Harbor by John Lindqvist (no david read aloud TXT) 📗

He had just closed his eyes to try and go back to sleep when the pounding started again. Three powerful blows on the outside door. He sat up quickly on the sofa and looked around instinctively for a weapon. There was something horrible about those short, hard blows.

As if…as if…

As if someone had come to get him. Someone following an order. Someone who had the right to take him. His legs were ready for flightas he slipped off the sofa, shuffled across to the fire and seized the poker.

He stood there with the poker held aloft, waiting for the pounding to come again. There was no sound apart from the growing fury of the sea, the creaking as a half-broken branch twisted in the wind.

Calm down. Perhaps it’s just…

Just what? An accident, someone needing help? Yes, that was probably the most likely scenario, and here he was looking as if he was expecting an alien invasion. He took a few steps towards the outside door, still holding the poker in his hand.

‘Hello?’ he shouted. ‘Who’s there?’

His heart was pounding and it felt as if something was tightening around his head.

There’s something wrong with me.

Someone had run aground in their boat, their engine had failed in the strong wind and they had made their way up the rocks to his door, perhaps they were standing there now, soaked to the skin and freezing.

But why are they hammering on the door like that?

Without switching on any of the lights that might dazzle him, Anders crept over to the hall window and peeped out. Nobody was standing on the porch, as far as he could see. He switched on the outside light. There was nobody there. He opened the door and looked out.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

Maja’s swing was flying wildly to and fro in the wind, dry leaves whirled around the yard. He put the door on the latch and stepped out on to the porch, closed the door behind him and glanced around, listening intently.

He thought he could hear the sound of an engine from the direction of the village. A small outboard motor or a chainsaw. But who would take a boat out at this hour, who would be cutting trees in the middle of the night? It could be a moped, of course, but the same question applied.

Maja’s swing was disconcerting. The way it was moving it looked as if someone was sitting on it and swinging, someone he couldn’t see. A cold blast of wind swept across his chest and stomach as he took a few steps away from the door and called ‘Maja?’ out into the empty air.

No reply. No change in the frantic movement of the swing. He lowered the poker and ran his free hand over his face. He was still drunk. Drunk and wide awake. The sound of the engine—if that’s what it was—had stopped. All he could hear was the creaking of the broken branch.

He went back to the door and examined the outside. No damage from the knocking. The corners of his mouth twitched.

I know what this means.

His grandmother had told him about one occasion when her father had spent the night in a hut on one of the little islands out in the archipelago. He had been on ‘an errand’, which at the time was the euphemism for smuggling spirits. He had probably arranged to meet some Estonian cargo boat outside the three-mile limit towards dawn, and had decided it would be safest to spend the night out in the archipelago.

In the middle of the night he is woken by the sound of hammering on the door. It’s a simple cottage door, and the heavy blows are making the latch jump. He thinks it’s customs that are on his trail, but this time they have made their move too early. He has nothing they can confiscate, and he is perfectly happy to explain why he is spending the night here—he has brought his fowling piece with him for appearance’s sake. He is quite happy to open the door.

No one is there. There is not a soul in sight, and only his own fishing boat is moored by the jetty. However, to be on the safe side he picks up the money he is going to use to pay for the contraband and takes a walk around the island with the gun in his hand. He manages to frighten a couple of eider ducks out of a clump of reeds, but nothing else.

As dawn breaks he sets off for the meeting place. After a fewnautical miles he catches sight of the cargo ship at anchor just beyond the limit.

Then he hears an explosion.

At first he thinks it might be his own compression ignition engine, but he realises that the resonance of the explosion is too deep, that it has come from outside his boat. He picks up the telescope and looks over at the cargo boat he is to meet.

Something has happened to it. At first he can’t make out what it is, but as he gets closer he can see that it is listing and beginning to sink. By the time he reaches it there is no longer anything to reach. He scans the surface of the sea with the telescope, but there is nothing to be seen.

‘Four men and at least a thousand litres of schnapps went down that day,’ his grandmother’s father told her later. ‘That was what it wanted to tell me, whatever was banging on the door. That something bad was coming.’

Anders’ grandmother had retold the story using exactly the same words, and ever since it had been an expression that came into his mind from time to time when he wanted to describe something. It came to him now, as he examined the door and found not a trace of whoever had been hammering on it.

Something bad is coming.

He looked up at the pine trees, their swaying tops invisible in