The Shapeshifters (16 page)

Now there were two dots, suspended beside each other in the darkness.

‘There's something there,' Susso said.

Gudrun's hand trembled as she moved the arrow to the next file, so Cecilia took over the mouse again. Susso had pulled her sleeves down over her hands and was sitting leaning towards the screen, looking closely.

On the next photo both dots were enclosed in an oval of faint light that could only be a face. No one said a word. They just stared at the screen while Cecilia clicked with the mouse.

‘Someone's coming,' said Gudrun, twisting her bracelet round and round her wrist.

Yes, someone was coming. Its eyes were shining white from beneath the hood of its jacket. It was an old man, a very small old man: the snow came up to his chest. His arms were open wide and he was wearing gloves.

The camera had taken a picture every ten seconds and the tiny figure was visible on a total of eleven, if you included the first ones showing only his eyes: seven as he walked towards the camera and two as he walked, or rather ran, off.

He could be seen most clearly in the seventh photograph. He was standing to the side of the shot, and his face glowed white in the cascade of infrared light.

He was not deformed exactly, but he had an unusual appearance,
to say the least. His eyes were set far apart and deep in their sockets, and his nose was lumpy and large. Sparse white bristles protruded from his wrinkled cheeks and his chin.

Susso phoned Edit immediately, standing in the kitchen, staring at the laptop. Gudrun and Cecilia could not take their eyes off the screen.

For a long time Edit was silent at the other end of the line. Then she wanted to know what they planned to do next. Susso didn't know how to answer that. She was completely thrown and filled with conflicting emotions. She could barely keep still.

Her mother and her sister were involved in a lively discussion, and because she wanted to have her say she ended the phone call with a promise to ring the next day.

Cecilia agreed that the little man in the photographs looked strange—not even human, in fact—but she refused to believe it could be a troll. Or a gnome, for that matter.

‘It could be a kid,' she said. ‘Dressed up. Ella and I have been looking at masks online and they're so bloody realistic.'

‘A kid?' Susso said, pointing at the screen. ‘At nineteen minutes past five in the morning?'

‘Well, it's a dwarf then,' said Cecilia, wide-eyed. ‘He might actually look like that. It can be hormonal, you know.'

She angled the screen to get a better look at the picture.

‘If I looked like that, I would only go out at night as well.'

‘If that's the case, then wasn't it a dwarf Granddad saw too?' Susso exclaimed.

Cecilia took a deep breath and rolled her eyes. She took her mobile out of her pocket and looked at it.

‘I've got to go home,' she said abruptly.

But Susso had no intention of letting her get away that easily.

‘So you don't think it's remarkable that he turns up here, in this very village, just a hundred kilometres or so from the place where Granddad took his photo?'

‘I hadn't thought of that,' Gudrun said, in surprise.

Cecilia stared at her phone, shaking her head.

‘You are completely bloody unbelievable . . .'

‘No,
you're
the one who's unbelievable,' muttered Susso.

Finally Cecilia looked up, her cheeks glowing red as she smiled.

‘Susso,' she said, ‘what do you want me to do?'

‘You could at least be a bit interested.'

‘But I'm telling you, I've got to get home to Ella!'

When Susso returned to her own flat upstairs she paced the floor in an attempt to calm herself down. She sent a text to Torbjörn. She didn't want to tell him about the photo over the phone, so they arranged to meet on the Friday at Safari.

That was where they used to go when they were together. It had been their favourite thing to do, sitting upstairs leafing through the papers, drinking coffee and playing games on their mobiles. Then he had moved to Luleå. He had been offered a place on some course at Luleå University of Technology. He had not said a word to her about applying, and she knew he had done it to get away from her and the family trouble at Riksgränsen. When she had confronted him he had asked if she wanted to go with him, but without really meaning it—he hadn't even tried to persuade her. Bloody Torbjörn.

 

 

Seved knew he would never be able to snatch a child. It would be easiest if he got Börje to do it for him.

Börje, who had done it before.

Although he had not snatched Seved.

