The Circle (Hammer)

22



MINOO’S BODY IS pumping with adrenalin as she makes her way to Adriana Lopez’s house, which is about ten minutes’ walk from school in an area known as Lilla Lugnet.

Here, the houses are spaced further apart and there are more empty plots. The blackened ruin of a burned-down house is waiting to be demolished. It looks eerie in the moonlight. Rumour has it that there was an underground swinger’s club in the basement. Supposedly married couples used to meet up there at night to share partners and bodily fluids. A jealous woman was said to have set the place on fire. Apparently a few people had died in the flames, and their spirits can be heard some nights, moaning and sighing with pleasure and pain.

Minoo shivers and zips her jacket to her chin. When she passes the charred remains of the house, she realises she’s pricked up her ears but she can’t hear any randy ghosts.

Her heart nearly stops when a black-clad figure steps out of the shadows at the edge of the property. Minoo is about to run when the figure raises its hand in greeting.

It’s Linnéa.

They walk down the street together. Minoo is painfully conscious of each and every window they pass, the curious eyes that might follow them. She’s starting to regret having agreed to break into the house with invisible Vanessa.

The general understanding was that Minoo would come along since she’s the ‘cleverest’ of them. Flattery had won over fear. How desperate for affirmation can you get? she wonders. She becomes aware that Linnéa is smiling. ‘What’s so funny?’ she whispers.

‘I was just thinking that this probably isn’t your kind of weekend activity.’

Minoo knows she’s a bit of a goodie-two-shoes, but she hates other people to point it out. ‘Is it yours?’

‘Relax – we know she won’t be back until tomorrow,’ Linnéa whispers. She looks excited. As if she were on an adventure.

They turn on to another road and glimpse Ida crouching in the bushes as look-out. If she sees anyone coming she’ll warn Anna-Karin, who is standing guard closer to the house. Anna-Karin is invaluable since she can get passers-by to choose a different route. But they hadn’t dared count on Ida, which is why she’s been given a task that’s somewhat redundant.

Minoo is relieved she can’t see Ida’s face in the shadows. She hasn’t been able to look her in the eye since the phone call.

‘Couldn’t she have stayed at home?’ Linnéa mumbles.

‘We have to do this together,’ Minoo says, and feels like a massive hypocrite.

The street they walk along is narrow, the houses fewer and older. Anna-Karin is standing on a little stretch of public land between two high fences. She looks at Minoo and Linnéa nervously as they pass.

‘Look,’ Linnéa murmurs, nodding at Nicolaus’s car, which is hidden in the shadow of a big tree.

He’s waiting there in case they have to make a quick getaway. He doesn’t like the plan, but he knows there’s no other way.

They continue for another ten metres and there, at the end of the street, is the principal’s house.

The property is surrounded by a freshly painted white wooden fence, which almost glows in the dark. The garden is overgrown in a way that seems intentional. A flagstone path starts at the gate, continues under a tall birch tree and leads up to the front door. The white wooden house has two floors and is adorned with elaborately carved cornices. Two of the upstairs windows are set with an abstract pattern of stained glass, like church windows.

The handle on the gate presses down and the gate opens by itself. Minoo’s heart nearly stops before she realises Vanessa is standing beside it, invisible.

‘Can you hear me?’ Vanessa whispers. She’s trained herself to be heard but not seen for tonight. Minoo nods, facing the spot where she thinks Vanessa is standing.

They stop at the front door and Minoo pulls on a thin pair of latex gloves she stole from her mother’s office. ‘Do you think she’s got an alarm?’ she whispers, as she pulls out her torch.

‘I reckon we’re about to find out.’ Linnéa smirks and takes out the key.

Minoo has to admire Anna-Karin’s courage. She stole the principal’s key, ran to the locksmith a few blocks from the school, made a copy and managed to return the original without anyone noticing.

Linnéa turns the key and the lock opens easily. She presses down the handle and makes an ironically inviting gesture.

‘Welcome to the House of Horrors,’ she says. ‘I’ll stay here and keep watch,’ she adds in a more serious tone, when she meets Minoo’s gaze.

