Handling The Undead

13 August

Svarvargatan 16.03

Death…

David lifted his eyes from the desk, looking at the framed photograph of Duane Hanson's plastic sculpture 'Supermarket Lady'.

A woman, obese, in a pink top and turquoise skirt, pushing a loaded shopping trolley. She has curlers in her hair, a fag dangling from the corner of her mouth. Her shoes are worn down, barely covering the swollen, aching feet. Her gaze is empty. On the bare skin of her upper arms you can just make out a violet mark, bruising. Perhaps her husband beats her.

But the trolley is full. Filled to bursting.

Cans, cartons, bags. Food. Microwave meals. Her body is a lump of flesh forced inside her skin, which in turn has been crammed into the tight skirt, the tight top. The gaze is empty, the lips hard around the cigarette, a glimpse of teeth. The hands grip the trolley handle.

And the trolley is full. Filled to bursting.

David drew in air through his nostrils, could almost smell the mixture of cheap perfume and supermarket sweat.

Death…

Every time his ideas dried up, when he felt hesitant, he looked at this picture. It was Death; the thing you struggle against. All the tendencies in society that point towards this picture are evil, everything that points away from it is… better.

The door to Magnus' room opened and Magnus emerged with a Pokernon card in his hand. From inside the room you could hear the agitated voice of the cartoon frog, Grodan Boll, 'Noooo, come ooooon!'

Magnus held out the card.

'Daddy, is Dark Golduck an eye or a kind of water?'

'Water. Sweetheart, we'll have to talk about this later…'

'But he has eye attack.'

'Yes, but… Magnus. Not now. I'll come when I'm ready. OK?' Magnus caught sight of the newspaper in front of David. 'What are they doing?'

'Please, Magnus. I'm working. I'll come in a minute.' 'Ab… so…lut filth. What does that mean?'

David closed the newspaper and took hold of Magnus' shoulders.

Magnus struggled, trying to open the paper.

'Magnus! I'm serious. If you don't let me work now I won't have any time for you later. Go into your room, close the door. I'll be there soon.'

'Why do you have to work all the time!'

David sighed. 'If you only knew how little I work compared to other parents. But please, leave me alone for a little while.'

'Yes, yes, yes.'

Magnus wriggled out of his grasp and went back to his room.

The door slammed shut. David walked once around the room, wiped his underarms with a towel and sat back down at the desk. The window to the Kungsholmen shoreline was wide open but there was almost no breeze, and David was sweating even though his upper body was bare.

He opened the newspaper again. Something funny had to come of this.

Absolute filth!

A giveaway promotion featuring adult magazines and liquor; two women from the Swedish Centre Party pouring vodka over an issue of Hustler as a protest. Distressed, read the caption. David studied their faces. Mostly, they looked belligerent, as if they wanted to pulverise the photographer with their eyes. The spirits ran down over the naked woman on the cover.

It was so grotesque it was hard to make something funny out of it. David's gaze scoured the image, tried to find a point of entry.

Photograph: Putte Merkert.

There it was.

The photographer. David leaned back in the chair, looked up at the ceiling and started to formulate something. After several minutes he had the bare outline of a script written in longhand. He looked at the women again. Now their accusing gazes were directed at him.

'So; planning to make fun of us and our beliefs are you?' they aid. 'What about you?'

'Yes, OK,' David said out loud to the newspaper. 'But at least I know I'm a clown, unlike the two of you.'

He kept writing, with a buzzing headache that he put down to a nagging conscience. After twenty minutes he had a passable routine that might even be amusing if he milked it for all it was worth. He glanced up at Supermarket Lady but received no guidance.

Possibly he was walking in her footsteps, sitting in her basket.

It was half past four. Four and a half hours until he was due on stage, and there were already butterflies in his stomach.

He made a cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette and went in to see Magnus, spent half an hour talking about Pokemon, helped Magnus to sort the cards and interpret what they said.

'Dad,' Magnus asked, 'what exactly is your job?'

'You already know that. You were there at Norra Brunn once. I tell stories and people laugh and… Then I get paid for it.'

'Why do they laugh?'

David looked into Magnus' serious eight-year-old's eyes and burst into laughter himself. He stroked Magnus' head and answered, 'I don't know. I really don't know. Now I'm going to have some coffee.'

'Oh, you're always drinking coffee.'

David got up from the floor where the cards lay spread out. When he reached the door, he turned around to look at his son, whose lips moved as he read one of his cards.

'I think,' David said, 'that people laugh because they want to laugh. They have paid to come and laugh, and so they laugh.' Magnus shook his head. 'I don't get it.'

'No,' David said, 'I don't either.'

Eva came back from work at half past five and David greeted her in the hall.

'Hi sweetheart,' she said. 'What's up?'

'Death, death, death,' David replied, holding his hands over his stomach. He kissed her. Her upper lip was salt with sweat. 'And you?'

'Fine. A little bit of a headache. Otherwise I'm fine. Have you been able to write?'

'No, it… ' David gestured vaguely at the desk. 'Yes, but it isn't that good.'

Eva nodded. 'No, I know. Will I get to hear it later?' 'If you like.'

Eva left to find Magnus, and David went to the bathroom, let some of the nervousness drain out of him. He remained on the toilet seat for a while, studying the pattern of white fishes on the shower curtain. He wanted to read his script to Eva; in fact, he needed to read it to her. It was funny, but he was ashamed of it and was afraid that Eva would say something about… the ideas behind it. Of which there were none. He flushed, then rinsed his face with cold water.

I'm an entertainer. Plain and simple. Yes. Of course.

He made a light dinner-a mushroom omelette-while Magnus and Eva laid out the Monopoly board in the living room. David's underarms ran with sweat as he stood at the stove sauteing the mushrooms.

This weather. It isn't natural.

An image suddenly loomed in his mind: the greenhouse effect. Yes. The Earth as a gigantic greenhouse. With us planted here millions of years ago by aliens. Soon they'll be back for the harvest.

He scooped the omelette onto plates and called out that dinner was served. Good image, but was it funny? No. But if you added someone fairly well known, like… a newspaper columnist, sayStaffan Heimersson-and said he was the leader of the aliens in disguise. So therefore Staffan Heimersson's solely responsible for the greenhouse effect…

'What are you thinking about?'

'Oh, nothing. That it's Staffan Heimersson's fault it's so warm.' 'OK…'

Eva waited. David shrugged. 'No, that was it. Basically.' 'Mum?' Magnus was done picking the tomato slices out of his salad. 'Robin said that if the Earth gets warmer the dinosaurs will come back, is that true?'

His headache got worse during the game of Monopoly, and everyone became unnecessarily grumpy when they lost money. After half an hour they took a break for Bolibompa, the children's program, and Eva went to the kitchen and made some espresso. David sat in the sofa and yawned. As always when he was nervous he became drowsy, just wanted to sleep.

Magnus curled up next to him and they watched a documentary about the circus. When the coffee was ready, David got up despite Magnus' protests. Eva was at the stove, fiddling with one of the knobs.

'Strange,' she remarked, 'I can't turn it off.'

The power light wouldn't go off. David turned some knobs at random, but nothing happened. The burner on which the coffee pot sat gurgling was red-hot. They couldn't be bothered doing anything to it for the moment, so David read his piece out while they drank the heavily sugared espresso and smoked. Eva thought it was funny.

'Can I do it?'

'Absolutely.'

'You don't think that it's…'

'What?'

'Well, going too far. They're right, of course.'

'Well? What does that have to do with it?'

'No, of course. Thanks.'

Ten years they had been married, and hardly a day went by that David did not look at Eva and think, 'How bloody lucky 1 am.' Naturally there were black days. Weeks, even, without joy or the possibility of it, but even then, at the bottom of all the murk, he knew there was a placard that read bloody good luck. Maybe he couldn't see it at that moment, but it always resurfaced.

She worked as an editor and illustrator of non-fiction books for children at a small publishing company called Hippogriff, and she had written and illustrated two books herself featuring Bruno, a philosophically inclined beaver who liked to build things. No huge successes, but as Eva once said with a grimace, 'The upper middle classes seem to like them. Architects. Whether their children do is less certain.' David thought the books were significantly funnier than his monologues.

'Mum! Dad! I can't turn it off!'

Magnus was standing in front of the television, waving the remote control. David hit the off button on the set but the screen did not go black. It was the same as the stove, but here at least the plug was easy to get at, so he pulled on it just as the newscaster announced the start of the evening current affairs show. For a moment it felt like pulling a piece of metal off a magnet, the wall socket sucking at the plug. There was a crackling sound and a tickle in his fingers, then I he newscaster disappeared into the dark.

David held out the plug. 'Did you see that? It was some kind of… short circuit. Now all the fuses have gone.' He flicked the light switch. The ceiling lamp went on, but he could not switch it off again.

Magnus jumped up in his seat.

'Come on! Let's keep playing.'

They let Magnus win Monopoly, and while he was counting his money. David packed his stage shoes and shirt, along with the newspaper. When he came out into the kitchen, Eva was pulling the stove out from the wall.

'No,' David said. 'Don't do that.'

Eva pinched a finger and swore. 'Damn… we can't leave it like this. I'm going over to my dad's. Fuck… ' Eva tugged on the stove but it had become wedged between the cabinets.

'Eva,' David said. 'How many times have we forgotten to turn it off and gone to bed without anything happening?'

'Yeah, I know, but to leave the apartment… ' She kicked the oven door. 'We haven't cleaned back there for years. Bloody thing. Damn, my head hurts.'

'Is that what you want to do right now? Clean behind the stove?'

She let her hands fall, shook her head and chuckled. 'No. I got it in my head. It'll have to wait.'

She made a final desperate lunge at the stove and threw up her hands, defeated. Magnus came out into the kitchen with his money.

'Ninety-seven thousand four hundred.' He scrunched up his eyes. 'My head hurts a whole lot. It's stupid.'

They each took an aspirin and a glass of water, said cheers and swallowed. A farewell toast.

Magnus was going to spend the night at David's mother's place, Eva was going to visit her father in Jarfalla, but come back in the middle of the night. They picked up Magnus between them, and all three kissed.

'Not too much Cartoon Network at Grandma's,' David said. 'Nah,' Magnus said. 'I don't watch that anymore.'

'That's good,' Eva said. 'It'll be…'

'I watch the Disney channel. It's much better.'

David and Eva kissed again, their eyes telegraphing something about how it would be later that night when they were alone. Then Eva took Magnus' hand and they walked off, waving one last time. David remained on the sidewalk, watching them.

What if I never saw them again…

The usual fear gripped him. God had been too good to him, there'd been a mistake, he had got more than he deserved. Now it would all be taken away. Eva and Magnus disappeared around the corner and an impulse told him to run after them, stop them. Say, 'Come on. Let's go home. We'll watch Shrek, we'll play Monopoly, we… can't let ourselves be separated.'

The usual fears, but worse than usual. He got a grip on himself, turned and walked toward St Eriksgatan while he quietly recited his new routine in order to fix it in his mind:

How does this kind of picture come to be? The two women are upset, so what do they do? They go to the store and buy a case of vodka and then a stack of porn magazines. When they've been standing there, pouring and pouring for two hours, Putte M erkert, photographer at Aftonbladet, just happens to catch sight of them.

