Free Hell Fire by Karin Fossum Page B

often as she had the chance, and he never tried to stop her.
    â€œOr,” Eddie continued, “the electric chair. Two thousand volts to the head, with a big wet sponge under the helmet. They can choose how they want to die. What would you choose?”
    Eddie looked at his mother and smiled. “I’m curious about everything,” he explained, “and it’s fun finding out about stuff.”
    â€œDeath and destruction are hardly fun,” Mass scolded. “Find something else.”
    â€œDid you know,” Eddie continued enthusiastically, “when you’re hanged, everything goes black after seven seconds? It’s an underrated method, I think.”
    He finished what he was doing and got up from the chair. He walked heavily across the room, plonked down on the sofa, and picked up the paper. He turned to the crossword on the second-to-last page and started to chew his pencil as he read. He liked the taste. He was well trained after all these years, and he seldom needed to erase anything. When he did, he sniffed it because it smelled sweet. He knew most of the compilers, knew what they were interested in: science, history, geography and politics, the human body. Astronomy. The odd abbreviation and the occasional made-up word that didn’t actually exist. Cheating nonsense, was what he thought then, no fun at all. But now he was stuck. Gas escape, two words, fifteen letters.
Was a gas explosion the same as a gas escape? Only twelve letters. Volcano explosion? Sixteen letters. He wrote it down with some uncertainty but soon realized that it had to be wrong. Because that involved magma, which turned to lava when it ran down the mountainside. But where would you find gas? In nature. And presumably in heavy industry. He carried on with the crossword and got the first letter of the second word, which was a “p.” And the last letter was “r.” Then he got an “m” and an “s.”
Solar prominence
. The great flames on the surface of the sun that can reach for thousands of miles into space. He pondered the next clue: seam
.
Six letters, the second of which was “u.”
Suture
. Thread, six letters—that was hard. The first was “c” and the fifth was “u.”
Catgut
. When he was halfway through the crossword, he decided to keep the rest for later. So he turned to the obituaries.
Fredrik was only twenty-two when he chose to leave life. The service will end at the grave. No flowers please.
Twenty-two, he thought. He must have had a miserable life. Eddie couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to take their own life, to die when they didn’t need to.
    â€œDon’t forget to take Shiba out,” his mother called from the kitchen, where she was peeling root vegetables. Eddie walked out to the hall to get his jacket and pulled a hat down over his curls. He put a leash on the fat dog and went out into the snow. Before he turned onto the road, he stopped and admired his snow lantern, which was still standing. Every evening after dark, he lifted off the top snowballs and lit a new candle.
    Shiba stopped as soon as they were out on the road. She went down on her haunches and did her business. When Eddie tried to make her continue walking, she resisted, but he hauled her over to the mailbox all the same. He opened it and took out the mail: two bills, electricity and telephone. Just as he was about to turn around, their neighbor, Ansgar, came out of the house. His cat, Kennedy, slipped out behind him, a dirty, scraggy yellow cat with slit eyes. Eddie didn’t like Ansgar at all, and he didn’t like the horrible cat either. That cat, he often thought to himself. One day, I’m going to lure him inside. And I’m going to boil him in a large pan on the stove until the meat’s falling off the bones. Then I’ll leave the carcass on Ansgar’s step. I’ll hide behind a tree and watch his horror. No doubt