The Voices Beyond

Summer 1930

Gerlof Davidsson left school at the age of fourteen, and went to sea as a boy sailor two years later. In between, he worked on the island of Öland, when he wasn’t helping out on the family smallholding. Some of the jobs he did were good, some less so. The only one that ended badly was his stint as a gravedigger in Marnäs churchyard.

As long as he lived, Gerlof would remember his last day there, when Edvard Kloss the farmer had to be buried twice. Even when he was an old man, Gerlof still had no explanation for what had happened.

He liked ghost stories, but he had never believed in them. Nor did he believe in vengeance from beyond the grave. And Gerlof would normally have associated words like ‘ghost’ or ‘phantom’ with darkness and unhappiness.

Not with sunshine and a summer’s day.

It was a Sunday in the middle of June, and Gerlof had borrowed his father’s big bike so that he could cycle up to the church. He could manage it now; he had shot up over the past year and caught up with his tall father.

Gerlof bowed his head and pedalled away from the village on the coast, wearing a thin white shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He was heading east, inland. Blue viper’s bugloss and purple alliums bloomed alongside the straight dirt track, with juniper and hazel bushes behind; in the distance on the horizon he could just see the sails of a couple of windmills. Cows were grazing in the meadows, and the sheep were bleating. Twice, he had to jump down to open the wide gates that kept the cattle safely enclosed.

The landscape was vast and open, almost treeless, and when the swallows swept past his bicycle and soared up towards the sun, Gerlof just wanted to leave the track and head off into the wind and freedom.

Then he thought about the task that awaited him, and a little of the joy went out of the day.

Edvard Kloss had been sixty-two years old when he died the previous week, a solid, well-established farmer. Kloss was regarded as well off in northern Öland; he didn’t have a great deal in terms of money, but was rich in land along the coast south of Stenvik, Gerlof’s village.

‘Taken suddenly, sadly missed by everyone,’ as Gerlof had read in his death notice. Kloss had died during the construction of a large wooden barn. Late one night, a newly erected wall had fallen on him.

But was he really sadly missed by everyone? There were plenty of stories about Kloss, and the accident that had caused his death had yet to be fully explained. His younger brothers Sigfrid and Gilbert were the only ones who had been there that night, and each blamed the other. Sigfrid insisted that he had been out of sight over by the piles of timber when the wall came down, but claimed that Gilbert had been right by the barn when their brother died. According to Gilbert, it was the other way round. In addition, a neighbour said he had heard loud voices from the construction site that night, voices he didn’t recognize.

Gerlof was pleased to see that there was no sign of the brothers when he reached the churchyard and propped his bike against the wall. He suspected this was going to be a grim burial.

It was only half past eight in the morning, but the sun was already blazing down on the grass and the graves. The whitewashed stone church, built like a fortified castle with thick walls, rose up against the blue sky. The muted sound of a bell echoed across the flat landscape from the western tower, tolling for the deceased.

Gerlof opened the wooden gate and made his way among the graves. The hut that served as a mortuary was over on the left.

There was a myling sitting behind it.

At first, Gerlof couldn’t believe his eyes: was he really seeing a myling, the restless ghost of an unbaptized child? He blinked, but the child was still there.

It was a boy, a few years younger than Gerlof. He was extremely pale, as if he had spent the entire spring locked in an earth cellar. He was crouching down with his back to the mortuary, barefoot and dressed in a white shirt and light-coloured short trousers. The only thing about him that wasn’t pale was a long, dark scratch across his forehead.

‘Davidsson! Over here!’

Gerlof turned his head and saw Roland Bengtsson, the gravedigger, waving to him over by the churchyard wall.

Gerlof set off towards him, but glanced back at the boy. He was still there. Gerlof didn’t recognize him and was puzzled by his pallor, but at least he wasn’t a ghost.

Bengtsson was waiting for Gerlof with a couple of iron spades. He was a tall man with a permanent stoop; he had tanned, sinewy arms and a firm handshake.

‘Good morning, Davidsson,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That’s where we’re digging.’

Gerlof saw that a broad rectangle of turf had been removed over by the wall. Edvard Kloss’s grave. When they reached the plot, Bengtsson asked quietly, ‘How about a cold beer before we start?’

He nodded towards the wide wall behind them, where a couple of brown bottles were waiting on the grass. Gerlof knew that Bengtsson’s wife was a Good Templar and presumed that the gravedigger drank beer while he was working because he wasn’t allowed to do so at home.

Gerlof could see that the bottles were cold and covered in condensation but, in spite of the fact that he had cycled all the way from the coast, he shook his head.

‘Not for me, thanks.’

