Handling the Undead
John Ajvide Lindqvist
To Fritiof. Mah-fjou!
Solidarity is always directed at
‘one of us’ and ‘us’ cannot refer
to everyone…For ‘we’ assumes
someone who can be excluded,
someone who belongs to the others,
and these others cannot be animals
or machines, but people.
SVEN-ERIC LIEDMAN,
To See Oneself in Others
All that we hope is, when we go
Our skin and our blood and our bones
Don’t get in your way, making you ill
The way they did when we lived
MORRISSEY
There’s a place in hell for me and my friends
Contents
Prologue
13 August
14 August
14 August II
16 August
17 August
17 August II
Prologue
When the current reverses its course
Sveavägen 13 August 22.49
‘Salud, comandante.’
Henning held up the box of Gato Negro and toasted the metal plaque in the sidewalk. A single withered rose lay on the spot where Prime Minister Olof Palme had been gunned down sixteen years earlier. Henning crouched down and ran his finger over the raised inscription.
‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘It’s all going to hell, Olof. Down, down and further down.’
His head was killing him, and it wasn’t the wine. The people walking by on Sveavägen were staring into the ground too; some had their hands pressed against their temples.
Earlier in the evening it had simply felt like an approaching thunderstorm, but the electric tension in the air had gradually, imperceptibly, become more intense until it was now all but unbearable. Not a cloud in the night sky, though; no distant rumble, no hope of release. The invisible field of electricity could not be touched, but it was there; everyone could feel it.
It was like a blackout in reverse. Since around nine o’clock, no lamps could be switched off, no electrical appliances powered down. If you tried to pull out the plug there was an alarming crackling sound and sparks flew between the outlet and the plug, preventing the circuit from being broken.
And the field was still increasing in strength.
Henning felt as though there was an electric fence around his head, torturing him, pulsing with shocks of pure pain.
An ambulance went by with sirens blaring, either because it was on a dispatch or simply because no one could turn them off. A couple of parked cars were idling on the spot.
Salud, comandante.
Henning raised the wine cask to face level, tilted his head back and opened the tap. A stream of wine hit his chin and spilled down over his throat before he managed to divert it into his mouth. He closed his eyes, drinking deeply while the spilled wine trickled down over his chest, mingled with his sweat, and continued on.
The heat. God almighty, the heat.
For several weeks all the weather charts had shown enormous happy suns plastered across the entire country. The pavement and buildings steamed with heat accumulated during the day and even now, at almost eleven o’clock, the temperature was stuck around thirty degrees.
Henning nodded goodbye to the Prime Minister and traced his assassin’s steps toward Tunnelgatan. The handle of the wine cask had broken when he lifted it out through an open car window and he had to carry it under his arm. His head felt larger than usual, swollen. He massaged his forehead with his fingers.
His head probably still appeared normal from the outside but his fingers, they’d definitely swelled up from the heat and the wine.
This damned weather. It’s not natural.
Henning steadied himself against the railing, walking slowly up the steps cut into the steep footpath. Every unsteady step rang through his throbbing skull. The windows on both sides were open, brightly lit, music streaming from some. Henning longed for darkness: darkness and silence. He wanted to keep drinking until he managed to shut down.
At the top of the stairs he rested for a couple of seconds. The situation was deteriorating. Impossible to say if he was the one getting worse or if the field was growing stronger. It wasn’t pulsating now; now it was a constant burning pain, squeezing him relentlessly.
And it wasn’t just him.
Not far from him there was a car parked at an angle to the sidewalk. The engine idling, the driver’s side door open and the stereo playing ‘Living Doll’ at full blast. Next to the car, the driver was crouched in the middle of the street, his hands pressed against his head.
Henning screwed his eyes shut and opened them again. Was he imagining things or was the light from the apartments around him getting brighter?
Something. Is about to. Happen.
Carefully, one step at a time, he made his way across Döbelnsgatan; reached the shadow of the chestnut trees in the Johannes cemetery, but there he collapsed. Couldn’t go on. Everything was buzzing now; it sounded like a swarm of bees in the crown of the tree above his head. The field was stronger, his head was compressed as if far under water and through the open windows he could hear people scream.
This is it. I’m dying.
The pain in his head was beyond reason. Hard to believe such a little cavity could pack so much pain. Any second now his head was going to cave in. The light from the windows was stronger, the shadows of the leaves cast a psychedelic pattern over his body. Henning turned his face to the sky, opened his eyes wide and waited for the bang, the explosion.
Ping.
It was gone.
Like throwing a switch. Gone.
The headache vanished; the bee swarm stopped abruptly. Everything went back to normal. Henning tried to open his mouth to let out a sound, an expression of gratitude perhaps, but his jaws were locked, cramped shut. His muscles ached from having been tensed for so long.
Silence. Darkness. And something fell from the sky. Henning saw it the moment before it landed next to his head, something small, an insect. Henning breathed in and out through his nose, savouring the dry smell of earth. The back of his head was resting on something hard and cool. He turned his head in order to cool his cheek as well.
