Ghosts

[Siggdalos]

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.
— Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves, Appendix I-F, "Untitled Fragment"

'So, you mean you want me to go with you?'
He is not wrong in asking that. [...] I can only explain it with the returnee's astonishment that everything that has been distant and far away is now distant and close by.
— John Ajvide Lindqvist
"Känner du Rudi Schmerz?" Andra berättelsen

* * *

PART 1

AUGUST 2014
Blackeberg School

"Did you know that the daycare is haunted?" Rasmus in 4b asked one afternoon.

Milan and Isak in 4a, who sat in a swing each in a corner of the schoolyard, looked up from their phones.

"What?" Milan said.
"Whatcha mean 'haunted'?" Isak echoed.

Rasmus leaned against one of the swing set's wooden beams with the smartass expression he always had when he wanted to look like someone who knew stuff.

"Well, that there are ghosts in there, duh."
"In the daycare?" Milan said.
"Yup. It's super haunted."

Milan looked in the direction of the neighboring preschool, half-hidden by some pines. It looked the way it always did, with a bunch of little kids playing in the sandbox or racing around on tricycles.

"Never noticed."
"You can't see them in daytime, obviously", Rasmus said in a tone suggesting that Milan was a total moron. "But at night they come out and guard the place."

Milan and Isak gave each other a sideways look. Everybody remembered that time in second grade when Rasmus had told an entire corridor that there was a dead rat in one of the bathrooms, until the school janitor had picked it up with a sigh and shown everyone that it was just a dirty wad of paper.

"So how do you know?" Milan kept protesting. "Did you go take a look last night or what?"
"My sis said it."

Milan thought: Oh boy, here we go again, like his mom used to say. As soon as Rasmus shared something crazy and was asked where he got it from, the answer was almost always My sis this, My sister that. If it wasn't for the fact that Milan had actually seen her a few times, he would've started suspecting that Rasmus had made her up too. Rasmus noticed Milan's expression, crossed his arms, and stared at them.

"It's true. You wanna hear or not?"

Isak, who lived in one of the high-rises less than a hundred meters away and who had two younger siblings attending the preschool, looked between Rasmus and Milan.

"I wanna hear", he said.
"OK", Rasmus said and enthusiastically continued: "There was a pool there before. Do you know why they closed it?"

Isak shook his head. Milan thought about it for a second.

"Wasn't there, like, somebody who got murdered there?"
"Yeah", Rasmus said, "only it wasn't somebody. It was several people. In the eighties." He said the last part as though it was something as vague and distant as the Viking Age. "The boys in sixth grade used to go there after school and have workouts. But then one night, on Friday the thirteenth, some psycho guy jumped in through the window and went bananas. Killed three of the boys, cut their heads off with a machete while the others watched. Just like that, chop!" He swung his hands through the air as if he was cleaving it with an invisible lightsaber.
"What's that?" Isak asked.
"Like a sword, sort of."
"Why'd he kill them?" Milan asked.
"Hell if I know. Guess he was just crazy or something. And, yeah, then he disappeared. The boys just lay there bobbing in the pool without heads so the water turned all red. The cops never caught the guy who did it."

Isak looked as though he was making a concerted effort to not widen his eyes and to instead look unfazed, but his voice sounded thin when he asked:

"Are they the ones haunting the place? The boys?"
"I'm getting to that. After that they closed the place, obviously. It just stood there empty until someone decided to turn it into a daycare. And in the daytime there's nothing weird about it. It's just a normal daycare, basically. But sometimes, at night, you can see people walking around in there even though it's supposed to be empty."

Isak immediately looked in the direction the preschool building's windows as if he expected to see something suspicious there, even though it was the middle of a warm and blue summer day. Milan caught himself glancing in the same direction.

"And then, a couple years ago", Rasmus continued in a quieter voice that made them look back at him, "a couple thieves broke in there."
"They broke into a daycare?" Milan asked, taking the opportunity to show that he was still skeptical.
"Yeah. I dunno, guess they thought there'd maybe be something worth nicking. But then when they were in there, they kept thinking there was someone walking behind them, but every time they turned around there was nobody there. Until they came into a room and he was suddenly standing in front of them. The headless boy."
"Head ... less?" Isak asked. His voice had gotten even thinner.
"Yeah. The only thing left of his neck was a stump like this"—Rasmus made a cutting gesture with his hand straight across his throat—"and there was blood running down all over him. And he was holding a gym bag in one hand, and when he lifted it up and opened it and showed the thieves what was in it, they almost shit themselves and ran outta there as quickly as they could. And then, in the morning, people discovered that there had been a break-in, but nothing was stolen."

Rasmus grinned at the expression on their faces. The bell rang before anyone had time to say anything more. Milan and Isak got up from the swings while Rasmus finished his story with:

"So, yeah. Best not to go there at night. Since they're still there, guarding the place."

Then he ran off toward the mass of students moving toward the entrance, and Milan and Isak were forced to hurry after him in order to not run late to their own class.

*

After school, Milan and Isak accompanied each other, as they always did, the tiny distance from the schoolyard to the high-rises where they would part ways.

"I didn't get the ending", Isak said when they passed the bike rack where a crowd of students were pushing against each other in an effort to fetch their bikes. "Of what Rasmus said, I mean."
Milan hadn't given the subject any more thought since the afternoon recess, so he was forced to ask: "Which part?"
Isak adjusted the shoulder strap on his rucksack. Other students ran past them between the pines. "What was in that gym bag. The one the boy had."
Milan thought about it. "His head, I guess."
"... oh", Isak said.

They stopped next to the fence around the preschool, looked at it and the larger brick building it was attached to. It truly looked completely and utterly normal. Milan tried to imagine that the events Rasmus had described could've taken place within walls like that, but ... no. Couldn't do it. Isak picked up a pinecone from the path and tossed it on top of the shed where the strollers were kept, and which was already blanketed in cones and needles. Without looking at Milan he asked:

"Do you believe in that stuff?"
"In ... ghosts?"
"Yeah."
Milan gave him a grave look. "What, do you?"
"No."

They continued along the thin trail that ran between the fence and the parking lot. When they reached the crossing where Isak would turn left toward his front door, he said:

"Or, I dunno. What if ..."
Milan rolled his eyes. "Are you five years old, or what? Everybody knows that Rasmus just talks a load of bullshit all the time. Right?"
Isak looked at the preschool building again and was silent for a moment before he said: "I guess."
"Exactly", Milan said. "So don't care about what he says. There are no ghosts."

* * *

JULY 2014
Outside St. Niklaus, Switzerland

A low crack sounded between the larches. A moment of silence, then a series of fleshy crunches, then silence again.

Eli let go of the man's head and climbed off the body. Brushed away some needles from his skirt and tights, breathed in through his nose, felt all the nuances of the conifer forest press close now that he no longer had his face next to the food. Heard the churr of a nightjar somewhere nearby. No scents of other people, except one.

Oskar stood a short distance away, examining the man's phone. The sharp light from the screen made his paper-white skin look even paler and revealed dark red blotches half-heartedly smeared away around his mouth. Eli snapped his fingers to get Oskar's attention and pointed up the slope. Oskar nodded, returned the phone to a pocket in the man's coat, and grabbed the legs while Eli lifted the torso. Eli made no attempt to hide his irritation while they carried the body to higher ground. Oskar had almost not said a word in two weeks. Even now, when they walked face-to-face, he avoided looking Eli in the eyes.

There was nothing wrong with silence—there were sometimes long periods when neither of them felt the need to say a word—but there were different kinds of silence, and this was an introverted, sullen kind which Eli had started feeling very fed up with.

When he though they'd walked far enough, he made a sign to Oskar to stop and put the body down. Nothing about the place stood out, just more moss and tree trunks. Oskar knelt and started shoveling away plants and dirt with his hands while Eli climbed up a fir to get a better view. And to get away from that grumpy scowl for a while.