He wasn’t all that keen on beer and wanted to be in good shape when he started digging.

Bengtsson picked up one of the bottles and looked over towards the mortuary. Gerlof noticed that the pale boy had got to his feet and was standing by one of the graves, as if he were waiting for something.

Bengtsson raised his hand.

‘Aron!’ he shouted.

The boy looked up.

‘Come over here and give us a hand, Aron! You can have twenty-five öre if you help us dig!’

The boy nodded.

‘Good,’ Bengtsson said. ‘Go to the toolshed and get yourself a spade.’

The boy loped off.

‘Who’s he?’ Gerlof asked when he was out of earshot. ‘He’s not from round here, is he?’

‘Aron Fredh? No, he’s from the south, from Rödtorp... But he’s a kind of relative.’ Bengtsson put down the bottle behind a gravestone and looked wearily at Gerlof. ‘He’s a relative incognitus, if you know what I mean.’

Gerlof hadn’t a clue. He’d never heard of Rödtorp and he couldn’t speak any foreign languages, but he nodded anyway. He knew that Bengtsson only had a little girl, so perhaps the boy was one of his nephews?

Aron came back from the shed carrying a spade. He didn’t say a word, simply positioned himself next to Bengtsson and Gerlof and started digging. The earth was as dry as dust and free of stones, but Gerlof’s spade found the first body part after just a few minutes. It was a dark-brown human bone, possibly part of a thigh bone. Having worked as a gravedigger for a month, he was used to such discoveries, and simply placed the bone carefully to one side on the grass and covered it with a small pile of earth. Then he carried on digging.

They worked their way downwards for over an hour.

The sun disappeared and the air grew colder. As Gerlof shovelled away, an old story kept going through his mind:

Once upon a time there was a door-to-door salesman who called at a farm on the island of Öland. A little boy opened the door.

‘Is your daddy at home, son?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Is he far away?’

‘No, sir. He’s in the churchyard.’

‘What on earth is he doing there?’

‘I don’t think he’s doing anything. Daddy’s dead...’

When it was almost eleven o’clock, they heard the sound of whinnying echoing off the walls of the church. Gerlof looked up and saw two white horses trotting through the gates, surrounded by a cloud of buzzing flies. The horses were pulling a black carriage with a wooden cross on the top — a hearse. Erling Samuelsson, the priest, was sitting next to the coachman. He had conducted the funeral service at the dead man’s farm.

By this stage, the grave was deep enough, and Bengtsson helped the two boys out of the hole. Then he brushed the dirt off his clothes and went over to the mortuary.

The hearse had stopped there, some distance away from the church. The shiny, expensive wooden coffin containing the body of Edvard Kloss had been lifted down and placed on the grass. Most of the relatives who had made up the funeral procession turned around and went home once they reached the gate; there was only the interment left now.

Gerlof saw the two brothers standing on either side of the coffin. Sigfrid and Gilbert had nothing to say to one another today; they stood in silence in their black suits, and it seemed as if there were a grey cloud hanging between them.

However, they had no choice but to work together. The brothers were to carry the coffin over to the grave, along with Bengtsson and Gerlof.

‘Up we go,’ Bengtsson said.

Edvard Kloss had enjoyed his food and the good things in life, and the base of the coffin cut into Gerlof’s shoulder. He set off, taking short steps; he thought he could feel the heavy body moving around inside, as if it were shifting back and forth — or was it just his imagination?

Slowly, they moved towards the grave. Gerlof saw that Aron was now standing by some tall headstones over by the churchyard wall, as if he were hiding.

But he wasn’t alone. A man in his thirties was on the other side of the wall, talking quietly to Aron. He was simply dressed, a bit like a farmhand, and he seemed on edge. When he took a step to one side, Gerlof noticed that he had a slight limp.

‘Davidsson!’ Bengtsson said. ‘Give me a hand with this!’

He had laid out two ropes on the grass. The coffin was placed upon them, then lifted again and positioned above the black grave.

Slowly, slowly, it was lowered into the hole.

When it reached the bottom, the priest picked up a handful of earth from the pile the gravediggers had made. He threw it on to the lid of the coffin as he spoke over the body of Edvard Kloss:

‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Our Lord Jesus Christ...’

The priest threw three more handfuls of earth on to the coffin, committing the deceased to his final rest. When he had finished, Bengtsson and Gerlof picked up their spades.

Before Gerlof began to fill in the grave he glanced at the Kloss brothers. The older brother, Gilbert, was standing behind him as steady as a rock, his hands behind his back. Sigfrid was wandering up and down by the wall, looking a lot more anxious.