'Hi there!' Putte Merkert says. 'What are you doing?'

'We're pouring alcohol on porn magazines,' the women answer.

'Aha,' the photographer thinks. A chance for a scoop.

No, not 'the photographer'. Putte Merkert. All the way through.

Aha, thinks Putte Merkert. A chance for a scoop…

Halfway across the bridge, David caught sight of something strange and stopped.

Recently he had read in the newspaper that there were millions of rats in Stockholm. He had never seen a single one, but here there were three, right in the middle of St Erik's bridge. A big one and two smaller ones. They were running in circles on the footpath, chasing each other.

The rats hissed, showing their teeth, and one of the smaller ones bit the bigger one on the back. David backed up a step, looked up. An elderly gentleman was standing a few steps away on the other side of the rats, watching their battle open-mouthed.

The small ones were as big as kittens, the bigger one about the size of a dwarf rabbit. The bare tails whisked over the asphalt and the big rat shrieked as the second small one grabbed hold of its back and a damp, black stain of blood appeared on its fur.

Are they… its children, its little ones?

David held a hand up to his mouth, suddenly nauseated. The big rat threw itself from side to side spasmodically, trying to shake off the smaller ones. David had never heard rats shriek, had not known they could. But the sound that issued from the big one was horrible, as if from a dying bird.

A couple of people had stopped on the other side. Everyone was following the rat fight and for a moment David had a vision of people gathered to watch some kind of organised event. Rat fighting. He wanted to walk away, but couldn't. In part because the traffic across the bridge was steady, in part because he could not tear his gaze from the rats. He felt compelled to stay and watch, and see what happened.

Suddenly the big one stiffened, its tail pointing straight out from its body. The small ones writhed, scrabbling their claws over its belly and their heads moved jerkily back and forth as they tore at the skin. The big one shuffled forward until it reached the edge of the bridge, crept under the railing with its burden and toppled over.

David had time to peer over the railing in time to see it land. The noise from the traffic masked the splash when the rats landed in the dark water and a plume of drops glittered for an instant in the street lamps. Then it was over.

People continued on their way, talking about it.

'Never seen anything like it… it's this heat… my dad once told me that he… headache…'

David massaged his temples and kept walking across the bridge. People from the other direction met his gaze and everyone smiled bashfully, as if they had all taken part in something illicit. When the older gentleman who had been standing there from the beginning walked past, David asked, 'Excuse me, but… have you got a headache too?'

'Yes,' the man answered, and pressed his fist against his head. 'It's terrible.'

'I was just wondering.'

The man pointed at the dirty grey asphalt spotted with rat blood and said, 'Maybe they had one too. Maybe that was why… ' He interrupted himself and looked at David. 'You've been on television, haven't you?'

He continued on his way. A muted panic hovered in the air. Dogs were barking and pedestrians walked more quickly than usual, as if trying to escape whatever was approaching. He hurried down Odengatan, took out his cell phone and dialled Eva's number. When he was level with the subway station, she answered.

'Hi,' David said. 'Where are you?'

'I've just got in the car. David? It was the same thing at your mum's place. She was going to turn the television off when we arrived, but she couldn't.'

'That'll make Magnus happy. Eva? I…I don't know, but… do you have to go see your father?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Well… do you still have a headache?'

'Yes, but not so I can't drive. Don't worry.'

'No. It's just that I have a feeling that… it's something horrible. Don't you feel it too?'

'No. Not like that.'

A man was standing inside the phone booth at the intersection of Odengatan and Sveavagen, jiggling the hook. David was about to tell Eva about the rats when the line went dead.

'Hello? Hello?'

He stopped and redialled the number, but couldn't get through. Just the crackle of static. The man in the phone booth hung up, cursed and walked out of the booth. David turned off the cell phone in order to try again but the phone refused to turn off. A drop of sweat fell from his brow onto the keypad. The phone felt unusually warm, as if the battery was heating up. He pressed the off button, but nothing happened. The display continued to glow and the battery indicator actually increased by one bar. The time was 21.05, and he half-ran down to Nona Brunn.

Even from outside the club, he could hear that the show had started. Benny Lundin's voice was thundering out onto the street, he was doing his thing about the difference between guys' and girls' bathroom habits and David pulled a face. Was pleased not to hear any laughter at the punchline. Then there was silence for a moment just as David reached the entrance, and Benny started on his next thread: about condom dispensers that stop working when you need them the most. David paused in the entrance, blinked.

The whole room was fully lit. The house lights, normally turned off to isolate the spotlight on stage, were up full bore. The people seated at the tables and at the bar looked pained, staring down at the floor and the tablecloths.

'Do you take American Express?'

That was the punchline. People usually laughed until they cried at Benny's story about how he had tried to buy black-market condoms from the Yugoslavian mafia. Not this time. Everyone just suffered.

'Shut your face, asshole!' a drunk man at the bar yelled, grabbing at his head. David sympathised. The microphone volume was on way too high and was distorting. With the ubiquitous headache, it amounted to mass torture.

Benny grinned nervously, said, 'They let you out of the asylum for this?'

When no one laughed at that either, Benny put the microphone back in the stand, said, 'Thanks everyone. You've been a fantastic audience,' and walked offstage toward the kitchen. There was a general moment of paralysis since everything had been cut off so abruptly. Then the microphone started feeding back and an atrocious ear-splitting squeal cut through the dense air.

Everyone in the room put their hands over their ears and some started to scream along with the feedback. David clenched his teeth, ran up to the mike and tried to disconnect the cord. The weak current shot trails of ants through his skin, but the plug stayed put. After a couple of seconds, the feedback was a butcher's saw hacking through the flesh of his brain and he was forced to give up, press his hands to his ears.

He turned in order to make his way to the kitchen, but was obstructed from doing so by people who had stood up from their tables to throng towards the exit. A woman without much respect for the club's property pushed him aside, wound the microphone cord once around her wrist and yanked. She only managed to knock the stand over. The feedback continued.

David looked up at the mixing booth, where Leo was pushing every button in sight, to no effect. David was about to shout at him to cut the power when he felt a shove and fell on the low stage. He lay there, hands still clapped over his ears, and watched as the woman swung the microphone over her head and dashed it into the concrete floor.

There was silence. The audience stopped, looked around. A collective sigh of relief went through the room. David clawed himself up to standing and saw Leo waving his hands, pulling his index finger across his throat. David nodded, cleared his throat and said loudly, 'Hello!'

Faces turned toward him.

'Unfortunately we have to interrupt tonight's show due to… technical difficulties.'

A few laughs in the audience. Jeering.

'We would like to thank our major sponsor, the Vattenfall Power Company, and… welcome you back another time.'

Boos from around the room. David held out his hands in a gesture that was supposed to mean, So fucking sorry for something that's not remotely my fault, but people had already lost interest in him. Everyone was moving toward the exit. The place was empty in a matter of minutes.

When David reached the kitchen, Leo looked grumpy. 'What was that thing about Vattenfall?'

'A joke.'

'I see. Funny.'

David was about to say something about captains and sinking ships since Leo was the boss of the place-and OK, next time he would make sure he had a routine prepared for a reverse power cut-but he held back. In part because he couldn't afford to get Leo's back up, and in part because he had other things to think about.

He went into the office and dialled Eva's cell phone number from the landline. This time he got through, but only to her voicemail. He left a message asking her to call him at the club as soon as possible.

Someone brought some beers in and the comedians drank them in the kitchen, amid the roar of the kitchen fans. The chefs had turned them on to mitigate the heat from the cooking ranges that couldn't be turned off, and now they had the same problem with the fans. They could barely talk but at least it was cooler.

Most of them left, but David decided to stay put in case Eva called. On the ten o'clock radio news they heard that the electrical phenomenon appeared to be confined to the Stockholm region, that the current in some areas could be compared to an incipient lightning strike. David felt the hairs on his arms stand up. Maybe a shiver, maybe static electricity.

When he felt a vibration against his hip he thought at first it was to do with the electrical charge in the air as well, but then realised it was coming from his cell phone. He didn't recognise the number that came up.

'Hello, this is David.'

'Am I speaking with David Zetterberg?'

'Yes?'

Something in the man's voice generated a clump of anxiety in David's stomach and set it wobbling. He stood up from the table and took a couple of steps into the hall toward the dressing room in order to hear better.

'My name is Goran Dahlman and I am a physician at Danderyd Hospital…'

As the man said what he had to say, David's body was swept into a cold fog and his legs disappeared. He slithered down the wall to the concrete floor. He stared at the phone in his hand; threw it away from him like a venomous snake. It slid along the floor and struck Leo's foot. Leo looked up.

'David! What's wrong?'

Afterwards David would have no real memory of the half hour that followed. The world had congealed, all sense and meaning sucked out of it. Leo made his way with difficulty through the traffic; it was following the most rudimentary road rules now that all the electronics had been knocked out. David sat curled up in the passenger seat and looked with unseeing eyes at the yellow-flashing traffic lights.

It was only in the entrance of Danderyd Hospital that he was.ihlc to pull himself together and refuse Leo's offer to come up with him. He couldn't remember what Leo said, or how he found the right ward. Suddenly he was just there, and time started making its slow rounds again.

Actually, there was one thing he remembered. As he walked through the corridors to Eva's room, all the lamps above the doors were blinking and an alarm sounded continuously. This felt entirely appropriate: catastrophe eclipses everything.

She had collided with an elk and died during the time it took David to reach the hospital. The doctor on the phone had said that there was no hope for her, but that her heart was still beating. Not anymore. It had stopped at 22.36. At twenty-four minutes to eleven her heart had stopped pumping the blood around her body.

One single muscle in a single person's body. A speck of dust in time. And the world was dead. David stood next to her bed with his arms by his sides, the headache burning behind his forehead.

Here lay his whole future, everything good that he could even imagine would come from life. Here lay the last twelve years of his past. Everything gone; and time shrank to a single unbearable now.

He fell to his knees by her side, took her hand.

'Eva,' he whispered, 'this won't work. It can't be like this. I love you. Don't you understand? I can't live without you. Come on, you have to wake up now. It doesn't make sense without you, none of it. I love you so much and it just can't be like this.'

He talked and talked, a monologue of repeated sentences which, the more times he repeated them, felt more and more true and right until a conviction took root in him that they would start to take effect. Yes. The more times he said it was impossible, the more absurd it all seemed. He had just managed to convince himself of the feeling that if he simply kept babbling the miracle would happen, when the door opened.

A woman's voice said, 'How's it going?'

'Fine. Fine,' David said. 'Please go away.'

He pressed Eva's cooling hand against his brow, heard the rustling of cloth as the nurse crouched down. He felt a hand at his back.

'Can I do anything?'

David slowly turned his head to the nurse and drew back, Eva's hand still held in his own. The nurse looked like Death in human form. Prominent cheekbones, protruding eyes, pained expression. 'Who are you?' he whispered.

'I'm Marianne,' she said, almost without moving her lips.

They stared at each other wide-eyed. David took a firmer hold of Eva's hand; he had to protect her from this person who was coming to get her. But the nurse made no move towards him. Instead she sobbed, said, 'Forgive me… ' and shut her eyes, pressing her hands against her head.

