The Darkest Room

December
18

It was a new month, the month of Christmas, and it was Friday afternoon. Joakim had returned to the hayloft in the ice-cold barn, and was standing in front of the wall with the names of the dead carved in it. In his hands he held a hammer and a newly sharpened chisel.

He had gone up into the loft an hour or so before he was due to pick up Livia and Gabriel, just as the sun was going down and the shadows were gathering in the inner courtyard. It was a kind of reward that he allowed himself if the renovation work had gone well.

Sitting up here in the loft felt quiet and restful, despite the cold, and he liked studying the names on the wall. He read Katrine’s name over and over again, of course, like a mantra.

As he began to learn many of the names by heart, so the wall itself, with its knotholes and the convoluted rings in the wood, was becoming familiar to him. On the left, in the corner, a deeper split ran along one of the middle

planks, and in the end it tempted Joakim to go and take a closer look.

The plank had split along one of the rings, showing the age of the original tree. The crack had then widened downward in a diagonal line, and when he pressed his hand against it the wood cracked and gave way.

That was when Joakim had gone to fetch his tools.

He pushed the chisel into the crack, hit it with the hammer, and the sharp metal went straight through the wood.

All it took was a dozen or so hard blows with the hammer to loosen the end of the plank. It fell inward, and the dull thud when it landed proved that the wooden floor continued on the other side of the wall. But it was impossible to see what was in there.

When Joakim bent down to look through the hole, just a couple of inches wide, a definite smell struck him. It rushed toward his face, making him close his eyes and lean against the wall.

It was Katrine’s smell.

He got down on his knees and pushed his left hand into the opening. First his fingers, then his wrist, and finally the whole of his forearm. He groped about, but could feel nothing.

But when he lowered his fingers, they touched something in there, something soft.

It felt like coarse fabric-like someone’s pants or jacket.

Joakim quickly withdrew his hand.

The next moment he heard a dull rumbling on the track outside, and a beam of light illuminated the windows of the barn, white with frost. A car was driving into the courtyard.

Joakim cast a final glance at the opening in the wall, then went over to the steps leading down from the loft.

In the courtyard he was dazzled by the headlights of a car. A door slammed.

“Hi there, Joakim.”

It was a brisk voice that he recognized. Marianne, the head of the preschool.

“Has something happened?” she asked.

He stared at her in confusion, then pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. In the beam of the headlights he could see that it was already half past five.

The school closed at five. He had forgotten to pick up Gabriel and Livia.

“I missed… I forgot what time it was.”

“It’s okay,” said Marianne. “I was just so worried that something might have happened. I tried to call, but there was no reply.”

“No, I’ve been… out in the barn doing a bit of carpentry.”

“It’s easy to forget the time,” said Marianne with a smile.

“Thanks,” said Joakim. “Thanks for bringing them home.”

“No problem, I live in Rörby anyway.” Marianne waved and went back to her car. “See you Monday.”

When she had reversed out of the courtyard, Joakim went inside, feeling ashamed of himself. He could hear voices from the kitchen.

Livia and Gabriel had already taken off their boots and outdoor clothes and thrown them down in two separate heaps. They were sitting at the kitchen table sharing a clementine.

“Daddy, you forgot to come and get us,” said Livia as he walked in.

“I know,” he said quietly.

“Marianne had to drive us home.”

She didn’t sound cross, more surprised at the deviation from the normal routine.

“I know,” he said. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Gabriel was eating his clementine segments, apparently unconcerned, but Livia gave her father a long look.

“I’ll make us something to eat,” said Joakim, and went quickly over to the larder.

Pasta with tuna sauce was a favorite, and he boiled some water for the pasta and warmed the sauce. Several times he glanced out of the window.

The barn loomed up on the far side of the courtyard like a black castle.

It had secrets. A hidden room without a door.

A room that, for a moment, had been filled with the scent of Katrine. Joakim was sure he had felt her presence; the smell of her had poured out through the hole in the wall, and he had been unable to defend himself.

He wanted to get into that room, but the only way seemed to be to attack the thick planks of wood with a saw or crowbar. But then the carved names would be destroyed, and Joakim could never do that. He had too much respect for the dead.

When the temperature dropped below freezing, the cold began to creep into the house as well. Joakim relied on radiators and tiled stoves on the ground floor, but there were strips of coldness along the floor and around some of the windows. On windy days he searched for drafts along the floor and walls, then blocked the gaps by loosening sections of the outer paneling and pushing flax fiber in between the timbers.

