The Resting Place, page 18
The fear in my mouth tastes metallic. I swallow it down. It has no place here.
“Rickard, I’m going to zip up your jacket and pull the hood over your head now,” I say. “For the cold. OK? Then we have to walk. It’s going to hurt, but we can’t stay here. We have to get you to the house so we can try to call an ambulance. If we can’t get them to come here, we’ll drive you to the hospital ourselves.”
He nods weakly, his eyes still closed.
We stop by the door. I reach for the door handle.
What if someone is waiting outside?
Someone with a blank, white face and silver scissors in their hand?
I brace myself.
Then I open the door.
ELEANOR
The wind whips against us like it has a will of its own, and I am temporarily blinded by the flurry of snowflakes.
It’s so dim out here that it feels like dusk. The trees around us are nothing but towering shadows, and it’s impossible to see more than ten feet ahead.
Our own footprints have already disappeared.
I crack my neck and start walking. The arm I have linked around Rickard’s back has already started to ache. He’s heavy, and he seems to be dragging his feet.
“Rickard!” I shout over the wind, and I can only hope that he hears me through his hood. “You have to try to lift your feet!”
I don’t know if he hears me. If he replies, I don’t hear it.
All I can hear is the wind and my own labored breaths. Sebastian and I are heading in the direction that I think—hope—leads to the edge of the forest. To the house. To safety and warmth.
If it can even be called safety.
Things are different now, worse. My very skin feels on edge, all of my senses alert. When I was running after Veronika last night I was scared, yes, but it was a different type of fear, shapeless and drunk.
It’s another feeling to know for a fact that there is somebody out here with us. Someone strong enough to break Rickard’s ribs. Someone fast and discreet, anonymous and motivated.
Someone who may have killed before. Who has seen my face. Who wants to hurt us.
We are clumsy, and slow, and oh so vulnerable. Whoever it was who did this, the storm will hide him until he’s already too close.
We are defenseless. We had to leave our paltry weapons in the lodge, so that we could lug Rickard’s full wounded weight through the forest.
We can only hope that the storm hides us long enough to reach safety.
My face is already numb, and my jacket feels hopelessly inadequate. The snow is sneaking in through all the cracks it can find. I’m out of breath, and my legs were shaky to begin with.
Are we even going the right way? Or are we already lost in the trees?
I have heard stories about people freezing to death, sometimes just a few hundred feet from safety, because the cold had made them tired and confused and they couldn’t see where they had to go. Like us, now.
Whatever we do, we can’t stop. If we stop, we’re dead.
That’s the mantra I’m repeating to myself.
If we stop, we’re dead. If we stop, we’re dead.
My foot catches on a root, and I stumble. I don’t know if it’s Rickard’s groan I hear when he slumps heavily onto my shoulder, or my own.
“I’m OK!” I shout.
Then I bite my tongue.
Quiet. Must be quiet. So the murderer can’t hear us if he’s waiting out there.
Whoever it is, he could come from any direction. Maybe he’s creeping his way behind us, biding his time, waiting for the exhaustion to take over and for us to let our guards down.
There. Something between the trees. A shadow.
The breath freezes in my throat. My feet refuse to move.
“Eleanor! What are you doing? We have to keep going!”
Sebastian. His voice pierces through the whirling snow and the screaming gale.
“There’s someone there,” I whisper.
Something tall, thin, and dark. Eyes staring at us.
“Eleanor!” Sebastian screams.
Rickard’s head is lolling between his shoulders. I don’t know if he’s still conscious. I take a firmer grip around his waist, keeping my eyes on the shadow. When we start walking again it seems to pale and dissipate like smoke.
Or just back away, now that it’s been seen. Back between the trunks, where it’s invisible once again.
How much farther can it be now? Shouldn’t we be there already?
Rickard pulls at me.
No, he isn’t pulling me: his legs give way underneath him, and he drags me down with him into the snow. I can feel the frozen blueberry sprigs cracking beneath us.
“Rickard, you have to get up,” I say. His arm is slack around my waist. “Come on, get up.”
My lips have split in the cold. I can feel it with my tongue, but it doesn’t hurt. My eyes are stinging from the wind and snow.
“Eleanor,” I hear, like a whisper.
Somewhere in the trees.
There’s no one there, I tell myself, my teeth chattering with cold and fear. I’m seeing things.
But then I hear it again, and now there’s somebody tugging at my arm. Sebastian. He has let go of Rickard.
“He won’t make it,” he says. His voice sounds thick and distorted.
But then, when I look up, I see it—see the trees up ahead starting to thin out. And something, a silhouette like a mirage, there behind them.
“We’re almost there,” I say. “Look! Just a few hundred feet to go.”
Sebastian looks small when I look at him. Alien.
“We’ll have to carry him. Come on, Sebastian. You can do this. Link your arms with mine under his shoulders. Help me to lift him up.”
I lock my eyes on Sebastian’s. Try to give him the same steely look that Vivianne used to give me—as though his only option is to do what I say.
You can do this, Victoria.
Sebastian nods. He squats down on the other side of Rickard.
Well done, Victoria.
