When he turned his head, he felt he could make out shapeless figures coming at him from both sides. Quick, stealthy shadows with evil intent. It was highly unpleasant, so he sat dead still to avoid it. Then he turned his head, but he did it stiffly and slowly like an old-timey robot.

He remembered something now. Something had happened at the field station. After the wolf incident, he’d been put on sick leave. Sick leave, he had that phrase to hold on to. But then? Had he broken something? Yes. He had a memory of glass shattering. People shouting. Several people talking over each other and attacking him with vicious tirades he had no way of defending himself against, a bombardment of accusations. Or was that something he’d dreamt? It was impossible to say. It was like there had been a merging in his brain. Everything blended together in a blurred mass and he knew he had tried to explain this to Johanna, what it felt like and how insanely difficult it was to put it into words and how it affected him, but she didn’t want to listen, the only thing she wanted was for him to seek help.

You need help, Anders.

You’re going mad. This is what it feels like.

Still, he felt he could remember more and more when he really put his mind to it. When he sat like this and searched his recollections. He had talked to Johanna, was that yesterday? She had said he ran about outside in the night. He remembered that. Not that he did but that she had said he did and he remembered exactly what she’d looked like when she said it. That was a step in the right direction. Maybe things were clearing up. Blue skies ahead.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds and the moment he took the leap into sleep he jerked like he was being electrocuted.

There was a notebook on the kitchen table. It was open and he could see that someone had written something on it. Words meant for him. How many lines? The paper was blue all over. Johanna’s handwriting. It was not a greeting, not a message. It was a letter. She had written him a letter and put it on the kitchen table. That was very ominous; he only reluctantly went up to the notebook and prodded it to make the writing turn the right way up. His fingertips strayed to his hairline but his glasses weren’t there. The only thing he found was a small piece of bark. A flake from a pine tree that he crumpled to dust between his fingers. He picked up the notebook and calibrated a distance at which he could make out the letters.