The Nightmare

Björn can feel his hands shaking as he pulls off his T-shirt and flowery, knee-length shorts. He’s younger than her, his body is boyish, almost hairless, and his shoulders have already caught the sun.

‘Now I want to look at you,’ she says.

He blushes and walks over to her with a big smile.

‘Can’t I?’

He shakes his head and hides his face against her neck and hair.

They start to kiss, very gently, just stand close together kissing each other. Penelope feels his warm tongue in her mouth and a feeling of dizzy happiness courses through her. She forces herself to stop smiling so she can carry on kissing. They start to breathe faster. She feels Björn’s erection growing as his heartbeat quickens. They lie down in the grass, finding a flat spot between the tussocks. His mouth traces its way down to her breasts and brown nipples, then he kisses her stomach and parts her thighs. When he looks at her it seems to him that their bodies are glowing with inner light in the evening sun. Suddenly everything is intensely intimate and sensitive. She’s already wet and swollen when he starts to lick her, very softly and slowly, and she has to push his head away after a while. She presses her thighs together, smiles and blushes. She whispers to him to come closer, pulls him to her, guides him with her hand and lets him slide into her. He breathes heavily in her ear and she looks straight up at the pink sky.

Afterwards she stands naked in the warm grass, stretches, walks a few steps and stares off towards the trees.

‘What is it?’ Björn asks languidly.

She looks at him. He’s sitting on the ground naked, smiling up at her.

‘You’ve burned your shoulders.’

‘Every summer.’

He gently touches the red skin on his shoulders.

‘Let’s go back – I’m hungry,’ she says.

‘I just need to go for a swim.’

She pulls her bikini bottoms and jogging pants back on, pulls her shoes on and stands there with her bikini top in her hand. She lets her eyes roam across his hairless chest, muscular arms, the tattoo on his shoulders, his careless sunburn and bright, playful eyes.

‘Next time you get to lie underneath,’ she smiles.

‘Next time,’ he repeats cheerfully. ‘You’re already a convert, I knew it.’

She laughs and waves at him dismissively. He lies back and stares up at the sky. She hears him whistling to himself as she walks through the trees towards the steep little beach where the boat is moored.

She stops to put her bikini top on before she goes down to the boat.

When Penelope goes on board she wonders if Viola is still asleep in the aft-bunk. She decides to put a pan of new potatoes on to boil with some dill tops, then go and wash and get changed. Rather strangely the aft-deck is wet, as if it has been raining. Viola must have swabbed it down for some reason. The boat feels different. Penelope can’t put her finger on what it is, but suddenly her skin comes out in goosebumps. It’s almost completely silent, the birds have stopped singing. There’s just a gentle lapping sound as the water hits the hull, and the faint creak of the rope around the tree. Penelope suddenly becomes very conscious of her own movements. She goes down the steps to the stern, and sees that the door to the guest cabin is open. The light is on, but Viola isn’t there. Penelope notices that her hand is shaking when she knocks on the door of the little toilet. She opens it and looks inside, then goes back up on deck. Further along the bay she sees Björn on his way down to the water. She waves to him, but he doesn’t see her.

Penelope opens the glass door to the saloon and walks past the blue sofas, teak table and helm.

‘Viola?’ she calls quietly.

She goes down to the galley and takes out a saucepan, but puts it down on the stove when her heart starts to beat even faster. She looks in the bathroom, then carries on to the cabin at the front where she and Björn always sleep. She opens the door and looks round in the gloom, and at first thinks she’s looking at herself in the mirror.

Viola is sitting perfectly still at the top of the bed, her hand resting on the pink cushion from the Salvation Army.

‘What are you doing in here?’

Penelope hears herself ask her sister what she’s doing in the bedroom, even though she’s already realised that something isn’t right. Viola’s face is oddly pale and wet, her hair hanging in damp clumps.

Penelope goes over and takes her sister’s face in her hands, lets out a moan, then a scream, right close to her face.

‘Viola? What is it? Viola?’

But she’s already realised what’s happened, what’s wrong – her sister isn’t breathing, there’s no warmth in her skin, there’s nothing left in her, the flame of life has been extinguished. The cramped room gets darker, closes in around Penelope. She hears herself whimpering in an unfamiliar voice and stumbles backwards, pulling clothes onto the floor, then hits her shoulder hard on the doorpost when she turns and runs up the steps.

When she emerges onto the aft-deck she gasps for breath as if she were close to suffocating. She coughs and looks round with a feeling of ice-cold terror in her body. A hundred metres away on the shore she can see a stranger dressed in black. Somehow Penelope realises how it all fits together. She knows it’s the same man who was sitting in the military inflatable in the shadow under the bridge when they went past. She realises that the man in black killed Viola, and that he isn’t finished yet.

The man is standing on the shore waving to Björn, who is swimming twenty metres out. He’s shouting, holding his arm up. Björn hears him and stops, treading water, then turns to look back towards land.

Time almost stands still. Penelope rushes to the helm and digs about in the toolbox, finds a knife and runs back to the aft-deck.

She sees Björn’s slow strokes, the rings spreading out across the water around him. He’s looking curiously at the man. The man beckons him towards him. Björn smiles uncertainly and starts to swim back to shore.

‘Björn!’ Penelope screams as loudly as she can. ‘Swim away from shore!’

The man on the shore turns towards her, then starts running towards the boat. Penelope cuts through the rope, slips over on the wet wooden deck, gets to her feet, hurries to the helm and starts the engine. Without looking she raises the anchor and puts the boat in reverse.

Björn must have heard her, because he’s turned away from shore and has started to swim towards the boat instead. Penelope steers towards him as she sees the man in black change direction and start running up the slope towards the other side of the island. Without really thinking about it, she realises that the man has left his black inflatable in the bay to the north.

She knows there’s no way they can outrun that.

She slowly turns the big boat and steers towards Björn. She yells at him as she gets closer, then slows down and holds a boathook out to him. The water’s cold. He looks scared and exhausted. His head keeps disappearing below the surface. She manages to hit him with the point of the boathook, cutting his forehead and making it bleed.

‘You have to hold on!’ she shouts.

The black inflatable is already coming into view at the end of the island. She can hear its engine clearly. Björn is grimacing with pain. After several attempts he finally manages to wrap his arm around the boathook. She pulls him towards the swimming platform as fast as she can. He grabs hold of the edge and she lets go of the boathook and watches it drift off across the water.

‘Viola’s dead,’ she screams, hearing the mixture of despair and panic in her voice.

As soon as Björn has climbed up onto the steps she runs back to the wheel and accelerates as hard as she can.

Björn clambers over the railing and she hears him yell at her to steer straight towards Ornäs.

The roar of the inflatable’s motors is rapidly approaching from behind.

She swings the boat round in a tight curve, and the hull rumbles beneath them.

‘He killed Viola,’ Penelope whimpers.

‘Mind the rocks,’ Björn warns, his teeth chattering.

The inflatable has rounded Stora Kastskär and is speeding across the flat, open water.

Blood is running down Björn’s face from the cut on his forehead.

They’re rapidly approaching the large island. Björn turns to see the inflatable some three hundred metres behind them.