I tighten my grip even though the muscles in my back are screaming, stick my arm under Rickard’s shoulders, and lift.
ANUSHKA
JULY 16, 1966
Märit can sense that something is off.
I keep on telling myself I should just leave. Sir won’t even look at me now, and he has been spending ever more time out in the hunting lodge. I should be grateful, but it just makes my stomach ache. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what it is I hope he will do. Tell me that it was nothing. That it won’t happen again.
This morning Märit asked me what was wrong. She asked if it was “that week” and I said it was, but I must have said it a little too hastily, or with the wrong tone of voice, because I could tell she didn’t believe me.
“Aren’t you happy out here? Are you feeling lonely? Do you miss your friends?”
To that I replied:
“I have no friends,” and I didn’t mean to, but my voice shook slightly. At this, Märit put down the pot she was washing, dried her hands on the tea towel on the counter, and wrapped her arms around me.
“That’s not true,” she said. “I’m your friend.”
This made me start to cry. I hate crying. Mama always said that people like us can’t afford to cry. We can’t show any weakness.
I wish I could tell Märit what happened, but at the same time I don’t want her to know. I don’t want her to look at me with contempt when she finds out what kind of girl I am. The sort of girl who kisses her cousin’s husband. The sort of girl my mama used to point at on the streets back home, and whisper about under her hot, contemptuous breath.
If she had known that this would happen, she would never have let me come here.
That might have been for the better.
I was supposed to go in and change Ma’am’s bedsheets half an hour ago. I stood by the door for what felt like an eternity, trying to pluck up the courage to go in, but I couldn’t. I was afraid I would break down and confess as soon as I saw her.
So now she’s lying in there alone on dirty bedsheets, while I’m sitting here writing my shame in a book.
Märit has suggested we ask for some time off on Sunday and take Kicki to the nearest town to go to the movie theater. She said that I should ask, because “Sir likes you better,” and she laughed when she said it. I felt like I was going to be sick.
But I can’t tell her that I can’t either.
Perhaps we should ask Mats if he wants to come with us. Mats, who is young and suitable and who likes me. And who isn’t married.
I’ll ask him tonight.
And then, if Mats says yes, I’ll ask Sir if we can go.
ELEANOR
Sebastian and I drag Rickard onto the rug in the hallway. After the subdued, dark grayness outside, the electric light from the ceiling seems unnaturally sharp, and the family portrait gazes down at us with flat, pitiless eyes.
“Rickard?” I say. “Can you hear me?” I roll him onto his back and try to find a pulse. Despite the thick gloves I have just taken off, my fingers are too cold to feel anything.
“He’s breathing,” says Sebastian, and I can see that he’s right. Rickard’s eyes are closed, but his chest is still rising and falling.
“We have to warm him up,” I say. “He’s way too cold.”
“I’ll get blankets,” says Sebastian.
He runs up the stairs while I unbutton Rickard’s coat. He lets out a quiet sound, which I take as a good sign. Any sign of life is a good sign right now.
When Sebastian returns, his arms are full of comforters. He spreads them out delicately over Rickard, and then takes a step back.
“What else can we do?” he asks. “We need some sort of heating pad, or … I don’t know, anything. A fire?”
“I think we’d better try to call an ambulance,” I say, “right away. Or drive him to the hospital.”
Sebastian nods.
“I’ll check my phone,” he says.
He runs into the kitchen. I hear his heavy steps echoing off the floorboards along the service passage.
My eyes are drawn back to the painting. To the woman who was Vivianne, and the man who was my grandfather.
Did you kill him?
I can’t imagine that Vivianne would have murdered her husband for an inheritance. Not that she would be incapable of killing: I have seen her in the deepest depths of her rage, received slaps so forceful it felt like my head would fly off my neck. At her most angry it was like she wasn’t even there at all—her eyes would blacken completely.
But she would never have killed anyone for money.
Of that I am sure.
Four people in the painting. Three of them dead, the fourth bedbound upstairs with a head wound.
My mom, taken all too soon by breast cancer. My grandmother, murdered before my very eyes.
And my grandfather? Evert?
His expression in the portrait is so pared back he could be anyone.
I think of the body in the hunting lodge. Mats Bengtsson. Of his terrible, empty face.
Vivianne. Evert. Mats. All dead. For what?
Not for money. It can’t have been for the money.
What did it say in the letter he left?
I have kept watch for them for half a century.
I have given all I could give.
Who are “they”?
When I close my eyes I see a photograph. Two women. One of them with a straight, dark braid.
The cousin. Anushka.
Is she one of the people he kept watch for?
Vivianne’s voicemail messages, that last week.
“I can hear them in the walls.”
I open my eyes again when I hear Sebastian’s footsteps returning. He doesn’t need to say anything: even before he opens his mouth I can tell from the look in his eyes and his stiff grip on his phone.
“Nothing at all.”
I nod.
“Then we’ll have to drive,” I say. “It’s our only choice.”
Sebastian shakes his head.
“What if we get stuck?” he says.
“Better than staying here,” I say, letting my eyes sweep up the stairs to the dark landing. “We have to get out of here.”
