The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,64

you hear that …’ Minoo begins, then notices the hairpin Vanessa is holding. And she understands that the door wasn’t opened by someone inside the room. Vanessa, wonderful Vanessa, had picked the lock. She could have hugged her, but Vanessa has vanished again.

They enter the room. Minoo hardly dares to breathe. The moonlight filters in through the stained-glass windows, creating a dreamy effect. The coloured panes project irregular shapes across the floor. Unlike the rest of the house, there is a faint smell of life in here, of dusty paper and old leather. There is also a hint of burned wood and a pungent smell that Minoo can’t identify.

The room is the biggest one upstairs. There is a fireplace in here, too, but it appears to have been used frequently, judging from the blackened brickwork. A bookcase runs the full length of the opposite wall, with three stuffed birds perched on top – two different owls and a pitch-black raven with a razor-sharp beak. The contents of the shelves are protected by glass doors secured with big padlocks.

Most of the spines of the books are so worn that the titles are unreadable, but Minoo’s gaze lands on one – Unaussprechlichen Kulten – and she shudders, as if she had touched something ancient and thoroughly evil.

‘Where are you?’ she whispers.

‘By the desk. Look,’ Vanessa whispers, and a hand appears out of thin air to point at something.

Underneath a stack of books, in various stages of disintegration, lies an old map of Engelsfors. Next to it there is a strange iron object with a big screw in the middle. And two photographs, blown up from last year’s school photo. One of Elias. And one of Rebecka.

‘I’m going to take a picture of this so we can show the others,’ Vanessa whispers. She sounds tense.

Minoo goes to the shelf next to the fireplace. It’s stacked with brown glass jars, each labelled with a roman numeral. She picks one up at random, with the number XI, and unscrews the lid.

At first she can’t tell what the small desiccated spheres are.

Eyes.

She screws the lid back on tightly and puts the jar back where she’d taken it from.

Small flashes light up the room when Vanessa photographs the desk with her phone camera.

Suddenly Minoo glimpses movement near the ceiling. Her gaze falls on the birds. She stands motionless, waiting for a beak to open, a wing to flap. But they don’t budge. Of course not.

She forces herself to focus on the task at hand. Find clues. Evidence. She mustn’t let fear get the better of her. She has to think of Rebecka and Elias. She’s here for their sake.

She walks up to a little wooden table standing next to a well-worn leather armchair. A circular, dark red wooden box is lying on the table. Minoo shines her torch on it. The lid is divided into two halves by a vertical line. Depicted on one half is an ingeniously carved city with strange architecture that looks like nothing Minoo has ever seen before, and on the other, swirling galaxies and unidentifiable slithering shapes. In the middle a man holds his hands straight out at his sides as if he were forming a bridge between the two halves. The line cuts his body in two. His eyes are closed.

‘Minoo …’

Vanessa’s voice comes from just behind her. Minoo turns. Vanessa is visible again.

‘Look down,’ she says.

How had she missed those lines when she entered the room? Or have they appeared while she and Vanessa have been in there?

A big white circle is drawn on the floor. In the middle of it there is a smaller circle, approximately half a metre in diameter. Inside the smaller circle, there is a strange symbol. Minoo and Vanessa are standing inside the bigger circle.

Minoo bends down and runs her finger across the outer line. It feels greasy and warm. She snatches her hand away.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Vanessa mutters.

The air above the smaller circle starts to shimmer, as it does over tarmac on a hot summer day. Minoo tries to run, but she can’t move. She hears a dull pulsating sound in the ceiling above them.

A wave of hot air shoots through the room. The heat makes it difficult to breathe. The muffled pounding grows louder, causing a vibration in their chests like a heavy bass line.

‘I can’t move,’ Vanessa squeals.

Minoo struggles, but it’s as if her feet are glued to the floor. The heat causes sweat to trickle from her