Harbor by John Lindqvist (classic novels for teens txt) 📕

was drenched in sweat and his heart contracted; he thought for a moment that he was in a cell. Then he recognised the walls, the pattern on the wallpaper, and realised he was still in the guest room at his grandmother’s house.

But he had been there, inside Maja’s memory.

He had felt the fear, the heat, and screamed from the depths of own lungs. He had seen the incomprehensible flight of steps and he had seen Henrik and Björn. Henrik had carried him and Björn had put a hand over his mouth when he screamed.

A dream. It was a dream.

No. Elin too had been tormented by memories that were not her own. Pictures she could not possibly have known about. The memories of others. This was the same thing.

Henrik and Björn. Hubba and Bubba.

He knew what he had to do. The clothes he had worn to the wedding were hanging on the bedpost, but he rejected those and picked up his own clothes, which lay in a heap in the corner. Despite the fact that they had been accidentally rinsed by the sea, the fluffy Helly Hansen top and the scruffy jeans still smelled unpleasant. They were impregnated with the smell of smoke, spilt wine and the sweat of fear, and it would take a proper wash to get rid of all that.

But still. This was his uniform. He pulled it on with the intention of wearing it until the whole thing was over. He gathered up his bottles and comics from the floor. When he looked at the lines on the Bamse cartoon, he could see that the zigzag line he had taken for a temple could just as easily be a flight of steps.

He took a few gulps of water. The perception of Maja’s presence in his body was once again so familiar that he didn’t even feel it, he simply knew that it was there. When he had swallowed the water, he opened the matchbox.

The insect had grown, and was now so fat that it only just fittedin the box. When Anders let a heavy gob of saliva fall on to it, it came to life and began to writhe in its narrow confines. Anders pushed the box shut and closed his hand around it, once again feeling that all-encompassing awareness of the water around him, within him.

He could feel the movements of the larva through the thin cardboard and felt a little sorry for it. But this was not the right moment to reflect on cruelty to animals and the rights of insects. In any case, Simon had said at the kitchen table that it wasn’t an insect. It had no will of its own, no purpose other than to be a source of power for its bearer. A kind of battery. Spiritus.

Anders tucked Maja’s snowsuit under his arm and went down to the kitchen. It was just after eleven o’clock. There was a note in Anna-Greta’s handwriting on the table. He was to take care of himself, and everything he needed was there in the house, there was absolutely no need for him to go out.

There was coffee in the machine, and Anders poured himself a cup. As he drank it he could feel every tiny movement of the liquid passing through his body. When he had finished he fetched a plastic bucket from the cleaning cupboard and half-filled it with water from the tap. He sat down on a chair with the bucket between his thighs, held the matchbox firmly in one hand and dipped the fingertips of his other hand in the water.

He simply knew.

As if the hand in the water were holding a remote control, or rather had become a remote control with which he was so familiar that he no longer needed to look at the buttons, he was now able to direct the water. His hand did not exist, the signals went directly from his brain to the contact surface.

He asked the water to move clockwise, anti-clockwise. He asked it to climb up and run over the top of the bucket so that his legs were soaked. Then he put down the bucket, placed his hand on the wet fabric and asked the water to leave it. A burst of steam rose up towards his face.

I can do it.

When he had emptied the bucket and put the matchbox in his pocket, he went and fetched the shotgun. He stood for a while weighing it in his hands, wondering whether it might be of any help to him. Its metallic weight was reassuring, its polished wood; a weapon.

But it wasn’t a weapon he needed, at least not one like this. He removed the cartridge, replaced it in the drawer where he had found it and rubbed his hands. He was clean.

A pair of Simon’s well-worn boots from the army surplus store stood in the hallway. They were only slightly too big for Anders. He pulled them on, fetched Maja’s snowsuit from the kitchen and went out.

Regardless of what kind of creatures Henrik and Björn might be these days, whatever they were composed of, however they lived, one thing was clear: the moped was an ordinary moped. It had weight and solidity, it could be damaged or destroyed. And it had to be somewhere.

When Anders reached the village road he could feel how cold it was. The air was raw, the temperature around freezing. He wrapped Maja’s snowsuit around his neck and tucked the ends down inside his top to keep himself warm.

He looked around. The ramblers’ hostel was on his right, the path down to the jetties on his left. Unlikely.

A place where nobody goes.

The western side of the island was more or less uninhabited, with just a few isolated, newly built villas on the side facing the mainland. It struck him that he had virtually never gone that way, not since he was little. At that time he and the others in the gang had occasionally embarked on an expedition