Gerlof and Bengtsson shovelled the earth back into the hole. When they had finished they would lay their spades on top in the form of a cross, as was the tradition.

After a little while they took a break. They straightened their backs, took a few steps away from the grave and let out a long breath. Gerlof turned his face up to the sun and closed his eyes.

He could hear something in the silence. A faint sound. He listened carefully.

Knocking. Then silence, then three more faint knocks.

The sound seemed to be coming from the ground.

Gerlof blinked and looked down into the grave.

He glanced over at Bengtsson, and could see from the other man’s tense expression that he had heard the same thing. And the Kloss brothers, who were standing further away, had gone white. Even further away, young Aron had also turned his head.

Gerlof wasn’t going mad — they had all heard the sound.

Time had stopped in the churchyard. There was no more knocking, but everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

Gilbert Kloss walked slowly to the edge of the grave, his mouth hanging open. He stared down at the coffin and said quietly, ‘We need to get him out of there.’

The priest stepped forward, rubbing his forehead nervously.

‘That’s not possible.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Gilbert said.

‘But I’ve just committed his body to the earth!’

Kloss didn’t speak, but his expression was determined. Eventually, another voice from behind said firmly, ‘Get him out.’

It was Sigfrid Kloss.

The priest sighed.

‘Oh, very well, you’d better bring him up. I’ll go and telephone Dr Blom.’

Daniel Blom was one of the two doctors in the parish.

Bengtsson put down his spade, sighed loudly and looked at Gerlof.

‘Will you go down, Davidsson? With Aron?’

Gerlof gazed down into the darkness of the grave. Did he want to go down there? No. But what if Edvard Kloss had woken up and was suffocating inside the coffin? If that was the case, they had to hurry.

He scrambled down into the hole and cautiously stepped on top of the lid, which was covered in soil. He remembered what he had read in his confirmation class, about Jesus’s encounter with Lazarus:

Gerlof listened as hard as he could for any sound from inside the coffin, but there was nothing. However, he didn’t like being down there; the air was icy cold. At some point in the future he too would end up in a place like this. For all eternity. Unless Jesus came along and raised him from the dead.

A scraping noise behind him made him jump, but it was only the boy clambering down on to the lid of the coffin, clutching a spade. Aron Fredh from Rödtorp. Gerlof nodded to him in the darkness.

‘Let’s dig,’ he said quietly.

Aron was staring down at the coffin. He whispered something — just one word.

‘What? What did you say?’

‘America,’ the boy repeated. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

‘Really?’ Gerlof was sceptical. ‘How old are you, Aron?’

‘Twelve.’

‘In that case, you’re too young.’

‘Sven’s going to take me. I’m going to be a sheriff when we get there!’

‘Oh yes?’

‘I’m a good shot,’ Aron said.

Gerlof didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t know who Sven was, but he’d heard of America. The promised land. Things weren’t going too well in America at the moment, with the Wall Street Crash and high unemployment, but the attraction was still there.

At that moment, standing on top of Edvard Kloss’s coffin, Gerlof decided to stop being a gravedigger. He would leave Stenvik and his strict father. He didn’t want to go to America; he would go to sea instead. He would take himself off to Borgholm and get a job on some cargo ship travelling between the island and the mainland.

Do something that would give him more freedom. Become a seaman in the sunshine.

‘How’s it going?’ Bengtsson shouted from above his head. Gerlof looked up.

‘Fine.’

He and Aron, the future sheriff, began to dig, and they quickly cleared all the earth from the lid of the coffin.

‘Done!’

Bengtsson threw down the ropes. Gerlof managed to get them around each end of the coffin, then climbed out of the grave as quickly as he could.

Edvard Kloss was lifted out and carried into the cool sacristy.

‘Put it down,’ the priest said quietly.

The coffin was placed on the stone floor with a scraping sound.

Then there was silence. Edvard Kloss was dead.

And yet he had knocked.

Dr Blom arrived twenty minutes later, carrying his black medical bag. His shirt was soaked in sweat and his face was bright red with the heat, and he was clearly in need of an explanation. He asked just one question, his voice echoing loudly beneath the vaulted stone ceiling: ‘What’s going on here?’

The men waiting in the aisle looked at one another.

‘We heard something,’ the priest said eventually.

‘You heard something?’

‘Yes.’ The priest nodded in the direction of the coffin. ‘A knocking noise from down in the ground... Just when they started filling in the grave.’

The doctor looked at the lid of the coffin, filthy and covered in scratches from the spades.

‘I see. In that case I’d better take a look.’

The Kloss brothers stood in silence as Bengtsson removed the screws and lifted the lid.

