One day I thought, has no one ever combined the gritty world of Noir detective fiction with the gritty world of professional janitors? Then I thought, they probably have. But then I thought, pretty much the only janitorial-focused work of writing in existence is the autobiographical Reports from a Soap Bucket which I'm told is actually not well written or interesting to read beyond the novelty factor; I may be the only person in the world who can combine good writing and knowledge of Noir tropes with nearly a year of experience studying, training and working as a janitor.
(I lasted five weeks in the job, by the way.)
So then I tried to write this story, and I was soon sucked into the dark world of sex and violence and heartbreak and poverty and endless nights and moral failure and run-on sentences you can suck on like a bottle of cheap hooch until your insides are on fire and you can't breathe.
Anyway. I hope a few nods to Disco Elysium I couldn't resist isn't enough to paint me as a full time fan writer, even after The Peacekeeper. I've probably got it out of my system now. The game is so good, though. And I hope I don't have to explain these characters are supposed to be gross, awful, desperate people, redeemed only possibly by occasional brief glimpses of kindness or courage, no one fully right or good, no one beyond all hope.
STAINED
I can smell dirt. Not in some cool way like seeing through people's lies, just literally. With my poor vision cleaning would be hard otherwise. I go over the office room's wooden floor on my knees with a rag and a bucket of water and it passes the time. When I lean over the bucket to wring the rag a hot tear falls on my hand and I realize the water has turned cold.
The office is so big and time goes so slow. I stand still on my knees and watch the lights from down on the street playing over the room's shadows, where the walls are almost covered in filing cabinets and bookshelves. The sound of a car stopping, more than the light, tells me I'm about to have company. Not hurrying, I wipe my hands on my jeans, wipe my eyes with the back of my hands, wipe my glasses on my shirt and sit down behind the desk, in the big wing back chair, and put my feet up between piles of open books and take a square whiskey bottle from the right side top drawer. The booze is just stage dressing, but I take a big gulp to get in the right mood. It might not matter that much to give the right impression, but I don't often get the chance. And I really need a job.
Footsteps creak in the stairs. A comfortable heat spreads in my belly and I sink down in the chair and take another swallow. My throat protests against the taste but I keep my face straight. Hanna would drink like it was the smoothest water.
And a dark silhouette appears in the lit frame of the glass door. The client stands in the hallway and hesitates for a good while. Of course it could just be because the light is off inside. 'Come in', I say, when they raise their hand to knock.
A lady steps in front of me with a dripping wet long coat and a lumpy hat. I like her as soon as I hear her voice, bright, brittle, vulnerable. She hesitates like the words would show her naked. 'Hi, I'm, Janus recommended you. I'm Freya. Are you, hm, the sister who does the cleaning?'
'Mm. Hanna Marks.' Misleading, of course, but not a direct lie. I offer her the bottle. 'Here, you look like you need something to warm you, or, if you want to hang up your coat it's behind you.'
'Oh, thanks', says Freya. She hesitates, indecisive, but only for a split second before turning to the coat hanger in the corner. 'One second.'
Under her hat she reveals a river of long blonde hair, and under the coat a black dress that looks nice enough for a wedding or funeral, and a pair of heavy boots. I take another sip of whiskey and enjoy the show.
'So, Freya', I say, leaning into the whiskey growl in my voice. 'You can't be out in this weather just for fun. What can I do for you?'
'It's, the police won't help me', says Freya, sitting down in front of me, taking a drink of whiskey with a face like someone trying not to think about germs. 'My sister has been gone for twelve days and the police won't talk to me.'
She says more after that but I don't quite listen. I note down names and descriptions, habits, haunts and behaviors, but I hardly register anything. I'm already on the case for several personal reasons and I just listen to the enchanting sound of Freya's voice and try to prepare myself mentally. I'm going to have to need to be a detective, or at least look like one. It wears on your brain, heart and often hands. But I have to do it. I want to hold Freya and stroke her hair and promise it'll all be right but it's better if I just find her sister instead. I decide that's more important than paying the electrical bill. Should tell a little truth, build some rapport.
'I don't know what's going to happen', I say, when she asks if I'm going to find Fredrika. 'Someone who's been gone for that long, you know. But I'm going to do everything I can. I, my sister disappeared over a year ago. Janus doesn't know that. But you understand I take it personally.'
'Aw, I'm sorry', says Freya, and puts a hand on my shin, a simple comforting gesture that hits me with unexpected feelings. I adjust my glasses and look for her eyes but I can't think of anything to say before she does. 'But you're saying, which sister are you again?'
'I'm Charlie, the janitor', I say, and give up trying to meet her eye. 'I'm sorry, but Hanna is gone, and well you know, got to pay the bills.'
'Yes I understand, I can't, what do I have to complain? But it's, nothing personal but it feels like Fredrika is going further and further away.'
'I know the feeling, I don't have much confidence in me either. But, Freya, you should be clear how little I have to lose. When Hanna disappeared I wasn't desperate, I thought she would come back, I had other things to do, the trail went cold. Since then I have found ten missing women, out of ten I've been hired for. It's all I do. I'm going to find Fredrika or die trying.'
At some point I've put my feet on the floor and stepped around the desk and now I stand next to Freya wondering what I'm doing. Freya touches my hand and looks up to me with a pleading face.
'I, thank you', she says. 'I didn't mean, you give me hope. I'm just scared. So um. What will you do?'
'I have a couple of ideas. I'm going to think them over. But I see no chance that you would, I think it's better if you don't know any details.'
Freya gives me a hug when she leaves, on top of a cash advance. Later I will remember now one has touched me since Hanna and cry to myself but I'm still playing the role of a tough cold blooded private investigator I think she needs.
And now I'm alone in the dark again. It fits my thoughts. First and foremost I have to sharpen up, get just as sharp as I can live with being. I'm going to have to clean up trash. So I put the janitor gear away and sip more booze and stand in front of the window and look out into the night. Between the heavy window blinds and the heavy rain I see almost nothing but blurry lights in the dark and it doesn't help me make any concrete decisions. I have to get out.
Fast, before any practical thoughts get in the way, I throw on my own rain coat (and old friend, comfortable, ragged in the edge, washed out from black to the color of rain) and leave the empty building. The rain fills the air, cold and clean. My plans clarify immediately, while survival instinct wakes up from the cold and the weight pushing down on me and the noise making my ears almost as useless as my eyes. And I go to work, marching down the street with an unstoppable grin on my lips and a forced hatred warming me from the inside. But it's a long walk to the populated part of town and when I'm enlivened enough I jump on a bus.
I'm not completely alone. There's the driver, of course, but she's working and not to be distracted by conversation, and four drunks looking more than halfway unconscious. I walk past their smelly gathering and I try to feel sorry for them but I think I'm only jealous that they don't have to care about any missing girls, jealous that they have each other for company and support.
