Tears started to pour down Flora’s cheeks, but she didn’t bother wiping them away. She pointed in the direction of the garage.
‘I’ve seen it. I know it. Every single one of those people, what used to be people lying in that fucking box, every single one of them has been condemned to…an eternity of nothingness, to the closest thing you can get to hell, for all I know, and I don’t understand why it’s being done, why those bastards are doing it, but that’s what they’re up to and I don’t intend to let it continue if I can do even the smallest thing to stop it!’
Flora suddenly closed her mouth, snivelled and rubbed her eyes. She sat down on the armrest of her chair and put her face in her hands. Roland had listened open-mouthed to Flora’s diatribe. He blinked rapidly a couple of times and said, ‘Bloody hell…’
Kalle placed a hand on Flora’s knee and asked, ‘But what can you do?’
Flora took a deep, sobbing breath and let it out in a sigh. ‘They don’t know. They’re scared. I can convince them. To…give themselves up.’
‘To…?
‘To death.’
Silence fell. The word death has a way of making other words seem inadequate. There isn’t much to add. Roland cleared his throat as he worked himself up to speak, but Flora got in first. She looked up at Kalle, and he saw a little girl.
‘Kalle, I didn’t choose this. It’s been laid on my shoulders. And I can’t…’ Flora searched for the right words, and Kalle supplied the phrase she had used before: ‘Run away from it.’
‘No.’
Roland cleared his throat again, and this time he managed to get it out: ‘I just wanted to say that…if that’s the way things are…I just wanted to say that…’ He sat up straight and placed his hand over his heart. ‘I’m in. I’m with you all the way.’
Flora looked at Roland as he sat there swaying on the sofa, doing his best to look solemn.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But maybe not tonight.’
‘You only have to say the word. When my services are… whatever.’
Flora nodded, grimacing slightly to stop a smile from reaching her lips. Kalle ruffled his dreadlocks, rubbed his fingers against his scalp as if to erase a dark woolliness inside. It didn’t help much. The problem was still there.
‘How are we going to get in?’ He interrupted Flora before she could answer. ‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess: No idea.’
Five minutes later they were sitting in the van. Kalle felt more or less as if he had been drinking all night, had two hours’ sleep then climbed a mountain. The hand that reached for the ignition key, the foot that depressed the clutch were objects he could manipulate, but they didn’t seem to belong to his body. If they were stopped by the police, he wouldn’t have the strength to blow into the bag.
They stopped at an all-night petrol station and bought six chocolate biscuits and a cup of coffee each. Flora could only manage two biscuits, so Kalle shovelled four into his mouth in the space of five minutes, then swilled down the gooey mess with coffee. After a while the sugar hit his bloodstream and he felt better. His hands were attached to his arms once more, and the road looked more like the E20 than a video game. He said, ‘If they’ve found out about the missing box we’ve had it. And they probably have.’ When Flora didn’t say anything, he went on, ‘We could be facing prison and stuff.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Flora. ‘I think they want to keep this outside…the system. If they can. That’s what I think.’
‘That’s what you think?’
‘Yes.’
Kalle snorted. ‘Maybe we’ll have the fucking secret police after us. Or something. Military intelligence, or whatever it’s called. Maybe the doctors have their own secret police.’
Kalle laughed and glanced at Flora. ‘That’s it. We’ll have the medical secret police after us.’
Things felt no less desperate. But at least it was vaguely amusing.
They stopped at the beginning of the track leading across the field. A couple of hundred metres away they could see the floodlights at the gate. Kalle leaned over the steering wheel and gazed across towards the Heath. He felt as if he were in a film. A war film rather than a horror flick. He wasn’t keen on either. Screwball comedies were his thing. There were undeniably elements in all this that could be described as screwball. But comedy? No. Not really.
‘Kalle,’ said Flora. ‘You have to make your mind up.’
‘About what?’
‘About whether you want to do this or not.’
‘I drove here, didn’t I?’
Flora shook her head. ‘I mean whether you really want to. Not just because you’re being kind to me, or doing your duty or whatever. That won’t work. You have to do it because you want to. Not because I tell you to. I can’t handle that.’
Kalle sat staring at the fenced-in compound. It all seemed so impossible. He asked, ‘They end up in hell, you say?’
‘Something similar, yes.’
Kalle tried to imagine it. He thought for a moment. Then he covered his face with his hands and kept them there for a long time. He took them away and snuffled.
‘What is it?’ asked Flora.
‘I was just thinking about my mum. If I’d…’ He broke off. ‘OK. Yes. OK. It’s not your responsibility. It’s ours.’ He looked at her. ‘That’s what you meant, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. That’s it then. I’m in.’
Flora leaned across and kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’
Kalle gave a wry smile. ‘If we’re in this together, you can’t say that.’
‘I’m saying it anyway.’
Flora crawled into the back of the van; Kalle started the engine, began drumming inside his head and moved off towards the gates. The same guard as before emerged from the small booth. He looked as if he’d just woken up. Kalle wound down the window. From the way the guard was moving and the expression on his face Kalle sensed that, as he had hoped, the theft of the box hadn’t been discovered. Yet.
