The Shapeshifters (58 page)

‘You've got to get out through there,' he said.

‘It's too narrow,' Amina said. ‘He can't.'

‘He has to!' bellowed Seved, ripping off the head torch and giving it to Amina so that she could direct it at the gap and show the creature the way out. But the little thing did not seem to understand.

‘I think he's afraid.'

‘What the hell has he got to be afraid of? We've got to get out, for God's sake!'

‘He is afraid,' she said, coughing. ‘He's afraid of dropping the key.'

She was exhausted and leaned against the wall, breathing with short, sharp breaths. Under her filthy jacket her chest heaved constantly. They did not have much time left.

Seved crawled into the tunnel in the direction of the ventilation pipe.

‘Come here!' he called. ‘You can get out this way!'

It was hard work for the mouseshifter to make its way while holding the key, so Amina picked it up and crept along the tunnel towards Seved. Seved held it up to the mouth of the pipe in the roof of the tunnel. But Amina told him to wait.

‘Take off your necklace,' she said to him. ‘So we can tie the key to him.'

Out of habit he pushed his hand behind his hair, but then he ripped off the necklace. It consisted of a leather thong holding a medallion that Börje had given him. Amina gnawed at the thong and then pulled it in two. Seved crouched down to illuminate her hands and in between coughing told her to hurry.

After she had threaded the key onto the strip of leather and fastened it around the mouseshifter's delicate neck she lifted the little thing up so it could get into the pipe. They heard its claws rapidly scrambling upwards. But it did not get far. There was a scraping sound and it came sliding back.

Amina had taken off her jacket and rolled up one of her sleeves. She took hold of the mouseshifter and pushed it up the pipe. Her arm was so skinny she could push it in all the way up to her shoulder.

‘Is it working?' Seved asked, his mouth pressed to the sleeve of his jacket. His eyes were blinking frantically in the caustic smoke.

‘We'll see,' Amina answered, pulling a face.

 

 

Amid the smoke from the blaze Susso went through corridors that ballooned towards her and shrank back as she made her way forwards, but it was impossible for her to get close to the flames inside the barn. The heat was like a wall, and when she tried to break through it felt as if the skin on her face was scorching. So she turned and ran back to where the squirrel had left her. It was still sitting there, and when she came running out of the grey haze it ran up her arm and sat on her shoulder again.

After looking about she ran to the jeep and tried the door. It was unlocked, and after checking the seat to see if there was anything she could use to break the chain she ran round the vehicle and opened the tailgate. She foraged among the various items but there was nothing there either that she could use, so she ran back.

‘I couldn't find a bloody thing,' she panted as she came up to Torbjörn. He was kneeling deep in the snow beside the hatch as the roaring blaze in the building closest to them made the shadows of the trees dance around him.

‘They've got a key,' he said. ‘They shouted that they've got a key and they're trying to get it out. But the crack is too narrow so they can't.'

A furious chattering made Susso look up, and then she bent down under the branches and switched on the torch. The squirrel was running in circles around a pipe that was protruding from the
white ground. It was a steel pipe with a cone-shaped hat topped with snow. Susso squatted down and shone the torch onto the pipe.

Torbjörn walked up heavily behind her. He leaned forwards, his hands on his knees, and sniffed loudly. Susso knocked the torch against the pipe and heard shouting from below.

‘Wait! He's coming up.'

‘What?' Susso shouted. She could not work out what they meant.

‘He's coming now!'

A few seconds later a small grey ball fell into the snow below the pipe, and when Susso shone the torch on it she saw it was a mouse. She was amazed and almost fell backwards because the mouse was standing upright. The head turned as the wrinkled face of a little old man shrank back from the powerful beam of the torch.

Around its neck was a leather strip with a key hanging from it, and as soon as Susso saw it she put the torch down in the snow, where it sank in an eerie ball of light. She reached out her hands to the little object, which stiffened as she gently worked the knot loose with her frozen fingers and took off the key.

