The Circle (Hammer)

42



RUBBER SOLES SQUEAKING on the floor, angry shouts and cheers, muffled thuds when a boot connects with a ball. The school’s gym feels completely different when Engelsfors Soccer Club practises there. It’s filled with another kind of energy, more focused, but the smells are the same. Sweat, rubber and stale air.

Vanessa is sitting invisibly in the stands, trying to take an interest in the practice game to make the time pass more quickly. She’s not succeeding. She’s never understood how anyone can be bothered to do something so meaningless as chase after a ball, much less watch other people doing it. There’s at least a billion things she’d rather do than follow Gustaf.

If Gustaf is a serial killer in league with demons, he’s doing a very good job of hiding it. Vanessa wonders if she’s thrown away half her Christmas break for nothing.

Kevin Månsson’s burly father is the coach, and now he blows the whistle. Vanessa looks at the big clock hanging above the wall bars. At last. The guys on the pitch gather in a group, exchange the obligatory backslaps, drink water from plastic bottles, pretend-wrestle and howl. Vanessa sighs impatiently. It’s at moments like these that she remembers why she could never be with a guy her own age.

She tiptoes down from the stands and attaches herself to the boisterous band. She’s learned not to wear scent or wash her hair before she tails Gustaf. She made that mistake the first time she attended a practice game. Kevin Månsson had started shouting that someone smelt like a poof and began sniffing around, like a bloodhound on speed, to find the culprit.

She follows them into the changing room, where they untie their laces and pull off their sweaty shirts. They root around in their bags for towels and shower gel.

It’s like entering a secret parallel universe. She’s seen some of the cutest guys in the school lathering themselves in the shower. On the other hand she’s also seen Kevin, alone, discover a big spot on his upper arm, suck out its contents and spit into the bin. Some things you just don’t want to know about other people. Some images you simply can’t forget, no matter how much you’d like to.

Gustaf isn’t like the others. More low key. As if he doesn’t have a lot to prove. That’s probably why girls have always fallen in love with him.

He’s sitting in the sauna now. His skin is gleaming with sweat. He’s surrounded by the others, and yet isn’t really with them. Vanessa can see that he’s pretending to laugh at their jokes. No one picks up on it, and she wonders if he was like this even before Rebecka died.

Before he killed her.

If it was him. Could it really have been Gustaf?



*



Early this morning everyone except Ida met at Nicolaus’s house. They’ve been there every morning since the attack on Minoo to practise resisting magic.

The sessions usually consist of Anna-Karin trying to get them to do something, one by one, while they try to block her. She was surprisingly reluctant but eventually let herself be talked into it. ‘But I’m only going to do harmless things,’ she said.

Then she directed her power at Minoo, who was seized by an irresistible urge to sing a schmaltzy song from a musical. She had belted out an entire verse and chorus before she’d managed to block the rest. ‘That was not harmless,’ Minoo said, bright red in the face.

Since then they’ve been keeping the exercises simple. Anna-Karin might order them to pick up a pen from the floor while they resist doing it.

So that Anna-Karin also had a chance to practise resisting, Nicolaus has suggested this morning that Vanessa make herself invisible and Anna-Karin try to see her. Eventually she succeeded, covered with sweat from the effort. Vanessa was noticeably shaken. ‘That makes me feel so secure when I’m supposed to be secretly following a guy who’s in league with demons,’ she said, as she was leaving to do just that.

Minoo and Anna-Karin went straight from Nicolaus’s apartment to the fairground for a reunion with the principal.

Now Minoo’s head is throbbing. She just wants to lie down and sleep in the middle of the dance floor. The principal drones on about the Book of Patterns, while Minoo, Anna-Karin and Ida twiddle their Pattern Finders and flip through the infuriating book.

‘Minoo?’

For a moment Minoo is unsure whether she’d dozed off. She looks up and meets the principal’s eye.

‘How are you getting on? Do you see anything?’

Her enthusiasm never wanes. Minoo twists the Pattern Finder and shakes her head.

‘It’s incredibly important that you make an effort,’ Adriana says. ‘I wish I understood why Vanessa and Linnéa aren’t taking this seriously. Do you know why they haven’t been coming?’

‘No,’ says Minoo.

She shouldn’t have to explain why Linnéa isn’t coming – the principal herself is the reason – but she comes close to launching into an hysterical spiel about how Vanessa seemed ill the last time she saw her, really ill, and besides, she usually goes to stay with relatives in the south over Christmas – um, Spain, I think it was.

Once she had seen a TV programme about how to catch someone in a lie: their explanations are always too involved and they’re a little too interested in explaining every detail. Now Minoo tries to swallow the words that are trying to get out of her mouth.

Luckily she’s cut off.

‘I think I see something,’ she hears someone say.

Ida is sitting on the floor cross-legged, peering through the Pattern Finder at the open book in her lap. ‘At first they were just a collection of symbols and then … I get it now.’

‘What can you see?’ Minoo asks. ‘I mean, is it an image or words?’

But no one’s listening to her. Instead the principal moves next to Ida in what seems like a single stride and slams the book shut.

