Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

He pulled on his trousers and his guernsey so that he would be warm and presentable, then opened the door.

Out of the darkness a boy came hurtling in; he almost fell over the doorstep. He was wearing a lifejacket and soaking-wet clothes; Gerlof had never seen him before.

‘Dear me,’ Gerlof said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The boy was kneeling on the rag rug, shaking like a leaf. He looked over at the doorway with terror in his eyes.

‘Shut the door,’ he whispered. ‘Lock it! They’re after me!’

‘Who’s after you?’

‘The dead. From the ship.’

Gerlof closed the door and turned the key.

‘Someone’s after you? What are you talking about?’

The boy crawled further into the boathouse. He stopped when he reached Gerlof’s narrow bed, and clung to it, still staring at the door. He didn’t look at Gerlof; his expression was blank, trapped in fear. He was holding his breath, and appeared to be listening. Gerlof listened, too, but nobody tried the handle or knocked on the door.

He made an effort to stay calm. Should he be afraid? He was still half asleep.

Slowly, he lit several candles on the table, to chase away the shadows. Then he took a couple of steps towards the boy. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Jonas.’

‘And what exactly has happened, Jonas? Can you tell me?’

Finally, the boy met Gerlof’s gaze. ‘There’s a ship out in the Sound,’ he said. ‘A big ship... It came straight at me. I climbed aboard.’ Pause. ‘From my rubber dinghy.’ Pause. ‘But they were all dead.’ Pause. ‘All except one. He had an axe.’

‘And he’s the one who was chasing you?’

‘The ghost,’ the boy said, raising his voice. ‘The ghost was on the ship. He was fighting with the dead!’

The boy took a deep breath, and a single tear rolled down his cheek. Gerlof waited until he had taken a few more deep breaths before reaching out and gently unfastening the lifejacket. Then he said firmly, ‘That was no ghost.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘No. Shall I tell you why?’

The boy nodded.

‘Because ghosts can’t cope with water.’ Gerlof slipped off the lifejacket and carried on: ‘My grandfather always used to say that you should make your escape by boat if you saw a spirit of some kind. So, whatever you saw tonight, it was no ghost, Jonas. I promise you that.’

The boy looked doubtful, but seemed to calm down, even though he was still glancing anxiously at the door.

Eventually, Gerlof went over and opened it again. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, and said reassuringly, ‘I’m just going to have a look. And see if I can hear anything.’

There was probably nothing to worry about but, just to be on the safe side, he picked up a weapon. It was a long orthoceras which he kept as an ornament. He had found it on the shore; it was the shell of an extinct cephalopod that had become fossilized after several million years under extreme pressure on the seabed.

The stone felt pleasingly heavy, like a cudgel, as Gerlof stepped out into the darkness, into the mild night. The shore around the boathouse was dark grey, the water like a black abyss down below. He moved silently, listening hard, but he could hear only the lapping waves.

He walked away from the patch of light by the door and gazed out across the Sound. A few white pinpricks of light glimmered over on the mainland but, otherwise, there was nothing to see.

He switched his hearing aid to the setting for background noise, then straightened up and listened again.

Now he could hear something in the night, a distant rumbling sound out at sea. He recognized the dull throbbing — he had heard it just before he went to bed. But now it was coming from the north, and it was heading away. He fiddled with the hearing aid, trying to turn up the volume, but the rumbling slowly died away.

He waited for another minute or two, then he heard the waves splashing on the shore, rattling the pebbles as the swell of a vessel passing through the Sound reached the land.

He went back inside and locked the door.

‘There’s no one out there,’ he said. ‘No ghosts.’

Jonas didn’t say anything, so Gerlof went on, ‘My name is Gerlof.’

‘I know,’ the boy said. ‘You’re Kristoffer’s granddad.’

A friend of Kristoffer, Gerlof’s youngest grandchild. Now he recognized the boy. He had seen him just a few days ago, at the midsummer dance. He was a member of the Kloss family.

‘Are you Jonas Kloss?’

The boy nodded, staring at the door again. ‘He hit the dead people on the ship with an axe.’ Pause. He thought for a second, then continued, ‘And he asked about an old American. He said, “Where’s Aron, the Swedish-American?”’

A Swedish-American? Gerlof thought.

‘And the man who was holding the axe, Jonas... Did you recognize him?’

The boy shook his head. ‘I don’t know... I don’t know his name.’

Gerlof considered this response. ‘But you did recognize him?’

Jonas thought hard. ‘I think so.’

‘Where had you seen him before?’

‘I don’t know.’

The boy had lowered his gaze, and Gerlof didn’t want to press him, so he simply said quietly, ‘Just try to remember... What was the first thing that came into your mind when you saw the man on the ship?’

Jonas looked up at Gerlof and frowned, then said, ‘Africa.’

The engines had fallen silent. The ship was drifting in the middle of the Sound now, almost motionless in the calm conditions, but it was still difficult for an old man with weary arms and stiff legs to disembark.

The Homecomer threw the bag containing his booty into the bottom of the launch. Then he tied the end of a long plastic cable around his wrist, climbed over the gunwale and managed to get his feet on the front seat. For a few seconds he was sure the two vessels were going to drift apart, but Rita was in control, revving the outboard motor and keeping them side by side.

The Homecomer slid down into the launch, the plastic cable still around his wrist; it was now the only connection between the ship and the launch.

Rita didn’t say anything. She seemed calm and collected, unlike her boyfriend. Pecka was sitting in the middle of the launch with his head down, mumbling to himself. As soon as he got in he had hurled his bloodstained axe into the water, far out into the darkness.

‘Fuck... fuck...’

The Homecomer slumped down in the prow and touched his knee. ‘Pecka. Look at me.’

Pecka raised his head. ‘Fuck,’ he said again. ‘They’re dead.’

The Homecomer nodded. ‘Yes, and now we need to remove all traces.’ He held up the cable in the darkness. ‘We’ve got one thing left to do.’

Pecka stared blankly at him. ‘We killed them,’ he said. ‘The whole crew.’

The Homecomer took his hand, which was ice cold. He knew what was wrong with Pecka. He was in shock, just like many soldiers when they have killed for the first time. The important thing was to get Pecka to focus on details now, to forget the wider picture. When he himself had started killing as a young man, he had thought only about his gun, about handling it correctly — nothing else. Then it had been quite easy.

‘They were sick, weren’t they?’ Pecka went on. ‘Because of something in the hold?’

The Homecomer shook his head. He had no answer to that.

‘They had only themselves to blame,’ he said eventually, passing the end of the cable to Pecka. ‘Let’s finish this. You can do it.’

Pecka looked at the cable, which ran up over the gunwale of the ship and disappeared into one of the hatches. He grabbed the end in his trembling right hand, clutched the small detonator and pressed hard.