Free Strindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin Page A

going to come.
    He looked over at the notebook by the telephone where he’d written down the researcher’s number in smeary pencil. Maybe he should call again … maybe he should … but wait …
a pencil
?
    Erik pulled himself along the bench, toward the telephone, and got hold of the notebook and pencil. He began to wind the next torn-off page around the shaft of the ankh.
    When the thin paper was pulled tight enough, he took the pencil and let its blunt tip begin to stroke back and forth across the designs.
    A flash just behind his neck made the pencil jerk in his hand, and he reflexively turned toward the window. He could barely make out the fence through the haze, and he started to count: a hundred one, a hundred two, and the crack came at a hundred three, two humongous pot lids struck together. The thunderstorm would come right over the house if it continued like this.
    When Erik’s gaze returned to the notebook paper wrapped around the shaft of the ankh, he saw that the pencil must have continued to sketch entirely of its own accord. In the light layer of pencil lead, a row of meandering symbols stood out:

    A dry feeling spread through his mouth, and now he watched as the pencil began to move faster and faster, as though it were guided by someone else’s hand.
    When the first page was full, his hand—even though he truly didn’t want to see more—automatically ripped another sheet from the notebook and twirled it into place around another part of the shaft, and the tip of the pencil began to work again. It wasn’t possible to stop it.

    The pattern was everywhere: the shaft, the crossbar, the eye; and soon sheets with snaking symbols lay spread out all over the table.
    Erik shook his head in order to rid himself of the feeling of paralysis, of being only some sort of …
onlooker
?
    Then there were two flashes in quick succession, and in the subsequent thunder he finally managed to stop—
drop the pencil
—and slowly, slowly, get his hands to start moving once again the way he wanted them to.
    And what he wanted most of all right now was to shuffle the sheets of paper with their winding symbols together into a pile in the middle of the table. In the hazy light it was difficult to really see what he was doing. The only thing he knew for sure was that all of this had to go away immediately.
    Erik crumpled the bunch of scribble-covered papers between his hands and carried it all over to the stove. There he sank down into a crouch, opened the door, and threw it in. He lit a match, guiding the burning flame, and let it go. At first nothing happened; then there was a crackle, and the paper burned.
    He sank down until he was sitting, hugged his knees, and saw before him how that damn ankh actually disappeared in the lake, not just an impossible thought, it ought to be done now, right away; he never wanted to touch it again. Maybe it was just the liquor, but over by the table there had—
    The sudden pain caused him to jerk his head to the side.
    What was that?
    He felt the back of his head with his hand.
    Why, there was something that … had
burned,
like an electricshock, from the base of his neck like a projectile up to his forehead, and as Erik turned around toward the kitchen table and the barred windows:
Was there someone there?
    He could see only a faint reflection of himself; the sheets of rain had blurred the windows into a mirror. Another flash of lightning, and now the thunder was directly above him.
    He stepped to the shelter of the wall alongside the window and the wooden bench and carefully widened the gap in the curtain so he could peer out.
    S
omeone there?
    A t first he couldn’t even see the yard through all the misty fog, but then his eyes adjusted themselves, and he could make out the contours of the sunporch.
    Erik let his eyes wander down the drainpipe toward the waterlogged grass, farther along toward the nearest gatepost, and there was …
a hand?
    A black figure rising up over the gate in