Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

The Homecomer stepped back to admire their handiwork. They had built a little burial cairn in the forest. It wasn’t old like the one in Stenvik; this one was brand new.

‘Have you... Have you done this before?’ Pecka asked.

‘Not here,’ the Homecomer said. But he knew what would happen in the grave from now on; that was nothing new.

The birds wouldn’t be able to detect the stench of the corpse, so they wouldn’t start pecking at it, which was good — but the insects would soon find it. The bluebottles would buzz in among the stones in just a few hours and, since the guard wasn’t wearing any clothes, they would start laying their eggs immediately. When the maggots hatched, they would be hungry. They would break down the body, work their way in until they reached the skeleton, until it no longer stank. In a few weeks all the soft parts would have dried out or disappeared, and in two months only the bones would remain.

And by that time the Homecomer would be gone.

He looked to the north through the trees, away from the grave. The ship was still at the quayside. ‘Have you been keeping an eye on the ship?’

Pecka had been staring at the stones, but he gave a start and answered mechanically, ‘Yes. They’ve all gone ashore. To the restaurant.’

‘Good,’ the Homecomer said. ‘Let’s go.’

With a final glance at the grave, he led the way into the forest, heading back towards the fence. His footsteps were light as he walked along, in spite of his age and what he had just done. He was still capable.

It was morning, a lazy Sunday when nothing much seemed to be happening along the coast. Jonas was gazing out from the decking in front of Uncle Kent’s house. The sun was spreading its warmth, and summer was all around him. Boats in the Sound, holidaymakers relaxing on the shore, the odd car passing by. The stony ground above the water was coloured red and blue by the petals of poppies and viper’s bugloss, which were shooting up everywhere.

But something had happened. The door behind him was wide open, and he could hear Uncle Kent’s voice in the middle of a phone call. His uncle usually sounded quite pleased, but today his tone was harsh and angry.

‘Gone?’ Kent said. ‘What do you mean, gone? Was he there in the morning, or did he not turn up at all?’ Pause. ‘He was? So he just cleared off at some point during the day? He’s done it again...’

Pause.

‘I know. We had some trouble with him last season, but Veronica decided to give him a second chance this year. She believed in him. He promised to pull himself together, work harder. And now this...’

Jonas didn’t want to eavesdrop, so he left the garden and went out on to the coast road. He could see the campsite just a few hundred metres to the north, and the jetty where almost everyone in the village gathered to swim and sunbathe when the weather was good. Summer visitors.

The summer visitors were lying there in the sun; the hotter it got, the more of them there were. The shore was covered with a mosaic of red, white and blue beach towels, with thermos flasks, balls, bottles and bicycle baskets scattered all around. The summer visitors had lots of stuff, but they hardly ever bothered with any of it. They went for a swim and played Frisbee, but mostly they lay motionless in the sunshine.

Jonas waved away a fly and looked in the other direction. Villa Kloss was the last house in the village, then the coast road narrowed to a dirt track. The Ölandic was a few kilometres away, with its huge campsite and luxury hotel, but the resort was hidden by a series of headlands jutting out into the sea.

Jonas crossed the road and walked out on to the plateau known as the ridge. It was covered in gravel and dropped down into a little hollow above the shore.

And right on the edge of the plateau, straight in front of Uncle Kent’s house, was the rounded burial cairn. It must have been there for a thousand years.

Jonas slowed down as he reached the cairn. He had never dared to come this close when he was little — not on his own. The cairn looked like a hillock, but at close quarters you could see that it was made up of hundreds of big stones, all piled on top of one another. It had been built during the Bronze Age.

Jonas knew that there was a coffin under all those stones — but not a wooden one. One day when they were standing there studying the cairn, his father had told him that it was a sarcophagus made up of solid blocks. The stones and boulders had been piled up on top of the coffin, to protect it from grave robbers.

Suddenly, he heard a rattling sound; he stopped and turned around a few metres from the cairn and saw his cousin Casper on a dark-blue Yamaha, approaching from the south.

Casper was fifteen now — of course he had bought a moped. Or perhaps Aunt Veronica had given it to him.

The summer before last, they had both had bikes and used to race each other on the gravel tracks in the quarry, but Jonas knew there was no chance of that now.

Casper turned on to the plateau and nodded to Jonas. He didn’t get off, but sat there revving the engine impatiently until Jonas went over to him.

‘Cool!’ he shouted.

Casper nodded. ‘Got it back in the spring. What are you doing?’

Jonas wasn’t doing anything; he was just standing here by the cairn. But he had to say something.

‘I’m counting stones.’

Casper revved the engine again. Jonas considered asking if he wanted to play, but suspected that his cousin probably no longer used that word.

‘Stones?’ Casper said.

‘Every year some of the stones fall down from the cairn. I’m keeping a check on them.’

That was in fact true; since he was last here at least three big stones had come tumbling down and were lying on the grass, along with others that had been there for several years. Jonas counted them and looked at his cousin.

‘Nine,’ he said, and continued in a confident voice: ‘When thirteen stones have fallen, the ghost will be free.’

‘What ghost?’

‘The one that lives in the cairn.’

The idea had only just come to him, but it sounded really good.

‘What will he do then?’ Casper wanted to know.

He didn’t sound all that interested, but Jonas had to keep going.

‘He’ll go to the houses on the other side of the road and...’ Jonas tried to think of something terrible that could happen. Something really bad. ‘He’ll go into every room and raise his sword, then chop off everyone’s arms while they’re fast asleep. The pain will wake them up, and they’ll see the blood pumping out, and their arms lying on the floor. Most of them will survive, but they’ll never be able to swim again.’

Casper was listening, but didn’t look impressed.

‘Wrong. He’ll take over their bodies while they’re asleep. And when they wake up, they’re possessed .’

‘Possessed?’

‘Possessed by the ghost.’

‘Right.’

‘I saw a film about that kind of thing last winter,’ Casper said. ‘ Fallen . It was about a demon who came up from hell and took over people’s souls. He could move from one person to another, and when someone was possessed they had to do whatever he wanted. He turned them all into serial killers, but when the police arrested the murderer, the demon simply transferred into another body. So nobody could catch him.’

Jonas nodded. He hadn’t seen the film, but being possessed by a demon sounded worse than having your arms chopped off. He tried to think of something even more terrifying, but he’d run out of ideas.

He looked down at the cairn. ‘More stones have started to come loose — can you see?’

‘Maybe the ghost is on his way out,’ Casper said. ‘But you could always roll them back.’