Vanessa fades into view on the other side of Minoo and gives her an encouraging nod. Then she vanishes again as she slips inside the darkened house.

Minoo thinks of Rebecka and follows her.



Minoo switches on her torch and aims it at the floor to minimise the chance of anyone seeing the light through the window. A row of coats hangs in a large alcove in the hall. They sneak across the creaking floorboards – Minoo hopes they’re not leaving footprints.

‘Does she actually live here?’ Vanessa murmurs, as they enter the living room.

Minoo knows exactly what she means. The place looks too perfect. The furniture is heavy and dark, and looks as if it belongs in a castle. Old portraits and landscape paintings in sombre colours hang on the walls. The open fireplace seems never to have been used, despite the basket of neatly stacked uniform-sized logs. There are no books lying around. No magazines. It smells spotlessly clean. Too clean. As if the air has never been sullied by human presence.

They walk along a corridor and look into the kitchen, a bathroom and a guestroom. Everything is furnished in the same manner. Opposite the stairway leading to the second floor there is a little room used as an office. A shelf is filled with ordinary books – literature, biographies and poetry. No old parchments or Latin manuscripts.

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Minoo whispers.

No one answers.

‘Vanessa?’ she whispers, louder, panicked at the idea of being alone in this big, dark house.

‘Sorry. I forgot you can’t see me. I nodded,’ Vanessa says, beside her.

They sneak up the stairs, which creak beneath their feet. Minoo realises that if the principal were to come home now they would be trapped upstairs. Unlike Vanessa, she would never get outside unseen.

The landing is bathed in moonlight pouring through a skylight so Minoo switches off her torch. Shadows lurk in every corner.

‘Shall we start with the rooms on the right?’ she whispers.

Silence.

‘Vanessa?’

‘Sorry. Yes.’

A long carpet deadens their footsteps. Minoo opens the door at the far end of the corridor, where the shadows are at their thickest. She steps into the room and switches on her torch again. At the far end, there is a neatly made bed and a simple floor lamp. Fitted cupboards line one wall. But there’s no indication that anyone sleeps here.

‘She must be a psychopath,’ Vanessa whispers.

One of the cupboard doors opens. Something black and shapeless flies out, like a desperate bird released from its cage. Minoo lets out a muffled cry. When the black shape stops moving she sees an elegant evening dress floating in the air.

‘A rich psychopath,’ Vanessa whispers, and hangs the dress back in the cupboard. ‘This is Prada.’

Minoo opens the door to the adjoining bathroom. Thick towels hang over a bar of brushed steel. The shelves and cabinets are filled with an immaculate array of exclusive cosmetics and skincare products, all with the labels facing forwards.

‘Wow! What a lot of makeup. D’you think she’d notice if something went missing?’ Vanessa asks.

There’s an unmistakable eagerness in her voice that causes Minoo to shake her head in terror.

‘Just kidding,’ Vanessa says.

Yet Minoo doesn’t dare move away from the front of the cabinet until Vanessa has left the bathroom.

The next door leads into an empty room.

As does the next.

The third is locked.

Minoo pulls at the handle. If there’s anything of interest in this house, you can bet it’ll be in the locked room. ‘What do we do now?’ Minoo asks.

She hears a strange noise, a faint metallic scraping coming from the door. Like little claws scratching. Minoo takes a step back. If the principal is some kind of evil queen, maybe she has nasty little minions hidden about her palace, silent sentinels ready to defend her secrets.

The handle presses down and the door opens a crack.

Something materialises in the corner of her eye, and Minoo whirls around.

Vanessa grins at her.

‘Did you hear that …’ Minoo begins, then notices the hairpin Vanessa is holding. And she understands that the door wasn’t opened by someone inside the room. Vanessa, wonderful Vanessa, had picked the lock. She could have hugged her, but Vanessa has vanished again.

They enter the room. Minoo hardly dares to breathe. The moonlight filters in through the stained-glass windows, creating a dreamy effect. The coloured panes project irregular shapes across the floor. Unlike the rest of the house, there is a faint smell of life in here, of dusty paper and old leather. There is also a hint of burned wood and a pungent smell that Minoo can’t identify.

