The Shapeshifters (5 page)

Edit had clamped her mouth together so tightly that her pink lips had disappeared.

‘It's lovely here,' said Susso, pulling aside the cotton curtain and looking up the road. ‘In the village.'

A sharp, vertical line appeared between Edit's eyes, as if someone had struck her with a chisel. She was troubled and had no time for small talk. That was perfectly obvious.

‘How . . .' she said in a thin voice that faded away. She placed her hand on one of the copper discs covering the hotplates on the stove. It slipped sideways and she moved it back into place.

Susso drew out a chair and sat down at the table. She pushed aside the newspaper and took her notepad and a ballpoint pen from her jacket pocket, not because she wanted to write anything in particular but mainly to get straight to the point. There was a click when she pressed the pen but it would not work. It had probably frozen solid. Looking around she found a pencil lying on the table and picked it up.

She looked encouragingly at Edit, who was fiddling with a button on the sleeve of her blouse. The lines on each side of the old woman's mouth were deeply etched, as if it required deep concentration to fiddle with that button.

‘Shall I show you where it was? Where I saw him?'

 

 

It had been snowing all morning. It fell and fell in thick masses, and Seved sat at the kitchen table seeing nothing else. The slopes of the stubbly pine-covered mountain had faded into white and the wire netting of the dog enclosure was so clogged up that it was impossible to see what was going on in there. The dogs usually sat staring silently ahead when the nights had been long.

He leaned across and widened the opening in the curtains so that he could see the upturned Volvo 240 out in the yard. The snow had covered the undercarriage in such a thick layer that it was hard to see any of the components apart from the hump of the silencer.

As soon as he had drunk his coffee he would go out and try to turn the car upright. Make an attempt, at least. Most of the damage had already been done so there was no immediate hurry, but he did not like it being upside down. Although Ejvor did not seem to mind. From time to time a sticky little sound came from her direction as she licked the tip of her index finger and thumb and turned the pages of the newspaper. Apart from that the only sound was the hum of the heater.

Above the double doors of the barn, beside a row of reindeer antlers growing out of the wall, a huge lamp was mounted on a curved metal pole. Many years ago he and Börje had plundered a lamp from a pole brought down by the wind along the road to Nalovardo. Börje made sure the lamp was switched off during the
day because it drew a lot of power. But it was on now. That said something about how stressed Börje must have been when he set off. Snowflakes lit up as they floated past the lamp, and Seved was staring at these slowly descending sparks when Ejvor put down the newspaper.

‘Don't I get a cup?' she asked.

‘I didn't think you wanted one,' he said, and pushed back his chair.

‘I could have a small one.'

He took down a cup and saucer from the cupboard above the draining board, placed it in front of her on the table and poured. From the shiny silver spout came coffee and spiralling steam.

‘That's enough,' she said, raising her hand.

He sat down and cradled his cup.

Now was a good time to talk to her. It seemed she was not in too much of a bad mood.

In a confused memory from the early-morning hours he remembered hearing a diesel engine idling for what seemed like an eternity. Car doors slamming. Börje's loud commands, Signe's muttering. A dog barking.

There was a clock on the wall above the Christmas decoration with little dancing elves that Ejvor had put up, and when he looked he saw it was getting on for eleven.

He cleared his throat.

‘When did they go?'

Ejvor sipped her coffee, then put her cup down gently on the saucer, like she always did, so there was no sound.

‘Yes, when was it? They went for the Isuzu too,' she said. ‘Not upside down but on its side, so I think it must have been about seven by the time they left.'

‘They made a hell of a noise. It was about three, I think.'

She turned the pages of the paper and then put it down on the table, looking at him.

‘And one of the dogs,' she said. ‘That small bitch. They had fun with her, throwing her up onto the barn roof. She just stood there, barking and barking, and couldn't get down, and Börje and I were too frightened to go outside, so she was up there for at least a couple of hours, poor little mite. She was scared out of her wits.'

