When I wake up she’s sleeping beside me. I gather up my clothes, head to the bathroom, fish out my holster, and fasten it tightly under my arm. Quickly put on my jacket in the hall, then I stand for a while in the doorway to the bedroom and look at her before leaving; sleep smoothes out her face, as if she were dead or a newborn baby.
When I leave her, I choose the street down the hill toward the center of town, and before reaching the small square I sit awhile on a bench in front of a soccer field, beside a home for the elderly. I pull out my phone and call the task force. It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes, they must have been nearby, I recognize them when they appear in the rotary where the slope ends, in unmarked vehicles. No sirens, just two big vans, one light, the other dark. I get up and go, hear them climbing the hill behind me, I push my hair out of my face, can smell her sex, she’s still there in my hands. Her jawline burned into my retina, just as lovely in reality as in the photo.
She’ll keep her beauty for a long time, long after our contemporaries have lost theirs to old age.
Part II
Fear & Darkness
From the Remains
by Inger Edelfeldt
Translated by Laura A. Wideburg
Tantolunden
Curled up in bed with my old-fashioned composition book, I’m finally feeling warm after the ice-cold night. And after such a strange encounter. She wants me to write down her tale. That’s all. A tale of winter and chill; an ice-cold saga. How fitting, that we are now in the middle of winter, with an unbelievable amount of snow covered by a shiny hard crust.
Everything was strange from the start — I mean yesterday, after I returned from my vacation and went out to see how my garden cottage had fared in the bitter weather. I wrapped myself in warm clothes and walked down to Bergsunds Beach, and then along the footpath by the edge of the expansive frozen water, toward Tanto.
The entire hillside seemed to be covered in a thick layer of white frosting. On the rock wall, at the first, lower wooden staircase, icicles hung like huge organ pipes. The second staircase, the one I usually take up to my cottage, had turned into an icy ramp, with barely visible steps. Still, I managed in spite of my slippery boots.
Once at the top of the hill, I could see out, over the encrusted surface of the water, the bridges, and the skyline with its glittering windows on the far side of the ice. The massive buildings on the horizon stood close to each other and seemed to exist in another time, a science-fiction future that appeared unreal and far removed from the garden colony — this special realm of small cottages painted in bright colors and their small yards with benches, tiny gazebos of glass, and other dreams embodied on their sloping plots. In the summertime, the whole effect is beyond idyllic, but now it seemed full of some fateful magic, as if a powerful winter sorcerer had bewitched it with frosting.
I’m describing all this because it all belongs. In the movies, characters never suspect that something unusual is afoot, but I felt it then. Everything was a premonition, a forewarning, but of something beautiful. As if something was calling to me. A crystal-clear, silent song vibrating in everything. Or am I reconstructing this after the fact? No, that I doubt.
The day had been sunny and clear, but the blue sky was beginning to darken as twilight approached; everything was breathtaking. The only thing that troubled me was the fear that the harsh weather might damage my cottage. This beloved small building, just one of the numerous playhouses for adults on the hillside, was my oasis during spring, summer, and fall. Mine was light blue like old-fashioned baby clothes for boys. The weather vane is less cute; it’s a rusty vulture. In addition, there’s a ceramic Poe raven nailed to the lowest branch of the apple tree.
I like to write in my little house, my refuge, now frozen solid. The snow lay heavy on its roof, the window panes were covered in strange, blossoming frost patterns. The ceramic raven watched me stolidly from the apple tree. I had to use a shovel to hack at the ice along the little door to open it.
An unpleasant smell struck my nostrils. Dead rat, I thought, but in this cold nothing dead should be able to give off such a stench.
With a bit of shock, I realized that someone had been in here. Nothing was damaged, but I was sure someone had been rummaging around.
No. That premonition I’d had on the way over had not been hinting at something beautiful. What I saw made me catch my breath. The instinct to vomit choked my throat. I saw a shape on the other side of the room — the thick plastic mat had been pulled up to cover something shoved right against the little bench, with its view over the spirea bushes, where I typically sat in the summer to drink my coffee.
Call someone. The words flew through my mind. Get out of here. Don’t check this out all by yourself.
But yet, a moment later, I still stood there, looking at the figure under the mat. The girl, this word came to me, as if she were all the girls in the world, as if there were no living girls, happy girls, girls eating ice cream in the sunshine.
She was curled in a fetal position. Her skin was bluish white, her limbs oddly thin. The body, frozen almost solid, wore nothing but a thin, dirty summer dress which had, perhaps, once been white. That the dress was trimmed in romantic, innocent lace made the sight especially creepy.
I couldn’t see her face. Her long dark hair curled over her features as if she herself wanted to hide them as a last gesture to spare any future gawkers. Or perhaps the killer had done this, covered her face, her stare. Trafficking, I thought. Crime scene, police. I felt so faint I had to sit down, powerless, but still unable to look away from the little naked foot. Repugnance and horror ran through me as well as wild tenderness, sorrow, and anger — as if I should be able to hug her and comfort her! Yes, that’s what it was like, what it was actually like.
The light in the cottage shifted into a darker blue, as if it emanated from her, oozed out of her. I was entirely alone in this cottage on the frosted hillside during twilight with the frozen body of a girl. A nightmare, said the voice in my head. And then I noticed a dead rat beside her body. A number of dead rats, actually. Had they chewed off her face? Don’t even think about that. A dark, trapped cry throbbed in my head, my throat, my chest. It carried no coherent thoughts with it; both the ability to think and the ability to act had fled.
Then a quick movement. Unexpected, incomprehensible. A rustle, an exhalation, and she sat up. I was so shocked I didn’t have time to be afraid, but I felt I had been thrown into another dimension, a kind of dream state, where this could happen.
I saw a tiny heart-shaped face. Her eyes were totally black, like bullet holes, with no whites. Her features shone gray-white, haloed by her black hair. Her lips were moving slightly, an almost silent sound reached my ears, but I could not make out what she was saying — was she speaking a foreign language?
Then came something resembling a laugh behind a closed mouth, and she said, “Welcome!”
Perhaps she’d already hypnotized me. At any rate, she seemed to be, in some inexplicable way, already familiar.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “My name’s Alma. I’m just sleeping here. It’s good that it’s winter. The days are short. And I never freeze.”