The guard made a show of looking at his watch, then at Kalle. Kalle nodded towards the compound.
‘My father called me. I left something behind.’
‘Like what?’
‘A box.’
Kalle couldn’t come up with anything better, given that he couldn’t use his brain. The guard stroked his chin. ‘What are they up to over there?’
‘No idea. I just shift boxes. Big boxes, small boxes.’
The guard grinned and went back inside. The gates opened.
The worst thing about the drumming, about controlling his thoughts was the fact that he couldn’t let his emotions break through. The relief and triumph Kalle felt could not be allowed to rise to the surface, and he hammered frenetically on his mental drum kit as he drove through the compound.
The lights were still on in the basement. He knew what to do. Without consulting Flora. There was only tonight, and after that…
No idea.
He switched off the engine. The thought field was weaker at this distance from the big community hall, and he risked lowering the beat as he turned to Flora.
‘Come on.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’ll see.’
They got out of the van and walked over to the door. Kalle tried the handle, and the door opened. The room looked the same as it had done a few hours earlier. Kalle guessed that the doctor, or whatever he might be, was behind one of the doors in the long wall.
Flora looked around and her hand flew up to her head. She whispered, ‘It hurts.’
Kalle squeezed his eyes tight shut. ‘Yes.’
One of the doors flew open and the doctor emerged. He was wearing a white coat and his eyes were veiled, covered with a film of concentration or agitation. He was wearing latex gloves, and they were messy. When he caught sight of Kalle and Flora, he stopped dead.
‘What the hell are you doing here? You’re not allowed in here!’
The doctor quickly
pulled off his gloves and threw them on the floor; one hand slipped into his pocket and he took out a mobile phone. Kalle reached him in two strides. He clenched his huge fist and held it in front of the doctor’s face.
‘Think about it,’ he said.
The doctor looked up from the phone, looked at Kalle’s fist. He thought about it. The he lowered the mobile and glanced from Kalle to Flora, who had just closed the door behind them.
‘What do you want?’
Kalle grabbed the doctor’s shoulders. They were like apples in his hands, and he squeezed hard. He leaned down towards the other man’s face and said, ‘You don’t need to worry about that. The important thing is this: I can knock you down, or I can decide not to knock you down. What’s it to be?’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Of course I am. What’s it to be?’
Kalle squeezed harder and the doctor pulled a face as something made a crunching sound. He snapped, ‘What the hell do you want?’
Kalle sighed and clenched his fist again, measuring the distance for a blow. The doctor’s hands flew up to his face and he nodded quickly.
‘Yes, yes, yes. So what…do you want me to do?’
Kalle looked around and spotted the bed. ‘Lie down.’
As the doctor crawled onto the bed, Kalle noticed that, conveniently, there were leather straps attached to the sides. He and Flora worked together to secure the man’s arms and legs. The doctor kept on shaking his head as if he just couldn’t believe this was happening. His voice was dripping with scorn as he said, ‘You’re going to be in so much trouble. You have no idea what you’re doing.’
He carried on like this as Kalle rummaged through a drawer and found several packs of disposable syringes. He read the labels.
‘Pentymal?’ he asked the doctor. ‘What do you think? Is this any good if you want to shut someone up?’
The doctor closed his mouth. Kalle found a roll of gauze bandage; he tore off a piece, rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the doctor’s mouth, then wound a length of the material around his head. Kalle surveyed his work and said, ‘Tell me if you can’t breathe. Or…think it.’
Flora was standing over by the internal doors. They had bolts on the outside, but the one on the door through which the doctor had come was pushed to one side. Kalle went over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder; she was trembling. There was so much adrenaline pumping through his body that he had forgotten to be afraid. When Flora’s trembling passed through his hand, he remembered exactly why they were there. He licked his lips and swallowed a lump of viscous saliva.
Flora’s eyes were huge and frightened as she opened the door.
The room was bigger than it seemed from the outside—twenty square metres at least. There were no windows, just bare cement walls, and the same merciless fluorescent light as in the outer room flooded the space, illuminating the source of the scream reverberating inside both their heads.
Three beds were arranged in a row. In the corner stood a box like the one they had taken. Next to one of the beds was a trolley laden with surgical instruments: knives, forceps, saws and scalpels, gleaming in the white light. That was where the doctor had been working when they arrived.
On the first bed lay the remains of an old woman. Long, grey hair that had perhaps been beautiful once upon a time hung halfway down to the floor. The woman’s eyes were cloudy blue, staring straight at them. Her arms and legs had been hacked off, leaving only greyish, dead flesh and white bone visible. The trunk was fastened to the bed with a thick leather strap.
On the second bed lay a hollow man. What had once been a big, round body was now reduced to a shell. The man still had his arms and legs, but his guts had been removed completely. Rubber straps with clamps on the end held his belly and chest cavity open, and his ribs stuck out as if he were a ship under construction. His entrails had been scraped out, removed and thrown in the box in the corner.