Sebastian’s arms are crossed. He looks so pale, so wiped out. It’s as if all of his features—all those little features I have made an effort to memorize—have fragmented and dissolved.
I get up and walk over to him.
“There’s something about this house, Sebastian,” I say, quietly. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it, too. There’s someone out there. Someone who did that to Rickard.” I nod at the bundle lying on the rug.
I raise my hand to Sebastian’s cheek. It feels cold under my palm, scratchy with stubble.
“Let’s get out of here. To safety. We’ll drive carefully.”
I kiss him, warm lips against his rigid, unmoving ones. I breathe in his smell, try to force something of the tension in my body to release.
“I’ll go start the car,” I say. “I’ll try to heat it up a little before we get Rickard and Veronika and go.”
“Not alone you’re not,” Sebastian says. “I’m going with you.”
I know better than to argue. I just nod. I see Sebastian cast one last, long look at Rickard lying there unconscious on the floor, and then we head to the door.
ELEANOR
It’s a little lighter when we step back outside, but not much. I’m holding Sebastian’s hand tightly as we walk, and he is squeezing my fingers just as much, like two little kids lost in the woods. When we reach the car I don’t want to let go, and jump into the passenger seat as fast as I can.
It’s almost as cold inside the car as out, but at least there’s no wind. My breath comes out in small puffs of vapor, and the car feels smaller than before. Sebastian fumbles around with his keys before he finds the right one, then slips it in the ignition.
He turns the key. The engine splutters, and for a single, crushing second I feel hope flare up inside me. But then the sound dies and everything goes quiet.
Sebastian says nothing. He turns the key again.
When the engine dies again after a few seconds, the silence is earsplitting.
He tries twice more. After the fourth attempt he curses so loudly that I jump, and then he slams his hands onto the wheel so hard it sends the adrenaline coursing through my body.
“Shit,” he says again, a touch quieter.
I moisten my dry lips before I say:
“Is it the cold?”
“Has to be,” he says. “It has to be the battery. Or the oil.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he adds, with a short chuckle that sounds more like a snort. “I have no fucking clue. But it won’t start.”
“We’ll just have to try the other cars,” I say. “One of them has to work. Right?”
He doesn’t reply. His silence says more than enough.
“We’re getting out of here, Sebastian,” I say. “Let’s go get Veronika’s keys. Try her car.”
In the compact car his hot-tempered breaths sound louder, gasping, like he isn’t getting enough air.
“How does this all fit together, Eleanor?” he eventually asks. “What is this?”
I pause before answering.
“I never understood it,” I say slowly. “When the police said it was just a break-in, I never understood why they didn’t attack me, too. If it was just a break-in, I mean.”
I turn to look at him, see the contours of his face in the gloom. In this dusky-gray storm light I can’t make out his markers. He could be anybody.
“I mean, the murderer didn’t know about my face blindness,” I say. “He couldn’t have. So he couldn’t have known I wouldn’t recognize him. Right?”
Sebastian says nothing.
“So why did he just walk away? Why didn’t he say anything?”
In my memory, that shiny, white face has one lone distinguishing feature.
Its silence.
Whoever it was who killed my grandmother, he didn’t make a sound. From the moment he saw me to when he left my field of vision.
“He said nothing,” I say. “As if he knew I wouldn’t be able to identify him by his face alone. As if he knew that if I heard his voice … I might recognize it.”
As I say it, I realize this is the thought I haven’t been able to utter since the gap in my memory, the words I haven’t been able to articulate for fear of sounding paranoid or unhinged.
ANUSHKA
JULY 21, 1966
Yesterday I took a walk in the forest with Mats.
Since asking if Märit, Mats, and I could go to the movies in town, I have tried to avoid Sir as much as possible. It was one of the most uncomfortable conversations I have ever had. I had braided my hair so tight it was pulling at my roots, and I kept my hands clasped in front of my apron. Meanwhile Sir cleared his throat after every other word and said that of course, naturally, quite all right, we could stay out as long as we wanted.
I hardly remember anything about the movie we saw. I think it was about cowboys. Kicki got scared by the pistols, but Märit kept on whispering that it was only pretend and wasn’t it exciting to see them fight? She said that the pistols and weapons were just toys, and that no one was killed. After the film, Kicki would only talk about “baddies” and how she was going to “shoot all of them.” Mats played cowboy with her all the way to the car, pretended to fall over when Kicki “shot” him again and again.
And so then, yesterday, when the three of us were eating our lunch by the lake and Märit nudged me and raised her eyebrow, then I thought: Yes. This can work. This can help.
So I asked Mats if he wanted to take a walk in the forest after our dinner, and he went bright red and nodded.
Once we were in the forest, we slowly strolled down one of the paths. Mats didn’t say very much but pointed out birds in the trees and told me where he usually takes the horses to ride them. I said I had never sat on a horse before, and he mumbled that he could show me, if I wanted.
I said I would love to.
It was so easy to be out there with him. There was no tension, no sense that I was doing something wrong. A housemaid and a stableboy—what could be more right? And he’s not bad, looks-wise. Not that he’s particularly handsome either, but there’s nothing wrong with his face. When I almost stumbled on a root, he gave me his arm. It felt warm and safe under mine.
