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

and placed it on the table. Simon didn’t seem to know what it was either, as he was looking enquiringly at Anna-Greta.

Whatever was in the bottle looked like some kind of infusion. Twigs and leaves filled the entire space, surrounded by a liquid that half filled the bottle. Anna-Greta fetched a shot glass and filled it with the cloudy liquid.

‘What’s that?’ asked Anders.

‘Wormwood,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘It’s supposed to protect you.’

‘From what?’

‘From things that come out of the sea.’

Anders looked from Simon to Anna-Greta. ‘So does this mean that…you believe me?’

‘I do now,’ said Simon, pointing to the glass. ‘Although I didn’t know about this.’

Anders sniffed the contents. It was alcohol, which was fine up to a point. But the aroma carried on the alcoholic fumes was oily and bitter, with a hint of putrefaction. ‘Isn’t wormwood poisonous?’

‘Well yes,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘But not in small quantities.’

Of course he didn’t think his grandmother was trying to poisonhim, but he had never smelt anything closer to the essence of poison than the one that was rising from the glass in his hand.

Wormwood…

A whole series of associations ran through his mind as he raised the glass to his lips.

The wormwood meadow by the shore…the plastic bottle in the woodshed that the bird was sitting on…and the name of the star was Wormwood…Chernobyl…and the rivers shall be poisoned…wormwood, enemy of the water…

What decided the matter was the fact that he was desperately in need of a drink. He knocked back the contents of the glass.

The taste was horribly bitter and his tongue curled up in protest. It felt as if the alcohol had gone straight to his brain, and everything was spinning around as he put down the empty glass. His tongue felt as if it were paralysed, and he managed to slur, ‘Didn’t taste very nice.’

The heat coursed through his veins and reached the very tips of his fingers, then turned around and raced through his body once again. With lips that were still curling from the vile taste, he asked, ‘Can I have another?’

Anna-Greta refilled his glass, then put the top back on the bottle and replaced it in the cupboard. Anders emptied the glass, and since his palate was already numb from the first shock, it didn’t taste half as bad this time. When he put down the glass and smacked his lips, he even got a hint of an aftertaste that was…good.

He got to his feet, using the table for support. ‘Could I borrow a pair of trousers? I have to go down to the Shack to check if Elin’s there, otherwise…I don’t know what we’re going to do.’

Simon went to check in the ‘hidey-hole’, the little storeroom where clothes and belongings from past generations were kept. Anders was left alone in the kitchen with Anna-Greta. He looked longingly at the empty shot glass, but by putting the bottle away Anna-Greta had made her point.

‘Protection from the sea,’ said Anders. ‘What does that mean?’

‘We’ll talk about it another time.’

‘When?’

Anna-Greta didn’t answer. Anders examined the photograph of Elsa. She looked angry; angry and disappointed. If the people in the other pictures looked as if it were hard work being photographed, Elsa looked as if she regarded it as an insult. Her furious gaze reached him through seventy years, making him feel distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Was she always alone?’ asked Anders. ‘Elsa?’

‘No, she had a husband who was quite a bit older. Anton, I think his name was. He had heart problems, and…he had a heart attack and died.’

‘When he was out fishing?’

‘Yes. How did you know that?’

‘And she was the one who found him in the boat. Some of the fish were still alive, but he was dead.’

‘I don’t know about that, but she was the one who found him, that’s definitely true. Who told you all this?’

‘Elin.’

Simon came into the kitchen with a pair of flimsy trousers that looked as if they might have had something to do with the army. He gave them to Anders along with a belt, and said, ‘I don’t know if these will do, but they’re all I could find.’

Anders pulled on the trousers, which were much too big, and fastened the belt around his waist. The wide legs felt good, because they weren’t tight over his cuts. Simon stood looking at him, his arms folded.

‘Are you really going out again? Is that a good idea? Shall I come with you?’

Anders smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s much you can do, and besides…’ he nodded at the kitchen cupboard ‘…I’m protected now, aren’t I?’

‘I don’t know about that, and I don’t think Anna-Greta does either, not really.’

‘That’s true,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘It’s only hearsay.’

‘I’ll go down and check,’ said Anders. ‘I’ll call you. Whether she’sthere or not. Then we can decide what to do.’

He borrowed a torch, hoisted up the trousers and grimaced as his wounds pulled. On his way to the outside door he stopped and turned around. He had suddenly realised something. He had been carrying the knowledge with him for quite some time, but it wasn’t until that moment it became obvious and possible to say out loud.

‘Ghosts,’ he said. ‘There are ghosts.’

He nodded to Simon and Anna-Greta and went out into the darkness.

Before he switched on the torch he gazed at the sky. Wasn’t that a tinge of orange in the thin clouds over Kattudden? Yes, it was, and he couldn’t have cared less. However, he turned, went back into the kitchen and said indifferently, ‘I think there’s a fire over by Kattudden again.’

If Simon and Anna-Greta wanted to do something about it, they were welcome. He just couldn’t. It had been a long night, and it was almost three o’clock. He wanted Elin to be fast asleep in bed when he got home, as if everything that had happened to her had happened in her sleep, and could be forgotten.

As he approached the Shack he veered off to the toolshed and picked up an axe. It might well be as useless as the fence post