And I sit all the way back and brush water out of my hair and look for a napkin in the coat pocket and wipe my glasses. It seems the shadows creep closer in the edge of my vision but when I put the glasses back on it stops. And I watch the sprawling treads of water and light running over the outside of the window and resist the urge to wipe down five dirty stains on the glass – I'm not a janitor today, and never without being paid – and wait for time to pass.
At last the speaker voice announces I'm in the right place and I step out into the formless dark, like jumping off a boat into the sea. I walk past a kebab wagon and realize the only food I've had today was a piece of bread, no, that was yesterday. I wonder if I should risk getting slow and sleepy from filling my belly or get weak and distracted by leaving it. Seems best to wait. Find something cheaper, when I know I have time to sit and digest the food. Trust the cold rain to keep me sharp. So I go on, twelve blocks from the closest bus stop, crooked winding streets, decorated by alternating wild grown and sick-looking trees, surrounded by crumbling houses. The light gets weaker and weaker until I walk through almost complete darkness and then I see my first stop, a bar with a poisonous green neon sign blinking in front of me.
I pause in the doorway and wipe my glasses and discover I'm shivering from cold. But there's Susanna, behind the bar, as she's always been.
'Hello, is it little Karl Marx?' she says. 'How goes the revolution?'
'It's dark and cold', I say. 'Do you have something hot to drink?'
'The brewing machine is running. Shall I make you a cup of chocolate milk?'
'No, today I need coffee. Strong coffee with liquor in it, please.'
'You're working?' asks Susanna, in a tone like she was asking if the cancer was back.
I give a numb nod in response, while I sit down (with a view over the entrance in the mirror behind the bar) and receive a large mug of smoldering witch brew. The heat burns my fingers and mouth but I hold it tight and drink it slow and let the warmth spread in me and watch while Susanna serves the other two patrons (I don't know their names, but I have seen them both here before a couple of times). Strong Susanna, with the huge arms with which she has been holding me since I was little. I brace to listen to stories about Hanna for twenty minutes, not because I have all the time in the world but because it's beyond my powers to stop her. And of course it feels good to see someone still remembers my sister.
But instead when she gets back to me she only asks what's new.
'Well', I say. 'Have you heard anything about any missing girls?'
'I've heard Paulsson might have heard something.'
'That fits with the information I have', I say, and drink more coffee. I don't make a face and I feel a certain amount of pride for that. 'Thanks.'
'Charlie', says Susanna, and I'm moved by the worry and compassion she shows, also without changing her expression. It's something especially, extra neutral in her expression I think, a conspicuous lack of concern in her tone. 'Charlotte. You're not going to go after Paulsson again? Do you think they'll let you live?'
'That's the lead I have. As long as I find her I don't care.'
And I drink my horrible coffee and listen to Susanna telling a story – the one where Hanna shot three men before they could shoot her with just one bullet – and let a dark warmth grow out of my aching empty stomach and watch the people coming and going in the mirror in front of me and drink more spiked coffee and wait. And sometime, late at night, he comes in.
I don't know who he is, I get no discreet signal from Susanna, but I don't even need my glasses to see he's Paulsson. The judging, superior smile (he actually bends his neck back to really look down on us), the fearless posture with a hand on his hip where he usually keeps his gun, and then the piles of money he spreads around him, he throws a thick roll of bills on the bar as if to say hi and asks for a private room and "many, many beers" and "a pretty girl to serve them". But at least he doesn't complain when he can only have Susanna, and a booth with low walls. He seems very drunk already.
I answer Susanna's pleading looks with one I hope conveys determination and wait a while longer, and then I wobble over to Paulsson and pretend to be drunk and desperate for company. Neither part needs a lot of acting. Kenn, police officer, is also glad for my company so it works well. I pretend to not care a lot about his badge, aside from a vague sense of appreciation, like an honest citizen who never has any concrete dealings with the law enforcement. He treats me to beer and is impressed that I drink it, as opposed to any "lady drinks". It tastes even more gross than the booze, but not as strong, so I keep my mask easily. I let time slip away and let Kenn's hands wander over my legs until he tells me he lives not far away.
Out there the shadows are deeper than before and I start singing to keep courage up (and to act like someone who has nothing to hide) and Kenn joins in. 'She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes', we wail, and I think the dark retreats, and the rain is less cold and the strange streets don't twist as wild under my feet, but that could also be because we lean lightly on each other.
And we reach his apartment, on the ground floor in a handsome little block of three story buildings. He is unspeakably proud of the little patch of grass looking like it's been flayed with a straight razor. And inside, cold, stinging fluorescent lights like a surgery. I don't understand what kind of creature could live like this. But here are all the clues, and no witnesses. Kenn might be thinking along the same lines, he has a huge erection and doesn't try to hide it.
'Fredrika Ford', I say, with my hands on my coat. Last chance before I have to take it off, so I have to try. It's a pretty safe bet. Paulsson is a gang just like any other, if well armed with tax money, and gangs watch their own's back more than they do anything else. And it works. For a second he looks baffled – he doesn't understand what he's hearing. Then the lights come on and for a short moment he looks as scared and guilty as any human could be. Then he gets angry and that's lucky because I was almost about to feel empathy for him. But I'm prepared. My heart is hard, hardened by hate. In the moment when he bares his teeth I crack several of them with a pipe wrench.
He starts to scream, a thin scream of pain and surprise, but he damps the sound himself with both hands over his mouth. I hit again, destroy his fingers, lips, nose, more teeth. It makes him angry enough to stop screaming. Sounds could call attention, and what he wants to do with me takes privacy. He has no doubt he's going to get what he wants. He thinks he's invincible. Very good.
I keep thinking it's good still though I don't get in a good hit on his knee and he throws himself into me and pushes me against the wall and something cracks in my back and I only barely get my naked hand in front of my throat when he bends down and starts ripping wildly with his tooth shards, growling like a dog. My knees don't hold his weight and I slide down to the floor. He gets an elbow into the space between us and falls on me and pushes it in with all his weight under my ribs and something tears in my stomach and now I'd like to scream but I have no air, just the taste of coffee and copper filling my whole chest. He stands on his knees and throws himself down again and the elbow digs into my ribs and I don't want to move anymore.
He stands again and I drive my knee up between his legs with everything I have left. It's a pathetic, obvious attack and he blocks it without any effort. He laughs and splashes blood over my face. But he both twists his hips and lowers both hands to guard himself and gives me a wide opening to swing the pipe wrench into the side of his face. I aim for the temple but I think I hit closer to the eye. But it still produces a hard crunching sound and a wide stream of blood and makes him stagger further back. I think he tries to scream again but only a dubious grunt comes out. I hit again, harder, driving him back again. Take the wrench in both hands and put it down in the middle of his forehead and finally he falls off me. I can stand up, my body isn't heavy at all now. It doesn't seem to have any weight. But I can feel things giving away, in my abdomen, my thighs, one ankle, both shoulders when I raise the pipe wrench again and again and hit him until he stops moving.