He had to struggle a while with sharp needles and twigs that stuck out everywhere and scratched him wherever they could before he reached the top and could take in the view. To the west, the ocean of treetops billowed down toward the valley floor, broken up here and there by little meadows and oceans of fire, with the mountains on the far side like a barrier shrouded in clouds. To the east, in the direction they'd traveled, the landscape continued its constant climb up past the tree line and on toward the chain of three- and four-thousanders. The nearest trails and cable car systems were no closer than a couple hundred meters away in any direction.

Good enough.

Before he went back down he took a couple deep breaths, closed his eyes, and tried to calm down. Felt his uncut hair flutter against his face. Listened to the now distant trill of the nightjar for a moment before he changed position and climbed down with his face down.

Oskar had managed to dig pretty deep into the earth. Eli was about to sign something along the lines of We need to talk, but was interrupted by a short, low buzz from the man's body. They both stopped and stared at it. After a few seconds Oskar returned to his digging, but then the sound came a second time. This time Oskar gave the body a longer look before he got up, changed his hands back to their normal shape, and ripped the phone out of the man's pocket. Eli waited. Knew that it was no use saying anything.

The screen illuminated Oskar's face, showed that his pupils were moving, that he was reading something. For at least half a minute he stood like that before he abruptly dropped the phone, walked up to the man's head, and kicked him square in the face. The nose broke with a soft crunch and blood spurted out, welled out and joined the half-dried blood already covering the neck. Eli blinked. Oskar kicked again. And again. Eli ran up to him and grabbed his shoulders.

"What are you doing?"
"Let go."
"Stop it!"
"Let go!"

Oskar twisted out of Eli's grip so violently that Eli stumbled backward over some shrubs and felt his back lightly collide with a pine tree. He blinked again.

Well, alright then ...

Oskar remained where he was and stared down at the body with his shoulders raised. He took a few quick breaths that sounded as if he was about to start crying before he started kicking the body again, quickly and jerkily. Eli wanted to say something, do something, but realized that he didn't have the energy. He leaned his back against the pine and allowed himself to sink to a sitting position. Leaned the back of his head against the trunk and looked up at the sky. Heard ribs break as Oskar's shoe struck the man's torso over and over again.

The phone lay within reach, dropped in the moss. Eli stretched his hand out and picked it up. He still hadn't quite gotten used to how different telephones looked these days, more like flat piece of plastic than something you could make calls with. He had to rotate and poke at the screen for a while before he found the button on one side that made the screen light up. He squinted at the light, saw speech bubbles in different colors and a woman's name at the top. Eli understood enough German—and knew that Oskar did too—to be able to read the messages the man and the woman had sent each other. Only about an hour before Oskar's teeth had punctured the man's artery, he'd sent a message where seemed to be apologizing for something he'd forgotten. She had replied with two messages which both more or less meant: Go to hell, Dad.

Eli looked at the screen, at the man's bloody face, at Oskar's back, at the screen again. He let the phone slip out of his hand and fall back down onto the moss, leaned his back against the tree and waited for the kicks and punches to stop.

*

Eventually the last of the energy had left Oskar and he'd sunk onto his knees next to the body. Eli went over and stood next to him with his arms crossed, waited for him to say something. When he didn't, Eli jumped into the half-finished hole in the ground and continued digging. Oskar made no attempt to help until the body was already in the hole, at which point he half-heartedly helped shoveling down some earth and then covering the grave with grass and moss. If he'd avoided Eli's eyes before, he was now careful not to look in Eli's direction whatsoever. When everything was done, he turned around and walked back down the slope without saying a word.

The nightjar had long since fallen silent.

Eli was about to follow when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the man's phone was still lying the moss where he'd left it. He picked it up and looked at it for a few seconds. Then his grip hardened and he threw it against a boulder so violently that it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

Then he followed Oskar down to the valley without turning around.

* * *

"Hey ..."
"Oh, have you decided to stop sulking now?"
"I'm not sulking."
"I don't just mean what happened tonight. You've been sulking for two weeks. Tell me what the matter is instead."
"..."
"Oskar?"
"..."
"Fine. Forget it."
"I was going to tell! Before you started ... You forget it."


"Good morning."
"..."
"I shouldn't have interrupted you like that yesterday."
"No."
"I'm sorry."
"Mm."
"I just ... get worried when you're like this."
"Sure."
"Because it's not me you're angry with, is it?"
"Don't touch me."
"OK. Sorry."
"I don't want to talk about it. Not tonight."
"OK. How about tomorrow?"
"Dunno."
"I'm nagging again."
"Yes."
"Sorry, I'll stop. Do you want to be alone tonight?"
"... No. Stay."


"Eli?"
"Yes."
"Hold me a little."


"Thanks."
"Do you want to tell me why you were crying?"
"You said you'd stop nagging."


"It just ... feels so childish."
"You're not childish."
"You'll think I'm childish when I say it."
"Why do you say that when you know it's not true?"
"I don't mean you're gonna say anything, or anything. But you're gonna look at me in that way."
"What 'way'?"
"The way you're doing now."


"If I don't look at you ..."
"Yes?"
"If I sit over here instead."
"Yes."
"Does that make it feel easier?"
"..."
"You don't need to scoff at me. I was just asking."
"Stop."
"Stop what? Stop asking things?"
"No. Just stop. With ... this thing you're doing. It's not helping."
"And what's 'it'?"
"Don't play stupid. You know."
"No. Tell me."
"Stop pretending like ..."
"Like ...?"
"Äh. Forget I said anything."
"Like I'm your ...?"
"I said forget it."


"I'm homesick."
"What did you say?"
"I'm homesick, I miss my family, I'm ashamed for what I did to them, and I'm ashamed that I still haven't gotten over it. Are you happy now?"


"Don't start."
"Excuse me?"
"You were about to say that you already knew. I saw that."
"..."
"You don't know what it's like. You don't know anything. And don't start on that whole 'I do know'. You're too old, it was too long ago for you. Stop pretending like you can fix everything all the time."
"..."
"Eli ..."
"I think I'll rest somewhere else today."
"Wait."
"Why? You don't even want me here."
"I didn't mean ..."
"Yes. You did. Good night, Oskar."

* * *

He stopped in the hills on the far side of the railroad running along the outskirts of town. Stood and looked out over the silent houses with his arms wrapped around his body, feeling like shit.

This wasn't about him. He understood that. And feeling wounded was meaningless. They'd said worse things to each other. He knew that. But right now, that didn't make it hurt less.

He inhaled cool air through his nose, released it through his mouth. Realized that his hands were shaking. He couldn't remain standing here. Needed to get further way. Further up. He turned around and looked at the mountains looming behind him.

*

His already worn and dirty tights become even more worn and dirty as he made his way up the slope. Larches clawed his hands and face when he forced his way through and between them, but he didn't care. It didn't take long until he'd reached the cliff wall where the mountain left the ground to instead soar almost vertically up toward the stars. He looked down at his feet. Lifted one of them, ripped up a hole in the fabric so he could stretch out his toes properly. Same thing on the other foot. He hadn't bothered bringing shoes when he left the hiding place. He stretched out his fingers and toes, jumped onto the cliff, and got going.

It wasn't a challenge. He'd made his way up much smoother and more vertical surfaces than this one. Even a normal climber could probably have managed the broken and uneven surface without equipment. The grass and firs climbed with him, clung onto every little shelf they could on their way up the mountain's shoulders, but soon he no longer saw them as anything more than blurry patches of color passing in the corners of his eyes. He climbed faster and faster, exerted himself more and more in throwing himself up the rock face, and barely felt it when the skin on his palms and toes got chafed and scratched open.

The wind grew stronger the higher up he came, made a few half-hearted attempts to rip him off the cliff. If he fell, he would die. He couldn't stretch his wings out with his upper body confined by his blouse. But he had no intention of falling, and the wind settled for tugging at his long, tangled hair and making his skirt flutter around his legs.

