The Circle (Hammer)

14



CITY MALL IS the epitome of everything Vanessa hates about Engelsfors. It’s deserted, ugly and, above all, an embarrassing failure.

It opened six years ago to a great fanfare and free balloons for all the children. Now there’s nothing there but shuttered shops and Sture & Co., hangout of choice for all the local drunks. The entire building sits in constant gloom because no one can be bothered to replace the light bulbs in the ceiling. The Crystal Cave is the first new addition to the place for more than two years.

A bell dings as Vanessa opens the door. There is a strong smell of incense. The walls are a warm yellow and it’s packed with shelves, tables of books, dream catchers, dolphin paintings, scented candles and mysterious jars. And, of course, there are crystals in all colours and sizes.

An older woman is sitting behind the counter flipping through a gossip magazine. Her skin has been battered by the sun, and her straggly blonde hair is a mess mangled from endless perms. Her lipstick is a frosty pink, and her eyelids droop under a heavy coat of turquoise shadow. Her denim outfit has small golden butterflies embroidered here and there.

So, this must be Mona Moonbeam. Vanessa doesn’t know what she was expecting, but not someone who looks as if she’s stepped out of an eighties music video. As she approaches the counter she smells stale smoke and sickly perfume. ‘Hi …’ she begins.

‘What do you want?’ Mona croaks, without looking up from her magazine.

Vanessa is annoyed. This shop probably needs all the customers it can get. Mona Moonbeam ought to cheer and scatter rose petals at her feet. ‘Am I disturbing you?’

Mona Moonbeam lowers her magazine slowly and looks at her. ‘What do you want?’ she repeats.

‘My mother was in here and had her palm read. Jannike Dahl? She said you had some kind of two-for-one offer.’

She lays the receipt on the counter and Mona picks it up slowly, as if she wants to emphasise that she’s not going to hurry on Vanessa’s account. She puts on the glasses she has hanging around her neck and examines the slip of paper closely and fastidiously. Then she looks at Vanessa and lets out a long, deep sigh.

Vanessa is about to turn and leave. But she’s already put this off for several weeks and the offer expires today. Her mother would be disappointed. She wants Vanessa to share her interest in dream interpretation, affirmation and aura photography. ‘Is there a problem?’ she asks.

Mona snorts, gets up and comes out from behind the counter. A dark red velvet curtain hangs between a cabinet filled with books on the occult and a copper dragon that comes up to Vanessa’s waist. Mona pulls it aside and goes in, waving for Vanessa to follow her.

The room is small and stuffy. Inside, more velvet curtains are nailed haphazardly on the white walls, but the peachcoloured linoleum flooring ruins any attempt at creating an atmosphere of mystique. In the middle of the room two chairs are upholstered in red plush, and a table is covered with a dark purple gold-fringed cloth. Mona gestures her over, and Vanessa takes that to mean she should sit down. A sharp metal spring inside the seat cushion cuts into her buttocks as she sinks into the chair.

‘What the f*ck?’ Vanessa squirms to find a comfortable position. ‘This chair’s broken.’

‘You’re too bony,’ Mona mutters, and sits down opposite her.

Vanessa is about to respond with something about Mona’s well-padded rump, but bites her lip.

Mona’s bracelet rattles as she fumbles under the table. Then she rubs something into her hands. Vanessa has time to wonder if it’s magic oil, then sees the bottle of hand sanitiser.

Mona holds out her hands. ‘Let’s see your mitts,’ she says.

Warily Vanessa lays her hands in Mona’s. The moment their skin touches, Vanessa gets a strange feeling. It reminds her of how she feels when she’s about to become invisible. A bit like a wind gusting inside her.

Over the last few weeks she’s become increasingly adept at controlling her invisibility. She can feel it coming and stop it. She has also started to learn how to bring it on when she chooses. That’s considerably more difficult, and the first time she tried to do it her nose bled.

Mona examines her hands and Vanessa is suddenly nervous. After all, she doesn’t know anything about the woman. Her heart beats a little faster when she counts the weeks backwards in her head and realises that Mona must have arrived in the town just before Elias died.

