Fire (2 page)

I thought I was losing my mind and you must have been afraid of that, too. You must have been so frightened.

If only we’d talked, told each other our secrets. Perhaps everything would have been different then. If only you’d been born anywhere except in this fucking hole. Perhaps you would still have been alive.

I know it’s pointless to think these things, but I can’t stop myself.

I draw up lists of all the tiny details that were part of you.

Like the way you always picked the pickled gherkin out of the veggie burger. I never figured out why you didn’t ask them not to add it. And your favourite authors were Poppy Z. Brite and Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde. I’ve underlined the passages you read aloud to me when you phoned me at night. You promised to take me on a journey to Japan before our thirtieth birthdays. Once, you said that if you were a girl you would’ve liked to be called Lucretia. Wherever did you get that from? You never had crushes on real-life celebs, only on fantasy people like Misa Amane, even though she’s so bugging, and Edward Scissorhands.

And you asked me not to forget you if you died before I did. Such a truly typically fucking stupid thing to say. As if I could ever forget you.

You are my brother in everything except the blood. I love you and will love you for ever.

Linnéa carefully rips out the diary page and folds it. She digs a small, deep hollow in the light soil by the rose bush next to the stone on Elias’s grave. The white shrub roses are faded already and the leaves have ugly, dried-out edges. She pushes
the folded paper into the hole. Buries it. Wipes her hands on her black skirt and sits back.

She can see the rectory between the old lime trees on the far side of the churchyard. Linnéa observes the window of the room that used to be Elias’s. The panes reflect the bright blue sky. Elias loved the view over the churchyard. Imagine if he had realised that he was looking at the plot of his own grave.

The air is very still. Within the walled cemetery, the baking sun heats the gravestones. The grass is yellowing and the parched ground criss-crossed with cracks. In June, the
Engelsfors Herald
ran euphoric headlines about the record-breaking summer. Now, in August, the record figures are the numbers of old folk dying of dehydration and of farmers having their finances ruined.

Linnéa’s mobile pings, but she can’t even be bothered checking. Olivia, the only one in the old gang who’s still her friend, has been texting like crazy all morning. The summer holiday has passed without a sign of life from Olivia, but now that it suits her, she expects Linnéa to jump. No such luck.

She unscrews the top of the water bottle in her fabric carrier. It makes no difference how much she drinks, she’s still thirsty afterwards. All the same, the rose bush gets the last few drops.

She puts the bottle back and pulls out the three red roses from the flower bed in Storvall Park. Their heads are drooping already. She puts one rose on Elias’s grave. Then she goes along to place another one on the nearby grave, where the stone bears Rebecka’s name.

Linnéa looks back at Elias’s grave. In the beginning she had hoped to be able to pick up the thoughts of the dead. To contact them. But she hasn’t succeeded in even sensing whether they are there at all, let alone what might be going on in their minds.

Linnéa used to believe that when a person died, that was it. End of story. Now, she knows that at least souls exist.

They’re where they should be
, Minoo had said when, after the end-of-term assembly, they had met up here, by the graves.

Linnéa hopes that it is true, that Elias exists somewhere else, in a better place.

She remembers meeting Max in the dining area and what he said when he was trying to make her reveal who the other Chosen Ones were.

Elias is waiting for you, Linnéa
.

A tiny part of her is tempted to find out if Max, ally of the demons, is telling the truth.

You can be together again
.

Now she can no longer hold back the tears. She lets them run down her cheeks as she walks away. So fucking what? Since when aren’t you allowed to cry in a churchyard?

One red rose is left in her carrier bag. It is for her mum.

Linnéa is just about to take the path leading to the Memorial Wood when she catches sight of a black shadow moving close to the ground between the gravestones.

She stops.

With a plaintive meow, Nicolaus’s familiar slips on to the path ahead of her. Cat, who has no other name, seems to have lost even more fur during the summer. Its single, green eye is fixed on her.

Linnéa has never managed to read the mind of an animal, but it is easy to grasp that Cat wants something from her. It stretches itself and meows, then pads along a narrow path leading to the oldest part of the churchyard. Now and then, it stops to make sure that Linnéa is following.