A corner-shaped shelf shot out above him and he threw himself at it, got hold of it with his fingers, and pulled himself up. There was something on top of it. He just enough managed to glimpse a dark shape and a mess of branches. The next moment, a high-pitched whistling screech shattered the air and the shape exploded toward his face. He lost his grip on the shelf and fell, slid two or three meters down the cliff before his claws managed to hook into the rock again and halted his descent with a jerk.

For several seconds he hung there motionless and just breathed. His heart was hammering in his chest at an almost human pace.

An eagle. A golden eagle, that's all.

Once he'd calmed down, he looked up. The eagle sat there glaring at him with its wings extended. Its beak was gaping open, but it didn't make a sound. A sudden anger welled up in Eli and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to climb up and fight it. Feel it rip open the skin on his arms before he tore its wings off at the roots, let it peck him in the face before he crushed its beak in his hands, let it ... let it ...

The feeling faded as quickly as it had come. It was a bird. Just a bird that happened to be in the way. Meaningless. He met the eagle's large, yellow eyes and made a rude face at it, then changed direction and started climbing sideways to find another way up.

*

Before long he sat all the way up at the top of the cliff with his legs dangling over the edge. Almost a kilometer below his feet, the lights from town and railroad snaked their way through the Matter Valley like a river of sparks, side by side with the actual river running north on its journey to the larger nearby valley, where it would join the mighty Rhône. Many people would probably say that it was a fantastic view. Eli, on the other hand, didn't feel anything when he looked at it.

It had been Oskar's idea to come here. They'd read an old adventure novel that took place in the Alps, had taken turns reading it aloud to each other over several nights, and Oskar had been filled with a longing for high peaks. It had been new and fun at the start. They'd spent many nights soaring between the mountains and one-upping each other with one complicated maneuver after another. But that had been several weeks ago at this point.

Eli drew one of his legs up against his chest and rested his chin against his knee. One of the sparks in the town all the way down there belonged to Oskar.

You don't know anything.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the memory of Oskar's voice. But instead he heard something completely different.

Did you think he had forgotten? said a high, girlish voice that cut through him in a completely different way than the alpine wind did.

Eli didn't look in the voice's direction. Go away.

The man cocked his head to the side and grinned at him. His face was a mask of white porcelain, His smile a moving crack. His eyes were lakes of blue ice.

That, mon ami, is a matter of your discretion alone.

Eli didn't answer. The man sat next to him on the edge of the cliff. A few strands of human hair detached from His wig and blew away like furry, flying snakes when He stretched his neck out and looked down at the shelf a few hundred meters below, where the eagle had gone back to sleep in its nest.

Magnificent creatures, n'est-ce pas?
No.
No? And yet we have so much in common with them.
We have nothing in common, Eli replied. He noticed that his hands had started shaking again.
Would Ganymède agree with that?
Yes. And stop calling him Ganymède.
Pourquoi? He is yours, as you were mine. And so I ask you again: what made you fancy that he had forgotten, when you so stubbornly refuse to?
Stop.

Eli squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them again and looked at the empty cliff next to him. He drew up his legs over the edge, got to his feet, and walked away. That kind of brooding wasn't going to lead anywhere. Just as it hadn't the previous hundred times.

*

For a long time he aimlessly roamed the mountain, among piles of rocks and bundles of meadow flowers trembling in the wind. As the hours went by it started feeling more and more unreal. As if he wasn't really there, as if the feeling of dry grass between his toes was the only thing tethering him to the world.

Like always when they were apart.

He stopped next to a loud stream and splashed water in his face in an attempt to get a grip. Needed to find someplace to rest. He followed the stream to a ridge in the west, climbed over it, and made his way down to a forested valley on the far end, where he after some searching found a narrow cave where he'd be protected from light. To be on the safe side, he dragged some boulders down from higher ground that he could use to block off the opening. When he was done, dawn was still an hour or so away. He didn't want to stay in the forest longer than necessary—it reminded him of the wood they'd been in the night before and everything that had happend there—so instead he climbed back up the slope to watch the stars for a while.

It was when he was approaching the crest of the ridge again that he saw a blink of blue in the corner of his eye. He turned his head in the direction of it and saw a small splash of color puncture the gray facade of boulders, a couple tens of meters away. There were a lot of flowers up here, nothing unusual about it, but something about the shape made him stop, even if it was difficult to discern any details at this distance. He hung motionless on the side of the ridge for a while, before he—without being sure himself as to why—adjusted his position and started moving toward the dot. Maybe it was more accurate to say that it was the dot pulling him toward itself.

Even up here there was plenty of life—the boulders bore stains of yellow lichen, and tufts of short grass defiantly shot out wherever they could. Before long he reached the flowers where they sat clamped in a pile of little rocks in the crevice between two larger blocks. The shape was simple: each flower had five rounded, sky-blue petals evenly placed around a center of white and yellow, like in a child's a drawing.

He sat for a while and looked at them without knowing why. A memory, somewhere. But of what? He stretched out his fingers and carefully stroked the nearest flower. Breathed in their scent. It had something to do with ... summer. A very long time ago. A summer evening. Midsummer's Eve, even? Yes ... no, what was it ...

Midsummer. Blue flowers. Midsummer. Blue flowers.

He focused. Searched among the layers of oblivion and faded memories. And there. There it was.

Midsummer's Eve. Sunlight. Forget-me-nots. Flowers in her hair.

He froze, slowly lowered his hand, and looked at the flowers again. Forget-me-nots.

Flowers in her hair.

* * *

He returned to the cellar early the next night. Oskar heard him coming, of course, and didn't look up when he entered. Eli went over to his rucksack, tinkered with it for a bit, closed it, then went and sat down on the floor a meter in front of Oskar. Oskar kept his eyes fixed on a few old papers that he'd spread out on the floor around him.

They didn't say anything. There was nothing that needed to be said. They'd forgiven each other so many times before.

*

"What do you want to do?" Eli finally asked.

Oskar stared at two of the papers in front of him—a copy of a six-year-old letter and a copy of a photograph from the same period. Then he looked up and looked Eli in the eyes. And Eli understood.

He didn't protest. Didn't criticize. Didn't ask questions. All he did was nod slowly and say, still in the same low voice:

"OK."

Oskar looked down again. Eli crept over and put an arm around him. Oskar leaned his head on Eli's shoulder and Eli rested his own head atop his, gently stroked Oskar's shoulder up and down. Felt his thin, bony body through the fabric of his shirt, heard the slow beats from his heart. Eli let out a long, resigned sigh and slowly nodded again while he whispered:

"OK."

[metoo]

Well done!

[PeteMork]

Very good! You set the mood perfectly, from expressing Oskar's anger and Eli's frustration, to their unassailable love for each other and finally Oskar's silent ask and Eli's simple reply. Or was it his permission?
A powerful bit of writing.

[VerbalHamster]

This is great!

From the mood of both scenes - the schoolyard rumors left in the wake of Blackeberg and the touch of Oskar's homesickness - it seems like you're building up to an exploration of where JAL's sequel could have gone (or go, one day hopefully). Here's hoping there's more to come!

[Siggdalos]

[Apologies for the delay. Didn't mean for this to take so long, but I've had—and continue to have—a lot of other things to think about.]

PART 2

Brommaplan Åkeshov Färjestadsvägen Islandstorget and then home.
— P. C. Jersild
Till varmare länder

* * *

JULY 2014
Hanover

The river lay still and black beneath them, reflected the lights on the bridge. The bridge railing was tall enough to reach them to the shoulders, so Eli had to dangle with his belly over the railing in order to look down on his reflection. He made faces to himself, touched his hair which hung down like a tangled curtain toward the water.

"Good thing we show up in mirrors", Oskar mumbled. He was standing just to the side, resting his chin on his arms.

Eli gave him a quick smile. It wasn't much of a joke—no fun at all, actually—but it was still the most lighthearted thing Oskar had said in weeks.

"But for real", Oskar attempted when Eli didn't say anything. "What're you doing?"
"Well, I was thinking", Eli said, pushed his body back, and landed with his gym shoes on the concrete. "That maybe we should change appearance. Since he recognized us. In case other people recognize us, I mean."

