I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Marlaine Delargy

there by her side. He is her secret, her Harvey.
    *
    Donald has been driving for fifteen minutes, sticking to around eighty kilometres an hour all the time, so he should have travelled about twenty kilometres. Still nothing. Still only the field and the field and the fucking field he can see through the windscreen.
    This is a mistake. He doesn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but possibly that he would drive up a hill, reach the top and be able to see all around. But it’s just the same unbroken horizon out there in front of him, offering nothing beyond itself.
    When the GPS screen turned blue, Donald didn’t slow down at all, didn’t even consider stopping to push sticks into the ground like those other fools. Okay, he can’t carry on like this forever, sooner or later the deviation will be too great, but surely he can drive in a straight line for a few kilometres.
    Strange images came into his mind as he drove into the blue. He thought he was driving through Las Vegas, where both John F Kennedy and Elvis were due to appear, and were just waiting for Donald so that they could get started.
    With a wry smile Donald thought that dementia has its advantages after all. Fantasies become so real that you feel you could step right into them. On the other hand there are names for people who do that kind of thing: nutcases, fruit loops, loonies. So Donald had ignored the temptations of Vegas and put his foot down.
    And there you go: after a little while his resolve begins to bearfruit. On the blank screen the map starts to appear once more. Donald nods with satisfaction, following a road that he will be able to follow again on the way back. The map becomes clearer and clearer, but he finds it difficult to see things close up, and he can only just make out the letters.
    What the fuck?
    He slows down and digs his reading glasses out of the glove compartment. When he sees what the GPS screen is telling him, he takes his foot off the accelerator and stops the car, sits there with the engine ticking over.
    Åkerö, Gillberga, Lilltorp.
    When he drove away, the GPS had claimed that they were in the same place as on the previous evening: the campsite ten kilometres south of Trosa. Then the arrow kept on moving west until the screen turned blue. Now it is saying that he is in the area where he grew up, one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north. It is physically impossible for him to have driven that distance. He puts the car into first gear and edges forward. He should now be crossing Norrtäljevägen and driving through the forest towards Åkerö and…Riddersholm.
    A chill runs down Donald’s spine. He pushes his glasses up onto the top of his head and gazes out across the field—towards Riddersholm, according to the GPS. There is nothing to see, but it feels as if the air has grown thinner, and it is difficult to get enough oxygen. Donald takes a few deep breaths to ease the pressure inside his skull. He studies the screen again. There is something wrong with Norrtäljevägen.
    When the E18 was extended at the beginning of the 1970s, the route between Norrtälje and Kapellskär became five kilometres shorter, as a straighter motorway sliced through the landscape. But the road on the GPS map winds its way through the villages, and judging by the width, it isn’t even a motorway.
    Donald scrolls up and down, zooms out. There is no doubt whatsoever. The route on the screen is the old road, large sections of which have been forgotten and overgrown for almost forty years.
    Donald rubs his eyes and breathes, breathes.
    What the hell is wrong with the air?
    Then he opens the car door and gets out.
    It is colder now, and he gets gooseflesh on his arms when he leaves the interior of the car with its controlled temperature. There really is something strange about the air. Donald opens his eyes wide, relaxes, opens wide again, relaxes, but the phenomenon remains.
    It’s just like when you stand up too quickly after bending down,