Let The Old Dreams Die Part 10

'Evening,' he said, and gave a start when he saw Joel. 'How are you?'

'Not too bad,' said Joel, running a hand over his face. 'Did you bring some of your...kit?'

'Sure. Left it downstairs. I see what you mean.'

'The building's listing?'

'Yes. I mean, there's nothing to worry about. But it does seem quite p.r.o.nounced. Shall we have a look at it straightaway?'

They went down in the lift and Joel felt as if he was moving through a sloping shaft. La.s.se took up virtually no room. He wasn't a rough builder with hairy armpits, but the small sinewy type. He said, 'As I mentioned before, it's nothing unusual, but I thought you said it was listing towards the east. It just seemed to me to be more... well, bowed.'

'It was listing yesterday.'

La.s.se looked at him and grinned. 'Maybe tomorrow it will have turned around.'

Joel didn't crack a smile. 'Yesterday it was listing, and today it's bowed.'

'Yes, yes,' said La.s.se in a tone of voice that suggested Joel's judgment might not be entirely reliable.

They went outside and La.s.se mounted a theodolite on a stand; it was calibrated by turning small wheels.

'We've got digital versions nowadays, but I prefer these.' He patted the theodolite and looked through the lens. Joel kept his eyes fixed on the facade of the apartment block. Windows in darkness, windows with the lights on. They were trying to tell him something, but he couldn't grasp it. Anita's apartment was still in darkness.

La.s.se puffed and turned the wheels. He took a step away from the theodolite, stood beside Joel and looked at the apartment block.

'Well,' he said. 'That's quite something. It's like a bow. Incredible. As I said before: the building isn't about to fall down, it's a long way from that, but I think you should be prepared to move out quite soon. This will have to be sorted out, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have to knock the whole lot down. I've never seen anything like it.'

Windows in darkness, windows with the lights on. What does it mean?

Joel turned his attention back to La.s.se and asked, 'How could this have happened?'

La.s.se scratched his head.

'To be honest, I don't know. The thing is, it's just as if something is...pulling at the building from below. But that level of strength, that torsion...no, I don't know. Maybe they cut some corners when they were building the middle section.'

'It was listing yesterday.'

'Well, in that case I have no idea what's going on. That means the power has shifted, you see. Yesterday it was on the left-hand side, today it's on the right. But that pressure...no. If you could imagine an invisible s.p.a.ceship the same size as the building, sitting up on the roof altering its position, then yes. By the way, they didn't have the film I was talking about, so I got Armageddon instead-is that OK?'

'Yes, sure.'

'Shall we go back inside?'

'You go. I'll be there in a minute.'

La.s.se folded up the stand and took it inside with him. Joel stayed where he was, gazing up at the windows and squinting as if he were trying to make out blurred handwriting. Suddenly he saw it. Just as if two pictures had been placed on top of one another, he saw it: the pattern of dark and illuminated windows was exactly the same as the previous evening.

Did that necessarily mean anything? People have their routines, after all. His own lights had been on at this time yesterday, and they were on now. Besides, there was one difference: the bathroom light was on in the apartment below his. It hadn't been on yesterday.

He suddenly felt very frightened. He hurried back inside and unlocked Anita's door without hesitation. He switched on the hall light and saw junk mail and bills strewn across the floor. He pulled a face as he recognised the rent demand from the company that owned the building.

They shouldn't be asking for money. They should be paying.

He placed the post on the hall stand and stood hesitating for a moment; he was waiting for something, but he didn't know what it was. Of course-Anita's cat, Trisse. He was waiting for Trisse to come rubbing round his legs as usual. He peered into the cat basket in the hall where Trisse usually lay relaxing. It was empty.

'h.e.l.lo? Anita?'

There's nothing intrinsically unpleasant about an empty apartment. But shouting for someone you know ought to be there is unpleasant. Because that means the person is lying dead somewhere, and you don't know where. That's just the way it is. Joel clenched his fists and steeled himself. The outdoor clothes and shoes Anita usually wore were in the hallway. Her keys were hanging on the hook just inside the door. She was here.

Anita, Anita...

His eyes were p.r.i.c.king and his heart contracted. He didn't want Anita to be dead. In fact, if he thought about it, he would rather be dead himself. He put his hands to his mouth, staring at the cat basket, and tears blurred his vision. He hadn't realised how important she was to him. Now he knew. He would rather be dead himself, if he had the choice. That's how important she was.

But Trisse wasn't here. If Anita was lying dead, a hungry Trisse should have come running to meet him. It was only two days since Joel was last here-the cat couldn't have starved to death in that time.

But the coat, the shoes, the keys...

He took a tentative step forward. In an attempt to suppress the fear threatening to take over his body, he started to sing quietly: 'The water is wide...'

The living room. He switched on the light. On the coffee table there was a pile of magazines that Anita got from a colleague at the hospital, because she enjoyed doing the crosswords. One lay open next to a half-full ashtray. It was the same crossword that had been lying there two days ago. She had asked him a question: 'Mooring, seven letters, starts with C and ends with N', and he had answered, 'Capstan'. No new words had been filled in since he last saw the crossword.

