The Circle (58 page)

That’s the worst thing. That he seems so happy to see her. As if what he has just done doesn’t matter.

‘I know you don’t understand now,’ he says, ‘but all I want … the only thing I’ve ever wanted … is for us to be together. We belong together.’

Rage fizzes through her blood. ‘But I don’t,’ she says, and is surprised by how strong and confident her voice is.

Max stops short. He looks hurt. The black smoke writhes around him, sending out long feelers that approach Minoo but pull back at the last moment.

Minoo stands her ground. Her body is filled with unfamiliar signals. Something is swirling in the air around her, flowing in front of her, intoxicating her with its power.

‘Minoo,’ Max says weakly. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m letting go.’

The black smoke between them thickens.

But it’s not just coming from Max. It’s streaming out of Minoo, twisting and churning with long black tentacles.

She’s powerful. She’s a whole army. She’s plugged directly into something that is staggeringly more powerful than she is. They are many. They are one. Together they move towards Max.

He looks at her in panic. He can’t move. The smoke envelops him, stops him running away as she approaches, engulfs them both in a swirling black maelstrom.

‘Please, Minoo,’ Max says, dropping to his knees at her feet. ‘I love you.’

The words don’t move her. She knows what she has to do. Minoo lays her hand on his forehead. She shuts her eyes and sees: the demons’ blessing.

Like a shimmering black aura it surrounds Max. The demons’ magic. The black smoke streaming out of Minoo chokes it.

The aura fades. Eventually there’s nothing left. The blessing is broken.

She feels Max’s life force leaving his body, sucked out by her hand, filling her and making her even stronger and more powerful.

Something is stuck inside Max, something that is struggling to make its way to the surface. She helps it pull itself out.

It’s like a weight that suddenly releases.

And Minoo’s eyes fill with tears, because now she feels it so clearly.

Rebecka. She’s been trapped inside Max. But now her soul radiates through Minoo, fills her with light. All that was her is inside Minoo – and then she’s gone. Free at last.

Soon afterwards comes Elias. Minoo recognises him as if she’d known him all her life, and long before that. His soul passes through her and disappears.

Minoo’s fingers grab Max’s forehead, boring themselves
into
his hair. His body sags and she sinks to her knees beside him as he drops on to his side.

She is filled with him. Impressions, thoughts and feelings, everything that he’s experienced. Everything that is him flows through Minoo, as if picked up by a hitherto unknown sense.

Memories
.

Max drags Linnéa from his car across the playground. Her hands and feet are tightly bound, but she tries to resist.

He opens the door to his house to find an unknown girl with a long black fringe standing outside. She pulls out a gun and tells him he’s going to die for what he did to Elias. But he sees in her hesitation that she won’t shoot. She’s no killer. And he knows that she’s a Chosen One. That she’ll help him find the others. What a gift.

He wakes, as if out of a dream, and sees Minoo in front of him in the classroom. They whisper to him that he has exposed himself. They’re angry but he’s afraid. Afraid she’ll misunderstand, that she won’t realise he’ll never harm her again, that they belong to each other.

The barn is burning and the cows are bellowing in panic. He runs away with
Their
strident voices in his head.
They
threaten to renege on their promise. They won’t let Minoo live after all.

Minoo asks if he can wait for her. He can wait for ever.

He’s in the classroom looking at Anna-Karin: she’s changed so much during the term. He knows how such things happen. Why didn’t he pick up on it sooner?

Minoo is so beautiful when he sees her by the viaduct. He
knows
he shouldn’t but he kisses her anyway. He’s made a new pact with
Them
: they’ll let her live.

The awful moment in the bath when he defied
Them
for the first time.

The first kiss.

Suddenly she’s outside his house and he wonders if he’s dreaming when he sees her.

He discovers that Minoo is the one he must kill.

He rips Rebecka’s soul out of her body as he begs her forgiveness.

She falls.

Rebecka turns and sees his face, sees him as Gustaf.

Rebecka at the City Mall.

He tries out Elias’s power for the first time. Sees himself transformed into Gustaf in the mirror, the one Rebecka trusts, who can get close to her if need be.

He sees Rebecka jogging along, knows that she’s his next victim. They whisper to him that she’s stronger than the first. That he has to prepare himself carefully.

The prophecy was wrong, the voices say. The Chosen Ones are seven. Six left.

He stands outside Minoo’s window, wishing she hadn’t been the one to find Elias. He wonders how she is and wishes he could comfort her.

He watches as the trolley with Elias’s body is rolled out of the school and feels relieved. It’s over.

Through the closed toilet door he hears the mirror shatter.

He enters the classroom and sees Minoo for the first time. Alice is alive again.

*

Minoo becomes aware of yet another weight deep inside Max. Like an anchor that clears the bottom and is slowly being drawn up to the surface.

His soul.

The memories come faster and faster.

He hangs up the poster of Persephone that is so much like Alice it’s painful to look at. A pleasurable self-torture.

So many nights he lies awake and thinks of the awful things he’s committed himself to carrying out. He reminds himself that it’s worth it. Alice is worth it.

From the first moment he hates Engelsfors. The town is like the one where he grew up.

The years of teaching, women who come and go, friends he secretly detests. Those who think that the world is only what you see with the naked eye.

They
have promised he’ll have Alice back. A fresh start.

The years of guilt.

And everything slows down again.

The funeral is like a fog. No one had known she was so unhappy.

The call from the police in the morning. They had found her body on the cliffs below the house.

The party’s in full swing, the music blaring. He’s shaking with adrenalin. The ‘friend’ he’s selected is there. ‘If anyone asks, I’ve been with you all evening,’ Max says, because he’s
suddenly
noticed something new about himself. Still, he’s surprised when he sees his friend’s eyes glaze. Max is giddy with his first taste of magic. Getting others to obey.

