Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

“What are you two up to?” she asks, her voice oddly cheerful.

“I’m fetching some more wood,” Jussi shouts, hiding the phone in his inside pocket.

“I’m finished,” says Benjamin.

Lydia stands in the doorway and lets Benjamin into the house.

It’s almost pitch dark inside the woodshed. The only light comes from the pale blue display of the phone. Jussi sees that it shows mum. He puts it to his ear in time to hear someone answer.

“Hello?” says a man’s voice. “Hello?”

“Is that Erik?” asks Jussi.

“No, this is- ”

“My name is Jussi. Can you give Erik a message? This is important; we’re up here at my house, me and Lydia and Marek and- ”

A sudden guttural scream comes from the person who answered the phone. There is a sound of crashing and crackling, someone coughs, a woman whimpers and weeps; then there is silence. The connection is broken. Jussi stares at the phone in astonishment. Just as he thinks he might try someone else and begins scrolling through the numbers, the battery gives out. And then the woodshed door opens and Lydia steps inside.

“I could see your aura through the open door. It was completely blue,” she announces.

Jussi slips the phone into his back pocket and starts piling wood into a basket.

“You go on inside,” says Lydia. “I’ll do this.”

“Thanks,” he replies, leaving the shed.

On the way up to the house, he can see ice crystals in the snow sparkling in the light from the window. The snow makes a dry, creaking sound beneath his boots. Behind him he can hear an irregular shuffling, accompanied by a panting, sighing sound. Jussi just has time to think of his dog, Castro. He remembers when Castro was a puppy, the way he used to chase mice beneath the light, freshly fallen snow. Jussi is smiling to himself when a sudden blow to the back of his head makes him lurch forwards. He would land on his stomach, were it not for the fact that the axe, stuck in the back of his head, is pulling him backwards. He stands still, his arms dangling at his sides. Lydia jerks the axe and manages to pull it out. Jussi can feel the warmth of his own blood pouring down his neck and back. He drops to his knees, falls forwards, feels the snow against his face, kicks out with his legs, and rolls over onto his back so that he can stand. His field of vision is shrinking fast, but during his last conscious seconds he sees Lydia raising the axe above him again.

Benjamin is curled up against the wall behind the television. He feels scarily dizzy; he’s having trouble focusing his eyes. But the worst thing is the thirst. He’s thirstier than he’s ever been in his life. The hunger has abated. It hasn’t gone, it’s still there, a nagging ache in his gut. But it is completely overshadowed by thirst- thirst and the pain in his joints. The thirst is like being stabbed, as if his throat were full of open sores. He can barely swallow now; there is no saliva in his mouth. How many days has he been here, lying on this floor, in this house? Benjamin, Lydia, Marek, and Annbritt, in this one furnished room, doing nothing.

Benjamin listens to the faint tapping of the snow as it lands on the roof. He thinks about how Lydia made her way into his life, running after him one day as he was walking home from school.

“You forgot this,” she’d called, and handed him his hat.

He’d stopped and thanked her. She’d given him a strange look and said, “You’re Benjamin, aren’t you?”

He asked her how she knew his name.

She’d stroked his hair. “Oh, dear boy. I called you Kasper.” And when he’d looked at her uncomprehendingly, she’d added, “I’m your real mother. I gave birth to you. Haven’t they told you?” She opened her bag and gave him a little pale-blue crocheted outfit. “I made this for you when you were in my belly,” she whispered.

He explained that his name was Benjamin Peter Bark and he couldn’t be her child. He’d tried to speak to her calmly and kindly. She listened with a smile on her face, then shook her head sorrowfully.

“Ask your parents,” she had said to him. “Ask them if you really are their child. You can ask, but they won’t tell you the truth. They couldn’t have children. You’ll be able to tell that they’re lying. They’ll lie because they’re afraid of losing you. You’re not their biological child. I can tell you about your real background. You’re mine. Can’t you see how alike we are? I was forced to give you up for adoption.”

“But I’m not adopted.”

“I knew it. I knew they wouldn’t tell you,” she said.

He thought about it and suddenly realized that she could actually be telling the truth; he had felt different for a long time.

Lydia smiled at him. “I can’t prove it to you. You have to trust your own instincts, you have to explore your feelings. Then you’ll realize it’s true.”

They parted, but he’d met up with her again the following day. They went to a café and sat talking for a long time. She told him how she had been forced to give him up for adoption but had never forgotten him. She had thought about him every day since he was born and was taken away from her. She had yearned for him every minute of her life.

Benjamin had told Aida everything, and they’d agreed that it was best if Erik and Simone knew nothing about what he’d learned until he had thought the whole thing through. He wanted to get to know Lydia first. It could be true, couldn’t it? Lydia contacted him via Aida’s e-mail and sent him the picture of the family grave.

“I want you to know who you are, Kasper,” she said. “This is the resting place of your family. One day we’ll go there together, just you and me.”

Benjamin started to believe her. He wanted to. She was exciting. It felt strange for him to be so wanted, so loved. She had given him money and small mementoes from her childhood, she had given him books and a camera, and he had given her drawings and things he had collected when he was a child.

She had even stopped Wailord from hassling him. One day she simply handed him a piece of paper on which Wailord had written that he gave his word never to come near Benjamin or his friends again. His parents would never have been able to achieve something like that. He was becoming more and more convinced that Erik and Simone- people he had believed throughout his whole life- were liars. It annoyed him that they never talked to him, never really showed him what he meant to them.

He had been so incredibly stupid.

Then Lydia had started to talk about coming to the apartment, about visiting him at home. She wanted his keys. He didn’t really understand why. He said he could let her in if she rang the doorbell, but she got angry with him. She said she would have to punish him if he didn’t do as he was told. Her outburst surprised and scared him. She explained that when he was very small she had given his adoptive parents something called a ferrule as a sign that she wanted them to give him a proper upbringing. Then she took his keys out of his backpack and said the whole conversation was ridiculous; she would be the one to decide when she visited her own child.

That was when he realized there was something not quite right about Lydia.

The next day when she was waiting for him, he simply went up to her and told her as calmly as he could that he wanted his keys back and he didn’t want to see her again.

“Of course, Kasper,” she’d said. “You must have your keys.” She reached into her bag and handed them to him.

He headed off, but she followed him. He stopped and waited for her and told her she hadn’t understood: he didn’t want to see her again.