He was lying on a block of marble. He felt something irregular under his cheek. Letters. He lifted his head and read what was written there.
CARL
4 December 1918 – 18 July 1987
GRETA
16 September 1925 – 16 June 2002
There were more names further up. A family grave. Greta had been married to Carl, but she’d been widowed these past fifteen years. Well, well. Henning imagined her as a small grey-haired woman, wrestling her walking frame through the door of a grand apartment. Pictured the inheritance wrangle that would have broken out a few weeks ago.
Something was moving on the face of the marble and Henning squinted at it. A caterpillar. A spotless white grub, about as big as a cigarette filter. It looked troubled, writhing on the black marble and Henning felt sorry for it, poked it with his finger to flick it onto the grass. But the caterpillar didn’t budge.
What the hell…
Henning brought his face up close next to the caterpillar, poked it again. It might as well have been cemented to the stone. Henning extracted a lighter from his pocket, and flicked it on for a better look. The caterpillar was shrinking. Henning moved so close that his nose almost brushed the caterpillar; the lighter singed a few hairs. No. The caterpillar was not shrinking. It was just that less and less of it was visible, because it was drilling down into the stone.
Naaah…
Henning rapped his knuckles against the stone. It was definitely stone all right. Smooth, expensive marble. He laughed and spoke out loud, ‘
No, come on. Come on, caterpillar…’
It was almost completely gone now. Only one last little white knob. It waved at Henning, sank down into the stone as he watched and was gone. Henning felt with his finger where it had been. There was no hole, no loose fragments where the caterpillar had dug through. It had sunk down and now it was gone.
Henning patted the stone with the flat of his hand, said, ‘Well done, little feller. Good work.’ Then he took his wine and moved up toward the chapel in order to sit on the steps and drink.
He was the only one who saw it.
13 August
What have I done to deserve this?
Svarvargatan 16.03
Death…
David lifted his eyes from the desk, looking at the framed photograph of Duane Hanson’s plastic sculpture ‘Supermarket Lady’.
A woman, obese, in a pink top and turquoise skirt, pushing a loaded shopping trolley. She has curlers in her hair, a fag dangling from the corner of her mouth. Her shoes are worn down, barely covering the swollen, aching feet. Her gaze is empty. On the bare skin of her upper arms you can just make out a violet mark, bruising. Perhaps her husband beats her.
But the trolley is full. Filled to bursting.
Cans, cartons, bags. Food. Microwave meals. Her body is a lump of flesh forced inside her skin, which in turn has been crammed into the tight skirt, the tight top. The gaze is empty, the lips hard around the cigarette, a glimpse of teeth. The hands grip the trolley handle.
And the trolley is full. Filled to bursting.
David drew in air through his nostrils, could almost smell the mixture of cheap perfume and supermarket sweat.
Death…
Every time his ideas dried up, when he felt hesitant, he looked at this picture. It was Death; the thing you struggle against. All the tendencies in society that point towards this picture are evil, everything that points away from it is…better.
The door to Magnus’ room opened and Magnus emerged with a Pokémon card in his hand. From inside the room you could hear the agitated voice of the cartoon frog, Grodan Boll, ‘Noooo, come ooooon!’
Magnus held out the card.
‘Daddy, is Dark Golduck an eye or a kind of water?’
‘Water. Sweetheart, we’ll have to talk about this later…’
‘But he has eye attack.’
‘Yes, but…Magnus. Not now. I’ll come when I’m ready. OK?’
Magnus caught sight of the newspaper in front of David.
‘What are they doing?’
‘Please, Magnus. I’m working. I’ll come in a minute.’
‘Ab…so…lut filth. What does that mean?’
David closed the newspaper and took hold of Magnus’ shoulders. Magnus struggled, trying to open the paper.
‘Magnus! I’m serious. If you don’t let me work now I won’t have any time for you later. Go into your room, close the door. I’ll be there soon.’
‘Why do you have to work all the time!’
David sighed. ‘If you only knew how little I work compared to other parents. But please, leave me alone for a little while.’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
Magnus wriggled out of his grasp and went back to his room. The door slammed shut. David walked once around the room, wiped his underarms with a towel and sat back down at the desk. The window to the Kungsholmen shoreline was wide open but there was almost no breeze, and David was sweating even though his upper body was bare.
He opened the newspaper again. Something funny had to come of this.
Absolut filth!
A giveaway promotion featuring adult magazines and liquor; two women from the Swedish Centre Party pouring vodka over an issue of Hustler as a protest. Distressed, read the caption. David studied their faces. Mostly, they looked belligerent, as if they wanted to pulverise the photographer with their eyes. The spirits ran down over the naked woman on the cover.
It was so grotesque it was hard to make something funny out of it. David’s gaze scoured the image, tried to find a point of entry.
Photograph: Putte Merkert
There it was.
The photographer. David leaned back in the chair, looked up at the ceiling and started to formulate something. After several minutes he had the bare outline of a script written in longhand. He looked at the women again. Now their accusing gazes were directed at him.
