Echoes From the Dead

Öland, September 1972

Gunnar stands directly in front of Nils and slowly raises the heavy iron pick. He looks around at the fog, as if he wants to make sure nobody can see what is happening out on the alvar. Or what is going to happen.

“You can’t go home, Nils,” he says. “You’re already dead. You’re already buried.”

Nils shakes his head. “Let go of the pick,” he says.

It seems as if a deathly silence has suddenly descended on the whole of the alvar, as if all the air beneath the sky had disappeared.

“Let go of the shovel first, Nils.”

Nils shakes his head again. He steals a quick glance at the other treasure hunter, Martin, who is breathing heavily as he lies sprawled on the ground a few yards away, clutching his forehead. He’s no threat.

But Gunnar is dangerous. He’s standing there with his legs braced, gripping the pick and listening; suddenly his head cocks slightly, as if he hears something in the distance.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m dropping the pick now.”

And he does. It lands beside the cairn with a heavy thud.

“Good.” And Nils drops the shovel too, but he doesn’t relax. “And now I want to go down to...”

Suddenly he can hear a noise as well. It’s getting louder. A faint hum from the village road, which rapidly swells to a dull roar.

A car engine.

“I think we’ve got company,” says Gunnar.

He doesn’t seem surprised.

Seconds pass. Then a broad shadow takes shape in the fog behind them. A shadow moving across the grass on four wheels.

It’s another Volvo, a gleaming brown Volvo creeping slowly toward them out of the fog. It stops next to Gunnar’s car, and the engine is switched off.

The driver’s door opens.

Nils doesn’t recognize the car, or the man who gets out. But he can see that the man is much younger than him, and is dressed in a neatly pressed uniform. He’s wearing a gun in his holster. The man closes the car door, straightens and adjusts his jacket.

The man who has just arrived stops in front of Nils. His eyes are fixed on Nils.

“We’ve never met,” says the man. “But I’ve thought about you a great deal.”

Nils is staring, openmouthed.

“You murdered my father,” says the man.

For several seconds Nils understands nothing.

“Nils, this is Lennart,” says Gunnar. “Lennart Henriksson. His father was the district superintendent. You remember, when you were young, many years ago... You met on the train to Borgholm.”

The district superintendent’s son.

Finally, Nils understands. He understands what’s going to happen, and he finally reacts. Nils sees Henriksson fumbling with his holster. He steps backward into the fog and begins to run.

“Stop!”

Nils doesn’t stop, of course; he keeps on running. The trap which has been set is starting to close, but he hurls himself out of it.

He is no longer young, and his progress across the grass is far too slow, but this is the alvar, his ground. He flees through the smoky fog with his head down, breathing hard, aiming for the nearest big clump of bushes and expecting at any moment to hear a shot behind him — but he manages to reach the juniper bushes before it comes.

Nils hears several shouts in the fog.

He doesn’t stop. Straight ahead, with long strides.

Is this the way down to the village?

Nils thinks it is. He’s on his way home now, he’s going home to his mother at last, and nobody can stop him.

Nils suddenly sees a figure taking shape in the fog ahead of him, and he stops, bewildered.

This is no pursuer. This is a little boy, maybe no more than five or six years old. The boy comes forward out of the gray fog and stops just a few short steps away.

The boy is small and skinny, dressed in shorts and a thin red shirt, with a pair of little sandals on his feet. He looks up curiously at Nils in silence, hesitating, as if he isn’t really afraid, but knows he should be.

But Nils isn’t dangerous, not to a child. He has never done anything but defend himself, and he really did try to save his brother from drowning that summer’s day, even if it was too late — and he’s never harmed a child in his entire life. Never.

“Hello there,” rasps Nils.

He tries to calm his heavy breathing so that he won’t frighten the child.

The boy doesn’t reply.

Nils quickly turns his head and looks around, but it doesn’t seem as if anyone’s chasing him. The fog is protecting him. He can’t stay here long, but just for the moment he is safe from his pursuers.

Then he looks at the boy again, without smiling, and asks quietly:

“Are you on your own?”

The boy nods silently.

“Are you lost?”

“I think so,” says the boy quietly.

“It’s all right... I can find my way anywhere out here on the alvar.” Nils takes a step closer. “What’s your name?”

“Jens,” says the boy.

“Jens what?”

“Jens Davidsson.”

“Good. My name’s...”

He hesitates — which of his names should he use?

“My name’s Nils,” he says in the end.

“Nils what?” says Jens. It’s a bit like a game.

Nils gives a short laugh.

“My name is Nils Kant,” he says, taking another step forward.

The boy stands still, in a world made only of grass and gray stone and juniper bushes. In the fog, there is nothing but grass and stones and bushes. Nils tries to smile at him, to show that everything is okay.

The fog closes in around them, not a sound is to be heard.

“It’s all right,” says Nils.

He’s intending to take the boy down to the village and find out where he lives, and then he himself will go home to his mother.

They are standing very close to each other by now, Nils and Jens.

Then the rumble of an engine comes echoing out of the fog behind them, and Nils tries to turn and run, but he hasn’t time to take one single step.

The noise swells and swells, and it seems to be coming from every direction.

It’s the car, the brown Volvo, and it comes hurtling between the rocks and the bushes, slithering across the grass before straightening up and aiming at him, aiming directly at Nils. It doesn’t slow down.

Right or left?

The car is growing, it’s so wide. Nils has only seconds to decide, one second — and then it’s too late. He can only watch, with his arm around the boy. There is no protection.

Everything disappears for a while.

Everything falls silent. Cold darkness.

The sounds return like dull echoes. The fog, the cold, and a car engine ticking over.

“Did you get him?” asks a voice.

“Yes... I can see him.”

Nils is lying on his back, stretched out on the grass. His right leg is twisted beneath him at an odd angle, but he feels no pain.

The car is just a few yards away from him, with its engine running. The driver’s door opens. The policeman slowly gets out, his revolver in his hand.

The passenger door on the other side opens too. Gunnar steps out too, but stays by the car, looking out across the alvar.

The policeman steps over to Nils, then stops.

He says nothing, he merely stares.

Nils suddenly remembers the boy in the fog, Jens — where did he go?

He’s gone.

Nils hopes that Jens Davidsson has disappeared, that he got away in the fog and ran back down to Stenvik in his little sandals. A successful flight. Nils wants to follow him, to go back home, but he can’t move. His leg must be broken.

“It’s over” is all he says.

It’s over, Mother. It ends here on the alvar.

Nils is very tired. He could crawl down to Stenvik, but he hasn’t the strength.

The dead are gathering around him, mute gray shadows crowding in.

His father and his little brother, Axel. The two German soldiers. The district superintendent on the train and the Swedish sailor from Nybro.

All dead.

Standing over him, the young policeman nods.

“Yes,” he agrees. “It’s over now.”

The policeman releases the safety catch on his gun with the barrel pointing downward, then he raises it, aims at Nils’s head, and pulls the trigger.