Fire (11 page)

When they are close, Minoo and Anna-Karin glance at Vanessa and look bewildered.

But Ida smirks. She had the same look on her face when she watched while Erik Forslund, Robin Zetterqvist and Kevin Månsson cornered Elias. The same smile as when she starts off lies and half-truths that are going to spread throughout the school like bubonic plague. Linnéa feels like grabbing Ida’s spade and hacking that sneer from her face.

She knows that she must accept that Ida is in the Circle, but she will never forget who Ida truly is: somebody at least as vicious as anyone that the Chosen Ones should stop.

‘What are we waiting for?’ Vanessa asks in a throaty voice. ‘Are we supposed to dig up a grave, or what?’

Ida watches as Minoo’s face takes on its self-important, professorial look.

‘I have brought three spades and Ida has one,’ she announces.

As if the fact that Ida is standing there with exactly
one
spade in her hand wasn’t instantly obvious.

‘So we don’t have one spade each, but someone must keep a lookout anyway.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Linnéa says.

Nobody minds, Ida least of all. She is simply grateful to lose that mind-reading freak.

It’s fair to say that there’s no one Ida detests more. Linnéa gives her a pain, she’s always shouty and annoying. Above all, totally mental. She thinks that she’s so special with her offbeat clothes and make-up and has obviously missed the point that normal people think all weirdos look identical.

As Ida follows the others towards the grave, her hand clutches the wooden handle of the spade. She is last in the line and feels prickly, as if the back of her neck was being tickled by a feather, as she senses the darkness behind her and all that might be hiding in it.

She fixes her eyes on Vanessa’s blonde head. Doesn’t want to look at the gravestones as they walk past. And especially doesn’t want to think about the corpses that are rotting down
there, worms crawling through eye sockets and between ribs. Doesn’t want to think what might have been buried in the grave they are going to dig up. Doesn’t want to think ahead about them digging up a horrid stinking grave at all.

I don’t want to be part of this. I don’t want to be part of this. I don’t want to be part of this.

Ida has always hated the dark. When she was little it could take hours before she went to sleep. She would lie in bed, listening out for the slightest sound, carefully wrapping herself up in the duvet, not daring to have an arm or leg uncovered. Too scared to close her eyes, too scared to get out of bed, too scared to stay put.

Sometimes she would call out for her mum or dad. One of them would turn up in the doorway, sighing, still half asleep and tell her that the dark wasn’t dangerous. That everything was just the same as during the day.

As if daytime life was totally safe and didn’t hold anything frightening. As if it isn’t worse when someone out to do something bad to you can hide away, concealed in the darkness. Like murderers and paedophiles. Rabid fighting dogs and drug addicts.

Erik, Julia and Felicia have never noticed this. Ida has become an expert at pretending to sleep. On taking deep, regular sleepy breaths as she lies with her eyes wide open, scanning the darkness.

She has no intention whatsoever of letting the others in the Circle notice that she is afraid of the dark, but is prepared to bet that Linnéa has been fishing in her mind already and picked it up.

It makes sense. Obviously, Linnéa would use her power to get at Ida.

Vanessa stops so suddenly that Ida nearly walks into her.

They have arrived at the grave.

Everyone holds still for a moment. Ida feels the feather on the back of her neck again. She takes a few steps towards the gravestone so that Vanessa stands between her and the dark.

Minoo opens the sports bag.

‘I did a search online and it seems the coffin should be about two metres below ground,’ Minoo says and grabs a spade.

‘
Two metres
,’ Vanessa groans as she too takes a spade and probes the ground tentatively. ‘Shit. Anna-Karin, since earth is your element, can’t you just say abracadabra and make the soil disappear?’

‘Yours is air, so you might as well blow it away,’ Anna-Karin replies quietly.

Vanessa puts her foot on the spade and lifts a large lump of dry soil with scorched grass on top. Ida shivers despite the warm summer night. In this case, anyway, she is with Nicolaus. It’s all so wrong, for lots of reasons.

Anna-Karin and Minoo push their spades in, too.

Ida swallows hard, reminds herself why she is here and what the book has promised her. She goes next to Minoo and starts digging.

It is much harder work than she had expected. Their spades get in each other’s way all the time. But, just as when she is riding, the physical effort creates a kind of trance. She becomes a digging robot that pulls the spade up, drives it in, heaves at the dried-out, lumpy soil and throws it to the side.