‘So; planning to make fun of us and our beliefs are you?’ they said. ‘What about you?’
‘Yes, OK,’ David said out loud to the newspaper. ‘But at least I know I’m a clown, unlike the two of you.’
He kept writing, with a buzzing headache that he put down to a nagging conscience. After twenty minutes he had a passable routine that might even be amusing if he milked it for all it was worth. He glanced up at Supermarket Lady but received no guidance. Possibly he was walking in her footsteps, sitting in her basket.
It was half past four. Four and a half hours until he was due on stage, and there were already butterflies in his stomach.
He made a cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette and went in to see Magnus, spent half an hour talking about Pokémon, helped Magnus to sort the cards and interpret what they said.
‘Dad,’ Magnus asked, ‘what exactly is your job?’
‘You already know that. You were there at Norra Brunn once. I tell stories and people laugh and…Then I get paid for it.’
‘Why do they laugh?’
David looked into Magnus’ serious eight-year-old’s eyes and burst into laughter himself. He stroked Magnus’ head and answered, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Now I’m going to have some coffee.’
‘Oh, you’re always drinking coffee.’
David got up from the floor where the cards lay spread out. When he reached the door, he turned around to look at his son, whose lips moved as he read one of his cards.
‘I think,’ David said, ‘that people laugh because they want to laugh. They have paid to come and laugh, and so they laugh.’
Magnus shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘No,’ David said, ‘I don’t either.’
Eva came back from work at half past five and David greeted her in the hall.
‘Hi sweetheart,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Death, death, death,’ David replied, holding his hands over his stomach. He kissed her. Her upper lip was salt with sweat. ‘And you?’
‘Fine. A little bit of a headache. Otherwise I’m fine. Have you been able to write?’
‘No, it…’ David gestured vaguely at the desk. ‘Yes, but it isn’t that good.’
Eva nodded. ‘No, I know. Will I get to hear it later?’
‘If you like.’
Eva left to find Magnus, and David went to the bathroom, let some of the nervousness drain out of him. He remained on the toilet seat for a while, studying the pattern of white fishes on the shower curtain. He wanted to read his script to Eva; in fact, he needed to read it to her. It was funny, but he was ashamed of it and was afraid that Eva would say something about…the ideas behind it. Of which there were none. He flushed, then rinsed his face with cold water.
I’m an entertainer. Plain and simple.
Yes. Of course. He made a light dinner—a mushroom omelette—while Magnus and Eva laid out the Monopoly board in the living room. David’s underarms ran with sweat as he stood at the stove sautéing the mushrooms.
This weather. It isn’t natural.
An image suddenly loomed in his mind: the greenhouse effect. Yes. The Earth as a gigantic greenhouse. With us planted here millions of years ago by aliens. Soon they’ll be back for the harvest.
He scooped the omelette onto plates and called out that dinner was served. Good image, but was it funny? No. But if you added someone fairly well known, like…a newspaper columnist, say—Staffan Heimersson—and said he was the leader of the aliens in disguise. So therefore Staffan Heimersson’s solely responsible for the greenhouse effect…
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘OK…’
Eva waited. David shrugged. ‘No, that was it. Basically.’
‘Mum?’ Magnus was done picking the tomato slices out of his salad. ‘Robin said that if the Earth gets warmer the dinosaurs will come back, is that true?’
His headache got worse during the game of Monopoly, and everyone became unnecessarily grumpy when they lost money. After half an hour they took a break for Bolibompa, the children’s program, and Eva went to the kitchen and made some espresso. David sat in the sofa and yawned. As always when he was nervous he became drowsy, just wanted to sleep.
Magnus curled up next to him and they watched a documentary about the circus. When the coffee was ready, David got up despite Magnus’ protests. Eva was at the stove, fiddling with one of the knobs.
‘Strange,’ she remarked, ‘I can’t turn it off.’
The power light wouldn’t go off. David turned some knobs at random, but nothing happened. The burner on which the coffee pot sat gurgling was red-hot. They couldn’t be bothered doing anything to it for the moment, so David read his piece out while they drank the heavily sugared espresso and smoked. Eva thought it was funny.
‘Can I do it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You don’t think that it’s…’
‘What?’
‘Well, going too far. They’re right, of course.’
‘Well? What does that have to do with it?’
‘No, of course. Thanks.’
Ten years they had been married, and hardly a day went by that David did not look at Eva and think, ‘How bloody lucky I am.’ Naturally there were black days. Weeks, even, without joy or the possibility of it, but even then, at the bottom of all the murk, he knew there was a placard that read bloody good luck. Maybe he couldn’t see it at that moment, but it always resurfaced.
She worked as an editor and illustrator of non-fiction books for children at a small publishing company called Hippogriff, and she had written and illustrated two books herself featuring Bruno, a philosophically inclined beaver who liked to build things. No huge successes, but as Eva once said with a grimace, ‘The upper middle classes seem to like them. Architects. Whether their children do is less certain.’ David thought the books were significantly funnier than his monologues.