This was a bad idea, Vanessa says to herself, a very bad idea, in fact.

‘I see that you’re an independent young woman who wants to go her own way,’ says Mona.

‘Really? Impressive guesswork,’ says Vanessa, as her pulse subsides.

‘I’m not in the business of guessing!’ Mona gives her an irritated look. ‘You want to go out into the big wide world and have a look around.’

‘Gosh! I must be so special.’ She’s got nothing to worry about. Everything Mona says would be true of any girl Vanessa’s age. Mona is a charlatan, just like the rest of her mother’s gurus. Now the charlatan scrunches up her mouth so that every nicotine wrinkle on her upper lip shows. Then she appears to make a decision.

‘All right. Let’s do this properly.’

She grabs Vanessa’s hands more tightly. A new feeling surges through Vanessa. She feels as she did when Ida levitated at the fairground: as if the air were charged with electricity. The hairs on her arms stand up. She holds her breath.

‘I see a man,’ says Mona. ‘You have a complicated relationship.’

‘Oh?’ says Vanessa, trying to sound indifferent.

‘It won’t last.’

‘You can’t just come out and say something like that!’

Mona smiles wryly. ‘Do you want me to stop? Can’t you handle the truth?’

Vanessa grits her teeth.

Mona peers intently into her right palm and follows a line with her index finger. It tickles. ‘See this? These two lines are intertwined all the way to the end. The love of your life isn’t the one you think, but it’s someone you’ve already met. Oh dear, oh dear … It’ll be no picnic, but you’re tied to each other.’ Mona laughs – no, that’s the wrong word. Mona chuckles.

‘What’s so funny?’ Vanessa asks.

‘You’ll see.’ Mona lets go of Vanessa’s right hand and grabs the left one. ‘You feel very let down by someone. I see a parent who …’ Suddenly Mona leans so far forward that the tip of her nose almost brushes against Vanessa’s palm. ‘Aha!’ she cries.

Vanessa’s mouth goes dry. Her tongue is glued to the roof of her mouth and she can’t speak.

Mona glances at her triumphantly. ‘I knew it,’ she says. ‘Wait a minute.’

Mona gets up and walks over to a black-painted chest of drawers. The top drawer gives such a shrill squeak when she pulls it open that Vanessa starts. Mona rummages around noisily until she finds what she’s looking for.

Vanessa catches a glimpse of a plastic bag containing yellowish-white stones before Mona disappears out of the room. She returns with a lit cigarette in the corner of her mouth, holding a red marble ashtray in one hand. The bag dangles in the other.

‘I need bigger guns,’ she says. She unties the bag and pours the contents on to the table. Vanessa goes cold when she sees they aren’t stones.

They’re teeth. Human teeth.

‘You see these inscriptions?’ says Mona, and holds up two front teeth.

Vanessa recoils.

‘Oh, don’t be such a wuss,’ says Mona. ‘Just be glad I’m not using animal droppings or entrails.’

Vanessa’s gaze glides down to the table. The gleaming teeth have strange lines on them that intersect in various ways. Each tooth has an inscribed pattern.

‘These are Ogham characters,’ says Mona. ‘The druids used them thousands of years ago. Some people believe that the characters are even older and originate from the ancient moon-goddess cults of the Middle East.’

She gathers all the teeth in her cupped hands and shakes them several times. They rattle and click. Then she opens her hands and they scatter out across the table. Vanessa feels that charged sensation in the room again. It’s as if someone was gently drawing a grater over her skin.

Mona turns a few teeth over so that their inscribed characters are visible. She studies the result and sucks in a few drags from her cigarette, which is still lodged in the corner of her mouth. ‘This character, úath, stands for terror or fear,’ she explains, pointing at a molar. ‘And this one … No. You probably don’t want to know.’ She looks at Vanessa provocatively.

‘Of course I do.’

‘nGéadal stands for death. Death is hanging over you.’

Mona takes another drag, making the column of ash at the end of her cigarette grow so long that it might break off at any moment. She takes off her glasses.

