More silence. Jakob cleared his throat.
“Who,” Vidar said, emphasizing every word this time, “did you see?”
85
There was something new in the air when Sander returned to Backavägen. The street was hushed, not just deserted for the summer but quiet, as if some invisible force had cleared all life out of it ahead of an oncoming disaster. Or maybe his visit to the cemetery and its dead was just sticking with him.
He stood with car keys in hand in the driveway. All he had to do was go inside, gather some things, drink a glass of water—his mouth was dry. Lock the door and arm the alarm and head out. He looked at his watch and wished he had a cigarette.
Then he found himself standing in the kitchen. He had gone inside and was holding a glass in his hand. It was empty. He hadn’t filled it. Or had he drunk it already? Where had this gap in his memory come from?
A dull vibration ran through Sander’s body, electricity rising and fading in slow waves.
He had gone back out to the driveway, into the warm evening. No more glass in hand. Or had he never even gone inside? No, he had—behind him, the door was open. He must have gonein.
This disorientation was making him feel nauseated, and the edges of his vision started to go black.
Someone was coming, way down on Backavägen. Sander staggered backward and nearly fell. In the nick of time, he regained hisbalance and made it into the house, where he closed the door and turned the lock.
He and Olivia had replaced the front door, must have been about three years ago. They’d chosen one with frosted glass, to let the light in. Albin and Josefin liked to stand there and make faces at their parents, because their features were hidden by the frost.
He stared at the windowpane and waited. Steps right outside, heavy and purposeful.
The outline of a massive figure on the glass.
Teeth. Teeth in a mouth without a face, they came for him, gaping in the summer stillness. A man.
The handle moved down, then up again. Locked. Sander waited, but nothing happened. The visitor simply stood there.
Sander knew he had to open the door.
Dangers from belowground. Old portals open once more. The man outside stared at Sander as the door swung open, as though he didn’t expect to be welcomed in. At his feet was a threadbare backpack.
“Hi,” the visitor said at last. “Long time no see.”
86
Hard to say where Sander was, other than right here, right now. Everything around him, all the familiar everyday objects, the kids’ jackets and shoes, the hat rack, Olivia’s coats, the umbrella, the rug on the floor—all of it had become astonishingly foreign.
“Could I…” the man in the doorway began, “it’s so hot. Could I come in and have a glass of water?”
He picked up his backpack. Sander held his breath and stepped aside, let him in, whatever he was. The man glanced around the front hall with curiosity, at the hooks for adults and children.
With a start, Sander reached out and grabbed the man’s forearm. The man laughed uncertainly.
Wrinkles around his eyes, crows’ feet. He was very tan. Sander was still grasping the man’s arm, but then an icy gust came between them and he dropped it abruptly as if his grip frightened him.
The man looked over Sander’s shoulder, at the kitchen.
“Could I just have a little water, please? I’m so thirsty.”
Sander turned around, looking away from the visitor for the first time. He slowly went to the sink and filled the glass he had just been drinking from; he turned his head. The man was still there. Sander held out the glass and watched it be swallowed by a hand meatier than his own, veinier, browner. The skin tougher.
“Thank you, Sander.”
The man drank greedily as he eyed the bracelet around Sander’s wrist. Rays of sun fell through the picture windows in the living room, warming the ash-gray herringbone parquet.
The man sat down on the kitchen bench and exhaled. One of the cushions slipped out of place and he straightened it, a movement so ordinary that it appeared even more surreal to Sander. He pulled out a chair and sat down too.