There was a memory, and that was of being picked up, but he had no memory of crying or shouting, and that was strange because it would have been reasonable to expect that. Perhaps it had all been too much for him. He remembered hunger, or perhaps it was nausea. He was carried for an eternity. He vomited and saw his vomit run like porridge down a hairy back, a rough bark of grey skin covered with long hair hanging like tassels.

It was an image that never faded. That could never fade.

A hand, heavy as a log, had held him, and the nails sprouting from the tops of its fingers were claws that occasionally dug about in his mouth, forcing in bilberries and lingonberries, and bitter fungi that he was unable to swallow. It was only in the darkness that he had dared to look at the enormous wrinkled face turned towards him, with its small, single amber eye edged with slime. A fly crawled into the gluey mucus but still the eye did not blink. It was always watching.

He wasn't sure now if that had been Karats or Skabram. It definitely wasn't Luttak because his pelt was almost entirely grey, or so Börje had said, and the one who had carried him was dark.

It could also have been the fourth hairy old-timer.

Urtas.

The one who had disappeared without trace.

Ejvor had told Seved that he had been carried off by mistake and that he had to live with them until they could find his mother. He remembered that so well. She was gentle and friendly as she explained that it was hard to find his mother because no one had contacted the police to say they had lost a boy. And the huge creature had carried him all the way up to Norrland, so he was far away from home.

They would just have to wait.

And he waited.

Then came the moment that was far worse than the moment when the huge creature lifted him up.

Ejvor had been standing with her back to him, doing something at the sink. He had been quite big, seven or eight at least, and he had asked her something about his mother. He could not recall what it was.

She had turned round and looked at him severely, and said that he had to stop going on about a mother because now there was no other mother. She was his mother.

He had always lived with them.

‘You've got such a vivid imagination.'

 

 

An aroma of coffee and cardamom met Susso as she walked into the cafe, and there was a din coming from the open kitchen door. A huge blackboard hung on the wall. She stood looking at it for a while, counting her money in her head. There was not a lot left in her account. She would prefer not to know how little. She was hungry but would have to settle for a drink. She ordered a Christmas latte. It had the flavour of spicy gingerbread and was laced with mulled wine. Holding it in her hand, she tramped up the old staircase.

He was sprawled on the red velvet sofa, tapping the keys of his mobile. His shiny black curls were sticking out from the edge of his white beanie hat. On the table was a can of Coke and beside it his tin of snus, with two crumpled pouches on the lid. She remained standing with her glass of coffee until he got up and gave her a hug. It was a stiff hug with one arm. A sour smell of snus came from his mouth.

Susso put her glass on the table and undid her jacket.

‘Talk about slippery out there,' said Torbjörn, sitting up straight. Typically he had already started grinning at the story he was about to tell.

‘I was coming home from work between shifts and it was okay until I got to the Statoil junction. Then I got into this massive great skid. And then that little hill, you know where I mean? I
hardly made it up there. Sliding about all over the place. Then I kind of swerved all the way to the hunting school, where I made the final skid, landed on the wrong side of the road and of course there was this car coming and it didn't get out of the way and I couldn't move, so it was a right pile-up. Well, sort of.'

‘Sort of?' said Susso, and took a gulp of coffee.

‘She got a small dent and my car was totally okay,' he said, with a lopsided grin.

As he tapped out texts on his mobile Torbjörn told Susso a few more stories, but soon he noticed that Susso was hardly listening. He put his phone down on the table and looked at her. He had grey eyes and between his eyebrows was a scar, a small pothole.

‘What's the matter?' he asked.

Susso reached out for his snus tin, shook off the used pouches and opened the lid.

‘Something's happened,' she said quietly.

 

 

It was not even half past five in the morning when Seved was woken up by the loud flush of the toilet. Almost immediately there were two heavy thumps on his door, so he got up, nauseous with exhaustion.

Börje had been right. Barking dogs, grunts and tormented bellowing had kept them awake for most of the night. The car chassis had squealed and he had heard a window being smashed.

Freezing cold, Seved got dressed and went down to the kitchen, zipping up his fleece jacket. He saw through the window that the rear lights of the Volvo were on and Börje was standing out there, scraping the windows. The Isuzu was lying on its side, its roof a white wall.