On the third bed, where the doctor had been working, lay a woman’s head attached to a spinal column and very little else. A number of dark red strands ran from the severed neck, presumably blood vessels or nerve fibres, which had been gathered up in a knot. It hung down to one side, making the head tilt slightly. The woman was younger than the others, but it was difficult to determine her age; her face was sunken and grey, and her eyes…
Kalle had clenched his jaws together so tightly that he could hear the grinding inside his head. He was no longer capable of prising them apart, he stood there frozen as if he had cramp, and he felt, he knew:
They’re alive.
He didn’t know what was true and what was false when it came to the reliving, what could be called life, but the pain and fear pouring from the mutilated bodies were perfectly clear: they were alive, and were in some way aware of what was happening to them.
The grip of the cramp eased. He regained control of his body, and it let him down. His legs gave way and he collapsed. Everything went black, and the blackness was like water on a burning body. He received it with gratitude.
When he opened his eyes he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing at first, why the world looked so strange. Everything was hanging from the ceiling. He saw Flora standing by the beds, her lips moving silently. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. Wave after wave of nausea coursed through him, emerging only as tainted air.
Something’s happening, something’s…happening…
He blinked, tried to understand. The atmosphere in the room had thickened. The cloying stench of stale blood had intensified, the light grew brighter, the walls seemed to be moving closer and he heard a noise. It started like a distant whisper, but quickly increased in volume to a whining, piercing howl that would have made him press his hands to his ears, had he been able to do so. As it was he just lay there gasping with his mouth open as the searing noise turned into a metal blade slicing up the air around his head.
He wanted to yell at Flora, tell her to be careful, but the sound paralysed him, and his face was slowly pushed in the opposite direction, as if by an invisible force, until he could no longer look at her. The last thing he saw was a tall, thin figure suddenly standing next to Flora, reaching out its arms towards the human remains on the beds.
Kalle closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut as tightly as he could. The noise went right through his head, bouncing around inside his skull, and he no longer knew if it was coming from inside or outside. He had no awareness of time or space, was incapable of thinking or not thinking.
Then it abated. Quickly, much more quickly that it had come, the terrible noise faded away and the room was silent. Completely silent. Kalle opened his eyes. Flora was standing alone next to the beds, her arms hanging limply by her sides.
Silent.
It was so…silent. Kalle slowly heaved himself up from the floor and looked around. He didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to see what was on the beds again. He got to his knees and looked around.
So silent.
Then he understood. It was the people on the beds. Their screams had fallen silent. They were no longer there. He coughed once, briefly and harshly, mostly to check that he was still alive. Flora came over to him. Strands of hair were stuck to her forehead with perspiration, and she looked exhausted. But calm. She hadn’t been involved in something horrible, just something that was incredibly hard work.
Kalle asked, ‘Is it…over?’ and Flora nodded.
Without looking, Kalle gestured towards the beds. ‘Was that… death, that thing?’
‘Yes. Or…your version of it. What did you see?’
‘I don’t know. Something tall. Thin.’
Kalle got up. He was still taking care not to look in the direction of the beds. Instead he gazed down at Flora, who seemed transparent, fragile, as if she might break if you touched her. He stared deep into her eyes, searching for a clue. There was nothing to be found, so he asked, ‘Who are you?’
The corners of her mouth twitched. ‘No one specia
l.’
She pressed herself against him, her cheek resting on his chest. He placed his hand on her head and she was an ordinary, exhausted girl. He put his arms around her, but couldn’t help thinking that something alien, something…godlike was working inside that head, which was just an ordinary head that almost fitted into his hand.
I’ve had a responsibility bestowed upon me.
He bent down and kissed her sweaty brow.
When they came out of the room, the doctor was staring at them. Flora went over and untied the gag. As if the words had been penned in, just waiting to leap out, he started straightaway, ‘What have you done! What have you done, you fucking lunatics!’
Flora did something Kalle had never expected. She slapped the doctor across the face. Hard. His mouth snapped shut. Flora hit him again. She placed her mouth close to his ear.
‘Listen to Dr Mengele. Who the fuck is the lunatic around here? Do you realise what you’re doing?’
Kalle just stood there open-mouthed. He had never seen Flora like this, wouldn’t have believed she had it in her. But she was angry now, more than angry. Furious. The doctor turned his head towards the inner room; he too was trembling with rage.
‘You’ve killed them. You’ve destroyed everything I—’
Flora hit him across the mouth with the palm of her hand, as if to block up the source of something disgusting. His lip split open and blood trickled down the doctor’s chin. Kalle touched Flora’s arm. She shook off his hand and bent over the doctor; a hint of fear showed in his eyes.
‘You’re the one who’s killing them.’
‘They’re already—’
Flora raised her hand to deliver another blow, and the doctor didn’t finish what he had been intending to say.
‘I want to know…’ said Flora. ‘I want to know why you’re doing this.’
The doctor’s mouth had begun to swell, and when he tried a scornful grimace he looked more like a tragic clown.