John Lindqvist - Little Star

Beata’s father had done a good job, and it was easy to scrape away the top layer of turf and soil until they had a rectangle thirty centimetres deep and two metres by one metre wide. Then they hit rocks. By this time the other girls had come out. Erika found another spade in the garage, and Caroline and Malin found two trowels. Everyone helped, without asking what they were doing. When they reached bigger stones, Beata fetched a crowbar which she and Malin used to loosen them, then they lifted them out. The hole grew quickly.

Theres worked with her eyes fixed on the ground. Her lips moved as if she were talking to herself, silently. When they had reached a depth of one and a half metres, Teresa rested her arms on the handle of the spade. ‘Well?’

Theres nodded, threw the spade out of the hole and swung herself up. Teresa had to drive the spade deep into the ground and use the handle as a step to climb out.

When they were all gathered around the hole, no one could avoid seeing what they had created together. A grave. They stood close together looking down into the hole as if they were taking part in a funeral where only the crucial element was missing.

Ronja smiled and said, ‘Who are we burying?’

The twilight had deepened, and as Sofie was the only one with a torch, Teresa turned to her. ‘Fetch the box. From the cellar.’ When Sofie had gone off with Cecilia, others were sent to fetch a hammer, nails and some rope.

The box that used to contain explosives had the same dimensions as a small coffin, and at each end there was a loop of rope attached to an iron mounting so it could be lifted. Teresa opened the lid and tipped out a few shrivelled potatoes and some soil. She banged on the sides with her fists and discovered that the rough planks were sound. It would hold. The hammer, nails and rope had been found.

Teresa looked around the group. Several of the girls were shuffling on the spot and their faces, wearing an expression of deep concentration, glowed pale and white in the darkness of the twilight.

‘Who wants to go first?’

Some of them had perhaps thought that it was a game, some had expected something else, some might have understood exactly what was going to happen, but when the words were spoken the pale ovals turned toward Teresa, eyes opened wide with fear and several shook their heads. ‘Noooo…’

‘Yes,’ said Teresa. ‘That’s what we’re going to do now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s the way it has to be.’

A few of the girls came forward and touched the coffin, imagining themselves enclosed in the narrow space, between the unforgiving planks of wood. Some took out their pieces of wolf skin, clutching them tightly in their hands or sucking them unthinkingly as they plucked up courage. A long time passed without anyone volunteering. Then Linn stepped forward. ‘I’ll do it.’

A faint sigh of relief ran through the group. Teresa gestured towards the coffin. Linn climbed in and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘We’re going to nail down the lid,’ said Teresa. ‘We’re going to lower you into the grave and shovel earth on top. And there you are.’

‘How long for?’

Theres had yet to speak. She went up to Linn and said in that strange, dark voice, ‘Until you are dead.’

Linn hugged her knees more tightly to her chest. ‘But I don’t know if I want to die. At the moment.’

‘Until you are dead but can scream,’ said Theres. ‘Then you scream.’

‘But what if you can’t hear me?’

‘I will hear you.’

Linn was so small that there were several centimetres to spare on either side of her and six centimetres above her head when she lay down in the coffin, crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes. The others stood there at a loss as Teresa lowered the lid and hammered a nail into each corner. Then she cut two five-metre lengths of rope and threw them to Caroline and Miranda.

‘Thread those through the loops. Lower her down.’

They did as they were told, but when they had threaded the rope through, made another loop and begun to lift the coffin towards the hole, Anna L started wringing her hands and looking around anxiously, ‘Is this OK? Can we do this? This isn’t a good thing to do, is it?’

‘It’s good,’ said Theres. ‘It’s very good.’

Anna L nodded and fell silent, but her hands continued to twist around one another like two small tormented animals as Caroline and Miranda lowered the coffin into the grave. When it reached the bottom, they stood holding the loops of rope in their hands. Teresa indicated that they should lay them over the edge of the hole.

Theres picked up a spade and started throwing the soil on top of the coffin. The lumps hit the coffin with dull thuds. After eight shovelfuls the lid was no longer visible, and Anna L said, ‘That’s OK, isn’t it? Surely that’s enough now?’

‘Get in your car,’ said Theres, ‘and go away.’ She continued shovelling earth into the hole. Anna L didn’t move, and Teresa grabbed the second spade to help out. Then Sofie took the third. In a couple of minutes the grave was half-filled in.

Theres gave her spade to Malin and said, ‘Everybody must help. Everybody must join in.’

Miranda dropped to her knees and picked up one of the trowels, while Cecilia took the other. Those who had no tools shovelled the earth in with their hands, several weeping as they did so.

The coffin wasn’t big enough to fill the space left by the stones and turf they had removed. When they had shovelled in all the earth, it was still a few centimetres below the surface. Theres went to the end of the grave and crouched down, staring at the black rectangle.

‘Linn has become dead,’ she said. ‘Linn was a little girl. A nice little girl. Now she is dead.’

The sobbing increased in intensity and several of the girls covered their faces with their hands. The sky was now deep violet with a single blood-red cloud drifting across the lake from one shore to the other. Slowly, slowly as if it wanted to make time pass even more sluggishly than it already was. A loon cried out, making them all shudder. If death had a call, then it sounded exactly like that. If death had a shape, then it was that black rectangle gaping in the ground. Linn’s grave.

The atmosphere was so petrifying that none of them could even get out their mobiles to check how much time had passed. It might have been five minutes, it might have been fifteen when Theres lowered her head, as if she were listening to a sound from the grave, then said, ‘Now.’

Teresa wasn’t sure, but she thought she had heard it too. It was more of a squeak than a scream; it was impossible to work out where it came from, and it was barely even human. But it had been there, and as soon as Theres said, ‘Now,’ they all grabbed spades and trowels and crowded around the grave to remove the soil as quickly as possible.

There were still a few centimetres of soil left when Ronja grabbed one loop of rope, Anna L the other, and both of them pulled. The coffin was lifted out of the hole along with a layer of earth which trickled over the lid when it almost tipped over the edge.

‘Linn?’ Anna L called out, banging the end of the coffin with her hand. No response; Teresa pushed her aside so that she could use the other side of the hammer to jemmy out the nails, while Anna babbled away, ‘Linn, Linn, little Linn, Linn?’

The lid came off. Linn was lying just as they had left her, apart from the fact that the arms crossed over her chest now ended in two clenched fists. Her face bore an expression of exalted peace. The girls were standing just as still as Linn was lying, and they were all as silent as Linn, apart from Anna L who was babbling again: ‘We’ve killed her, what have we done, we’ve killed little Linn.’