At the mask. But it’s not a mask, it’s too bulky to be a mask.

It’s a head.

The square is still full of noise; the shirtless drummer, the wolf howls and chanting. But more people come closer. To look at what we’re looking at. The Sheriff arrives and gets flustered.

Hush.

One woman screams and the noise of it fills the square.

The Sheriff steps closer to the head and then takes off his hat and places it on his chest. Like he’s praying. He looks over at us.

‘You see who left this?’

We all shake our heads.

The Sheriff climbs up onto a bench and sticks his thumb and index finger in his mouth and whistles.

The drummer stops.

A man lets go of his bladder balloon and it floats haphazardly, diagonally, up through the fog until it disappears.

‘I’ve called Gavrik police,’ says the Sheriff. ‘If you all know what’s good for you, you’ll clean up, pack up, and bug out.’

Everyone stands still, like statues. Black statues with masks and fur – and prams, some of those packed tight with troll triplets, wrapped in blankets against the cold.

‘Go on, now.’

The Sheriff climbs down. He presses the button on his radio and it crackles and he speaks into it.

I see faces pressed against the glass windows of the Hive. Steamed-up glass and eyes.

The crowd in the square turn back into civilised modern Swedes within minutes. Masks are pulled off. Front doors are unlocked and pans snatched inside. I can see Eva Edlund the dentist’s wife and Ragnar Falk. The clockmaker is removing black balloons from apple trees and someone else who has chosen to keep their mask on is waking a half-naked couple asleep or high underneath a bench.

Some people try to sneak a peek, like motorists slowing down beside an accident to observe the carnage and bloodshed from the corners of their eyes. Not so despicable that way. Just a glance, not head-on. A peripheral half look at death and destruction.

The backwards walkers start walking normally again.

The bee on top of the hive slows to its normal pace.

The clock outside Hans Wimmer’s shop stops dead.

Someone walks around with an extinguisher and puts out all the fires in the fire baskets. The town square is heavy with steam and cold fog.

The Sheriff drags over a menu board from outside the pizzeria, the kind that’s hinged at the top. He takes another from outside the gamer café and another from Konsum and he cordons off the severed head the best way he can, I guess, the way a neighbourhood-watch, taxi-driving, bullshit sheriff might do.

The head has no teeth, that I can see. Its jaws are spread wide and its gums shine in the weak light of Visberg town square. The skin is grey and the neckline ragged. The eyes are bulging and red. I look away.