I try to move gently, not tear anymore at my body, but it's hard. It seems sort of far away. And it's heavy dragging Kenn to the radiator in the far end of the hallway. But there I can stick him in his own handcuffs and threaten him with his own kitchen scissors while I sit on his chest to keep him from catching a breath.
'Give me names', I say. 'Or I'm going to snip off your dick and choke you with it. And then I dump your body in the river and look through your apartment and find your friends anyway.'
'Have to kill me either way', he says, slurring, gasping, probably brain damaged, yet irritatingly clear-headed. 'Why should I snitch. If I knew anything.'
'Obviously you want to give me something to go by. There's a risk I give up and just disappear. You want to give me the name of somebody you're sure will take care of me like an interfering little amateur who thinks she's some kind of hero deserves.'
'Good idea. Okay, the one you're looking for is Colonel John Harley, he's on my computer.'
I laugh, relieved, grateful, and I give him a warm smile. The bitter hate in his face lightens and laughs too, utterly surprised. He must think it's so unexpected, a moment of pure humanity. Then I jam the scissors into his eye – the left one, with the blood in it – and twist, and jump up and down on his chest to not give him a chance to scream. It takes a long time before he stops wiggling in panic and lies still and trembles.
'It wasn't me', he says, in a broken falsetto. 'Please I don't even know what they did. Please.'
'I know you don't know', I say, which is probably a lie. I lean over him, close, eye to eye, with just the bloody scissors between us. 'But you know who knows.'
He only stares, petrified by fear. He seems to have forgotten what's at stake, he's just scared of dying and can't see a way out.
'Names. You have one eye left and then I start in on your dick. Or should we save the eye for last? You can pick.'
'Nuh, nuh', he says, and closes his eye, and I let out a snort of frustration and start cutting up his cheek with the scissors, slowly towards the eye, but I have misunderstood him. 'No! Ne. Netley. Netley is the one.' No resistance, just shame. He's closing his eye because he's crying and doesn't want me to see it. I stand up and put my foot down on his throat with my weight on it and save him further suffering. Or I think he quickly loses consciousness, but it takes a minute of spasms and bowel evacuation until he's dead for sure.
So first of all, before the smell sets in, I take his keys and wallet and free his hands and wrap him into the rug he lies on – it's a small entrance mat of some green plastic material, not very soft, and it the effect is comical as an attempt to hide a body, but I hope it can soak up some spillage – and I carry him out on the street. If anyone sees me I'm going to tell them I murdered a policeman and now I'm trying to hide the evidence. Maybe they want to help, maybe not and then I'm going to die tragically of an inexplicable heart attack in jail tonight, but I have no better ideas for getting rid of the body, and if they find a body all the Paulsson in the country are going to drop all other work until they find me.
But I don't see anyone out in the rain, and I carry the body on my shoulder for two blocks until I can't stay upright and his feet scrape the ground and I realize I don't know where I am. But I have somehow made it straight to the river anyway. Maybe followed the smell without thinking about it. I hoist the body over the low railing into the deep quiet stream and it disappears without much sound. They won't dredge the river even if it's the most obvious place to look for a disappeared cop. They can't risk the wrong bodies coming up in front of the cameras. The carpet floats up again and whirls lazily downstream, a limping artless dance on the black water. I follow it with my eyes much further than I should, long past the point where I'm sure I don't see anything but tricks of my mind.
And I straighten up my aching back and take a deep breath. The rain smells so clean. I want to stand here forever, clean and wet and cold (I don't even regret not putting my coat on), and not have so much work left to do. Without warning a blade of pain cuts through my stomach and I fall down and hit both my knees and fold over and puke. My stomach muscles protest hard but they can't relax and a dark fluid spurts out of me, mostly old coffee, some old beer, hard to say but I think there's no blood in it. At least not much. I take that as a good sign.
There's enough blood in the apartment anyway. When I get back the next step turns out to be cleaning up the worst spots – somehow I have managed to smear blood and shit over the entire hall floor and it's about more than cleaning evidence, I can't work in this mess. Kenn doesn't have much of cleaning equipment and I work for over an hour and a half with hot water and an almost empty bottle of vinegar and a lone towel I have to wash every five minutes. It takes another hour to clean the bathroom after cleaning and to wash myself and I'm so hungry I want to throw up again before I get a chance to look in the refrigerator.
There is more beer, fortunately. Among the best things to have when you're on the road to genuine starvation. Disgusting as it may taste. And the hunger feels like a hole in me that's bigger on the inside than outside. But I stop myself after just a few careful probing sips to see if my body can take it without more pain. No new suffering happens so I put most of the contents of the fridge on a couple of sandwiches and eat while I look through Kenn's computer.
He's logged in to everything, of course. I copy an address book from the computer desktop to my notebook, there are many enticing names besides Netley, Adam and Harley, John. Kenn's family – three sisters, parents, grandparents and cousins and more – I can't imagine any use for. I check a link to the police database but I can't think of any relevant information I could find there, and if I go looking for friends and family I figure it will leave some trace. I start reading him email but there's too much noise and not enough signal. And I peer into a chatroom in an open window where Paulsson seem to discuss all kinds of horrible little ideas and little crimes as if they thought they were invisible. I write down the complicated web link for later use. Maybe some journalist would like to know about it.
Last of all I think to check Kenn's wallet, but there's nothing I need to know anyway. Membership card for a gym, what should I do with that? But I pocket an identity card, five credit cards and two thousand marks in unfolded bills. If I wanted to sift through police corruption there's surely a month's work left in the apartment, but I think I'm finished.
Kenn's gun lies next to the computer screen and it's tempting. I can probably need it, and it would be reasonable if he brought it with him if he suddenly left to start a new life. But on the other hand there is no plausible reason some dishonest person who's made him disappear wouldn't just as well have taken it. Leaving the gun in place makes it look less like a crime, or at least a crime done by some more resourceful actor that wouldn't need to loot the crime scene.
I could sell it tonight and buy food for a month for the money. If I didn't have money for rent and food for six months in my pocket I would, but now it doesn't seem worth it.
So I put an hour into cleaning up my tracks. Almost forget to clean the computer, even though I have a thing on my keyring for just such occasions. A pocket memory with an entirely legal program for paranoid characters that I've downloaded illegally because I'm extra paranoid. It's for cleaning up viruses and malware, but one auxiliary function is cleaning the computer's operating system's own threads to track recently opened files and such. I remove all records of the computer being used in the last day – there's few – and then I have to trust the program is smart enough not to leave tracks after itself.
Cleaning your tracks is sort of like painting yourself into a corner in reverse, I philosophize, as I sniff every surface in the apartment for the freshest dirt and dab it away with a damp napkin. Maybe there's some related but deeper metaphor in the difficulty to track my own scent with the same nose as the flesh that produces the smell, but I can't think of it and I keep working inwards in a fan pattern towards the door.