Seved leaned forwards to look at the far end of the barn roof. Naturally there was no trace left of the dog, at least nothing that could be seen from this distance.

‘They've never done that before, have they? Had a go at the dogs?'

Ejvor licked her finger and turned a page before answering.

‘Once, in the seventies,' she said. ‘They got into the enclosure and killed every single dog. Tore them to shreds, as if they wanted to find out how many pieces you can split a dog into. It looked like a slaughterhouse when I came out in the morning. Eleven dogs, and three of them pups. I cried like a baby when I saw it.'

It took a while for Seved to absorb what she had told him—she had told him!—and he felt his mouth go dry.

‘You never said.'

‘Well, it's so unusual.'

She did not want to say more. Sharp lines had stitched her lips together. But even so he tried.

‘Why? What caused it?'

‘It was all four of them that time. They got each other worked up. We had to separate them after that.'

‘Because of what happened with the dogs?'

Her eyes scanned the pages.

‘Among other things.'

Seved pushed the chair aside and leaned against the window, pulling aside the light-blue viscose curtain that reached all the way to the floor.

Directly opposite the barn was the building they called Hybblet. It looked like an old toilet block, and that is what it was, in a way. It had white fibre cement cladding, and with the roof covered in snow the place seemed to dissolve and recede until the only clear features were the door and the dark window frames, and the plastic pipes protruding like yellow elephant trunks taped to the base of the drainpipe. On the gable end was a satellite dish, but of course there was no television—Börje had attached it there to make the house look like any other house. Presumably that had been Lennart's idea.

On the front porch stood a pile of empty blue plastic storage boxes beside a row of black sacks, filled to the top. Flattened cardboard boxes poked out of one. The snow had blown in and settled in the folds of the sacks.

‘Have you been cleaning up?'

When there was no answer he turned round and looked at Ejvor's face. It showed no expression. That meant it was her.

‘When did you do it?'

‘This morning.'

‘But we weren't supposed to clean up. We were meant to wait.'

She put down the paper. She even stood up.

‘Well, it won't make things any better if it's filthy in there, that's for sure!'

She spat out the words without looking at him, as if they had sprung from a suppressed rage, and Seved accepted them in
silence. He knew she was not angry with him, but that was not the point. If he continued, if he reminded her once again what Lennart had said, then she would take her anger out on him, and he wanted to avoid that at all costs.

But it was already too late because she had gone out into the hall. The outer door opened and he heard her swear. He knew one of the hares was taking the brunt.

Seved finished his coffee, which by now was cold. He felt incredibly tired. His eyes fastened on the back page of the newspaper, a copy of
Västerbottens-Kuriren
that had to be at least a week old. There was an advertisement in red letters, which to him appeared as meaningless shapes.

You sleep well after a beating, Börje usually said.

At night he could only lie there, glancing every few minutes at the clock radio, because he knew when it usually kicked off. As soon as he thought he heard something he would hold his breath. That was the worst thing. Waiting for it to start. Because some nights nothing happened.

 

 

They plodded through snow a metre deep. Susso glanced towards the ice. The bottom of a boat, pulled up on the shore, stood out like a sky-blue sliver against a field of white so flat it was impossible to distinguish the shoreline. In the distance she could make out a mountain, but it could just as easily have been a patch of dark sky. A cold wind was blowing up from the lake and it stung her cheeks.

Edit pointed towards some leaning birch trees.

‘There,' she said. ‘At the edge. That's where he stood.'

Susso continued walking until she reached the trees Edit had pointed out. It was such a struggle to walk through the deep snow that she had to swing her arms to keep her balance.

‘Here?' she asked, turning round, one hand on her hat.

Edit nodded. Susso leaned forwards slightly and peered in among the sparse pine trees. The neighbours' house, a white single-storey building painted blue around the windows, was visible through the trunks only a hundred metres away. She took a step sideways to keep her balance, but it was difficult and she had to put her hand down on the snow for support.

‘Is that all he did? Stand there?' she shouted.

‘Yes,' said Edit. ‘Grinning.'