'I cannot get over...'

His legs didn't want to move. He forced them to walk to the kitchen, poised to close his eyes if it was horrible. The dirty dishes were in the sink, just as before. There was one additional item. A half-full coffee cup on the kitchen table. The coffee machine was switched on. The jug crackled as he picked it up and looked at the hot, burnt crust in the bottom.

'And neither have I wings to fly...'

He knew her morning routine. She put the coffee on as soon as she got up. Then she read the paper until the coffee was ready. The paper lay open on the table. When she had drunk half a cup of coffee and smoked her first cigarette of the day, she needed a pee and went to the bathroom.

'Build me a boat that will carry two...'

He actually started to feel ill as he left the kitchen and headed for the bathroom, raising his voice.

'And both shall row...'

Whatever had taken place, it had happened in the morning after he left her at about seven-thirty, and before she went to work at nine. The bathroom door was closed but not locked. His heart was pounding in his head and he felt as he if was about to faint as he placed his hand on the door handle and sang as loud as he could, 'MY LOVE AND I...'

He yanked open the door. The bathroom was empty. In the light from the living room he could see something glinting on the floor. The pressure in his head eased, he started breathing again and sang quietly, 'There is a ship that sails the sea...'

He switched on the bathroom light. Whatever it was must have happened in the morning, because all the lights were off. In the mornings the daylight was enough in the apartment. He went over to the object on the floor and picked it up. Anita's gla.s.ses. She never went anywhere without her reading gla.s.ses. When she wasn't using them she pushed them up on top of her head, her hair holding them in place. He looked around the bathroom.

'It's loaded deep-'

His jaws stiffened, stuck fast. The lid of the toilet was open. The inside of the bowl was streaked with red, as if someone had been p.i.s.sing blood. Down at the bottom was a dark red, gooey mess moving slowly up and down, up and down. Like breathing. Rising and falling, rising and falling.

He backed out of the bathroom, still clutching Anita's gla.s.ses in his hand. When he reached the living room they snapped in half. He raised his hand, gazed at the two monocles and hurled them away.

Red rising.

The image of a thermometer flashed through his mind. The column of mercury slowly rising. He had stopped thinking. There was something he wanted to check, a suspicion he wanted to confirm. His body numb, he left the apartment and went up to the first floor as if he was walking on stilts. Opened a letter box and peered inside. Letters and junk mail.

He went up the next floor. Letters and junk mail. Third floor, fourth floor, same thing. No one was home. No one had been at home since early the previous day. There were no people in the building.

But the children, the children...

On the fifth floor the post looked different. The same advertising leaflets were uppermost, but they weren't lying on top of yesterday's paper. The residents had picked up the mail yesterday. But not today.

It's...rising.

Still stunned, he carried on up the stairs as if he was walking on stilts, or like a marionette, dangling from a string. He had to know. It wasn't until he reached the seventh floor, just below his own, that the post had been picked up. He rang the doorbell. No one answered.

He stood there with his arms dangling by his sides, the throbbing pulling at his temples, and the fear took hold of him, squeezed him. Now he understood why he had felt as if someone was watching him down in the entrance hall. He wasn't being watched, he was enclosed in something...alive. Something that was rising.

La.s.se!

His legs jerked as if he had received an electric shock and he ran up the stairs to his own apartment. The staircase was listing, and he ran along a corridor of tunnel vision, a ghost tunnel. They had to get out of here, now. As he hurled himself through the door of his apartment he saw the thing he wanted to see least of all.

La.s.se was in the toilet with the door open, just zipping himself up.

'Joel, what the h.e.l.l...'

'Get away from there!' Joel yelled. 'Get out of the bathroom!'

La.s.se grinned and pushed the handle to flush the toilet. There was a hollow clicking sound from the empty cistern, and La.s.se said, 'Looks as if you've got a problem with-'

He got no further. A black snake shot up out of the toilet, wound itself around both his legs. La.s.se shouted and threw out his arms. Joel grabbed one hand, but the strength that was pulling against him was so immense that he might as well have tried to stop a runaway train with his fingertips. He had barely got a grip when his friend's hand was wrenched free and La.s.se was thrown inwards at an angle like a rag doll.

There was a cold crack as both of his kneecaps were smashed against the bowl, and the next moment both legs were in the toilet. La.s.se's eyes were wide open, his mouth gaping in a silent scream. He managed to grab the wine container with one hand, but in half a second the whole of his lower body was down in the toilet, and the container tipped over, its contents surging across the floor as La.s.se's body was dragged down through the impossibly small hole.

His eyes bulged out of his head with the pressure and the pain. They were looking into Joel's eyes without seeing. When his hips shattered something in the pupils was extinguished, and La.s.se was no longer aware of what was happening.