Vanessa is having trouble breathing. The room seems to be getting smaller, as if at any minute the walls will close in on her and crush her.

‘You don’t have to take everything literally,’ says Mona, as if what she had said was nothing out of the ordinary.

Vanessa gets up suddenly, grapples with the mass of velvet hanging in the doorway, and finally gets through it to the other side, back into the normal world where the air is breathable.

‘Hi,’ someone says, and Vanessa looks around.

Linnéa is standing behind the shelves. She’s holding a pearlescent porcelain figure of a cherub. ‘So ugly it’s wonderful,’ she says.

Vanessa looks at the chubby angel playing the harp. Nobody but Linnéa would be able to take that grotesque thing home and make it look cool.

Mona steps into the shop and casts a sweeping glance over Linnéa’s leopard-print fake fur. The shirt underneath has been cut to shreds and put back together with safety pins. She’s paired it with a super-short skirt made of pink tulle, and the knee-high combat boots.

‘Empty your pockets,’ Mona croaks.

‘What for?’ Linnéa asks.

‘I know a thief when I see one.’

‘I don’t have any pockets,’ Linnéa says. She spins around, a full turn, and smiles smugly.

Mona grabs a handful of the imitation fur, examines it closely and decides she’s telling the truth.

Vanessa decides that Linnéa is just what she needs right now, after this chain-smoking old fruitcake with her death characters. They leave Mona Moonbeam and her stuffy little shop.

‘What the hell were you doing with that old bat?’ Linnéa asks, and fishes a packet of cigarettes out of her boot as they emerge from the mall. She lights one and holds it out to Vanessa, who takes it even though she usually only likes the taste when she’s drunk. Linnéa lights another for herself and they start to walk.

‘My mum insisted I came,’ Vanessa answers. She doesn’t want to talk about her fortune –she’d prefer to forget about it. ‘What were you doing there?’ she continues, before Linnéa gets the chance to ask any more questions.

‘Just picking up some stuff,’ Linnéa says, with a grin, and shows her a packet of incense she’d hidden in her other boot.

Vanessa’s impressed.

When they reach Storvall Park they stop beside the fountain.

‘Have you been back to the fairground?’ Linnéa asks.

Rebecka has tried to get Vanessa there several times, but she’s always said she’s seeing Wille or Michelle and Evelina. She doesn’t want to think about what happened that night.

Doesn’t want it in her life.

‘No. Have you?’ she asks,

‘No,’ Linnéa says, barely audibly. ‘I want to know why Elias died, but I don’t know what to do’

‘Maybe we should meet up with the others,’ Vanessa says, after a while. ‘Try to find out what’s going on.’

‘If I do anything, I’m going to do it by myself,’ Linnéa answers curtly.

Vanessa takes a drag and tries to hide how disgusting it tastes.

Behind Linnéa she sees one of the drunks who usually hang out in the park. He’s dancing an odd little jig on the greyish-brown grass. Totally gone in the head. But nice, Vanessa knows that because she used to get him to buy booze for her from the off-licence before she met Wille.

Linnéa tosses her cigarette on to the ground and pains-takingly grinds it out with her boot. Suddenly she looks annoyed. Is she afraid that Vanessa’s going to ask to come home with her?

‘I’ve got to go,’ Vanessa says, to make it clear she’s not trying to become best friends.

Linnéa doesn’t answer.

Behind her the drunk is shaking his head. He staggers forward unsteadily, approaching them with jerky movements. ‘Hello!’ he calls.

‘Hi,’ Vanessa shouts back, and hopes he’ll be satisfied with that.

But he continues towards them. ‘Linnéa, the light and joy of my life!’ he calls, in the slurring, broken voice that all drunkards seem to acquire sooner or later.

‘Friend of yours?’ Vanessa asks, with a little laugh.

Linnéa doesn’t answer. She just walks away.

‘Linnéa!’ the lush shouts again.

He stops short in his bizarre dance, rocking back and forth, looking after Linnéa with empty eyes and gaping mouth.

Linnéa speaks to him so softly that Vanessa barely catches what she says.

‘’Bye, Dad.’