The Caller Read Online Free Page B

recycled paper and was blank. He got a sharp knife from a drawer and tore open the envelope. Inside was a picture postcard of an animal: a brown-black creature with a large, shaggy tail. He held the postcard with utmost care, sniffed it and read the back:
    Norwegian mammals. Wolverine. Photographer Gøran Jansson .
    Then he read the short message: Hell begins now .
    He looked down at Frank, who had followed him like a shadow. ‘A wolverine,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that something?’
    He turned off the light in the kitchen and headed back to the bedroom. The dog lumbered to his mat and fell asleep. Sejer held the postcard up to the lamp on the bedside table.
    Sleepless for a long while, he stared at the wolverine. My face on the television, he thought, on three channels.
    My name at the bottom of the screen.
    A piece of cake to track me down.
    I’m in the phone book.
    Finally he switched off the bedside lamp. Thought of the child, Margrete, and of everything that had happened, and of everything that might happen.
    Hell begins now .

Chapter 4
    His mother had been drinking heavily throughout the day and now lay sleeping on the sofa, her mouth wide open. He could see the pale, dry roof. She wore nothing but a silky bathrobe; it was black and had fallen open at the front, so he could see one of her breasts.
    The brown nipple reminded him of a hard little turd.
    His name was Johnny Beskow, and he cut a slight figure. But he had a distinct talent for mischief, and now he was putting it to use. His eyes were cold and clear as he studied his mother. He let his disgust flow freely because it allowed him to feel something. When he felt something he was completely alive, and his blood pumped more easily throughout his body. He stared at her as she lay on the sofa, and he loathed her; his loathing took his breath away, made his cheeks burn. He loathed everything about her: her personality, her appearance, her behaviour. Her sounds, her smells. She was thin and pale and haggard. She was unkempt and pathetic, a drunk, and all he felt was disgust. The thought that he’d come from her made him feel sick; he could barely stomach it. Once, many years ago, she’d wailed and squeezed him out of her body in a long, desperate scream. Without happiness or joy or expectation.
    She had long dark hair and pale skin. Her age showed in a green web of lines at her temples and on her wrists. Her feet were small and narrow, with dry, hard skin and thick grey-white crusts on her heels.
    ‘Where does my father live?’ he said. ‘Tell me.’
    She obviously didn’t hear him, because she was deep inside a thick vodka haze, and there she would remain for hours. She would rise from the sofa only at nightfall, then blink a few times and look at him in surprise. As though she’d forgotten she had a seventeen-year-old son who also lived in the house.
    Johnny glanced at the wall, at a black-and-white photo of his mother. It had been taken when she was young. Each time he looked at this picture he would slide his eyes towards his mother on the sofa and think: What happened to her? The smiling woman on the wall, with her radiant eyes?
    As a child he’d often asked about his father. ‘Where is he?’ he’d prodded. ‘Where is my father? Is he abroad?’
    ‘Your father?’ she would say, her voice full of bitterness. ‘Don’t keep on about that. He’s long gone, over the hills and far away.’
    Johnny imagined the hills. A man ran through the picture in his mind, across a green hill only to disappear, before materialising on the next hilltop. He continued over the landscape in the same way, from hilltop to hilltop, until he was gone.
    He sat motionless in his chair, staring icily at his mother. Or, as he liked to think: I’m watching her with the eyes of a fish. I could wake you, if I wanted. One day, when I’ve reached my limits, I will shock you from your stupor. And you will get up from the sofa screaming, covering your face with your hands. I can