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

he lay there with the only weapon he had left: his pleading eyes. Henrik gazed into them as if he were searching for something. Björn came over to the bed and put the bucket down. There was something in it, something that was making the small amount of water that was left move around. Something invisible.

Björn looked at Henrik and said, ‘Is he hidden?’

Henrik nodded and squatted down by the bed. Anders exhaled in a trembling, panting breath, and Henrik looked as if he was about to throw up when the smell hit his face. Without speaking to Anders, he said, ‘So how did you find out?’

‘What shall we do?’ asked Björn.

‘Nothing we can do,’ said Henrik. ‘Just at the moment.’

He glanced down into the bucket and seemed happy with what he saw. Something was whirling around down there, splashing about. Henrik stood up, towering over Anders. He leaned down and whispered in his ear, ‘You can’t be here either, little Maja. We’ll take you too, in time.’

Björn picked up the bucket and they left the room. Anders heard their footsteps moving through the living room and the hallway. Then the outside door closed. He lay there motionless, staring at Elin’s lifeless body on the floor, the strands of her wet hair radiating out from her head like black sunbeams.

His fear of the GB-man. The way he’d recited words from Alfie Atkins, the fact that he had started making bead pictures, that all he wanted to do was lie in her bed reading about Bamse. I’m so little.

He finally understood what it meant: Carry me.

2

Possessed

As long as the little boat can sail

As long as the heart can beat

As long as the sun sparkles

On the blue billows

EVERT TAUBE—AS LONG AS THE LITTLE BOAT CAN SAIL

Bodies in the water

Beware of the sea, beware of the sea

The sea is so big, the sea is so big…

Taking care of business

The dawn came creeping behind the eastern islands and a glimpse of the sun was just appearing between the windblown pine trees on Botskär. Anders was standing right on the end of Simon’s jetty, squinting into the approaching light. Despite his scarf and padded jacket he was frozen, and couldn’t stop his body from shaking. He jumped as Simon dropped a chain in the boat behind his back. He tried to find a point of warmth inside himself, tried to find Maja. There was nothing there, and he felt like the sloughed-off skin of a human being. He turned around.

The chain lay in a heap in the prow of Simon’s boat. In the stern lay Elin. He couldn’t remember why they had decided to wrap her in two black plastic sacks with parcel tape wound around them. He wished they hadn’t done that, would have preferred her empty, staring eyes to the person-shaped package on the deck. It looked horrible, and he didn’t want to go anywhere near it. ‘Are we really going to do this?’

‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I think it’s the only thing we can do.’

With half-dried excrement smeared over his legs, Anders had crept to the telephone and called Simon. Simon had come, placed a tea towel over Elin’s face and helped Anders to wash himself. Then they had sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, staring out of the window until a lone pink cloud drifted across the sky, a starting flag for the new day.

There were two possible courses of action.

Nobody would believe that two dead teenagers had turned up and drowned Elin in a bucket. On the other hand, as far as everybody was concerned, there had been no sign of Elin since the fire.

Therefore, one possibility was to come up with a different story: a story that would be closely scrutinised under interrogation, since this was a murder. Would Anders be able to stick to a made-up story when the police started questioning him? Probably not.

Which left the other possibility. To get rid of Elin and pretend it had never happened.

After Simon had argued back and forth for some time, mostly with himself, they agreed that this was the lesser of two evils.

Anders took the torch and went out to the shed to fetch a couple of plastic sacks. Once inside he stopped, and his knees gave way. He had a bowling ball stuck in the middle of his chest. A black, shining sphere of guilt. He had done nothing when they were murdering Elin, he had just stayed in his bed and watched.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he whispered.

Say it once, twice, a thousand times. Eventually you might believe it.

He was finding it difficult to breathe, because the bowling ball was in the way, pressing on his lungs. Stiffly he swept the torch over the walls of the shed, and caught sight of the plastic bottle.

Wormwood…

He unscrewed the top, raised the bottle to his mouth and took two swigs. If there was a thought in his head it was burn away. What was to be burned away he had no idea. Maybe it was the ball, maybe it was he himself. The liquid coursed down his throatand he waited for the fire, but the fire did not come.

This wormwood was not dissolved in alcohol but in something else, and the substance running down into Anders’ stomach had a thick, slippery consistency. Like oil. Only when he had finished swallowing did the taste come. It didn’t explode on his palate as it had at Anna-Greta’s, but came creeping along and squeezed his tongue, his palate, his throat, his chest.

Anders sank down into a crouching position as the upper part of his body was turned inside out. He lost all feeling in his fingers, and his breathing stopped.

Cramp. Cramp in my lungs. I’m going to die.

Poison. Not the instantaneous shock of a toxin that compels the body to spit it out immediately, but the treacherous effect of something that slips down and takes root, spreads through the bloodstream