The Darkest Room

24

Twilight fell over sea and land in the afternoon now. The solitary streetlamp out by the main highway came on earlier and earlier, and Joakim walked around in his big house and tried to feel pride in what he had achieved.

The renovations on the ground floor were more or less finished. All the painting, wallpapering, and furnishing was done, as far as possible. He ought to buy some more furniture, but he was short of money at the moment and had made only halfhearted attempts to find a new teaching post. But at least he had put the big eighteenth-century cupboard, the long dinner table, and the tall dining chairs in the drawing room. He had hung the big round chandelier from the ceiling, and placed candlesticks in the windows.

He had managed hardly any work on the outside of the house this fall-he had no money for scaffolding-but he had the feeling that the previous residents still appreciated the renovation indoors. When he was alone, Joakim sometimes

hoped that he might hear them in the house, hear their slow steps crossing the floor upstairs, their murmuring voices in the empty rooms.

But not Ethel. Ethel was not allowed to come into the house. Thank goodness Livia seemed to have stopped dreaming about her.

“Are you coming up to me for Christmas?” asked Ingrid when she called in the middle of December.

She spoke in the same quiet, tentative voice as always, and Joakim just felt like hanging up.

“No,” he said quickly, looking out of the kitchen window.

The door to the barn was open again. He hadn’t opened it. Of course, it could be down to the wind or one of the children, but he sensed that it was a sign from Katrine.

“No?”

“No,” he said, “we’re intending to stay here this Christmas. At Eel Point.”

“Alone?”

Maybe not, thought Joakim. But he replied, “Yes, unless Katrine’s mother, Mirja, stops by. But we haven’t discussed it yet.”

“Can’t you-”

“We’d love to come up to you for New Year’s,” said Joakim. “We can exchange presents then.”

Of course, Christmas was going to be grim wherever he celebrated it.

Unbearable, without Katrine.

Early on the morning of December 13, Joakim sat in the darkness at the preschool in Marnäs, watching the children celebrate the feast of Saint Lucia. Dressed in white with candles in their hands, smiling nervously, the six-year-olds filed into the meeting room where their parents were waiting. Several of the parents had their video cameras at the ready.

Joakim didn’t need to film the children, he would still remember exactly which songs Livia and Gabriel sang. He touched his wedding ring and thought about how Katrine would have loved to see this.

The day after Lucia the first winter storm swept in over the coast, with bulletlike granules of snow rattling against the windowpanes. Out at sea the white-crested waves reared up. They moved rhythmically in toward the shore and smashed the thin layer of ice that had formed off the point, then they crashed over the jetty, the water foaming and swirling around the islands where the lighthouses stood.

When the storm was at its worst, tearing at the house, Joakim rang Gerlof Davidsson, who was the only person he knew on the island who was interested in the weather.

“So, this is the first blizzard of the winter,” said Joakim.

Gerlof snorted at the other end of the line. “This?” he said. “This is just a slight breeze. This isn’t a blizzard… but it is coming, and I think it’ll be before New Year’s.”

The strong wind died away before dawn, and when the sun rose next morning Joakim saw that a thin layer of snow was still covering everything. The bushes outside the kitchen window were wearing white hats, and down on the shore the waves had hurled the ice up to form wide banks.

Beyond these banks a new layer of ice had quickly formed out at sea, like a blue-and-white field crisscrossed with black cracks. The ice didn’t look safe-some of the deep cracks met up in dark gaps.

Joakim peered toward the horizon, but the line between sea and sky had disappeared in a dazzling mist.

The telephone rang after breakfast. It was Gerlof’s relative, Tilda Davidsson, who started off by saying that she was calling on a police matter.

“I just wanted to check something, Joakim. You said before that your wife didn’t have any visitors at the house… but you have had workmen there?”

“Workmen?”

It was an unexpected question, and he had to think about it.

“I heard you’d had someone laying floors,” said Tilda. “Is that correct?”

Now Joakim remembered. “Yes,” he said, “but it was before I moved here. There was a guy here to rip out some old cork flooring and sand the floors in the main rooms.”

“From a firm in Marnäs?”

“I think so,” said Joakim. “It was the realtor who suggested them. I’ve probably still got the invoice somewhere.”

“We don’t need that at the moment. But do you remember what his name was?”

“No… it was my wife who dealt with him.”

“When was he there?”

“In the middle of August… a few weeks before we started bringing our furniture down.”

“Did you ever meet him?” asked Tilda.

“No. But Katrine did, as I said. She and the children were here then.”

“And he hasn’t been back since then?”

“No,” said Joakim. “All the floors are finished now.”

“One more thing… have you had any uninvited guests during the fall?”

“Uninvited…” said Joakim, his thoughts immediately turning to Ethel.

“Anyone trying to break in, I mean,” said Tilda.

“No, we haven’t had anything like that. Why do you ask?”

“There have been a number of break-ins on the island during recent months.”

“I know, I read about it in the paper. I hope you find them.”

“We’re working on it,” said Tilda.

She put down the phone.

The following night Joakim woke up in bed with a start.

Ethel…

The same fear as always. He raised his head and looked at the clock: 1:24.

He pushed away all thoughts of Ethel. Had Livia called out? There wasn’t a sound in the house, but still he got up and pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans, without switching on the light. He went out into the corridor and listened again. He could hear the ticking of the wall clock, but not a sound came from the darkness of Livia’s and Gabriel’s rooms.

He went in the opposite direction, over to the windows in the hallway, and looked out into the night. The solitary lamp illuminated the inner courtyard, but nothing was moving out there.

Then he saw that the door to the barn was standing open once again. Not far, just eighteen inches or so-but Joakim was almost certain he had pulled it shut a few evenings earlier.

He would go and close it right now.

He pulled on his winter boots and went out through the veranda.

It was windy outside, but the sky was clear and full of stars, and the southern lighthouse flashed rhythmically, almost keeping pace with his heartbeat.

He went over to the half-open door and peered into the barn. It was pitch black.

“Hello?”

No reply.

Or was there? Perhaps he could hear a slow, whimpering sound somewhere inside the wooden building. Joakim reached in and switched on the light. He didn’t step inside until the lights on the ceiling came on.

He wanted to call out again, but stopped himself.

He could hear something now: a quiet but regular rasping sound. Joakim was sure of it.

He went over to the steep steps. The bulb high above on the ceiling wasn’t very powerful, but he began to climb upward.

Up in the hayloft Joakim stopped again and looked at the piles of old forgotten junk. At some point he must clear all this out. But not tonight.

He moved in amongst the objects. He could make his way through the piles without any problem by now; he knew this labyrinth by heart and was drawn to the far side of it. Toward the wall at the far end of the loft.

That was where the rasping noise was coming from.

Joakim could see the wall now, and the names of the dead that had been carved into it.

Before he had time to start reading them again, he heard a whimpering noise again, and stopped. He looked down at the floor.

First of all came the whimpering, then Rasputin yowling.

The cat was sitting by the wall, carefully washing his paws. Then he looked up at the visitor, and Joakim met his gaze; the cat almost looked pleased. And why not? He had worked hard tonight.

In front of him lay a dozen or so slender bodies with brown fur. Mice. They had been carefully ripped apart, and looked as if they had been killed just before Joakim arrived.

Rasputin had placed the bloody mice in a row at the bottom of the wall.

They looked like a sacrifice.