The deeper they dig, the moister and heavier the soil becomes. Earthworms and insects try to crawl and creep away, but they haven’t a hope against Ida’s spade. She crushes each one if she can reach, pretending they are her enemies whom she exterminates, one after the other.

Felicia. Robin.

Linnéa. All the Chosen Ones get a taste of her spade.

Erik, too. And Julia, because she’s such a nuisance.

As the hole grows deeper, they have to take turns, two at a time. Naturally fatso Anna-Karin is panting and wheezing. Minoo presumably never exercises except for lifting books.

In the end, only Ida and Vanessa carry on digging. It has turned into a competition. The only sounds are their heavy breathing and the rasping of metal against grit.

Ida homes in on an unusually fat earthworm and drives the edge of the spade down to chop it up. The spade hits a hard surface. Both Ida and Vanessa stiffen.

‘The coffin,’ Minoo whispers.

Ida panics. She has to get out of the grave. Now, now, now! She jettisons the spade, holds up her hands.

‘Help me up!’ she hisses.

Minoo and Anna-Karin hesitate. They exchange a glance, then Minoo kneels and lets Ida grip her hands. She clings to them, scrabbles for footholds on the walls of the hole while clods of earth loosen and fall to the bottom. Finally, she is on firm ground, feeling the rough grass against her bare knees. Her heart is galloping.

Vanessa carries on clearing the lid of the coffin, cool as anything; must be violating graves on a weekly basis at least.

‘Take care, you might break through it,’ Minoo says. ‘Old wood can be brittle.’

‘It doesn’t look that old,’ Vanessa replies.

She is right. The dark wood of the coffin lid gleams in the moonlight. It looks as good as new, as if the coffin was buried only a few hours earlier.

Vanessa throws her spade up on the grass and bends over the coffin, letting her hands slide over the smooth surface.

‘There’s magic here. I sense it,’ she says as her fingers fumble along the edges. ‘How are we supposed to open this sodding thing?’

‘Can’t you see how sick all this is?’ Ida says. ‘We can’t open a coffin just like that! I don’t fancy checking out some rotting corpse!’

When she gets to the bit about the corpse, her voice cracks. It always gives her away when she is upset.

‘What did you think you’d find in a grave, really? An Easter egg?’ Vanessa snaps.

Her legs and arms are streaked with soil. There is a grimy line across her forehead, where she has wiped sweat off with a dirty hand.

Minoo extracts a crowbar from her bag and hands it to Vanessa.

‘We don’t know what’s in that coffin. Maybe it isn’t a corpse,’ Minoo says.

But Ida hears the dread under Minoo’s preachy tones.

Vanessa takes the crowbar and tries to lever the lid open.

‘It’s stuck!’

Suddenly Ida feels something soft against her leg. She can’t hold back her scream. It echoes across the cemetery. She tramps wildly up and down with her feet and stares at the ground. The green eye of Cat stares back at her. It is grinning. Cats normally don’t grin, but Ida is positive this bloody awful animal is doing exactly that.

‘What’s your problem?’ Vanessa asks, as she throws the crowbar out of the grave before clambering up.

Ida feels her rage coming to the boil. Most of all she would like to kick Cat, it’s so revolting. But it is an animal after all, though a shabby, ugly one.

Anna-Karin picks up Cat and holds it in her arms. Her fingers stroke the tufty fur and bare patches of skin. Ida simply can’t bear to watch.

‘What are you up to, pussy cat?’ Anna-Karin coos.

Then she suddenly stops talking.

Something has caught her eye. Ida turns to look and immediately feels enormously relieved.

Nicolaus.

He will put a stop to all this.

Cat begins to twist in Anna-Karin’s arms and she lets it down at once. It sneaks in behind the gravestone. Anna-Karin wishes that she could hide, too.

Nicolaus is walking across the cemetery. Linnéa is jogging along after him.

No one speaks. There is nothing to say. They have gone behind Nicolaus’s back. Lied to him. Nicolaus, who has never betrayed them.

He stops at the edge of the gaping hole. Stares at it, standing still, as if frozen to the ground.

‘Forgive us,’ Anna-Karin says.

‘Honestly, we had no choice,’ Linnéa says breathlessly.

Nicolaus looks up and meets Anna-Karin’s eyes. He doesn’t seem angry, only resigned.