And in the end I can simply walk out with a half full plastic bag of trash – a towel, two beer bottles, paper napkins, hair, gravel – that I can easily put under my coat, and lock the door. The keys and the wallet I throw in the river and the trash in a garbage can on the way to Susanna's. And I walk in wide detours and let the rain wash over me and think it could wash my wounds away so Susanna doesn't have to worry.
It doesn't work. When I reach the bar Susanna's alone there and she dashes up and embraces me hard and I think I scream, before the shadows creep over my eyes, all the way into me.
No time seems to pass and then I'm embedded in warmth and light and some soft, slow touch. I assume I'm dead. I'm sorry for Freya and Fredrika's sake, but I did all I could and I regret nothing. If this is death, if this endless comfortable rest is all there is, I can rest in peace.
And I wake up a little more and discover Heaven is in Susanna's apartment behind the bar, in a regular bed – though it is a very soft and comfortable bed – and the warmth and light is the sun coming in through the window, and the soothing touch of the angels is Rossi's hands stroking my belly and poking carefully in the soft parts. Looking for internal bleeding.
'Um. Am I naked?' I say.
'I got excited when I saw you lying out cold and defenseless', says Rossi. 'Couldn't help myself.'
Rossi is a nurse, like her mother before her. Two generations of women who's rallied at every hour of the day to keep Hanna alive, and now me. She always makes me laugh with her non-stop flirting and I laugh again now, though it hurts. It feels good to be alive. I tell her so.
'I wish you thought about that earlier', she says. So sad. 'I'd really like you to be in hospital, Charlie. Yeah I know, you don't have time, that' just my stupid concern talking.
'I really don't have time this time', I say. 'And Paulsson can't hear about anyone being beaten up.' Rossi knows exactly what that means and her shoulders sink and I desperately want to make her smile again. 'But you, you're not stupid. I love that you care about me.'
'I hate that I do', says she, but she smiles a crooked smile anyway. 'You self destructive fools are so much work.' She stands up from the side of the bed and looks away, far away. 'I have to get out of here. You're about to force yourself to your feet and continue doing whatever mission of violence you're on and you're going to ask me for painkillers and speed and why not cocaine and I can't do it and I have to get home anyway, I've been working for twenty hours.'
'No, don't go, please', I say, without a thought. I reach out with a bandaged arm and take her hand and I think if I tried to hold on to her harder she'd tear away but my grip has no power and she stops. 'I don't want to do what you said, I promise. I can't even stand up. I just don't want to be alone.' I don't know what I'm talking about.
'Okay', says Rossi, with a sigh, and she brushes her free hand over her face before turning back to me with a big grin. 'Okay. But I'm just going to use you for your hot little body and curl up and sleep.'
And she makes me drink water (though I try to protest I've absorbed enough rain through my skin) and undresses and lies next to me, unbothered, like when we were small, before she got so beautiful it hurts to be close to her.
Today I don't care. I cling to Rossi and I don't think about the thin layer of bandages separating us, I just shiver in relief to be touching her. 'I know, I don't know what's wrong with me', I say.
'Stress', I guess.' Rossi breathes evenly, pointedly evenly, and strokes my hair. 'You killed somebody tonight, didn't you?'
'It's not that, it's, yes, but it's the shadows, something wrong is happening and I can't tell you cause you'll just say I'm drinking too much.'
'Alcohol, drugs, stress, grief, loneliness, malnutrition, yeah you must know there are many obvious explanations if you've started seeing things. But.' Rossi sighs again and turns on her side and pulls me close in a hard, relentless, cautious embrace. 'It must be terrible. If you see something that can't be there. Doesn't matter why you do. It's, you have the right to be scared.'
'I'm not scared now', I say, in an unsteady voice, pushing my forehead against her neck. 'Thanks for staying.'
'If it can keep you in bed for a week so you don't die, sure.'
But by nightfall I have to go out again. I try to explain Fredrika can't wait but my two allies only sigh and shake their heads. I understand well if they have to give up hope, I say. Obviously I don't care about myself, I can't exactly ask anyone else to. And I give Susanna Kenn's cards, she knows who wants to pay for such instruments, and most of his money, I do have a long bill to pay, and if anything's left over she's still the best one to look after the money until I have time to spend it. Or do something good for the community with them if I die. And Rossi gives me another hug, and two pill jars. She's not happy about me forcing her complicity in my self destruction, as she calls it, but she would rather see that than see the next dirtbag I have to fight beat me to death.
'One more thing', says Rossi and stops me in the door with a hand on my shoulder. Susanna looks very busy behind the bar and Rossi pulls me to her and lifts my chin and leans in close and I can feel her breath on my lips and I see something strange in her eyes and I wait for her to kiss me.
'Hanna saw things too', she says. 'She told me, tried to tell me. I don't know if I should tell you this but. It had something to do with twisted shadows. And then she disappeared. Same week. If, if you want to talk you can call me. I want to know where you are every second if you, if you can. But if you just see something that scares you we can talk about that too. If you need some connection with reality.'
'Okay. I don't know when I might be close to any phone, but, I can try. You deserve that.'
And the cold and dark and rain swoops in around me again. I start thinking about what I've done wrong and what I could do different. Did I really do everything I could when I let Kenn get on top of me? I could have been harder. More sharp. Could have caved his head in to start with, not try so hard to keep him in a condition to talk. Could have got him on his back without violence. (Maybe. It's hard to even imagine the world where I hate myself enough for something like that.) All the softness and light, all the love I've seen today, I have to let it wash off. You can't care about other people and effectively destroy their body at the same time. It's heavy. Sad. Lonely. But I let go of the part of me that shies loneliness and I can almost see slimy tentacles of hate and darkness slither out of the shadows and grab hold of me.
The fear I've lost my mind or have a brain tumor or something even worse drives me forward at full speed for maybe two minutes. Then I take a pair of pills to speed up my body and my brain and numb the pain and the road back to the bus stop still seems too long.
A real detective would maybe take a cab ride, but the thought doesn't even occur to me before I'm seated on the bus. I'm not even sure if they go to this part of town anyway. And the place I'm going is right along the route of the number 8 bus, if memory serves. (And I have no idea how much it would cost out of the hundred marks I have left.) So I lean back in the stillness at the back of the buss and rest my eyes and my thoughts rush and crackle with images of police stealing women away in electric clarity and I live and breathe hate.
And I switch buses at the central and eat a hot dog while I wait and get on an overcrowded bus where I have to stand and jostle people and I don't lose the thread. I step off when I see the big bright sign I expected and I go into Netley's favorite bar. Maybe it's just the association that ruins it for me but it seems like an unusually unfriendly place. Bright colors, strong lighting (but at least it's warm yellow lights), not much decor beyond some football shirts on the walls that tell me nothing.