‘What are you doing?’ Ida shouts.

‘Open it again,’ the principal says. ‘Open it and concentrate on what you’re looking for. Once you’ve seen something in the Book of Patterns, you’ll be able to find it again.’

Ida pouts but does as she’s told. She furrows her brow in caricatured concentration and flips through the book with the Pattern Finder pressed to one eye. She twiddles it and flips through the pages, twiddles and flips.

‘There!’ she cries.

The principal looks at her with almost reverent attention, which makes Minoo envious to the depths of her soul.

‘But it’s still just symbols. It doesn’t appear as text I can read, but I can still, like, understand somehow what it says,’ Ida says.

‘That’s usually how it works,’ the principal says patiently. ‘What does it tell you?’

Minoo pulls out her notepad and listens intently.

‘Okay. Here’s sort of what it says. That it’s, like, built for one. Then it works just great. But if more people try to get in, someone is always left out. And if the one who’s outside disappears, the next one ends up outside. And then the next. And the next. And the next. Until everyone’s gone.’

Minoo lowers her pen. It had made no sense to her at all.

‘What exactly is it?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘It’s, like … this thing. It’s something to do with us.’

‘But what sort of thing?’ Minoo asks, irritated.

‘It’s like a … I can’t explain! Some kind of atmosphere or something.’

Minoo is about to explode with frustration. ‘Atmosphere? Come on, Ida, you must be able to explain it better than that.’

‘Well, read it yourself, then!’ Ida says, and adds, with her trademark venomous smile, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. You don’t know how.’

Minoo grits her teeth and raises her Pattern Finder.

The book is both a transmitter and a receiver.

Maybe it’s ready to transmit to her too.

Minoo opens her book again, heart pounding, and sees Anna-Karin do the same.

She stares at the small symbols, then twiddles and flips. But nothing happens.

‘I don’t see anything,’ Anna-Karin says.

The principal looks at Ida with delight, as if she were a child prodigy. Not only does Minoo find it incredibly unfair but she wonders how reliable the book can be if it has chosen to communicate with Ida of all people.



The black winter sky sits like a dome over the cemetery. It’s so cold that your nose hairs stick together when you breathe in. On days like this Vanessa can hardly believe she’ll ever see the sun again. It feels unreal to imagine that it’s still out there somewhere in space.

They enter the newer part of the cemetery. Here, most of the graves are marked with discreet stone slabs that lie flat on the ground. It’s as if they don’t want to attract too much attention, unlike the ostentatious blocks used for the older graves.

Gustaf’s sports bag is slung over his shoulder and is swinging in synch with his footsteps. He’s walking quickly, as if he’s in a hurry, and Vanessa almost has to run to keep up with him.

He turns off on to a snow-covered path. Some of the graves are looked after by family while others lie hidden under a white blanket. Vanessa starts to worry that Gustaf will hear her footsteps crunching, turn and see her tracks, so she tries to step in his and walk as quietly as she can.

Gustaf puts down his sports bag. Then he walks the last few steps up to the square marble headstone that bears Rebecka’s name, and squats in front of it. Next to it stands another with the name ‘Elias Malmgren’. Vanessa shivers, but it has nothing to do with the cold. Gustaf takes off a glove and runs his finger over Rebecka’s name, which has been carved into the stone and filled with gold leaf. ‘Hello,’ he whispers.

Then he falls silent. Vanessa stands stock still and shoves her hands deep into her pockets to keep them warm.

‘Sorry I haven’t been out to see you before now,’ Gustaf says. ‘I’ve sort of felt like you’re not buried here … I mean that this isn’t where you are. But I can’t find you anywhere else. So now here I am. And I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you can sense somehow that I’m here, and know that I think about you every day. I miss you. I talk to you every night before I fall asleep.’

His voice is tense, and his breathing uneven. A few tears run down his cheeks.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,’ he continues. ‘I don’t know which way is up or down. I miss you so much it feels like I’m going to be sick. And I don’t know if you can ever forgive me. Please, you’ve got to forgive me.’

Gustaf bends forward so she can no longer see his face. His words crumble into inconsolable sobs. It’s unbearable. It’s far too private. But she daren’t sneak away in the squeaking snow.

‘You’ve got to forgive me, you’ve got to …’

Gustaf repeats the words in a drawn-out wail.

Vanessa lowers her eyes and tears run down her own cheeks. When she looks up again, Gustaf is standing. He lays something on the gravestone before he walks away. She watches him until he’s some distance away. Then she goes up to the grave. Lying on the black marble is a necklace set with little blood-red stones.



It’s actually really good for everyone that Ida found a pattern in the book, Minoo tells herself. And of course I must have a power, too. After all, Linnéa’s got an element with out having any powers. That must feel even worse to her.

It’s so dark that it could be the middle of the night. She tries to avoid slippery patches of ice as she walks. The ground is still strewn with the remains of spent fireworks from New Year’s Eve. Electric candlesticks and Christmas stars glow from windows she passes.

She hasn’t met anyone since she left the fairground. In this town it’s easy to gain the impression that you’re the last person on earth.

