Free The Invisible Man from Salem by Christoffer Carlsson

help.’
    I inspect the note.
    â€˜Whose number is it?’
    â€˜Someone I know very well,’ is all Levin says.

VII
    I spent a lot of time on my own. I don’t know why it turned out like that; my friends were around, but for some reason I didn’t really spend much time with them outside school.
    Vlad and Fred used to hit me. It started when I was ten, and went on for a couple of years. At first I didn’t hit back, and when I did they were so incensed that the beatings just got worse. So I stopped fighting back. That was best for everyone. Vlad was the worst. Fred could sometimes look at me with something approaching empathy; I wouldn’t really know what to call it. But Vlad never did. He seemed to genuinely hate me.
    I never told anyone. I was ashamed. It always happened outdoors, with few or no potential witnesses around; despite my determined efforts to avoid certain places, they always seemed to find me, as though they could track me, follow my scent. They stole my cap, my money. Then they would normally hit me in the stomach or on the arm — never on the face, where it would show. I told my parents that I’d lost the cap, that I’d spent the money on sweets, that I’d fallen awkwardly at school and had strained my stomach muscles, that I’d been arm-wrestling a classmate and strained something. I didn’t understand why it was happening, or why they were picking on me, but I assumed that I must have done something wrong, that it was just the way life was.
    One day in early spring, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I’d finished school early but forgotten a book in my locker. My mum made me go back and get it. As I was walking from the bus stop up to Rönninge Middle School, I heard someone make a noise. It was a stifled sort of sound, like someone breathing through pain.
    The school stood like a giant among the small houses and the trees that were just getting their leaves back, and I looked around, wondering where the noise had come from. The back of the school was just a stone’s throw further on, the goods entrance. Daily deliveries arrived there at the loading bay. After nightfall you would sometimes hear heavy music coming from a ghetto-blaster, mumbling voices and sudden laughter, beer cans opening and lighters clicking away. If you got close enough, you could catch the sweet smell of hash smoke.
    This was something else.
    On the loading bay, with their backs to me, were two guys I didn’t recognise. They didn’t look like pupils at the school — more like high-school students. I stood behind one of the trees so they couldn’t see me, but ensuring I still had a good view of them. The two guys had trapped someone between them; they were standing close together, each with one hand on the brick wall. Whoever it was had nowhere to go.
    â€˜You little cunt.’
    One of them hit him, and I heard the choking sound of someone who’d lost all the air in his lungs, and saw his torso fall forward between them. That’s when I saw Vlad’s face, red and contorted, gasping for air.
    â€˜One more,’ the other one said.
    The first guy pushed him up against the wall and piled into his stomach, making him fall forwards again. I carried on watching them, although I didn’t really need to in order to understand what was going on. Vlad might have snogged or maybe even shagged someone he shouldn’t have, or borrowed money he couldn’t repay, although I doubted it. Everyone had seen this sort of thing before. It happened because it could happen; people treated each other like this because they could. Because they were bored. Because no one cared.
    â€˜Wallet,’ the one who had hit Vlad said, holding out his hand.
    â€˜What are you playing at?’ said the other one.
    The first guy turned his head and looked around, making me take a step back behind the tree.
    â€˜We might as well take it,’ he said. ‘This