The Circle (Hammer)

24



ON MONDAY MORNING, Vanessa briefly considers not going to school. The events of Saturday scared her, but the prospect of sitting alone at home and waiting for something terrible to happen seems far worse.

She hasn’t heard Nicke mention any break-ins at Lilla Lugnet. If the police had been called out for something that exciting he would definitely have talked about it at the dinner table. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. Vanessa can’t imagine that a person who’s in league with demons would bother calling the police if someone broke into her secret torture chamber.

Her mother is reading a thick book about how to cast your horoscope. It’s her day off and she’s humming as she sits there, taking notes while flipping through the book. Her face is calm, which makes her look younger. She was only seventeen when she had Vanessa, and thirty-three is still pretty young. Sometimes Vanessa thinks her mother has thrown away her life. She wears herself out, and for what? Mother of two and a care assistant at an old people’s home. Is that all she’s going to do with her life? Doesn’t she have any ambition? Vanessa isn’t going to make the same mistake. She’s going to be young for as long as possible. She wants to savour life. Real life. The one that exists away from Engelsfors. If she survives long enough.

‘I’m going now,’ she says.

Her mother smiles. For someone who’s thrown away her life, she looks very content. ‘Hey, I almost forgot,’ she said. ‘How did it go at Mona’s?’

Why does her mother have such a knack for bringing up the very thing Vanessa doesn’t want to talk about? ‘Good,’ she mumbles.

‘I was really impressed,’ her mother says. ‘What did she say to you?’

‘It’s private.’

‘That’s okay, Nessa. I understand if you don’t want to tell me everything. Maybe I don’t want to know.’

She says it with a knowing smile, as if she knows what Vanessa’s going through, that she understands what it’s like to be a teenager. But her mother has no idea what Vanessa is going through. And Vanessa can never tell her.

‘No, you don’t,’ she says quietly, and gives her mother a quick hug.



The first thing Vanessa sees when she arrives at school is Jari. He’s standing with Anna-Karin, who is tossing her hair and laughing exaggeratedly.

‘You’re mad.’ Anna-Karin giggles at something Jari has said, and Vanessa quickens her pace so she doesn’t have to hear any more.

She sits through her morning classes on tenterhooks, flinching at every movement in the classroom. Evelina and Michelle look at her as if she should be strapped into a straitjacket and pumped full of tranquillisers. They’re probably right.

When she comes down to the cafeteria she sees the principal at the salad bar. Adriana Lopez is piling a mountain of grated carrot on to her plate. All of a sudden everything seems silly and unreal.

Maybe the principal is a demon. But an entire morning marks the upper limit of how long Vanessa can feel afraid – especially of a demon who loves carrots.



Monday drags on into Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday and finally Friday. Nothing happens. They meet at the fairground once to decide on a strategy. Linnéa wants them to use Anna-Karin’s powers to get the principal to expose herself. Minoo objects: Rebecka had some pretty potent powers, which didn’t save her.

Vanessa wants to scream with frustration. There’s nobody they can ask for help or advice. Now they’re just waiting their turn to die, like animals to the slaughter, without even trying to fight back. One afternoon when she watched the principal getting into her car, she felt like running up, yanking open the door and shouting, ‘Go on, do it! What are you waiting for?’

She had intended to spend the weekend with Wille, to try to forget everything, but he’d said he had to help Jonte with ‘this thing’. Michelle and Evelina are in Köping for a concert, and Vanessa can’t afford to go too.

On Saturday the storm hits. The last of the autumn leaves are torn from the trees, and there’s a howling wind that pummels the town with rain.

Vanessa is a prisoner at home. By the afternoon claustrophobia is creeping in. It feels as though Nicke is everywhere. If she goes into the kitchen, he’s there making coffee. If she wanders into the living room, he’s lying on the sofa, reading a crime novel, muttering about bad research. In the end Vanessa starts tidying up her room for something to do.

‘Can you do the rest of the apartment, while you’re at it?’ her mother says, in a way that suggests she’s being funny.

But Vanessa actually does it. If nothing else, it’s fun to irritate Nicke with the sound of vacuuming. He can hardly complain.

Afterwards, Vanessa sits in front of the computer. Nobody’s logged in. She tries calling Wille. No answer. She walks up to the window.

Engelsfors is best viewed in darkness, from a bit of distance, when all you can see is streetlamps and lit windows. Vanessa catches sight of the church spire. That’s where Rebecka is going to be buried on Monday. Vanessa wishes she could be there, but it’s out of the question. Nobody can know that she and Rebecka were friendly.

Frasse scratches at the door and she lets him in. He lies down on the bed and sighs contentedly. Vanessa glances at her mobile on the desk. Then she picks it up.

Linnéa sounds out of breath when she answers. ‘Has something happened?’

Vanessa is a little confused. Then she realises that Linnéa was hardly expecting an ‘ordinary’ call from her. ‘No, I just wanted …’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Forget it,’ says Vanessa, and hangs up.

Unease wells up in her chest. She calls Wille. The phone rings at the other end. He doesn’t answer.

Frasse yawns so widely that it looks as if his jaw is going to pop out of joint. Vanessa puts down her mobile and downloads a horror movie. It’ll be nice to look at some imaginary monsters. Anything to stop her thinking about the ones already living inside her head, whispering that her boyfriend is cheating on her at this very moment with Linnéa Wallin.



The windowpanes rattle in the wind.

Minoo is searching the Net for information about demons. Again. As usual she gets nowhere. The stories she finds are more like fairy tales. She tries to compare them with each other, but draws no useful conclusions other than that evil creatures figure in most religions and cultures. But originally the word demon had nothing to do with evil. It stems from the Greek word daimon which simply means ‘spirit’, ‘god’ or ‘being’. Evil demons didn’t appear until the arrival of Christianity.

Minoo sighs in frustration. She’s sure that the people who put up the information on these sites know as little about it as she does. A lot of it is obviously rubbish, other stuff is wishful thinking from wannabe Satanists, but most of it is the senseless rambling of religious nuts. And they frighten her as much as any demons.

Minoo gets up and massages her stiff shoulders. Her gaze falls on the black dress hanging on the wardrobe door.

They had bought her funeral outfit after school yesterday. Minoo had put it off as long as she could until her mother had forced her to go shopping with her in Borlänge. Minoo feels sick just thinking about the funeral. It’s the day after tomorrow, and she wishes she could get out of it. But her mother keeps insisting: ‘You have to go. It’s part of the grieving process. You’ll understand what I mean afterwards.’

Rebecka’s parents don’t want the funeral to become a big spectacle, and have invited only the closest family and friends to attend.

Minoo doesn’t know if she’ll be able to handle it. What will she say to Rebecka’s mother? How will she cope with seeing Rebecka’s little brothers and sisters? Is Gustaf going to be there? She hasn’t spoken to him since Rebecka died. Not since she read Cissi’s interview with him in the paper.

Minoo takes her outfit and hangs it inside the wardrobe, out of sight.

Then she picks up her dog-eared copy of The Secret History and lies down on the bed. But she can’t concentrate on the familiar words. Instead her thoughts wander from the principal to demons, to school, to Max.

Max is a refuge from the darkness, and she lingers on his face. Her thoughts give way to dreams of longing, the kind of dreams that have filled so many lonely Saturday nights.