It had been a long time since Little Stefan had believed in ghost stories, but he couldn’t help shuddering. The marshy forest closed in around the dirt track, scraping at the paintwork with long, green fingers. This was the part of the castle estate he disliked most of all. The dampness, the smell of decay. The sodden ground that at one moment felt solid, at the next sucked your boots so deep into the mud that it was a real struggle to escape without help. The marsh belongs to the Green Man, his grandfather used to say. People ought to stay away. At least the superstitious old misery guts had been partly right.

The track led deep into the marsh, to Svartgården, where the girl had lived. Only a month or so ago he’d given her a lift to the bus stop. She’d sat right next to him in the front seat of the pick-up. She hadn’t said much; she’d seemed lost in her own thoughts. He’d stolen glances at her from time to time, watching her face, her movements, and out of nowhere he’d been overwhelmed by a feeling he couldn’t explain.

He was married, he had two young daughters, a house, a car, a good job. Things he usually valued, but at that moment, sitting beside that beautiful girl, they had felt like a burden. His whole life was already mapped out, one long, predictable journey without an ounce of the tempting, forbidden pleasures that emanated from her. He could smell it on her – sweet and sharp like newly opened lilac blossom. A perfume that evoked yearning. Desire.

At one point when she looked away, he’d almost reached out to touch her, as if that would enable him to access everything he didn’t have. He’d stopped himself at the last second, but the sense of loss had lingered for several days.

He had to concentrate in order to avoid the deepest potholes the further on he drove. Lasse Svart was supposed to maintain the track, according to his lease, but needless to say he didn’t bother. For years Lasse Svart had relied on the fact that the count would never be able to find another tenant; nobody was interested in a dozen or so acres of sodden forest, so he more or less did what he liked out at Svartgården. His own little kingdom, far away from laws, rules, and curious eyes.

But that was before Walpurgis Night. Before Lasse’s sixteenyear-old daughter was found dead on the sacrifi cial stone, the ground all around ploughed up by hooves.

During Walpurgis Night the veil between life and death is at its thinnest. Things are on the move, nature is hungry and the Green Man rides through the forest.

Little Stefan suppressed another shudder.