The Annals of Fear

Mello had hired a motorbike from Västerås Airport. He wanted the freedom of movement, especially after the long wait and subsequent flight from Stansted. He took the E18 west into Närke and was amazed to find that he hadn\'t even reached Örebro after two hours. Nevertheless, the scenery had been mildly pleasant. All green fields rolling away into pineforests, dotted here and there with red-timbered buildings. The roads were reasonably straight. It took considerably longer to find Mullhyttan and, when he did, Mello\'s first stop was to find a public toilet and somewhere to eat. His stomach had been growling since Arboga.



Settling down with a tortilla, Mello\'s \'phone rang before he could even take a bite. He sighed, unzipping his bag to locate his skull-decorated \'phone. A couple at the next table gave him strange looks, but Mello just bowed his head and answered the call. "Yes, Matt."



"What did he say?"



Mello sniffed, "I\'ve only just reached Mullhyttan. I haven\'t seen him yet."



"Oh." Matt replied and there was a faint clicking of his mouse. "I found out some more." Matt was still at home in England. Mello planned to be back with him by bedtime. "This is from a fansite in Mexico. Close as damn it to an eye-witness report. She says..."



"Who\'s she?" Mello asked, trying to negotiate holding the \'phone and eating the tortilla at the same time.



There was a pause. "She\'s just calling herself Amorita. She\'s on a forum about it. Her brother killed himself." Matt waited until Mello grunted. "Are you eating?"



Mello chewed and swallowed. "Yes."



"Some nice Swedish chocolate?"



Mello glanced at the remains of the tortilla. "No. I fancied putting something Spanish in my mouth."



"Really?" Matt was grinning. Mello could hear it. "Shit! I\'m in the wrong country!"



"Unlucky." Mello forked another piece. "What did this Amorita have to say?"



"What are the Swedish men like?"



Mello peered around at the mainly middle-aged clientele of the cafe. He neither could or wanted to imagine Matt fancying any of them. "Blond."



"Oh!"



"Amorita wrote..."



Matt laughed. "Ok. She said that her brother had become obsessed with death after hearing the album. She described him becoming extremely introverted and paranoid, looking around himself like there was something on his tail. If he left the room, he often raced back in again, where there was company, looking terrified."



"Of what?"



"He would never say. Their mother tried to get him to speak to her, but he would never say. He did keep asking her, Amorita this is, to check the window. He wanted to see if anything was watching the house."



Mello quickly chewed the contents of this fork. "Anything? Not anyone?"



"She definitely writes \'anything\'." Matt paused, skim-reading it again. "This went on for two days, then he killed himself."



"Try to contact Amorita. See if she has anything to add." Mello scanned the street. It had occurred to him that he really ought to be getting on. "I\'m going to find this house. Don\'t call me, until I call you, unless it\'s something relevant to my interview here."



"Ok." There was another click. "Loads of porn shops?"



Mello frowned. "What?"



"There."



"Where?"



Matt laughed. "You\'re in Sweden, Mello. I thought the streets would be full of people making out."



Mello rolled his eyes. "Porn? For a start, I\'m in the Bible belt and secondly...." He lowered his voice, as the people at the next table glared at him. "Matt, go away. Te amo. Bye." He nodded towards the couple, then cut the connection, collected his belongings and left.



The house was picked out in sunlight, standing alone in a spacious, well-kept garden. Its outer walls were painted yellow with ornate white trim. The window surrounds were, unusually for the neighbourhood, Jugend style. There were flower-boxes underneath two of the windows, with trimmed, pretty flowers peeping above. Beside the Art Nouveau porch, a few ivy saplings were just starting to be teased through a trestle against one wall. In short, it all appeared too clean and quaint to be the home of a death metal band. Nevertheless, Mello parked his bike and took his helmet off, before climbing the four steps to the front door.



His knock was answered by a dark-haired man in his late thirties. He surveyed Mello with pale, blue eyes. "Ja?"



"Jörgen Åström?" Mello asked with a charming smile. "Mello." He knew that his name would be enough. They had already exchanged e-mails, wherein the man had agreed to meet Mello to discuss the album. However, the Swede looked uncertain. Mello continued, jogging his memory, "Du sa att vi kunde prata om albumet du spelade in."



