Chapter 11
Rasmus’s eyes drift over to the library window. His face darkens.
I’m sitting with my back to the sea. But I can sense its presence, those waves whispering so close by.
Even though it was my idea to come to the library, I can’t help but wonder if Rasmus wants to avoid being seen with me.
“What was that?” Rasmus asks after a few moments of silence.
“I don’t know.”
This isn’t the whole truth. He can tell.
“But what do you think?”
I poke at a broken thumbnail. I’ve always had hard, thick nails that never break, but I was biting them last night.
The floor in the library needs a good scrub. I can see our dirty shoe prints, alongside those of previous visitors.
“What do you remember?” I ask.
“Not much,” he says. “We had just left checkpoint seven and were heading toward the water to find the eleventh checkpoint. Axel said eleven was nearby, and then he started running, and I followed after him.”
He has a rip in his jeans, just below the knee.
“I heard something,” he says.
Rasmus looks me straight in the eye. His pupils are tiny black pinpricks in his pallid face.
“I heard something in the woods. Axel was a little ahead of me, but I stopped to listen. Then there was something that . . .”
He shuts his eyes. A small crease forms between his eyebrows.
“It’s all such a blur. I know something happened next, but I don’t really know what, you know? It’s like a dream. You don’t remember the details when you wake up, but you can still feel it.”
I sit very still.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m not trying to scare you.” He lets out a forced little laugh.
“Don’t worry,” I say.
My voice wavers. I swallow. Take a breath. “It’s just . . . that’s exactly what’s been happening to me for the past few weeks. Weird dreams, I mean.”
I can’t stop picking at my broken nail.
“Every night. I feel like there’s something wrong. With the sea. It’s so creepy. Like there’s some danger lurking out there. Below the surface.”
I think of Old Man Ingvar warning me to stay home last night. And what Dad said about Jacobsson. That makes three this fall.
Four now, with Axel.
“You think something is wrong because you’re having weird dreams?” Rasmus looks confused.
“Not because I’ve dreamed about it,” I snap. “But because something really is wrong. With the sea.”
“There’s no need to get mad.”
Rasmus’s tone makes me blush.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I hate him. I should never have said anything. He’s just like the others. He’s one of them. I always knew who he was; why should I expect anything different?
I keep my eyes shut until I feel his hand on my arm.
“I believe you,” he says solemnly.
“You do?”
Rasmus looks just as surprised as I feel. “I think you’re right.”
He looks really sad, and I’m ashamed of losing my temper.
“I think something happened yesterday,” he says. “To Axel. Something that can’t be explained, at least not in any . . . normal way.”
He almost manages a smile.
“If I can be hypnotized by mysterious forces in the woods, that’s no weirder than there being something wrong with the sea. Or something bad happening to Axel.”
His faint smile trembles and fades.
I swallow.
“Do you think they came from the sea? Those lights?” he asks.
I can’t bring myself to answer. But I know what I believe.
I spent a lot of time last night in my room on the computer, trawling the internet. I read everything I could find until my mind was spinning and I had to slam the laptop shut.
“No,” I say eventually. “I think they were something else.”
A seagull lets out a shrill squawk outside the window. The screeching sound gives me goose bumps.
“They were fairies,” I say softly. “Those lights. I think they were fairies.”
It sounds crazy when I say it out loud.
I want to take it back, say I was only joking, but Rasmus actually looks relieved.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I think so too.”
“I googled them,” I say. “Last night, before bed. I read that fog is common when fairies appear.” I stumble over my words. “And that they lure people into the forest. To keep them captive.”
“There’s no such thing as fairies,” Rasmus utters as though casting a spell.
“We saw some yesterday.”
Rasmus presses his lips together and shoves his hands into his pockets.
“I’m glad you were there as well,” he says finally.
“Because I saw them too?”
He gives me a puzzled look. “No,” he says. “So that you could stop them.”
Yes, I did stop them, didn’t I?
I recall the image of those dancing little points of light. The largest fairy comes to mind, the one who looked right at me. Who heard me.
Go away.
“Do you think that . . . ?” Rasmus trails off. Then he tries again, though his voice is shaking. “Do you think they’ve taken Axel?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t there when I found you. You were alone at that point.”
Rasmus scratches the spine of a book with his index fingernail. It makes a soft, rasping sound that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“When you googled it, did you find out what they usually do? When they’ve taken someone?”
I want to lie, say something to make him feel better. But I can’t. He deserves to know the truth.
Still, I hesitate.
“There are different theories,” I murmur.
“But they don’t send people back, do they?”
“No,” I whisper.
We hear voices from the hallway, people approaching. Then the sound gets farther away. Neither of us speak until it’s silent again.
“Did the police question you yesterday?” says Rasmus.
“Mmm. You too?”
He smiles bitterly. “The blond guy asked if I had it in for Axel, if we’d fallen out or something. They must think I’m an idiot. As if I don’t know they suspect me, think I pushed him into the water.”
“I wondered if they suspected me too. That they thought I’m the one who ki—”
I try to stop the word from escaping my mouth, but Rasmus has heard enough.
“He might not be dead,” he says quietly.
I ache with shame. My cheeks burn. “Sorry.”
It comes out as little more than a whisper.
“Did you tell the police about the lights?” he says after a long, awkward pause.
“No way.” I shake my head violently. “It’s not like they would have believed me anyway.”
“No.” Rasmus smiles tiredly. “I didn’t say anything about them either.”
So we share a secret.
“Yesterday,” he says, looking down, “when the school nurse was taking my temperature and checking my pulse and all that. I almost told her. I was so out of it. I was about to tell her.”
Rasmus runs his hand through his hair, which immediately sticks up again.
“Now I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. She’d have thought I’d completely lost my mind. Ha,” he adds joylessly. “Maybe I have. Lost my mind, I mean.”
His eyes are questioning.
“No,” I say softly. “You haven’t.”
Out in the corridor, Mrs. Lindgren announces that the lesson is starting.
“If we’re late, they’ll probably send a search party after us,” I say and turn to go.
“Wait,” says Rasmus. “Give me your number.”
“What for?”
Suddenly, he seems shy.
“So we can talk. About this, I mean,” he squeezes out.
Rasmus takes my number and saves it in his phone.
“I’ll text you,” he says and puts his phone away. “So you’ll have my number too.”
We slip out of the library, and I quicken my steps in order to reach the classroom a few seconds before him. That way it won’t look like we’ve become friends.
I don’t want him to have to ask me to. I already know he doesn’t want to be seen with me.