David understood. The pain in his head, the ragged pulsating heartbeat was not only his. The nurse slowly straightened up, momentarily lost her balance, then walked out of the room. For a moment, the outside world penetrated his consciousness and David heard a cacophony of signals, alarms and sirens both inside and outside the hospital. Everything was in turmoil.

'Come back,' he whispered. 'Magnus. How am I supposed to tell Magnus? He's turning nine next week, you know. He wants pancake cake. How do you make pancake cake, Eva? You were the one who was going to make it, you bought the raspberries and everything. They're already at home in the freezer, how am I supposed to go home and open the freezer and there are the raspberries that you bought to make pancake cake and how am I supposed to… '

David screamed. One long sound until all the air was gone from his lungs. He pressed his lips against her knuckles, mumbled, 'Everything's over. You don't exist any more. I don't exist. Nothing exists.'

The pain in his head reached an intensity that he was forced to acknowledge. A bolt of hope shot through him: he was dying. Yes. He was going to die too. There was crackling, something breaking in his brain as the pain swelled and swelled and he had just managed to think, with complete certainty-I'm dying. I am dying now. Thank you-when it stopped. Everything stopped. Alarms and sirens stopped. The lighting in the room dimmed. He could hear his own rapid breathing. Eva's hand was moist with his own sweat, it slid across his forehead. The headache was gone. Absently, he rubbed her hand up and down across his skin, drawing her wedding band across it, wanting the pain back. Now that it was gone, the ache in his chest welled up in its place.

He stared down at the floor. He did not see the white caterpillar that came in through the ceiling, fell, and landed on the yellow institutional blanket draped over Eva, digging its way in.

'My darling,' he whispered and squeezed her hand. 'Nothing was going to come between us, don't you remember?'

Her hand jerked, squeezed back.

David did not scream, did not make a move. He simply stared at her hand, pressed it. Her hand pressed back. His chin fell, his tongue moved to lick his lips. Joy was not the word for what he felt, it was more like the disorientation in the seconds after you wake from a nightmare, and at first his legs did not want to obey him when he pulled himself up so he could look at her.

They had cleaned and prepped her as best they could, but half of her face was a gaping wound. The elk, he supposed. It must have had time to turn its head, or make a final desperate attempt to attack the car. Its head, its antlers had been the first thing through the windshield and one of the points had struck her face before she was crushed under the weight of the beast.

'Eva! Can you hear me?'

No reaction. David pulled his hands across his face, his heart was beating wildly.

It was a spasm… She can't be alive. Look at her.

A large bandage covered the right half of her face, but it was clear that it was… too small. That bones, skin and flesh were missing underneath. They had said that she was in bad shape, but only now did he realise the extent of it.

'Eva? It's me.'

This time there was no spasm. Her arm jerked, hitting against his legs. She sat up without warning. David instinctively backed up. The blanket slid off her, there was a quiet clinking and… no, he had not realised the full extent of it at all.

Her upper body was naked, the clothes had been cut away. The right side of her chest was a gaping hole bordered by ragged skin and clotted blood. From it came a metallic clanking. For a moment, David could not see Eva, he only saw a monster and wanted to run away. But his legs would not carry him and after several seconds he came to his senses. He stepped up next to the bed again.

Now he saw what was making the sound. Clamps. A number of metal clamps suspended from broken veins inside her chest cavity. They swayed and hit against each other as she moved. He swallowed dryly. 'Eva?'

She turned her head toward the sound of his voice and opened her one eye.

Then he screamed.

Vallirigby 17.32

Mahler made his way slowly across the square, his shirt sticky with sweat. He had a bag of groceries for his daughter in one hand. Soot-grey pigeons waddled under his feet with centimetres to spare.

He looked like a large, grey dove himself. He'd bought the worn suit jacket fifteen years earlier, when he became fat and could no longer use his old clothes. Same thing with the pants. Of his hair, only a wreath above the ears was left and the bald spot on top had become red and freckled from the sun. It was easy to imagine that Mahler was carrying empty bottles in the bag, that he was rooting around in garbage bins-a big pigeon plucking goodies from discarded takeaways.

This was not the case. But it was the impression he gave: a loser. In the shadow of Ahlens Emporium, on his way down to Angermannagatan, Mahler dug under his double chins with his free hand and took hold of the necklace. A present from Elias. Sixtyseven colourful plastic beads threaded on a fishing line, now tied around his neck for all eternity.

While he continued to walk he rubbed the beads one by one like a rosary, like prayers.

It was three flights up to his daughter's apartment; he had to stop and catch his breath for a while. Then he unlocked the door with his own key. Inside it was dark, stuffy and stale from unaired heat.

'Hi sweetheart. It's just me.'

No answer. As usual he feared the worst.

But Anna was there, and still alive. She lay curled up on Elias' bed, on the designer sheets that Mahler had bought, her face turned to the wall. Mahler put down the shopping bag, stepped over the dusty Lego pieces and perched himself gingerly on one corner of the bed.

'How's it going, little one?'

Anna drew in air through her nose. Her voice was weak. 'Daddy…I can feel his smell. It's still there in the sheets. His smell is still here.'

Mahler would have liked to lie down on the bed, against her back. Put his arms around her and been Daddy, and made everything hurtful go away. But he didn't dare to. The bed slats would crack under his weight. So he simply sat there, looking at the Lego pieces that no one had built anything with for two months.

When he had been looking for an apartment for Anna, there was one on the ground floor of this same building. He hadn't taken that one, out of fear of burglars.

'Come and have something to eat.'

Mahler put out two servings of roast beef and potato salad from plastic containers, cut up a tomato and placed the slices on the edge of the plates. Anna did not answer.

The blinds in the kitchen were drawn, but the sun pressed ill through the cracks, drawing glowing lines across the kitchen table and illuminating the whirling motes. He should clean. Lacked the energy.

Two months ago, the table had been full of things: fruit, mail, a toy, a flower picked during a walk, something Elias had made at daycare. The stuff of life.

Now there was just the two plates of supermarket food. The heat and the smell of dust. The bright red tomatoes; a pathetic attempt.

He went to Elias' room, stopped in the doorway. 'Anna… you need to eat a little. Come on. It's ready.'

Anna shook her head, said into the wall, 'I'll eat it later. Thanks.'

'Can't you get up for a while?'

When she didn't answer, he went out into the kitchen again and sat down at the table.

Started loading the food into his mouth automatically. Thought the sound of his chewing echoed between the quiet walls. Finally he ate the tomato slices. One by one.

A ladybug had landed on the balcony railing.

Anna had been busy packing. They were going to Mahler's summer house in Roslagen, staying a couple of weeks.

'Mummy, a ladybug…look.'

She had come out into the living room in time to see Elias standing on the outdoor table, reaching out for the ladybug as it flew away. One of the legs of the table gave way. She didn't get there in time.

Below the balcony was the parking lot. Black asphalt.

'Here, pumpkin.'

Mahler held out the fork with a serving of food for Anna. She sat up in bed, took the fork and put it into her mouth. Mahler handed her the plate. Her face was red and swollen and there were grey streaks in her brown hair. She ate four bites, then handed back the plate.

'Thank you. That was delicious.'

Mahler put the plate down on Elias' desk, put his hands in his lap.

'Have you been out today?' 'I've been with him.'

Mahler nodded. Couldn't think of anything else to say. When he i stood up he banged his head into the wooden duck suspended over the bed. It flapped its wings a few times, swishing air across Anna's. face. Stopped.

Back in his own apartment on the other side of the courtyard, he removed his sweat-drenched clothes, showered, pulled on his robe and took a couple of painkillers for the headache. He sat down at the computer and logged into Reuters. Spent an hour searching for and translating three items.

A Japanese gadget that could translate the meaning of dogs' barks. Siamese twins separated. A man who had built a house of tin cans in Lubeck. There was no photograph of the Japanese machine, so he searched for a picture of a Labrador and attached that. Sent it ' to the paper.

Then he read an email from one of his old sources in the police who wondered how things were going for him these days, it had been: a long time. He replied that things were hell, that his grandson had.: died two months ago and that he considered suicide daily. Deleted it without sending.

The shadows on the floor had grown longer, it was past seven. He stood up out of the chair, massaging his temples. Went out into the kitchen and fetched a beer from the fridge, drank half of it standing up, wandered back to the living room. Ended up next to the couch.

On the floor below the arm of the couch there was the Fortress.

It had been a present to Elias on his sixth birthday four months earlier. The biggest Lego fortress. They had built it together and afterwards they had played with it in the afternoons, arranging knights in different places, making up stories, rebuilding and extending. Now it stood there just as they had left it.

Every time Mahler saw it, it hurt. Each time he thought he should throw it away or at the very least take it to pieces, but he couldn't.

Most likely it would stay there as long as he lived, just as he would take the necklace to the grave.

Elias, Elias…

The abyss opened inside him. Panic came, the pressure on his chest. He hurried to the computer, logged into one of his porn sites. Sat and clicked for an hour, without so much as a movement in his groin. Only indifference, revulsion.

Shortly after nine he logged out and shut down the computer. The screen wouldn't turn off. He couldn't be bothered with it. The headache had started to press on the insides of his eyes, making him agitated. He walked around the apartment a few times, drank another beer; finally stopped and crouched in front of the fortress.

One of the Lego knights had leaned over the edge of the tower, exactly like he was shouting something to the enemy trying to break the door down.

'Watch out or I'll pour out the contents of our toilet on you!' Mahler had said in a creaky voice and Elias had laughed until he lost his breath, shouting, 'More! More!' and Mahler had gone through all the terrible things that a knight could conceivably pour on someone else. Rotten yogurt.

Mahler picked up the piece, turned it in his fingers. The knight had a silver helmet that partially concealed his resolute facial expression. The little sword he held in his hands was still shiny. The colour had flaked off the ones Elias had at home. Mahler looked at the shiny sword and two realisations dropped down through him like black stones.

This sword will always remain shiny. I will never play, ever again.

He replaced the knight, stared at the wall. I will never play, ever again.

In the grief after Elias he had gone over all the things that he would never get to do again: walks in the forest, the playground, juice and sweet rolls at the cafe, the zoo park and more and more and more. But there it was, in all its simplicity: he would never play again, and that was not restricted to Legos and hide-the-key. With Elias' death, he had lost not only his playmate but also his desire to play.

That was why he couldn't write, that was why pornography no longer stirred him and why the minutes went by so slowly. He couldn't fantasise any longer, make things up. It should have been a blessed state, to live only in what is, what exists before one's eyes, not to refashion the world. Should have been. But it wasn't.

Mahler fingered the scar from the operation on his chest. Life is what we choose to make it.

He had lost his vigour, was chained to an overweight body that he would have to drag around joylessly in the days and years to come. He saw this, in a sudden realisation, and was overcome with the desire to smash something. The clenched lis! 1 rembled above the fortress, but he controlled himself, stood up and wcut out to the balcony where he grabbed the railing, shaking it.

A dog was running around in circles down there, barking. Mahler would have liked to be doing the same thing.

When in trouble, when in doubt

Run in circles, scream and shout.

He looked out over the railing, saw himself fall, split wide open against the ground like an overripe melon. The dog would maybe come over and start to gnaw at him. This thought made the act more tempting. To end his days as dog food. But the dog would probably not even notice, it seemed hysterical. Someone was probably coming to shoot it soon.

