The Darkest Room - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Johan Theorin (ч. 2)

The dead gather every winter to celebrate Christmas. But on one occasion they were disturbed by an old spinster. Her clock had stopped, so she got up too early and went to church in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. There was the murmur of voices as if there were a service going on, and the church was full of people. Suddenly the old woman caught sight of her fiancé from the days of her youth. He had drowned many years ago, but there he was, sitting in a pew among the others.

SWEDISH FOLKTALE FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This is where my book begins, Katrine, the year when the manor house at Eel Point was built. For me the manor was more than a house where my mother and I lived, it was the place where I became an adult.

Ragnar Davidsson, the eel fisherman, once told me that large parts of the manor were built with salvaged cargo from a German vessel carrying timber. I believe him. On the wall at the far end of the hayloft inside the barn, the words

IN MEMORY OF CHRISTIAN LUDWIG

are carved into one of the planks.

I have heard the dead whispering in the walls. They have so much to tell.