Midwinter Sacrifice

67

I’m bleeding.

Something is lifting me up, away from the post and down on to a soft, hairy bed.

I’m alive.

My heart is beating.

And the black thing is everywhere, laying cloth, wool on my body and it’s warm and the black thing’s voice, voices, say, ‘He died too soon. But you, you’re going to hang the way it’s supposed to be.’

Then the trees above me, I’m moving through the forest. Am I lying on a sledge? Can I hear the sound of runners over the crust of snow? I’m tired, so tired, and it’s warm.

It’s a real warmth.

It’s in my dream and in wakefulness.

But away from the warmth.

It kills.

And I don’t want to die.

The engine sound again. I’m in a car now.

In the sound of the engine, in its persistent running is a suspicion. That my body has one more chance, that it isn’t yet too late.

I breathe.

Welcome the pain from every battered and smashed body part, the tearing of my bleeding innards.

It is in pain that I exist now. And it will help me survive.

I am drifting here.

The field lies open. Between Maspelösa, Fornåsa and Bankeberg, at the end of an unploughed road covered by just a thin layer of snow, stands a lone tree, like the one I was hanging in.

The car with the woman in the boot stops there.

I wish I could help her now.

But she must do that herself.

The black thing has to open up. It has to help me out. Then I shall be an engine. I shall explode, I shall get away, I shall live.

The black thing opens the boot, heaves my body over the edge and down on to the snow by the exhaust.

It leaves me lying there.

A tree trunk, thick, ten metres away.

The stone is covered by snow, but I still see it. Is it my hands that are free, is it my hand, that swollen red lump I see to my left?

The black thing at my side now. Whispering about blood. About sacrifice.

If I twist to the left and then grab the stone and strike at what must be its head, it might work. That could get me away.

I am an engine and I am turning the key.

Now I ignite.

I exist again and I grip the stone, and the whispering stops; now I strike, I am going to get away and I strike myself away from here. Don’t try to fend me off, I strike, I want more, my will is what sits deep, deep down, it’s brighter than the darkness can manage to blacken.

Don’t try.

I strike at the blackness, and we roll around in the snow, and cold does not exist and it gets a tight grip on me, but I explode once more and then I strike. The stone against its skull and the blackness goes limp, glides off me, on to the snow.

I crawl up on to my knees.

Open field in all directions.

I get up.

In the darkness. I have been there.

I stagger towards the horizon.

I am on my way, away.

I drift beside you as you stumble on across the plain. You will arrive somewhere, and wherever you go, I will be there to meet you.