Fire, page 53
And then, just as Minoo knows that her task is complete, she feels tiredness flowing into her.
She slips out of Adriana’s mind.
She is not yet back in the physical world, only almost there. She is in between, as in the moment when she saw the blessing of the demons radiate around Max like a halo.
In front of her, Adriana lies stretched out on the bed.
Now do you understand?
Minoo looks up.
Matilda has materialised on the other side of the bed. Her face is shaded, but Minoo feels sure that the apparition is smiling.
Your powers can be used for good.
Matilda doesn’t move, but Minoo senses something that sweeps through the air, feels like a caress against her cheek.
You must hurry away from here. The others need you.
‘What is going to happen tonight?’ Minoo asks. ‘Have Helena and Krister planned to kill everyone?’
Yes. It is the last requirement.
‘For what?’
Matilda is melting away into the shadows once more, but her voice lingers.
For the apocalypse to begin.
Vanessa cautiously opens the door leading from the girls’ changing room into the gym.
The stands are full of PE members and those without a seat are crowded together around the walls. A short girl right at the back is jumping up and down to catch a glimpse of what is happening on the stage.
Entering is like stepping back into the summer heatwave. Vanessa tries to breathe through her mouth to avoid inhaling the smell of new sweat and of old, engrained gym.
But, above all, the air is thick with magic.
Vanessa can’t see any ectoplasm circles anywhere. But that’s not necessarily significant. She and Minoo saw no circles a year ago, when they broke into Adriana’s study. Some circles don’t become visible until they are activated.
It feels as though the magic in the hall is set to standby. Any time now, the witch in charge of the remote can press ON.
Vanessa watches the stage. Rickard’s eyes flicker anxiously as they scan the audience. The amulet hangs outside his yellow T-shirt. Next to him, Erik and Kevin have their eyes hopefully fixed on Helena, who stands behind the microphone and is just slitting open an envelope.
‘And the Young Positive Engelsfors Member of the Year is …’ Helena makes an artificial pause and throws a conspiratorial glance at the audience. ‘Imagine how wonderful it feels to give you such a happy message, because – yes! Most of you will have voted for him.’
Laughter fills the hall. Helena pulls a card from the envelope. Her smile broadens and she reads out the name in a triumphant voice.
‘Erik Forslund!’
A new burst of applause. Stamping feet make the stands shake. Wolf whistling cuts through the air. Erik doesn’t even try to act surprised. Calmly, he goes to hug Helena. Then he turns to Krister, who hands him a big bunch of daffodils and a framed certificate, then thumps him on the back so hard the amulet jumps on Erik’s chest.
Vanessa observes Rickard. He is applauding like everyone else, but is obviously disappointed. Krister says something to him and Kevin, and they get off the stage together.
Rickard joins a group of guys who are nibbling directly from the buffet platters. He takes his glasses off and starts polishing them, tries to act as if he’s not bothered. Vanessa sets her sights on him, moving through the crowd very cautiously in order not to bump into anyone.
‘This is really a surprise,’ Erik is saying from the stage. ‘A positive surprise, of course.’
The hall fills with laughter again. Many of the voices sound over the top, forced. There is hysteria in the air and it frightens Vanessa. As if the fun and games could in an instant topple over into either despair or rage.
‘PE has not only changed Engelsfors,’ Erik carries on. ‘PE has changed our lives. My life.’
Vanessa catches sight of Gustaf. He is standing near the stage, smiling like everyone else. But he can’t hide the anger in his eyes. She is pretty certain that he isn’t wearing a necklace. She hopes nobody else has noticed.
‘It isn’t easy to change your life,’ Erik says. ‘When we develop as human beings, we can’t count on everyone around us developing at the same pace. Often, they may resist change out of jealousy. Anger. Take my ex. I did try to make her understand, but she refused. She was simply not ready for change. A real energy-thief. And I realised in the end that I had to cut the bond between us. It was hard, but now I feel all the stronger for it. She held me back. She pulled me down.’
