The Hypnotist (50 page)

With no sign of emotion, Lydia holds up a pair of scissors in front of Benjamin. They are tailoring scissors, sharp, with broad blades.

“In that case,” she says calmly, “it will be no problem for you to accept your punishment.” With an expression of utter serenity she places the scissors on the table.

“I’m only a kid,” says Benjamin, swaying.

“Stand still,” she snaps at him. “It’s never enough, is it? You never, ever understand. I struggle and try my hardest, I wear myself out so this family will work, will be whole and pure. I just want it to
work
.”

Benjamin is looking at the floor and crying: rough, heavy sobs.

“Aren’t we a family? Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes. We are.”

“So why do you behave like this? Sneaking around behind our backs, betraying us, deceiving us, stealing from us, giving us lip. Why do you behave like this toward me? Poking your nose into everything, talking behind my back.”

“I don’t know,” Benjamin whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Lydia picks up the scissors. She is breathing heavily now, and her face is sweaty. Red blotches have appeared on her cheeks and throat. “You will receive a punishment so that we can put all this behind us,” she says. She looks from Annbritt to Marek and back again. “Annbritt, come here.”

Annbritt, who has been staring at the wall, moves forward hesitantly. Her expression is strained, her eyes shift around the room, her narrow chin trembles.

“Cut off his nose,” says Lydia.

Annbritt looks at Lydia and then at Benjamin. She shakes her head.

Lydia slaps her hard across the face. She grabs hold of Annbritt’s stout upper arm and shoves her closer to Benjamin.

“Kasper has been poking his nose into everything, and now he’s going to lose it.”

Annbritt picks up the scissors. Marek seizes Benjamin’s head in a firm grip, angling his face toward her. The blades of the scissors glint before Benjamin’s eyes, and he sees the terrified look in the woman’s eye.

“Get on with it!” Lydia yells.

Annbritt tentatively extends the hand holding the scissors towards Benjamin. Her face contorts and she begins to weep openly.

“I have a blood disorder,” Benjamin whimpers. “My blood doesn’t coagulate! Please. I’ll die if you do that!”

Annbritt brings the blades together in the air in front of him and drops the scissors on the floor. “I can’t,” she sobs. “I just can’t. It hurts my hand to hold the scissors.”

“This is a family,” says Lydia with weary inflexibility, as she laboriously bends down and picks up the scissors. “You will obey and respect me— do you hear me?”

“They hurt my hand, I told you! Those scissors are too big for— ”

“Shut up!” Lydia snaps, striking her hard across the mouth with the handle of the scissors. Annbritt gasps with pain and staggers to one side. Leaning against the wall, she puts a hand to her bleeding lips.

“Sundays are for discipline,” Lydia says.

“I don’t want to.” She cowers. “Please. I don’t want to.”

“Get on with it,” Lydia says impatiently. She cocks her head suddenly. “What did you say? Did you say
cunt
to me?” She lifts the scissors menacingly.

“No, no.” Annbritt sobs, holding out her hand. “I’ll do it. I’ll cut off his nose. I’ll help you. It won’t hurt; it’ll soon be over.”

Lydia looks satisfied and hands her the scissors. Annbritt goes over to Benjamin, pats him on the head, and whispers quickly, “Don’t be scared. Just get out, get out as fast as you can.”

Benjamin looks at her with a puzzled expression, trying to read her frightened eyes and trembling mouth. Annbritt raises the scissors but turns and stabs weakly at Lydia instead. Benjamin sees Lydia defend herself against Annbritt’s attack, sees Marek grasp her wrist, yank at her arm, and dislocate her shoulder. Annbritt screams with pain. Benjamin is already out of the room by the time Lydia picks up the scissors and sits down astride Annbritt’s chest. Annbritt shakes her head from side to side, trying to escape.

As Benjamin passes through the chilly porch and emerges into the burning cold out on the steps, he hears Annbritt screaming and coughing.

Lydia wipes the blood from her cheek and looks around for the boy; Benjamin is moving quickly along the cleared path. Marek takes the elk gun down from the wall, but Lydia stops him. “It’ll do him good,” she says. “Kasper has no shoes, and he’s wearing nothing but his pyjamas. He’ll come back to Mummy when he gets cold.”

“Otherwise he’ll die,” says Marek.

