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

he’d used but it felt good in his hand, and perhaps a sharp weapon would work better.

The fire alarm up in the village went off just as he pushed down the handle of the outside door. The door was locked. He thought about it. No, he hadn’t locked it when he went out. And there was no light in the kitchen window. It had been on when he left.

‘Elin!’ he shouted through the closed door. ‘Elin, are you there?’

The door was old and in poor condition; many winters of patient work had made it settle in the frame. He pushed the blade of the axe into the broad gap above the lock and prised the door open with a cracking sound. He stepped into the hallway and said tentatively, ‘Elin? Elin, it’s only me.’

He took off his shoes and locked the door, which was now evenmore warped, behind him. Despite an exhaustion that felt much too big to be accommodated in his skinny body, fear kicked the adrenaline into action once again as he crept through the hallway, clutching the shaft of the axe.

No more now, he thought. No more.

The beam of the torch made the perfectly ordinary kitchen furniture look ominous, creating shadows with unpleasant shapes.

‘Elin,’ he whispered. ‘Elin, are you there?’

The kitchen floor creaked beneath his feet and he stopped, listened. The fire alarm could be heard less clearly indoors, but still covered all the small noises that might indicate the presence of another person.

He went on into the living room. A little warmth was still emanating from the Roslagen stove, and he swept the beam of the torch around him without noticing anything strange, apart from the fact that the bedroom door was closed. He licked his lips. His tongue was still stiff from the wormwood, and the taste seemed to have penetrated so deep into the flesh of his palate that it would never be possible to wash it away.

When he pushed down the handle, the door was barricaded from the inside. But it had been done badly, and the chair that had been placed behind the door fell over when he pushed.

Elin was sitting in the bed, leaning against the bedpost. She had wrapped the quilt around her so that only her head was sticking up. The sheet at the foot of the bed was streaked with blood and covered in lumps of mud.

‘Elin?’

Her eyes were staring at him in terror. He didn’t dare go into the room or switch on the light, because he didn’t know how she would react. He became aware of the axe in his hand, and put it down next to the door. He shone the torch around the room, listened to the fire alarm. He looked at Elin, and a shudder ran through his body.

She’s dead. They’ve killed her and put her here.

‘Elin?’ he whispered. ‘Elin, it’s Anders. Can you hear me?’

She nodded. A faint, faint nod. He made a gesture, just hang on, and turned away. Behind him he heard Elin say, ‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I’m just going to make a phone call. I’ll be right back.’

He went into the kitchen, switched on the light and rang Anna-Greta’s number; he told her Elin was back, and they would deal with everything when they’d had a couple of hours’ sleep. When Anna-Greta had hung up, Anders stood with the receiver in his hand, staring at the grubby tape on the table.

The music you play, would you say it was…just between ourselves… cheerful music?

He wanted to ring somewhere and ask for help. He wanted to ring Kalle Sändare. Sit at the kitchen table with the phone pressed to his ear listening to Kalle’s gentle Gothenburg accent, like balm to the soul, talking about little things and laughing from time to time.

How can the world be like this? How can what happened tonight exist at the same time as Kalle Sändare exists?

He put the phone down and felt a strange pain in his chest. It wasn’t Kalle Sändare he missed, but his father. Kalle was just a simpler and more manageable substitute. Because they had had so much fun together with Kalle, Kalle had come to mean Dad, but without the difficult associations.

It was really his father he wanted to talk to. The sense of loss that he had refused to recognise came crawling up through his chest, reaching for his heart with its long claws. He pushed it back and went into the bedroom.

Elin was sitting just as he had left her. Cautiously he sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. ‘Shall I put the light on?’

Elin shook her head. The light from the kitchen was enough for him to be able to see her face. In the half-light it was even more like Elsa’s. Elin had had quite a prominent chin. It was gone now, running on from her throat just like Elsa’s.

How did they do it? They must have…smashed her legs.

His eyes moved to the signs of blood and mud at the foot of the bed. ‘We need to…get you bandaged up.’

Elin pulled the quilt more tightly around her. ‘No. I don’t want to.’ Anders didn’t have the strength to insist. It was as if he had an anchor chain around his neck. His head kept trying to droop, and all he wanted was to go to bed. From time to time flashes of white shot through his eyes, and he didn’t know if it was just tiredness, or if the wormwood really had poisoned his exhausted body.

‘There’s something wrong with me,’ whispered Elin. ‘I’m insane, I ought to kill myself.’

Anders sat there with his elbows on his knees, staring at the wardrobe. He didn’t know what was best: to tell or not to tell. In the end he sought refuge in one simple sentence: It’s better to know. He’d heard it in the context of illness, and didn’t know if it was appropriate here, but he hadn’t the energy to work it out.

‘Elin,’ he said.