Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin

quickly finished peeing beside the path outside the boathouse, then hurried back into the warmth and locked the door behind her. Then she remembered there was no running water
    down here; she’d have to go up to the cottage to fetch some.
    Three days after the terrible storm, there came news from the northern tip of Oland: a ship had run aground at Bbda and had been smashed to pieces by the waves three days earlier. The vessel had come from the Estonian island of Osel. All those on board had perished in the storm, so the seaman that the fishermen in Stenvik had met and spoken to had been dead by that time. Dead and drowned.
    Grandmother had nodded at Julia in the twilight.
    A ghost of the shore.
    Julia believed the story; it was a good tale, and she believed all the old stories she’d heard in the twilight. Somewhere along the coast the drowned seaman was surely still wandering, lost and alone.
    Julia had no desire to go out again. She had no intention of fetching water; she’d just have to do without brushing her teeth tonight.
    There were thick red candles in the windows of the boathouse.
    She lit one with her cigarette lighter before she went to bed, and left it burning for a while.
    A candle for Jens. It was burning for his mother too.
    In the glow of the flame she made a decision: no glass of wine and no sleeping pills tonight. She would fight against her grief. It was everywhere anyway, not only in Stenvik. Every time she met a young boy on the street, she could still be overcome by a sudden surge of grief.
    When she saw her little address book lying on the bed beside Lena’s old cell phone, she picked up both of them on an impulse, flicked through the address book to find a number, and dialed it.
    The phone worked. Two rings, three, four.
    Then a muffled male voice answered. “Hello?”
    It was already tenthirty on a normal weekday evening. Julia
    had rung too late, but she had to continue now.
    “Michael?”
    “Yes?”
    “It’s Julia.”
    “Right… Hi, Julia.”
    He sounded more tired than surprised. She tried to remember
    what Michael looked like, but couldn’t get a picture in her head.
    “I’m on Oland. In Stenvik.”
    “Right… Well, I’m in Copenhagen, as usual. I was asleep.”
    “I know it’s late,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you a new clue has turned up.”
    “A clue?”
    “To our son’s disappearance,” she explained. “Jens.”
    “Right,” he said.
    “So I’ve come here … I thought you’d want to know. It probably isn’t an important clue, but it might…”
    “How are you, Julia?”
    “Fine … I can give you a call if anything else happens.”
    ‘You do that,” he said. “You still seem to have my number. But if you could call a little earlier next time, that would be good.”
    “Okay,” she said quickly.
    “bye, then.”
    Michael hung up, and the telephone was silent.
    Julia sat there with the cell phone in her hand. Okay. So she’d tested it out and found that it worked, but she knew she’d chosen the wrong person to call.
    Michael had moved on long ago, even before they separated.
    From the beginning he’d been certain that Jens had gone down to the water and drowned. Sometimes she’d hated him for that conviction, sometimes she’d just been crippled by envy.
     
    A few minutes later, when Julia had turned out the light and got into bed, still wearing her pants and sweater, down came the torrential rain that had been hanging in the air all evening.
    It started very suddenly, hammering rapidly and frantically
    on the tin roof of the boathouse. Julia lay there in the darkness, listening to small streams beginning to babble along down the slope outside. She knew the boathouse was safe; it had survived every violent storm up to now, and she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
    She didn’t hear the rain stop half an hour later. She didn’t hear any footsteps over by the quarry in the darkness; she didn’t hear a thing.
     
    OLAND, MAY 1943
     
    Nils Kant