Shadows in the Twilight Read Online Free Page A

light was on in her kitchen. And he could see
her shadow outlined against the curtains.
    She was at home. Maybe she could help him to find a
good way of saying thank you for the miracle, and
getting quits with God, or whoever it was that prevented
the Ljusdal bus from killing him.
    He opened her squeaky gate.
    He glanced up at the starry sky. But there was no sign
of the dog.

3
    There was only one thing Joel could be certain about as far
as Gertrud was concerned. That she didn't have a nose.
    But that was all. Gertrud had lost her nose as a result
of an operation that went wrong, and Joel couldn't make
her out. Nearly everything she did was Contrary.
Although she attended the Pentecostal chapel where the
minister was known as Happy Harry, she didn't look
like the other ladies in his congregation. They all
dressed in black and wore flat hats with a little black net
over their faces. They wore galoshes and carried brown
handbags. But Gertrud didn't. Never. She made her own
clothes. Joel had spent several evenings in her kitchen,
watching her at work on her sewing machine. She made
new clothes out of old ones. She sometimes cut two old
coats down the middle, then sewed them together to
make a new one. Joel used to help her to pin the seams,
She never had a proper hat, although she often wore an
old army fur cap pulled down over her ears. Once upon
a time it had been yellowish white, but Gertrud liked
bright colours and had dyed it red.
    Joel thought that Gertrud was a difficult person. He
could never be sure what she was going to do or say.
That could be exciting, but also annoying. She
sometimes wanted Joel to accompany her on some frolic
or other, and made him feel embarrassed. But at other
times he thought she was the most fascinating person in
the whole world.
    Gertrud was grown-up. Nearly thirty. Three times as
old as Joel. Even so, she could act like a child on
occasions. Like a child even younger than Joel.
    She was a grown-up childperson. And that could be
difficult to cope with.
    Joel stood outside the kitchen door and listened.
Sometimes Gertrud was feeling sad, and would sit
sobbing on a chair in the kitchen. She had a special
Weeping Chair in the corner next to the cooker. She
seemed to have arranged a punishment corner for herself.
    Joel didn't like it when Gertrud was crying. She
sobbed far too loudly. It wasn't as if she had stomach
ache, or had fallen and hit herself; but it sounded as if
she were in pain.
    In Joel's view, when you were feeling sad you should
cry quietly. You should cry so quietly that nobody could
hear you. Not bawl your head off and bring the world to
a standstill. You could do that if you were in pain, but
not just because you were sad.
    On several occasions Joel had run over the bridge to
pay a visit to Gertrud, only to find her sobbing in the
kitchen. So he had turned and gone back home again.
    But now there wasn't a sound to be heard from the
kitchen.
    Joel pressed his ear against the cold door and listened
hard.
    Then he pulled a string hanging next to the door.
    Immediately, lots of bells started playing a tune.
    That was what Joel liked most about Gertrud. Nothing
in her house was usual. She didn't even have a normal
doorbell with a button to press. Instead, she had a string
to pull, and that set off lots of bells, like a musical box.
    Gertrud had invented it herself. She had taken an old
wall clock to pieces and attached to the parts several
little bells she'd bought from Mr Under, the horse dealer
– the kind that ring when his horses pull sledges through
the snow. And she'd made the contraption work.
    The rest of her house was the same.
    Once he had been helping Gertrud to do an
uninspiring jigsaw puzzle on the kitchen table when she
suddenly jumped to her feet and brushed all the pieces
onto the floor. They'd almost finished the puzzle, there
were only a few pieces left.
    'I have an idea,' Gertrud had shouted.
    'Aren't we going to finish the puzzle?' Joel had asked.
    Even as he