The first weekend in December the thermometer hovered around minus five when the sun was shining, but dropped down to minus ten in the evening.

On Sunday morning Joakim looked out of the kitchen window and discovered that there was a layer of black ice out at sea. The open water was now several hundred yards away. The ice must have formed by the shore during the night, then slowly crept around the headland and out toward the horizon.

“We’ll soon be able to walk across the water to Gotland,” he said to the children as they sat at the breakfast table.

“What’s Gotland?” said Gabriel.

“It’s a big island further out in the Baltic.”

“Can we walk there?” asked Livia.

“No, I was just joking,” said Joakim quickly. “It’s too far away.”

“But I want to.”

It was impossible to joke with a six-year-old-she took everything literally. Joakim looked out of the kitchen window and an image came into his mind of Livia and Gabriel walking out onto the black ice, going further and further out. Then suddenly it cracked, a black hole opened up, and they were pulled down…

He turned to Livia.

“You and Gabriel must never go out onto the ice. Not under any circumstances. You can never be sure it will hold.”

That night Joakim called his former neighbors in Stockholm, Lisa and Michael Hesslin. He hadn’t heard a word from them since the night they left Eel Point.

“Hi, Joakim,” said Michael. “Are you in Stockholm?”

“No, we’re still on Öland. How are things?”

“Fine. Good to hear from you.”

And yet Joakim thought Michael sounded wary. Perhaps he was embarrassed over what had happened the last time they met.

“You’re feeling okay?” said Joakim. “And what about work?”

“Everything’s going really well,” said Michael. “Lots of exciting projects. Things are a bit hectic right now, coming up to Christmas.”

“Good… I just wanted to check up, make sure everything was okay. I mean, it was a bit of a hasty departure last time you came down here.”

“Yes,” said Michael, and hesitated before going on: “Sorry about that. I don’t know what it was…I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep…”

He fell silent.

“Lisa thought you’d had a nightmare,” said Joakim. “That you dreamed someone was standing by the bed.”

“Did she say that? I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember who you saw?”

“No.”

“I’ve never seen anything strange around here,” said Joakim, “but I’ve felt things sometimes. And out in the barn I’ve found a wall in the hayloft where people-”

“So what about the renovation?” Michael interrupted him. “How’s all that going?”

“What?”

“Have you finished the wallpapering?”

“No… not quite.”

Joakim was confused, until he realized that Michael had no desire whatsoever to discuss unusual experiences or bad dreams. Whatever had happened to him that night, he had closed and locked the door on the memory.

“What are you doing at Christmas?” Joakim asked instead. “Will you be celebrating at home?”

“We’ll probably go to the cottage,” said Michael. “But we’re intending to be at home for New Year.”

“Maybe we can get together, then.”

The conversation didn’t last much longer. When Joakim had hung up, he looked out of the kitchen window, toward the film of ice on the sea and the empty shore. The frozen desolation almost made him miss the crowded streets of Stockholm.

“There’s a hidden room here,” said Joakim to Mirja Rambe. “A room without a door.”

“Really? Where?”

“Up in the hayloft. It’s big… I’ve paced out the barn, and the floor of the loft stops almost four yards before the outside wall.” He looked at Mirja. “You didn’t know?”

She shook her head.

“The wall with all those names on it is enough for me. That’s all the excitement I need.”

Mirja leaned forward on the big sofa and poured Joakim a steaming cup of coffee. Then she picked up a bottle of vodka and asked, “A drop in your coffee?”

“No thank you. I don’t drink spirits and-”

Mirja gave a short laugh. “Then I’ll have your ration,” she said, pouring the vodka for herself.

Mirja lived in a spacious apartment close to the cathedral in Kalmar, and had invited the family over for dinner this evening.

Livia and Gabriel finally got to meet their maternal grandmother. Both were quiet and wary when they walked in, and Livia looked suspiciously at a white marble statue of the upper half of a man’s body, standing in one corner. It was a while before she started talking. She had brought Foreman and two teddy bears with her, and introduced all three to her grandmother. Mirja took the family into her studio, where finished and unfinished paintings of Öland lined the walls. They all showed a flat, blossoming green landscape beneath a cloudless sky.

For someone who had hardly bothered about her grandchildren up to now, Mirja was remarkably interested in them. When they had eaten their meat-filled dumplings, she worked hard to get Gabriel to come and sit on her knee, and finally succeeded. But he only stayed put for a few minutes before running off into the TV room to watch children’s programs with Livia.

