The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

in his underpants, leaning out. When I put my arms around him to pull him inside I saw movement on the lawn outside. Two small, hunched bodies dressed in rags were running erratically towards the forest.

The door is open.

In my despair I pulled too hard and Robin lost his balance. I fell over backwards and he landed on top of me without making a sound.

“Robin? Robin? Are you all right?”

I sat up, holding him in my arms. His expression was distant and he was looking straight through me. I shook him gently.

“Robin? What happened?”

His head moved feebly from side to side, and when I checked him over I saw four long scratches on one forearm, scratches made by fingernails.

I picked him up and carried him into the kitchen. As I approached the door of the living room I let out a sob and held onto him more tightly. I inched forward two steps and peered in through the doorway. Above my mattress and the stained duvet cover there was nothing but an empty hook on the ceiling.

“Robin? It’s okay now. They’ve gone.” It was as if another voice was speaking through my mouth as I added, “The door is closed.”

Robin didn’t respond, and I gently laid him down on my bed and tucked him in. His wide-open eyes were staring at the hook. Could he see something I couldn’t? The stale smell of sweaty feet still lingered in the room, and had completely obliterated the scent of Annelie. I looked at the hook with loathing. Couldn’t the bastard have showered before he hanged himself?

“Dad. ”

I stroked Robin’s hair, his cheeks. “Yes, son?”

“Dad, get rid of it. Get rid of it.”

I nodded and licked my lips. They had a sour taste, like sweaty feet. When I got up from the bed I realised I was still naked. I pulled on my dressing gown, went into the kitchen, rummaged in the drawer where I kept tools for indoor use and dug out a pair of heavy pliers.

The first thing I did was to unscrew the hook from the ceiling. I didn’t know if it would help, but I didn’t want the accursed thing in the house. When I opened the living room window Robin whispered, “No, no, don’t open it.” I hurled the hook as far as I could, closed the window and said: “It’s fine.”

“Get rid of it, Dad. You have to get rid of it. I can’t.”

“What do you mean, son?”

“The piano. Get rid of it. I don’t want to.”

I was on the point of saying that it would have to wait until tomorrow because I hadn’t the strength to carry or even drag the piano on my own, but then I realised there might be a simpler solution.

When I stood in front of the open lid looking at the keyboard, the notes were playing inside my head. By now I had heard them so many times I knew them by heart. I was able to make out a melody, and what’s more, when I looked at the keys it was as if some of them glowed, flashed as the notes passed through my mind. I can play, if I want to. My hands were irresistibly drawn towards the piano.

Dum, di-dum, daa.

Just once. Or twice. Or as many times as necessary.

When I placed my right hand on the keyboard to begin playing, there was something in the way. A pair of pliers. I was holding a pair of pliers in my hand. A pair of pliers. I worked the handles and saw the sharp jaws opening and closing. Bite through it. Snip snip.

I blinked a couple of times and pushed the notes out of my head, concentrating on the pliers. Then I opened the top of the piano and whispered, “Sorry, Annelie.”

It took me ten minutes to snip through every single string inside the piano, and when I hit a key to check, the hammer thudded against empty space and the note didn’t play. The piano was dead.

Finally I fetched a roll of duct tape and wound it round and round the window catches so that it would be impossible to open them without tools. When I turned away the piano was staring at me; the notes popped into my head and my fingers itched.

I laughed out loud, sat down at the piano and played through the entire melody, but the only sound was the soft, dull thud of the hammers.

“Try that, you bastard,” I said, without any idea of who the bastard in question was.

Robin was still awake when I went back into the living room. When I told him what I’d done he nodded and said, “But I don’t want to sleep in there.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, lying down beside him on the narrow bed. “You can sleep here for as long as you like.”

He reached for my hand and tucked my arm around his chest. I held him and rested my forehead against the back of his head. When five minutes had passed and he still hadn’t relaxed, I said: “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Robin mumbled something into the pillow, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.

“What did you say?”

Robin turned his head a fraction to the side; his voice was so faint that I had to put my ear right next to his mouth in order to pick up the words.

“Those children came. They want me to find them. He killed them.”

I glanced up at the hole in the ceiling and shuddered as I thought about the pale, shapeless face that had been hanging there. Puffy cheeks covered with stubble. I had no doubt whatsoever that it was the murderer I had seen. The murderer who had spoken to me. Bengt Karlsson. He took it badly.

“I don’t want to do it, Dad.”

“Of course you’re not going to do any such thing. How could you?”

“Because they told me. Where they are.”

Bearing in mind the insanity in which my son and I found ourselves, perhaps it won’t sound too strange if I say that it was a relief to think that here at least was something to hold onto, something I recognised.

While Annelie was still alive we had watched all the Emil in Lonneberga films. Robin had been frightened by Krosa-Maja’s talk of mylings, the ghosts of murdered children who have not been given a proper burial.

Mylings. If someone had told me a week ago. but never mind. I took it seriously. I accepted that this was what we were dealing with, and so I was relieved that it had a name. Something that has a proper designation can probably be dealt with.

I asked: “So where are they, then?”

Robin whispered, “In the forest.”

“Did he bury them in the forest?” Robin shook his head. “So what did he do?”

Robin carried on shaking his head as he buried his face in the pillow. I tugged gently at his shoulder.

“Robin? You have to tell me. I don’t know what we can do, but. you have to tell me. I believe you.”

Suddenly he curled himself into a ball with his bottom sticking up in the air, just like he used to do when he was asleep when he was very small. Then he yelled into the pillow, “It’s so horrible!”

I stroked his back and said: “I know. I know it’s horrible.”

Robin shook his head violently and shouted: “You haven’t a clue how horrible it is!” He was breathing hard through the pillow, in and out, in and out, and his body kept on heaving those deep, convulsive breaths as I helplessly carried on stroking his back.

I was afraid he was actually going over the edge in some way. It would hardly be surprising. I too felt that I was very close to the edge in terms of what my mind could cope with.

Suddenly Robin’s body grew still and he rolled over onto his back. In a thin, expressionless but perfectly clear voice he addressed the ceiling: “The man found a rock. A big rock. He dug a hole next to the rock. Then he tied up the child so that it couldn’t move. Then he carried the child to the hole. He had one of those iron bar things. He had it with him so that he could roll the rock down into the hole. On top of the child. But the child’s head was sticking out so that the man could listen to the child screaming. And the child screamed because it hurt so much. Lots of bones got broken when the rock rolled on top of the child. The man sat and listened to the child screaming. He sat and listened right up until it died. It might have taken all night. Then he dug a little more and moved the rock so