The Circle (Hammer)

23



WHEN MINOO AND Vanessa tell the others what they saw at the principal’s house, Anna-Karin feels unexpectedly closed off. It’s as if she had to see it to believe in it. She should be the last person who needs convincing that the supernatural exists. But their account of what happened sounds like an old ghost story she’s heard a million times.

She’s sitting on the stage, looking out across the dance floor. Her parents had met here many years ago. She doesn’t know much more than that. Her mother usually describes her father as a handsome man and a good dancer. But she ends the story with a bitter laugh, saying, ‘If I had known how bad he was at everything else, I would have run away as fast as my legs could carry me.’ It sounds as though her mother wishes she had run away, even though that would have meant Anna-Karin had never been born.

A mild rain has started to fall and is thrumming gently against the dance pavilion’s roof. It’s leaking and little pools are forming on the wooden floor. The one-eyed black cat has puffed itself up at Nicolaus’s feet. He seems to have grown used to it and has even given it the imaginative name of Cat.

‘So now we know that the principal is the killer,’ Vanessa says.

‘Not quite,’ Minoo adds.

‘How much proof do you need?’ Linnéa asks.

‘Excuse me,’ says Ida, ‘but you three are, like, missing the point here.’

‘Which is what exactly?’ Linnéa snaps.

‘Well,’ says Ida, her voice dripping with sweetness and venom, ‘the point isn’t that we know it’s her. It’s that she knows we’ve been there.’

‘We don’t know if she saw us,’ says Vanessa. ‘Even if it was her.’

Ida rolls her eyes.

‘We’re not completely helpless,’ says Minoo, sounding unconvinced.

‘Against her you might very well be, I’m afraid,’ says Nicolaus.

He’d been flipping silently through the photos on Vanessa’s mobile. Now he was staring vacantly into space. ‘I suspect that the principal is in league with the demons.’

Minoo takes out a little notepad and starts scribbling feverishly.

‘Demons? Where the hell did that come from? Do you, like, know something all of a sudden?’ Vanessa says.

‘God have mercy on your souls,’ Nicolaus mumbles, and staggers.

Minoo lowers her notepad. ‘Are you all right?’

The confusion is back in Nicolaus’s eyes. ‘What was it we were talking about?’

‘The principal,’ Anna-Karin answers. ‘And something about demons.’

‘Ah, yes! Demons. The principal.’ His gaze moves back to the photos. ‘I’ve seen this device before. God help us.’

‘Okay …’ says Vanessa.

Anna-Karin gets up and walks closer to him when he holds up the mobile to display one of the photos: the one of the iron object with the big screw in the middle.

‘I thought I recognised it. It’s a tongue tearer,’ Nicolaus continues.

‘A what?’ Ida asks shrilly.

‘You force the victim’s tongue through this opening, screw it fast, then pull out the tongue like this …’ He demonstrates by sticking out his tongue as far as it will go. ‘Then you turn a crank so that the tongue is pulled out further and further. You continue until the root splits and the tongue comes off. The human tongue is surprisingly long.’

Anna-Karin looks at the image, unconsciously pulling her tongue as far back in her mouth as she can, as if to protect it. Now she has no trouble in believing the ghost story.

‘She saw us,’ Minoo says faintly. ‘I’m pretty sure of it. Do you think she’ll do something at school?’

‘That was where Elias and Rebecka died,’ says Linnéa.

‘I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see which of us it is on Monday,’ Vanessa says.

Perhaps it was an attempt at a joke, but nobody laughs.