Free Dreamless by Jorgen Brekke

They’d slipped out, and Julie hadn’t replied. She’d just turned on her heel, put Bismarck on his leash, and left for their evening walk.
    That had opened Elise’s eyes. I can’t keep on this way, she thought. So she had crept into bed alongside Ivar, who was already asleep. I’m a terrible mother, she had whispered to him as he dreamed. He had merely grunted and kept on sleeping. So Elise had lain in bed, listening for the door, the humming in the hallway, the dog shaking the snow off his coat. But she had fallen asleep before Julie came back.
    But I was awake for a long time, wasn’t I? she thought now.
    She went into the hall and opened the bathroom door. Everything was just as she’d left it last night. No towels or dirty clothes tossed on the floor. And the top was on the toothpaste tube.
    Without thinking, she went to the front door and pulled it open, staring out at the yard. It was not yet daylight. The frosty vapor issuing from her mouth made the world seem hazy, and she stood there, peering vacantly into the white space between the big trees.
    Then out of old habit she looked down and found the newspaper lying on the doorstep. She read the front-page headline, which was about that awful thing that had happened on Ludvig Daaes Gate. It had shocked the whole neighborhood. For two days afterward she had forbidden Julie to go out alone after dark. But her daughter had refused to obey, which led to more arguments. So Elise had finally relented, though with a bad feeling in her stomach.
    With a rising sense of alarm she went into the kitchen. The counter was clean, without a single crumb on it. In the living room, Bismarck wasn’t sprawled on his pillow. For a moment she stood there, motionless, as if it were a great effort to draw a breath. Slowly, taking off-tempo steps, she went over to her daughter’s bedroom. It was at the other end of the living room. An idiotic question suddenly occurred to her: Why did they sleep so far apart? For a moment she wondered if she were going crazy. Then she thought, This is just a dream. A horrible nightmare.
    She stood outside her daughter’s bedroom door for what seemed like a long time. Then she gathered her courage and opened the door.

 
    9
    In his mind, Grälmakar Löfberg relived the murder again and again, which was no more than a few days old. Sometimes he dwelled only on a single blow, a drop of blood, or a flash in her eyes. Other times, like now, he recalled the entire course of events and the atmosphere that had settled over everything. The blows, the sounds, the smell of blood and sweat, the dim light in the basement storeroom. He thought about everything. It was the only thing that gave him any sense of calm.
    He heard his own voice from that night with Silje Rolfsen.
    “Sing!”
    Then came the images.
    The knife blade made a little hollow in the skin of her neck but did not cut all the way through. It wouldn’t, since he held it very still, and she didn’t move.
    “Sing!” he repeated, taking the knife away so she could breathe. He turned it and set the point against her larynx.
    Then she sang. He got up, taking the knife with him, and left the storeroom, locking the door behind him. He lay down on the mattress in the hall and listened to her singing. She had memorized every note and every verse. He heard her voice through the thin door, muted, like sound drifting in from someone else’s apartment. For a while he thought he was getting drowsy, that he was drifting off to sleep. But his eyes refused to close. Then he heard the fly buzzing inside his head.
    It wasn’t working like it was supposed to.
    Finally he got up slowly, leaned down, and put on a CD. It was Bellman. He turned up the volume. Then he went back into the storeroom. She had stopped singing. She stood there, her feet apart and her head bowed toward the floor.
    He grabbed her by the hair and threw her against the wall. Her scream made him feel calmer. He slapped her cheek.
    “Please