He wants her to die. Better that no one has her if he can’t. If only she would just kill herself. He wishes it with all his heart. And that is when she gets up and climbs on to the windowsill. He know he’s making her do it. They look at each other, shocked. It’s just a moment. And she submits to his wish and lets herself fall.

The windows stand wide open to let in the warm summer air and she perches on the sill, her forehead on her knees. She says, ‘Please, Max, go away.’ He tries to convince her that he loves her, that they belong together. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I never want to see you again,’ she says.

Alice, whom he loves so much, who showed him the painting of Persephone. Together they laugh at how alike Alice and Persephone are.

Alice, the very first time he sees her. He knows she’s going to make him happy.

Max’s soul will soon surface. Minoo becomes aware of a scream growing louder and louder, filling her head. It’s Max screaming in pain. She is inflicting that pain.

She can sense the darkness of his childhood and knows that if she doesn’t let go now, she’ll be doing the same to Max as he did to Rebecka and Elias. She’s going to rip out his soul, take everything from him.

Let go
.

And Minoo gently lets go, feels how the weight sinks back
into
the depths. The scream fades out. Everything falls silent.

Minoo opens her eyes.

The black smoke is gone.

She kneels on the floor. Max’s forehead is red where her hand lay. His eyes are closed. His chest is moving slowly.

It’s over
.

58

THE JUNE AIR
is refreshing after the rain, as if someone has thrown the windows wide and aired the world. The ground is still slippery and muddy in places and it’s heavy-going, as Anna-Karin pushes Grandpa’s wheelchair across the farmyard towards the main house. Nicolaus offers to take over, but she refuses: she’s got to do this herself.

Grandpa is staring silently ahead. Anna-Karin is unsure that he recognises her but doesn’t want to ask. His lucid moments come more often now, and she knows he finds it demeaning to be fussed over.

He’s recovering. But her mother refuses to acknowledge it. When Anna-Karin suggested they take him to see the farm one last time, she simply said there was no point. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It would only upset him, assuming he understands where he is.’

Nicolaus helps her get the wheelchair up the front steps. ‘I’ll wait out here,’ he says. ‘Take as much time as you need.’

Anna-Karin looks at him gratefully and unlocks the front door. Luckily it’s wide enough for the wheelchair.

They enter the empty hall. Continue into the kitchen. The
living
room. The front room, which they stopped using after Grandma died.

Nothing hides the blemishes. Wallpaper has come unstuck, paint flakes along the skirting boards, and there are brownish-yellow spots on the ceiling above where her mother used to sit and smoke.

Somehow the rooms look smaller when they’re empty. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

They had once been full of life but now they’re empty. That’s the difference, Anna-Karin thinks. Before it was a home. Now it’s just a house.

Grandpa still hasn’t said a word, but he reaches back and pats Anna-Karin’s hand when they leave the house. Nicolaus helps her down the steps. She’s afraid they’ll accidentally tip the wheelchair so Grandpa falls out and hurts himself. She doesn’t want to imagine what her mother would say if anything happened. She has no idea they’re here – doesn’t even know that Anna-Karin still has a key.

Anna-Karin aims at Grandpa’s cabin and pushes the wheelchair ahead of her. She follows his gaze towards the new building going up where the barn had stood. Jari’s father, who bought the farm, has decided to raise pigs.

‘It doesn’t look the same,’ Grandpa says.

‘No,’ Anna-Karin agrees. ‘It doesn’t.’

It doesn’t smell of coffee in Grandpa’s cabin. When Anna-Karin pushes the wheelchair into the empty kitchen, she wonders if she’s done the right thing in bringing him here. The kitchen, the little bedroom and the shabby bathroom are so dreary and desolate. Anna-Karin looks at Grandpa.
He
seems thoughtful. She pushes him up to the window where he used to sit.

She squats next to him and looks out. They gaze up towards the big house, at the meadows where there are no longer any cows grazing. The early summer twilight glows above the treetops.

It’s beautiful here, Anna-Karin thinks. She understands why Grandma and Grandpa chose this particular farm, on this particular spot, when Engelsfors was a town full of promise.

‘Anna-Karin,’ Grandpa says.

She meets his clear gaze.

‘Staffan wasn’t a bad man,’ he continues. ‘Your father. He was afraid, but he wasn’t bad.’

Anna-Karin is mute. It’s hard for her to get the words out when she asks, ‘Then why did he disappear?’

‘I don’t know. That was between your mother and him. But he loved you, Anna-Karin. He did. In his way.’

‘Not enough,’ she mumbles, and warm tears are running down her cheeks.

Grandpa wipes them away. ‘He was wrong to go, but I don’t think he had a lot of love in him to start with. Mia was drawn to those boys. The ones who didn’t have much to give. But whatever love he had, he gave to you. The little he had to give was yours, Anna-Karin. I’m not saying it was enough, but I want you to know that.’

Anna-Karin takes Grandpa’s hand. His skin is softer than it’s ever been. As if it’s thinned.

‘I’ve worked all my life,’ Grandpa continues. ‘I worked,
ate
and slept, then started again from the beginning. But lately I’ve been thinking. I haven’t been fair to you, Anna-Karin.’

She shakes her head. ‘Don’t say that, Grandpa—’

‘I’m old and I can say what I like. And I’m telling you I did wrong. I closed my eyes to how things were for you. When those young thugs at school were picking on you, Mia always told me to stay out of it, that she’d been bullied, too, and she’d survived. She said I’d only make things worse if I got involved. But I should have anyway.’