The Key (56 page)

They have left chalk marks near already investigated entrances and tried to draw maps of the system. One of the problems is that compasses don’t work inside the mountain. All they have truly learnt is that the system extends much further than they had first thought, and includes old mine shafts and natural passages that run in every direction underneath Engelsfors. Some tunnels have been blocked by rock falls and Anna-Karin has had to clear many of these. Most of the tunnels so far have ended blindly, or narrowed so much that exploration has become impossible. Now, there are only two untried tunnels left.

Step by step, Anna-Karin starts the descent on the other side of the ridge. It is a steep slope that ends on a ledge above a rock face.

‘God, I hate nature,’ Evelina groans from somewhere far behind.

Finally, Anna-Karin stands on the ledge. It is so high that she looks down on the treetops; she is terrified of falling every time she looks.

They had spent a whole day in the tunnels when they found this opening. At first, they thought it was another dead end. But then they saw faint beams of daylight outlining a giant boulder that blocked the way. Despite Anna-Karin’s new strength, it took several tries before it gave way and they were suddenly dazzled by the sunlight that entered. The boulder tipped over the edge and fell to the bottom of the rock face. The mighty crash echoed around the forest.

‘Is it OK if you take the same route as you did yesterday?’ Anna-Karin asks Vanessa and Evelina when they have climbed down to the ledge. ‘And we will test the tunnel underneath the town?’

‘Whatever,’ Vanessa says. She pulls on her mum’s hot pink, quilted winter jacket. ‘They’re all the same.’

‘We don’t know that yet,’ Nicolaus says.

‘Don’t we, though?’ Vanessa asks, and then she sighs. ‘Sorry, just being bad-tempered.’

No need for her to explain why. Tomorrow, they are going to the magistrates’ court in Västerås. Anna-Karin can’t imagine how Vanessa feels about that. Not to mention Linnéa.

‘And there’s definitely nothing to cheer you up inside the caves,’ Vanessa adds.

Anna-Karin nods. She still isn’t sure if it is the cold, the monotony or the lack of real light that makes their time in the caves so exhausting. She hopes this will be their last day here.

Vanessa and Evelina switch their torches on and step into the dark opening first.

Anna-Karin follows them with her eyes while she opens her rucksack and pulls out the woollen sweater and duffel coat she has stuffed into it.

The zip on Rickard’s anorak makes a ripping noise when he pulls it right up to his chin. The frame of his glasses had to be mended with tape after he fell over an old camping stove in one of the passages. Rickard, Gustaf and Nicolaus have spent more time underground than the rest of them. Rickard’s powers have developed quickly. Now, he can sense human energy fields and determine when he is underneath populated areas.

Anna-Karin turns her own torch on and goes inside, followed by the others. Gustaf and Nicolaus have to bend over to move in there. These last few days, Nicolaus has been trailing a strong smell of muscle balm.

She thinks of the time when Engelsfors was a mining town, and remembers photographs of the workforce who spent every day of their working life underground. The ghostly old pictures on display in the local museum, where rows of miners stare gravely into the camera with tired, empty eyes. Little boys, sometimes no older than nine or ten, are lined up in the front row. Their eyes look unnaturally light in their dirty faces.

Anna-Karin allows the darkness and the cold to enclose her as she continues into the mountain.

* * *

The light from Vanessa’s torch plays over the rough, craggy walls of the tunnel.

She shivers despite her jacket, which is so bulky she can hardly move. She has always detested winter clothes. So clumsy, and they don’t even help much. Here, the raw chill quickly finds a way in. And wraps itself like a wet blanket around your body. All warmth is just sucked out. All energy, too. She feels tired already.

Evelina makes her torch float in front of them. She always was a slouch about schoolwork, but seems never to tire of practising her magic powers. Vanessa has also tried to practise but hasn’t managed to levitate again.

‘Do you remember that horror movie we watched, about girls going climbing inside caves?’ Evelina says. ‘And then they got lost and were eaten by monsters? Time to watch it again, don’t you think?’

‘Why not a double-bill with the one about the St Valentine’s Day murderer who hides in old mine shafts?’ Vanessa suggests.

They laugh but their laughter rings false. No amount of laughing can take away the fact that they are living a horror movie. It’s probably a sequel, since Olivia is on her way back, like one of those serial killers who are impossible to kill and never give up.