He pressed his hands to the sides of his head. It would probably split open anyway if the pain continued to escalate like this.

It was a little after half past ten when Mahler realized that he probably did want to live after all.

He had suffered his first attack eight years ago, when he was out interviewing a fisherman who had caught a corpse in his net. When they stepped ashore from the trawler, the light had all of a sudden dimmed, shrinking to a point, and then Mahler couldn't remember anything more until he woke up lying on a pile of nets. If the fisherman had not been proficient in CPR, Mahler's troubles would have been over.

A doctor had told him that he had chronic myocarditis and needed a pacemaker to stabilise his heart. During that time Mahler had been so depressed that he'd considered taking his chances with death, but he had had the operation in the end.

Then Elias came along and Mahler finally found a reason for even having a heart after all these years. The pacemaker had ticked along faithfully and allowed him to play grandpa as much as he wanted.

But now…

Beads of sweat broke out along his hairline and Mahler pressed his hand over his heart; it was beating twice as fast as normal. Somehow his heart was managing to duck out from under the steady beat of the pacemaker and race off on its own. Under his hand, Mahler felt his pulse increase even more.

He put his fingers on his wrist, looked at the alarm clock and counted the seconds. He timed himself at 120 beats per minute, but he wasn't sure that was correct. Even the second hand on the clock appeared to be moving faster than usual.

Calm down… calm… it will pass.

He knew that this kind of heart spasm was not dangerous in itself as long as it did not become too extreme. It was the worry, the anxiety that did the damage. Mahler tried to breathe calmly while his heart raced faster and faster.

Then he had a thought. He placed his fingers over the pacemaker, the metal box just under his skin that was guarding his life. He couldn't tell if it was going faster than normal, but he suspected that's what was happening: the same thing that was happening to the clock.

He curled up in a foetal position on the couch. The pain was going to split his head open, his heart was racing insanely and to his own surprise he saw that he did not want to die. No. At least, he did not want to be killed by a machine whipping up his heart until it burst. He looked up and squinted at the computer screen. Even that had become more intense, and all the icons were engulfed in shining white light.

What should I do?

Nothing. He should do nothing that would strain his heart any more. He sank back again, resting his hand over the muscle of life. His heart was beating so quickly now that he could not make out the different pulses, it was a drum roll from the land of the dead increasing in tempo, and Mahler closed his eyes and waited for the climax.

Just as he thought the drum skin was going to burst and vision close in, like that other time, it was over.

The heart palpitations eased back to the old, deliberate rhythm.

He lay completely still with his eyes closed, then breathed in deeply and felt his face as if checking that he was still there. His face was there; it was covered in sweat, warm drops trickling down through the folds on his belly, tickling.

He opened his eyes. The icons on his computer were back, set against their usual cerulean background. Then the screen went dark. The dog in the yard stopped barking.

What is happening?

The clock was marking the seconds at a normal pace, and an enormous silence had fallen over the world. For the first time, now that they had stopped, he became aware of the cacophony of sounds and screams that had preceded this lull. He licked his salty lips, crouched down and stared at the clock.

Seconds, minutes… one second we are born, one second we die.

He had been lying there for twenty minutes or so when the telephone rang. He slid off the couch and crawled over to the desk. His legs would probably have carried him, but he felt that he should crawl. He pulled himself up onto the desk chair and lifted the receiver.

'This is Mahler.'

'Hi, Ludde here. At Danderyd.'

'Oh… hi.'

'I've got something for you.'

Ludde had been one of his innumerable sources when he was working at the paper. As a custodian at Danderyd Hospital, he would sometimes hear or see things that could be 'of public interest', as Ludde put it.

Mahler said, 'I'm not working anymore, you'll have to call Benke… Bengt Jansson, evening editor at…'

'Listen, the stiffs have come back to life.'

'What are you saying?'

'The stiffs. The corpses. In the morgue. They've come back to life.'

'No.'

'Yes, listen to me. The pathology department just called here completely hysterical, wanting more personnel to go down and help out.'

Mahler watched his hand reach automatically over the desk for his notebook, but pulled it back, shaking his head.

'Ludde, calm down. Do you hear what you…'

'Yes, I know. I know. But it's true. People are running around here like… it's complete chaos. They've come back. All of them.' Mahler could actually hear voices in the background, speaking agitatedly, but could not make out what they were saying.

Something was clearly up, but…

'Ludde, let's take this one more time. From the top.'

Ludde sighed. In the background someone cried out, 'Check with Emergency!' and when Ludde spoke again, he had his mouth closer to the mouthpiece, his voice almost erotic.

'First everything was haywire here because of the electrical stuff. Everything was on and nothing worked. You know? The electricity?'

'Yes… yes, I know.'

'OK. Then five minutes ago… the body butchers called the reception desk, said to send down a couple of guys from Security because there was a bunch of stiffs that were… escaping. OK. The security guys have a laugh, great joke, but they go down there. OK. A couple of minutes later the security guys call, say they need reinforcements because now everyone has woken up. An even funnier joke. A couple more go down, maybe there's a party on down there. OK. Then a doctor calls and says the same thing… and now there are even emergency surgeons heading down there.'

'How many corpses do you have there?'

'No idea. A hundred, at least. Are you coming, or what?' Mahler checked the time.

Twenty-five minutes past eleven. 'Yes. Yes, I'm coming.'

'Great. Will you bring…?'

'Yes, yes.'

He put on his clothes, packed his tape recorder, his cell phone and the digital camera he had never got around to returning to the paper, took some money for Ludde, two thousand kronor, to be on the safe side, and ran down the stairs as fast as he dared.

His heart was still with him as he wedged himself into his Ford Fiesta, started the engine and drove east. When he was out on the Blackeberg roundabout he called Benke, told him, yes, he had quit but he'd just got a tip-off about a thing at Danderyd and was checking up on it. Benke said welcome back.

The roads were empty and Mahler accelerated to 120 when he was through Islands Square. The western suburbs rushed by and somewhere in the vicinity of the Tranebergs Bridge he caught sight of himself. He was more alive than he had been in a month. Almost happy.

Taby Municipality 21.05

'Darling, you'll have to turn that off now.' Elvy wagged her finger at the television screen.

'That groaning is too much for my head.' Flora nodded without taking her eyes off the screen, said, 'OK. I'll just save this.'

Elvy laid Grimberg aside-she had not been able to concentrate on her reading anyway since this headache began-and watched as Jill Valentine made her way back to her safe room. Flora had explained how the video game worked and Elvy understood the basics.

There were two things she didn't understand: how such worlds could be created in computers, and how Flora could remember everything. Her fingers flew over the buttons, and text, maps, indexes flickered past and were replaced so rapidly that Elvy could never take in what was happening.

Jill moved down a dark corridor with her pistol raised, her body tense. Flora's lips were compressed, her heavily made-up eyes narrowed. Elvy's gaze caressed the thin, pale inner arms marked with scratches and scabs from old cuts. The head with its red, straggling hair looked too large for her small body. For a while she had coloured it black, but had been letting it grow out for a year or so.

'Is it going all right?' Elvy asked.

'Mmm. I just got a thing I needed. Just have to… save.'

The map came up, then disappeared. A door opened to a dark background and Jill was standing at the top of some stairs. Flora moistened her lips and steered her toward the steps.

Margareta, who was Flora's mother and Elvy's daughter, would have objected if she had known what kind of game Flora was playing: deemed it unsuitable for both of them, for different reasons.

The Gamecube had ended up at Elvy's three months ago, as a compromise. Flora had been glued to the machine three, four, five hours a day for the past six months, her parents had issued an ultimatum: either sell the machine or keep it at her grandmother's, if Elvy agreed.

And Elvy agreed. She was very fond of her grandchild and vice versa. Flora dropped by two or three evenings a week to play and didn't usually spend more than a couple of hours at the console. They had tea, talked, played cards and sometimes Flora spent the night.

'Ooooohh…'

'Damndamndamn!'

Elvy looked up. Flora's body was curled; tense.

A zombie had staggered out from around a corner and Jill raised her gun, managed to fire a shot before it was upon her. The control in Flora's hand creaked as she tried to turn away but the blood spewed out in red spouts and soon Jill lay at the zombie's feet.

You are dead.

'Idiot!' Flora slapped her forehead. 'Ow. I forgot to burn him.

Ow.'

Elvy leaned forward in the armchair. 'Is it… over now?' 'No…I know where it is now.'

'Uh-huh.'

Flora had self-destructive tendencies, according to her school counsellor. Elvy didn't know if that was better or worse than the diagnosis she'd received herself at the same age: hysterical. In the fifties, as the welfare state flowered and the final victory of rationality seemed imminent, it was not a nice thing to be hysterical. Even Elvy had cut her arms and legs then-inner pain, outer pressures. This problem hadn't even existed back then. No one had the right to be unhappy.

Ever since Flora was very little, Elvy had felt a strong connection to the serious, imaginative child, had sensed that she might have troubles. The sensitivity they were cursed with had skipped a generation. Maybe in reaction to her emotional mother, Margareta had studied law and become neat, polished and successful. Had married Goran, another law student who might have come from the same pod.

'Do you have a headache too?' Elvy asked, watching Flora push the hair off her forehead as she leaned forward and turned off the game.

'Yes, it's…' Flora pushed the button. 'Oh. It won't turn off.'

'Then turn off the television.'

But the television could not be turned off either. The game started to display self-generated scenes. Jill shocked two zombies, another was shot in a corridor. The shots echoed in Elvy's head and she grimaced. The volume couldn't be cut either.

When Flora tried to pull the cord out of the socket it crackled and she jumped back with a scream. Elvy stood up from the armchair,

'What happened?'

Flora stared at the hand that had grabbed the cord.

'I got a shock. Not that strong, but…' She shook her hand as if to cool it down and pointed at the screen where Jill was again electrocuting the undead, chuckled and said,

'No, not like that.' Elvy held out her hand, helped her up on her feet.

'Let's go out in the kitchen.'

Everything electrical and mechanical had been Tore's domain.

After he fell ill with Alzheimer's, Elvy had been forced to call an electrician the first time a fuse blew. She'd never been entrusted with that kind of information because she was considered delicate. But the electrician, who didn't know about her limitations, showed her what to do and now she could do it. A malfunctioning television, however,. exceeded her abilities. That would have to wait until tomorrow.

They played a hand of canasta in the kitchen, but they both had trouble concentrating on the cards. Beyond the headache there was something else in the air, something they both sensed. At a quarter past ten, Elvy gathered up all the cards, asked, 'Flora? Do you feel..’

'Yes.'

'What is it?'

'I don't know.'

Both stared down at the table top, tried to… sniff it out. Elvy had occasionally encountered other people who had this ability: in Flora's experience Elvy was the only other one. It had been a relief to her when they had first spoken of it a couple of years ago. There was someone else as crazy as her, who had the Sense.

In another society, in another time, they might have been shamans. Or burned at the stake, for that matter. In Sweden in the twenty-first century they were hysterical and self-destructive. Overly sensitive.