Vanessa thinks of Ida who is hiding in the girls’ shower-room together with Linnéa and Anna-Karin. Hopefully, she can’t hear all this.
‘I think many of you know what I’m talking about,’ Erik continues. ‘I’m not the only one who has been betrayed by somebody I thought was close to me.’
A familiar sob from somewhere. A girl with dark hair stands with her back to Vanessa. The girl’s boyfriend is stroking her bare shoulder to comfort her.
Michelle and Mehmet.
‘Put these feelings aside,’ Erik says. ‘Concentrate on your own goals. Who knows, perhaps the day will come when the others understand what we are about and catch up with us. Until that day, we have each other. Everyone in this room is a friend of mine.’
Hundreds of heads nod in agreement and Michelle’s is one of them.
Vanessa has to look away.
Rickard puts his glasses on again. Vanessa homes in on his amulet. If only she can get it off him, all this will be over and done with.
The dark shower-room smells damply of mould and old shampoo.
Linnéa can barely make out the shadowy shapes of the others. Ida, who is sitting curled up on the floor. Anna-Karin, who is standing next to Ida. Linnéa can’t see her face, but knows that Anna-Karin’s eyes are shut. She is with the fox.
Outside, in the gym, Erik carries on with the praise of Positive Engelsfors.
Linnéa so wishes that the sound of his voice wouldn’t make her heart race. Wishes that he didn’t have the power to make her afraid.
‘I hate him,’ Ida whispers.
‘You’re not the only one,’ Linnéa says in a low voice and, then, to Anna-Karin: ‘Has Vanessa done it yet?’
‘No. With such a crowd it’s hard for her to move about.’
Linnéa is glad that animals can see Vanessa when she’s invisible to humans. But someone in the gym might be able to see her, too. The thought makes her utterly terrified.
She presses her hands against the tiled wall, drums against it with her fingertips.
Linnéa.
Linnéa turns to Ida and Anna-Karin. But she realises that this is not either of their voices. A stranger’s voice. Inside her head.
Say nothing to the others.
Linnéa opens her mouth, but the other person’s thoughts are ahead of her.
Or else I’ll kill Vanessa. I know she’s in the hall. And I know where you are.
Linnéa shuts her mouth again. Switches off all emotions. She must keep a cold head. Not act on impulse.
Good.
Now she suddenly recognises the voice. She hesitates. Can it really be her?
Michelle? she asks. Is that you?
A moment’s silence.
Not any more.
A quite different voice. This time, Linnéa does not hesitate. She knows Backman’s thoughts only too well.
I am everyone.
This new voice she only recognises vaguely.
Rickard? Are you the one doing this?
Laughter.
And now Linnéa understands. He can leap between the consciousnesses of others, steer their thoughts towards her.
I control everyone in here, Rickard’s voice continues. I can make them kill you.
‘Linnéa?’ Anna-Karin whispers. ‘Vanessa’s just standing there. Can’t you ask her if we can do anything?’
‘Just wait a minute,’ Linnéa says, just managing to keep her voice steady.
Tell me what you want me to do, she thinks.
Find an excuse for going away. See to it that the others don’t follow you.
‘Vanessa is calling me,’ Linnéa says. ‘Something I must do.’
‘We’ll come with you,’ Anna-Karin whispers.
‘No. She says that only I must come. You stay here.’
‘Right,’ Anna-Karin says hesitantly.
Good. Now come along.
Linnéa leaves the changing room. The harsh light makes the hooks along the wall shine.
She would like to send Vanessa a warning thought, but doesn’t dare. It might expose Vanessa to even greater danger.
All she can do is hope and pray to all the gods she doesn’t believe in that Vanessa will succeed against all the odds.
72
Vanessa moves slowly towards Rickard. His entire attention is focused on the stage, where Erik is still holding forth. He seems able to trawl his bottomless store of PE clichés for hours to come.