They have tried to locate her by suspending a pendulum above a map of Engelsfors, but it swung wildly in a way they have never seen before. Mona Moonbeam might have been able to help, but the Crystal Cave is still shut.

Vanessa feels certain that Olivia will have a go at Linnéa first. Minoo might well be the most important, because she is the only one of them that can’t ever be replaced by another witch. But between Linnéa and Olivia it’s personal.

And Olivia isn’t the only threat. There is the court case as well.

Vanessa worries so much about Linnéa. And is furious with her as well. Sometimes, her anger makes her sleepless. Her heart keeps beating too hard.

‘What’s wrong?’ Evelina asks.

‘I was thinking about Linnéa,’ Vanessa says. ‘She must feel terrible about tomorrow.’

‘I don’t get why she broke up with you,’ Evelina says. ‘If I were in her position, I’d want to have someone by my side just now.’

‘But I get it,’ Vanessa tells her. As usual, it’s impossible to stop talking about Linnéa once she has started. ‘She’s such a fucking coward. She’s scared of being hurt. And part of me knows that she has all these issues to cope with. But another part says … What the fuck, come on! Who isn’t scared of being hurt? I mean, does she think that anyone likes it?’

They have arrived at the place where they stopped exploring yesterday; they crawl past the pile of stones that blocked the passage before Anna-Karin shifted them out of the way.

‘She could trust me,’ Vanessa continues. ‘I would have done absolutely anything to help her and it’s so bloody tragic that she won’t see that.’

‘It really is,’ Evelina says.

‘Thanks for listening,’ Vanessa says.

‘No need to thank me. Seriously.’

‘Yes, there is. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. What if this had happened when I couldn’t talk to you? I would have been a wreck. I mean, who else could I have talked to? I never see Minoo these days and Anna-Karin is lovely but isn’t exactly experienced with relationships.’

‘Looks like Nicolaus, then.’ Evelina grins.

The tunnel ceiling is lower now and Evelina allows the torch to land in her hand.

‘Listen,’ she adds. ‘I’m sorry I was such a bitch. Before I knew.’

‘You didn’t have any choice.’

‘Maybe not. But now I know so exactly what it was like for you. Just look at me and Leo.’

Leo had realised immediately that something had changed for Evelina. And drew his own conclusions when she started producing feeble excuses for not being able to see him, had less and less time to talk to him, and obviously had her head full of thoughts that she wouldn’t tell him about. The previous Saturday, he’d got drunk and then called her to say it was over between them.

‘Have you heard any more from him?’ Vanessa asks.

‘Nope. And I don’t think I’d speak to him if he phoned me. It’s impossible to talk to him when he’s convinced I’ve slept around with half of Engelsfors.’

The ceiling rises again and they straighten up. Vanessa rolls her shoulders a little, tries to stimulate the circulation.

‘I thought you’d take it much harder,’ she says.

‘So did I. But the way he behaves is so unsexy. I just can’t take it … Michelle is upset because we don’t hang with her any longer. And Dad is bitter because I’ve stopped going to Örebro. Mum and I have fought more than ever because I’m skipping school all the time, and all I want to say to all of them is like,
Hello, I’m busy trying to save your life and everybody else’s
.

‘You don’t get any gratitude in this job,’ Vanessa tells her.

‘Too true.’

They walk round a bend and suddenly the passage stops.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Evelina says.

Vanessa scans the stone wall in the light of her torch.

‘Maybe the others have found something,’ Evelina suggests, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

Vanessa almost hopes that the others have also hit a dead end. Then they would have run out of places to investigate.

‘Vanessa, look!’ Evelina shines her torch on the cave floor. A wristwatch.

She makes it float up through the air and land in her palm. Once, the watch was gold-coloured, but that outer coating has pretty much disappeared.

Vanessa wonders whose arm used to wear that watch, and where that arm is now. She shudders. Where are all the people whose belongings they have come across?

Vanessa and Evelina search the whole area but find nothing more. Only stone, stone, and more stone.

* * *

Anna-Karin walks along the dark passage beside Nicolaus.

The fox runs ten to twenty metres ahead of them. Now and then, she shares his senses and his curiosity, too.

They are close.

