Out here, he was free of everything. Alone on the sea, just like someone who had been shipwrecked.
His brother’s secret plan for the evening had worked. Just after six o’clock, Jonas had got into the car with Mats and their cousins. The adults had assumed that all four boys were on their way to the cinema in Kalmar, but as soon as they reached the campsite at Stenvik — out of sight of Villa Kloss — Mats had handed Jonas the money from Dad for his cinema ticket, then turfed him out of the car.
‘Have fun, bro! We certainly will!’
The cousins smiled and nodded at him, and the car headed off towards the main road.
Jonas had watched the car until it disappeared, then he had gone down to the jetty. It was busy with people taking an evening dip, and he had sat down on a rock to watch them for a while, particularly a girl of his own age, with long, almost pure-white hair. She was sitting on a blanket with two girlfriends, chatting and laughing, and she never even glanced at him. Not once. He might as well have been invisible.
So he had got up and made his way south across the banks of pebbles on the shore until he reached the point below Villa Kloss. The area was deserted at this time of the evening, and it was a good hiding place. He just had to find a way of keeping busy, getting through the evening.
First of all, he had gone for a long swim, then he had dried himself in the sun. He had done a bit of beachcombing, but had found nothing but a few empty German milk cartons.
Then he had had another swim. By this time the sun was low on the horizon and the shallow water had cooled.
When he was dry, he pulled on his shorts before dragging Casper’s rubber dinghy out of the boathouse. He slipped on a lifejacket and waded out into the water for an evening outing. Once the sun had set he would creep back up to his little chalet in the darkness and go to bed. In the morning he would tell the adults he had enjoyed the film.
A good plan.
Jonas stepped on to a rock, the dinghy in front of him, and looked around. The surface of the water was calm and shining. The Sound looked perfectly safe, but he knew that the seabed dropped away sharply just ahead of him, and that you could go under and drown just metres from the shore.
The water turned pitch black when the sun disappeared, as if the Sound had suddenly become bottomless. A bit scary, but exciting.
He stepped carefully into the dinghy and started to row along the shoreline; when he reached the gill nets he turned and headed away from the land, following the nets and feeling the pull of the black depths below him. The algae and the fish, the seaweed and the rocks. Another world...
Eventually, he reached the middle of the nets and tied the little boat to one of the thick poles.
The water out here was as deep and dark as a grave, but there wasn’t a breath of wind.
Jonas settled down in the bottom of the dinghy and watched as the sky above him grew darker and darker. There were gaps in the cloud cover, and small pinpricks of light glimmered through.
They’ll be in the cinema in Kalmar by now, he thought.
While Mats and their cousins were watching the film, all Jonas could do was gaze at the stars above the island. But gradually the all-consuming envy faded away, leaving a kind of peace, a sense of floating weightlessly between sea and sky. There were no insects to disturb him this far out in the Sound, not even the mosquitoes.
He closed his eyes. Everything was dark and quiet.
But a faint sound made him open his eyes and raise his head. A dull throbbing that could be felt through the water as well as heard.
It was the sound of a ship. A big ship that had started up its pounding diesel engines, somewhere in the darkness. The throbbing grew louder, then diminished.
He blinked slowly, feeling drowsy. Had he fallen asleep? Jonas didn’t have a watch, but the sun had gone down and clouds covered the night sky. The stars had vanished.
He looked to the south, but saw nothing. There were no lights approaching.
The island was even darker than the sea. The two spits of land jutting out into the Sound on either side of the bay were pitch black, apart from the odd light in the windows of the summer cottages closest to the shore.
He could hear the faint sound of voices and laughter; it was probably the party up at Villa Kloss. Dad and Aunt Veronica and Uncle Kent and their guests would be sitting on the veranda, eating and drinking.
Jonas considered spending the whole night in the dinghy. Soon the summer night would be completely black, and perhaps then they would all stop drinking and laughing up at Villa Kloss, and when the car from Kalmar came back without him they would wonder where he was. They would be worried. Where’s Jonas? Has anyone seen Jonas? For once, he would be important to them.
He would stay down here and row a bit further — out to the very end of the gill nets, further than he had ever been before.
He rowed with even strokes, and through the thin rubber bottom of the dinghy he could feel the water quickly growing colder. He couldn’t see any rocks now, only blackness. If the boat got a puncture, he wasn’t sure he would be able to swim ashore, even with his lifejacket.
The depth of the water made him feel dizzy.
Finally, he reached the very last pole, tall and slender. He could see that it was held in place by long ropes and chains.
Jonas stopped rowing. The dinghy drifted on and he reached out and grabbed the pole, clinging to the rough wood with both hands. The pole proved that at least there were other people in the world, people who had come out here at the beginning of summer and laid their nets, hoping to catch eels.
He looked over the side but couldn’t make out the nets. Were there eels down there right now, trapped in the darkness? The Kloss family ate smoked eel occasionally, but Jonas didn’t really like the taste. It was too oily.
Suddenly, he heard the throbbing again. Was it a motor boat? It should have had its lights on if it was out at sea at night, but there was no sign of anything.
Silence.
He let go of the wooden pole and drifted away as the current drew the dinghy out into the sound. Bye bye, pole.
He picked up the oars but didn’t start rowing, allowing the boat to drift instead.
Out into the blackness. But only for a little longer. It was OK, because he was wearing his lifejacket, but he would turn back soon. He just wanted to see if he could catch a glimpse of the other vessel.
He peered around. A faint haze had begun to rise from the water, a night mist that made it even more difficult to see.
All at once, Jonas had the feeling that something huge and silent had appeared by the spit of land to the south — a grey shadow on the water, long and slender like a sea monster. A sea serpent, or a giant octopus lurking in the Sound...
Was the shadow moving? He blinked, but it was gone.
He started rowing. He wanted to get home now, but it was so dark and misty that he was no longer sure exactly where he was, or even how far he was from the shore. There was nothing to give him his bearings. Were those dots of light coming from the houses on the coast, or were they faint stars glimmering in the distance?
He stopped rowing and let out a long breath. He listened.
He could hear splashing. Small ripples lapped against the side of the dinghy, but this was louder. It sounded like rushing waves.
Jonas looked up — and suddenly he could see. The full moon emerged through a gap in the clouds, and the Sound was bathed in light. The water around him turned into a glittering expanse of silver.
And, in the middle of it all, he saw something large and black — a ship.