Börje and Seved sat more or less in silence for the entire journey, and it was a long one: three hundred kilometres to Jokkmokk, and then maybe ten more on the road that curved alongside the river. The atmosphere in the car was strange. They had never spoken before about anything other than practicalities, and although neither of them wanted to admit it, something had changed between them since Börje had told Seved about Signe. Seved had been coming to his own conclusions during the night, and Börje knew that, of course. But he probably thought it was just as well, that it was about time. Either that or he had reached a point where he no
longer cared. He didn't bring it up, and Seved did not ask. Deep inside, he wanted to know nothing about it.

So nothing was said.

The humped peaks of the mountains that had been huddled gently on the horizon were now increasing in height, and Seved realised they were getting closer. A peculiarly thick fog had drifted up from the lake, which was half covered in ice, and it lay ghostlike across the road that wound down the steep fir-clad slopes of the mountains. When they turned off the main road the pallid mist followed them a short way into the trees.

The forest road was narrow, and after a couple of hundred metres it was blocked by a barrier. Seved ran out and opened it. Torsten knew they were coming and so he had left it unlocked.

The tyres crunched on the crusty snow as they steered through the forest, with tall starved spruces on each side. It was a deep, wild forest, ancient and full of dead wood.

Soon they saw the farm: a collection of white-hatted blocks against a dark fringe of fir trees whose tops had all been blow-dried in the same direction. A few silvery-grey wooden sheds were keeping their distance from the other buildings. A thin band of smoke was rising from the house's chimney.

Börje pointed to the barn, and Seved leaned forwards to see.

The frost had edged its way far up the unpainted timber. It looked as if someone had started applying white paint to the logs but had stopped halfway up. There was a window with four panes on the side wall, and that was also white, blinded by the cold. Where the panes met it resembled a faded cross.

Up on the roof's ridge something was standing.

A small figure in a green anorak with the hood up.

Puzzled, Seved wondered if a child had climbed onto the roof.

But naturally it was no child.

It was only that Seved wasn't used to seeing the shapeshifters wearing clothes.

‘How many are there exactly?' he asked, without taking his eyes from the little figure on the roof.

‘Lots,' answered Börje, and changed down a gear before the final uphill stretch.

Then he added:

‘And they live in the house. Well, not Luttak, of course. But the others.'

‘They have the shapeshifters indoors?'

‘Only the small ones.'

‘That one doesn't look very small,' said Seved, nodding at the roof, where the creature had now moved back along the snow-covered tiles on the ridge so it could watch the approaching car.

‘Yes, well, that one's a different matter,' Börje said, darting a look at the barn as he turned the wheel, letting his hands cross. ‘He comes and goes as he likes.'

Seved looked away and faced rigidly ahead, taking care not to stare.

They parked between an old van and a large yellow tractor with frost-covered, studded ice chains draped around the wheels. Inside a compound the dogs were leaping around each other. Their barking and howling was deafening, and to make himself heard Seved was forced to shout as they got out of the car.

‘How long will it take, do you think? Shall I connect the engine warmer?'

A tall and slightly crooked man in oil-splattered overalls came walking stiffly towards them from the barn. Seved realised it was Torsten, whom he had heard about all his life but had never met.
He had thin grey hair and unshaven cheeks, and the skin under his eyes was darkened by wrinkles. Without greeting them he asked tersely if they had locked the barrier after them, and Börje nodded.

He was alone. The others had gone to the village, he said, opening the door that led to the kitchen. The doors were unpainted and had old-fashioned locks and doorknobs. There was no electric cooker, only a wood-burning stove with a pearl-white microwave standing on it, and a coffee machine perched on top of that. The old floorboards were grey and covered with narrow rag rugs. Across the ceiling ran a fabric-covered flex, hanging in deep loops and leading to a lamp that hung low and had a thin shade made of what looked like hand-blown glass. On the wall above the wooden sofa was a wall hanging with the embroidered text: PEACE THROUGH THE BOND OF UNITY.