The Darkest Room

32

Joakim stood in the barn listening to the wind roaring over the huge roof. He could feel its power through the beams and the sheets of asbestos, but at least he was out of its reach.

He had climbed the ladder a few minutes earlier and was back in the room behind the hayloft.

Everything was silent here. The angular roof high above gave him the feeling of having stepped into a church.

The batteries in his flashlight were almost done, but he could still make out the old church benches in the darkness. And all the old objects lying on them.

This was the prayer room for those who had died at Eel Point; this was where they gathered every Christmas.

Joakim was sure of it. Would they come tonight or tomorrow? It didn’t matter, he would stay here and wait for Katrine.

Slowly Joakim moved forward along the narrow aisle between the benches, looking at the possessions of the dead.

He stopped by the front bench and shone the flashlight on the denim jacket lying there, neatly folded.

He had left it exactly where he found it-he had hardly dared touch it that night. He had taken the book Mirja Rambe had written into his bedroom and started to read it, but he didn’t want Ethel’s jacket in the house. He was afraid that Livia would start dreaming about her aunt again.

Joakim reached out and felt at the worn fabric, as if touching it could provide answers to all his questions.

When he got hold of one sleeve, something rustled and fell on the floor.

It was a small piece of paper.

He bent down and picked it up, and saw a single sentence written in ink. In the faint beam of the flashlight Joakim read the words, which had been pressed hard into the paper:

MAKE SURE

THAT JUNKIE WHORE

DISAPPEARS

Slowly he moved backwards, the note in his hand.

That junkie whore.

Joakim read the six words on the note several times, and realized this was not a message to Ethel. This had been written to him and Katrine.

Make sure that junkie whore disappears.

But he had never seen it before.

The paper had not been damaged by damp and the ink was black and clear, so the note couldn’t have been in the pocket the night Ethel fell in the water.

The note had been placed there later, he realized. Presumably by Katrine, after she had got hold of the jacket from Joakim’s mother.

Joakim thought back to the nights when Ethel would stand and scream out in the street at the Apple House. Sometimes

he had seen the neighbors’ curtains being pulled aside. Pale, terrified faces had peered out at Ethel.

A note with an exhortation from the neighbors. Katrine must have found it in the mailbox one day when she was home alone, and she had read it and realized that this couldn’t go on. The neighbors had had enough of the yelling, night after night.

Everybody had had enough of Ethel. Something had to be done.

Joakim was very tired now, and sank down on the bench next to Ethel’s jacket. He kept on staring at the note in his hand, until he heard a faint scraping noise through the wind.

It was coming from the opening in the floor behind him.

Someone was inside the barn.

When the northern lighthouse is lit, someone is going to die at Eel Point. I have heard that story, but that evening when I got home from Borgholm and saw the white light from the northern tower, I didn’t think about it. I was too shocked at seeing Ragnar Davidsson carrying Torun’s paintings down to the water, without taking the slightest notice of my cries.

He had dropped a few rolled-up canvases in the snow, and I tried to gather them up, but they scudded away in the wind. All I had in my arms were two paintings when I got back to the house.

– MIRJA RAMBE