"Jag spelade inte in något album." Jörgen whispered, denying that he had made any album. However, he stepped back and indicated that Mello should enter. The house was more spacious inside than it had seemed from without. Many of the tilings were 19th century. It felt bright and airy. Mello noted this with a glance, then returned his bewildered attention back to the Swede. Jörgen took the hint and clarified, "Men jag känner dem som gjorde det." He had known the musicians. Mello relaxed again, turning at a sound from the room to their left. There was a blonde woman sitting on a settee, looking across at them. "Ebba, det här är Mello."



Mello inclined his head towards her. "Ma\'am."



Ebba didn\'t speak, but Jörgen closed the front door behind them and warned, "Det är otur att prata om den musiken."



Mello hadn\'t encountered this aspect of the album\'s mythology. He had heard repeatedly that people died after listening to it, but not that it was bad luck to merely mention it. He displayed his most winsome grin, quipping, "Det verkar som det är otur att lyssna på den också." It appears to be bad luck to listen to it too. There was no reaction beyond stony acceptance. Mello probed, trying to get them to admit that this was just propaganda. Internet hype. "Men det är väl bara hype. Ett Internet fenomen." They stared unblinkingly at him. He tried another tactic, all very friendly. He asked them who had invented the story, "Vem kom på den historien?"



Both Jörgen and Ebba looked at him with incredible solemnity. Mello kept expecting them to laugh or wink. Neither did. Ebba turned away, directing her attention back to the Nikon camera in her hand. Jörgen stood there, not taking them anywhere that they could sit down. Mello got the hint that they were standing just inside the doorway, because he wasn\'t staying. Jörgen commented quietly. "Vi har båda förlorat människor på grund av den musiken. Ursäkta om vi inte ser det roliga i det."



Mello blinked. "Oh." Neither of Jörgen\'s e-mails had even hinted at the fact that this couple had lost anyone to the music, let alone \'a lot\'. He understood that they didn\'t want to joke about it.



Ebba finally spoke. "Vad har du för intresse av det?"



"Jag undersöker det." Mello swallowed over a dry mouth, declaring his interest as an investigator.



"Journalist?"



"Detektiv." Mello replied. He decided to take control of this situation. He strode forward towards the woman and was surprised when Jörgen simply trailed behind him. Mello bowed slightly to Ebba, as he would any comare, and she blinked in surprise at him. "Mitt namn är Mello. Har ni hört talas om Kirafallet?" There were two mute nods. Of course they had heard of Kira. Everyone had heard of the Kira case. Mello flashed a brief smile and nodded, informing them that he had been instrumental in its conclusion. "Jag spelade en vital roll i lösandet av det." He pressed ahead, while they looked warily impressed. He specialised in cases like this. This was a case that needed solving. Mello was conscious that he might sound a little arrogant before the humble Swedes, but he had learned in America that if you didn\'t blow your own trumpet, no-one was going to do it for you. "Sådana fall är min specialitet, och som ni har fått erfara i era personliga tragedier, allt för många männsikor dör." His gaze locked onto hers. Mello flashed a charming smile, as he challenged her to tell him what she knew. "Ni kan väl tala om vad ni vet?"



It took Mello nearly twenty minutes to prise the story from them, despite Jörgen\'s apparent willingness to discuss this via e-mail. Eventually though, they were all seated and it was Jörgen who did speak. "Det var inte vi." He stated again. "Min kusin var gitarristen och Ebba\'s bästa kompis var sångerskan."



"Var?" Mello paused in his note-taking, at the past tense. He had scribbled down that Jörgen\'s cousin was the band\'s guitarist, while Ebba\'s best friend was the singer. Until now he hadn\'t realised that any of the actual band members were dead.



"De är döda båda två. Det är cellisten, bassisten och trummisen med." Jörgen let this sink in. "Hela bandet är döda."



Mello fixed him with a stare. Then he wrote it down. No-one in the band had survived. Singer, guitarist, bassist, celloist and drummer were all apparently deceased. It didn\'t feel like this was another element of the hype. The couple appeared genuinely bereft. Mello could only assume that the band had died together, perhaps the tour bus had crashed. He proffered it as a likely explanation "Olycka med turnébussen?"