She rearranged her shawl and with her head bowed stepped into the track Susso had made. Her long waistcoat trailed behind her.

‘Perhaps he was only making a face,' she said. ‘It wasn't easy to see what he looked like. But I think he was laughing, because that's what Mattias said he was doing.'

‘How old is Mattias?' asked Susso.

‘Four,' said Edit, pulling the shawl and the collar of her blouse tighter around her. She looked cold, but it was probably only a shudder going through her because then she said, almost in a whisper:

‘You see, I was standing in the kitchen and then I heard the boy. He was talking to someone. Out here. “Why are you laughing?” he said.' Edit had altered her voice to sound like her grandchild. ‘I thought he was playing a game, but then he said it again: “Why are you laughing?” He sounded almost angry, I thought, as if he was getting impatient. I was curious, of course, because he doesn't have any friends. There are no other children in the village.'

She turned round to face the house, pointing.

‘He was sitting there on the steps with his hands on his backpack, as if he was afraid someone would take it from him. Then he looked over here, and when I came out I saw him. The little man. Here. Where we are standing now,' said Edit.

Susso took out her snus tin and opened it without taking her eyes off Edit.

‘He wasn't at all shy, and that was unexpected. You'd think a thing like that would be. That's what it's like—you want them to run away, given that they're so secretive people don't even know if they exist.'

Susso put a pouch of snus under her lip and nodded.

‘But this one,' said Edit, sharply, ‘he didn't run away and hide. Do you understand what I'm saying? He
didn't run away
. And it felt as if, I don't know, as if he wanted me for something.'

‘Okay,' said Susso.

‘But I certainly didn't want to find out what he wanted. I dragged the boy with me into the house and locked the door. Then we went into that room to watch him through the window.' She nodded towards the side of the house.

‘And then guess what he did? You won't believe it. He came even closer. He was standing right below the window, looking at us. He was staring at us so intently I closed the curtain. I couldn't
bear
him looking at us like we were looking at him.'

‘So you saw him close up?'

‘Oh yes,' Edit said. ‘I had a good look at him. He was wearing a jacket with a hood over his head. And his eyes . . . they were the worst thing about him. It was like looking at an animal's eyes. They were yellow, bright yellow, with pupils like slits.'

‘Like a cat?'

‘Yes,' said Edit. ‘Just like a cat.'

Susso nodded and looked away to the trees.

‘And it was obvious that he was thinking,' Edit continued. ‘He was standing there planning something.'

After a few moments of silence she added:

‘He had some kind of business here, you could tell that a mile off.'

She shook her head.

‘We didn't know what to do so I phoned Carina—that's Mattias's mother—and when she pulled into the drive he ran off immediately. Straight over there, towards the Westmans'.' Edit pointed towards the neighbouring house. ‘And since then I haven't seen him.'

‘And Mattias's mother,' said Susso, ‘did she see anything?'

‘Carina? No, no.'

Edit leaned towards Susso.

‘And she didn't
believe
us either. That was the worst part. She insisted we had made it up, all of it. Me and the boy. Even though I showed her the tracks he had left when he ran. Well, they're gone now. But I took pictures of them.'

Susso looked at her. This was something new.

‘But you can't see anything,' Edit said, waving her hand. ‘When you take pictures in the snow they don't turn out very well. It's all white. Anyway, when I wanted to show her the tracks she got angry. She put Mattias in the car and drove home. And they haven't been back since. He doesn't want to, Carina says. And Per-Erik, my son, won't say anything at all.'

‘And the neighbours?' asked Susso. ‘The Westmans, wasn't it? Have you spoken to them?'

‘I have,' said Edit. She shivered. ‘But I know what he's like. He just shrugged his shoulders. And that's just it,' she said. She fixed her gaze on Susso, who had turned to face the Westmans' house. ‘If you don't know what he looked like, how strange his face was with those eyes, and how
little
he was—hardly a metre tall, I would say—then it's hard to be interested. Hard to take it seriously.'