Page 100 of The Sleepwalker
Amina’s kayak is a narrow rocker with a relatively short sternand a V-shaped hull, making it extremely manoeuvrable and easy to tilt when dealing with waves.
She isn’t planning to go far today, just wants to feel the power of a couple of rapids, practise some peel outs and eddy turns and work on her speed down to Kullens badplats. After that, she’ll get changed and catch the bus back up to the bridge to get her car.
She fits her spraydeck and pushes off, paddling gently.
The surging water from the power station gives the kayak real momentum, causing it to shoot forward like an arrow. Amina quickly works up to a fast stroke rate, twisting her torso and keeping her hips loose, driving herself downriver.
She wants to pick up as much speed as possible before hitting the Klockarharen rapids.
Her body is desperate for the adrenaline rush.
The kayak catches the wind blowing in from the flat landscape to the right, and she has to take a few extra strokes to adjust her course.
The water glitters brightly.
Amina picks up the pace to the right-hand side of the island and can see the low suspension bridge across the river up ahead.
Someone has attached a metal ladder rope to the bridge, and it is trailing in the water in the middle of the channel, pulsing unnaturally like a fishing line with a salmon on the end.
She decides to paddle beneath the bridge, to the right of the ladder.
As she drifts past the little island known as Korallen, she comes too close to the shore. She doesn’t notice the large rock lurking just beneath the surface until her bow hits it, and the kayak immediately flips, plunging her into the icy water.
Amina is upside down, surging forward in the powerful current.
From beneath, the surface of the water looks like aluminiumfoil.
She gets ready to roll before she runs out of air, leaning forward and pressing the paddle to the side of the kayak.
Above her head, green rocks and swaying seagrass race by.
The sunlight ripples through the water.
She knows she needs to make use of the current as she rights the kayak.
The river is roaring in her ears.
Amina realises she must be getting close to the bridge, and she twists around and tries to look downstream in an attempt to avoid hitting the ladder.
The cold water makes her eyes ache.
Green eddies swirl past her, carrying fragments of plants and sediment.
She speeds past a dark log on the riverbed, eyes still scanning all around.
Just then, she hears herself scream underwater.
A grey body without a head is hanging from the ladder.
It is caught between two rungs, spinning slowly like some sort of propellor. The severed vertebrae in its neck seem to glow white amid the pale-pink tissue.
Amina passes the rotating body, then tenses her stomach, swings the paddle out in a quarter-circle, breaks the surface with the blade, jerks her hip and pulls back. The kayak rolls, and she swings up out of the water, head last.
The light is blinding.
Amina takes a deep breath and then leans as far back as she can, spluttering for air. Once she has regained her balance, she quickly starts paddling towards a calmer patch of water, fumbling for the bilge pump with shaking hands.
* * *
