified parents told their kids, “given what happened out there, what might still be happening. You are staying home.”
The adults claimed it was for their own good, but the affected teens hardly saw it that way.
Instead they considered this a punishment of sorts, and maybe it was; maybe what had happened to Mikael and Killian was everyone’s fault, in some regard.
Sander felt unfairly linked to violence and death, even though it was true that these were what occupied his thoughts more than anything for the moment.
His parents thought he had finally dozed off. They’d heard him milling and crashing about upstairs, but now, at last, the noise had ceased. He must have been so exhausted after everything that had happened.
They held each other on the sofa and spoke softly. Erik placed his lips to his wife’s hair. She closed her eyes.
“It’s so awful,” Eva whispered. “Have you talked to him?”
“I tried. But he doesn’t want to talk.”
“We need to keep an eye on him. You know, I’ve almost been thinking maybe he should talk to someone.”
“What? How do you mean?”
“You know, a psychologist or something. Just so he has someone to turn to in case he needs it. I don’t know.”
“Yes,” Erik said. “Yeah, maybe. Have you checked in with Linda, by the way? And Sten?”
She had talked to both of them. Linda was completely beside herself and couldn’t say a word; all she did was scream and cry. Sten, though, had been numb and cold. He had gone over to see Karl-Henrik Soderstrom.
“He did?”
“Yes, apparently.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
Eva looked at her husband and shook her head.
“I don’t know. But I guess it didn’t end very well.
I told them they need each other now, him and Linda.
They should take care of each other. After all, Killian was both of theirs.
I asked what Killian was doing in the car, but Linda didn’t know.
” A shiver ran through Eva’s body. “ ‘I just don’t know what Killian was up to recently. Something was going on with him.’ That’s what she told me. ”
“Well, yeah, he killed Karl-Henrik’s boy,” Erik said.
He felt Eva stiffen. “You think he did it?”
“Everyone’s been saying so. It’ll be good for Sander to get out of here, to get away from all this.”
Eva nodded slowly. “We’ll have to keep an extra eye on him from now on. He’s had his dark moments. This could…well, I don’t know what.”
—
And up in his bed, wide-awake, lay Sander.
He picked up the phone and dialed a number he knew by heart, even though he’d never called it before. It rang on the other end.
“Hello?” said a soft voice.
“Hi. It’s Sander.”
“Sander,” said Felicia. “Hi.”
He had no words. None at all. “I just wanted to hear someone’s voice. Is this a bad time?”
He must have sounded as lost as he felt.
“No, it’s fine.”
Too many questions inside—they got stuck. He wanted to cross them out and come up with a new one, the right one. He tried, but it didn’t work, so he just lay there breathing. In the end, Felicia was the one who spoke:
“He stopped by and said he had to go away for a while. But that he would come back. Killian, I mean. I tried to get him to stay but he wouldn’t listen.” She exhaled. “He said you had a fight.”
The guilt was a tremendous wooden cross on his shoulders.
They came back to him now, all those words inside him that hadn’t stayed where they belonged, deep down in his body and his soul; they had flown from his mouth and driven Killian to take off, to flee. They had driven him to death. He said it aloud now, for the first time:
“It’s my fault.”
“No it isn’t.”
But she didn’t totally believe her own words. He could tell.
“You and Mikael,” he said. “Killian said you…that he had forced himself on you. Is that true?”
“Does it matter?”
No, maybe not. That didn’t matter anymore either.
Except, yes. It did.
“I just want to know,” he said. “Did he?”
Felicia didn’t say anything for a long time. “What do you think?”
“But…when? Where? How…I mean, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Who would I tell?”
She fell silent again. Sander could hear her sniffling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I…”
“Killian was the only one who knew.”
“Is he the one that did it?”
“Did what?”
“Mikael.”
A long silence, more profound this time. “What do you think?”
Sander had no idea anymore.
—
Lots of people said: Killian was probably trying to flee. Guilt can do strange things to a person. But that didn’t make it any easier to come to terms with.
Even so, that Christmas folks tried to distill the truth, what it all meant, because what else could anyone do?
They all lay awake in their beds: Sander, his parents, Karl-Henrik, Lillemor, Filip, Kjell ?stholm and Frans Ljunggren, Linda and Sten Persson, the Lindells, everyone.
Eventually most of them fell asleep and straight into dreams, and who can say what they dreamed about, really—and what if it was the same dream?
It could have been, why not, a single, collective dream, just like on the night Mikael died and it all started.
A dream that grew out of the community itself, out of the land and the soil. A dream about cruelty that hadn’t yet taken on a permanent shape, because it was still just a dream, but soon, very soon, it would…
Well.
Here, like a pry bar under the world itself.
Here it came.