‘There is something different about this tunnel,’ Nicolaus says. ‘Isn’t there?’

‘I think so,’ Anna-Karin replies.

She hears Rickard’s and Gustaf’s voices behind her.

‘Have you talked with Minoo recently?’ Nicolaus asks.

It seems weird that he should ask that, since she and Minoo live in the same house. But they have hardly even seen each other during these last few weeks. Minoo is at the manor house all the time. She hasn’t once come to the caves.

Anna-Karin hears Gustaf laugh at something Rickard has said. Gustaf hasn’t seen much of Minoo either, even though they are together now.

‘She wasn’t back when I went to bed last night,’ she says. ‘And when I got up this morning, she’d already left.’

Secretly, Anna-Karin had felt relieved. These days, their conversations are stilted. Anna-Karin tries to make everything feel as it was before and wants to show Minoo that they’re still friends, still belong together. But it is hard when Minoo won’t speak about what is happening in the manor house. Whenever Anna-Karin asks, she’s evasive, saying that they ‘are just practising’.

‘She doesn’t answer the phone when I call,’ Nicolaus says. ‘She is withdrawing in a way that concerns me very much.’

‘I suppose she might feel she has no choice,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘After that row …’

Then she stops. And asks herself why she should defend Minoo when she’s actually hurt by her behaviour.

‘Things can become very intense in closed groups like the one in the manor house,’ Nicolaus observes. ‘Also, Walter Hjorth seems to be an exceptionally charismatic man.’

Anna-Karin wishes that she could keep a closer eye on the manor house. But the fox is becoming more and more reluctant to go anywhere near it. She understands that it has to do with Walter’s familiar. Lynxes are higher up the food chain.

At least it’s good that Viktor is there. He has promised that he will never allow anyone to harm Minoo.

Suddenly there’s a white flash in front of Anna-Karin’s eyes. She is inside the fox’s mind. His sensitivity to light has responded to something further ahead. Something that shouldn’t be there.

Light.

The fox’s curiosity turns instantly into fear. Anna-Karin opens her eyes and stops. ‘There’s something ahead of us.’

Nicolaus has stopped next to her.

Gustaf catches up with them. ‘What’s up?’ he asks.

‘The fox saw a light.’

‘A light?’ Rickard asks. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I am.’

Then Anna-Karin hears something move and come closer. She just has time to be frightened before she realises that it’s the fox.

‘I have no idea what’s there,’ she says. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t all go on from here.’

‘I’ll join Vanessa and Evelina,’ Gustaf says. ‘If the fox comes with me, you can make him bark if you need help.’

She nods. Gustaf knows just as well as they do that if something dangerous is waiting for them, he is the one of least use. Anna-Karin wonders how it feels to be the only one in the group without powers.

Gustaf walks around a bend and the light from his torch vanishes in the darkness.

‘Let’s go,’ she says to Nicolaus and Rickard.

The stone floor is slippery here. The walls are dripping. Now and then, drops run down the inside of her duffel-coat collar.

Then, she sees it, this time with her own eyes.

A faint light further along.

‘Could it be an opening of some kind?’ Nicolaus asks. ‘An old mine shaft?’

‘No.’ Rickard shakes his head. ‘We are still beneath the town.’

‘And that can’t be daylight,’ Anna-Karin says. The light is far too blue.

She hurries now, almost slipping on the stones. Nicolaus calls her name but she doesn’t care, doesn’t care that the fox was frightened and that she, too, should be. She has to see it. Has to finally find out what it is they have been looking for all these weeks. What has tempted her into the forest, again and again, for such a long time.

Now she sees that the passage ends in a cave. The closer she gets, the stronger the light becomes.

She steps into the cave. And stops.

The ceiling is high. Three metres, maybe more. On the rock wall opposite her, two circles are painted with ectoplasm. One outer, one inner. The circles emit a strong ice-blue radiance that glitters in minerals and deposits on the rock.

Anna-Karin moves towards the circles and steps straight into a puddle.

‘Incredible,’ she hears Nicolaus say behind her.

Anna-Karin walks all the way to the wall and reaches out her hand towards the innermost circle.

‘Be careful,’ Nicolaus says.

The ectoplasm has hardened. Its consistency reminds her of congealed candle-wax. It is very cold. Colder than the mountain itself.