When they had opened the padlock and unwound the chain from the handles the hatch doors flew up, and in the smoke that billowed out and turned Susso's eyes into two watery slits someone came crawling out. It was a thin girl with black hair hanging down in frizzy strands. She crawled a few paces before collapsing. Susso helped her up because she was only wearing a sweatshirt and the snow was deep. For a moment the girl stood bending over and coughing violently, before staggering a few steps to one side and sinking down on all fours.

‘You've got to stand up,' Susso said, tugging at her. ‘It's better for you. You'll get more air in that way.'

Then Torbjörn called out, and when Susso turned round she saw that he had climbed down into the smoke-filled opening. She hurried over and grabbed hold of a bearded man who Torbjörn was trying to get to stand up but who seemed barely conscious. His face was grey and his mouth gaped open. Together they pulled and pushed him up through the hatch. When they got him out they were not sure what to do with him, so they laid him down in the snow. Within seconds he came round and tried to stand up. With lumps of snow on his back and his neck, he bent over, slurring the same words over and over again, and they realised he was probably asking about the girl, who by now had picked up the strange mouse and was holding it to her hot cheek as she shivered in the cold.

‘She's here,' Susso said. ‘She's okay.'

The squirrel sat at her feet and she picked it up. She started brushing away the snow that had gathered in its tail as she studied the man.

‘I have to ask,' she said. ‘Are you Magnus?'

 

 

I had parked outside Randolf Hedman's house in Sorsele, but Randolf seemed unwilling to get out of the car. He sat there, picking at the loose threads of his long johns and looking at me with tired eyes. He wanted to know more and more about our strange journey, and that was lucky really because when Torbjörn phoned telling us about the fire and that they were at a farm somewhere between the Råvojaure and Jumovaure rivers, Randolf said he thought the place was in the direction of Ammarnäs, so we headed that way. There was no trace of any smoke, but it had become overcast with heavy grey clouds and it wasn't easy to tell if we were on the right road, but I trusted Randolf because he had lived in the area all his life.

We drove up into the forest on a narrow road. Just as the fire became visible as a golden-brown glow in the sky, we met a man stumbling along the roadside.

He tugged the rear door handle open hard and threw himself onto the back seat, shouting at me to reverse. Of course, I wanted to know why, but I soon found out.

Two bears came lumbering towards us along the road, looking grey in the darkness. It seemed the headlights were keeping them back because they stopped directly beyond the beams of light. Randolf pushed down the door lock on his side and I did the same. I suppose that's the kind of thing you do in drastic,
life-threatening situations—you react instinctively, so stupidly that it makes you embarrassed afterwards. We sat there for ages, staring at the huge animals wandering backwards and forwards in the dark. Occasionally we saw their small eyes like shiny buttons.

The man in the back seat panted and whimpered. He wheezed as he breathed and it seemed he could not decide whether to lie down on the seat or sit up. Between gasps he said he had wounded one of the bears and they were dangerous.

‘Drive!' he said. ‘Drive, for God's sake!'

I expect the bears had worked out that the headlights were not as dangerous as they thought, and soon they were so close I could see their nostrils.

‘Perhaps you ought to reverse,' Randolf said.

But I shook my head.

‘Susso is up there.'

‘There's no one there!' the man said. ‘I promise you, there's no one there.'

Flashing the headlights at full beam was no good, so I tried hooting. That made one of the bears stop and tilt its head to one side. It annoyed the other and it ran towards the car, hitting a wing mirror with such force it snapped off. The man shouted from the back seat:

‘If you don't back out of here, they'll tip the car over!'

It looked as if he was right, so I put the car into reverse and rolled slowly backwards. The bears followed, of course. I increased speed but drove carefully because the road was winding and in the dark it wasn't easy to see where the bends were. But soon I managed to put thirty metres between me and the bears.

‘Randolf,' I said.

‘Yes?'

‘Hold on!' I said, putting it into first.

I pressed the accelerator so hard that the tyres skidded. Randolf clutched the handle above the door, taking my advice literally. I hooted again and flashed the headlights.