Jörgen shook his head. "De dog på skilda håll." On his notepad, Mello ringed their names and wrote, \'separate incidents\'. "Min kusin, Janne, blev dödad här ute. Han var den förste." Mello\'s pen paused against the paper. There were times when he really loved the Swedish language and this was one of them. \'Blev dödad\' held no ambiguity, as its counterpart \'killed\' did in the English language. Jörgen believed that his cousin, Janne, had been murdered \'out there\'. Mello opened his mouth to query the details, but Ebba was arguing over semantics, disputing the fact that Janne had been the first casualty.



"Det finns inga bevis." Ebba frowned, annoyed. "Maja\'s kropp hittades inte förrän senare. Hon kan ha varit först." Mello wrote, \'Maja\'s body undiscovered until afterwards. May have died first.\'



"Det är ingen tävling, Ebba." Jörgen sighed, appealing for peace. "Snälla." The woman shrugged. "Rasmus dog här nere. Han blev dödad vid det gamla sågverket."



Mello frowned. Rasmus was presumably another band-member. Mello was going to let them tell the story in their own way, then return to fill in the detail later. However, something about this puzzled him. If Rasmus had died \'back here\' in a derelict sawmill, then it didn\'t fit the pattern. Everyone else, as far as Mello knew, sought out religious institutions in which to suicide. He queried it, "Inte på ett religiöst ställe?" They apparently did not think that his question was strange. They both shook their heads, but Mello understood that they knew of the album\'s reputation and the dead around the world. Mello pressed on. There were still two more band-members as yet unmentioned. "De andra två då?"



Jörgen replied, "Vi kände inte dem. De var inte Svenska." Mello nodded, adding \'not Swedish\' to his notes. "Men vi vet att de är döda." Jörgen\'s gaze finally met Mello\'s, but immediately slid away, as if embarrassed to know that they were dead before he knew them as living people. "De spelade in någonting på banden. Inte en del av musiken. Rasmus sa att de blev anfallna." He gulped, obviously remembering something of the telling. Mello let him speak in his own time. They were finally getting to the crux of the story. While he waited, Mello encircled the name \'Rasmus\' and drew two lines from it. One ended in the words, \'they were attacked\'; the other in, \'captured something on the tapes\'. After a minute had passed, Mello looked up again. Jörgen looked wholly uncomfortable, almost stricken. "Det som anföll dem var inte mänskligt. Inte från vår värld. De fångade det på band innan de dog."



"Vad var det?" Mello believed him or, at least, knew that this man believed what he was saying. Nevertheless, he pondered what was meant by \'not human\' and especially by \'nothing of this world\'. The former could mean an animal, but the latter slid the image of the Shinigami Sidoh insidiously into Mello\'s mind. To cover his unease, he made another note, \'caught something possibly supernatural on the album tapes\'. As an afterthought, he added, \'auditory\'.



"En hemsk kvinna och en flock hundar." Jörgen shuddered visibly and Ebba stood up. She walked out without a backwards look. "Rasmus sa att de kom på natten och att de är med på skivan."



Mello watched him carefully. A woman, however hideous, with some dogs did not sound supernatural in origin to him. "Och varför tror du att de är övernaturliga?" He started to wonder, not for the first time, how much of a part LSD or some kind of mass hysteria had played in this recording session.



Jörgen looked around himself helplessly, appearing trapped. "Det är därför de var där. Historierna. Janne var intresserad av allt det där. Det ville ha något ställe med atmosfär. Något hemsökt. De ville ha stämning för att inspirera musiken. Det fick de."



A sense of the kind of man that Janne had been was forming in Mello\'s mind. Someone who actively sought out the darkness, chasing ghosts and shadows, trying to weave them into the fabric of the music. Mello could understand that. He often chose music to suit his mood; moreover, his state of mind could well infect how he interpreted the notes on his violin. However, he was foremost a detective and so he needed evidence. He was perhaps a little sharp in how he asked for it. "Kan man bevisa det här?"



Finally Jörgen seemed to snap. "Var snäll och gå." He leapt up, glaring at Mello and pointing towards the front door.



Mello backtracked. Projecting humility with his whole being into his glamour, he apologised, "Jag ber om ursäkt ifall jag förolämpade er. Låt oss börja om." He turned the page in his notebook, emphasising the new start, then sat poised with a pen. "Vi kan väl börja med deras namn..."