KULT: A dark and gripping crime thriller full of twists and suspense Read online

  When he opened the door and came out, his mother looked inquisitively at him. But she didn’t know what he’d done. The next time, he was lying in the bathtub and started pulling again. Suddenly, the door opened. He forgot to lock it. Mom came in and saw what he was doing and flew into a rage. She went and got a pot of boiling water and poured it over his erect penis. He luckily had time to sink down a bit in the water, but a lot of it splashed on him. He screamed loudly from the pain, but she just took hold of his wiener and squeezed. She looked crazy-eyed as she frothed at the mouth and screamed, “This is the damnation of man! You will go to Hell if you do that!” She then forced him to read the Bible every evening for three weeks. After every reading, she hit him to “beat the evil out of him”.

  It began sometime around then, and really got going just a few weeks later. Patrick, the neighbor boy, was fourteen years old and set up a tent in the forest. They were playing Cowboys and Indians, and afterwards they gathered in the tent. Patrick ordered Susanne, who was twelve years old, to take off her pants and underwear and lay on her back. There were five of them looking on as Patrick took off his pants and boxers. Patrick had developed a little hair around his cock and Thomas remembered how he stared when he saw it. It was the first time he had seen anyone else’s erect cock. Long and pointy. Patrick took hold of it and laid on top of Susanne, who just lay there, completely silent. Then Patrick started humping. But he was interrupted when they heard voices approaching.

  Even cut short, the event made a deep impression on Svärd. The young girl’s smooth vagina, completely free from disgusting black hair. The pointy spear that approached and entered. That was when he understood what this tool should be used for.

  He sat up in bed, set his feet on the dirty rag rug, lit a cigarette, and looked at the clock. 12:30 at night. He had to piss. He stood up and walked the two yards to the bathroom. He opened the bathroom door, turned on the light, and went in. Since the attack a year ago, he couldn’t stand to piss anymore. It sprayed wildly in every direction. The doctor did the best he could, but all that was left of his urethral opening now functioned in much the same way as a sprinkler on a warm summer day.

  The bathroom wasn’t large. Built sometime in the middle of the previous century, it was at least fairly bright and nice. But it was tight and he had got used to backing in. It was completely tiled and the showerhead hung on the wall behind the toilet. When he showered, the whole bathroom got wet and he had to spend fifteen minutes wiping up afterward. There can’t have been more than one man at a time in this damn bunker, he thought.

  He got up and flushed. He went out into the main room, sat at the rickety little table, and turned his laptop on. He needed to fill in his account for the next assignment and so he logged into SexNordics BBS. He went into his galleries and saw that he had some messages. An idiot from Dallas who claimed that his latest Sandra picture was fake. He probably studied her birthmarks and decided that it wasn’t the right girl in the picture. At the same time he was asking for a picture of Sandra when she was younger; thirteen-year-olds were too old for his taste.

  Svärd pondered this. He earned serious money from the Sandra pictures but realized that he needed to change things up. Demand for the 4 to 6-year-old range was increasing. There were crazies who were ready to pay up to a hundred dollars for a picture of a naked four-year-old in sexy poses. He went quickly through the other messages and swore to himself. Not one single fucker who wanted to shell out; just idiot freeloaders who didn’t care about watermarks over the image and who wanted to praise him for his fine collection.

  He logged on to his bank webpage and checked his account balance. $303.91 was all he had. Damn, that’s hardly enough for a flight, he thought. Have to get more money.

  He spent an hour finding suitable preschools on Kungsholmen in Stockholm; there were over twenty. He went to every webpage to see which ones were open in the summer and surprisingly enough, seven were. He formulated a letter of interest for a substitute teaching position and sent this along with his falsified diploma from Linné University and a false CV to all seven. He used his old fake name, Gustav Thordén, and was almost sure that some of them wouldn’t bother calling around and checking that it was all true. Even if they did call, it would be nearly impossible for them to get hold of anyone over the break. And if they were desperate for staff, as he hoped, then they might just skip that part of the process completely.

