The Merman (27 page)

A voice came from a spot behind me. I turned round, but could see no one. Only the house with its yawning window-holes and lopsided door.

‘Stay where you are.'

They were somewhere inside. They'd got there before me – and waited.

The door opened and Peder stepped out. He was holding my brother by a noose tied round his neck. They'd pulled a woolly hat down over his face so he couldn't see. Peder dragged Robert after him as if he were an animal; my brother was taking careful steps so as not to stumble. He was barefoot. His trousers were wet through. His clothes caked with mud. They had bound his hands behind his back with a hanky.

‘I'm here now, Robert,' I said. Just stay calm. I'm going to get you away from here.'

A movement in the corner of my vision made me turn round. It was Gerard coming out of the cottage with a wooden chair under his arm, followed closely by Ola.

‘Can you hear me, Robert? Everything's going to be all right. I promise.'

‘He's not going to answer, Ironing Board. He hasn't said a peep since last night. I think he's been struck dumb by fear.'

Gerard didn't even look at me while he spoke; he was just feeling the chair, tugging its legs as if he wanted to check what condition it was in.

‘Robert, can you hear me?'

No reaction. His head just lolled.

‘You see? He doesn't even know where he is. And the way I see it, this never needed to happen.'

Peder had started tying a loop in the free end of the rope, tugged at it to test how firm it was, and looked over towards the shed as if he were searching for something. I wanted to say something again, but it was like I'd lost the ability to speak.

‘Okay, Ironing Board. I'm gonna do something really fucking nasty to your brother now so you understand that this is serious.'

I realised the rules of the game had been changed again as Peder started to pull him over towards the shed.

‘Down on your knees! ' he roared. ‘Come on now, you fucking spacker! '

Robert sank down into the mud. He looked like a condemned prisoner there, with his hands bound behind him and his face
covered by the hat. He was directly underneath the opening to the old hay loft. A beam that was part of a lifting device extended several metres above his head.

My voice sounded strange and shrill when I turned to face Gerard.

‘You wanted me to show you where he is... the creature. That's what we agreed.'

‘I don't remember that.'

‘You were going to let him go in exchange – that's what we said.'

‘Unfortunately there's nothing I can do now. It's in Peder's hands.'

The water was still dripping from the roof of the cottage in a steady rhythm like a clock. My brother was turning his head in every direction, as if trying to identify the location of the sound. Peder stood behind him with one foot on his shoulder. He was holding the rope, but suddenly seemed unsure what to do.

It was only then I realised what they were going to use the chair for.

When Ola went to fetch it, placed it underneath the beam and looked up to assess its position.

‘You can tie him to the hook there,' he said. ‘The one that's sticking out.'

‘I need to cut the rope if it's gonna work. Otherwise he'll hit the ground.'

‘The rope will give way anyway after a while. It's gonna burn like hell.'

My brother was whimpering and panting at the same time. His whole body was shaking.

‘Are you joking?' I tried to sound as calm as possible. ‘Peder, stop it now!'

‘Shut it, Ironing Board! You were the one who blabbed about the cat... and that was where it all started. You've got to pay the price for that.'

‘You know it wasn't me. It was you. It was your sister's cat.' I turned to Gerard: ‘Why aren't you telling the truth? That you figured it out a long time ago.'

But Gerard just nodded over to him, started him up with a single glance, got him to fasten the loop around the hook and pull on it.

It was like I was suffering from paralysis. This stuff that was happening wasn't really happening. The petrol can Peder got from the shed... they must have brought it with them and hidden it there... the total insanity of seeing him empty it over my brother, several litres on his head, on the cap, as if it were water, as if he really just wanted to wash him clean of all the dirt.

Over in the root cellar the creature had woken up. I could hear him. And he could hear me. Somehow he knew what was happening; he understood everything. So he tried to calm me down, get me to focus my concentration. That was the only way, he said: I had to think clearly; they hadn't decided yet, and I had the power to change the course of events.

I took a step closer to my brother, but Ola held me back.

‘I don't know what's left to negotiate,' Gerard said. ‘Sooner or later you reach a point where there's no use talking any more – when you've got to do something. And that's where we are now. Unfortunately.'

‘Get up,' Peder said as he poured petrol out to make a fuse between my brother and the shed. ‘And now lift your foot. Get up, I said. This is a chair, understand, and when it gets knocked over it's goodbye for you.'

The petrol was making him cough and gag. He was drenched in it; there were fumes rising rom him. He got up. His legs were shaking. Peder took his right foot, placed it on the chair and sort of lifted him up. The chair legs sank down into the mud.

Then I heard the creature again. It was too late, he said, we wouldn't be able to do anything now, he realised; he understood where these actions were leading.

I could hear him more clearly than ever before. As if he was vibrating within me, like he was making my whole body shake with that voice that was not a voice, which did not consist of sound or words.

And the others could hear him as well. I only realised then... that he had taken them into his range, although I didn't understand why.

Gerard stood stock-still.

‘What is that?' he asked, turning to Peder.

‘Dunno.'

‘Can't you hear it? What the hell is it?'

But the voice was not coming from outside; it was coming from themselves, from within their bodies, as if they had hollow spaces in there, large chambers that suddenly started to resonate. He was speaking to them. And he was letting me listen in on everything, letting me step into Gerard's consciousness so I could hear through him.

Come!
he said.
I want to show you something. I want to challenge you, little person... come to me... what have you got to lose?

But without words, just as pure feelings, something far more easily comprehensible and clearer than language, and impossible to resist.