'Can I have a beer and a whiskey for ten marks?' I say, sitting in front of the bartender where there's plenty of empty chairs.
The barman, not at all surprised to have a new customer, shrugs a shoulder (almost imperceptibly, it's not a gesture meant for me, just a reflex) and serves me without a word.
I drink slowly and work at not looking around. I'm not curious, I'm not a newcomer, I'm definitely not looking for somebody. Just an anonymous alcoholic with moderately clean clothes enjoying a fluid dinner. After three glasses of beer, when something disco starts playing on low volume in the bar's sound system, I stand up as if to stretch my legs and throw a relaxed happy mildly bored look around me and walk a lap around the premises. It's built like a U, one long room housing the bar and the entrance and with bathroom doors on the side, and around the corner there's a second long room with two rows of booths, and around the next corner one more room just like it. No overview, but there's only one way in and out, so it works. I visit the bathroom and take my pills and return to my seat with my back straight to the door and pay to use the phone so I can tell Rossi everything is quiet, and I keep waiting.
The bartender is replaced and I sit still like a solid lump of hate frozen in time and nothing happens for so long the sun has time to rise and I have to consider my options. I won't need sleep for a few days, but I need more money to keep existing in a public space without drawing attention, what was I thinking when I took so little with me? I thought I would probably be sucked into a darkness of violence, torture and possibly heterosexual sex, obviously. Down there money doesn't run out so fast.
I guessed wrong. It happens sometimes. I could have gone out to chase the man on the street but now is likely the wrong time for it. And I'm not going to go to his home and try to navigate around his wife and kids. But if I just wait here he will turn up sometime. So, a trip back to Susanna's – she has been questioned about Kenn, of course she recognizes him, he comes there to drink most every week or every other, haven't seen him since last week, oh so he's police, she hopes everything is all right – and back home to the office to change clothes, and a solid meal at the finest hamburger joint in the city five minutes away from there, and then back to my post. It feels weird to move outside in the sun. Dangerous. I'm sure I can feel someone has eyes on me but I hope it's just paranoia or else I'm hopelessly outmaneuvered and might as well lie down and don't get up again.
I walk slow and pick random directions in street corners and the feeling is constant. I rush suddenly around a corner and into the closest shop but I see nobody following me. Not a lot of people on the streets anyway. The shop sells clothes and I take the opportunity to buy a pair of socks and there's nowhere anyone can watch me from behind and I still feel eyes in my back all the time. A rain shower falls when I walk through a park and rattles above me in the trees and it immediately feels better with the lower light and the water blurring the contours and I decide it must be the sunlight making me nervous and nothing else.
At dusk, again in the bar without any character, I continue playing uninteresting. I think I must be good at being invisible, nobody at all bothers me, though I see several women around me being less fortunate. The hate flows more and more for every one who walks out of there with a man without great enthusiasm. They're certainly not in danger, I tell myself. It just reminds me of Fredrika.
And I'm lucky. Shortly before the dawn I hear Netley's name when a group of five Paulsson come in, laughing, loud. I'm in the middle of a swallow of whiskey and I finish it without moving another muscle. Hanna would be proud, I think.
By the sound I can hear them going all the way into the back, but nothing else. It could be good to hear what they say to each other when they think nobody is listening but there's no way to get close to them without being noticed. You must never believe evil people are necessarily stupid.
And it's not necessary to spy on them either. I wait and at last, close to lunchtime, they leave, all together, and I hear them stand up and have time to empty my glass and pay without hurry and cross the street where I can sit at the bus stop before they turn the first corner.
They can't know anyone's following them. They make so much noise and move so slowly I can stay two blocks behind them and follow their every move. But I pull closer to hear better. If they split up before I work out who's who I have to gamble and maybe lose time and unbroken bones on the wrong man. But I judge by the tone of their conversation they have no such plans and they continue going slowly ahead and drinking and we're getting close to the empty city where nobody's going to notice any screams even in the middle of the day and that suits me fine.
I manage not to think the words "It's too good to be true", if nothing else. But they're not far off by the time I come close enough to see them, halfway through a narrow crooked alleyway, and see there's only four of them. It surprises me but I only think it's not too bad, four still gives me good odds to find Netley. I don't think I should have heard some brighter voices, like people usually talk when they say goodbye. Not until I hear the voice immediately behind me, low and full of threat and authority.
'What's all this then?'
My belly is full of ice but I don't show any reaction. I only turn around and follow the voice up and look him straight in the eye and smile an easy and expectant smile and straighten my glasses and say, 'Adam Netley? Is that you?'
'Yees?' he says, with all the authority of someone who just walked into a glass door. His chest deflates and the hands on his hips fall ever so slightly. He was sure he'd laid a perfect trap and got his pursuer just where she wanted them – how could they know, insists my sister's bitter voice. How? – but now he's not sure what's happening at all and it gives me time to pull the pipe wrench out and I bare my teeth in another kind of smile even as I swing the weapon directly at his temple, in an arc from below and the left. A strike that should be hard for him to guard against, but he gets his right hand up (he's too fast!) and I only hit the back of his hand. It makes a hard sound and it hurts like fuck but it does nothing to make him fall down. Instead he shoves my face with his left and I fly down onto my back and can only focus on not hitting my head.
'Dennis called me the first night you showed up, if you're wondering', he says while he and his four large friends form a circle around me. 'The bartender you ignored. Damned weird girl, he says. Hard to miss. Never seen her before. Just might be there to snoop around something. He works for me, you understand. I own the place. But now the question is, who're you working for?'
He's fast and trained for violence. They all are. But they don't want to hurt me so much they won't get any information and they think I can't hurt them and they're cocky enough to give me information for free just to brag about how smart they are. All that is enough if I'm fast enough. It has to be enough. I have to be fast enough.
Netley stands closest, by my feet, certain I will have to try kicking his legs. I flex my leg for exactly the kick he expects and throw myself around onto my belly and up and spin around and get some glancing hits in on outstretched hands with the wrench and the flapping fringe of my coat but I'm only moving out of the circle. Someone catches my arm but I twist free just from my momentum and then, when only one or two of them has had time to take one step after me, when they probably begin to think I'm going to try to get away, in the moment I get eyes on all five of them, I attack. No style, no strategy. I just swing my pipe wrench as fast as I can and hammer their fists and arms to reach their heads. It has to happen so fast they fall before they're ready to really fight, ready to go as far as I am.
The two closest men, taking my aimless blows while I'm taking theirs, slump down bleeding and I climb over them and get an easy shot in the temple of the third one while he's busy pulling a gun. Netley has his out and aims at me but he thinks I'm going to give up rather than get shot and I hit the back of his hand again and he's the first one who screams and the gun goes flying. But immediately after that, while I let my poor arm relax for one moment and I'm stupid enough to blink, the last man hits me with a truncheon and strikes my upper arm so hard I lose feeling all down my side and lose my breath and lose the wrench. I bend down to take it in my left hand that still moves and he hits me in the back. Maybe he's aiming for my heart or maybe he just screws up, but it only hurts and I don't care. I spin on my heels and crush his nose and it looks like he's losing faith, he bends over with his hands over his face and after a hit in the temple he lies down.