  Afterwards, he went to the weather website and checked the forecast for the following day. Sunshine and hot as hell all of Thursday. Vacation time. The local playgrounds would be full of families with small children. He closed the lid of his computer and crawled into bed with a faint smile on his lips.

  6.

  Karlskrona, December 6, 1991

  “Then I want you to fly home to my mom. Check what she’s wearing and fly back here and tell me what you saw! Hantverkargatan 17A, third floor. You can find it, right?”

  Jenny gasped quietly. She felt a reluctant admiration that a soccer player nicknamed “Pidde” dared to challenge Peter. She looked at Pidde, who was looking intently at Peter. He wasn’t joking any more. His cheeks had developed a red hue over the past few minutes. His voice had risen considerably. His tone had hardened.

  Pidde’s actual name was Per Johansson and he was the star of Karlskrona AIF, the city’s soccer team. He was friends with Affe, who was on the way to joining Scientology—a little half-hearted for now, but it would come. Pidde was popular among the city’s youth. He studied to become a teacher at the college in Växjö. He was smart and attractive and had amazing promise as a soccer player. Not a terribly common combination among the city’s soccer players. Jenny liked him but thought he could have left his Palestina shawl at home that evening. She knew he was doing it to be provocative. She heard the others talk about him being a communist. Communism wasn’t popular among the Scientologists, that much she understood.

  Affe played junior league soccer with him and was given the assignment of trying to interest him. That was the strategy: to get people who were popular, smart and locally famous in the movement, then others would follow. The idea came from Celebrity Center in Hollywood, which the Scientologists had successfully led for over ten years. They were successful in recruiting Jenny’s favorite star, John Travolta, who was the first really big international star to become a Scientologist. Jenny almost fell out of her chair when Stefan told her. John Travolta! And last year, Tom Cruise joined the movement. That was big. If those two were part of it, there must be something about it that was really great, she thought.

  This evening, they were having coffee at Peter’s in his apartment on Vallgatan. They were celebrating Peter reaching the Scientology state of OT III, Operating Thetan Level III. That was three levels above the first auditing level, which was called “Clear,” and meant he could now leave his body and act in the physical world without it. It felt a little creepy, Jenny thought. What if he were suddenly at her house when she was going to shower, or flying around in the night in their apartment?

  Candles in candelabras stood on the floor, a large Buddha head of walnut watched from the antique bureau, an impressive crystal chandelier hung like a dimmed sun over a round Art Deco-style coffee table with curved legs. The room was like an antique shop, a museum of vanished gallantry and the Swedish bourgeoisie that invaded Blekinge in the late 1600s.

  On the coffee table stood black currant tea and sandwiches, Robinson’s blackberry marmalade, and Peter’s favorite spread, a soft French cheese called “The Laughing Cow”. Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” came through the stereo speakers. Ten people were sitting in the small living room. Some were sitting on the floor, the rest on the brown leather couch and in armchairs. Jenny and Stefan felt like they were part of this group now. The first evening in Ronneby was followed by several late evenings over coffee. Jenny learned a lot about the ideas surrounding Scientology during these evenings. Peter, Mikael, Fredrik, Maria—they were all so pleasant, smart, and cool. They opened up a
whole new world for her.

  This was the first time anyone dared to deny it. To question. The room fell quiet after Pidde’s challenge. Stefan leaned over and turned down the volume of the music. Jenny was looking forward to hearing how Peter would handle it. She didn’t think Pidde stood a chance. Everyone’s eyes turned to Peter.

  Peter looked intently back at Pidde. He smiled.

  “Why should I? I don’t need to prove anything to you. This ability isn’t something we play around with. It should be used for more important things.”

  Pidde looked around the room at the dozen guys and girls there. He threw up his hands.

  “But there are a few people here, I think, anyway, who might be a little doubtful whether you or your soul or whatever you want to call it can leave your body. Or that there’s a soul at all, for that matter. Now you have the chance to convince us. Go on and check so I can call my mom later and see if you’re right.”