‘We are many. And we will grow bigger and bigger,’ he is saying. ‘Our journey has only just begun!’
Noisy applause bursts out again. Incredibly, Erik seems to be finished. He steps aside for Helena, who is also clapping. To prolong the moment, she steps forward to the edge of the stage and puts her hands together above her head.
Vanessa observes Rickard.
He looks so ordinary. So normal. But isn’t that precisely what the serial killer’s neighbours always say, once the psycho has been caught and the police have excavated fourteen carved-up bodies from his garden?
The guys near Rickard drift closer to the stage and suddenly he is on his own. She goes to him. Stops.
The amulet chain looks thick. She doesn’t dare pull at it.
The clasp has slipped down on to his chest. Vanessa curses. It’s going to be much trickier to undo it from that position. She has only one option. She takes another step, wipes her sweating hands on her jeans, raises them and moves them closer, ready to grasp the amulet. She is so close she can smell vinegary crisps and disappointment on his breath. Her fingers almost touch the chain.
Rickard starts. And looks at her.
No, it’s impossible, Vanessa thinks. I’m imagining things. Before she can get her head around what is happening, Rickard has grabbed her wrists and is holding them in a vice-like grip.
Vanessa kicks him on the shin as hard as she can, but he doesn’t even twitch. His knee hits her stomach like a sledgehammer.
Pain makes Vanessa black out. She can’t breathe. When she flops to the floor, Rickard is still holding on to her wrists.
She feels herself becoming visible again and, in confirmation, hundreds of pairs of eyes turn to look at her.
The shock ejects Anna-Karin from the fox’s consciousness.
‘He’s caught her!’ she whispers and opens her eyes.
Next to her, she sees the shadow that is Ida stand up.
‘He’s caught Vanessa,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘He …’
She falls silent.
Steps approaching from the gym. Ida has heard them, too. She is already on her way out of the shower-room.
‘Wait!’ Anna-Karin hisses and tries to catch up with her.
But Ida is so much faster than her and disappears through the doors on the opposite side of the changing room, out into the dark corridor.
Anna-Karin realises she oughtn’t to be surprised, but is all the same. She had really believed that Ida had changed.
The door behind Anna-Karin is pulled open. The door to the gym.
She turns around.
Julia and Felicia step inside. After them many more PE members pour in, like a bulky yellow mass.
Anna-Karin backs away. The look in their eyes shows that each one of them shares in a single consciousness, has one uniform intent. To capture her.
She releases her power at full strength.
STOP.
Julia and Felicia carry on walking towards her and Anna-Karin backs into one of the low benches that line the room, then almost bumps the back of her head into a metal clothes hook.
STOP!
The mass flows on towards her.
STOP!
The problem isn’t that there are too many of them. Anna-Karin has controlled bigger crowds than this. It is that they are interconnected. Her power is diluted inside the huge communal conscience. It is like filling a bathtub a teaspoonful at a time.
Julia and Felicia go to each side of her and take hold of her arms. Anna-Karin doesn’t even try to struggle and allows herself to be led out and into the gym. If the other Chosen Ones have also been caught, maybe they’ll have a chance if they act together.
73
The beat of the pulse booms in Linnéa’s ears, rising and falling.
It is like being in one of her recurring nightmares. She is walking along the dark corridor leading to the attic stairs. She knows that something terrible is about to happen, that she must not let it, but she doesn’t know how and fears that it is already too late.
Linnéa stops outside the graffiti-covered toilet door.
Go inside, the voice commands.
She pushes the handle down and opens the door.
The strip lighting is switched on and she has to blink before her eyes can tolerate the strong fluorescent light.
She cannot quite take in the woman who is confronting her. Her face is one Linnéa knows well and yet it is not. It has aged so much. As if many years have passed since they last spoke, rather than just a few months.
But the expression in the dark-brown eyes is recognisable. And a few fading blue strands are still visible in her hair, which hangs limply around the emaciated face.