The room is the biggest one upstairs. There is a fireplace in here, too, but it appears to have been used frequently, judging from the blackened brickwork. A bookcase runs the full length of the opposite wall, with three stuffed birds perched on top – two different owls and a pitch-black raven with a razor-sharp beak. The contents of the shelves are protected by glass doors secured with big padlocks.

Most of the spines of the books are so worn that the titles are unreadable, but Minoo’s gaze lands on one – Unaussprechlichen Kulten – and she shudders, as if she had touched something ancient and thoroughly evil.

‘Where are you?’ she whispers.

‘By the desk. Look,’ Vanessa whispers, and a hand appears out of thin air to point at something.

Underneath a stack of books, in various stages of disintegration, lies an old map of Engelsfors. Next to it there is a strange iron object with a big screw in the middle. And two photographs, blown up from last year’s school photo. One of Elias. And one of Rebecka.

‘I’m going to take a picture of this so we can show the others,’ Vanessa whispers. She sounds tense.

Minoo goes to the shelf next to the fireplace. It’s stacked with brown glass jars, each labelled with a roman numeral. She picks one up at random, with the number XI, and unscrews the lid.

At first she can’t tell what the small desiccated spheres are.

Eyes.

She screws the lid back on tightly and puts the jar back where she’d taken it from.

Small flashes light up the room when Vanessa photographs the desk with her phone camera.

Suddenly Minoo glimpses movement near the ceiling. Her gaze falls on the birds. She stands motionless, waiting for a beak to open, a wing to flap. But they don’t budge. Of course not.

She forces herself to focus on the task at hand. Find clues. Evidence. She mustn’t let fear get the better of her. She has to think of Rebecka and Elias. She’s here for their sake.

She walks up to a little wooden table standing next to a well-worn leather armchair. A circular, dark red wooden box is lying on the table. Minoo shines her torch on it. The lid is divided into two halves by a vertical line. Depicted on one half is an ingeniously carved city with strange architecture that looks like nothing Minoo has ever seen before, and on the other, swirling galaxies and unidentifiable slithering shapes. In the middle a man holds his hands straight out at his sides as if he were forming a bridge between the two halves. The line cuts his body in two. His eyes are closed.

‘Minoo …’

Vanessa’s voice comes from just behind her. Minoo turns. Vanessa is visible again.

‘Look down,’ she says.

How had she missed those lines when she entered the room? Or have they appeared while she and Vanessa have been in there?

A big white circle is drawn on the floor. In the middle of it there is a smaller circle, approximately half a metre in diameter. Inside the smaller circle, there is a strange symbol. Minoo and Vanessa are standing inside the bigger circle.

Minoo bends down and runs her finger across the outer line. It feels greasy and warm. She snatches her hand away.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Vanessa mutters.

The air above the smaller circle starts to shimmer, as it does over tarmac on a hot summer day. Minoo tries to run, but she can’t move. She hears a dull pulsating sound in the ceiling above them.

A wave of hot air shoots through the room. The heat makes it difficult to breathe. The muffled pounding grows louder, causing a vibration in their chests like a heavy bass line.

‘I can’t move,’ Vanessa squeals.

Minoo struggles, but it’s as if her feet are glued to the floor. The heat causes sweat to trickle from her hairline over her forehead. Vanessa stretches out her hand. ‘I can’t f*cking move!’ she shouts, over the din.

The moment they touch the pressure pinning their feet to the floor eases – enough for them to move.

‘Run!’ Vanessa yells.

As they race out of the room Minoo glances back and sees something unbelievable before she flees towards the stairs.

The muffled pounding grows in intensity as they race along the corridor, down the stairs and through the lower rooms. The windowpanes are rattling and a painting crashes to the floor in the living room. Vanessa throws open the front door and they burst out into the night air. Minoo tears after her towards the open gate.

Out of the corner of her eye she spots Linnéa, who doesn’t ask questions, just joins them.

The three girls stumble into each other as they throw themselves into Nicolaus’s car.

‘Did you see it, too? In the light?’ Vanessa says to Minoo, when they’re sitting in the back seat.

Minoo nods. She knows what Vanessa saw: a human form taking the shape of a pillar of light.