Lazarus had spent four days in his grave, Gerlof recalled. ‘Lord, by this time he stinks,’ his sister, Martha, had said to Jesus as they stood before the stone.

The lid was off now. Gerlof didn’t move closer, but he could still see the body, washed and arranged for its final rest. The arms were crossed over the big belly, the eyes were closed and there were black bruises on his face, possibly from the wall that had killed him. But Edvard Kloss was smartly dressed; the corpse was wearing a black suit made of thick fabric.

‘If you dress the deceased as well as you speak of him, he will have a smile on his face when he is lying in his coffin,’ Gerlof’s grandmother used to say.

But Edvard Kloss’s mouth was no more than a narrow, straight line, his lips hard and dry.

Dr Blom opened his leather bag and bent over the corpse; Gerlof turned away, but he could hear the doctor muttering to himself. A stethoscope rattled against the stone floor.

‘No heartbeat,’ the doctor said.

There was silence, then came Gilbert’s voice, sounding strained:

‘Open a vein so we can be absolutely sure.’

That was enough for Gerlof. He went out into the sunshine and stood in the shade of the church tower.

‘Now will you have a beer?’

Bengtsson came over, carrying two fresh bottles.

This time, Gerlof nodded and gratefully accepted a drink. The bottle was ice cold, and he raised it to his lips and drank deeply. The alcohol went straight to his head and slowed down his thought processes. He looked at Bengtsson.

‘Has this happened before?’

‘What?’

‘Have you heard noises before?’

The gravedigger shook his head.

‘Not personally, at any rate.’ He gave a tight little smile, took a swig of his beer and looked over at the church. ‘But of course the Kloss brothers are a bit different... I have a problem with that family. They just take whatever they want. All the time, all over the place.’

‘But Edvard Kloss...’ Gerlof said, struggling to find the right words. ‘He can’t have...’

‘Calm down,’ Bengtsson broke in. ‘This isn’t your problem.’ He had another drink, and added: ‘In the old days, they used to tie the hands together. When someone died, I mean, so that they’d lie still down there in the coffin. Did you know that?’

Gerlof shook his head and didn’t say another word.

After a few moments the church door opened, and Gerlof and Bengtsson quickly hid the bottles of beer. Dr Blom stuck his head out and waved them over.

‘I’ve finished.’

‘And he’s...’

‘He’s dead, of course. No sign of life whatsoever. You can put him back where you got him from.’

The interment was repeated. The coffin was carried out of the church, the ropes were slipped underneath and it was lowered into the grave. Gerlof and Bengtsson started shovelling earth into the hole once more, clutching their spades with a certain amount of grim determination; they were feeling a little unsteady after the beer. Gerlof looked around for Aron Fredh, but both the boy and the man with the limp had disappeared.

Everyone gathered around the grave, including Dr Blom, who was holding tightly on to his leather bag.

The earth thudded against the coffin lid.

Then the sound came again: three sharp raps from down in the ground. Quiet but clear.

Gerlof froze in mid-movement, his heart pounding. Suddenly, he was completely sober, and frightened. He looked across at Bengtsson on the other side of the mound of earth; he, too, had stopped dead.

Sigfrid Kloss looked tense, but his brother, Gilbert, seemed to be absolutely terrified. He was staring at the coffin as if mesmerized.

Even Dr Blom had stiffened at the sound. Gerlof realized the scepticism was gone, but the doctor shook his head.

‘Fill in the grave,’ he said firmly.

The priest was silent for a moment, then he nodded.

‘There’s nothing more we can do.’

The gravediggers had no option but to comply. Gerlof shivered in spite of the sunshine, but he set to work. His spade felt as heavy as an iron bar in his hands.

The earth began to thud against the coffin lid once more; the rhythmic beat was the only sound.

After twenty shovelfuls the lid had begun to disappear beneath a layer of earth.

There was still no other sound in the churchyard.

But, suddenly, someone sighed next to Gerlof. It was Gilbert Kloss, edging towards the grave. The sigh sounded like a long, heavy exhalation; he lifted his feet and moved slowly across the grass. He stopped by the open grave and tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs managed only a thin whistling.

‘Gilbert?’ Sigfrid said.

His brother didn’t reply; he stood there motionless, his mouth open.

Then he stopped breathing, and his eyes lost focus.

Gerlof watched as Gilbert Kloss fell sideways by the grave. He saw Bengtsson simply standing there staring, along with the doctor and the priest.

Sigfrid called out behind them; Gerlof was the only one who rushed forward, but he was still several steps away when Gilbert’s heart stopped beating.

Gilbert’s body fell head first on to the grass beside the grave, rolled slowly over the edge and landed on the lid of the coffin like a heavy sack of flour.