‘Olivia,’ Linnéa says.
Olivia laughs abruptly. There is a dark gap where one of her teeth should have been.
‘Whatever, it’s not Rickard Johnsson,’ Olivia says. ‘Honestly now, did you lot really believe that?’
Under the white powder, her skin is grey. Linnéa looks at the amulet that gleams against Olivia’s black camisole top.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Olivia says and pulls the zip of her hoody up all the way to her throat. ‘You surely realise what will happen to the others if you try anything on.’
‘Do what you like with me but let the others go,’ Linnéa says.
Olivia sighs.
‘Oh my God, how paranoid you’ve become. I won’t hurt you. I’ve brought you here to tell you about what’s going to happen next.’
‘Great, so I’m here now. Go ahead, tell me.’
‘Elias is going to come back.’
Linnéa stares at her. Any other answer was imaginable. But not this.
‘Impossible,’ she says.
‘No, it isn’t,’ Olivia says. ‘He’s coming back soon. Tonight.’
Linnéa glances at the toilet cubicle where she found Elias’s dead body. The blood. The shard of glass. His beautiful eyes that would never again see anything.
‘It’s impossible,’ she says again.
‘Not for me,’ Olivia says, solemnly meeting Linnéa’s eyes. ‘I am the Chosen One.’
‘Who are you?’
Minoo opens her eyes and sees Adriana looking at her. Without a trace of recognition. Minoo has succeeded in what she set out to do and it is an uncomfortable feeling.
‘Do you really not recognise me?’ Minoo asks.
Slowly, Adriana sits up in bed.
‘I don’t know … I’m not … No. I don’t recognise you at all. I’m so sorry but …’
She looks both embarrassed and alarmed.
Minoo gets up from the bed. Her mind spins when Adriana’s memories come back to her. Simon. Max. Rebecka.
The sensation of being in control, being invulnerable, has definitely gone.
‘I feel so peculiar …’ Adriana says. ‘Have I been asleep?’
She looks down at her clothes, pats with her hands to try and smooth her crinkly skirt.
Minoo looks anxiously at her. She has to hurry on to the school, but can she simply leave Adriana like this? Is there anything she can say to calm her down? Advise her that she has amnesia? Perhaps not such a reassuring thing to be told, but at least an explanation.
‘Adriana …’ she begins, but is interrupted when the door opens.
She turns around. Alexander stands in the doorway.
‘I was instructed about this last summer,’ Olivia says. ‘I’m the only one who can stop the apocalypse.’
Linnéa feels she’s watching herself in a fun house distorting mirror. But it’s not a funny sight.
‘Who told you that?’ she asks.
Olivia smiles even more broadly now and Linnéa notes two more missing teeth.
‘Elias.’
Linnéa almost wants to believe her. But only for a moment. She understands of course who has been parading as Elias.
‘He spoke to me in my dreams,’ Olivia continues. ‘At first, I didn’t believe it was him. But then he told me things that only Elias could have known.’
Linnéa remembers when Max stood in front of her in the dining area, pretending to be Elias. He had known all about the boy he was impersonating. Details that no one else could have known.
‘It wasn’t Elias,’ Linnéa says. ‘It is the demons—’
‘You don’t get anything! We’re to stop the demons. Elias and I. And you, if you care to join us.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand! When Elias told me that I was the Chosen One … it was as if I had known all along. I always felt I was different. As if I was stuck in the wrong life.’
‘Everyone feels like that at times,’ Linnéa says. ‘That doesn’t make it true.’
‘What is it with you, can’t you just trust me?’ Olivia shrieks and her voice echoes in the tiled space. ‘You’ve never trusted me! You’ve never taken me seriously!’
Linnéa can’t argue. What Olivia says is true.
‘I’m telling you, there were times when I almost envied you,’ Olivia continues. ‘Because of what happened to your mother and then what with your father …’
‘Envied me?’ Linnéa exclaims.
