Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin Page B

explosions had been heard all the way up to Stenvik. Nils had been woken by the dull thuds, and stared out of the dark window with his heart pounding; he could have sworn he heard the plane’s engines as it flew away from the island. A Messerschmitt, perhaps. He’d listened and longed for more explosions, bombs raining down all around Stenvik.
    But there had been no German invasion, and now it’s too
    late for Hitler to do anything. Nils has read the newspaper reports about the big surrender in Stalingrad earlier in the year, during the bitterly cold winter. Hitler seems to be on the losing side.
    Nils hears a horse neigh behind him.
    He opens his eyes and turns his head. There are several horses behind him. Four young animals, brown and white, have come up to the cairn, and now the animals trot in front of him in a curving line, their heads bowed, the dust whirling around their legs. Their hooves make almost no sound as they move across the grass.
    Horses. They roam at will across the alvar in herds. On a few occasions when Nils has been looking for hares rather than at the ground in front of him, his boots have sunk deep into the piles of shit they leave everywhere, like small brown memorial cairns.
    This little herd seems to be on the way to a definite goal, but when Nils gives a short whistle and pushes his left hand down into his rucksack, the leading horse slows and turns its head toward him.
    All the horses come to a halt and look at Nils. One lowers its head to nuzzle the yellow grass of the alvar, but doesn’t begin to graze. They are waiting for something tastier.
    Nils keeps his hand in the rucksack, rustling the empty greaseproof paper, while he places his right hand quietly beside him on the stones.
    The horses hesitate, sniffing the air and pawing the ground
    with their hooves. Nils rustles the paper again, and the dark brown lead horse takes a cautious sideways step toward him. The others follow slowly, their nostrils twitching slightly.
    The lead horse stops again, five yards away.
    “Come on, then, feeding time,” says Nils, smiling with anticipation.

You
    can’t get hares to come to you like this, only horses.
    The lead horse shakes its big head and gives a low, snorting neigh.
    Then he takes a couple of steps forward, and Nils swiftly lifts his right hand and throws the first stone.
    Good shot! The rough piece of limestone hits the animal just above its muzzle and it jerks backwards as if it’s had an electric shock. It backs away in terror, bumping into the horse behind, and spins in a blind panic as Nils stands up quickly and throws the second stone. This one is flatter and sharper and flies through the air like the blade of a saw.
    It hits the lead horse on the rump. He gives a highpitched,
    terrified neigh, and now all the horses grasp the danger. They turn and gallop away across the alvar at full speed, their hooves drumming on the ground. They disappear among the bushes.
    Nils panics slightly, and his third stone goes too far over to the left. That’s bad. He bends down again quickly, but the fourth throw is too short.
    The last he sees of the lead horse is a bloodied, glittering stripe along its right flank. The wound is deep, and probably won’t heal for several days. Nils will try to find the stone that cut the horse before he goes home, to see if there’s any blood on it.
    The noise of the horses’ mad flight dies away. Silence returns to the alvar. Nils breathes out and sits down again on the cairn, smiling as he thinks about the stupid, bewildered expression on the horse’s face when the first stone hit him.
    Fucking horses.
    Nils has shown them who rules the alvar around Stenvik. He
    is still smiling to himself as he picks up the rucksack again. Has his mother put any butter toffees at the bottom?
     
    It was morning at the residential home for senior citizens in Marnas. Gerlof “was sitting at his desk, his notebook open in front of him. He was holding a ballpoint pen, but