The Healer by Antti Tuomainen Read Free Book Online

me, but that someone was strong and persistent. I held on to her. I wouldn’t let go. I tried to see her face, but it was turned downward. My grasp came loose. That unknown someone finally got hold of her and she sank away out of my arms into the darkness. When she had disappeared completely from my sight and only emptiness was left, I felt a shivering cold. I shook, and my hands reached out to grasp at nothing.
    The light changed to a deep red, cursive neon behind a thin curtain. I tried to read it for some time from left to right before I realized that I was looking at it backward. I finally managed to make it out from right to left: kebab-pizzeria.
    I lifted my hand to my left ear, which was itching, and I felt a rustling wad of bandage, held on with tape. I was lying on my side with my weight on my right arm, which had gone completely numb. I pulled my arm out from under me, grabbed hold of the edge of whatever it was I was lying on, and sat up.
    I was in some sort of back room or storage area. My mouth tasted like blood and metal. I sat where I was, took a few deep breaths, shook my numb arm gingerly. There was a pain in my back whenever I breathed.
    I heard a language foreign to me on the other side of the curtain—first a man’s voice, then a woman’s. I remembered my dream, felt a sense of panic, and took my phone out of my pocket. The display was dark. Either it had been hit by a club or the battery was dead. My panic grew.
    I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t hold me, and I collapsed back to where I’d been sitting.
    I fixed my gaze on the red text glowing behind the curtain and managed to remain upright. I breathed for a moment until I was sure that I wouldn’t get dizzy, and looked around me. A gray cement room, cardboard boxes and junk along the walls, plastic sacks full of soft drink bottles in the doorway, some full, some empty, and a chair with the backpack I’d got from Ahti slung over it. It was less than two meters away.
    I got to my feet again and—made wiser by my previous attempt—used the wall for support. I got the backpack and sat down again. The gun lay in my hand as the pack fell to the floor.
    The voices behind the curtain paused.
    I held the pistol on my lap as the curtain was pulled aside. I recognized Hamid in spite of the red glow behind him that left his face in darkness and formed a halo around his head, softening his outline.
    â€œTake it easy,” he said.
    I shook my head, opened my mouth, and moved my tongue, but I couldn’t get any sound to come out.
    â€œWater,” I heard Hamid say.
    A moment later the curtain was pulled completely to one side. Into the room came a woman with a pitcher of water in one hand and a glass in the other. She filled the glass, set the pitcher on the floor, and handed the glass to me.
    I drank as if it were my first taste of water. Half of it slopped down my chest, the other half I coughed back up. Swallowing was going to take some practice. I did better with the second glass—the woman didn’t need to back up to avoid a spray of water this time.
    She was about thirty years old, brown-eyed, with slightly lighter brown skin than Hamid. She had long black hair twisted into a bun on the back of her head and large silver earrings that shone brightly. She was wearing dark jeans, a yellowish hooded sweatshirt, and a startlingly white apron. She handed me my backpack.
    â€œMy cousin,” Hamid said, nodding in her direction.
    He came closer and pointed to my ear.
    â€œShe knows what she’s doing.”
    I touched the wad of paper and tape. For that ear the world was full of rustlings and raspings. It didn’t hurt, though, so perhaps it was wisest to be grateful. And I was. I said so to Hamid.
    â€œYes,” he said with a smile. “They almost did you in.”
    The woman also smiled. I tried to.
    â€œThanks,” I said to her. First in Finnish, then in English.
    â€œI speak