Oskar didn't ask who he meant.

"How?"

Eli blew away a strand of hair dangling in front of his eyes. He'd made up his mind.

"You'll see. Wait here", he said and started walking toward the north end of the bridge.

Oskar let go of the railing and looked after him.

"Where are you going?"
"Hairdresser."

Oskar was about to follow, but Eli motioned at him to stay where he was.

"I said wait there. It'll be like a surprise." He waved and started jogging in toward the city. "See you in a bit."

*

Oskar stayed put, leaned against the railing. Hairdresser. He had no clue what to expect. Most of the time, he and Eli simply cut each other's hair when it got too long. Were there even hairdressers who were open at this hour? Probably, but were there any here?

A group of drunk teens crossed the bridge, singing and shouting in German. Oskar pulled the hood of his sweater up and walked past them in the opposite direction so they wouldn't take too much notice and start wondering. A thirteen-year-old standing by himself on a bridge in the middle of the night was not a good look.

There was barely a centimer of the railing not covered in graffiti and stickers. Here and there he saw padlocks, symbols of everlasting love. He and Eli had seen other, bigger bridges sporting hundreds of them. One time they'd left one on a bridge themselves, in ... Budapest? Prague? He couldn't remember. It had in any case mostly felt silly afterwards. Unnecessary. They'd returned the next night and ripped it off again, tossed it in the water.

When he reached the north end of the bridge he stopped under some trees, looked around, sniffed the air. Waited to make sure he was alone, then quickly climbed up on the railing and swung down to the ground under the bridge.

*

It took over thirty minutes before he heard the quick, light footfalls—the sound of which he'd recognize anywhere—above his head. He gave a whistle to reveal where he was, and the next second Eli had jumped down from the railing and landed softly on the ground. His eyes lit up and began to glow when he entered the darkness under the bridge and walked up to Oskar, who sat with his back against a graffiti-covered pillar. Eli stretched out his arms and spun around in place.

"Ta-da. Whatcha think?"

Oskar just looked at him. Didn't know what to say. Eli sank into a crouch in front of him.

"Be honest."
"You ... look like a boy." It sounded stupid, but it was the only thing he could think of.

Eli nodded and pulled his hand through his black hair—what little was left of it. The majority of it was gone, reduced to a short and dishevelled cut that was not that dissimilar to the guys who had passed Oskar on the bridge earlier, or to Oskar's own hair for that matter. In the back, it didn't stretch down much farther than to just past Eli's ears. In other words: a boy's haircut. It looked weird as hell.

"Yes", Eli said. "I know. But what do you think?"
"I don't know."

Eli smiled faintly, sat down next to him with his back against the pillar.

"It's OK if you don't like it."
"No, it ... It'll take time to get used to it, is all. Almost didn't recognize you."
"Mm, sure." Eli pulled up one of his legs against his chest and wrapped his arms around his knee. "He'll probably recognize me anyway."
"Yeah. At least if you're with me."
"Maybe you should also ..."
"How?"
"Well, I don't know."
"Let my hair get longer, maybe. So that we swap looks, kinda."
"Do you want to wait that long?"
"No."

Eli glanced at Oskar's rucksack, which was propped up against the wall next to him.

"Have you figured out what you're going to say yet?"
"A little bit."

Eli looked at him, but when Oskar didn't say anything he let it be. They sat in silence, listened to the gurgle of the water a couple meters in front of them and to the more distant sounds of the city surrounding them. Every so often, Eli pushed his new, short bangs to first one side and then the other, as though he couldn't decide how he wanted it. Now that Oskar had gotten over the initial surprise and actually saw what Eli looked like, he knew that yes, he'd get used to it. Eli was Eli, no matter how he looked. That said, there was another thought that crossed his mind: If Eli had looked like that the first time they'd met ... would he still have ...?

Would things still have turned out the way they did?

He thought it over. For a long time. It had been many years since he'd stopped dwelling on those kinds of thoughts. Didn't like thinking about the alternatives. But it couldn't be helped: he vividly remembered what Eli had told him one time, not long after they'd met.

"I was almost about to kill you once. Just so you know."
"Huh? Yeah, I know. In the basement."
"No. Or, I mean, that time too. But there was another time. In the courtyard."
"When?"
"Just after we met. I was going to ... return your cube. And that was when I was going to do it."
Something twisted slightly in Oskar's stomach. "Uh-huh. I see. So why didn't you?"
"You stopped me."
"I did? How?"

Eli looked at him for a moment. Then slowly stretched out his arm, placed his hand against Oskar's face and stroked his cheek with his finger. Only once.

"Like that."

Oskar didn't say anything. Now that he'd been reminded of it, he could clearly remember the whole thing. How he'd done that, how Eli had reacted in a weird way and then gotten into a hurry to leave the courtyard. And killed somebody else instead.

"That was when I decided", Eli continued, "that I actually didn't want to hurt you. Not right then and there, anyway."
"... How lucky. That I did it, I mean."
"Yes."

Would he have done that to a boy he didn't know? To someone who looked like a boy? Fat chance. In other words he'd have been dead now. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn't have offered to lend the cube to begin with.

"What are you thinking about?" Eli asked.
"Nothing."

Maybe it would all still have turned out sort of the same, but in a different way. He wasn't sure if he liked that idea, but in some way there was still something comforting about it.

His rucksack fell over, he could hear the papers moving around in there. He propped it back up, avoided looking at Eli. He had lied earlier and he knew that Eli knew. He had no idea what he was going to say.

*

Eli broke the silence. "You know that we can turn back whenever."
"You've said that."
"Yes, but I want to say it again. Even if there's as little as ... ten meters left. Even then, we can turn back."
"You've said that too."
"Just so you know, in case you change your mind."
"I won't change my mind."
"I'm not trying to convince you."
"Good. So stop it."
"I just don't want it to ... to feel like you can't ... back out of this."
"Knock it off."
"OK." Eli stroked his hair for the tenth time at least. After a few seconds he said: "This was a stupid idea."
"What was?"
"The hair. It actually feels really strange."
"I think it suits you."
"You don't have to ... You can say that you don't like it."
"Äh, knock it off." Oskar put his arm around Eli and gave him a kiss on the forehead. "You look really pretty."
"Thanks."
"And kinda funny."
"Psht!"

Eli pushed his hand into Oskar's face and shoved him to the ground. Crossed his arms and pretended to sulk, but Oskar saw the corners of his mouth twitching a little.

* * *

AUGUST 2014
Södra Ängby

"Admit that that guy is cute."
"Who? That one?"
"No, the other one. The one with glasses."

Andrea and Nadine had to almost shout into each other's ears in order to make themselves heard over the music. Andrea looked over at the boy Nadine had pointed out. He sat in the opposite end of the room, half-obscured by dancing bodies, and seemed more interested in the chess game he was playing against a mate than in anything happening around them.

"For real?"
"So what? I can think glasses are cute if I want."
"It's not that. But he seems boring as hell. I mean, who goes to a house party just to sit in a corner with a shitty board game all night?"
"So you do think he's cute."

Andrea didn't bother replying. Looked around the living room, saw familiar and unfamiliar faces from school. She'd basically never headed into Ängby proper more than to the school where she spent the last three years of primary school, and she wasn't sure what she would've replied had someone decided to ask what she and Nadine were doing there. Somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody whose rich parents were on vacation, or something like that. She was really mostly there for Nadine's sake. Nadine's parents weren't overly strict or religious, but it had still taken some time and persuasion on her part before they'd agreed to let her start accompanying Andrea out on the weekends.

Andrea's eyes stopped at the entrance to the kitchen across the hallway and the group standing there. She recognized them, they were second-year students at her gymnasium, and even though she'd never spoken to any of them, she was pretty sure she knew all of their names. A girl with shoulder-length pale blonde hair, whom she knew was named Liv, was just leaning forward and laughing out loud at something one of the guys in the group, whom she thought was named Adde, had said. The sight gave Andrea an odd feeling somewhere below her ribs and she had started turning her eyes away from them even before she noticed that Nadine was nudging her.

