Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

John glanced discreetly at his watch — it would soon be time for his evening rounds at the campsite — so Gerlof put down his cup.

‘Thank you for the coffee; it was nice to talk to you. Could I possibly borrow the postcards for a few days?’

‘We’ll be in Majorca for two weeks, so you might as well hang on to them until we’re back,’ Sonja said.

Gerlof had one more question, but it wasn’t about Aron. It was about the sound of knocking from inside a coffin. However, he didn’t really know what he wanted to ask Sonja. It was her father who had heard the sound, along with Gerlof, and now Roland was lying in the churchyard, too.

In the end, he said, ‘In that case, we’ll head home and let you get on with your packing.’

Kristoffer wanted to hang out, so Jonas was back in the Davidssons’ garden. When he walked through the gate, he saw that Gerlof was sitting on his chair with his straw hat perched on his head, just as he should be.

The garden was quite small, but Jonas preferred being here to being at Villa Kloss. He could relax here.

But Gerlof’s voice was sharper this evening. He sounded more like a sea captain. ‘Good evening, Jonas. Come over here for a moment.’

Jonas slowly walked over to join him. Gerlof leaned forward, using his stick for support, and fixed him with a penetrating gaze. ‘Peter Mayer,’ he said. ‘You remember that name?’

Jonas’s heart gave an extra thump. Then he nodded. Gerlof looked so serious.

‘And have you mentioned it to anyone else, Jonas?’

Jonas didn’t know what to say. He wanted to sit down and tell Gerlof everything , absolutely everything , about the trip to Marnäs and Uncle Kent and Peter Mayer running across the field towards the road. And about the shouts and the screech of tyres.

But what would happen then? Yesterday, Casper had actually let him have a ride on the back of the moped, and Jonas knew he couldn’t tell on Uncle Kent. So he shook his head.

‘No. No one.’

‘Do you know why I’m asking you about Peter Mayer?’

‘No,’ Jonas said quickly.

Perhaps rather too quickly. Gerlof waved away a fly, keeping his eyes fixed on the boy. ‘You seem a little tense, Jonas. Is everything all right?’

‘Not really.’

‘What’s the matter?’

Jonas took a deep breath. He had to say something about his fears, so he decided to reveal one of them. ‘The cairn. It’s haunted.’

‘Oh?’ Gerlof didn’t sound in the least bit afraid.

‘I’ve seen the ghost. It actually came out of the cairn.’

‘Did it?’ Gerlof smiled at him. ‘I heard there was a dragon living in there. Twelve metres long from nose to tail, and bright green.’

Jonas didn’t smile back. He was too old for fairy tales, and knew that dragons didn’t exist. There were other things to be frightened of, but not dragons.

Gerlof’s smile disappeared. He leaned more heavily on his stick and got to his feet. ‘Come with me, Jonas. We’re going for a little walk.’

He set off slowly but resolutely, with Jonas close behind.

At the far end of the garden a small path led through the undergrowth and into a meadow. They followed the path for some thirty metres, then Gerlof stopped.

‘Look over there, Jonas.’

Jonas turned his head and saw a square tower of sun-bleached wood in a clearing not far away. He knew what it was — a windmill. There was another one behind the restaurant, but that one was red and looked almost new. This one was derelict, with unpainted walls and wind-damaged sails.

‘You mean the windmill?’

‘No. Over there.’

Gerlof was pointing to the right of the windmill with his stick. Jonas looked, and saw a pile of round stones lying half hidden in the long grass.

‘You see that? Those stones are the cairn... The real cairn, which was raised over some dead chieftain back in the Bronze Age.’

‘The real cairn?’

‘Yes. Your ancestors Edvard, Sigfrid and Gilbert Kloss dug out the cairn in the twenties. They thought there was ancient treasure under the stones. I don’t know if they found anything, but while they were digging they decided the cairn would look better on the ridge, in front of their land... More “National Romantic”.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s something that was fashionable in those days... People liked to worship ancient monuments. So the brothers fetched an ox cart and transported several loads of boulders to the ridge and shifted half the cairn.’

Jonas didn’t say anything, he just listened.

‘So the new cairn opposite Villa Kloss isn’t a grave,’ Gerlof went on. ‘Haven’t you noticed the old bunker set into the rock?’

‘I’ve seen the door,’ Jonas said. ‘It’s down in the dip.’

‘Exactly. But do you think the army engineers would have been allowed to build a bunker under the cairn, if it was a real ancient monument?’

Jonas shook his head.

‘They wouldn’t,’ Gerlof stressed. ‘But because it’s not a real cairn, it was fine.’ He glanced over at the stones again, and added, ‘If there’s anyone who ought to be afraid of the ghost, it’s me... When I was little, I was told that if you walked past here, invisible arms would reach out and grab you, and squeeze the air out of your lungs.’

‘Are you scared?’ Jonas said quietly.

Gerlof shook his head. ‘I think there’s an explanation for most things that seem frightening. In the old days, people used to hear ghosts screaming out on the alvar at night, but it was just hungry fox cubs, sitting in their dens and calling for food.’

Jonas felt a bit better now. Gerlof had an answer for everything.

They walked back to the garden. Jonas checked the legs of his trousers to make sure he hadn’t picked up any ticks from the grass, but he couldn’t see any.

Gerlof sat down and closed his eyes, as if the conversation was over. But Jonas hadn’t finished. ‘I’ve seen someone standing by the cairn. Several times.’

Gerlof opened his eyes. ‘I believe you, Jonas. But that was a real person. A tourist, perhaps.’

‘But he was like you... really, really old. And he just disappeared.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He had grey hair and a white beard. He was dressed in dark clothes. Just like the man in the wheelhouse.’

Gerlof peered up at him. ‘Are you all right, Jonas?’

The boy shook his head.

‘I know you have horrible memories,’ Gerlof said. ‘You’ve had a terrible experience. Something dreadful happened to me one summer, when I was fifteen years old. I saw a man have a heart attack and die right in front of me. But everything passes — that’s the only consolation. We get older, and happy memories push away the horrible ones.’

Jonas wondered when he would find those happy memories.

Gerlof’s grandsons and Jonas Kloss had cycled off to the sweet shop, and Gerlof had gone indoors to avoid the mosquitoes’ evening assembly.

He gathered up some empty glasses the boys had left on the coffee table, then flopped down in the armchair next to the telephone. He was very tired.

He was getting nowhere. Not with Peter Mayer’s death, at any rate.

And the elderly American? What could he do to track him down? He picked up his notebook, licked his finger and started to leaf through the pages. He read through what he had written during his lunch with the Swedish-Americans, and over coffee with the gravedigger’s daughter, paying close attention to every detail.

Speculation about Sven and Aron Fredh from Rödtorp. A question jotted down: ‘Whereabouts in the USA did Aron end up?’ But the line below was blank because, apart from the postcard before their departure, Sonja and her father had never heard from their relatives again.