Benjamin ignores the pain in his joints as he runs between the rows of derelict vehicles. He crouches behind an old Volvo sedan and eats some snow, slaking the terrible thirst he feels, and then begins to run again. Soon, he is no longer able to feel his feet. Marek is yelling something at him from the steps of the house, and Benjamin begins looking for a place to hide in the darkness. Maybe he can make his way down to the lake when things quiet down. Jussi said you could always find a fisherman there, sitting patiently over a hole drilled in the ice.

He has to stop; leaning on a pick-up, he listens for footsteps, glances up at the dark edge of the forest, and moves on. He won’t be able to keep going much longer . He crawls under a stiff tarpaulin covering a tractor, slides along the frosty grass beneath the next car, stands up, and finds himself between two buses. He gropes along the side of one of the enormous vehicles until he locates an open window, and scrambles inside. Moving through the dark, musty coach by feel, he finds a pile of old rugs on a seat and wraps himself up in them.

The red-painted airport at Vilhelmina is a desolate sight in the midst of the vast white landscape. It is only ten o’clock in the morning, but it is still quite dark. The concrete landing strip is illuminated by floodlights. After a flight lasting one and a half hours, they are now taxiing slowly toward the terminal building.

Inside the waiting area it is surprisingly warm and cosy. Christmas music is playing, and the aroma of coffee drifts out from a shop that appears to be a mixture of news-stand, information desk, and cafeteria. Outside hang wide rows of Sami handicrafts: butter knives, wooden drinking scoops, baskets made of birch bark. Simone stares blankly at some Sami hats on a counter. She feels a brief pang of sorrow for this ancient hunting culture that is now compelled to reinvent itself in the form of brightly coloured hats with red tassels for tourists who regard the whole thing as a bit of a joke. Time has driven away the shamanism of the Sami; people hang the ceremonial drum,
meavrresgárri
, on the wall above their sofas, and the herding of reindeer is well on the way to becoming a performance for the benefit of tourists.

Joona takes out his phone and makes a call. He shakes his head with growing irritation. Erik and Simone can hear a tinny voice at the other end responding to his terse questions. When Joona flicks his phone shut, his expression is tense and serious.

“What is it?” Erik asks.

Joona stretches up to look out the window. “They still haven’t heard from the patrol that went out to the house,” he says, sounding distracted.

“That’s not good,” Erik says quietly.

“I’ll call the station.”

“But we can’t just sit and wait for them.”

“We’re not going to,” Joona replied. “We’ve got a car— it should be here already.”

“God,” Simone says. “Everything takes such a bloody long time.”

“The distances are a little different up here,” says Joona. He shrugs his shoulders and they follow him as he heads for the exit. Once through the doors, a different, dry cold suddenly hits them, a cold of another magnitude entirely.

Two dark-blue cars pull up in front of them, and two men dressed in the bright yellow uniforms of the Mountain Rescue Service get out.

“Joona Linna?” asks one of them.

Joona nods briefly.

“We were told to deliver a car to you.”

“Mountain Rescue?” Erik asks anxiously. “Where are the police?”

One of the men straightens up and explains tersely. “There isn’t that much difference up here. Police, Customs, Mountain Rescue— we usually work together as necessary.”

The other man chips in. “We’re a bit short-staffed at the moment, with Christmas just around the corner.”

No one says anything for a moment. Erik looks desperate by this stage. He opens his mouth to speak, but Joona gets there first. “Have you heard anything from the patrol that went out to the cottage?” he asks.

“Not since seven o’clock this morning.”

“How long does it take to get up there?”

“Oh, you’d need an hour or two.”

“Two and a half,” says the other man. “Bearing in mind the time of year.”

“Which car?” Joona asks impatiently, moving toward s one of them.

“Doesn’t make a difference,” replies one of the men.

“Give us the one with more fuel in it,” says Joona, and they climb inside. Joona takes the keys and asks Erik to enter their destination into the brand-new GPS system.

“Wait,” Joona calls after the men, who are heading for the other car.

They stop.

“The patrol that went out to the cottage this morning— were they Mountain Rescue as well?”

“Yes, I’m sure they were.”

They follow the shore of Lake Volgsjö and then, just a few miles farther on, they come out onto the main road, driving west in a straight line for about six miles before turning off onto the winding road that means fifty miles more. They travel in silence. Once they have left Vilhelmina far behind, they notice that the sky seems to lighten and a strange, soft glow appears to open up the view. They become aware of the contours of mountains and lakes around them.

“You see?” says Erik. “It’s getting lighter.”

“It won’t get lighter for several weeks,” Simone replies.