The cemetery is surrounded by a low stone wall. Cat stops in its shadow, next to a tall headstone almost a metre high and covered with mosses and pale grey lichens.

Cat meows shrilly, noisily, and gently butts its head against the stone.

‘Yes, yes,’ Linnéa says and kneels.

The ground feels surprisingly cool against her bare legs. She leans forward, scrapes some of the moss off the stone and tries to make out the crumbling letters.

NICOLAUS ELINGIUS

MEMENTO MORI

A chill makes Linnéa’s whole body shiver, as if the souls of the dead were present here after all and reaching for her through the soil.

Minoo has made one corner of the garden into her own, where she can sit with her books. She has placed a deckchair in the shade of a sycamore at the back of the house and as far away from it as you can get. Too bad that it isn’t far enough for her to ignore what is going on inside it.

Minoo glimpses the outline of Dad through the kitchen window. He crosses the floor with long, clumping steps. Out of sight, he roars something. He is so loud he could make the windowpanes rattle. Mum shrieks something back at him. Minoo pulls her earphones down and tries to lose herself in a Nick Drake song, but music simply makes her even more aware of the sounds she is trying to exclude.

Mum and Dad always used to deny that they argued, called it ‘discussions’ when they fought about Dad’s health or about all the time he spent at work. But this summer, at some point, they had stopped pretending.

Perhaps it would be kind of grown-up to think of their rows as normal. Whatever has been simmering under the surface for so long has finally found an outlet. But Minoo feels like a scared little kid whenever she thinks of the word ‘divorce’. Maybe it wouldn’t have felt so bad if she had had brothers or sisters. But what is at risk now is the only family she has ever known. Mum, Dad and herself.

Minoo tries to concentrate on the book in her lap. It’s a
crime story by Georges Simenon that she found in Dad’s bookshelf. Its back has split, and yellowing pages sometimes drop out when she leafs through it. The book is really good. At least, she imagines so. There’s no way she can engage with the story. She feels shut out of the world in the book.

Minoo catches a glimpse of brightness in the corner of her eye. She quickly pulls off her earphones and turns round.

Gustaf is wearing a white T-shirt. It enhances his tanned skin and the golden sheen of his sun-bleached hair. Some people seem made for summer. Minoo definitely isn’t one of them.

‘Hi, Minoo,’ he says.

‘Hi,’ she replies.

She glances nervously towards the house. All quiet in there now. But for how long?

‘You look surprised,’ Gustaf is saying. ‘Did you forget we were meeting up today?’

‘Oh, no. I’d just lost track of the time.’

Inside the house, a door slams and Dad roars at top volume. Mum’s response has a lot of swearing in it. Gustaf’s face is blank, but he must have heard them. Minoo stands up so quickly the book falls on to the lawn. She leaves it there.

‘Come on,’ she says and walks off quickly.

At the end of the garden, she turns impatiently. Gustaf has picked up the book and is putting it on the deckchair. He looks at her, smiles, then hurries to catch up.

Side by side, they amble through Engelsfors. It is impossible to move at anything like a normal pace. The heat is pressing them down to the ground, as if the gravitational pull had been magnified by a factor of ten.

Minoo has never seen the point of lying around on a beach. That is, not until just this summer, when she has been
thinking seriously of going to Dammsjön Lake where the rest of Engelsfors goes to cool down. But the mere thought of undressing in front of other people has always made her stay away. She can hardly bear to show her face in public. The heatwave hasn’t exactly done wonders for her skin. A particularly hyper pimple is throbbing at her temple and she tries to pull a strand of hair over it so that Gustaf won’t notice.

Just as it is hard for her to put her finger on exactly when Mum and Dad started fighting openly, it is hard for her to pinpoint when she and Gustaf became friends.

When Minoo finally dared to tell the other Chosen Ones about the black smoke, her alienation from the world of other people felt a little less paralysing. But she was not the same Minoo as before. Her friend Rebecka had died. Killed by Max, the man Minoo had loved more than anyone else. Max, who claimed that the demons had a plan for her. She had no idea what the plan might be, just as she knew nothing about the powers held inside her.

