Excerpt

From "She," by John Ajvide Lindqvist (trans. Marlaine Delargy):

She is running through the forest. The ground is a shimmering blue mosaic of moonlight filtered between bare branches. Wet oak leaves are crushed beneath the thick soles of her shoes, and her hands smell of petrol. In the distance she can hear the sound of voices shouting orders, dogs barking. Her seventeen-year-old heart is like jelly, splashing and squelching with every pounding beat. She runs.

The First Night

The first night in our new house—we couldn't wait!

Over the past few months, barely an evening had gone by when we hadn't crept in with our torches to see how far the builders had got during the day. We wandered around the empty, half-finished rooms and imagined what our future lives would be like in these spaces, then we returned to our neighbours' summer cottage, which they had kindly allowed us to use during the seven-month construction project.

The original plan had been to carry out a major renovation. Replace the windows, improve the insulation, add an extension to the upper floor. However, when the builders opened up the walls it turned out that the house was in such poor condition that the only solution was to tear the whole thing down and start again. We looked at our finances, spoke to the bank and discovered that it would be just possible if we used what was left of my inheritance from my paternal grandfather.

It would never have worked with Swedish builders. I might as well admit it right away: we used a Polish construction company that did the same job for a third of the price. Cash in hand, of course. It's not something I'm proud of, but otherwise, there would have been no house. They also imported some cheaper materials from Poland.

Enough about that. We swallowed our shame at cheating the Swedish state out of money and watched our solidly built house take shape with every day that passed, and now our first night had arrived at last.

The removal truck with our stored furniture and other possessions wasn't due to arrive until the following day, but Alice and I were so eager to start on the next phase of our lives that we decided to spend the night on a mattress in our future bedroom. In a rush of optimism, we made passionate love, and after snuggling up together for a few minutes, Alice fell asleep while I lay awake, listening.

Every house has its own sounds and aromas, its own breathing and atmosphere. Ours had yet to find its individuality, and smelled mainly of newness. Paint, wallpaper paste, new wood. My heart gave a little leap as I thought that Alice and I would be the ones to give this house its particular character through the lives we lived.

And maybe there would be a third person too. We were both thirty-five and had worked hard so that we could afford to build the house—cash in hand, admittedly—and now we were ready to have a child. We had been trying for a year, without success. We were intending to give it another six months before seeking help.

It felt almost presumptuous when we asked the architect to add another bedroom, as if we were tempting fate by imagining that we were capable of creating the person who would sleep there. But we crossed ourselves, tossed salt over our shoulders and spat three times—only mentally, of course—then showed him where we wanted the room to be.

Okay, so I wasn't entirely free of superstition. When we were inspecting our new house earlier in the day, we ended up in the empty room where a putative child would one day live. Just standing in there made me feel as if we were nurturing unreasonable expectations, and I knocked three times on the door frame. Alice looked at me and pulled a face. Then she knocked too.

Little one…

When we started talking about having a baby a year ago, it felt… all right. Reasonable. People are meant to have kids, and maybe it was time now. That kind of thing. As the months went by and nothing happened, that reasonableness became a hope that became a longing that eventually became a hunger. Even though I wasn't the one who would be carrying the foetus, I had a baby-shaped hole inside my body. A whimpering and squeaking that only the patter of tiny feet would be able to drown out.

Little one…

I had gone so far as to visualise the child in detail and at so many different ages that I was now experiencing a sense of grief over something I had lost. I thought, Little one, and felt sorry for the uncreated child and its non-existence.

I turned over and looked at the clock on the floor next to the mattress. 02:07. The alarm was set for seven, when I would get ready for another day as a case worker with social services. I had meetings booked with a couple of really tricky clients, and I wanted to have a clear head. Debt consolidation might not be the sexiest job in the world, but someone has to do it.

I tensed every muscle in my body as tightly as I could, then slowly relaxed. Something softened within me, and a gas lighter than air seeped into my joints as I drifted up towards sleep. Suddenly my legs jerked, I inhaled sharply and opened my eyes.

At first I thought it was the kind of jolt that sometimes comes when you're falling asleep, but no. I'd heard a noise. A bang. From above. From the loft. That was what made me react.

The loft? This afternoon we climbed up there to check it out. It was unheated, with exposed beams, and all it contained was a small pile of sawdust that the builders had forgotten to sweep up. Not a single thing that could fall over and make the noise I'd just heard.

