Harbour

He ran with long strides and with every step his wet socks froze on to the ice a fraction before they were pulled free, which give him an excellent grip, and he was gaining on them, he was gaining on them. Before he set off on the water they had been twenty metres ahead of him. Now the distance was shrinking a little with every step he took. The moped was not travelling fast, and he would be able to catch up with it.

And then?

He wasn't even thinking about that.

The moon was high in the sky, creating a silvery path that fell diagonally across the causeway of ice. The beam of the lighthouse on

Gavasten was flashing directly towards him. That was where they were heading, but they weren't going to get there. He would take them. Somehow he would take them.

He had run approximately three hundred metres from the shore. He could no longer feel his feet, they were nothing but a pair of frozen lumps moving him forward. He was so close to the moped that he could see individual strands of Henrik's hair in the moonlight, and he was trying to urge his body to make one final spurt when something fell from the platform.

Anders slipped, stumbled, fell to his knees on the ice and shone the beam of his torch on the bundle in front of him as the moped continued on its way, out to sea.

Maja, Maja, Maja…

It was her, there was no doubt. When he shone the torch he could see the patch on the chest of her snowsuit. Maja had stuck a knife in it when she was having difficulty putting it on, and Cecilia had mended it with a patch with a picture of Bamse on it.

'Sweetheart? Poppet?'

He crawled over to her and pulled her close. When he had the snowsuit in his arms he screamed.

She had no head.

What have they done, what have they done, what have they…

Everything went black and he collapsed on top of the little body that was beyond all help. He fell right on top of her, and it didn't matter. She had no head, no hands, no feet.

As the darkness tied a knot around his head he heard the gulls in the distance. Gulls that were flying at night. Maja's body crunched beneath his, was squeezed together.

He curled up on the ice and raised his head slightly, shone the beam of the torch on the neck of the snowsuit. There was no body inside. He reached out weakly and touched what was there instead. Seaweed. It was filled with wet bladder wrack.

He lay completely still for a moment digesting this fact as the screams of the gulls drew closer. He felt something cold trickle over his ear and raised his head, drew his legs up under him and managed to get to his feet with the snowsuit in his arms.

A hundred metres out to sea he saw the moped swing around. The headlight was facing him like an evil eye, and it was getting closer.

A trap. It was a trap.

He turned and staggered a few steps towards the shore. The surface beneath his feet squelched and splashed. The ice he had run along earlier had begun to melt. He covered perhaps another ten metres, and then his feet were under water and the ice bridge w.is swaying beneath him.

He clutched the snowsuit tightly and kept going. After a few metres more the ice broke beneath him and he sank down into the water. He had no weapons, and only the moon could see him. He lay in the cold sea and the headlight kept on coming closer.

Clever. Clever of them.

One tiny, tiny detail they had overlooked. The bladder wrack they had used to fill the snowsuit was acting as a kind of a float. He didn't sink immediately. He gained another minute's respite before the cold and the water took him.

Movement was almost impossible. His body had been frozen already, now it felt as if his skeleton itself was clinking with splintering ice as he began paddling towards the shore out of a pure and meaningless instinct for self-preservation.

The moped passed him and Henrik and Bjorn braked, blocking, his way. He saw them only vaguely, as if a film of ice had formed over his eyes. Behind them hundreds of thin silhouettes moved against the starlit sky.

The gulls want to join in, too.

A kind of peace sank into his body, a hint of warmth. It was over now. His efforts had been in vain, but it didn't matter any more. Ii had given him something. He had at least got to see her snowsuit once again. That was something. He would have it with him in his watery grave. The only sad thing was that the gulls would tear at him too, perhaps even peck out his eyes before he…

'Come out,' screamed Henrik as a cloud of birds enveloped him, 'find the one that…' The high-pitched screams of the gulls filled the night as they dived on the boys on the moped and ripped at their hair, pecked at their faces.

Bjorn stood up on the platform, hitting out at the savagely flapping birds, but for every bird he managed to chase away, there were five more who settled on him, stabbing at his clothes, driving their beaks into his inhuman flesh.

Anders' eyelids twitched and all he wanted to do was sleep, sink down. It was warm now, and a beautiful spectacle to watch. The white wings of the gulls shimmering in the moonlight, their ferocious defence of him, one small human being.

Thank you, beautiful birds.

His left hand was clutching Maja's snowsuit tightly and the movements of his legs stopped as Henrik and Bjorn shot away on the moped, disappearing in the direction of Gavasten with the flock of seagulls after them. Anders paddled feebly with his right hand, just to stay afloat long enough to enjoy the beautiful sight for a little while.

Good night, little lapping waves. Good night little lapping waves…

He thought it was Henrik and Bjorn coming back, having shaken off the gulls. But the sound of the engine that was getting louder was different, somehow. His frozen thoughts moved slowly around in his head as he began to sink. The water had just begun to cover his eyes and run into his mouth when he worked out that it was probably Simon's engine.

The engine slowed and switched to neutral, and Anders just had time to take in a mouthful of cold water before a hand grabbed his hair and pulled him upwards.

Then he was lifted into the boat in a way that was impossible to understand. It was as if the water threw him upwards, away from itself, and he tumbled on to the deck.

He lay on his back looking up at the stars and Simon's face. A clenched fist was laid on Anders' brow and before he fainted he

thought he could see the water lifting from his body in clouds of steam, could feel a wave of real heat sweeping through his blood. Then he saw and felt nothing more.

Strange Ways

So carry me. Carry me all the way home.

Carry me up the path,

round the side of the house, over the threshold, into the house.

Lift me inside in your hands opened gently like eyelids.

Mia Ajvide -If a Girl Wants to Disappear