The Hand that Trembles

FORTY-EIGHT

She heard the sound of a car and felt more angry at the disturbance than afraid. She had been sketching for several hours. She had returned to the subject again and again, used many pieces of paper, and slowly the idea had started to take shape.

The sound of the engine stopped. She walked over to the window that faced the dirt road but saw nothing but the darkness between the pine trees.

There was a small dirt road between the Avenue and the cottage. If one continued past this road, it was only a hundred metres to the turnaround at Bultudden’s end. People occasionally drove down that way and turned around but never this late at night.

She stared out into the December night. Fear came creeping. The card Ann Lindell had given her was pinned to the noticeboard. Her mobile phone lay on the bed. A new look out of the window after she had turned out the light yielded nothing. The darkness and silence were impenetrable.

The knock came out of nowhere. She twirled around and fixed her eyes on the door before running over to the bed, grabbing her phone, and pressing the number keys for 911.

‘Who is it?’ she yelled.

‘It’s only me.’

She stared at the door. The voice sounded familiar but her terror prevented her from immediately identifying it. She pressed the dial button on her phone. Her hands shook. One ring sounded, then another, then a voice could be heard. A woman’s voice. At that moment the door opened.

‘Hello,’ said Thomas B. Sunesson.

He stepped into the house and immediately closed the door behind him.

‘It’s cold,’ he said, smiling. ‘I don’t want to let out the heat.’

The voice in the telephone yelled a ‘hello’.

‘Did I scare you?’

Lisen Morell shook her head.

‘Are you talking on the phone?’

A new shake.

‘I just wanted to let you know that Lasse is burning rubbish, in case you were wondering about the smell of fire.’

At last she managed to answer the increasingly agitated voice on the other end.

‘I dialled the wrong number,’ she said, and ended the call.

‘How are you? You look terrible. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘But you did!’

‘I just wanted to…’

‘I know what you want! You come sneaking around my house.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You can leave now.’

‘Calm down,’ Sunesson said.

Lisen Morell lifted one hand to stop him.

‘Leave,’ she said, ‘or I’ll call the police.’

He looked perplexed.

‘What do you mean I come sneaking around? I knocked, didn’t I?’

He explained how Doris Utman had called him and how he had gone out to check up on the burning smell.

‘She thought there might have been a fire at your place.’

‘There’s nothing burning here,’ Lisen Morell said.

‘Okay, then I know.’

He glanced at the table, then bent over and snatched a piece of paper from the floor.

‘This looks good,’ he said.

‘It’s a sketch, nothing else. But you are bothering me. I’d like you to leave now.’

He gazed at her, dropping the page so that it wafted down to the floor.

‘You’re not exactly a diplomat. I came here out of a sense of concern. That’s what we do out here. We look after each other.’

‘I’ve noticed,’ she said with an acidity that made him pull a face.

‘To be honest, I don’t think it’s good for you to live here all alone.’

‘And who has asked you for your honesty? You live alone too.’

‘Did you ever talk to Frisk? Did he come down here?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Did you meet his Thai girl?’

Lisen shook her head. She suddenly discovered that all fear and anger had run out of her. She imagined it was the smell of smoke that had calmed her.

‘What do you think happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lisen Morell said.

‘You said that someone’s been sneaking around. When was the last time?’

‘Just the other night. I heard footsteps and sounds.’

Sunesson walked over to the window facing the sea and stared into the darkness. She watched the back of his neck where the hairs were standing on end. It was as if he felt her gaze, and he pulled one hand over his shoulder.

‘Who do you think it was?’

He turned around and looked at her. She shrugged.

‘Have you talked with anyone about the fact that someone’s been sneaking around? I mean the police.’

‘I mentioned it to Ann Lindell. You’ve met her, haven’t you?’

‘Sure, she borrowed my chainsaw,’ he said.

He walked up to the front door, put his hand on the handle, then turned around and looked at her with a serious expression.

‘You should keep your eyes and ears open,’ he said. ‘If anything comes up, you should give me a call right away.’

Before she had time to answer, he had opened the door and left.

After a minute she heard the sound of his car. Why had he parked out by the turnaround, she wondered as she walked up to the door and fastened the bolt.

Lisen Morell curled up under the blankets. Her limbs were stiff and cold, her back ached. That’s how it was when she stayed up working too long. She had always had difficulties with proportions. She exaggerated, worked too much, dipped again and again until fatigue caused her hands to shake. The evening often morphed into night before she finally put away her pencil, charcoal, and brush. Now her body was punishing her for it.

She looked out in the dim light of the cottage where the white papers spread on the floor bore witness to her last session. In this chaos of attempts there was perhaps a single expression actually worth something, that carried forward and that could perhaps, after additional hours, days, or weeks of work, result in a painting that passed muster.

Lisen Morell was poised on a razor-sharp edge, teetering between total collapse, both physical and artistic, and brilliance.

She could not help but smile when she thought about her neighbour’s unexpected visit. Was his talk of smoke simply an excuse to make contact? Was he the one who had been sneaking around outside? Sunesson was harmless. He would never become threatening. She decided to invite him in for coffee one of these days. Not that she was interested in him, but to show him what she was working on. Maybe it would be the start of better contact with her neighbours.

She fell asleep late but woke up almost immediately. She sat up in bed, confused. The clock on the nightstand said 2:14 a.m.

It was absolutely quiet. Not even the wind or the sound of the waves could be heard. Nonetheless there was something that had awakened her. She carefully turned the blankets aside, pulled her robe over, and pressed it to her body. A scraping sound somewhere outside the cottage made her gasp. She held her breath and listened. She pressed the robe even harder to her chest, where her heart was racing.

The digital numbers on the clock showed 2:15. She breathed out through her mouth and barely managed to inhale.

She knew she should search out her mobile phone from the mess on the table, but could not manage to make herself get up. She shivered with cold and fear. Paralysed with terror, she saw a severed foot walk across the floor, touch her papers and leave sooty, bloody prints on her sketches, only to disappear from view. A slender and lost foot, a woman’s foot. Lisen had the impression it was searching for its body.

‘I don’t want to,’ Lisen mumbled, as she carefully pulled on her robe. It occurred to her that perhaps it was a bird that had struck the windowpane. That happened a couple of times every year, but what birds were flying around in the December night?

She stood on trembling legs and took a couple of steps out into the room. The window to the bay was black. Suddenly there came a gust of wind so strong the cottage flinched and the sea answered with a muted thunder as it mercilessly struck the shore and the worn expanses of rock.

She walked over to the window. Someone out there wishes me ill, she thought. What have I done? Let me be in peace!

Then she glimpsed a movement outside the window. It looked like the shadow of a body, hastily fluttering past. Lisen quickly pulled herself aside and pressed up against the wall. She felt a trickle of warm urine run down her legs.