Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

“Don’t go, Daddy.”

He stopped and turned around.

“Why not?”

“Don’t go.”

Livia was lying motionless, facing the wall. But was she awake?

Joakim couldn’t see her face, just her blonde hair. He went back to the bed and sat down cautiously beside her.

“Are you asleep, Livia?” he asked quietly.

After a few seconds came the reply:

“No.”

She sounded awake, but relaxed.

“Are you sleeping?”

“No… I can see things.”

“Where?”

“In the wall.”

She was talking in a monotone, her breathing slow and calm. Joakim leaned closer to her head in the darkness.

“What can you see?”

“Lights, water… shadows.”

“Anything else?”

“It’s light.”

“Can you see any people?”

She was silent again, before the reply came:

“Mommy.”

Joakim stiffened. He held his breath, suddenly afraid that this was serious-that Livia was asleep, and really could see things through the wall. Don’t ask any more questions , he thought. Go to bed .

But he had to carry on:

“Where can you see Mommy?” he asked.

“Behind the light.”

“Can you see-”

Livia interrupted him, speaking with greater intensity:

“Everybody’s standing there waiting. And Mommy’s with them.”

“Who? Who’s waiting?”

She didn’t reply.

Livia had talked in her sleep before, but never as clearly as this. Joakim still suspected that she was awake, that she was just playing games with him. But he still couldn’t stop asking questions:

“How’s Mommy feeling?”

“She’s sad.”

“Sad?”

“She wants to come in.”

“Tell her…” Joakim swallowed, his mouth dry. “Tell her she can come in any time.”

“She can’t.”

“Can’t she get to us?”

“Not in the house.”

“Can you talk to her?”

Silence. Joakim spoke slowly and clearly:

“Can you ask Mommy… what she was doing down by the water?”

Livia lay motionless in the bed. There was no response, but he still didn’t want to give up.

“Livia? Can you talk to Mommy?”

“She wants to come in.”

Joakim straightened up in the darkness and didn’t ask any more. The whole thing felt hopeless.

“You must try-”

“She wants to talk,” Livia broke in.

“Does she?” he asked. “About what? What does Mommy want to say?”

But Livia said nothing more.

Joakim said nothing either, he just got up slowly from the bed. His knees creaked; he had been sitting in the same position with his back rigid for too long.

He moved silently over to the blind and peeked out from the back of the house. He could see his own transparent reflection in the windowpane, like a misty shape-but not much beyond it.

There was no moon, no stars. Clouds covered the sky. The grass in the meadow rippled slightly in the wind, but nothing else was moving.

Was there anyone out there? Joakim let go of the blind. To go outside and take a look, he would have to leave Livia and Gabriel alone, and he didn’t want to do that. He stayed by the window, unsure what to do, and eventually turned his head.

“Livia?”

No reply. He took a step back toward the bed, but saw that she was fast asleep.

He wanted to carry on asking questions. Perhaps even wake her up to find out if she could remember anything about what she’d seen in her sleep, but of course it wasn’t a good idea to press her.

Joakim pulled the flowery coverlet up over her narrow shoulders and tucked her in.

He returned silently to his own bed. The coverlet felt like a shield against the darkness as he crept in.

He listened anxiously for noises from the corridor and from Livia’s room. The house was silent, but Joakim was thinking of Katrine. It was several hours before he managed to fall asleep.

A Friday night at the end of November.

The big vicarage at Hagelby was almost two hundred years old, and lay at the end of a forest track half a mile or so outside the village. The Swedish church no longer owned the vicarage. Henrik knew it had been sold to a retired doctor and his wife from Emmaboda.

Henrik and the Serelius brothers had parked their van in a grove of trees up by the main highway. They had left everything in it except for two rucksacks containing just a few tools, with plenty of room for anything they might pick up. Before they set off through the forest, past the stone wall by the church and the graveyard, they had each knocked back a dose of crystal meth and washed it down with beer.

Henrik had drunk more beer than usual; his nerves were at breaking point tonight. It was all the fault of that fucking board-the Serelius brothers’ Ouija board.

They had conducted a quick session in Henrik’s kitchen at around eleven o’clock. He had turned off the main light, Freddy had lit the candles.

Tommy placed his index finger on the glass.

“Is there anybody there?”

The glass began to move straightaway. It ended up on the word YES. Tommy leaned forward.

“Is it Aleister?”

The glass moved over to the letter A , then L…

“He’s here,” said Tommy quietly.

But the glass carried on to G , then to O and T . Then it stopped.

“Algot?” said Tommy. “Who the fuck is that?”

Henrik stiffened. The glass had begun to move across the board again, and he quickly reached for a piece of paper and wrote down what it was spelling out.

ALGOT ALGOT NOT GOOD ALONE HENRIK NOT GOOD NOT LIVING NOT GOOD HENRIK NOT

Henrik stopped writing.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said quickly, pushing the piece of paper away.

He took a deep breath, got up and switched on the main light, then breathed out.

Tommy took his finger off the glass and looked at him.

“Okay, chill out,” he said. “The board is just supposed to be a help…Let’s go.”

It was twelve-thirty when they finally arrived at the vicarage. It was a cloudy night, and the house was in darkness.

Henrik was still pondering over the board’s message. Algot? His grandfather’s name had been Algot.

“Are they home?” whispered Tommy in the shadows among the birch trees in the lower part of the garden. Just

like Freddy and Henrik, he had pulled the black hood over his head.

Henrik shook himself. He must pull himself together, focus on the job.

“I’m sure they are,” he said. “But they sleep upstairs. Up there, where the window’s open.”

He pointed up at a window that was slightly ajar in one of the corner rooms.

“Good, let’s go,” said Tommy. “Hubba bubba.”

He led the way up the stone path and the steps. Then he leaned forward and peered thoughtfully at the lock.

“Looks pretty solid,” he whispered to Henrik. “Shall we go for a window instead?”

Henrik shook his head. “This is the country,” he whispered back. “And they’re seniors… look.”

He reached out, silently pushed down the handle, and opened the door. It wasn’t locked.

Tommy said nothing, he simply nodded and went inside. Henrik followed, with Freddy right behind him.

This wasn’t good-three men inside the house was one too many. He signaled that Freddy should stay and keep watch outside, but he just shook his head and walked in.

Tommy opened the next door and disappeared into the house itself. Henrik followed.

They were in a big, dark hallway. It was warm inside-seniors were a chilly breed, thought Henrik, and they always had the heating turned up high.

The floor was covered with a dark red Persian carpet that muffled the sound of their footsteps, and on one of the walls hung a huge mirror with a gold frame.