The Sandman

152

The sand on the steps crunches under Joona’s shoes as he heads down into the darkness. After nineteen stairs he finds himself in a large concrete room. The torch beam flickers across the walls and ceiling. There’s a stool almost in the middle of the floor, and on one wall is a sheet of polystyrene with a few drawing pins and an empty plastic sleeve.

Joona realises that he must be in one of the many shelters built in Sweden during the Cold War.

There’s an eerie silence down here.

The room tapers slightly, and tucked beneath the staircase is a heavy door.

This has to be the place.

Joona puts the safety catch back on his pistol and slips it into the holster again to leave his hands free. The steel door has large bolts that slide into place when a wheel at the centre of the door is turned.

He turns the wheel anticlockwise and there’s a metallic rumble as the heavy bolts slide from their housings.

The door is hard to open, the metal fifteen centimetres thick.

He shines the torch into the shelter, and sees a dirty mattress on the floor, a sofa and a tap sticking out of the wall.

There’s no one here.

The room stinks of old urine.

He points the torch at the sofa again and approaches cautiously. He stops and listens, then moves closer.

She might be hiding.

Suddenly he has the feeling that he’s being followed. He could end up trapped in the same room as her. He turns and at that instant sees that the heavy door is closing. The immense hinges are creaking. He reacts instantly, throwing himself backwards and jamming the torch in the gap. There’s a crunch as it gets squeezed and the glass shatters.

Joona shoves the door open with his shoulder, draws his pistol again and emerges into the dark room.

There’s no one there.

The Sandman has moved remarkably quietly.

Strange light formations are flickering in front of his eyes as they try to make out shapes in the murky gloom.

The torch is only giving off a faint glow now, barely enough to illuminate anything.

All he can hear are his own footsteps and his own breathing.

He looks over towards the concrete steps leading up to the building above. The hatch is still open.

He shakes the torch, but it carries on getting dimmer.

Suddenly Joona hears a tinkling sound and holds his breath as he finds himself thinking about porcelain fingertips. At the same moment he feels a cold cloth pressed to his mouth and nose.

Joona spins round and lashes out hard, but hits nothing and loses his balance.

He turns, holding his pistol out, the barrel scrapes the concrete wall, but there’s no one there.

Panting, he stands with his back to the wall, extending the torch towards the darkness.

The tinkling sound must have come from the little sedative bottles when the Sandman was pouring the volatile liquid onto the cloth.

Joona is feeling giddy, and swallows hard, forcing himself not to empty the magazine of the pistol into the darkness.

He desperately wants to get out into the fresh air, but forces himself to stay where he is.

It’s completely silent, there’s no one here.

Joona waits a few seconds, then returns to the capsule. His movements feel strangely delayed, and his gaze keeps slipping to the side. Before he goes inside, he turns the wheel of the lock so that the bolts slide out, preventing the door from closing.

In the weak glow of the torch he makes his way forward once more. The light bounces round the grey walls. He reaches the sofa and nudges it carefully away from the wall, and sees a skinny woman lying on the floor.

‘Felicia? I’m a police officer,’ he whispers. ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’

When he touches her he can feel that she’s boiling hot. She has an extremely high fever, and is no longer conscious. As he picks her up from the floor she starts to shake in fevered cramps.

Joona charges up the stairs with her in his arms. He drops the torch and hears it clatter down the steps. He realises that she’s going to die soon unless he manages to get her fever down. Her body has gone completely limp again. He doesn’t know if she’s still breathing as he climbs up through the hatch.

Joona runs through the small building, kicks open the door, lays her down on the snow and sees that she’s still breathing.

‘Felicia, you’ve got a really bad fever... you poor thing...’

He covers her with snow, speaking to her in a soothing, reassuring voice, all the while keeping his pistol trained on the door of the building.

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ he says. ‘Everything’s going to be fine, I promise, Felicia. Your brother and your dad are going to be so happy, they’ve missed you so much, do you hear?’