“The snow catches the light through the clouds,” says Joona.

Simone rests her head against the window. They drive through snow-covered forests, immense white fields that have been cleared of trees, dark boggy areas, and lakes that look like enormous plains. In the darkness they can just make out a strangely beautiful lake, with steep shores, cold and frozen, sparkling darkly by the light of the snow.

After almost one and a half hours, sometimes heading north, sometimes west, the road begins to narrow. They are now in Dorotea, approaching the Norwegian border, and high, jagged mountains tower above them. Suddenly a car coming in the opposite direction flashes its headlights at them. They pull over to the side of the road, watching as the other car stops and reverses toward them.

“Mountain Rescue,” says Joona dryly, when they see that the car is the same as theirs. He rolls down the window, and crisp ice-cold air sucks all the heat out of the car.

“Are you the lot from Stockholm?” shouts one of the men in the car in Finnish.

“We are,” Joona replies in Finnish. “City slickers, that’s us.” They laugh, then Joona reverts to Swedish. “Was it you who went out to the house? Nobody has been able to get hold of you.”

“No radio coverage,” replies the man. “But it was a waste of petrol. There’s nothing up there.”

“Nothing? No tracks around the house?”

The man shakes his head. “We went through the layers of snow.”

“What do you mean?” asks Erik.

“It’s snowed five times since the twelfth— so we searched for tracks through five layers of snow.”

“Well done,” says Joona.

“That’s why it took a while.”

“But no one’s been there?” asks Simone.

The man shakes his head. “Not since the twelfth, like I said.”

“Shit,” Joona says quietly.

“So are you coming back with us, then?” asks the man.

Joona shakes his head. “We’ve come all the way from Stockholm. We’re not turning back now.”

The man shrugs his shoulders. “Suit yourself.” They wave and head off to the east.

“No radio coverage,” Simone whispers. “But Jussi said he was calling from there.”

They drive on in silence. Simone is thinking the same thing as the others. This trip may be a disastrous mistake. They could have been lured in the wrong direction, up into a crystal world of snow and ice, of wilderness and darkness, while Benjamin is somewhere else altogether, without protection, without his medication, perhaps no longer even alive.

It’s the middle of the day, but this far north, deep in the forests, day is like night at this time of year, an immense night that overshadows the dawn from December to January, that refuses to crack and let in the light.

They reach Jussi’s house, driving the last part across the hard crust on the snow. The air is freezing, utterly still and fragile. Joona draws his gun. It’s been a long time since he saw real snow and experienced this dry feeling in his nose from severe cold.

Three small buildings face one another in a U-shaped formation. The snow has formed a huge, softly curved dome over each of the roofs, and there are drifts against the walls, right up to the windowsills. Erik gets out of the car and looks around. The Mountain Rescue team’s tyre tracks are clearly visible, as are their footprints around the buildings.

“Oh God,” Simone whispers, hurrying forward.

“Wait,” says Joona.

“There’s no one here, it’s empty, we’ve— ”

“It
seems
to be empty,” Joona says. “That’s all we know.”

Simone waits, shivering, as Joona crunches across the snow. He stops by one of the small windows, leans forward, and can make out a wooden chest and some rag rugs on the floor. The chairs have been placed upside down on the dining table, and the refrigerator is empty and switched off, with the door wide open.

Simone looks at Erik, who has stopped in the middle of the yard, looking around as if perplexed. She is about to ask him what’s wrong when he says loudly and clearly, “He isn’t here.”

“There’s nobody here,” Joona replies wearily.

“I mean,” Erik says, “this isn’t his haunted house.”

“What are you saying?”

“This is the wrong cottage. Jussi’s haunted house is pale green. I’ve heard him describe it: there’s a larder off the porch, a tin roof with rusty nails, a satellite dish near the gable end, and the yard is full of old cars, buses, and tractors.”

Joona waves his hand. “This is his address. This is where he’s registered.”

“But it’s the wrong place.”

Erik takes a few steps towards the house again; then he looks at Simone and Joona, his expression deadly serious, and says stubbornly, “This is not the haunted house.”

Joona swears and takes out his cell phone, then swears even more when he remembers there is no coverage.

“We’re not likely to find anyone we can ask out here, so we’ll have to drive until we pick up a signal again,” he says, getting back in the car. They reverse up the drive and are about to pull out onto the road when Simone spots a dark figure among the trees. He is standing there motionless with his arms by his sides, watching them.

“There!” she shouts. “There’s someone over there!”