The Sense was as difficult to describe, to put one's finger on, as a scent-impression. But just as the fox knows that there is a hare somewhere out there in the dark and even knows, from the smell of the hare's fear, that the hare is aware of the fox's presence, both women could discern something that lingered in the air around places and people.

They had started talking about it last summer when they had been walking along N orr Malarstrand. Just short of the City Hall they had both, as if on cue, turned away from the wharf and gone up onto the bike path. Elvy had stopped and asked, 'Didn't you want to walk there?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because…' Flora had shrugged, looked down at the ground as if she was ashamed. 'It just didn't feel good.'

'You know…' Elvy had taken Flora's chin in her hand, lifted her face, 'I felt the same thing.'

Flora had looked searchingly into her eyes. 'Seriously?'

'Yes,' Elvy said. 'Something has happened there. Something bad. I think… someone drowned.'

'Mm, yeah,' Flora said. 'He was going to jump from the boat…’

'… and then he hit his head on the edge of the wharf,' Elvy filled

They had not checked if they were right. They knew. They spent the rest of the afternoon swapping stories. The Sense had come to both of them in their early teens and Flora's pain stemmed from the same source as Elvy's at that age: she knew people too well. The Sense told her the exact state of mind of the people around her, and she could not accept their lies.

'My dear,' Elvy had said, 'all of us lie in some way. It is a precondition for society to function, that we lie a little bit. You can view it as a form of consideration. The truth is, in a way, very self-centred.'

'I know, Grandma, I do know that. But it's so… revolting. The air sort of stinks around people who… you know?'

'Yes,' Elvy sighed. 'Yes, I do.'

'You don't have to be out in it. You interact with, like, Grandpa and the old ladies at church. But at school, there are like a thousand people and all, almost all of them, are unhappy. Some of them don't know it themselves, but I know and it hurts. It hurts. All the time. When some teacher calls me over and wants to have a serious discussion and tell me everything that's wrong with me…I just want to throw up because while he's talking he just reeks of different stuff. Anxiety and worry and he's afraid of me and has a lousy life and he's the one who is telling me how I should act?'

'Flora,' Elvy said. 'I know it's no comfort now, but you will get used to it. When you've been sitting in the outhouse for a while, you don't notice the smell anymore.' Flora laughed at this, and Elvy went on. 'And as far as the ladies in the church are concerned, I can tell you I wish I had a clothes peg sometimes.'

'A clothes peg?'

'To put on my nose. And Grandpa… we'll get to that another time. But there is no way to turn it off. You should know that. If you are like me, then there is no clothes peg. You have to get used to it. It's purgatory, I know. But you have to get used to it if you want to live.'

The positive result of the conversation was that Flora stopped cutting herself. And she started visiting Elvy more often. Even in the middle of the week, she would take the bus to Taby Church, going back to school the next morning. She volunteered to help care for Grandpa, but there wasn't much to do. Elvy let her feed him his porridge a couple of times so that she could feel involved when she wanted.

Elvy started hesitant conversations about God a couple of times; but Flora was an atheist. Flora tried to play Marilyn Manson for Elvy, with the same unsatisfactory result. There were limits to their friendship. But Elvy could tolerate the horror films, in modest amounts.

When they returned to the living room the television had got louder. Flora tried turning it off again, but nothing happened.

She had received the Gamecube from Elvy on her fifteenth birthday. There had been heated discussions with Margareta, who claimed that video games made teenagers switch off from the real world. Elvy thought she was right, which was the precise reason she had bought the game. She herself had been fifteen when she started to drink: to switch off, to dull the emotional antennae. From that perspective, she felt that the game was a better option.

'Let's go out for a bit,' Elvy said.

They couldn't hear the television from the garden, but the air was still and the heat oppressive. All the surrounding houses were lit up, dogs were barking and an aura of foreboding hung over them.

They walked to the guardian tree: the apple tree planted when the house was built, to stand beside it and keep the household from harm. Hundreds of green fruit peeked through the dark leaves, and shoots that had not been pruned back during Tore's years of illness splayed up toward the sky.

I'll get the shotgun, walk up the stairs and shoot the dogs. 'Did you say something?' Elvy asked.

'No.'

Elvy searched the sky. The stars were pinpricks of light against the dark blue, unimaginably distant. She saw them loosen, become needles that flew down and pierced her brain, throbbing and aching.

'Like an iron maiden,' Flora said.

Elvy looked at her. Flora was also staring up at the sky.

'Flora,' she said, 'Were you thinking about a shotgun just now and… dogs?'

Flora raised her eyebrows, let out a laugh.

'Yes,' she said. 'I was planning what I was going to do in the game. How…?'

They looked at each other. This was something new. The headache was increasing in intensity, the needles pressing deeper; and then, in a sudden gust, it was over them.

Not a leaf moved, not a blade of grass bent, but they both staggered as a great force blew through the garden and for a second was over, around, inside them.

sa… rack… me… j… i… tess… st… kla… rm… kss

It was as if a radio had spun through hundreds of frequencies, filling their heads with voices; only staccato half-sounds, but nonetheless they could hear that the voices belonged to people in a state of panic. The strength drained from Elvy's legs, she fell on her knees on the lawn and mumbled, 'Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we… '

'Grandma?'

'…forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil..'

'Grandma!'

Flora's voice trembled, and with an effort Elvy pulled herself away from her faith, looked around. Flora was sitting wide-eyed on the lawn, staring at her. A beam of pain pierced Elvy's mind, so sharp that she feared she might be having a stroke and she whispered, '… yes?'

'What was that?'

Elvy grimaced. Everything hurt. It hurt to move her head, it hurt to open her mouth. She tried, and failed, to form the words inside her head and then… it was gone. She closed her eyes, breathed. The ache simply switched off, the world fell back into place, took on its normal colours. She could read her own relief in Flora's face.

A deep breath. Yes. It was gone. Over. She reached out her hand, took hold of Flora's.

'I'm so glad,' she said. 'That you are here. That I was not the only one who… experienced this.'

Flora rubbed her eyes. 'But what was it?' 'Don't you know?'

'Yes. No.'

Elvy nodded. Of course. In a way it was a matter of faith.

'It was the spirits,' she said. 'The souls of the dead. They have been let out.'

Danderyd Hospital 23.07

She was his wife, how could he be afraid of her? David took a step closer to the bed. It was that eye, the one eye, and how it looked.

It's impossible to describe a human eye; all expectations end up ghost-like, paintings and photographs acceptable only because we know they are frozen moments of time. A living eye cannot be described or recreated. But we know all too well when it is not there.

Her eye was dead. It was covered by a microscopically thin grey membrane, and it might as well have been a stone wall. She was not switched on, not…present. David leaned over, whispered, 'Eva?'

He had to hold onto the steel bed rail in order to keep himself from recoiling when she looked straight at him-

there are diseases that do that to the eye

– and opened her mouth, but there was no sound. Only a dry clicking. David ran over to the sink and filled a plastic cup of water, held it up to her. She looked at it but made no attempt to take it.

'Here, my love,' David said. 'A little water.'

Her hand swung up and knocked the cup out of his hand. Water splashed over her face and the cup landed on her stomach. She looked at it, put her hand over it and scrunched it up with a crackle.

David stared at the hole in her chest, the clamps dangling inside like Christmas decorations from hell, and finally came out of his paralysis. He pressed the button at her bedside and when no one had turned up after five seconds he rushed out into the corridor and shouted, 'Hello! Help!'

A nurse responded quickly from a room further down the corridor. Before she had reached him David was screaming, 'She's woken up, she is alive she… I don't know what I should… '

The nurse gave him a look of bewilderment before she squeezed past him, into the room and stopped at her first step inside the room. Eva was sitting in the bed and stiffly picking at pieces of the plastic cup. The nurse clapped her hand over her mouth and turned to David, shaking her head, said, '… it… it… '

David grabbed her by the shoulders. 'What? What is it?'

The nurse turned half-way into the room again, gestured with her hand and said, 'It… isn't possible… '

'Do something, then!'

The nurse shook her head again and ran without another word back toward the nurses' station. When she reached the door, she turned to David and said, 'I'll call someone who… ' and disappeared inside.

David remained in the corridor for a moment. He realised he was hyperventilating and tried to calm his breathing before he went back inside to Eva. The thoughts were racing through his head..,A miracle… her eye… Magnus. He closed his eyes, and conjured up an image of Eva's gaze when she was looking at him with her utmost love. The glimmer, the play of living light. He breathed deeply, held onto this image and went in.

Eva had lost interest in the cup, which lay on the floor below the bed. David moved closer trying not to look at her chest.

'Eva. I'm here.'

The head turned toward him. He looked just below the eye; toward the smooth, undamaged cheek. He stretched out his hand, stroking her cheek with the back of his fingers.

'Everything will be fine… everything will be fine…'

Her hand came up so fast that he instinctively pulled back, but then steeled himself and held it out to her again. Her hand gripped his. Hard. A stiff, mechanical grip, painful. Her nails dug into the back of his hand. He clenched his teeth and nodded.

'It's me. David.'

He looked into her eye. There was nothing there. Her mouth opened and a hissing sound emerged, '… aavi…' The tears welled up in his eyes. He nodded. 'That's right. David. I'm here.'

The grip on his hand grew tighter; a shaft of pain as a nail pierced his skin.

'… Daavi… hee… heeere…'

'Yes. Yes. I'm here. With you.'

He eased his hand out of her grip, replacing it with the other, but angled so that she was squeezing the fingers instead. A trickle of blood ran from the hand she had been holding. He wiped it on the sheet, sat down on the bed.

'Eva?'

'Eeva…'

'Yes. Do you know who I am?'

A moment's silence. The hold on his fingers loosened a little. She said, 'aa… aam… davi… d.'

It's getting better. It must be getting better. She understands.

He nodded, pointing to his chest like Tarzan, said, 'I David. You Eva.'

'Youu… Eva.'

They got no further. A doctor burst into the room, stopping short when she caught sight of Eva. She too seemed on the verge of some exclamation of protest but instead, diverted by a professional reflex, she took a stethoscope out of her pocket and approached the bed without looking at David.

David drew back to let her pass, and saw the nurse again standing in the doorway with another nurse who had no apparent function except curious bystander.

The doctor placed the bell of the stethoscope on the uninjured side of Eva's chest. Listened. Moved the stethoscope, listened again. Eva's hand flew up, grasped the tube-

'Eva!' David yelled, 'No!' -and yanked on it. The physician screamed, her head yanked forward before the earpieces came free. David grimaced in sympathetic pain.

'Eva, you can't… do that.'

A shiver ran through him. He was acting to shield her from authority, as if he feared that they would punish her in some way if she did not behave herself.

The doctor let out a whimper, holding her hands up to her ears for a couple of seconds, but then with an effort she restored her face to a professional calm and turned to the nurses.

'Call Lasse in Neurology,' she said. 'Otherwise, Goran.'

The nurse took half a step into the room and echoed, 'Otherwise?'

'If Lasse isn't there,' the doctor said with irritation, 'then ask Goran to come.'

The nurse nodded and said something ina low voice to the other one, and both of them ducked out into the corridor.

Eva plucked the head of the stethoscope free of the tubes and it clattered to the floor. The doctor, who was simply sitting there staring at Eva, made no movement to pick it up, so David retrieved it instead. When he placed it in her hand she appeared to become aware for the first time that there was another person in the room.