  Peter leaned back on the brown leather couch, lifted his cup and took a small sip of his tea before he answered.

  “So you don’t think we have a soul? Do you think we’re just wandering piles of flesh that satisfy our primal needs for a few trifling years and then we’re buried and become earth again?”

  He set his teacup down and many in the room smiled. Jenny heard this formulation before. She liked it.

  Pidde didn’t give up.

  “Don’t change the subject, Peter. Go on now so that you get it done. If you do it and you’re right, I promise I’ll sign up and start working for you tomorrow.” He held up his hand as if he were swearing an oath.

  Devoted followers sign a contract and agree to work evenings and weekends for the cult for two and a half years. For that, they would get certain therapy and courses for free.

  “Let it go,” Peter said. “It’s not going to happen. We don’t play with this, I already said that.” Peter raised his voice slightly.

  Now Jenny started to think that this was a little strange. Peter actually had the chance to silence Pidde once and for all and even convince others who were doubting. Why didn’t he just do it? Peter was ending up in a subordinate position that didn’t feel good. Jenny had never seen him lose a discussion. But now? Jenny thought a few people in the room probably felt like she did. A little bit of doubt snuck in. Maybe Peter couldn’t?

  “You understand that this doesn’t sound particularly plausible?” Pidde continued. “You claim that you’ve reached some sort of state, what was it you called it?”

  “OT, Operating Thetan. The third level.”

  “Exactly. Which means you can leave your body and do things. Or is it just to observe? Can you do things, too?”

  “You regain abilities that mean that you can impact what we call MEST: Matter, Energy, Space, and Time, without us being dependent on our bodies. Regaining is important, it’s abilities we had once before. Even a materialist like you, Pidde.” Peter looked around and smiled. The smile was reflected back at him.

  Pidde gave a chuckle.

  “He was smart, that Hubbard guy! What ten-year-old hasn’t dreamed about having the ability to be invisible and run around causing mischief for others? Hubbard stole ideas from Buddhism and Hinduism, made his own concoction, formulated it so it would sound scientific, came up with a few exercises and said, Voilá! A new religion! With the goal of becoming an invisible superman who fights evil. And Hubbard’s bank account was filled generously over time. Because that’s how it was. First, he was an unsuccessful science fiction writer who wrote so terribly that he couldn’t earn any money. So he decided to create a religion instead. It’s the best way of getting rich. He said so himself.”

  Pidde clearly came prepared, Jenny thought. This stuff about Hubbard and money wasn’t new to her. And she knew that Peter had good answers for it. It was like watching a boxing match.

  Peter leaned towards the table, took a cigarette out of the pack, and lit it slowly. Now he was in his element, Jenny knew. She had heard this discussion before.

  “L. Ron Hubbard has written forty books about Scientology. He’s written seventeen seven-hundred-page volumes about therapeutic techniques and processes. He has written an additional eleven eight-hundred-page volumes that have to do with how to lead a Scientology organization. He has held over five thousand lectures and has worked around the clock for thirty years. Do you seriously think that a person who just wanted to get rich would sink so much time into a business project? He hasn’t even had time to enjoy the money, for heaven’s sake! It’s be easier to sell some random product instead.”

  “Whatever,” Pidde said. “You and some of the others here clearly think he’s a genius. The only thing I want to see is proof. Give me proof that you can leave your body, and I’ll join. Totally and completely.”

  “There is tons of proof,” Peter answered. “The Stanford Research Institute in California has researched some of the OT’s abilities to leave the body, such as a guy named Ingo Swann, who demonstrated that he could leave his body and see things, completely perplexing the scientists. It happened in experiment after experiment. The American government is putting millions of dollars into research because they think the Russians are ahead of us. They think the Russians have developed methods to allow people to affect and disrupt atomic bombs and missiles from a great distance.”

  “I want to see that evidence,” Pidde said.

  Peter leaned back in the sofa and nonchalantly exhaled smoke.

