Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

And I heard Charlotte respond, “I’ve gathered they’re all crazy about him at the moment.”

“Kasper doesn’t have a daddy. Perhaps Spider-Man acts as his male role model,” said Lydia, laughing so loudly that my headphones reverberated. “But we’re fine,” she went on. “We laugh a lot, even if we’ve had a few problems lately.” She dropped her voice confidentially. “It’s as if he’s jealous of everything I do, he wants to destroy my things, he doesn’t want me to talk on the phone, he throws my favourite book down the toilet, he yells at me… I think something must have happened, but he just won’t tell me.”

Jussi began to talk about his haunted house: his parents’ home up in Dorotea, in southern Lapland. They owned a lot of land close to an area where the Sami people lived in their traditional huts, even as late as the 1970s. “I live very close to a lake, Djuptjärnen,” he explained. “The last part of the route is old wooden tracks. In the summer, kids come there to swim. They love the myths about Nächen, the water sprite.”

“The water sprite?” I asked.

“People have seen him sitting and playing his fiddle by Djuptjärnen for over three hundred years.”

“But not you?”

“No,” he said, with a grin.

“But what do you do up there in the forest all year?” asked Pierre, half smiling.

“I buy old cars and buses, fix them up, and sell them; the place looks like a scrapyard.”

“Is it a big house?” Lydia asked.

“No, but it’s green. My dad painted the place one summer, a kind of peculiar pale green. I don’t know what he was thinking; someone must have given him the paint.” He laughed, then fell silent. It was time for a break.

Lydia produced a tin of saffron-scented biscuits that she offered around. “They’re totally organic,” she said, urging Marek to take some.

Charlotte smiled and nibbled a tiny bit from one edge.

“Did you make them yourself?” asked Jussi with an unexpected grin, which brought a gentle light to his heavy face.

“I almost didn’t have time,” said Lydia, shaking her head and smiling. “I almost got into a quarrel at the playground.”

Sibel sniggered and ate her biscuit in a couple of fierce bites.

“It was Kasper.” Lydia sighed. “We’d gone to the playground as usual this morning, and one of the mothers came over and said Kasper had hit her little girl on the back with a shovel.”

“Shit,” whispered Marek.

“I went completely cold when she said that,” said Lydia.

“What do you do in a situation like that?” Charlotte asked politely.

Marek took another biscuit and listened to Lydia with an unusually focused expression on his face, as if he were studying her as much as listening to her. For the first time, I wondered if he had a crush on her.

“I don’t know. I told the mother that I took it very seriously. I think I was quite upset, actually. Even though she said it was nothing to worry about, and she thought it had been an accident.”

“Of course,” said Charlotte. “Children play with such wild enthu siasm.”

“But I promised to speak to Kasper. I told her I would deal with it,” Lydia went on.

“Good.” Jussi nodded.

“She said Kasper seemed to be a really sweet boy,” Lydia added with a smile.

I sat down on my chair and flicked through my notes; I was anxious to get the second session under way as quickly as possible. It was Lydia’s turn again.

She met my eyes and smiled tentatively. Everyone was silent, expectant, as I began. The room was quiet with our breathing. A dark silence, growing more and more dense, followed our heartbeats. With each exhalation, we sank more deeply. After the induction my words led them downward, and after a while I turned to Lydia.

“You are moving deeper, sinking gently; you are very relaxed. Your arms are heavy, your legs are heavy, your eyelids are heavy. You are breathing slowly and listening to my words without question; you are surrounded by my words, you feel safe and compliant. Lydia, right now you are very close to the thing you do not want to think about, the thing you never talk about, the thing you turn away from, the thing that always lies hidden to the side of the warm light.”

“Yes,” she answered, with a sigh.

“You are there now,” I said.

“I am very close.”

“Where are you at this moment?”

“At home.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

I looked at her. Reflections and flashes of light passed across her high, smooth forehead, her neat little mouth, and her skin, so pale it was almost sickly. I knew she had turned thirty-seven two weeks ago. She hadn’t gone far back in time like the others, but just a few days instead.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“The telephone…”

“What about the telephone?”

“It rings, it rings again, I pick up the receiver and put it down straight away.”

“You are perfectly calm, Lydia.”

She looked tired, troubled perhaps.

“The food will get cold,” she said. “I’ve made lentil soup and I’ve baked bread. I was going to eat in front of the TV, but of course that won’t be possible.”

Her chin quivered, then stopped.

“I wait a while, look out into the street through the blinds. There’s no one there. I can’t hear anything. I sit down at the kitchen table and eat a little bit of warm bread with butter, but I have no appetite. I go down to the cellar, it’s cold down there as usual, and I sit on the old leather sofa and close my eyes. I have to compose myself. I have to gather my strength.”

She fell silent. Strips of seaweed drifted past and came between us.

“Why do you have to gather your strength?” I asked.

“So I’ll be able to get up and walk past the red rice-paper lantern with the Chinese symbols and the tray of scented candles and polished stones. The floorboards sag and creak beneath the plastic mat.”

“Is anyone there?” I asked Lydia quietly, but immediately regretted it.

“I pick up the stick and push down the bubble in the mat with my foot so I can open the door and go in and switch on the light,” she said. “Kasper’s blinking in the light, but he doesn’t sit up. He’s peed in the bucket. It smells very strong. He’s wearing his pale blue pyjamas. He’s breathing hard. I poke him with the stick through the bars. He makes pitiful noises, moves away a fraction, and sits up. I ask if he’s changed his mind and he nods, so I push a plate of food into the cage. The cod’s shrivelled up and turned a dark colour. He crawls over and eats it and I’m pleased, and I’m just about to tell him how happy I am that we understand each other when he throws up on the mattress.”

Lydia’s face contorted in a wry grimace. “And there I was”- her lips were taut, the corners of her mouth turning down- “I thought we were done.” She shook her head and licked her lips. “Do you understand how this makes me feel? He says sorry. I repeat that it’s Sunday tomorrow; I slap my face and scream at him to look.”

Charlotte was looking at Lydia through the water with frightened eyes.

“Lydia,” I said, “you are going to leave the basement now, without being frightened or angry; you are going to feel calm and collected. I am going to lift you slowly out of this deep relaxation, up to the surface, up to clarity, and together we are going to talk about what you’ve said, just you and I, before I bring the others out of their hypnosis.”

She snarled quietly, tiredly.

“Lydia, are you listening to me?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to count backwards, and when I reach one you will open your eyes and be fully awake and aware: ten, nine, eight; you are rising gently to the surface, your body feels completely relaxed and comfortable; seven, six, five, four; soon you are going to open your eyes but remain seated on your chair; three, two, one… now open your eyes. You are fully awake.”