Netley grasps for his gun, apparently more handicapped with his left than I am, and I easily reach him and break his remaining hand against the ground and give him a light tap in the neck I think will calm him down for a minute while I make sure his friends are dead. I break the skull on the first one, who's struggling to his feet, and the second, lying still and staring at me and crying like a child. Number three and four I think are dead or dying already, they're definitely no threats right now and if they make it they'll probably have brain injuries that will have a practical demoralizing effect on their gang.
And when I get back to Netley he's curled up with his hands pressed to his chest. He's babbling things like 'You can't do that, it's not possible' and it feels promising. I break his knees with four blows and he doesn't even try to resist.
'Quiet', I say, and ram the pipe wrench into his mouth. He pulls away and hits his head in the asphalt and I try again and get the front teeth in his lower jaw in the wrench's grip and twist. It's sloppy and messy and the teeth don't even come free, but they get twisted around and I crush a great deal of gums. And I sit down on his hands and grip his nose with the wrench and lean in so he can see me properly and continue, 'stop whining. Yes it's real, I've killed all your friends and now I'm going to kill you too, so sorry to ruin your fantasy about being invulnerable. But now the question is, do you want Sandra and Felix and Lina to throw up when they see your body? Or are we going to be reasonable?'
'You don't touch my family', he says, showing a whole other kind of fear.
'No, I'm not going to touch your family. But you have to ask nice. You have to understand you're not in charge here.'
He blinks. Once more he's not sure what's happening. I turn the wrench a little, just so it hurts. 'Please', he says, and closes his eyes. He says nothing else and I respect his discipline. He doesn't waste time on questions. He understands I'm going to answer them. He understands I'm in charge.
'Good', I say, and take a breath. 'Where is Fredrika Ford?'
'She's dead if that makes any difference.'
'No, it makes no difference to our relationship. I need names and places of course.'
He gives me an address not far from my office. 'But I want to say one thing. Last request?' he says in a flat voice and opens his eyes. He looks desperate.
'By all means.'
'You can drop this. Drop the Ford girl. It's done, you can try to get revenge or whatever the hell but it won't change the fact. You think I say this to protect my colleagues but I want to protect you, you seem like a decent person. Heart in the right place. Which my colleagues lack. And you're just going to die. They, they aren't human. They probably have eyes on you already but if you give up maybe they'll leave you alone. But if you fight these. Creatures. Then you'll die.'
'Hm. You, Adam, can you convince me I don't need to kill you? If I tell you to leave town today?'
'Uh. I, I don't know if that's possible, you're a cop killer and I can identify you.' He turns his head, thinks, breathes in deep, a breath full of helpless hope.
'No, think, Adam. You disappear, I never existed. They'll think you're the killer.'
'Yeah maybe, but my.' I can see how he decides to abandon his family and live as a fugitive rather than die. How the decision kills him just a little. 'Okay. It's tricky with my legs and all but you'll get a number to call, they'll take care of me no questions asked and nobody will hear from me again. Do you believe that?'
'I believe you. You've got an honest face. But if instead we say you're on my side, we put you in a wheelchair and you and me go to that place together and put a stop to their shit? I mean you don't like them more than I do.'
'No. No, no you're not listening.' His eyes grow wide and he lies still and I'm ready to believe he meant that warning earnestly. It sounds unlikely but at least he seems to believe it. And it happens while I'm still formulating that thought. Netley's eyes keep growing, they puff out, the run out of his eye sockets. I throw myself off his chest to get away, pure flight response. He screams, the kind of screams not even the empty city could ignore, but it stops almost immediately. I fall on my back when I try to sit up with my hands behind me for support and find the right arm still doesn't move and I turn on my left side and watch Netley's bleeding corpse with the swelling pulsating purple eye full of thick veins squishing his face down over his jaw to make room and turning around and sticking on me and staring at me with a pupil like a dribbling shapeless puddle and it follows me when I stand up and walk up and strike a hesitant blow with the pipe wrench and the eye sucks in the long piece of steel that shouldn't fit inside the man's head and I run and I hear a bursting, wet tearing sound and I don't look back.
I would absolutely take a cab now if I could catch one. Rossi's apartment is twelve blocks away, or thirty minutes by bus. I'm obviously irrational, I think as I swallow two painkillers and one amphetamine and run straight there. But I can't stand the thought of sitting on a bus going the wrong away all the way to the central before I can get on one going the right way and then sit still for fifteen minutes more and do nothing. Without even knowing if she's at home at this hour.
So I run as fast as I can for forty minutes. It works fine after a little bit when I hurt in every single place and don't gain anything by limping or keeping my arm still or not breathing too deep or worrying about the ache in my heart. And the shadows get long while I run and I get there and run six flights of stairs up a house that's had a broken elevator for fifteen years and pound on Rossi's door and try to keep breathing.
'It's me', I call when I hear some movement in there and then Rossi opens the door and she has messy hair and a bathrobe on her and a gun in her hand and not quite open eyes and she's completely alive and unharmed and I fall to my knees.
'I'm not too bad', I lie in a wheezing voice while she hunkers in front of me and grips my chin to look at my pupils. Oh my soul, the pupil. All the souls of humanity. 'I'm okay. Just out of breath. You need to. I might have given your phone number to the enemy. Not sure they'll figure it out. Or they'll bother to look you up. Or think they can get to me through you. But.'
'But they might come at any moment. Okay. Let me think.'
'If you've got anything here at home that could lead to someone you like, that can give the police a trail.'
'Exactly. No, I can take everything with me and we can get a hotel room and figure this out. Your treat, of course.'
'Haha I'm, haha, I'm good for it.
In the space of a breath Rossi packs a small backpack on her bag, a large medical bag in her hand, a portable computer on a shoulder strap and an umbrella on her arm and we leave.
'Do you want to hold the gun?' she says. 'I bet you're better at shooting than me.'
'If you've had any training at all you're ahead of me but also I think my good arm is broken.'
'Ah, I knew something was wrong when you didn't immediately offer to carry my heavy bags.'
'If only I could save your fragile lady hands from, no but I remember now, I lost my trusty pipe wrench, we should stop by my office.'
'It's nearby I seem to remember, but how much janitor work did you have in mind to do?'
'I wanted to come up with some picturesque hint but I was just unclear I see now. I want to have a hammer in my pocket in case I have to beat someone to death.'
Rossi loses less than half a stride but she looks at me with a sad face and I feel a crack open in my hard armor and I try to fight it. Can't afford to feel emotions, not now, not just yet.
'But you don't want the gun I'd rather get rid off', she says.