  “The research is classified,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette. “And do you know what? Even if I laid out the evidence for you tonight, I’m positive you still wouldn’t have given in. Because you’ve already decided. You don’t believe in it and only accept what supports your explanation of things. It’s completely natural. Researchers called this ‘confirmation bias’. We Scientologists have full respect for the freedom of opinion. You get to think exactly how you want to. All that’s important to me is things that work, that make people feel better and can be developed so that we can become free and independently-thinking creatures that can reach our full potential.”

  Peter fell silent. Pidde looked at him. A small smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  “So you’re not going travelling tonight, then?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “Ok. Now I know. Thanks for the grub. It was good. That Laughing Cow stuff especially.” He got up, turned on his heel, and left the apartment. The door slammed behind him.

  “Pidde is a shining example of the brainwashing that we have been subjected to over the past fifty years,” Peter said. “Completely locked into the body and material things. Damn unfortunate. It is our duty to try to get people to elevate their consciousness, get them to see their own greatness and get them to want to seek the freedom and free themselves from this prison. The future of the planet is at stake. So we can’t go playing around with our abilities. We have more important duties than that.”

  Peter and Mikael spent the rest of the evening lecturing about the powers, the evil powers that were fighting to stop the movement. And about how for centuries they dedicated themselves to brainwashing humanity to make people believe they are only piles of flesh and not higher levels of creatures. Peter showed a book that came out two years previously, Operation Mind Control, which revealed how the American government transformed normal people into mercenaries and spies with the help of hypnosis and drugs.

  There was talk about highly-developed cultures that existed millions of years ago. About Atlantis, von Däniken, and about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the gull who didn’t want to be like other gulls, who refused to be happy just catching fish and following the flock, who wanted to test his limits and see how high and how far he could fly. When the evening was over, Jenny had completely forgotten Pidde had been there.

  She felt as if she were high. High on Scientology, on these people who wanted to do so much good and who believed that she had unharnessed abilities. It resonated with something deep inside her, a string that she didn
’t know about until now, which lay there slumbering for all of her seventeen years but that now began to vibrate inside her. It was as if a hidden desire had been laid bare. A longing she noticed, sensed, without being able to put it into words. For the first time in her life, she felt alive, filled with a powerful energy that made her feel invincible.

  When Jenny and Stefan were about to leave, Peter came out into the hall.

  “What do you think about what happened earlier with Pidde?” he asked.

  Jenny didn’t know what she should say. Stefan answered.

  “Well, he’s a rabid communist, so I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t really understand why he was invited, to be honest. But I kind of think you could have gone along with it. Now it feels like something was left hanging, and that’s too bad. I would really have liked to see you win. Even if I think I understand your position.”

  Peter smiled.

  “I seriously considered accepting his challenge,” he said. “But luckily I thought better of it. It is strictly forbidden to use the ability in that way. Even if I had done it and proved to him that it works, I don’t think he would have given in. Pidde is a good guy who wants to do the right thing, but Communism is a treacherous ideology that plays on people’s consideration of others but that is ultimately about slavery. We want to liberate humankind. Give humankind spiritual and physical freedom. Ensure that people have the opportunity to exploit all potential that exists in every individual and use that potential to do good for humanity.”

  Jenny and Stefan held hands and walked in silence the first stretch from Vallgatan where Peter’s apartment was located. They turned right at Amiralitet Park up towards Stortorget and on to Kungsplan where Jenny would take a bus home to Hästö. On Södra Smedjegatan, Jenny saw a group of people of various ages spill out from a gourmet restaurant on the other side of the street. She recognized the parents of a classmate from ninth grade, Bosse, and realized it was people from a division of the Karlskrona shipyard having their staff Christmas party. Several thousand people still worked at the shipyard, despite large cutbacks over the past twenty years. Her father always joked with her that kids who didn’t focus in school ended up with jobs at the shipyard washing tarps. Bosse first interned at the shipyard, then got a summer job and later a permanent job there as a welder. Everyone was jealous of him. He suddenly had a ton of money and soon was going to move into his own apartment in the middle of town.