John Lindqvist - Handling The Undead

'Of course,' Roy said and turned back to Magnus. 'A rabbit? Yes, well then I certainly understand if you want…I would also want to. Come.'

Without further ceremony he waved fro them to follow him and led them into the room from which he had appeared. David took a deep breath, put his hand on Magnus’ shoulder and followed.

The room echoed with the quiet and the scattering of the hospital equipment highlighted the emptiness. There was only a bed with a nightstand on which there was a machine, and next to the bed was a simple armchair. On the floor next to the armchair were a couple of issues of Journal of American Medcine . Sitting on the bed, Eva.

The bandage that had covered half of her face had been replaced with a stocking of thick gauze that emphasised the damage beneath. The blue hospital gown curved in on one side of her chest. A number of cables ran from her head to the machine on the nightstand. The bed was raised in a sitting position and both of Eva's hands rested on the institutional blanket, her one eye directed at the door through which they came.

David and Magnus slowly approached the bed. David felt Magnus' body tense: watchful. Eva's eye did not look anything like it had in the hospital-the grey membrane had just about dissolved and the eye looked almost healthy. Almost. On the other hand she looked as if she had lost quite a few kilos in the past few days; the healthy cheek had lost its curve and collapsed toward the oral cavity. When the corners of her mouth pulled up into a smile it looked more like a grimace.

'David,' she said. 'Magnus. My boy.'

The voice still had something of its hoarseness but David would have recognised it anywhere as Eva's. Magnus stopped, David let go of his shoulder and walked up to the bed. He didn't dare hug Eva for fear that her body would break, so he just sat on the edge of the bed putting his hands on her shoulders.

‘Hello, my darling,’ he said. ‘We are here now’.

He pressed his lips to keep from crying, and waved to Magnus to come forward to the bed, which he did, hesitantly. Even Sture walked up, a step behind Magnus. Eva's eye travelled between them.

'My dearest,' she said. 'My family.'

There was silence for a moment. There was so much to say that they could say nothing. Roy came up with his hands clasped on his stomach as if to show that he was not going to do anything and he nodded at the machine.

'So I'm just measuring EEG,' he said. 'It's nothing dangerous. Just so you… ' He backed away again, with yet another unfinished sentence hanging in the air. David looked at the machine, where a number of almost-straight lines floated through blacked space, only interrupted by occasional blips, bumps.

Should it look like that?

He looked at Eva again. Her eye was appraising, calm and not at all frightening. And it sent a shiver through him. It took him a couple of seconds to realise what it was: inside his head he felt Magnus, Sture, Balthazar and Royall in a messy jumble, but of Eva he felt nothing.

He looked straight into her eye and thought: Darling, my darling,

where are you? but received no answer. When he really tried he could conjure up a faint image, a contour of what Eva was to him, but it was completely drawn from memory and had nothing to do with the person in

front of him. He carefully took her hand. It felt cold even though it was surely the same temperature as the room.

'It is Magnus' birthday today,' he said. 'There was no pancake cake. I didn't know how to make one so I bought a cake instead.'

'Happy birthday, my dear Magnus,' Eva said.

David saw that Magnus made a decision, overcoming what he actually felt, and he stepped up to the bed, displaying Balthazar.

'I got a rabbit. His name is Balthazar.'

'It is very nice,' Eva said.

Magnus put Balthazar down on the bed and he took a couple of tentative hops, sitting between Eva's emaciated thighs and nibbling on the tufts on the blanket. Eva did not appear to take any notice of him.

'His name is Balthazar,' Magnus said. 'Balthazar is a nice name.'

'He's not allowed to sleep in my bed, is he?'

David opened his mouth to reply but realised that the question was directed to Eva and kept quiet. As if stating a fact, Eva said, 'He is not allowed to sleep in your bed.'

'Why not?'

'Magnus… ' David put a hand on his shoulder.

'Please stop.'

'So is he?'

'We'll talk about it later.'

Magnus frowned and looked at Eva. Roy cleared his throat, took a step forward.

'Actually,' he said, 'there was a little thing 1 was wondering about.'

David stroked the back of Eva's hand with his finger, stood up and followed Roy a couple of steps from the bed, making space for Sture. Before he stood up he glanced at the EEG screen and saw that the bubbles on the lines had become slightly larger, spaced slightly closer together.

When they had moved away from the bed David asked, 'Was that what you meant? That she is sort of like a… ' David could not bring himself to say 'machine', but that was how he felt. Eva answered all their questions, said completely reasonable things but she did it mechanically, like a rote behaviour.

Roy nodded.

'I don't know,' he said. 'It will probably get better. Like 1 said, there has been great progress and… ' He did not complete the sentence, but started a new one. 'What I'm wondering about is: the Fisher. Does rh.u mean anything to you?'

'The Fisher?'

'Yes. If I ask her about herself then… we always end up back at

the Fisher. There's something that frightens her.'

Sture got up from the bed and came over. 'What are you talking about?' he asked.

'The Fisher,' David said. 'It's something Eva says, but we don't know what it is.'

Sture turned to the bed, where Magnus was saying something to Eva as he pointed to Balthazar, who had just crawled up on her belly. 'I know what it is,' he said and sighed. 'Does she talk about it?' Roy nodded and Sture said, 'I see. Yes. That was something that happened when she was little, you see. She was seven and… well, I guess you could say it was my fault for not keeping a good enough eye on her. She came very close to drowning. Very close. It was right on the edge. If my wife hadn't known exactly what to do, then…' Sture shook his head at the memory. 'Anyway. Once we had… brought her back to life, then…'

'Daddy, Daddy!'

David heard Magnus' shriek inside his head one second before it reached his ears. No, the scream inside his head came from Balthazar and just as Magnus' voiced scream died against the walls there was another, a sound more like a bird cry, then a light cracking.

David lunged for the bed, but it was too late.

Balthazar's body was still lying in Eva's lap but she had his head in one hand, moving it up to her eye in order to examine it. She twisted and turned the little rabbit head where the nose still twitched and the eyes stared in terror. In her lap the legs on the headless body were still kicking and a trickle of blood found its way along a fold in the blanket, dropping to the floor.

Balthazar's legs jerked one last time and froze. Eva's eye looked closely at the rabbit's eye; two black pools reflecting in each other.

Magnus screamed, 'I hate you I hate you!' and hit Eva across her arm, her shoulder, his arms flailing, tearing loose the cables attached to her head. David managed to get a last glimpse of the EEG peaks before they went out: tightly clustered spikes. He took hold of Magnus from behind, locked his arms in a tight hug and carried him out of the apartment, whispering words of comfort to no effect.

'I don't understand… she has never…' Roy was twisting his hands and swaying on his feet, hesitant to approach the bed where Eva was examining Balthazar's head and sticking her finger into the bloody, mucus-filled throat, its lining of tendons and ligaments hanging down in threads.