The Darkest Room

38

So Ethel went down the dark paths, down among the trees by the walkway along the shore. Down to the water, where the lights of the houses and streets of Stockholm glittered in the blackness.

There she sat down obediently in the shadow of a boat-house and got her reward. Then she just had to do the usual: heat up the yellow-brown powder in the spoon, draw it up into the syringe, and insert it into her arm.

Peace.

The murderer waited patiently until Ethel’s head was drooping and she was just beginning to doze off… then went over and gave the unresisting body a hard shove. Straight down into the winter water.

Joakim was still sitting slumped on the bench, motionless. There was no light in the prayer room, and yet it

wasn’t completely dark. He could make out the wooden walls, the window, and the drawing of Jesus’ empty tomb. There was a faint, pale glow around him, as if from a distant moon.

The storm continued to howl over the roof.

He was not alone.

His wife, Katrine, was sitting beside him. He could see her pale face out of the corner of his eye.

And the benches behind him had filled up with visitors. Joakim could hear the faint sound of creaking, just like when the congregation in a church is impatiently waiting to go up and take Communion.

They started to get up.

When Joakim heard this, he stood up too, with the unpleasant feeling of being in the wrong place on the wrong night. Soon he would be discovered-or unmasked.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Trust me.”

He pulled at Katrine’s cold hand and tried to get her to stand up, and in the end she obeyed him.

He heard creaking steps approaching. The figures behind him had begun to move out into the narrow aisle.

There were so many of them when they were gathered together. More and more shadows seemed to fill the room.

Joakim couldn’t get past them. All he could do was stay where he was in front of the bench-there was nowhere to go now. He stood completely still, not letting go of Katrine’s hand.

The air grew colder around them, and Joakim shivered. He could hear the rustling sound of old fabric, and the floor creaked faintly as the chapel’s visitors spread out around him.

They wanted so much warmth that he was unable to give them. They wanted to take Communion. Joakim was freezing now, but still they pressed forward to reach him. Their jerky movements were like a slow dance in the narrow room, and he was drawn along with them.

“Katrine!” he whispered.

But she was no longer with him. Her hand slipped from his grip and they were separated by all the movement in the room.

“Katrine?”

She was gone. Joakim turned around and tried to push his way through the crowd to find her again. But no one helped him, everyone was standing in his way.

Then suddenly he heard something more than the wind through the cracks in the barn: someone shouting, then several dull bangs. It sounded as if someone were shooting with a rifle or a pistol-like a volley of shots somewhere down below the hayloft.

Joakim stiffened and listened. He could no longer hear any other sounds, no voices or movements inside the room.

The pale light that had been seeping through the wall from the bulb in the loft suddenly went out.

The electricity had gone out, Joakim realized.

He stood still in the pitch darkness. It felt as if he were completely alone now, as if all the others in the room had gone away.

After several minutes a flickering light began to glow somewhere in the barn. A pale yellow glow that rapidly increased in strength.