"Hello, Earth to Drea!"
"H-huh?"
"I said, what do you think I should do?"
"About what?" When she saw Nadine's raised eyebrows she quickly added: "Oh. Uh, I mean ... honestly, I would just go up and talk to him."
"Huh?" Nadine looked between Andrea and the glasses guy as though talk to him was a completely foreign concept.
"Yeah, so what? Boys love it when the girl makes the first move."

The glasses and his opponent were still occupied by their game. Andrea was pretty sure they hadn't moved an inch since they'd arrived, and she suspected that they wouldn't do so until the game was decided, even if it meant having to stay seated until the sun came up.

Nadine looked at them with an unsure expression on her face. After a couple seconds she started getting up, but then sank back down on the couch, mumbled:

"No, I dunno. I mean, I don't wanna bother them."
"Hey", Andrea said and put an arm around her shoulders, "in that case, it's their own fault for not sitting in ... the library or something. And trust me, to most guys it'd be, like, a dream if someone like you came up and bothered them."

But Nadine didn't seem to hear. Andrea tried cheering her up with a couple more lines of the same, but eventually gave up and went to get a glass of water in the kitchen. She checked her phone on the way. Three unread texts from Dad. Not so bad. She'd gotten halfway through the living room before she looked up and saw that the group of second-year friends had moved a tad through the hallway so that they, probably unintentionally, were now blocking the entrance to the kitchen.

Andrea slowed down, pretended to linger at the foot of the stair to the second floor. Didn't want to push her way past them. They laughed at some in-joke again and Andrea felt a sudden urge to be allowed to stand with them, wished that she'd been the one to say the funny whatever-it-was, tried to hear if they were talking about anything she was familiar with, something she could comment on as she walked past, but of course they weren't. Eventually, luckily before Andrea had stood there long enough for it to get awkward, they moved as if on a given signal to their outerwear and the front door. Andrea hurried toward the kitchen, accidentally bumped into the blonde girl.

"Oh, sorry."
"No problem."

Liv's voice was kind, but Andrea avoided looking at her. She opened the cupboards in search of an empty glass, found a wine glass, poured from the tap. Swallowed a mouthful, poured out the rest. Too warm. She switched to cold water, drank the whole thing, and then forced herself to stand by the sink and take calm breaths. Her face felt hot. The hell was the matter with her? Not the alcohol, she'd made sure to stay almost-sober tonight so she could keep an eye on Nadine. So what was it?

She heard the front door close and realized after a while that she could no longer hear the second-years' voices. She looked in the direction of the dark kitchen window, unfortunately caught sight of her own reflection and, as always, couldn't help but notice all the flaws. Too tall, too flat, too many sharp edges in her face. She counted at least a dozen pimples. Out in the living room they were playing Petra Marklund and the floor was moving along with the music.

"Tror du att du och jag har en framtid tillsammans? Det tror inte jag."

The sky outside the window was black. Had it already gotten so late? Andrea looked at the glass in her hand, filled it up with water again and emptied it a second time before leaving it upside-down in the sink amidst some empty beer cans. Realized that she really didn't feel like staying any longer.

"Tror du att du och jag kommer att minnas den här kvällen?"

She pushed her way past a kissing couple back to the living room. Nadine looked excited and beckoned Andrea over to the couch.

"What's up?" Andrea asked and leaned down next to her.
"That guy, you know ..." Nadine waved her hand, completely unnecessarily, at the opposite end of the room. "Just now, one of his buddies nudged him and nodded at me, and then he looked at me and smiled!"

Andrea made a concerted effort to give her a smile.

"Told you so. What'd you do then?"
"Well, that's what I don't ... Like, I'm not sure ..."

Andrea, who had really only meant to tell Nadine that she was leaving, thought of the times when she was little and Dad had taught her to ride a bike in their courtyard by pretending he was running behind her and supporting her. How she would've never had the courage to try on her own if she hadn't believed that he was behind her the whole time, even though he'd actually let go a long time ago.

"Listen. You're gonna head over right now and talk to him."
"About what?"
"About whatever. Just say hi. If you click, it'll keep going by itself. I'll wait here if you need me."

Andrea stayed at the couch and watched Nadine force her way through the crowd. The glasses guy's buddy gave him another nudge, and suddenly the oh-so-vital chess game was forgotten. After a while Nadine glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Andrea, who smiled back and gave her a thumbs up. When Nadine turned back to the glasses, Andrea waited a few seconds, then slipped out to the hallway, put her thin jacket on, and went out.

*

Nadine called before she'd gotten to the end of the street.

"Where'd you go?"
"Gotta head home. Sorry."
"Now?"
"Yeah, I'm actually really tired." It sounded better than I didn't feel like staying.
"OK ... On your own?"
"It's fine. Subway's around the corner. What's he like?"
"Seems nice. And"—Nadine giggled at the other end—"even better-looking up close."
"Well, what are you doing talking to me, then? Keep having fun instead."
"Mm. His mate was just wondering where my friend went. 'That tall chick.'"
"Mm. Listen, I gotta ..."
"Yeah, yeah. Fine. See you." She hung up.

The thumping and the neon lights faded as Andrea put distance between herself and the house. It took a while to navigate through the quiet, peaceful streets where every corner and every white building looked identical, but eventually she made her way to the Ängbyplan station where she stood humming the tune of "Händerna mot himlen" while she waited for the subway. Stopped when she realized it wasn't helping to improve her mood nor her guilty conscience. More like the opposite.

Vem bryr sig? Natten är vacker, du är som natten och jag är en vinnare igen ...

The car she entered was empty save for an old drunk who sat leaning against a window and snored, a couple young boys, and a man in an afro with headphones on. She took a seat in the back—as far away from the other passengers as she could get—and avoided eye contact, instead looked out the window at the rows of sleeping houses gliding past across the road. Her phone buzzed again and she checked it reflexively. A fourth text from Dad.

When she let it slip back down into her pocket, her gaze happened to fall on the boys, who sat facing her a couple seats in front and to the side. They both sat looking out at the darkness, and they were holding hands. She stared at them for two whole seconds before she realized what she was doing and jerked her head back in the direction of her own window, pretended she hadn't seen anything. Felt as though she'd intruded on something private. In the corner of her eye she thought she saw that one of the boys, the one with dark hair, had turned his head and was now observing her, but she pretended to be distracted by her phone so she wouldn't have to look up and confirm it.

When the subway came to a stop at the Blackeberg station, the boys got up from their seats at the same time as Andrea got up from hers. She let them get off the car first, glanced at the place where they'd sat and saw that a bag was lying under the light-haired boy's seat nearest the window. She hesitated a moment. Was it theirs? She decided that it probably was, hurried over and pulled it out, before following the boys out onto the platform. Almost bumped into the dark-haired one who was on his way back in.

"Hi, you forgot ... Or, I mean ..."

The boy was carrying his own rucksack on his back; it was his mate who was missing his. Andrea handed the bag over to the dark-haired one anyway since he was closer, tried giving him a smile to seem friendly. He did not smile back. He accepted the bag and simply looked at her with an expression of utter indifference. She realized that he had an unusually beautiful face for a twelve- or thirteen-year-old. She realized in the next moment that it was kind of a weird thing to think, but still: in only a few years he would probably cause many a broken heart among his female friends, if he had any.

The boy gave the rucksack a suspicious look, as though he thought she could've had enough time to steal something from it in the five seconds that had passed, but then he turned around and handed it to his mate, who was standing a couple steps away and stared at Andrea with an odd furrow in his brow. The boys looked at each other, then back at Andrea, and then hurried away to the doors together. Before they disappeared out of sight up the stairs to the station, she saw the dark-haired one give her one last glance over his shoulder.