'No, it's better you have it, just in case. Almost certainly no one is coming for us you know. I hope this is completely unnecessary. But just in case you should know. I'm so sorry to get you involved.'
We hit the street just then, and the rain has started. Clean and cold and dark. I stop and turn my face up and drink up the feeling of being free. Invisible. The rain might really be something, something to protect me from that stuff. That eye staring at me.
'Come on', says Rossi, and pulls my sleeve. 'I forgive you but you have to tell me what's happening with, with your case or mission or, what's happening with you.'
I blink and nod and stumble along with Rossi at my side. She looks like she wants to support me and I struggle to walk straighter. Getting stiff and it's hard to move even though my body twitches with energy. My thoughts fly light as air but run together like porridge. I guess I'm out of adrenaline but still have a lot of amphetamine in my body, or something.
Rossi lives only ten minutes away from me, but once we get there and I get my hammer out of the janitor closet I'm done. I give her the money and suggest she can just get a cheaper room for one and I can just as well stay here.
'I'd rather stay with you', she says. 'If you're sure you don't have some suicidal plan to let the bad guys come to you?'
'No, no, they don't know who I am. The only lead they have is my call to you from the bar.' The only lead humans should have anyway. 'I can't think any place would be safer than here. As long as you can do without electricity.'
I have safety candles in the closet and a sink in the bathroom and a thin worn mattress in the corner and it's enough. I light a couple of candles and put them on the floor and work a molar loose with my tongue while Rossi fills a bucket with warm water and I collapse into bed and she comes to me like an angel and takes the hurt away with her skilled careful hands. I tell her everything while she unwinds my bandages and washes my tender skin and feels out cuts and bruises and cracked ribs and sprained shoulder and somehow it hurts less just because she touches me and gives names to what she finds and kisses a bruise on my cheek and jaw and my swollen lip it doesn't hurt at all. And I float in a sea of warmth and safety and comfort with soft candle flames dancing over my eyelids and everything is real and nothing is real and I can tell her about the huge purple eye intruding into the world in front of me. I don't know if it sounds ridiculous or pathetic or insane but I can talk about it.
When I'm talked out Rossi asks if I have any liquor close at hand. If my immediate and exact answer worries her I can't tell. She brings the square bottle and drinks deep in a way I haven't seen since Hanna and her eyes glitter in the murk as she puts it down on the floor by the mattress. 'I'm so sorry', she says, while she climbs over me and lies down close and holds me.
'I know, it's awful. Or what are we talking about?'
'The missing girl. It, I don't know how you're feeling really but I know it was important to you to find her.'
'Yeah. It's still important. I don't know she's dead. I want, I can't contact Freya until I have evidence.'
'Ah, right. I'm just trying, don't get me wrong, I admire your obsession, but I don't understand where it's coming from. You care so much about finding her, about speaking for this girl who doesn't have anyone else to speak for her, it's great, but you don't care about her, about that she's dead.'
'I, no, you know, it's my job. How's the hospital by the way, we never talk about you.'
'It's hard. But I'm helping people. There are similarities of course. But, but I wanted to ask, you said you just turn off your ability to care about people, to do the job?'
'Yeah? It's not healthy obviously, I know that.'
'No but could you turn it on again? Now you're on a break?'
'It's hard. It's harder to shift back and forth than. But it's close. I'm close to my feelings, I can't resist. Not when I'm with you.'
'I appreciate you're trying to flirt but it sounds a little, a little too intense.'
'Rossi, I've met some kind of monster god from another dimension and I'm almost sure they're really out there looking for me and they'll probably kill me in a matter of hours. You have been the most beautiful thing in the world to me since I was like nine years old and, and I just wanted to say that. While I can. I'm very attracted to you.'
'How can, wait. Wait. I remember. I was, hm, twelve. You were so weird. Started staring at me and agreeing with me about everything. And I liked it. Guess I was self absorbed. Ha, remember the time I was Frankenstein, I mean, I was the monster and you were Frankenstein?'
'I had a lot of fun with your body parts. I think I had my first orgasm adjusting your breasts.'
'Oh, yes. It felt so good and I was scared to move, just lied there and felt like a pervert and hoped you didn't understand what was going on. I, you were always so small, it felt sick.'
'Haha, I'm not that short, am I?'
'No, not anymore', says Rossi. She lifts my hand to her mouth and kisses the knuckles, so light, so gentle. 'I can, I'm trying to be serious here, it's not easy.'
'I trust, if you say one thing I still trust what you do.' I turn my hand and touch her lips with my thumb. 'This is so real. If you stop joking I'll get scared.'
'You're scared you're hallucinating, you're scared it's all real, which way is it going to be?' says Rossi in a voice thick with held back laughter. I giggle helplessly and push her away with a shove lacking any strength and she lies on top of me to tease me and laughs and takes my hand in both of hers and leads it to touch her sex and the laugh turns into a trembling sigh and she curls up to my chest and talks in a low whisper. 'I've waited a long time for this too, and I have, you don't know her, but you should know, Helen, another nurse, we, it's nothing official but we're fucking, I understand if you don't want to get in the middle of something, we have to go behind her back and I don't care.'
'Oh, I didn't think. Are we assholes if we do this to Helen?'
'Yes, I guess so. Even if she never finds out. We just have to live with. I'm a cheating whore.'
'It doesn't, don't talk like there's something wrong with you. You're better than me. I'm a killer and a, uh, who sleeps with someone else's, who cares about her. Person.'
'Haha, do you have any more convoluted way to label yourself? Well when you put it that way I think it's best if we stick to the word you used from the start.'
'Asshole?'
'And possibly jackass.'
'How about palooka? I so rarely get a chance to use that.'
'That, and maybe even pylon.'
I laugh with Rossi's fingers in me and it's unreal and wonderful and she massages me so slowly and carefully and she makes us both come together so softly precisely and controlled so I won't hurt and in the middle of the orgasm she whispers 'Hanzo main' and I laugh so hard it hurts anyway.
A time without time passes and Rossi and I share our own little world in dying candlelight and it's dark and wet and clean and warm and still like water, so simple and naked and close to the skin and I want it to be forever and when the memory of a human face turning into meat in my hands come and I cry Rossi holds me and the violence is real and it's far away and I can breathe for the first time.
And I write a letter to Freya if she should come to the office before I do, just to say according to my sources Fredrika is dead and so are many of the responsible cops. And life is new and fragile and brilliantly beautiful and I walk carefully on sore legs when we go out in the rain again for food and information. 'When we tell our grandchildren how we met', says Rossi with a bracing arm around my back, 'can we say I fucked you so hard you couldn't walk straight after?'
'It's true, at least some part of the pain I'm having is because of the sex. But it's nice. I wouldn't mind adding some further aches very soon.' I watch her as she walks so close to me, she seems wet despite the umbrella covering us both and I can see her smooth pale skin under the clothes and she can see the way I look at her and it's the first time I see her blush. 'If you want, I mean, you had to do most of the work, but it wasn't terrible for you right?'