Taking care not to wake Alice, I eased myself off the mattress, stood and pulled on my dressing gown. The oiled floorboards were cool against the soles of my feet. We had considered installing underfloor heating in the bedroom, but at that point the budget had dug in its heels and said No. Maybe one day.

I padded over to the door, which didn't make a sound when it opened. I stepped out onto the landing and closed the door behind me. Directly ahead were the stairs leading down and to my right a corridor that ran past the longed-for child's room to the bathroom. Halfway along the ceiling was the loft hatch. I looked up. Blinked. Looked again.

Where I should have seen the white surface of the hatch, instead I saw a black square. The moonlight coming in through the window was enough to pick out the contours of the corridor in pale blue, and I could even distinguish the wallpaper's floral pattern, but it wasn't enough to illuminate the loft. There was nothing to see but blackness because the hatch was open.

I can't deny that I felt uneasy. I thought back to the afternoon. The loft probably wasn't going to be used for anything except storage, so we had chosen the simplest solution due to budgetary constraints. A plain, square hatch that opened inwards, then the loft could be accessed with a stepladder.

I racked my brain for a logical explanation, something that could cause such pressure from below that the hatch flew open, or alternatively something in the loft pulling on the ring we'd requested so that no one could get shut in. To be honest, there was only one reasonable explanation. My throat felt dry and tight as I whispered: "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Just saying those words sent a shiver down my spine, and in my mind, I searched the house for a weapon. My toolbox was downstairs, there was a hammer in it. What kind of person had hidden in the loft? Maybe one of the tradesmen had fallen asleep and… no, there hadn't been anyone up there in the afternoon, so someone must have sneaked in and…

"Hello?" I croaked. "Come down from there!"

Against all my instincts I was about to take a step towards the hatch when I heard a scraping sound from above and then… I died. I can't describe it any other way. I was so terrified that my heart stopped, everything went black before my eyes, and I really do believe that I was dead for a few seconds.

The first thing that appeared in the hole was two dark lumps, then everything happened very fast. A woman plummeted straight down through the opening, feet first. I caught sight of a pair of thick trousers tied at the waist with a piece of string, and a torn check shirt. Long black hair fluttered around a pale face.

A few inches before the woman's feet reached the floor, the movement stopped abruptly. Her head jerked forward and her hair fell over her face, and at the same time, I heard a sort of wet, dull crack like breaking ice. Only now did I notice the rough rope around her neck, stretching up into that dark square in the ceiling.

I fell towards the stairs and only managed to save myself from tumbling straight down by grabbing hold of the banister. I squeezed my eyes tight shut as a dark red swirl eddied around my brain and made me feel sick.

I didn't see that. It didn't happen.

I was dreaming. I was hallucinating. I'd had a bleed on the brain. I lowered my head and tried to take deep breaths, but my compressed lungs could manage only shallow panting. I held my breath. And then I heard it. The muted creaking of fibres rubbing against one another. A quiet dripping.

I didn't dare open my eyes completely, I just squinted along the corridor. The woman hung there, a few inches off the floor, her body slowly swinging from side to side as the rope complained about her weight. I clung to the banister as if it were my lifeline, keeping me on the right side of insanity. I had never been so frightened, and was incapable of a single rational thought.

Suddenly a flash of lightning passed through my mind as the reptilian brain, or possibly the child's brain, took over. I hurled my body at the bedroom door, opened it then closed it behind me. When I had double-locked it, my legs gave way beneath me. I crawled over to the mattress, wriggled onto it and pulled the covers over my head.

I lay there motionless with my eyes wide open, holding my breath. It must have been my imagination, but I thought I could still hear the dripping. Something was dripping from her out there. I thought back to the pale face I had glimpsed before it was covered by her hair.

She had been young. Only a girl. And now she was hanging dead, here in our newly built house. In our life.

She can't go any further. Weeks and months of malnutrition have eroded all the energy reserves in her body. She crawls into a hollow beneath a fallen tree, rests her face on the ground. Cold, wet leaves cool her fevered cheek and dampen her shirt and trousers. She has nothing left. Even the hatred that has kept her going lately seems to have ebbed away. She is nothing more than a bag of bones and internal organs waiting to be obliterated. The barking is getting closer.

The Second Night

I didn't sleep a wink during the first night in our new house. After half an hour I got too sweaty under the covers and tentatively poked my head out, ready to pull it back in if the girl turned out to be standing next to the bed.