Andrea stayed where she was, a bit nonplussed by the boys' behavior and the fact that they hadn't even mumbled "thanks". Maybe they were just shy, not used to being addressed by an older girl, but what the hell. Brats with shitty manners. She pulled her jacket a little tighter about her against the cool night air. Through her irritation, she also felt—without exactly knowing why—that it would not be good if the boys got the idea that she was following them. Something about the way they'd looked at her.

She watched the subway car leave the station and continue to Råcksta with a deafening metallic rattle. She counted to one minute before heading up the stair and home toward Holbergsgatan.

* * *

Back.

Everything was the same. Everything was different.

There was the glowing sign above the stairs he'd walked up and down hundreds of times. There were the bowl-shaped fountains where the junkies used to let their dogs bathe. There was the place where he'd been convince to participate when the other boys ran back and forth across the street in front of the cars and tried not to get run over. There were the high-rises, the coconut ball factory, the old mill.

He had to repeat it to himself several times: that he was back. Even though he'd sat with his eyes glued to the window the whole journey and seen the increasingly familiar landmarks become more and more plentiful the closer they got, it took a while before he felt that his body had really understood that he was here again. He would've liked to be able to tell himself that everything was exactly the way he remembered it, that time had stood still, that someone had pressed a stop button the moment he left and only waited for him to come back.

But that wasn't the way it was.

Everywhere he saw things that deviated, that messed with and clouded his soup of partially melted-together mental images. The trees looked different, skewed the angles and made him disoriented. The stores had different names, equipment in the playgrounds had been replaced and modernized, he saw new buildings shooting up at the sky where before there had been none. There were posters with unknown politicians' faces plastered everywhere. Apparently it was an election year.

Every time someone walked by, he avoided looking at them, afraid of seeing a face he recognized at the same time as he hoped for it. He knew that it was stupid. By now, the faces he recognized would've aged to the point of unrecognizability or disappeared, and the void they'd left behind would've been filled by a load of new people.

Was there any risk that anyone would recognize him? And if they did, would they believe what they were seeing? There was at least one person who had. His address—or at least the one he'd had six years earlier—was written on a piece of paper in Oskar's rucksack. But Oskar had avoided getting too close to the street in question, didn't want to seek him out yet. Not tonight. It was too much to take in all at once.

"Do you remember if there are any good hiding spots?" Eli asked when they stood halfway down Ghost Hill looking at the enormous iron building.

He had barely said anything since they'd left the subway station. As soon as they'd gotten out of sight from the station, he'd helped Oskar check and double-check the bag to make sure that that tall pimply girl on the train hadn't taken anything. After that, he had for the most part walked in silence next to Oskar, looked at him, taken his hand sometimes when he noticed that it was needed. Oskar understood that Eli wanted to give him time, be close in case Oskar needed him but not interfere.

"I have some ideas of places we can check", Oskar said with his gaze directed at the Ghost House. It looked just as overdimensioned and out-of-place as it always had, aside from the fact that the CAN WE HAVE YOUR MOPED? graffiti had been removed from the wall facing the slope. As if it had never existed.

Oskar removed his bag and opened it to make sure for the third time that he hadn't forgotten anything. Speaking of the girl and recognizing people, there was something about her hadn't been able to put out of his mind. Eli noticed.

"What's wrong?"
"That girl. She was kinda familiar."
"Have you seen her before?"
"Don't think so, but it was like ... I dunno."

It was actually the girl's smile, but he didn't quite want to say it. He was almost sure that he had seen an identical smile before, but he couldn't remember where that could've been no matter how much he tried.

It was probably just his imagination.

* * *

Andrea closed the front door behind her. The hallway was dark, she could see the black silhouette of Långben the dachshund sleeping in his basket in the living room, but light was streaming out of the kitchen. Not a good sign. She quickly shook off her shoes and jacket and made an attempt to hurry past the kitchen and into her room, but Dad's voice hooked into her like fishing lines and forced her to stop.

"Do you remember what we agreed?"

Andrea looked straight ahead into the living room, avoided looking to the side into the kitchen where she knew that Dad was sitting at the table and looking at her.

"Do you?" Dad said.
"Eleven at the latest", Andrea mumbled.
"And what time is it?"

Andrea closed her eyes. Didn't reply. A couple seconds passed before she heard Dad get up and walk up to her.

"You could at least answer my texts."
"Mm."
"You understand that I get worried, don't you?"
"Yes."

She was still avoiding looking at him.

"Has something happened?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Mm."
"When you say it like that it means that something's happened."
"No, nothing's happened."
"So where have you been?"
"There."
"And where is-"
"Where I said we'd be, maybe."
"All night?"
"Yes. What's so hard to understand?"
"Nothing. I just want you to answer wh-"
"We went there, we stayed there, I got bored and went home. That's it."
"Nadine didn't leave with you?"

Andrea felt another violent wave of guilty conscience well up inside her when she heard the name. Without saying a word she made her way past Dad, fled to her room, and threw the door open.

"Hang on a moment, where are you going?"
"Well, what the fuck do you think? Going to bed, maybe, or is that not allowed anymore?"

They looked at each other for several long seconds. Then Dad sighed:

"OK. We can talk more about this tomorrow."

And Andrea hated that he was just letting her leave. She would've preferred if he'd forced her to stay, preached at her, at least raised his voice a bit. First the party, then the boys at the subway, and now her own dad couldn't even give her a proper lecture when she got home. Fuck.

She slammed the door shut behind her.

* * *

He remained standing in the hallway long after the echo from the door had ebbed out and been swallowed by the dark silence of the building. Through the crack in the doorway he saw the light turn on in his daughter's room only to turn off again shortly after.

Over by the front door, Andrea's jacket had fallen onto the floor from the stool onto which she'd thrown it. He picked it up and hung it in its usual place on the coat rack, carefully placed her shoes where they belonged on the shelf, then went back to his and Ingela's bedroom. He sat for a long time on the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger.

"That strategy is never gonna work", said Ingela's back behind him, and he started since he'd assumed that she was asleep.

He snorted.

"Yeah, thanks, I've noticed as much."
"We have to let her be a teen", Ingela continued, yawning. "It's only for a few years."
"I was never like that."
"I know. And you know what I was like. But we weren't exactly ... average."
"No."

They kept talking for a while until the words grew sparser and he heard that she had fallen asleep again, and once he had ultimately tired of the company provided by his own thoughts, Micke Siskov too crept down under the covers to fall asleep next to his wife.

[metoo]

Långben the dachshund

[PeteMork]

As usual, very well done. Your attention to detail makes the whole thing not only a smooth read, but relatable. You've also taken the time to give all your relevant characters depth and complexity, which makes the final twist at the end all the more surprising. Micke's child. And her familiar smile. I love it!

[Siggdalos]

PART 3

SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2008

In the autumn of 2008, Tommy decided to get a Facebook account. Every Sunday he took the subway to Vällingby to participate in the St Thomas Church's volunteer activities and make sandwiches for the visitors, which largely consisted of people who weren't faring so well and elderly who didn't have anyone else to talk to. More than once after the service had he heard some of the old ladies happily discussing how they'd gotten much better contact with their grandchildren and other relatives, and one evening when he was once again eating dinner alone at the kitchen table in the suffocating silence that passed for his apartment, he thought: Well, why not.

Making an account was easy enough. What he was going to do with it afterward was a different matter. He sat staring at his computer screen for a while before getting up and heading to the bedroom, opening the wardrobe, and lifting down the pile of old yearbooks from the hat shelf. Gray snow fell around him when he disturbed the layer of dust that had built up there. He felt a tinge of sorrow mixed with gratitude toward Mom who'd kept them over the years. He himself had never given them any thought until he found them while going through her estate.

Creaking complaints from the mattress springs when he sat down on the edge of the bed. Södra Ängby School, autumn semester '79. Rows of faces, columns of names, hairstyles from another world. A faint jolt of recognition in his head when looking at some of them, at most of them nothing. Strangers. Contacting any one of them was unthinkable. If he was to pick, say, that girl third from the left in the front row, write to her and ask ... well, what? They would have not one iota to say to each other. There was really only one alternative, he'd known that even before opening the book, and that was the boy standing next to Tommy himself farthest out on the right on the back row. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, grinning in unison at some long-forgotten joke.