'You have much to learn when your body has recovered, you know that obviously, but, hmm, let's say my work to teach you doesn't seem heavy.' She closes her eyes and leans briefly against my cheek and gets a serious look. 'I, I like you, I like being with you. I love what we did because it felt like we were so close. I'm happy just to have this moment with you even if it's all going to end soon. Don't worry about mastering the acrobatics.'
'Mm. I feel the same. So you know. I'm going to make an effort to not die if I can. I love you, Rossi.' I squeeze her hand at my waist and she loses her breath and it's so good to see and I smirk and I think she knows precisely what's coming next. 'But I do have to point out it was a damn fine somersault you did in my pussy.'
We laugh so much I almost fall over until we make it to the hamburger shop. But we manage to sit down and once Rossi has made her phone calls (to skip work and to say goodbye to Helen) we share four of my "usual" – a cheeseburger, a chicken burger, a tray of fries and all the soft drinks you can drink – and watch the news on the TV on the wall and on Rossi's computer. Paulsson apparently still hasn't found their fallen brothers and in the private chat room people don't sound worried about them missing. It's frustrating, it would probably give some clue to what I'm hallucinating or not depending on what they say or don't say about the bodies. But on the other hand time and the rain helps to cover my tracks.
And then we have nothing more to do but eat fat and sugar and hold hands and share funny stories about unlikely people we (Rossi) have met at work and put off what's coming next to enjoy life for as long as possible. For a while I can let Fredrika go, not feel her corpse hang over my head silent and dead and waiting for someone to answer for the crimes they subjected her to. For a moment I can feel pleasure without guilt. Or at least I can pretend. It helps my body needs all the rest I can give it.
'So I'm going to play it very carefully', I say, at last. 'Have to check this storage building out but I'm going to do it slow, as safely as possible. Probably just walk past outside to begin with and then start thinking about what's next, you would maybe like to get us that hotel room in the meantime, it won't take me long.'
'I know you just want to protect me and it's not altogether brain dead machismo, you're better at violence than I am if it's going to go sideways. I appreciate the thought. But I'm not going to let you run off and get hurt and eaten by space monsters without supervision. I'll go with you, it'll be faster, the two of us have a better chance to see what's what and we just walk past the place and then right back, and then we pack up and look for a hotel and fall asleep together in a huge hot bath. Nice and easy.'
'Yes, okay, it's, I prefer your plan.
The storage building is on the street Netley named, but if I didn't know I'd not guess what was there. I might not even guess anything was there. A low square structure takes up the whole block, anonymous, invisible, a smooth facade with a few boarded up windows, a smooth door without handles, no signs or marks of any kind. A very telling absence of things. Rossi and I walk around the building without pause and only on the way back I figure out all the streetlights were off. The lights are often unreliable here, maybe less than half tend to work, but a whole block without any light is another telling absence.
We decide we need to rest properly before we even try to think what's next – I have no ideas at all – and we walk quickly back and fetch Rossi's stuff and pack me a (light) bag and take a bus to the other end of town where we get a room for sixty marks. The lady in the lobby who takes our money seems so stoned she might not remember us. Nobody knows we exist, even less where we are, and it seems worth the cheap ragged room without any of the luxurious bathroom Rossi wished for. I open the window and the rain is present in the room and we snuggle up close under layers of blankets and we're alone together and safe and warm and for a while we don't care about anything else.
I think I wake up from a dream. I hope I wake up because I see an eye, purple and swollen like a bruise, staring at me in the dark and I don't understand if it's a memory of a dream or my imagination or something worse. Rossi sleeps deeply and I sneak away from her and walk out into the rain on my own just like I promised myself I wouldn't. I wonder if the eye controls my mind. It seems less than clever to do the things I do. Unreasonable. There's too many unknowns, I can't even guess how wrong it could go. How many are waiting for me over there. But it feels impossible to do anything else. Impossible to live with the eye out there for one minute without doing something. Best that I die if I can't get rid of it.
So I ride all the way back to the warehouse and I mostly feel my way through the dark and break up a window in the back – the hammer was a good choice after all – and climb in. Inside is dark and tight and full of dust. It smells terrible. Dirt and old meat and something else I don't know what it is, mixed with flower scents that just make it more horrible, dandelions and elder and I'm scared to sort it out thoroughly. The smell is everywhere in any case, it doesn't help me find my way. But from the echo it sounds like I'm in a small, bare room and I find a door and it opens without resistance. A corridor leads down in a scraggy curving track and the floor gets more and more uneven. It's rock, I realize, a natural rock formation, with boards laid here and there to even out the road over the most jagged bumps. The edges give away some weak light, I think, or the dark has given me radar vision.
But soon light and dark and form and substance mean something other than what I recognize. Down there something waits dissolved in a bed of dark light, black and white at the same time. I don't understand what I see and I think my eyes protect me from understanding it so it won't make me sick. A jellyfish congeals and opens a purple eye and a gristly tentacle made of diseased wounded tissue reaches for me and I want to run but I'm too slow. It touches me and sinks into my head and I feel it move behind my eyes and it speaks to me.
It's Hanna's voice but it's not words. The monster tells me it's just good business. It enjoys the gifts the humans bring it and it gives the humans things they want and everyone wins. No one dies, not in the way I'm thinking. To prove it the monster takes my eyes and trades them for Fredrika Ford's. I fight Fredrika's twitching and blinking and I wonder how much she can see. I only see shadows and the monster still doesn't make sense but it's beautiful, huge and frighteningly beautiful.
At last I can run. I run and don't look back and set fire to a dusty pile of clothes in a corner before I climb back out the window opening.
'There's one gift you can give me', I say to myself when I sit down in the bus, as the sound of sirens get closer. (The empty city might not have real law enforcement but the fire brigade is more proactive.) 'I want no more women to disappear. Not in my city.'
The eye keeps following me like a constant memory at the forefront of my frontal lobe and I start shaking and when I change buses I take a little detour and buy two whiskey bottles and start drinking and the eye catches fire and seems to shrivel and go away from my head and I breathe out.
But everything looks different now. It's so bright and sharp but the colors are wrong. The glasses only make the world blurry and dirty and I put them in my pocket. People look like shadows and bruises and the booze is full of faces and when I look out the window at the trails of light and water on the outside of the glass I see patterns with far too much meaning. I wake Rossi up when I fall on stiff legs into bed and cry and she knows immediately what I've been up to and she's angry but she holds me anyway and when I say the case is closed and we have only to follow the news to see just how many skeletons come out of what closets but as soon as I've called Freya I won't have to hurt anyone anymore she cries with me.
And I hold Rossi and close my eyes and I wish I'll never have to stop drinking and never leave the rain and never open my new eyes.
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