'How is she?' David asked.

The doctor looked at him with a half-open mouth as if he had just asked a question so stupid there was no answer.

'The heart isn't beating,' the doctor said. 'There. Are. No beats.'

David felt a pain in his chest.

'But don't you have to…' he said, 'aren't you going… get it going?'

The doctor looked at Eva pulling on the rubber tubing and said, 'She doesn't seem to… require it.'

They had to wait quite a long time for Lasse. When he finally arrived, Eva's awakening no longer appeared to be a sensation.

Danderyd Hospital 23.46

Mahler parked the Fiesta in the short-term lot closest to the hospital and made an ungainly exit. The car was not designed for his 190 centimetres-nor his 140 kilos. Legs first, then the rest. He stood up next to the car, fanning his shirt against his chest. Dark stains had already started forming under his arms.

The hospital building loomed in front of him, enormous and expectant. No sign of activity. Only the quiet breath of the air conditioning, the building's respirator, its way of saying, 'I am a living being, even if it doesn't look like it.'

He slung his bag over his shoulder, walked to the entrance. Checked his watch. A quarter to twelve.

The shallow pool of water next to the revolving doors reflected the night sky, became a star map; standing next to it like a sentry was Ludde, smoking. When he caught sight of Mahler, he raised a hand in greeting and tossed the butt into the water with a sharp hiss.

'Hi Gustav, how you going?'

'Fine. Sweaty.'

Ludde was in his forties but looked younger, in a sickly way. If it hadn't been for the blue shirt with the nametag (,Ludvig') you could have taken him for a patient. Thin lips and pale, almost unnaturally taut skin, as if he had had a facelift, or was standing in a wind tunnel. Nervous eyes.

They walked in through the regular door since the revolving door was closed for the night. Ludde kept looking around him the whole time, but his watchfulness was redundant. The hospital seemed to be deserted.

When they left the entrance area and reached the corridors, Ludde relaxed, asked, 'Did you bring…?'

Mahler pushed his hand down into his pocket, but kept it there.

'Ludde, don't take this the wrong way, but all this seems… '

Ludde stopped and stared at him with reproach.

'Have I ever tried to con you? Huh? Have I said there was something and then there wasn't anything? Have I?'

'Yes.'

'You're thinking about that thing with Bjorn Borg. Yeah, yeah. But it was a damn close resemblance, you have to admit it. OK, OK. But this… well anyway. Hold onto your cash then, you bloody miser.'

Ludde took off down the corridor with angry strides, and Mahler had trouble keeping up. They took the elevator down in silence and then walked along a long, slightly inclined corridor with an iron door at the far end. Ludde pointedly hid the touch pad as he ran his card through and punched in his code. The lock clicked.

Mahler took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. It was cooler down here but the hike had taken its toll. He leaned against the green concrete wall, pleasantly cool against his hand.

Ludde opened the iron door. In the distance, through one or more walls Mahler could hear cries, clanking metal. The first and only time he had ever been here it had been as quiet as… the grave. Ludde looked at him with a what did I tell you grin. Mahler nodded, held out the wrinkled bills and Ludde softened, made a generous gesture toward the open door.

'Be my guest. Your scoop awaits you.' He glanced swiftly down the corridor. 'The rest of them use the other entrance so you don't have to worry.'

Mahler tucked his handkerchief in his pocket, adjusted his bag.

'Aren't you coming?'

Ludde snorted. 'How long do you think I'd keep my job after that?' He pointed around the corner inside the door. 'Take the elevator down one floor-that's it.'

As the door banged shut behind him Mahler started to feel uncomfortable. He walked up to the elevator and hesitated before he pressed the call button. He was starting to get twitchy in his old age. The cries and clatter could still be heard below and he stood still, willing his heart to calm down.

It was not the thought of seeing dead people wandering around that unsettled him as much as the fact that he had no right to be here. When he was younger, he couldn't have cared less about all that. 'The truth must be told,' he would think, and plunge into the fray.

But now…

Who are you, what are you doing here?

He was rusty, and much too uncertain to be able to fake the authority you needed in such situations like that. He pressed the button anyway.

Have to see what's going on.

The elevator rumbled into action and he bit his lip, backing away from the door. He was a little afraid after all, had seen too many movies. Elevators that arrived and someone… something is inside. But the elevator arrived and through the narrow window in the door he could see it was empty. He stepped in and pressed the button for the level below. As the elevator descended he tried to empty his mind, switch modes to become simply descriptive, a camera whose images develop words.

The elevator starts with a jerk. Through thick concrete walls, I can hear screams. The morgue level comes into view through the window and through it I can see…

Nothing.

A bit of a corridor, a wall and nothing more. He pushed open the elevator door.

The chill came at him. The corridor he was standing in was several degrees colder than the rest of the hospital. The sweat on his body congealed into a cold film, made him shiver. The elevator door shut behind him.

To his right, an open door gave onto a cold storage room. Outside two people were sitting on the floor, embracing with bowed heads.

What are they doing?

The clatter of metal from the autopsy room to the left made one of them raise her head and Mahler now saw that it was a young nurse. Her face was panic-stricken.

She was holding a very old woman in her arms; white hair like a halo around her head, delicate body and spindly legs that moved over the floor, trying to gain a foothold in order to stand up. She was naked apart from a white sheet that hung around her neck and down one side of the body. Someone's mother and grandmother; perhaps a great-grandmother.

Her face was nothing but hard bones under a pale yellow skin and her eyes… her eyes. Two windows opening onto the great Nothing. Theywere a translucent blue and seemed to be covered in a film of white slime, gelatinous, expressing absolutely no emotion.

From the sunken lips-a mouth robbed of dentures-there came only a single mournful note,'Oooooommmm… ooommm…'

And Mahler knew, with immediate comprehension, what it was she wanted. The same as everyone wants.

To go home.

The nurse caught sight of Mahler. She looked at him in entreaty as she said, 'Can you take over?' and inclined her head toward the old woman. When Mahler made no reply she added, 'I'm freezing to death…'

Mahler crouched down, put his hand on the old woman's foot. It was ice cold, stiff; it was like putting your hand on an orange that has been in the freezer. At his touch, the woman's lament began to rise-

'OOOOOOMMM!'

– but Mahler stood up with a groan while the nurse screamed at him, 'You've got to help me! Please!'

He couldn't. Not right now. Had to see what was going on. Shamed, he staggered away to the autopsy room; the photographer who takes pictures of the famine victims, goes back the hotel room and drinks to assuage his guilt.

Photographs… the camera…

As he walked toward the large brightly lit room, he opened the bag. White sheets lay spread along the corridor.

Later he would have trouble sorting out the scene that was laid out in front of his eyes. It was as if it should have been staged in half darkness, a battle between the living and the dead pitched in the Goya-esque lighting of some cave.

But everything was clinically precise and illuminated. The large neon tubes in the ceiling spewed light across the stainless steel counters and over the people who moved around in the room.

Bare skin everywhere. Almost all of the dead had managed to rid themselves of their shrouds, and the sheets lay strewn across benches and floor. A toga party that had spiralled out of control into an orgy.

There were around thirty people there, living and dead. Doctors and nurses and morgue staff in white, green and blue coats who struggled to hold onto the bare bodies. All of the dead were very old, many had large, roughly stitched autopsy scars that stretched from the lower abdomen to the throat.

The dead were not violent. But they were striving, wanted to get away. Lined faces, bodies with the proportions of ill-health. The waving bird-fingers of old ladies, old men who slung their club-fists in the empty air. And the bodies pulled, strained but were embraced, held in check.

And the din, the din.

A whimpering and howling as if a football team of newborns had been thrown into the same room and told to express their terror and astonishment at the world they'd come to. Come back to.

The doctors and nurses talked continuously, soothing-

'Take it easy it will be all right everything is fine take it easy'

– but their eyes were wild. Some of them had cracked. A nurse was huddled into a corner, her face in her hands, her body shaking. A doctor was standing at a sink, washing his hands calmly and methodically as if he was at home in his bathroom. When he was done he took a comb out of his breast pocket, started to comb his hair.

Where is everyone?

Why weren't there more…living people here? Where were the reinforcements, the agencies-the things that despite everything worked so well in Sweden in the year 2002?

And Mahler had been here once before. Therefore he knew that the majority of the bodies were stored in refrigerated boxes one floor down. This was only a small proportion. He took a step into the room and fumbled for his camera.

Just then a man broke free. One of the few whom the process of decomposition had not had time to work on. He was big and strong, with hands that looked like they were used to heaving rocks. Maybe a retired and prematurely deceased construction worker. He moved toward the exit on mottled white legs, jerkily as if on stilts of rough-cut birch trunks.

The doctor who had lost it shouted, 'Take him!' and Mahler didn't think, simply obeyed the command and barricaded the doorway with his body. The man moved toward him and their eyes met. His were watery brown; it was like staring into a muddy pool where nothing was stirring. No response.

. Mahler's gaze slid down to the throat, to the small scar above the collar bone where the formaldehyde had been injected and for the first time in this room of horrors Mahler became… afraid. Afraid of touch, of infection, fingers that groped. Wished that he could pull out his press card and shout, 'I'm a reporter! I have nothing to do

with this!'

He clenched his teeth. He couldn't very well run away.

But when the man came at him he couldn't bear to take hold of him. Instead he simply pushed him away-

get this away from me!

– and the man lost his balance, tumbled to the side and fell on the doctor who had started washing his hands again. The doctor looked up indignantly, like someone interrupted in the middle of an important task, said, 'One at a time!' and pushed the man away toward the wall.

Some kind of alarm started nearby. Mahler thought he recognised the melody of the signal, but had no time to think about it, because at that moment the reinforcements arrived. Three doctors andfour green-clad guards forced their way past him. Stopped short for an instant, exclaimed, 'Jesus Christ, what the…' and various other expressions of amazement, then overcame their fear and ran into the room to intervene where they were needed.

Mahler touched one of the doctors on the shoulder and the man turned to him with the expression of someone who was planning to punch him.

'What are you doing with them?' Mahler asked. 'Where are you taking them?'

'Who the hell are you?' the doctor asked and the wallop appeared to came an inch closer to reality. 'What are you doing here?'

'My name is Gustav Mahler and I'm from…'

The doctor let out a high-pitched hysterical laugh, and shouted, 'If you've brought Beethoven and Schubert with you, can you get them to pitch in?' Whereupon he took hold of the man Mahler had pushed, restrained him and shouted out into the room, 'Everyone to the elevators, two at a time! We're taking them to Infectious Diseases!'

Mahler backed out. The alarm continued stubbornly.

When he turned around he saw that the nurse on the floor had also received help. She rose on shaky legs and transferred the woman she had been holding to a guard. She spotted Mahler and her face was distorted into a grimace.

'Bastard,' she spat and sank to the floor again, a couple of metres from the corpse. Mahler took a step toward her, but decided that it was best to let it go. He didn't need to hear more about what a coward he was.

The alarm, the alarm.