The child's brain, like I said. But there was no one there, and both the creaking and the dripping outside the door had stopped.

Is it over?

I couldn't believe what my eyes had seen, and yet I still didn't have the nerve to go out onto the landing to check. If she really was still hanging there, what would I do? My thoughts were scurrying around like a flock of hens frightened by a fox, trapped inside my head. I rubbed my eyes hard and tried to pull myself together.

As I saw it, in my agitated state of mind, there were three alternatives: 1) I'd had an incredibly detailed hallucination, 2) a young woman had actually hanged herself from the loft in our house, or 3) I'd seen a ghost.

None of these alternatives were appealing. I'd never had a hallucination in my entire life. The idea that a young woman had managed to sneak up into our loft and then hang herself was just too absurd. And a ghost? They were supposed to haunt old houses with a terrible past, weren't they? Ours was brand spanking new and had no history whatsoever.

Okay, so the house that had stood on this spot had been here for just over a hundred years, but we'd lived in it for eight years without the slightest hint of supernatural phenomena. It didn't make sense.

So what did that leave?

In the end, it was only the hallucination that seemed possible, however weird it might be. Maybe I'd dropped off momentarily and had a nightmare that lasted seconds? But surely I'd stood on the landing for longer than that, looking up at the opening? Oh well, time functions differently in dreams.

That had to be the explanation. A terrifying image had been hurled at my defenceless inner retina, and my mind had reacted to an illusion. That's what must have happened. I still didn't get out of bed, though; I lay awake staring at the ceiling with the covers drawn up to my chin. Alice snored gently and trustingly beside me.

It was the beginning of April, and at about six o'clock the dawn came creeping. By ten to seven it was almost full daylight. I reached out and switched off the alarm. During the night I had wriggled out of my dressing gown; I got up and put it on again.

With my arms folded across my chest, I stood perfectly still, staring at the door. My heart began to beat faster. If the improbable was possible and there really was a dead girl hanging out there, what would I do? I didn't know, but I definitely wasn't going to leave the discovery to Alice. I had to check.

With sweaty fingers, I turned the key and placed my hand on the door handle. My head pounded, and I realised I'd been holding my breath ever since I got up. I slowly exhaled and pushed open the door. It opened to the right, which meant it obscured my view of the corridor.

In the same childish spirit as I'd dealt with everything else last night and this morning, I stuck my head around the edge of the door, presumably so that I would be able to pull it back quickly if I saw… But sunlight poured in through the window, illuminating an empty corridor. I let out the air I had left in my lungs in a huge sigh of relief. Alternative number two—a girl had actually hanged herself—could be ruled out.

I still padded cautiously towards the hatch, which was now closed. I examined the floor immediately beneath it, looking for traces of whatever had been dripping. Nothing. Only prime Polish oak floorboards, without so much as a scratch or the tiniest mark. I looked up at the hatch and considered fetching a ladder, but no, I wasn't quite there yet.

I went back into the bedroom, kissed Alice's bare shoulder and told her it was time to wake up. She gazed at me in some confusion, took in my dressing gown and said: "Morning. You're up already?"

"Yes, I didn't sleep too well."

"Oh dear." Her eyes narrowed as she remembered, and her lips curved into a sensual smile. "Thanks for last night."

"Thank you."

Alice looked into my eyes, which presumably weren't at their best after all those sleepless hours, and asked: "Didn't you get any sleep?"

"No. I think I might call in sick."

"Poor you. Why couldn't you sleep? I mean usually, after we've…"

"I don't know, but maybe it's for the best. I can be here for the removal men, start unpacking."

I had no intention of sharing my nightmare with Alice, partly because I didn't want her to worry about my mental health, and partly because I didn't want to scare her. The image of the loft hatch and the hanged girl was suggestive to say the least, and Alice might be frightened if she needed to pass beneath the hatch to go to the bathroom during the night. Better to say nothing.

I called work then went back to bed while Alice showered and got ready to set off for Rådmansö School, where she was a teacher. At seven forty-five she came into the bedroom and stroked my cheek. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

"I'm never okay without you, but I can fake it."

"In that case, I'll do the same. See you later—love you."

"Love you."

I heard her footsteps descending the stairs, the front door opening and closing, the car starting up. We usually drove to work together, but now I lay there following her in my thoughts. A warm feeling spread through my chest as I contemplated the fact that the woman who was driving away would come back to me, over and over again. That this was what she wanted. I was the luckiest man in the world.

