Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

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Summer on the beautiful Swedish island of Öland. Visitors arrive in their thousands, ready to enjoy the calm and relaxation of this paradise.
Amongst them is Jonas Kloss, excited at the prospect of staying with his aunt, uncle and older cousins. But it is not as he had hoped. One night he takes a boat out onto the moonlit sea. A ship looms out of the darkness and the horror he finds on board is unimaginable.
Fleeing for his life, Jonas arrives at the door of an elderly islander, Gerlof Davidsson. Once Gerlof has heard his tale of dead sailors and axe-wielding madmen, he realizes that this will be a summer like none other Öland has ever seen.
For one man — the Homecomer — this is a very special journey. He seeks revenge that he’s waited a lifetime to exact...

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It was time.

Pecka and the Homecomer had entered the Ölandic’s private area through the north fence then made their way south through the forest. They had kept out of sight of the shore until they reached the dock. The car park in front of them was empty now; all the cars had left.

‘How are you feeling?’ the Homecomer asked.

‘Fine,’ Pecka said, but his eyes were darting all over the place, and he hadn’t said much all evening. Pecka had grown a lot quieter since the murder of the security guard, but he still obeyed orders.

They had remained hidden among the trees until the sun went down, but now they stepped out and moved towards the water. Towards the L-shaped quay and the ship on the outer side of the dock.

The Homecomer had spent so much time watching the ship over the past few days that he almost felt like a member of the crew. There were four men on board, all foreigners. Today there had been no loading or unloading, and all the indications were that the ship would set sail tomorrow morning. Tonight the crew were probably up at the hotel, celebrating. Happy and unsuspecting.

Time to get on board.

They made their way quickly towards the quayside, the Homecomer in front, with Pecka a few steps behind him.

Both were armed. Pecka didn’t want to carry a gun any more, but he was carrying a freshly sharpened axe. The Homecomer had the Walther hidden behind his back.

‘Here we go, then,’ he said.

‘OK,’ Pecka replied, pulling the balaclava over his head.

The Homecomer could feel his age in his legs but increased his speed.

Once they reached the quayside and everything was quiet, Pecka pressed a key on his mobile and allowed it to ring out twice, which was the signal to Rita to start up the launch, come around the point and board the ship from the other side. When they had finished, all three of them would make their escape in Rita’s boat. That was the plan.

But suddenly they heard a rumbling noise, disturbing the peaceful evening.

The Homecomer slowed down. At first he couldn’t work out what was going on, but then he realized that someone had just started up the ship’s engines. He heard Pecka behind him: ‘Fuck! We’ll have to forget the whole thing!’

The Homecomer shook his head and kept on going.

‘There are too many of them!’ Pecka yelled. ‘They’re all on board... they’re leaving tonight!’

But the Homecomer just kept on walking towards the ship, the gun hidden behind his back. He headed straight for the gangplank, knowing that Pecka was following him, in spite of his protests.

Yes, there were lights on the bridge — the crew were on board. The Homecomer spotted one man in the stern, a seaman who must have just come up on deck. He was in his fifties, dressed in blue overalls, and had started repairing a broken air vent with a piece of corrugated cardboard. He looked extremely bored.

The Homecomer was so close to the ship that he could read the name on the prow: Elia . The hull was dark, a mixture of rust and black paint.

He heard an angry buzzing through the throbbing of the engines. Rita had rounded the point in the little launch.

The seaman looked up and saw the two visitors. He stared at them with no trace of suspicion, merely surprise.

The Homecomer walked to the edge of the quay and said, ‘Good evening,’ in a calm, steady voice.

The seaman opened his mouth and his expression changed from quizzical to uneasy — but by that time the Homecomer had produced his gun.

Pecka had also reached the ship, while at the same time Rita swung the launch around sharply, heading for the stern.

The ship was moored with three hawsers. Pecka positioned himself next to the first one, and raised the axe. Five sharp blows, and the hawser was severed. He quickly moved on to the next one.

The Homecomer was on the deck now, still pointing the Walther at the seaman and speaking quietly but firmly as he issued a series of instructions.

He glanced back and saw that Pecka had lowered the axe. All three hawsers had been cut, and the ship slowly began to drift away from the quayside and out into the dark waters of the Sound.

He looked around. The quayside was still deserted.

The seaman looked confused; he raised his hands and began to back away.

The hijacking had begun.

The New Country, June 1931

Sixty-eight years earlier, the ship that is to take Aron and Sven to the new country is made of metal, and is bigger than any vessel Aron has ever seen.

They have travelled by train from Kalmar, journeying northwards through Sweden. The train has chugged its way through vast coniferous forests, past mountains and lakes, then out into the sun and straight into the heart of a big city.

The station is enormous, packed with travellers and all their luggage. Outside the city awaits, with its long, straight cobbled streets, people strolling along the pavements, and more vehicles than Aron has seen in his whole life. Plenty of carts and horse-drawn carriages clatter by, but there are also big, black motor cars, rumbling along with uniformed chauffeurs behind the wheel and smartly dressed men in the back seat.

‘Stockholm,’ Sven says.

Aron recognizes the name from school.

‘The capital city of Sweden.’

They eat a plate of steaming-hot stew in a smoky café not far from the central station, then buy provisions and the last bits and pieces for their journey. In an ironmonger’s, Sven equips himself with a hammer and a decent spade.

‘It’s easier to get a job if you bring your own tools to the new country,’ he explains.

Then they wander across the city’s bridges, past the tall buildings and the splendour of the Royal Palace, then down through narrow alleyways, to a long quayside with rows of derricks and crowds of people.

‘There she is!’

Both large and small ships are moored alongside, but Sven is pointing to a long, white vessel. A thin curl of smoke is emerging from a big funnel, which has three yellow crowns painted on a blue background. Pennants along the railing flutter in the wind, and a large Swedish flag hangs down from the stern.

The name on the prow reads SS Kastelholm .

‘That’s our bridge,’ Sven says. ‘The bridge that will take us across the water!’

He quickly takes a pinch of snuff from the wooden box, and seems to have left all his anger, all his troubles, behind.

Aron sees that they will not be crossing the sea alone. There are at least twenty fellow travellers standing on deck, with suitcases and rucksacks and tools in their hands. They are all straight-backed, heads up, as if something great is waiting for them.

‘Let’s go on board,’ Sven says. ‘We’re off to the new country!’

Aron feels a shiver run down his spine. It might be the cold wind blowing off the water, or a sudden fear of the unknown.

He has no idea what is going to happen in the new country, but he follows Sven up the gangplank and turns his back on Sweden.

Gerlof

The sun disappeared into a huge bank of cloud behind Gerlof’s cottage on Monday evening. A dark-grey wall rose up on the horizon, as if there were a forest fire on the mainland — but, as an old seaman, Gerlof knew that more overcast weather was on the way. He must remember not to whistle, because whistling brought gales and thunderstorms.

There was no need to whistle; things were already noisy enough in the cottage. He was the only adult at the dinner table; his daughters had gone back to the mainland after midsummer, back to their jobs. But their children were still here.

Julia and her husband were coming over for a holiday at the beginning of July, and until then Gerlof was in charge. He often missed his wife, particularly at a time like this, because she would have been much better at looking after the three boys. Vincent was nineteen, and old enough to keep an eye on the two younger ones, who were sixteen and eleven, but all three had an energy and speed that Gerlof had lost a long time ago. They and their friends raced around the cottage with enormous water pistols, and played video games — Nintendo and Super Mario Bros , or whatever they were called.

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