Everything happened so fast that the wine container wasn't even empty by the time his chest collapsed with the sound of falling trees, breaking branches, and La.s.se's head vanished out of sight below the rim.

Without knowing what he was doing- have to look -Joel moved over to the doorway as the wave of wine reached the threshold. He saw La.s.se's head being dragged down towards the hole, but it wouldn't go through. His ears were folded back against his cheeks, and the skin on his face was such a dark shade of red that it was almost black.

The wine poured through the door and soaked Joel's shoes just as La.s.se's head was torn from his body and floated a few centimetres up the bowl on a backwash of red sludge. His hair was still undisturbed. His evening coiffure, shaped with mousse, bobbed among his guts for a moment before the equilibrium was broken and the head spun around with a splash towards its heaviest point, the cranium, and the severed neck was impossible to distinguish among all the redness.

The tentacle reappeared, wound itself around the head and crushed it before emerging from the toilet once more. If there had been a nose, something recognisable as an organ of smell on the black shiny surface, it would have been obvious that it was sniffing.

Joel ran for the front door, but the snake was out of the bathroom in a second, cutting off his escape route. He carried on into the living room and out onto the balcony, slamming the door behind him.

That was no snake.

Through the balcony window he could see that the black thing making its way into the room, sniffing and taking its bearings, had no end. He moved back towards the railings.

It can't see, can it?

More of the tentacle came into the room, wriggling across the floor like a serpent. The end rose up, wrapped itself around his ship in a second like one of those old horrific pictures in which sailors are attacked by a giant octopus. It squeezed and the ship broke in half. Joel pulled himself up onto the railings, sat down and waited. His ship was in bits inside the room. Anita. La.s.se. The creature swept the room, searching, knocking down the lamp and the television.

Octopus.

Not a snake. That black cable of pure muscle searching his living room was merely a runner from something bigger. Something much bigger. Something so big that it could bend an apartment block like a sapling.

No. Think about...

The balcony window shattered and Joel let himself fall backwards. He continued his chain of thought as he fell past the seventh floor, the sixth.

Think about the torsion.

His body turned in the air so that he was falling face downwards, towards a black dot at the bottom.

The torsion. You can't use your arm to bend something into a bow shape if it's not attached to your body. The creature wouldn't be able to bend the apartment block unless the thing in his living room was merely a small runner from something else.

Something much bigger.

The black dot was growing quickly and he was falling straight towards it. For a brief second he managed to register what it was: a drain cover. In a flash of X-ray vision he saw the entire sewerage system, the reservoirs extending beneath the whole city. The size of the body that had allowed a part of itself to penetrate the apartment block during the night of the storm, when n.o.body could hear.

And what if anyone had heard? If everyone had heard?

This is a village on the hill. We don't talk about that kind of thing here.

Equinox.

It wasn't anybody's fault. One pebble triggers a landslide, one snowflake starts an avalanche. n.o.body's fault. Something is set in motion and it has to fulfil that movement. That's all it is.

I'm happy with my punishment.

Almost two years ago, in the autumn of 2004, Maud Pettersson rang and asked if I could keep any eye on their house while she and her husband were in the Canaries. Water the plants, feed the cat. I was a bit surprised because we hadn't really had any kind of close contact, but I saw no reason to say no. Their house is only three hundred metres from ours, just on the edge of the area where all the summer cottages are located. Playa de Nten, as we like to call it.

I suppose it was partly because Emil had started nursery two months earlier, at the same time as Johanna started Year 3. La.s.se was still working for the prison and probation service in Norrtalje, and the house was empty during the day. I could usually get my work done in two or three hours. I'm a crossword compiler. Hemmets Journal, Allers and Kamratposten.

I can work much more quickly since Goran, one of La.s.se's friends, wrote a program enabling me to do the whole thing on the computer. If I really made an effort I could probably come up with something along the lines of the Sunday crossword in Dagens Nyheter. But that would take longer, and the weekly magazines neither demand nor want that kind of thing. I'm paid twelve hundred kronor for a crossword that takes about five hours to compile. I work three hours a day and earn marginally less than La.s.se, who works seven.

Not a bad life. Quite the reverse. Almost perfect, in fact. By about twelve o'clock I've finished work. Happy if I've managed to make everything work with words that are in the Swedish Academy's dictionary, less happy if I've had to resort to 'Bjorn Larsson' to fit in with BL. My employers don't seem to mind; it's rare that I get any kind of response.

So from twelve o'clock the day is my own until half past three, when Johanna and Emil come home. I usually start by praying to G.o.d for a while. It goes in cycles; sometimes it's every day, sometimes I might miss a whole week. Then I have a guilty conscience.

I pray on the kitchen floor, kneeling on a cushion. I pray for the usual thing: the ability to feel love. Or perhaps that isn't the usual thing? Nowadays I know there's something wrong with me. Perhaps there was something wrong with my prayers too.

Anyway. Maud's house.

She and her husband set off for the Canaries in the morning, and in the afternoon I went over to feed the cat.