Free Itsy Bitsy by John Ajvide Lindqvist Page B

eyes for a couple of seconds before he went inside.
    She’s up there now. That’s where she is. We’ll go home and we’ll file this with all those other times she’s disappeared for a while and then come back.
    Next to the staircase was a system of weights and chains, the cupboard containing the light’s mechanism secured with a padlock. He tugged at it and established that it was locked, that Maja couldn’t be in there. He went slowly up the stairs, calling her name. No reply. There was a rushing sound in his ears now, and his legs felt weak.
    He reached the room containing the reflector. No Maja.
    Barely half an hour ago he had photographed her here. Now there was no trace of her. Nothing. He screamed, ‘ Maaaajaaaa! Out you come! This isn’t funny any more!’
    The sound was absorbed by the narrow room, making the glass vibrate.
    He walked all the way around the room, looked out across the ice. Far below he could see Cecilia following the track that had led them here. But the red snowsuit was nowhere to be seen. He was gasping for air. His tongue was sticking to his palate. This was impossible. This couldn’t be happening. Desperately he stared out across the ice in every direction.
    Where is she? Where is she?
    He could just hear the sound of Cecilia’s voice shouting the same thing as he had shouted so many times. She got no reply either.
    Think, you idiot. Think.
    He looked out across the ice again. There was nothing to interrupt his gaze, no cover at all. If there had been holes in the ice, they would have been visible. However good you are at hiding, you still have to have a place to hide.
    He stopped. His eyes narrowed. He could hear Maja’s voice inside his head.
    Daddy, what’s that?
    He went over to the spot where she had been standing when she asked the question, looked in the direction where she had pointed. Nothing. Only ice and snow.
    What was it that she saw?
    He strained to try and see something, then realised he was still wearing his rucksack. He pulled out the camera and looked through the viewfinder, zoomed in and panned across the area where she had been pointing. Nothing. Not a hint of another colour, not the slightest nuance in the whiteness, nothing.
    His hands were shaking as he dropped the camera back in his rucksack. Out on the ice there was only white, white, but the sky had grown a little darker. It would soon be afternoon, it would be dark in a couple of hours.
    He put his hands to his mouth, stared out into the vast emptiness, heard Cecilia’s distant cries. Maja was gone. She was gone.
    Stop it, stop it.
    And yet a part of him knew that it was so.
     
    It was just after two when Simon’s telephone rang. He had spent the last hour fiddling with old conjuring props that his hands, stiff with rheumatism, could no longer use. He had considered selling them, but had decided to keep them as a little family treasure.
    He answered the telephone on the second ring. He’d hardly managed to say hello before Anders interrupted.
    ‘Hi, it’s Anders. Have you seen Maja?’
    ‘But surely she’s with you?’
    A brief pause. A quivering exhalation at the other end of the line. Simon sensed that he had just extinguished a hope. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘She’s gone. I knew she couldn’t have got back to the land, but I thought—I don’t know, Simon, she’s gone. She’s gone.’
    ‘Are you at the lighthouse?’
    ‘Yes. And she can’t…it’s just not…there’s nowhere…but she isn’t here. Where is she? Where is she?’
    Two minutes later Simon had pulled on his outdoor clothes and kicked the moped into life. He rode out on to the ice where Elof was sitting on a folding chair, gazing down into the hole he had made with Simon’s drill. He looked up as he heard the moped approaching. Simon braked.
    ‘Elof—have you seen Maja, Anders’ daughter?’
    ‘No—what, here? Now?’
    ‘Yes. In the last hour or so.’
    ‘No, I haven’t seen a soul. Or a fish, come to that.