Had almost forgotten how thin I was.

Tommy returned to his computer and searched for the name. The sky blackened and a light rain started drumming against the windows before he found the right one, since there were so many with the same first and last name to choose from, but when he saw the face he recognized it immediately, even though sixteen years had passed since he'd last seen it and even though it'd acquired a beard since then. Robban—Robban with the lank hair and sharp edges in his face, who'd given Tommy an alibi when he set off the school's fire alarm in third grade, who was a whiz at picking locks and who was always up for breaking into a bikeshed or smuggling liquor with him from home—was now Robert Lundgren, 43, married, father of two, residing in Gårdsstugan in northern Stockholm. Tommy looked for a long time at the pictures and posts Robban had made, compared them to his own blank profile and the spaces he was expected to fill with some sort of content. After he was done hesitating he returned to Robban's page and wrote him a message.

*

They met in Vällingby on a Saturday. Yellow leaves were floating in the fountains and a light drizzle stained the stone paving's mosaic of white circles, so they quickly retreated to the warmth of the restaurant they'd agreed on. The hesitation Tommy had felt before the meeting turned out to be unfounded. It was as if they'd never parted from each other.

"You look the same as always", Robban said once they both sat with a plate of dagens lunch.
"And you still suck at lying", Tommy said.

Which, as an aside, was also what the Stockholm District Court had thought sixteen years earlier when they gave Robban and his mates three years for gross theft. At that point the growing distance between Tommy and Robban had already gotten difficult to bridge, and after Robban got locked up, Tommy had neither heard nor seen another sign from him. Nor had he bothered finding out what happened to him afterward.

Robban told him, in short, everything that had happened since he got back out. How he'd decided to "lay off the shit" and get a job. How it would never have been possible if there hadn't been people who believed him to be not completely hopeless. His love, above all.

"It was like she kicked open doors that I didn't know existed. She changed my life, she really did."

When Robban kept going by showing pictures of his son and daughter on his iPhone and talk about how they'd returned home from a vacation in Spain a week or so earlier, Tommy made sure to drink deep from his glass, partially so he wouldn't have to reply and partially to wash down a bitter taste of bile that had started searing his throat. Probably an aftertaste from the sauce.

"Anywho, enough about me", Robban eventually said. "So what's happening in your life?"

The question was expected, and yet Tommy didn't know how to respond. He shrugged, talked about his job as a preschool teacher, about the Sunday activities (with a nod toward the St Thomas Church on the other side of the square), how he passed his free time, that he watched a lot of movies. He didn't get much further than that. There was nothing more to say. But Robban listened attentively without the slightest sign of condescension, and when Tommy had been silent for a while he said:

"Gotta say it's good to hear, that you've ... made a life that works for you. That makes me happy."

When Robban asked if Tommy didn't want to accompany him home and keep chatting over a beer, it was only out of politeness that Tommy said: "Nah, I don't know", and a simple: "Yes, come on", from Robban was enough to persuade him.

*

Tommy had never been to Gårdsstugan, but he knew about the place's reputation. Not exactly a place he'd have picked to raise two kids in. Since he didn't want to ruin the mood he chose not to say anything about it while Robban drove him the rough mile or so there, but when they stepped out onto the parking lot and crossed the empty square between the four enormous blocks that passed for houses, he couldn't help but think that Blackeberg—built about a decade earlier—wasn't so bad after all. Bloody hell, to live in a place like this. It was admittedly still cloudy, which strengthened the impression of concrete-gray Million Program misery, but he doubted that a bit of sunshine would be enough to improve things. Blackeberg was, objectively speaking, a fairly pleasant place to live nowadays, despite its history and its national claim to fame. Gårdsstugan seemed more like it had made the opposite journey and spent the half-century since its infamously poor start slumping even deeper into decay.

The Lundgren family lived in a fairly cramped apartment on the north side, just about smack-dab in the middle of the block named section A: floor seven, stairwell eleven. Tommy was introduced to Robban's wife (he tried to ignore the taste of bile making its presence felt again) and children (he was forced to cough into his fist a couple times). He knew perfectly well what the taste was. Envy. The wife was polite and greeted him, the children sitting in the son's room settled for a shy glance at the stranger before returning their attention to the TV where Super Mario was flying around in an outer space setting.

Robban went to the kitchen to fetch glasses and a pilsner from the fridge. Tommy followed him and saw that the kitchen table was covered in a pile of photographs. Robban explained that his wife was going through the pictures from their vacation and sorting which ones to put in the album.

"Wouldn't it be easier to do it digitally?" Tommy asked.
"You'd think so, but not her. She says she wants the feeling of physically holding and sorting them. Thinks that makes it easier to organize." Robban made sure to angle his back toward the living room so she didn't see him demonstratively rolling his eyes at the mess.

Tommy's gaze moved across the pictures while Robban pointed out details. The hotel pool, the beach, the city sights.

"Who took this one?" Tommy asked and picked up one of the few photos where the whole family was included in the frame at once, standing on a street at night in the sharp lighting of a camera flash. Robban and his wife held their children's shoulders while all four gave the viewer beaming smiles, the daughter with a few leftover gaps from her milk teeth. At this point Tommy was used to the stinging in his throat.

"An American guy who lived in the hotel room next to ours", Robban said. "We became buddies a bit during the week we were there, kept running into each other while we were out and about. Although, I think he thought we were Swiss, now that I think about it. He said hi to us in French a couple times." Robban thought about it for a few seconds, then shrugged. "Anywho. We ran into him out on the town one evening and asked him to take a pic with Marie's camera. He took a bunch as you can see, we kept blinking and yawning and shit, it was pretty late."

Sure enough, there were several nigh-identical photographs in the pile. All of them looked to have been taken in quick succession on the same occasion. Some of them showed glimpses of various passersby at the edges.

"Anywho, shall we?" Robban asked and motioned at the living room and the balcony door.
"Yeah, sure", Tommy said and put the photo he was holding back down. Before turning away he threw one last glance at the pictures.

Then he saw them.

Then he saw them.

Then he saw them.

"Tommy?"
"Huh?"

Robban was looking at him with a concerned furrow between his eyebrows.

"I asked if you're feeling alright. You got all pale."
"What? No, or ... yes, I think maybe ..." Tommy swallowed, tried to regain composure. "I ... think I feel a little ill, actually."

Robban kept looking at him for a moment, then put the pilsner and one of the glasses down on the countertop, filled the other one up from the tap with his back turned toward Tommy. Tommy realized he was holding something. Without thinking, his arm had shot out and grabbed the photo where the two figures had been captured in the background. There was no time for second thoughts. He tucked it inside his shirt and just managed to return his arms to their resting position before Robban turned back around and handed him the water. The few seconds it took to empty the glass gave Tommy time to try to get a grip.

"It's probably just ... the lunch. I don't usually eat out. If I can just sit down a little ..."

Robban nodded, put an arm on his shoulder, and brought him out to the balcony. Robban's wife, who sat in the living room, wondered what was wrong, but Tommy told her that it was alright.

Outside, the shadows had begun to stretch out as the sun sank, but there was still enough warmth in the air for them to sit comfortably on the balcony chairs. Tommy did his best to show that nothing was wrong. Robban seemed to buy it, and after a while the conversation was moving along as usual again. They talked about memories from the old neighborhoods where Tommy still lived, about what had happened to the rest of their old buddies, about Lasse who now lived in Borlänge and whom Robban had sporadic contact with twice a year or so. Several times, Tommy realized that he was just sitting and humming agreement without hearing a word of what Robban said. The photograph itched against his skin. Eventually he decided that he couldn't take much more, excused himself on account that it was getting late. Robban called a cab for him, and after they'd made assurances that it was good to see each other and that they'd get in touch again soon, Tommy left the apartment. On his way out he threw a glance inside the son's room, where the children were still seated in front of their video game. The screen showed Mario being chased by fluffy white ghosts.

