Åsa Larsson - The Blood Spilt

The road runs parallel with the river. The village is sleeping. She passes the tourist area and the restaurant, the old Konsum supermarket and the ugly community center. The old folk museum’s silvery timber walls and the white veils of mist on the meadow in front of the fence.

At the far end of the village, where the road runs out, is the wooden church, painted Falun red. A smell of fresh tar comes from the roof timbers.

The bell tower is part of the fence. To get into the church, you go in through the bell tower and walk along a stone path that leads to the church steps.

One of the blue doors to the bell tower is standing wide open. Pia clambers off her bicycle and leans it against the fence.

It should be closed, she thinks, walking slowly toward the door.

Something rustles among the small birch trees to the right of the path down to the rectory. Her heart races and she stops to listen. It was only a little rustle. Probably a squirrel or a shrew.

The back door of the bell tower is open as well. She can see straight through the tower. The door of the church is also open.

Now her heart is really thumping. Sune might forget the door of the bell tower if he’s been celebrating-after all, it’s the night before midsummer’s eve. But not the door of the church. She thinks about those kids who smashed the windows of the church in town, and threw burning rags inside. That was a couple of years ago. What’s happened now? Pictures flash across her mind. The altarpiece sprayed with graffiti and piss. Long slashes with a knife on the newly painted pews. Presumably they’ve got in through a window, then opened the door from the inside.

She moves toward the church door. Walks slowly. Listens carefully in every direction. How has it come to this? Little boys who ought to be too busy thinking about girls and fiddling with their mopeds. How have they turned into queer-bashers and thugs who set fire to churches?

When she passes the porch she stops. Stands beneath the organ loft where the ceiling is so low that tall people have to stoop down. It’s silent and gloomy inside the church, but everything seems to be in order. Christ, Laestadius and the Sami maiden Maria glow from the altarpiece, unblemished. But still something makes her hesitate. Something isn’t right in there.

There are eighty-six corpses beneath the floor of the church. Most of the time she doesn’t think about them at all. They are resting in peace in their graves. But now she can feel their unease rising up through the floor, pricking like needles under her feet.

What’s the matter with you? she thinks.

The aisle of the church is covered with a red woven carpet. Exactly where the organ loft ends and the ceiling opens upward, something is lying on the carpet. She bends down.

A stone, she thinks at first. A little white splinter from a stone.

She picks it up between her thumb and index finger and walks toward the sacristy.

But the door to the sacristy is locked, and she turns to go back down the aisle.

As she stands at the front by the altar, she can see the lower part of the organ. It is almost completely covered by a wooden partition that goes across the church from the ceiling, and hangs down one third of the height of the ceiling. But she can see the lower part of the organ. And she can see a pair of feet hanging down in front of the organ loft.

Her first lightning thought is that somebody has come into the church and hanged themselves. And in that very first split second she is angry. Feels it’s inconsiderate. Then she thinks precisely nothing. Runs down the aisle and past the partition, then she sees the body hanging in front of the organ pipes and the Sami sun symbol.

The body is hanging from a rope, no, not a rope, a chain. A long iron chain.

Now she can see dark stains on the carpet, just where she found the splinter of stone.

Blood. Can it be blood? She crouches down.

Then she understands. The stone she is holding between her thumb and her index finger. It isn’t a stone at all. It’s a splinter from a tooth.

Up onto her feet. Her fingers lose their grip on the white shard, she almost flings it away from her.

Her hand fishes the phone out of her pocket, punches in 112.

The lad on the other end sounds so bloody young. While she’s answering his questions, she tugs at the door to the organ loft. It’s locked.

“It’s locked,” she says. “I can’t get up there.”

She races back to the sacristy. No key to the organ loft. Can she break down the door? What with?

The lad on the other end of the phone makes her listen to him. He tells her to wait outside. Help is on the way, he promises.

“It’s Mildred!” she shouts. “It’s Mildred Nilsson hanging there! She’s our priest. God, she looks so terrible.”

“Are you outside now?” he asks. “Is there anyone nearby?”

The boy on the phone talks her out onto the steps of the church. She tells him there isn’t a soul in sight.

“Don’t hang up,” he says. “Stay with me. Help is on the way. Don’t go back into the church.”

“Is it okay if I have a cigarette?”

That’s all right. It’s all right to put the phone down.

Pia sits down on the steps of the church, the phone beside her. Smokes and notices how calm and collected she feels. But the cigarette isn’t burning properly. She finally notices that she’s lit the filter. After seven minutes she hears the sirens from a long way off.

They got her, she thinks.

Her hands begin to shake. The cigarette jerks out of her grip.

The bastards. They got her.

Rebecka Martinsson climbed out of the taxi boat and looked up at Lidö country house hotel. The afternoon sun on the pale yellow facade with its white decorative carving. The big garden full of people. Some black-headed gulls from nowhere screeched above her head. Persistent and irritating.

Where do you get the energy, she thought.

She gave the taxi driver a tip that was much too big. Compensation for her monosyllabic answers when he’d attempted to talk.

“Big party,” he said, nodding toward the hotel.

The whole law firm was assembled up there. Almost two hundred people milling around. Talking in groups. Detaching themselves and moving on. Handshakes and air kisses. A line of enormous barbecues had been set out. Members of staff dressed in white were laying out a barbecue buffet on a long table covered with a linen cloth. They scurried between the hotel kitchen and the table like white mice in their ridiculously tall chef’s hats.

“Yes,” replied Rebecka, and hoisted her crocodile skin bag onto her shoulder. “But I’ve got through worse things.”

He laughed and pulled away, the prow lifting out of the water. A black cat slunk silently down from the jetty and disappeared into the tall grass.

Rebecka set off. The island looked tired after the summer. Well trodden, dried out, worn out.

This is where they’ve walked, she thought. All the families with children, carrying their picnic blankets, all the well dressed, tipsy people from the boats.

The grass was short and turning yellow. The trees dusty and thirsty. She could imagine what it would look like in the forest. No doubt there were heaps of bottles, cans, used condoms and human feces under the blueberry bushes and ferns.

The track up to the hotel was as hard as concrete. Like the cracked back of a prehistoric lizard. She was a lizard herself. Just landed in her spaceship. Wearing human clothing on her way into the trial by fire. Trying to imitate human behavior. Look at people around her and do the same. Hope the disguise wouldn’t gape at the neck.

She had almost reached the gardens.

Come on, she said to herself. You can do this.