Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 25 - The Angel

“Sit on my lap,” he stuttered. He was hardly able to say the words because he was so excited.

Tula pretended to hesitate. She thought this was fun.

“Mother says that I mustn’t sit on the laps of grown-up men any more,” she explained innocently. “I’ve probably gotten too heavy.”

“You ... you can also ...” He was breathing like a pair of bellows. “You can lie down. Lean back a bit and pull your knees up.”

Tula obeyed. She was enjoying herself. What would this lead to? She was curious to investigate the grown-ups’ game, since they seemed to enjoy it so much.

He was immediately under her skirts, caressing her. He fumbled and was very excited. Oh, dear! What a wonderful tickling sensation ...

This was going to turn into something very exciting! His fingers were eager. Now Tula was beginning to understand a little bit about the game of the grown-ups. It didn’t seem to be at all stupid.

“What are you doing?” she asked naively.

“Nothing, nothing,” he muttered, his face distorted in a series of grimaces. “Don’t worry!”

He began to dig in his trousers. He moaned and gasped and then Tula got to see that strange object again.

“Well! You don’t look like me at all!”

He lay down. “Feel it. Feel it!” He stumbled over the words.

Tula felt, and laughed the special, childish laughter she resorted to when she wanted to fool people.

“Aren’t you afraid at all?” he said, surprised at her reaction.

His hand searched once more, groped and then turned violent. All of a sudden, he moaned and threw himself over her, spreading her legs.

Just like the couple in the forest, Tula thought. At last, I’m going to find out why the grown-ups like it so much.

“Ouch! It hurts!”

But Mr Knutsson groaned and went on pushing. This chubby young girl surpassed everything he had tried before. She was temptation personified.

With a wrinkled brow, Tula said: “This isn’t funny any more.” She tried to break loose. “It hurts!”

Her words had changed his face: every feature radiated evil and madness. “Yes, doesn’t it? It has to hurt,” he groaned so heavily that he whined. “You must be scared. You must scream! Scream! Otherwise I won’t ... for hell’s sake, SCREAM!”

His hands searched furiously for her throat. “This was meant to come afterwards,” he snarled. “So you wouldn’t tell! But I’ll make you scream – make you scared. I won’t let you cheat me out of my right!”

His hands squeezed. Then Tula thought, is this what it’s all about?

A few whispered words glided over her lips. A spell.

Knutsson let out a yell and quickly slipped off her.

“You’re burning,” he screamed, clasping his hands around his red-hot tool. Tula sat up and removed his hands with a single movement, muttering a series of strange words. She grabbed his pride and pulled it so that for a moment it seemed to his eyes unreasonably long and thin ... and then he screamed! His organ was curled round like a pig’s tail, with an unbearably tight knot in it.

This can’t be true, he thought, horrified. This just can’t be true. This is just not possible, this is physically impossible, nobody can tie a knot ...

But the knot was there.

Tula had got up. She stood over him and he was totally confused as he looked into her eyes. There was another spell, now with her hand pointed at his mouth. And yet another one while she held both her hands over his, without touching him.

Then she turned around and started to walk away. Over her shoulder, she said: “Five children, maybe more, have died, including your own daughter! How could you?”

Knutsson wanted to say that child wasn’t his – which was, of course, beside the point. He would probably have killed her anyway. His or others – the wonderful feeling of molesting a child and killing it in the middle of a violent orgasm was stronger than anything else.

But Knutsson was unable to say a single word! That little witch had made him dumb forever so that he couldn’t betray her. But he didn’t want to admit that he was defeated – he would see to her, he would get revenge!

He dragged himself back to Bergunda, semi-conscious with pain. He had been unable to loosen the knot no matter how hard he tried, digging his nails in until he bled. He managed to get home to Växjö, where he went to bed without a word to anybody. He couldn’t, he would have to lie down and scream silently because his vocal cords wouldn’t do as he wanted them to.

After two days, he couldn’t stand it any more. His bladder was about to burst and his life was in danger. He wrote a note to his hysterical, baffled wife telling her to call the doctor, who turned up and stared incredulously at his misery.

“No,” said the learned man with determination in his voice. “I simply don’t understand any of this!”

Mr Knutsson waved and gesticulated that he wanted pen and paper to tell the doctor about Tula, the witch, about the words that he thought he had discerned in her low mutterings: “Knot, magical knot, never loosen.” And much, much more that he hadn’t really perceived. Nobody could understand what he was on about. Meanwhile, the doctor had pulled and pulled to loosen the knot, as Knutsson silently moaned and yelled.

Finally, the doctor said: “No, this won’t do.” He was completely exhausted. “There’s only one solution. We must cut if off above the knot, because if we don’t your bladder will burst and you’ll die from poisoning.”

Knutsson tried to bellow a protest but not a sound passed his lips.

“How on earth did all this happen?” the doctor asked.

At long last, he realized that his patient was asking for pen and paper. Now Tula’s final spell took effect ... Knutsson put pen to paper to identify her and accuse her of witchcraft. However, the pen wrote what it wanted, and all he could do was follow the pen: “I’m the one who raped and murdered those innocent children and I enjoyed it. This is God’s punishment!”

The last sentence was an expression of Tula’s sense of humour. Because heaven was hardly involved in this. Knutsson’s wife and the doctor read the words and believed them – especially the last sentence. Knutsson tried desperately to make clear that this wasn’t at all what he had wanted to tell them but it was all in vain. Tula’s name would never cross his lips no matter how hard he tried.

The wife and the doctor went into the next room. The wife was devastated. “My husband? My dear, kind husband? How could he do this to my little girl? I don’t understand, I just don’t understand it.”

The doctor, who knew about these things, said: “Who the child is means nothing to them. These creatures are known as paedophiles. They’re only satisfied when they touch children. Your husband was probably one of the worst kind, who had to go even further ... And such people tend to find work that puts them in contact with children. Alas!”

Despite the doctor’s attempt to save him by cutting off most of his vital parts, Knutsson died that night.

And rumours spread. Although the two witnesses had agreed to say nothing, the story was too sensational to be hushed up. Somehow, the public got to know the identity of the child molester and that he had now been caught. Nothing was said about the details – after all, nobody would believe something so absurd.

Gunilla heard the rumours. She took young Tula in her arms and squeezed her hard as she rocked her back and forth.

“Just think – it was your singing teacher, Tula! Just imagine what might have happened! You’ve done that long walk between Bergqvara and our house so many times! You might have met him! I just don’t dare to think what could have happened, Tula, you’re so naive!”