Page 65 of The Living and the Dead

—

Lots of people said: Killian was probably trying to flee. Guilt can do strange things to a person. But that didn’t make it any easier to come to terms with.

Even so, that Christmas folks tried to distill the truth, what it all meant, because what else could anyone do? They all lay awake in their beds: Sander, his parents, Karl-Henrik, Lillemor, Filip, Kjell Östholm and Frans Ljunggren, Linda and Sten Persson, the Lindells, everyone. Eventually most of them fell asleep and straight into dreams, and who can say what they dreamed about, really—and what if it was the same dream? It could have been, why not, a single, collective dream, just like on the night Mikael died and it all started.

A dream that grew out of the community itself, out of the land and the soil. A dream about cruelty that hadn’t yet taken on a permanent shape, because it was still just a dream, but soon, very soon, it would…

Well.

Here, like a pry bar under the world itself.

Here it came.

47

Some people, those who still lay awake in their beds, heard it. Like thunder, they said, it was like being on the coast as a storm blows in from the sea.

Gerd was listening to the comms radio, to her colleagues in Halmstad, where, as usual, the Christmas revelers were moving through the streets like one big steamroller of drunken fights and festivities. Out here, all was quiet and still.

Siri said her name. Gerd rose from her chair, a half-eaten Lucia bun in her hand, and went to see what was up. It was just past eleven thirty at night on the twenty-fifth of December.

“Frans Ljunggren in Skavböke called,” Siri said. “He said Kjell Östholm’s farm has disappeared.”

“What did you say? Kjell Östholm disappeared?”

Siri glanced down at her notepad, as though she had to double-check her own notes.

“Thefarmdisappeared. That’s what he said. I asked him to repeat himself twice.”

They headed for Skavböke without lights and sirens. Siri drove, while Gerd finished her Lucia bun. It was nice not to have to chat.

“Listen, how are you doing?” Gerd asked at last.

“I’ve just been thinking about Killian Persson. I’m having a hard time letting it go.”

“The way he died?”

“Yes, but that’s only part of it.”

And that it might have been our fault,Siri thought.If what we did in his cabin drove him to flee.

Once they were out of range of the streetlights, Siri turned on the high beams. The white headlights shone into the forest and over the fields and a call came over the radio. Gerd reached out to answer it, her mouth still full of saffron bun.

“We’re getting a whole lot of calls from Skavböke,” the bewildered operator said. “We don’t know what’s going on. I wanted to let you know we’re sending more cars, so you know to expect them.”

Siri, grim, spedup.

But then she hit the brakes as hard as she could. Something in the car frame cracked loudly and the car swerved and nearly went into a skid. When they jerked to a stop, Gerd’s Lucia bun got caught in her throat and she coughed violently.

“Well done,” Gerd said. “You’ve got a lead foot when the situation demands.”

Siri gulped, as though she could swallow down the shock.

They shakily got out. Siri found a flashlight. From this vantage point they should have been able to make out the farm, the stable, and the house, the old barn. She should be able to see all of that from here. But she didn’t.

Siri lowered the beam of the flashlight. It was like a plug had been pulled from the earth. The beam caught the asphalt rubble way down in the ravine, no telling how deep it had gone. The road was missing.

The cold December wind carried a peculiar smell: sour old earth and cropland, strange metals. In the distance, a dog was barking furiously, but suddenly it stopped, as though it had been frightened or silenced by force.