“So it’s just the two of us,” said Mirja, sitting down on the sofa in the main room.

“Fine,” said Joakim.

Mirja had none of her own paintings on the walls, but two of her mother Torun’s pictures of the blizzard hung in the main room. Both depicted the snowstorm approaching the coast, like a black curtain about to fall on the twin lighthouses. Just like the picture at Eel Point, these were winter

paintings that exuded hidden menace and the premonition of evil.

Joakim looked in vain for traces of Katrine in the apartment. She had always loved bright, clean lines, but her mother had decorated the rooms with dark, flowery wallpaper and curtains, Persian rugs, and black leather sofas and chairs.

Mirja had no photographs of her dead daughter or her half siblings. She did, however, have several large and small pictures of herself and a young man, perhaps twenty years her junior, with a blond goatee beard and spiky hair.

She saw Joakim staring at the pictures and nodded toward the man.

“Ulf,” she said. “He’s off playing indoor hockey, otherwise you could have met him.”

“So you’re a couple…” said Joakim, “you and the hockey player?”

A stupid question. Mirja smiled.

“Does that bother you?”

Joakim shook his head.

“Good, because it bothers a lot of other people,” said Mirja. “Katrine, certainly, even if she never said anything… Older women aren’t supposed to have a sex life. But Ulf doesn’t seem to be complaining, and I’m certainly not.”

“On the contrary, you seem proud of it,” said Joakim.

Mirja laughed. “Love is blind, or so they say.”

She drank her coffee and lit a cigarette.

“One of the police officers in Marnäs wants to carry on with the investigation,” said Joakim after a while. “She’s called me a couple of times.”

He didn’t need to explain which investigation he was talking about.

“Right,” said Mirja. “She’s welcome to do that, I suppose.”

“Sure, if it provides any answers… but it won’t bring Katrine back.”

“I know why she died,” said Mirja, drawing on her cigarette.

Joakim looked up. “You do?”

“It was the house.”

“The house?”

Mirja laughed briefly, but she wasn’t smiling. “That damned house is full of unhappiness,” she said. “It’s destroyed the lives of every family that has ever lived there.”

Joakim looked at her, surprised by the comment. “You can’t blame unhappiness on a house.”

Mirja stubbed out her cigarette.

Joakim changed the subject.

“I’m having a visitor next week, a retired guy who knows the house. His name is Gerlof Davidsson. Have you met him?”

Mirja shook her head. “But I think his brother lived close by,” she said. “Ragnar. I met him.”

“Anyway… Gerlof is going to tell me about the history of Eel Point.”

“I can do that, if you’re so curious.”

Mirja took another huge gulp of her coffee. Joakim thought her eyes were already beginning to look slightly glazed from the alcohol.

“So how did you end up at Eel Point?” he asked. “You and your mother?”

“The rent was low,” said Mirja. “That was the most important thing for Mom. She spent the money she earned from cleaning on canvases and oils, and she was always short of money. So we had to find places to live to fit in with that.”

“Was the place already looking shabby by then?”

“It was getting that way,” said Mirja. “Eel Point was still owned by the state at that stage, but it was rented to someone on the island for a small amount of money… some farmer who didn’t put a penny into fixing it up. Mom and I were the only ones who were prepared to live in the outbuilding in the winter.”

She drank some more of her coffee concoction.

The children were laughing loudly at something in the TV room. Joakim thought for a while, then asked, “Did Katrine ever talk to you about Ethel?”

“No,” said Mirja. “Who’s Ethel?”

“She was my older sister. She died last year… almost exactly a year ago. She was a user.”

“Booze?”

“Drugs,” said Joakim. “Anything, really, but mostly heroin over the last few years.”

“I’ve never really been into drugs,” said Mirja. “But of course I agree with people like Huxley and Tim Leary…”

“About what?” asked Joakim.

“That drugs can open doors in your mind. Particularly for artists like us.”

Joakim stared at her. He thought of Ethel’s blank expression, and realized why Katrine had never told Mirja about her.

Then he quickly finished his coffee and looked at his watch: quarter past eight.

“We’d better get back.”

“So what do you think of your grandmother, then?” asked Joakim as they drove back across the Öland bridge.

“She was nice,” said Livia.

“Good.”

“Will we be going there again?” she asked.

“Maybe,” said Joakim. “But probably not for a while.”

He decided not to think about Mirja Rambe anymore.