She stops and listens. It’s deathly silent. Nothing but darkness, snow, and drab, featureless houses.

Despite that, she doesn’t feel entirely alone.

She turns and thinks she can discern a figure, black against black, further down the street.

She walks faster. Tries to make it look natural. Doesn’t want to show she’s afraid.

When she passes under the viaduct by the railway station, she hears footsteps that aren’t hers echoing off the stone walls of the tunnel.

A lone car drives past. When it disappears the world feels even more desolate. No one lives on the other side of the viaduct. There’s just a string of closed-down petrol stations that Minoo can barely make out in the darkness. The streetlamps are spaced wide apart here and she thinks of the black smoke, how it could float towards her unseen, suspended in the darkness.

She is walking even faster now, almost running.

The other footsteps draw closer.

And closer.

‘Minoo, wait!’

It’s Gustaf. She stops and turns.

‘Sorry, did I scare you?’ he says.

There’s no point in trying to run. Minoo forces a smile as if it were a nice surprise to see him there. She feels she ought to say something, but when she tries, all that comes out is a hawking sound. ‘No,’ she finally croaks, when he’s just a few metres away.

It’s Gustaf. And yet not Gustaf. There’s something about the way he’s looking at her – as if he finds her fascinating.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, and tries to make it sound like an innocent question, as if she isn’t suspicious in the least.

She has the feeling it didn’t work.

‘I was out for a walk,’ Gustaf says. He continues to look at her intently. She feels like a lamb with a hungry wolf.

‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ he says. ‘When we spoke on the steps … it was as if all the pieces fell into place.’

‘What do you mean?’

It’s like being in a strange dream, one in which everything is familiar, yet feels totally wrong. Gustaf moves closer until their puffa jackets brush.

‘I think about you all the time,’ he says. ‘At first I thought it was because you remind me so much of her. But now I finally understand. I understand.’

This can’t be happening. She’s more convinced of that with every passing second. She’s ended up in one of those parallel worlds that the principal was talking about.

‘I like you,’ he continues. ‘A lot.’

When he bends forward and kisses her, she doesn’t realise he’s doing it at first. She has time to notice that his lips feel soft and warm and sort of melt into hers. That even though his mouth is new to her, it doesn’t feel strange. And a tiny part of her misses it when she shoves him away. ‘What are you doing?’

He shushes her and grabs her jacket to pull her to him.

Minoo breaks free and Gustaf loses his balance, slips on the icy pavement and drops to his knees. He looks at her with an expression of desperation. ‘Can’t you get it into your head that Rebecka is dead? We have to move on!’

She’s disgusted by what he’s said. It rouses her from her dreamlike state and makes her wipe her mouth. She wants to remove any trace of that kiss.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe I said that.’

‘Neither can I,’ she says, and backs away.

‘Minoo …’

‘Leave me alone.’ She walks away, more scared than ever of slipping on the ice.

She wants to scrub her mouth with steel wool and rinse it with chlorine. She hears him call her again.

F*cking creep, f*cking creep, f*cking creep.

She’s not sure whether she’s referring to Gustaf or herself.

Then she remembers Vanessa. Gustaf’s invisible tail.

She must have seen the whole thing.



Vanessa has almost reached the cemetery gates when Cat pops up. It scowls at her with its one green eye. Apparently both dogs and cats can see her when she’s invisible. They don’t even need two eyes to do it.

‘What do you want?’ Vanessa asks in irritation.

It miaows and turns down a very narrow, virtually snowed-over path that disappears between the old gravestones. It turns to look at her, as if to make sure she’s following.

Vanessa looks at Gustaf, who is waiting for the bus some distance down the road. She deliberates with herself as to what she should do.

The moment in front of Rebecka’s grave has made her feel uncomfortable. Gustaf isn’t guilty. She’s sure of that. Enough of this crap. She wants to go home and forget the whole thing. Warm her frozen body in a hot bath, read Sirpa’s Harlequin novels, and eat sweets left over from Christmas Eve, even though only the disgusting ones are left.

The cat is miaowing loudly and persistently. Just then Vanessa’s mobile vibrates in her pocket. She struggles to pull it out and hits answer with her thick-gloved finger.

‘Hello?’

‘I just wanted you to know that it’s not what you think.’

It’s Minoo. She sounds out of breath and worked up.

‘What do you mean?’

‘With Gustaf.’

‘I know,’ says Vanessa. ‘Or –what are you talking about?’

Minoo falls silent. Eventually she says, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I followed him to the cemetery.’

‘When?’

‘Just now. A few minutes ago.’

Minoo is silent. Then she says, ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Are you saying I’m lying?’

‘I saw Gustaf. Just now. By the viaduct.’

It takes Vanessa a while to understand what she means. It’s as if her brain has frozen. She looks down the road to where Gustaf is climbing on to the bus. ‘But that’s on the other side of town,’ Vanessa says flatly. ‘Are you sure it was him?’

‘Believe me, it was him.’

‘But that is impossible,’ Vanessa says, as if that wasn’t already obvious.