There was only one piece of grit in my shoe, one fly in the ointment.

Before I had time to weigh up the pros and cons, I got dressed, fetched a torch and the stepladder, carried it over to the hatch. Even though the corridor was in bright daylight and last night's ghosts had been chased away, a viscous sense of dread ran through my blood, creating an internal tremor. I climbed five steps, gritted my teeth and pushed the hatch open.

It flipped over and hit the floor, making exactly the same sound as I had heard last night. I took a deep breath, swallowed and stuck my head up through the aperture. Nothing, absolutely nothing, apart from the little pile of sawdust. I climbed the two remaining steps so that I could heave myself up and into the loft.

It was chillier than the rest of the house, and the smell of fresh wood was strong. I shone the light of my torch into every dark corner beneath the pitched roof. Empty, empty. One of the beams ran across the opening in such a way that meant it would be possible to fasten a rope around it, then fall to one's death.

I felt a bit ridiculous, but I decided to do a thorough job. With the help of the torch, I inspected every square inch of the beam, searching for the tiniest sign of friction damage, the smallest trace of fibre that could bear witness to the rope used by someone hellbent on suicide. Nothing. The beam was as undamaged and spotless as the floorboards down below. I nodded to myself.

Okay. Time to let this go.

I climbed down, closed the hatch and put the ladder away. Enough. We had a new life in a new house to tackle, and nightmares and hallucinations were not going to be part of the inventory.

The previous evening we had made do with takeaway pizza because the kitchen wasn't set up. I set to work unpacking the three boxes of equipment we had taken to the neighbours' cottage and brought back. When I'd finished I made a start on our clothes. I became fully absorbed in the task and barely gave the dead girl a thought. She belonged to the past, and an imaginary past at that.

At noon the removal truck arrived, and there was even less time to speculate on the paranormal. I lifted, carried, unpacked, flattened boxes. Both Alice and I read a great deal, so our library alone filled twenty heavy boxes. Words have weight. I was looking forward to the two of us spending several evenings sorting our books and placing them on the built-in bookcases in the living room.

Everything had been carried indoors and the truck had left by the time Alice got home shortly after four. We worked side by side putting our lives back together, prepared a simple meal, then carried on emptying boxes until eleven. We fell into bed and barely managed to say good night before we fell asleep.

Annoyingly, I slept for half an hour then opened my eyes, wide awake. This happened sometimes, and I knew that it was going to be very hard to get back to sleep. I got up, went down to the kitchen and warmed some milk. I drank it while reading the crime novel I was currently enjoying. At one thirty I went back to bed. Yes, I did glance over at the hatch before I opened the bedroom door, but there was nothing to see.

And yet still sleep refused to come. I lay there in the semi-darkness staring at the second hand as it crawled around the clock face until two. Then a number flashed inside my head: 02:07. That was the time it had been when I looked at the clock last night, just before it happened.

No chance of sleep now. I lay on my side with my fists clenched between my thighs, staring at the minute hand as if it were a hypnotist's pendulum. 02:05, 02:06, 02:07… When the hand slipped over to 02:08 it was as if a balloon inflated to bursting point inside my chest slowly began to let out its contents with a soft hiss.

Oh God, the things we…

BAM! I heard the bang as the hatch flew open, it felt as if a shudder passed through the entire house, through floors and walls, up through the frame of our bed and into my body. I let out a strangled cough and began to shake, drew my knees up towards my chest and dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

No, no, please, don't let it… don't let her…

I lay in quivering expectation for perhaps seven, eight seconds when a rattling noise came from the loft, followed by the sound of rope fibres creaking and stretching, then almost simultaneously the crack of cervical vertebrae breaking. And then the dripping, the dripping.

No sleep tonight either.

They grab hold of one of her boots and drag her out. They beat her black and blue with the butts of their rifles and let the dogs bite her wherever they can. They spit and piss on her, call her a Jewish whore and an arsonist. As she lies sprawled on the ground with her limbs broken and battered, the soldiers begin to discuss the best method of execution for the bitch who had burned down their barracks. They agree that it would be fun to make her dance for them. Someone fetches a rope and throws it over a thick, straight branch. They fasten a noose around her neck, then two men hoist her up. Her feet twitch and jerk in an entertaining dance while the soldiers clap their hands, keeping time…