The melody was 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' and Mahler started to hum along. A nice little tune for this chaos. The same one he had on his mobile phone. And the same one that he had…

He dug the phone out of his bag, staring at the ridiculous thing while it continued to play its cheerful little song. He started to laugh. With the phone in his hand he took a few steps away toward the corridor and leaned against the wall next to a sign that said 'Turn off all mobile phones.' He was still sniggering as he answered.

'This is Mahler.'

'Benke here. Hey, how are things out there?'

Mahler looked back at the autopsy room, at the bodies that were moving in there. Green, blue, white.

'Yes. It's true. They're alive.'

Benke breathed into the phone. Mahler thought he was going to say something funny, thought he should hold the phone up to the room so Benke could hear. But Benke didn't say anything funny. He said slowly, 'Apparently it's happening… at a number of places. All over Stockholm.'

'They're coming back?'

'Yes.'

They were quiet for a couple of breaths. Mahler imagined how the same scene was unfolding in other locations. How many dead people could be affected? Two hundred? Five hundred? Suddenly he went cold, stiff, asked, 'The cemeteries?'

'What?'

'The cemeteries. The ones who are buried.'

Almost inaudibly, Benke whispered, 'Oh my God… ' and added, 'I don't know…I don't know… we haven't had any… ' He broke off.

'Gustav?'

'Yes?'

'This is a joke. Isn't it? You are joking with me. You're the one who… '

Mahler held up the receiver toward the autopsy room, stared vacantly into space for a couple of seconds, then brought the receiver back to his ear. Benke was in the middle of a monologue, '… makes no sense whatsoever, how can it… here in Sweden… '

He interrupted. 'Benke. I have to go.'

The night editor in Benke won out over the sceptic. He said, 'You'll get me some shots, right?'

'Yes, yes.'

Mahler put away the phone. His heart was beating wildly.

Elias wasn't cremated. Elias was buried in the ground, Elias was buried in the ground, Elias is at Racksta cemetery, Elias…

He got the camera out of the bag and snapped a couple of quick shots. The situation had been stabilised, everything was under control. Here, anyway. For the moment. One of the guards, holding onto an old gentleman whose head was bobbing up and down and up and down as if he wanted to say, 'Yes, yes, I am alive!' saw him and yelled, 'Hey you! What are you doing?'

Mahler made a sweeping gesture-don't have time-and backed out of the room again. He turned and jogged toward the staircase.

Outside the staff room there was an ancient stick-thin man, fingering the ruffles on his burial shirt. One of the sleeves had come off and the man's mouth was hanging open as if he was wondering how he had ended up in this magnificent piece of clothing and what he should do now that he had destroyed it.

There were several patrol cars parked outside the entrance and Mahler muttered, 'Police? What are the police going to do? Arrest them?'

Sweat was pouring down his whole body by the time he reached his car. The lock on the driver's side was broken and he had to use the full weight of his body against the door to open it. As he did so, the lock ripped out of his hands and the asphalt under his feet rotated ninety degrees, hitting him over the shoulders and the back of his head.

He was lying next to his car, staring up at the stars. His belly moved up and down: deep breaths, like bellows. He heard sirens in the distance, fine music for a newspaperman, normal. But he couldn't go on.

The stars twinkled at him, his breathing steadied.

He focused on a point far beyond the stars, whispered, 'Where are you, my darling boy? Are you there? Or… here?'

After several minutes, feeling capable of action again, he crawled up, got into the car, started the engine and drove out of the hospital parking lot, toward Racksta. His hands trembled with exhaustion. Or anticipation.

Taby Municipality 23.20

Elvy made up the bed in Tore's room for Flora. The stubborn antiseptic hospital smell had been softened three weeks back by almond-oil soap and detergent. Of Tore there was nothing left. Only the day after he died Elvy had thrown out the mattress, pillows and all the bed linen and bought new ones.

When Flora visited her the next day, Elvy had been surprised that she'd no objection to sleeping in the room where her grandfather had died so recently, especially in light of her sensitivity. But Flora simply said, 'I knew him. He doesn't frighten me,' and that was that.

Now Flora came in and sat down on the edge of the bed. Elvy looked at the Marilyn Manson shirt that hung to her knees and asked, 'Do you have any other clothes for the day after tomorrow?'

Flora smiled. 'Yes. Even I have limits.'

Elvy fluffed up the pillows, said, 'Not that it matters to me or anything, but…'

'The ladies,' Flora filled in.

'Yes. The ladies.' Elvy frowned. 'Or rather, I agree that one should…'

Flora laid a hand over hers, interrupting. "Nana. Like I told you. I think it's right to dress nicely for a funeral.' She made a face.

'Weddings, however… '

Elvy laughed. 'One day you'll be standing there yourself,' she said, and added, 'Maybe. Or maybe not.'

Flora said, 'Probably not,' and let herself fall back onto the bed, arms outstretched. She stared up at the ceiling, opened and closed her hands as if she were catching invisible, falling balls. When she had caught ten of them, she asked straight out into the air, 'What happens when you die? What happens when you die?'

Elvy didn't know if the question was directed at her, but answered it anyway. 'You go somewhere.'

'Somewhere where? Heaven?'

Elvy sat down on the bed next to Flora, smoothing out the already-smooth sheet.

'I don't know,' she said. 'Heaven is probably a name we've given to something completely unknown to us. It's simply… somewhere else.'

Flora didn't answer, catching a few more balls. Suddenly she sat up, close to Elvy, and asked, 'What was that before? What happened in the garden?'

Elvy sat quietly for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low, tentative.

'I know that you don't share my faith,' she said, 'but maybe you could look at it like this. Put aside God and the Bible and all of that, and think about the soul: a human being has a soul. Do you think that's reasonable?'

'No,' Flora said. 'I think we die and get burned up and then that's it.'

Elvy nodded.

'Yes. Of course. But this is what I think. A person lives a life. Accumulates thoughts, experiences, love, and when she is eighty years old and still has a razor-sharp mind the body slowly begins to falter. Inside that human being is still the same person, just as fully alive and thinking, but the body is worn down, is worn away and at last the person sits there inside crying: No, no, no… and then it's over.'

'Yes,' Flora said. 'It is.'

Elvy became excited, grabbed Flora's hand and raised it to her lips, kissing it lightly.

'But for me,' she said, 'for me that's completely absurd. Always has been. For me… ' Elvy stood up from the bed, waved her hands, 'it is completely obvious that a person has a soul. We must have one. To think that we are all-that a consciousness which can embrace the whole universe in an instant should be dependent on this kind of… ' Elvy swept her hand across her body 'this kind of… sack of meat in order to exist… No, no, no. I can't accept that.'

'Nana? Nana?'

Elvy's eyes, which for a moment had been fixed far away, returned to her granddaughter. Elvy sat down on the bed again, clasped her hands in her lap.

'Forgive me,' she said. 'But tonight I was shown proof that the things I believe are true.' She glanced at Flora and added, almost sheepishly, 'I think.'

After she had said goodnight and closed the door on Flora, Elvy began to pace. She tried to sit down in the armchair, picked up Grimberg, read several sentences and then put it away.

That had been one of her projects that she had promised herself she'd take on when Tore was gone: to read The Wonderful Adventures of the Swedish People before she died herself. She was well underway, was already half-way into the second volume, but tonight she would get no further. She was too restless.

It was past midnight. She should go to bed. Admittedly, she didn't need so much sleep these days, but frequently she'd wake up at around four in the morning and have to sit on the toilet for a couple of hours while the urine trickled out of her.

Tore, Tore, Tore…

Earlier in the day she had been down to the funeral parlour with his best suit, for the service scheduled two days later. Was he lying in the cold storage box at the church now, ready and dressed for his last big day? They had asked her if she wanted to dress him herself, but she had been more than happy to hand the matter over to them. She'd done her bit.

It was ten years since she'd started to make his sandwiches; seven since she'd begun feeding them to him. For the last three years, he hadn't been able to take anything by mouth except porridge and purees, needed supplements through a feeding tube just to stay… yes, alive. Or whatever you would call it.

Confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak or, probably, think. Just occasionally when she said something to him a glint of understanding flickered in his eyes, only to disappear just as quickly.

She had fixed his food, changed his nappy and his bag, washed him. The only help she received was in putting him to bed at night and getting him up in the morning-for yet another day sitting in his wheelchair unable to move.

For better or worse, until death us do part. She had kept her promise without joy or love; but also without complaint or hesitation, for that was how it went.

In the bathroom she removed her dentures, brushed them thoroughly and put them in a glass that she kept in the bathroom. Did not understand people who kept them next to the bed like a grinning reminder of time passing. Glasses, yes. The security of having one's eyesight close at hand if anything should happen, but the teeth? As if something you had to chew was suddenly going to appear.

She went into her bedroom, took off her clothes and put on her nightgown. She folded the clothes carefully and placed them on the rolltop desk. She paused, looked at the photograph on the desk. Their wedding picture, her and Tore.

What a pair of lovebirds.

The photograph was originally black and white, but had later

been hand coloured in still-vivid hues. She and Tore looked like an illustration in a book of fairy tales. The King and Queen-shortly after 'and then they lived happily ever after'. Tore in tails, she in a white dress with a colourful bouquet of flowers at her breast. Both staring into the future with spookily blue eyes. (Tore had not even had blue eyes; the retoucher had made a mistake, but they'd never got around to having it corrected.)

Elvy sighed, stroking the photograph with her finger.

'That's how things can end up,' she said, not thinking of anything in particular.

She turned on the bedside lamp, wondering if she should try another session with Grimberg before she fell asleep, but before she had made up her mind there was something at the front door. She listened. The sound came again. A… scratching.

What in the name of heaven…?

The clock on her bedside table said it was twenty past twelve. The scratching came again. Probably some animal, perhaps a dog, but what would it be doing at her house? She waited a while, but the scratching continued. Stray dogs were unusual round here. In the winter you might get a deer, wandering into the suburbs, but they never came to the door to pay a visit.

She pulled on her robe and walked to the front door, listening. Not a cat, she thought. Partly because the scraping was too strong, and partly because it appeared to be coming from chest height. Elvy leaned against the door post and whispered loudly, 'Who is it?'

The scraping stopped. Now there was a low whimpering instead.

It must be someone who's been injured in some way.

She stopped thinking about it and opened the door.

He was dressed in his best suit, but it did not hang well on him. During his final years of illness he had lost about twenty kilos and the gabardine now drooped from his shoulders where he stood on the front steps, his arms dangling. Elvy backed up a couple of steps until her feet bumped the doorstop and she almost lost her balance, but grabbed the coat rack and straightened again.

Tore was standing still, staring at his feet. Elvy looked down. His feet were bare and white, his toenails untrimmed.

She stared at his feet and thought:

They cheated. They haven't trimmed his toenails.

For it was not terror or horror that she felt when she looked at her husband, dead three years after their fiftieth anniversary, now returned. No. Only surprise and… a kind of exhaustion. Then she took a step towards him and said, 'What are you doing here?'

Tore did not answer. But he lifted his head. There were eyes, but no gaze. Elvy was used to this, she'd had the non-gaze turned on her for three years. It was just that now it was even more frozen, lifeless.

This is not Tore. This is a doll.

The doll took a couple of steps forward and entered the house.

Elvy could not bring herself to do anything to stop it. She wasn't afraid, but she had no idea what she should do.

