Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

‘My wife needed care... I just wanted a small piece of land,’ he said slowly. ‘I just wanted the croft. That was what I’d dreamed of coming back to as an old man... Rödtorp, down by the water.’

‘You would never have got it,’ Veronica said.

‘No. You knocked it down to make sure of that.’

Veronica turned and looked at her son, who hadn’t made a sound.

‘It’s all about security,’ she said. ‘And planning for the long term. No one is going to come and take the Ölandic from us. Certainly not some bastard who turns up after sixty years, wanting our land... So I sent you away from Stockholm and I took care of your sister in the home, before she could start talking. Kent and I were in complete agreement; there was no way we were going to let you in.’

‘That was a mistake,’ Vlad said.

Veronica pointed at his bloodstained shirt with the pen. ‘That doesn’t look too good,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You’re bleeding, Aron.’

Vlad shook his head, but he could feel the sweat trickling down his brow. ‘Not any more.’

Veronica smiled. ‘I think you’re dying, Aron.’

Vlad blinked. ‘So are you.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m feeling fine, Aron. I’m going to live for a very long time... After all, I have our land to take care of.’

Vlad raised the gun and said quietly, ‘Your children will have to do that.’

He was going to say more, but all of a sudden he heard banging. It was coming from underneath him, from the floor.

The old trapdoor was down there — he hadn’t really thought about it until now, but it was shaking, the dust whirling up in the glow of the lamps.

Vlad didn’t have time to do anything. The trapdoor dropped open with a crash, and the boy who had been sitting on top of it fell through, still tied to the chair.

He had lost his hostage.

Vlad stared at the hole for a couple of seconds too long. He didn’t notice that Veronica Kloss was on her feet, he just heard the sound of breaking glass as she kicked over the nearest lamp.

The paraffin flared up, and Veronica flew towards him. She was fast; Vlad didn’t see her until she was standing right in front of him, still clutching the pen. In a single movement, she jabbed it straight into the wound in his belly.

‘That’s from Kent!’ she yelled, before delivering a second vicious blow.

Ice-cold pain in the wound.

Vlad dropped the gun and heard it clatter on to the floor. He fumbled for the pen, trying to pull it out, but Veronica was holding on to it, and pushed him against the wall.

‘It’s over!’ she hissed.

But he shook his head.

Vlad didn’t die; instead, he threw his whole weight against Veronica, pushing her backwards, past the beams and against the opposite wall.

‘Let go of me!’ She was screaming, tearing at him.

They danced around the cramped room, fighting, staring one another in the eye.

The burning paraffin spread all around them. The dry wooden floor had caught fire — but Vlad saw the piece of paper with Veronica’s confession on it whirling upwards in the heat, away from the flames.

The wind was pushing against the mill. It was swaying more and more violently, and it began to list like a capsizing ship. The walls creaked and the floor cracked. Two more lamps fell over and shattered.

Vlad closed his eyes; he felt seasick.

He let go of Veronica.

It’s over, he thought as the whole world began to tip.

‘Catch him!’ Gerlof yelled.

John had knocked off the iron bolt and was hunched beneath the mill. A thin, bound body came crashing through the open trapdoor. A boy.

Gerlof staggered forward, but he was too slow. John wasn’t fast enough either, but Jonas threw himself forward and managed to catch his cousin. He tucked his hands under Casper’s arms and dragged him away.

Through the thin wall, they could hear thuds and crashes, and a woman screaming.

‘They’re fighting!’ John shouted.

The whole mill was shaking. Gerlof saw it swaying above him, like an ancient oak tree. It was being buffeted by the storm, and the struggle inside wasn’t helping. The mill had run out of time — it was too old to remain standing any longer.

As the structure swayed, they heard a cracking sound from the plinth beneath the building. Then a loud bang as the base finally gave way.

Gerlof opened his mouth. ‘Get out, John!’ he shouted.

John hadn’t moved; it was as if he were frozen to the spot, staring at Gerlof. Eventually, he began to shuffle sideways.

Gerlof tried to get out of the way, too, edging backwards with his stick, but he wasn’t fast enough. His stiff legs made him feel as if he were wading through treacle.

‘John?’ he yelled again. He could no longer see his friend, and the mill was coming down. Gerlof heard shouts through the walls, and the sound of breaking glass.

He was still too close. The black shadow grew as it came towards him. He thought about Don Quixote and tried to turn around, to get away.

Something flared up in the darkness inside the mill.

Lamps , Gerlof remembered. Paraffin lamps.

Planks and beams crashed to the ground in front of him. Old nails were ripped out, and the air was full of debris swirling around in the wind.

As the mill collapsed, the sails broke.

Gerlof went down, too; he fell backwards on the grass and saw the fire catch hold. The flames began to crackle.

But suddenly he saw a slim figure crawling out of the ruined mill: Veronica Kloss. She didn’t get up; perhaps she had broken something, but at least she was alive. She crawled slowly across the grass towards her son.

Gerlof raised his head.

John? he thought.

And where was Aron Fredh?

The mill had collapsed.

Aron Fredh was trapped, with one beam across his chest and another resting on his thighs. His legs were crushed, his stomach was bleeding and his body was ice cold.

He knew that this was the end. But the bullet wound no longer hurt, and his brain was still working.

The memories drifted through his mind. He heard voices, saw faces.

His mother’s eyes. His sister’s smile. The final whimper from his father, Edvard Kloss, who had also been trapped under planks of wood some seventy years ago, crushed and dying, but still refusing to take his son’s hand.

Aron blinked away the memories. He could see something shiny and slender poking up among the debris just a metre or so away. The barrel of the assault rifle. But he couldn’t reach it, and it didn’t matter. He was done with shooting.

He thought back to the time when he had been a soldier in the prison camp and had finally managed to get rid of the clumsy Winchester. He had handed it in at the guards’ office and been issued with his first Russian pistol, a Nagant. This meant he could start delivering shots to the back of the neck at close range.

It was more than six decades ago, in September 1936. But he remembered that day. There had been an endless series of executions by firing squad during the autumn, in the gravel pit outside the camp. The sound of shots echoed through the forest from morning till night, but it was such an isolated location that it might as well have been on the moon. No one could see or hear what happened in the battle for a bright future.

When Vlad arrived with his troop of two men, the guards had already lined up those who had been sentenced to death. There were about thirty of them, facing a wall of sand and with their backs to their executioners. They were tied together with rope, long enough to ensure that the others wouldn’t be pulled over when one of them fell.

There was a lot to do. Time to get to work.