She sees all the princes and princesses and the wurses and the dream hunters and the sea-angel and the innocent people of the Land-of-Almost-Awake running for their lives. Behind them the shadows are closing in, banishing imagination and leaving nothing but death as they pass. Elsa tries to find Wolfheart in the inferno, but he’s gone. Cloud animals, mercilessly butchered, lie in the ashes. All of Granny’s tales are burning.
One figure wanders among the shadows. A slim man enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. That’s the only scent Elsa can smell up there on top of the dome, the smell of Granny’s tobacco. Suddenly the figure looks up and two clear blue eyes penetrate the haze. A shroud of mist seeps between his thin lips. Then he points directly at Elsa, his forefinger deformed into a gray claw, and he shouts something, and in the next moment hundreds of shadows launch themselves from the ground and engulf her.
Elsa wakes up when she throws herself out of the bed and lands facedown against the floor. She cowers there, her chest heaving, her hands covering her throat. It feels as if millions of eternities have passed before she can trust that she’s back in the real world. She’s not had a single nightmare since Granny and the cloud animals first brought her to the Land-of-Almost-Awake. She had forgotten how nightmares feel. She stands up, sweaty and exhausted, checks to see that she’s not been bitten by one of the shadows, and tries to get her thoughts into order.
She hears someone talking in the hall and has to muster all her powers of concentration to scatter the mists of sleep and be able to hear what’s happening.
“I see! But surely you understand, Ulrika, that it’s a bit odd for them to be calling you. Why don’t they call Kent? Kent is actually the chairman of this residents’ association and I am in charge of information, and it’s common practice for the accountant to call the chairman with these types of errands. Not just any old person!”
Elsa understands that “any old person” is an insult. Mum’s sigh as she answers is so deep that it feels as if Elsa’s sheets are ruffled by the draft:
“I don’t know why they called me, Britt-Marie. But the accountant said he would come here today to explain everything.”
Elsa opens the bedroom door and stands in her pajamas in the doorway. Not only Britt-Marie is standing there in the hall; Lennart and Maud and Alf are also there. Samantha is sleeping on the landing. Mum is wearing only her dressing gown, hurriedly tied across her belly. Maud catches sight of Elsa and smiles mildly, with a cookie tin in her arms. Lennart gulps from a coffee thermos.
For once Alf doesn’t look entirely in a bad mood, which means he only looks irritated in an everyday way. He nods curtly at Elsa, as if she has forced him into a secret. Only then does Elsa remember that she left him and the wurse in the garage yesterday when she ran up to the flat. Panic wells up inside of her, but Alf glares at her and makes a quick “stay calm” gesture, so that’s what she tries to do. She looks at Britt-Marie and tries to figure out if she’s worked up today because she has found the wurse, or if it’s a quite normal fuss about the usual Britt-Marie stuff. It seems to be the latter, thank God, but directed at Mum.
“So the landlords have suddenly had the notion that they might be willing to sell the flats to us? After all the years that Kent has been writing them letters! Now they have suddenly decided! Just like that, easy-peasy? And then they contact you instead of Kent? That’s curious, don’t you find that curious, Ulrika?”
Mum tightens her dressing gown sash. “Maybe they couldn’t get hold of Kent. And maybe since I’ve lived here so long they thought—”
“We’ve actually lived here the longest, Ulrika. Kent and I have lived here longer than anyone else!”
“Alf has lived in the house the longest,” Mum corrects her.
“Granny has lived here the longest,” Elsa mumbles, but no one seems to hear her. Especially not Britt-Marie.
“Isn’t Kent away on a business trip?” asks Mum.
Britt-Marie pauses at this and nods imperceptibly.
“Maybe that’s why they didn’t get hold of him. That’s why I called you as soon as I hung up after speaking to the acc—”