Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

There’s an old corner cupboard painted in traditional folk-art style. The top door is decorated with a hand-painted motif: the ages of man, from cradle to grave. A man and woman stand side by side on a bridge where each step represents a decade. On the top step the pair stand tall as fifty-year-olds, but death lurks beneath the bridge in the form of a skeleton with a scythe in his hand.

‘That’s lovely,’ Erik says, looking at Nestor, who is still standing in the living room.

‘I sleep in... M-mother’s room. I moved in there when...’

Nestor cranes his neck oddly, as if he wanted to look at someone standing behind him.

‘Goodnight,’ Erik says.

He takes hold of the door handle to close it, but Nestor puts his hand on the door and looks at him with anxious eyes.

‘The r-rich need it, the poor already have it, but you f-fear it more than death,’ Nestor whispers.

‘I’m a bit too tired for riddles, Nestor.’

‘The rich need it, the p-poor already have it, but you fear it more than death,’ Nestor repeats, then licks his lips.

‘I’ll think about the answer,’ Erik says, and closes the door. ‘Well, goodnight.’

Erik sits down and stares at the hideous wallpaper with its repeated pattern that looks like ornate coats of arms, garlands, peacock feathers, and hundreds of eyes.

The roller-blind is already closed, and he switches the light off and detects a faint smell of lavender as he folds back the heavy covers and gets into bed.

He’s so exhausted that all his thoughts drift away and lose their shape. He’s just about to tumble over the boundary into sleep when he hears a small creaking sound in the room. Someone is trying to open the door quietly.

‘What is it, Nestor?’ Erik asks.

‘A clue,’ the soft voice says. ‘I c-can give you a clue.’

‘I’m very tired, and—’

‘Priests think it’s b-bigger than God Himself,’ Nestor interrupts.

‘Can you close the door, please?’

The handle clicks as Nestor lets go of it and pads away across the parquet in the living room.

Erik falls asleep, and in his dreams little Madeleine is standing by his bed, blowing on his face and whispering the answer to Nestor’s riddle.

‘Nothing,’ she whispers, blowing on him. ‘The rich need... nothing, the poor have nothing... And you fear nothing more than death.’

Erik is pulled from sleep by a breeze on his face. Someone is whispering quickly, but stops the moment he opens his eyes. The darkness is almost impenetrable, and it takes him a few seconds before he realises where he is.

The old horsehair mattress creaks when he rolls over.

Even if he was fast asleep, some part of him was alert, a force that yanked him from sleep.

Perhaps he just heard water running through the building’s pipes, or the wind pressing against the window.

No one has been whispering in his room, everything is still and dark.

Erik wonders if this was where Nestor was sleeping when he slipped into psychosis, when the rattling of the pipes turned into voices, into the old woman brushing dandruff from her long grey hair who told him you shouldn’t look your nearest and dearest in the eye when you kill them.

Erik knows it was all about the dog Nestor was forced to put down when he was a child, but he still used to shiver every time Nestor imitated the woman’s creaking voice.

He thinks of the way Nestor used to sit with his hands clasped in his lap and his head lowered, a little smile would play on his lips and he would flush slightly as he dispensed advice on how to murder a child.

The old cupboard creaks and the shadows by the door are hard to interpret. He closes his stinging eyes and goes back to sleep, but wakes up again immediately when the door to the guestroom closes.

Erik thinks that he’s going to have to tell Nestor to leave him alone when he’s sleeping, that he doesn’t have to keep checking on him, but he can’t be bothered to get up now.

A car passes on the street outside, and its chill light finds its way past the roller-blind, slides across the patterned wallpaper and disappears.

Erik stares at the wall.

It looks like a trace of the light has been left on the wall once the car has gone. He thinks that there must be a weak lamp by the shelf that he hasn’t seen before.

Erik blinks, stares at the motionless blue light, and realises that there’s a peephole between the rooms.

The light is coming from the other bedroom, Erik thinks when everything suddenly goes dark.

Nestor is looking on to his room right now.

Erik lies absolutely still.

It’s so quiet that he can hear himself swallow.

The blue light becomes visible again and he can hear intense whispering through the wall.

Erik quickly gets dressed in the darkness and moves closer to the light.

The point of light is between the two lower shelves of the bookcase. The little hole would be invisible if the porcelain animals were arranged differently.

It’s positioned in the very darkest part of the pattern on the wallpaper, so small that he realises he’s going to have to press his face to the wall and put his eye right next to the hole to be able to see anything.

He moves a porcelain puppy in a basket, leans his hands on the wall and carefully puts his head between the shelves, feeling the wood against his hair and the wallpaper touching the tip of his nose.

When he is right next to the hole he can see straight into the next room.

There’s a mobile phone on the bedside table, the screen is lit up, illuminating the alarm clock and the oval pattern of the wallpaper. Erik manages to catch a glimpse of the neatly made bed and a framed photograph of a young child in a christening gown before the light from the phone goes out.

He hears rapid footsteps somewhere in the flat and tries to pull his head back, but his hair catches on a splinter in the wood. The porcelain figures tinkle ominously.

Erik puts his hand up and tries to free his hair as the door opens behind him.

He pulls his head out and hears the figurines on the shelf rattle. Nestor comes towards him and he backs away.

‘I’ve called the p-police, I c-came back to tell you,’ Nestor whispers. ‘It’s your t-turn to get h-help now, I’ve spoken to them several times, they’re here now.’

‘Nestor, you don’t understand,’ Erik says forlornly.

‘No, no, you d-don’t understand,’ Nestor interrupts in a friendly voice, and switches on the lamp in the window. ‘I said it’s your t-turn to get medicine and—’

There’s a sudden noise, like a stone hitting the window, the dark roller-blind quivers in the light from the lamp, and a cascade of glass falls down behind the blind and tinkles over the radiator.

Nestor lurches. He’s been shot, right through his body with a high-velocity weapon. Blood sprays out of the exit hole in his shoulder.

He looks at the blood in surprise.

‘They p-promised...’

He stumbles, falls on to his hip and looks up with a confused expression.

‘G-get out through the extra door,’ he hisses. ‘Go down into the laundry room, straight through, and you’ll be in the next building...’

He puts his knuckles on the floor as if to push himself up.

‘Lie down,’ Erik whispers. ‘Just lie flat.’

‘Run across the schoolyard, then follow the church wall t-to the forest and the pet cemetery.’

‘Lie still,’ Erik repeats, then runs at a crouch towards the door.

When he reaches the living room he hears Nestor’s front door being forced open. There’s a crash and splinters and pieces of metal from the lock clatter across the floor.

‘Hide in the little r-red house,’ Nestor gasps behind him.