‘I cannot criticise you for this,’ he says. ‘And I realise I ought not to have attempted to hinder you. My courage failed me. But not without reason. I do not know what is in that coffin, but whatever it is terrifies me to the depths of my soul.’ He sighs heavily. ‘But, whatever it is, I must have wanted to find it. I cannot escape.’

Cat interrupts by drawn-out meowing. It emerges from behind the gravestone and pads towards Nicolaus, sits down just in front of the grave and looks up at him. Its tail twitches from side to side. Nicolaus kneels down.

Around them, the silence seems to grow thicker. Nicolaus reaches out and Cat rubs its head against his hand. Anna-Karin can almost see the magic bond between them.

‘No,’ Nicolaus mumbles and lifts his hand to his throat, as
if he suddenly finds breathing difficult. ‘No, no, I cannot …’

Cat meows again. Tears are streaming from Nicolaus’s eyes.

‘No,’ he whispers. ‘I cannot …’

‘What’s going on?’ Ida asks impatiently.

Nicolaus looks up, but seems evasive, even ashamed.

‘You must all leave this place. Please. I beg you.’

Anna-Karin feels as cold as ice. She doesn’t want to walk away. She wants to
run
away from here. Something is very wrong.

‘We’re going nowhere,’ Linnéa says.

Cat rubs itself against Nicolaus’s knees and begins to purr softly.

Nicolaus closes his eyes and bends his neck. He lifts Cat and holds it in his arms as if it were a baby. Its purring gets louder.

‘Forgive me, forgive, forgive …’ Nicolaus whispers over and over again, his lips pressed close to Cat’s ear.

He places his hand over Cat’s eyes.

Cat’s meowing sounds pained. The paws shudder a few times. Then its body goes limp and its head slumps. The bond between Cat and Nicolaus is broken for ever.

Anna-Karin’s eyes fill with tears as Nicolaus lowers the lifeless body to the ground in front of the grave. Cat’s single eye is still wide open.

‘
Memento mori
,’ Nicolaus whispers.

A crackling noise comes from inside the hole. Then one more. And another. It sounds like hailstones pattering against a roof.

Anna-Karin takes a few steps closer to the open grave. The others follow her.

The lid of the coffin is cracking and falling apart. Torn chunks of wood become sticks which become flakes that
dissolve into nothingness. Anna-Karin is aware of the magic flowing out of the grave. She senses something in the air, something shimmering. It whirls towards Nicolaus and wraps him in a swarm of sparks that gradually fade.

Anna-Karin leans forward over the hole again.

Left inside the coffin are only shards of bone, blackened and porous. As she watches, they, too, fall apart into a fine dust. Instinctively, Anna-Karin covers her nose and mouth with her hands to keep herself from breathing in dust and death.

She casts a sidelong glance at Nicolaus, who is sitting curled up near the grave and staring into it.

‘Nicolaus? What’s happened?’

Nicolaus takes his time to answer.

‘I remember,’ he says in the end.

‘What do you remember?’

Nicolaus slowly straightens up and looks at her.

It is Nicolaus and yet it is not. The uncertain look has gone. It has been replaced by infinite suffering.

‘Everything,’ he replies.

Minoo observes Nicolaus. He gets up, drags his hand through his hair. That gesture is so characteristic of him. And yet, he is not really the same.

‘My entire life,’ he says. ‘Everything has come back to me.’

He falls silent. Sways.

‘It’s too much to …’

‘Just try to keep calm,’ Anna-Karin says.

Nicolaus laughs briefly. It is an alien sound.

Minoo still observes him. She is worried. Better than most, she knows the power of memories. And to have your whole life back in one go … perhaps Nicolaus is suffering a massive brain overload?

‘You will learn all,’ he assures them. ‘But not here, where anyone might be listening.’

He gently lifts Cat’s dead body, slowly strokes its ragged fur.

‘It wanted you to, didn’t it?’ Anna-Karin asks in a choked voice. ‘What I mean is, it asked you to do this.’

‘It’s true,’ Nicolaus replies. ‘The life of my familiar should have ended long ago. But it stayed behind faithfully. Now, it can finally find rest.’

Nicolaus carefully places the small body in the grave. Then he takes a spade and starts shovelling down earth. Minoo gets hold of a spade, too, even though she has hardly any strength
left in her arms. Together with Vanessa and Linnéa, the hole is quickly filled in. When that is finished, they try to smooth the top layer of soil as best they can.