Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

“I’m in Marnäs, or rather north of Marnäs, at Lennart Henriksson’s. We’ve—”

“Is Gerlof there with you?”

“No,” said Julia. “I assume he’s at the home.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Astrid firmly. “The lady who’s in charge there, Boel, rang me a little while ago, wondering where he was. He went off this morning with John Hagman, and he hasn’t come back.”

“I expect he’s with John, then,” said Julia.

“No,” said Astrid, again firm. “It was John who called Boel. He’d left Gerlof at the bus station, and Gerlof was supposed to phone him when he got home.”

Julia thought for a moment. Gerlof ought to be allowed to do whatever he wanted, and he was sure to be fine, but...

“I’d better ring the home, then,” she said, despite the fact that all she really wanted to do at the moment was to go down to the shore with Lennart.

“Good idea,” said Astrid, and they said goodbye.

Julia hung up.

“Everything okay?” asked Lennart behind her. He was standing in the doorway and had already put his jacket back on. “Shall we go? We can have a cup of coffee when we get back.”

Julia nodded, but she had a thoughtful furrow in her forehead.

The sky had darkened now; it was almost evening, and even colder than before. The soughing of the wind in the tops of the pine trees surrounding the house sounded even more desolate now.

None of the dead has been identified, thought Julia.

It was a headline about a car accident she had read on a placard down in Borgholm, she remembered. It was going round and round in her brain: None of the dead identified, no dead identified...

She turned.

“Lennart,” she said, “I know I’m being a pain and I know I’m worrying for no reason... but can we go down to the shore a bit later on this evening, and drive down to the home in Marnäs now? I need to check that Gerlof has got there.”

“Treasure? I haven’t taken any fucking treasure,” says the man whose name is Martin.

“You hid the metal box,” says Nils, taking a step forward. “When I turned my back on you.”

“What box?” says Martin, taking his cigarette packet out again.

“Let’s just all calm down,” says Gunnar behind him. “We’re all on the same side.”

He’s standing too close, right behind Nils’s back.

Nils doesn’t want him there. He glances quickly behind him, then looks at Martin again.

“You’re lying,” he says, taking another step forward.

“ Me? I was the one that got you home!” snarls Martin angrily. “Gunnar and I organized everything. We brought you home, on my ship. As far as I’m concerned, you could have stayed where you were.”

“I still don’t know you,” says Nils, thinking: My treasure. My Stenvik.

“Really?” Martin lights a cigarette. “I couldn’t give a fuck whether you know me or not.”

“Put the shovel down, Nils,” says Gunnar.

He’s still behind Nils, and way too close.

Martin is too close too. Suddenly he raises the shovel.

Nils senses that Martin is planning to strike him with the shaft, but it’s too late. Nils has a shovel too, and he’s already lifted it.

He’s holding the shaft with both hands, and he swings it just as hard as he swung the oar at Lass-Jan thirty years ago. The old rage wells up; all patience is swept away. He has waited and waited.

“It’s mine!” he screams, and the man in front of him suddenly blurs.

Martin moves, but he doesn’t have time to duck. The shovel strikes Martin on the left shoulder, keeps moving and slices into the skin beneath his ear.

Martin staggers, howling, and Nils strikes again, this time at Martin’s forehead.

“No!”

Martin roars, spins around, and falls, right onto the cairn.

Nils lifts the shovel again, and this time he is aiming for Martin’s unprotected face.

“Stop it!” roars Gunnar.

At Nils’s feet, Martin raises his arms. Blood is pouring down his face; he is waiting for the killing blow.

But Nils can’t strike him.

“Stop, Nils!”

A hand has gripped the shovel’s shaft. Gunnar is holding the spade, and he pulls it so hard that Nils lets go.

“That’s enough!” Gunnar says loudly. “There was absolutely no need for this at all! What happened, Martin?”

“Fucking... hell,” whispers Martin, his voice thick and his arms still raised protectively above his head. “Do it, Gunnar! Don’t wait until... Just do it! ”

“It’s too soon,” says Gunnar.

“I’m going now,” says Nils. He takes a step backward.

“Fuck the plan... We need to do it,” says Martin. “He’s fucking crazy, that one...”

He tries to get up, but the blood is pouring from his nose and from the gash in his forehead.

“Someone has taken the treasure... you or someone else,” says Nils, staring unblinkingly at Gunnar. “So the deal’s off.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m going home now. Home to Stenvik.”

“Okay...” Gunnar sighs wearily. “No more deals, then. We might as well finish it here.”

“I want to go,” says Nils.

“No.”

“Yes. I’m going now.”

“You’re not leaving,” says Gunnar. “It was never the plan that you should leave this place. Don’t you realize that? You’re staying here.”

“No. I’m going,” says Nils. “It doesn’t end here.”

“It does, actually... after all, you’re already dead.”

Gunnar slowly lifts the heavy pick, looking around in the fog as if he wants to make sure nobody can see what’s happening.

“You can’t go home,” he tells Nils. “You’re dead. You’re buried up in Marnäs churchyard.”

Gerlof was dying, and dead people were showing themselves to him.

They were making noises too. The bones of a warrior who fell in some long-forgotten Bronze Age battle were rattling down on the shore — he closed his eyes to avoid seeing the ghost dancing down there, but he could clearly hear the rattling.

When he opened his eyes he saw his friend Ernst Adolfsson walking around in circles in the meadow looking for stones in the grass, his body spattered with blood.

And when Gerlof looked out to sea, Death himself was sailing by in the twilight, straight into the wind, aboard an old wooden ship with black sails.

The worst thing of all was when his wife, Ella, sitting beneath the apple tree in her nightgown, looked at him with a sad and serious expression and asked him to give up the struggle. And Gerlof closed his eyes and really wanted to give up and go with her aboard the black ship; he wanted to fall asleep and escape the rain and the cold, to stop worrying and just pretend he was in bed in his room at the home in Marnäs. He didn’t know why he was trying to stay awake. Dying was taking a long time, and that bothered him.

The rattling continued down on the shore, and Gerlof slowly turned his head and opened his eyes.

The horizon, the line between sea and sky, had completely disappeared in the darkness.

But was it really old bones rattling down there? Or something else? Was there a living human being somewhere nearby?

Somewhere within his numb body a faint spark still flickered, a faint echo of the will to live. It was like hoisting a mainsail in a strong wind, Gerloff thought — difficult, but not impossible. He counted: One, two, three, then he pulled himself up to his knees, using the old apple tree for support.

Heave-ho, heave-ho, he thought, placing his right foot on the ground.

Then he had to rest for a few minutes. He stayed completely still, apart from the trembling in his knees, before he made the final lurch into a standing position, like a weight lifter.