Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

“You mean drowned sailors?” said Gerlof.

“Sailors… or other members of the family who have passed away somewhere else. Did they come back at Christmas as well?”

Gerlof glanced briefly at Tilda, then shook his head. “This is just a story, you know,” he said. “There are many superstitions surrounding Christmas… It was the turning point of the year, after all, when the darkness was at its peak and death was at its closest. Then the days grew longer again, and life returned.”

Joakim didn’t say anything.

“I’m looking forward to that,” he said eventually. “It’s so dark now… I’m looking forward to the turning point.”

A few minutes later they were outside saying goodbye. Joakim held out his hand.

“You have a beautiful home out here,” said Gerlof, shaking it. “But be careful of the blizzard.”

“The blizzard,” said Joakim. “It’s supposed to be a really big snowstorm down here, isn’t it?”

Gerlof nodded. “It doesn’t come every year, but I’m pretty sure it will come this winter. And it comes quickly. You don’t want to be outdoors down here by the sea when that happens. Especially not the children.”

“So how do people on Öland know when something like that is coming?” asked Joakim. “Can you feel it in the air?”

“We look at the thermometer and listen to the weather forecasts,” said Gerlof. “The cold has arrived early this year, and that’s usually a bad sign.”

“Okay,” said Joakim with a smile. “We’ll be careful.”

“You do that.” Gerlof nodded and set off toward the car, supported by Tilda, but he suddenly stopped, let go of her arm, and turned around. “One more thing… what was your wife wearing on the day of her accident?”

Joakim Westin stopped smiling. “I’m sorry?”

“Do you remember what clothes she was wearing that day?”

“Yes… but they were nothing special,” said Joakim. “Boots, jeans, and a winter jacket.”

“Have you still got them?”

Joakim nodded, looking tired and tortured again. “The hospital gave them to me. In a parcel.”

“Could I take a look at them?”

“You mean… you want to borrow them?”

“Borrow them, yes. I won’t damage them in any way, I just want to look at them.”

“Okay… but they’re still all parceled up,” said Joakim. “I’ll go and get them.”

He went back into the house.

“Can you take care of the parcel, Tilda?” said Gerlof, setting off toward the car once more.

When Tilda had started the engine and driven out through the gate, Gerlof leaned back in his seat.

“So, we had our little chat,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose I was a bit of a canny old man after all. It’s difficult to avoid it.”

A brown parcel containing Katrine Westin’s clothes was lying on his knee. Tilda glanced at it.

“What was all that business with the clothes? Why did you want to borrow them?”

Gerlof looked down at his knee. “It was just something that occurred to me when we were standing out there by the bog. About how the sacrifices were carried out there.”

“What do you mean? That Katrine Westin was some kind of sacrifice?”

Gerlof looked out through the windshield, over toward the bog. “I’ll tell you more very soon, when I’ve looked at the clothes.”

Tilda pulled out onto the main road.

“This visit worried me a little,” she said.

“Worried?”

“I’m worried about Joakim Westin, and about his children…

It felt as if you were sitting there in the kitchen talking about folktales, while Westin regarded them as reality.”

“Yes,” said Gerlof, “but I think it was good for him to talk a little. He’s still grieving for his wife, which is not so strange after all.”

“No,” said Tilda. “But I thought he talked about her as if she were still alive… as if he were expecting to see her again.”

After the break-in at Hagelby vicarage and the flight through the forest, it was two weeks before the Serelius brothers came back to Borgholm. But suddenly there they were at Henrik’s door one evening, at the worst possible moment.

Because by that time the quiet but rhythmic knocking in his apartment had started to become intolerable, like a dripping faucet that couldn’t be turned off.

At first Henrik was convinced that it was coming from the old stable lantern, and after three difficult nights with the constant sound of tapping, he put it in the car. The following morning he drove over to the east coast and put the lantern in the boathouse.

But the knocking continued the next night, and now it was coming from inside the wall in the hallway. But not always the same wall-the sound seemed to move slowly behind the wallpaper.

If it wasn’t the lantern, then it must be something else he had brought with him from the forest, or from that fucking death chamber he’d been crawling around in.

Unless of course it was something that had sneaked into his apartment through the brothers’ Ouija board. Those nights when they had sat around the kitchen table staring at the glass as it moved beneath Tommy’s finger, it had definitely felt as if something invisible was in the room.

Whatever it was, it was getting on Henrik’s nerves. Every night he wandered back and forth between the bedroom and the kitchen, terrified of going to bed and turning off the light.

In sheer desperation he had called Camilla, his ex-girlfriend. They hadn’t been in touch for several months, but she sounded pleased to hear from him. They had talked for almost an hour.

Henrik’s nerves were at the breaking point when his doorbell rang three days later, and the sight of Tommy and Freddy at the door didn’t exactly make him feel any better.

Tommy was wearing sunglasses and his hands were twitching. He wasn’t smiling.

“Let us in.”

It wasn’t a friendly reunion. Henrik wanted money from the Serelius brothers, but they had none-they hadn’t sold any of the stolen goods yet. He knew they wanted to do one more trip to the north of the island, but Henrik didn’t want to.

And he didn’t want to discuss any of it with them tonight, because he had a visitor.

“We can’t talk now,” he said.

“Sure we can,” said Tommy.

“No.”

“Who is it?” asked Camilla from the sofa in front of the TV.

The brothers craned their necks curiously to see who the female voice belonged to.

“It’s just… two friends,” said Henrik over his shoulder. “From Kalmar. But they’re not staying.”

Tommy lowered his sunglasses and gave Henrik a long look. It made him step outside and pull the door closed behind him.

“Congratulations,” said Tommy. “Is this a new find, or an old one you’ve dug up?”

“It’s the girl I used to live with,” said Henrik quietly. “Camilla.”

“Fuck me… she took you back?”

“I called her,” said Henrik. “But she was the one who wanted to meet up.”

“Nice,” said Tommy without a smile. “But what shall we do now, then?”

“About what?”

“Our joint project.”

“It’s over,” said Henrik. “Apart from the money.”

“Oh no.”

“It’s over.”

They stared at one another, Henrik and the brothers. Then he sighed.

“We can’t talk out here on the stairs,” he said. “One of you can come in.”

In the end Freddy lumbered back out to the van. Henrik led Tommy into the kitchen and closed the door behind them. He lowered his voice:

“We’re going to sort this out right now, then you can go.”

But Tommy was still more interested in Camilla, and asked loudly and clearly, “So has she moved back in? Is that why you look so fucking tired?”