It was only after he stepped out the front door down on the ground level that Tommy realized what he'd actually done.

Once a thief ...

To get to the point where the cab would pick him up, he had to cross the square again. It had started getting dark and a cold wind rasped his face. His prejudices concerning Gårdsstugan were confirmed when he saw what kinds of people had started moving outside. People who hung around entryways or under broken street lamps, smoking and talking quietly in different languages, who fell silent and followed him with their eyes when he passed. He did his best to avoid eye contact.

My cohorts.

In the corners of his eyes, he glimpsed bits of the graffiti which had spread out like a black mold over facades and benches seemingly unrestrained. On one wall, among a mess of tags and symbols, someone had sprayed a rough picture of a person—a child, judging by the proportions—and some kind of big cat painted entirely in black. Something about the picture unsettled him even further, and he quickened his pace some more. He almost ran the last few steps.

Only once he'd gotten back to the safety inside his apartment on Elias Lönnrots Väg did the panic hit him for real. His vision darkened and he lost the ability to breathe when his entire interior contracted, as if his body was trying to strangle him from the inside. As he gasped for air, his eardrums started pounding, a steady rhythm of deafening thuds.

Oh God. Help me. My help and my deliverer, help me.

And he felt how the panic most definitely didn't milden or recede but that the presence—the one that was never far—listened, how it held its hand over his innermost while his body continued to struggle for breath, protected him with its warmth all the way until the panic blew over, slowly withdrew, and finally left him entirely, sitting on the bedroom floor with his back against the bed. He ripped the photograph out from under his shirt with shaking hands and threw it away as though it were a venomous animal.

*

He didn't visit Vällingby that Sunday. At work, his colleagues asked how he was feeling and some of the children wondered if he was sad about something. At home, he wasted several evenings wavering back and forth, knew that he had to pick up the picture and look at it again, couldn't bring himself to. He kept waiting for Robban to contact him and ask if he knew anything about the fact that one of their vacation pictures had gone missing since he was there, but it never happened. Maybe they hadn't even noticed that it was missing. They'd had several other almost identical pictures to choose from, after all.

Finally, after several days, he pulled himself together one afternoon and sat down to take a closer look at the photograph in the sharply-defined circle of light from a lamp. It lay in front of him on the desk with its backside up. In the bottom right corner, someone, either Robban or Marie, had written: Barcelona, September 2008. He took a deep breath and turned it over.

He had hoped that he had made a mistake. That it would turn out to just be two strangers who looked similar, that he'd gotten all worked up for nothing. Then he could throw the picture in the trash can under the desk and pretend that it had never happened. But he hadn't made a mistake. A short look was all it took to know. Most of all he would've liked to put the picture away again, but somewhere he felt that he had to be sure. He turned on his computer, searched for oskar eriksson with fingers that felt slow and clumsy against the keyboard, clicked "Images", met a wall whose every panel was the school photograph from the boy's last autumn semester. It had been published in several of the major papers after the disappearance. He held up the photograph next to the screen, compared them. No doubt about it. Significantly thinner, different haircut, but the same. Hadn't aged a day.

As for the girl, there was of course nothing with which he could compare, but he didn't need to. He hadn't forgotten her face. Hadn't forgotten in 27 years. Nor would he ever.

You cannot tell anyone about this. Ever.

An echo of low thuds, stone against stone floor. A slight itch in the crook of his right elbow. He shut his eyes, felt his body tense up in anticipation of the panic. It never came, and when his breaths eventually grew fewer and deeper he opened his eyes again, froze. He'd been so fixated on the figures in the background that he had completely ignored the bigger picture, so to speak. When his eyes now fell on the entire composition, on how the children were moving toward Robban's family, he felt a cold pit open deep in his stomach.

Oh, bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell.

He thought of wild animals that were scared off by sudden flashes of light. Of the graffiti of the child and the beast. Of what would've happened if that American guy hadn't happened to be there on the street that evening. He thought of Robban—so genuinely happy to see him—of Marie, of the children helping each other with their video game.

Tommy slowly turned the photograph over so it lay with its backside up again. Didn't want to see the image anymore. Then he went out to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

By the time he'd recovered somewhat, he had come to a conclusion: this was not something that he could keep to himself. He had to tell someone about it. Not Robban, but somebody. Otherwise the knowledge would eat him from inside.

Also, the more he thought through all of the circumstances it must've taken for the picture to finally end up in the pile on Robban's kitchen table where he could spot it, the less he thought that he was meant to interpret it as a coincidence. He and only he was supposed to ...

He searched inside after a sign, any sign, that could confirm his thoughts, but was met with silence. He felt that God was present, but distant. Maybe a punishment for the fact that Tommy had gone against the commandment not to steal. Maybe He was simply of the opinion that Tommy already knew what to do and didn't need any guidance.

Tommy rubbed his hand over his face and considered his options. Thought about how to present his case so that he'd be listened to and not dismissed as off his rocker. Once he'd decided, he went and fetched an envelope, pen, and paper, sat down, and started writing a letter to the police.

* * *

NOVEMBER 2008
Sabadell, Spain

Oskar read the short lines again.

"He writes that he knew you", Karin said.
"Yes. We were neighbors. And ... friends, sort of. Even though he was a couple years older and all that."
"I see."
"Is that him on the picture?"
"We don't know, really, but I don't think so."
"No", Oskar said, "it doesn't look like him. We would've recognized him there if it was."

Eli, who sat next to him with the enlarged copy of the photograph in his hands, looked up at him. Oskar read the question in his eyes: Would we?, but he didn't pay it any mind.

"We?" Karin asked.
"Yes. He and Eli ... also met once."

Eli made a face at his choice of words. Karin and her husband noticed, of course, but neither of them said anything.

"Or, well", Oskar added, "it's a long story."

For a few seconds there was no sound but the noise of the cars from the street at the end of the alley, before Stefan's face contorted as if from pain and he drew a sharp breath. Karin put her hands on his arm until it passed, then looked back at Oskar.

"Wouldn't you like to tell it to us? We told you about us."
"Karin", Stefan said, "has guessed most everything about you. But it would mean quite a bit to her—and, well, to me too—if you wanted to fill in the blanks for us. Even if you decide that ..." He hesitated.
"... that you don't want to do us the favor we asked", Karin finished.

Oskar scrutinized the two grownups' faces. Saw only sincerity. Turned to Eli, who sat completely still for a few seconds and then nodded.

"OK", Oskar said. "If I can keep these." He lifted the copied letter he was still holding and pointed at the photograph in Eli's hands.

Stefan and Karin nodded. Oskar picked up and opened his rucksack, let the paper slip inside. He stretched his hand out for the photograph, but Eli made no attempt to give it to him, instead only looked at him with a hesitant expression. Oskar signed a question.

»What?«

Eli shook his head and handed him the picture. Once Oskar had put that in the bag too, he looked at Eli again and repeated the same gesture.

»Nothing«, Eli replied with a resigned motion of his hand.

Oskar put away the bag, well aware that Stefan and Karin had watched the whole thing. He decided to leave it be. Pulled his legs up until he sat cross-legged atop the wall, turned to Eli and asked him, out loud this time:

"Should you start or me?"

[metoo]

I really like this!

I have always been of the opinion that Tommy wouldn't have been the one who wrote and sent that letter and picture.
He would have been too involved, I felt.

Still, this story works out, I think.
Tommy wasn't in Barcelona, wasn't part of the family in the photograph. Instead he got hold of the picture by pure chance.
However, seeing the picture hit him hard. He never had completely recovered from his encounters with first Eli and then Håkan.
And that this very troubled Tommy would write and send the letter and the picture to get some kind of relief feels completely believable to me!

Good work!

[PeteMork]

Very clever. The whole thing works well because your story is credible.