But in the middle of her confusion, Gustaf had been there for her. Early on in the summer holidays, he tried to persuade her to come along to Dammsjön Lake but, when she kept being evasive, they went for walks instead. Or else talked, read or played cards in his garden.

Gustaf is the local football star and one of the most popular boys in the school. Through the years, Minoo has heard so much praise of him, usually over-the-top variants on what a perfect guy he is. As for Minoo, the word she feels describes him best is ‘easy-going’. He makes everything seem simple. Since her life generally is the total opposite to simple, the time spent with Gustaf has become a rare zone of ease.

But when she is not with him, paranoia lurks. She wonders why he cares enough to be with her. Maybe she’s some kind of charitable project.

They stroll across Canal Bridge, then follow the swirling flow of black water past the lock gates and take a path underneath the canopies of the trees. A wasp is buzzing around Minoo and she flicks it away.

‘How are things with you? Honestly?’ Gustaf asks.

The wasp disappears among the trees. Minoo understands that he means what he had heard from inside her house. He has probably sensed all summer that something was up.

‘Look, I’m sorry, maybe you’d rather not talk about it?’

Minoo hesitates. He is her escape route and she doesn’t want to mess that up.

‘Do your parents fight like that?’

‘They did when I was little. Now they never do,’ Gustaf says and then doesn’t speak for a moment. ‘But now, I don’t think they care enough any more.’

Astonished, Minoo glances at him. She always had the impression that Gustaf’s family was like one of these sweet’n’cosy ones in rubbish American comedies, the kind where people get cross with each other because of some crazy misunderstanding. And when all is sorted in the end, cue for hugs all round as everyone agrees they’ve learned a lesson.

‘I try not to think too much about it, but I’m pretty sure they’ll get divorced as soon as I’m out of their way,’ Gustaf says. ‘I’m the last of their kids who’s still at home. I leave and that’s it. Nothing left to hold them together.’

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘You notice when two people are in love, I think. It’s like … a kind of energy between them. Do you know what I mean?’

Minoo mumbles agreement. She knows exactly what he means. She once felt an energy field between herself and Max. That is, before she found out who he actually was. That he was Rebecka’s killer.

‘There’s nothing like that between my parents,’ Gustaf continues. ‘I realised that once I had fallen in love.’

He falls silent. Minoo knows that he is thinking about Rebecka.

Her death had brought them together. Now they talk less and less about her. It is Minoo who avoids the subject. As she gets closer to Gustaf, it is more and more difficult to play along with the lie that the death of his girlfriend was suicide.

She sees a familiar shadow sweep across his face and wants to ask him how he feels. Does he still have nightmares about when he watched Rebecka die? Does he still blame himself? She wants to be the friend he deserves.

But how can she be a true friend at the same time as she keeps lying about something so important?

If only it was possible to tell him the truth. But she knows that she couldn’t, not ever.

The woodland opens up into a meadow where the summer flowers have faded and died. The old abandoned manor house stands on the far side of the meadow.

‘Did you know that building was an inn once?’ Minoo asks to change the subject.

‘No, I didn’t. When?’

‘In the nineties. Dad told me about it. A couple of Stockholm restaurant owners bought the whole thing, moved in and refurbished it. They spent serious money, apparently. And then they opened a restaurant. It got brilliant reviews but, all the same, they had to close the place down after about a year. Zero customers, you see. Dad said the talk in town was all about how they’d show the city folk that in Engelsfors there was no money to be had just for the asking. So there. As if everyone wouldn’t have gained by something actually happening here.’

Gustaf laughs.

‘Engelsfors strikes again. Typical.’

For a while, they stand looking at the house. It is a grand two-storey building made of white-painted wood. Definitely the largest and most beautiful building in the town. Not that the competition is so hot. A wide flight of stone steps leads from the overgrown garden to a veranda where two massive pillars support a large balcony on the first floor.

‘Let’s check it out,’ Gustaf says.