It was Tore, there was no sense in pretending anything else. But how was this possible? She had felt for his absent pulse; had held the little hand mirror to his mouth and seen that he was no longer breathing. She had heard the ambulance driver say it, she'd been given certificates confirming the fact that Tore was dead, deceased, gone.

The resurrection of the flesh…

He brushed past her and went on into the house. A cloud of chilled hospital smell reached her nostrils; disinfectant, starch… and something sweeter, more fruity underneath. She quickly pulled herself together, grabbed hold of his shoulder and whispered, 'What are you doing?'

He paid her no attention, and continued his steps-jerkily, as if each one was an effort-in the direction of the other bedroom. His room.

It struck her suddenly that for the first time in seven years she was seeing him walk. Stiffly, as if unused to his new-found body, but walking nonetheless. Straight to the room where Flora was sleeping.

Elvy turned around, grabbed hold of both his shoulders from behind and whisper-shouted, 'Flora is sleeping in there! Let her be!’

Tore stopped, the cold from his body seeping through the cloth into her hands. After they had stood like this for several seconds, a memory rose up: those times when Margareta was little and Tore had come home drunk. The daughter sleeping in her bed, Elvy playing sentry in the hallway to prevent Tore from stumbling into Margareta's room and dribbling endearments over the terrified child.

She's sleeping! Let her be!

Often it had worked. But not always.

Tore turned around. Elvy tried to fix him with her gaze, nail him to the wall as she had done forty years ago. Make him stop moving, start talking. But it was like trying to pin a tack to a bowling ball; her gaze slipped, could not pierce his and for the first time she began to be afraid.

Despite the shadows on his hollow cheeks, the sunken lips and the missing twenty kilos, he was still significantly stronger than she. And in his eyes there was no emotion, no recognition. She could not bear to look any longer and backed away, defeated.

Tore turned and continued towards the room. Elvy tried to grab hold of him again, but just as his shoulders slipped from her grasp, the bedroom door opened and Flora came out.

'Nana, what…'

She caught sight of Tore. A whimper escaped her and she threw herself aside, out of the way of his cold determination. Tore appeared not to notice her and entered the bedroom as Flora stumbled and fell over the armchair and crawled toward the balcony door. She

sat down on the floor, wide eyed and screaming at the top of her lungs.

Elvy hurried over to her, took her in her arms and stroked her hair, her cheeks.

'Shushh… shushhh… it isn't dangerous… shushhhh.'

The screaming stopped. Elvy felt Flora's jaw muscles tense under her hand. Her body started to tremble and she leaned towards Elvy, still tensed, her gaze directed at the bedroom. Tore had walked over to his desk and sat down, as if he had just come home from work and had a little paperwork to get through before going to bed.

They saw his arms moving, heard the quiet rustle as the papers moved over each other. They huddled there for a long time unable to move, until Flora freed herself from Elvy's arms and sat up straight on the floor.

Elvy whispered, 'How are you going there?' Quietly, so Tore wouldn't hear.

Flora opened and closed her mouth, made a half-hearted gesture at the coffee table, at the bedroom. Elvy looked over and saw what she meant. The cover of Flora's video game, Resident Evil, was on the coffee table. Flora mumbled something and Elvy leaned forward.

'What did you say?'

Flora's voice, less than a whisper, was quite clear, 'This is… ridiculous.'

Elvy nodded. Yes. Ridiculous. Laughable, except that neither of them was laughing-and the facts remained. She stood up. Flora fumbled at the hem of her robe.

'Shh…' Elvy whispered. 'I'm just going to see what he's doing.'

She crept up to the bedroom. Why were they whispering, why was she creeping if all of this was so ridiculous? Because the ludicrous, the impossible, is located at the outermost limits of existence. One wrong move, the least little disturbance, and it falls. Or rises, roaring. You never know which. And you have to be careful; take precautions.

Elvy leaned against the doorpost, but only Tore's back and one elbow, pulled in, were within her line of vision. She took a step into the room, sliding along the wall to get another angle.

Is he looking for something?

Ghosts coming back to put something right. The fruity smell had grown stronger. She rested the tips of her fingers against the wall as if to maintain contact with reality.

Tore's white, stiff hands moved across the desk, over the photocopied texts of psalms they'd sung at the funeral, blank stationery, the copy of today's newspaper that Flora had brought. He lifted a piece of paper to his eyes, moving his head back and forth as if he were reading-

Only a day, one moment at a time

– whereupon he put the paper down, and picked up a new piece with the same text and read it with equal care.

'Tore?'

Elvy started at the sound of her own voice. She had not been planning to say anything, it just slipped out. But there was no reaction from Tore. Elvy relaxed. She did not want him to turn around, do anything or-

God help me

– say anything.

She shuffled out of the room along the wall and closed the door gently behind her, listening. The paper sounds continued. She pulled the armchair up to the door, jammed the chair back under the door handle and wedged in a couple of books so that the handle wouldn't turn.

Flora was still sitting on the floor in the same position as before. Tore's return was inconceivable, quite beyond Elvy's comprehension, but she was afraid for Flora's sake. This was too much for her sensitive girl.

Elvy sat down next to her, and it was a relief when Flora asked, 'What's he doing?' since it meant she had not completely dissociated; she was interested. And Elvy had an answer for her.

'I think,' she said, 'that he is pretending to be alive.'

Flora gave a little nod, as if this was just the answer she had been expecting. Elvy didn't know what to do. Flora shouldn't be anywhere near this, but Elvy couldn't see how she could get her away. The buses had stopped running and Margareta and Goran were in London.

She couldn't have called her daughter anyway. Margareta might be generally better socially adapted than Flora and Elvy, but her capacity for hysteria, on the few occasions when it did break out, was enormous. Margareta would come over, and she would take care of everything. Margareta would be speaking very rapidly in a high-pitched voice, and if the smallest detail went wrong she would start to claw at her face.

Damn Tore.

Yes. As Elvy sat wrestling with the problem, she began to feel increasingly hostile toward Tore, whose fault this all was. Hadn't she already done enough? Hadn't she done everything that could possibly be done?

Wait a minute.

Something occurred to her and she smiled, in spite of everything. Of course it was only theological hairsplitting; but didn't it say, 'For better or for worse, until death us do part?' She looked over at the closed door. Tore was dead. Therefore this was no longer her responsibility. She'd made no promise to the priest, forty-three years earlier, to have, hold or cherish anyone after death.

A sound from Flora. Elvy asked, 'Sorry? What did you say?'

Flora looked her straight in the eyes and said, 'Aaaaah.'

A jolt of terror ran through Elvy. This was it. She'd failed to protect the girl, and now… Her hands went up to Flora's face, stroking her cheeks. She said, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 1 should call a taxi. Does that sound good? I'll call a taxi and then… you and 1 can get out of here. Yes?'

Flora shook her head slowly, grabbed Elvy's hands and held them. 'Aaaaahhh,' she said again, with the shadow of a smile this time. Elvy gave a short, sharp laugh, almost a bark, of relief. Flora was joking. She was making the sound the undead made in her computer game.

'Oh, Flora, you scared me. I thought…'

'Sorry, Nana.' Flora looked around the room with her normal eyes. The emptiness in them had vanished. 'What should we do?'

'Flora, I don't know.'

Her granddaughter frowned.

'Let's think this through,' she said. 'The first thing is: is there a chance that he never really died? That he's sort of been gone, and now he's come back?'

Elvy shook her head. 'No. Unless we've all simply been duped somehow. I looked at him when I went down with his suit the day before yesterday and… Flora, are you all right?'

'I'm fine. I'm just trying… to work this out.'

Elvy was amazed. She was speaking in a completely normal voice, holding her fingers up in front of her and checking off the possibilities. It was as if she had gone through a few minutes of shock and doubt, and was now done with that. In its place, the side of her had emerged that she usually tried to suppress: the lawyer's daughter.

'Secondly,' Flora checked off on her middle finger, 'if he really is dead, what is it that brought him back to life? Does it have anything to do with what happened in the garden?'

'Ye-e-e-s…I think that's likely.'

'Thirdly…'

Elvy began to understand. This change in Flora, she thought, was not as straightforwardly positive as she'd believed at first. The rational way of talking had taken over beause she'd started to look at the whole situation as a video game; not as an impossible event, but as a series of problems, there to be cracked.

Well, Elvy thought, it could be worse.

'… thirdly: is this something that only we can see or is it like real… well, you know what I mean.'

Elvy thought of the feeling of Tore's sloped shoulders under her hands, the chill that had radiated from them.

'It is real, and I think we should… call an ambulance.'

Flora stood up. 'Can I?'

'Don't you think it's better if 1… '

'Yes. But can I do it?'

Flora had actually clasped her hands in front of her, entreating, and Elvy shrugged. She did not understand the child's enthusiasm but thought this was a good enough way to be. Flora went to make the call while Elvy sat on the floor, thinking.

It means something.

All of this… means something.

Overview

23.10-23.20: The dead come back to life at every morgue in the greater Stockholm area.

23.18: An old man is observed on the street, completely naked, outside the aged care facility in Solkatten. Does not respond to speech. The police are called to the scene in order to return the individual to his home.

23.20: A young man is run over by a van about a hundred metres from the Medical Examiner's office in Solna, When the police arrive at the scene, the victim has walked away. The driver of the van is in a state of shock, claiming that the victim had a big scar on his abdomen. The man was thrown some ten metres in the collision, and his stomach split open, but he stood up and walked away.

23.24: The first call to the emergency line. An elderly woman has received a visit from the sister she's lived with for the past five years, who died two weeks ago.

23.25: The staff of Danderyd Hospital start calling around to those aged care facilities and churches that have mortuaries, to inform them of the situation.

23.25-23.45: Twenty-odd reports of old people wandering around on the street.

23.26: Nils Lundstrom, retired nature photographer, takes the picture that will dominate the front page of the tabloid Expressen the next day. At the cemetery by Taby Church, seven old people in shrouds come staggering out of the mortuary, heading for the exit. The photograph captures them among the gravestones.

23.30-23.50: Radio communications from patrol cars dispatched to take Care of disoriented old people reveal that all of the individuals concerned died over the course of the past few weeks. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs is informed.

23.30 and on: The emergency call centre in inundated by callers in a state of shock, sometimes hysterical, reporting the return of dead relatives. Paramedics, counsellors and religious ministers are quickly rounded up to be assigned to the families concerned.

23.40: The infectious diseases ward at Danderyd Hospital is designated as a temporary gathering place. Extra staff are summoned urgently.

23·50: There is a report from Danderyd that two bodies have not come back to life. Their medical records show that one has been dead for ten weeks, the other for twelve. Both corpses had been treated repeatedly with formaldehyde while the formalities regarding their funeral arrangements were cleared up.

More reports of non-awakenings follow. It appears that only those who have been dead two months or less have come back.

23·55: Databases are correlated: numbers of deceased unburied in the greater Stockholm area going back two months, yields a total of exactly 1042 people.

23.57: It is decided that the unthinkable must be investigated. A delegation with sound amplification and digging equipment is dispatched to the Stockholm Woodland Cemetery in order to listen to the graves, possibly with a view to opening them.

23·59 and on: Emergency psychiatric units begin to receive relatives who have had breakdowns upon being reunited with their dead.