‘What is that?' asked Gerard again. ‘What the hell is going on?'

Peder and Ola heard it as well. He was luring them to him. They could not defend themselves. They didn't stand a chance, and as if following a command, they started walking towards the root cellar.

That's how I interpreted it, because he let me understand everything. How he was basically leading them away from the yard, all three of them, away from my brother who was standing there on the rickety chair with a noose round his neck, drenched in petrol; how he was luring them, calling to them, alternately screaming and whispering inside them with his inaudible voice, making them forget about Robert and me and go towards the place where he was.

They walked slowly over towards the root cellar. Peder first, as if he still wanted to prove his loyalty to the boss. The door was open. He must have worked it loose somehow, maybe kicked it out with his tail fin.

Ten metres from the opening, they stopped. Peder put down the
petrol can. Gerard took something out of his jacket, a metal object of some kind.

‘Who's going first?'

The others looked down at the ground.

‘Is it going to be me as usual, then?'

He looked ruefully at them as the sound of the water got louder and louder inside, as if heavy waves were striking a pier. And even though I was standing on the other side of the yard, I could see it splashing, how water was sort of being cast out from the opening, as if somebody was in there with a bucket or bailer. I heard him again. He told me to hurry, to get out of there as fast as I could.

My brother was still on the rickety chair in front of me. He hadn't moved since Peder secured the rope on the beam. And I hadn't moved either. Time had put us onto a side track, and in a parallel world Gerard and the others were still going closer to the root cellar.
Go
, I heard the creature saying.
Hurry!

My paralysis vanished. I was up with my brother in an instant, removing the noose from round his neck and helping him down to the ground.

‘Come on, Robert!'

He didn't seem to understand anything. Like he wasn't there, just staring uncomprehendingly into space.

‘We've got to get out of here. Here, hold onto me!'

I took him by the hand and ran like I'd never run before in my life, away from the abandoned cottage, away from what I saw out of the corner of my eye or maybe with an eye that had suddenly sprung up in the back of my head. As if I was seeing events through the creature's eyes, I thought, through his consciousness, as if he was letting me peek into himself and witness what was happening. How the petrol they'd poured over him suddenly caught fire, how the root cellar was shaking, how he got hold of Gerard even though he was on fire, knocked the slaughterman's bolt gun out of his hand and pulled him in through the opening. How earth and stones started to come crashing down when
he beat his tail fin against the roof and walls: the mound that collapsed under its own weight, cubic metres of rock and earth over flames and water, as if we'd ended up in a mudslide or a minor earthquake. And Gerard's terrified screams went silent as if someone had pulled the plug, while my brother and I sprinted down towards the sea.

BORÅS,
MAY 1984

F
ive months later I got a letter from Robert, the first sign of life since we'd been split up just before Christmas. He ended up with a family down in Skåne. The couple he was placed with were teachers and had two children of their own. They were nice to him, he wrote, but in a slightly chilly way It was not the first time they'd fostered a child. Before Robert they'd had a girl from northern Sweden, and before that a disabled guy whose parents needed some respite. To me, they sounded like pros, adults who take in foster kids for the money.

My brother wrote that they had a big house and two cars; maybe it was a matter of big loans that their salaries didn't cover, so they took in problem children in order to make ends meet. At any rate, I could tell that not a lot had happened with his schoolwork. His handwriting was more spidery than ever, and his letter was full of spelling mistakes. For example, he spelled my nickname
Nela
instead of
Nella
.

His letter was six pages long, and it took me at least an hour to decipher it. He wrote like Dad: under great resistance, as if he had to struggle with every single character.

He was doing well in spite of everything, he assured me. It was the dad in that family who had taken him under his wing. He was keen on shooting air rifles, and in his first week my brother got to go along to a shooting range. Even with his glasses, he proved to be good at it, and now he'd begun to train with a club. His foster brother Erik was also keen, so they spent quite a bit of free time together. It felt weird to read the expression ‘foster brother', as if he were being pulled even further away from me by those words.

Erik was the same age as Robert. He was spoilt rotten and had loads of nice brand-name clothes, which Robert got as hand-me-downs because he was smaller. There was a foster sister as well, Elinor, who was in Year Eight and liked horses. At first she had barely spoken to him. Perhaps she thought he'd soon get swapped for someone else and didn't really think it was worth the effort to get to know him, but things had got better over time.

The first month he'd spent most of his time pining for me. It had been hard, especially at Christmas, even though a support person from the children's mental health service had been there. Our own Christmases in Skogstorp would usually descend into chaos, and yet it felt much worse to him to be sitting there in the midst of someone else's happiness and watch strangers hand out presents to each other. He had been given a model building set and a hand-me-down Lacoste shirt from Erik.

Gradually he had grown accustomed to his new environment. It got easier week by week, both at school and with the family. He had his own room and put up the old Michael Jackson posters he'd got off me. His room was much bigger than the one in Skogstorp; it was located away from the other bedrooms and even had its own en-suite.

The mum in the family was the one he had the hardest time with. She wasn't unkind to him, more like uninterested. And she always took her own children's side. Especially the first time there had been some conflict. His foster siblings thought it was unfair he got the room with the en-suite, and there were some rows about the shower, who got to shower first and that kind of thing, and sometimes about what there was to put on their bread at breakfast. His sister Elinor thought he ate too much. The mother would usually side with her. But it didn't matter, he wrote, he could understand it; after all, he would always take my side against everyone else on earth, no matter what it was about.