The bears waited for a long time and I thought they were never going to move. But finally they did. They lurched off on opposite sides of the road. The one on my side of the car had his jaws wide open as I drove past.

After that I floored it because naturally they came after us, and this time they were running, so Randolf informed me.

A little further along the road was an upturned car, and as we passed it we saw flames shooting up behind the trees. It wasn't until then that I remembered that Torbjörn had told me to phone the fire service. But at that moment all I could think about was Susso. And the bears, of course. I got out my phone and tried to ring Torbjörn, but the driving took all my concentration, so I threw the phone to Randolf.

‘Redial the last number!'

Randolf tapped with his thumb, and when the call was answered he introduced himself by his first and second name and even added that he was the owner of the ski trousers Torbjörn had borrowed.

‘Ask where they are!'

‘She is wondering,' he said ponderously, ‘where you are.'

With my hand pumping the horn I drove right into the fire. That's how it felt, anyway, as if we were hurtling ourselves straight into a sea of fire. Every building was alight and the sky was flickering yellow with all the smoke that had gathered like an enormous ceiling over everything. The barn walls were bulging out and the roof of one of the buildings had fallen in. But the yard
was big, so I was brave enough to park in the middle. Randolf informed me that it was dangerous, but I told him I was not going to drive away without Susso. The bloke in the back seat didn't say a word. He seemed happy as long as the bears were not around.

They came running up in a line, first Torbjörn and then two people I didn't know, a man and a girl. Susso came last, with the squirrel on her shoulder.

Randolf opened the door. ‘Jump in!' he shouted.

When we had driven out of the smoke, I turned to look at Susso and Torbjörn, who were lying in the luggage compartment at the back, coughing.

‘What the fuck is he doing here!' Susso exclaimed when she saw who was sitting in the back seat. It surprised me that she knew who the man was, and I told her we had picked him up along the way, with two bears breathing down his neck. Practically shouting she explained that he was one of the two men who had attacked her and Torbjörn in Holmajärvi. The man in question sat immobile, staring out of the window. He had nothing to say.

We drove back past the upturned car, and further along we came across the bears.

‘Well, Susso,' I said, slowing down, ‘there they are. I don't think we'll get any closer than this.'

The man we had rescued broke his silence.

‘Drive,' he said. ‘There are three of them. The third one's keeping out of sight but he's much more dangerous than the others, and if he gets close, we're done for, all of us. So drive!'

It sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, so I drove on, but after we had travelled a short distance in silence Susso shouted at me to stop.

‘You're getting out of this car,' she said to the man.

The man did not move, and I assumed he was going to refuse. But then I heard him fumbling for the handle and opening the door. Randolf protested. It was like murder, he said.

‘Perhaps you would like to get out as well, Randolf?' Susso said. ‘There are six of us in the car, after all, and that is illegal.'

‘No,' he said, considering the prospect. ‘I'd prefer not to.'

‘That's all right then.'

I drove on and I could see the man's back in the rear-view mirror as he stiffly climbed down into the snow at the side of the road, and I remember I felt dreadfully sorry for him and that I was already ashamed of what I had done.

Jola Haapaniemi was his name and nobody knows what happened to him after he stepped out of my car that evening at the end of January 2005, when the Öbrells' farmstead was burning. The police found Ejvor Öbrell's charred remains in a cellar and subsequently her younger brother, Börje Öbrell. Parts of him, at least. I think it was a lower leg and lower arm the dogs unearthed from the snow. The police never located the actual head, even though Susso had given them the GPS coordinates. Whoever had put it in the tree had moved it, maybe to keep it as a trophy or to have as dessert. The wolverines, perhaps. It's the kind of thing they do, decorate trees with the ripped-off heads of their prey, and no one really knows why they do it. Perhaps they don't even know themselves.

But, as I say, nobody found a trace of Jola Haapaniemi, apart from his car, and when the guilt makes me break out in a cold sweat at night I try to persuade myself that he got away somehow. That the bears left him alone. Because Randolf's words, when he said it was like murder throwing him out, they come back to haunt me, I can tell you.