Authors Note.



I hope I placed this under the right section and I would like to let the reader know that this is a slow starting story.



*****



After going through a horrible divorce where I lost my house, my car and the right to see my son for more than once a month, I decided to look into my ancestry. I'm over six feet tall with broad shoulders. My hair is blonde and I have blue eyes. My last name is Kallberg, first name Hans. They are both Swedish names and my family came over in the mid nineteenth century. Originally they were farmers in the province of Dalarna. By car it takes about four hours from Stockholm to Mora which is one of the larger towns in the area. My family came from a small village called Ek, or Oak in English.



After spending a few months on the internet and hundred of phone calls I finally tracked down one of my family members who still lived. He was a man in his mid eighties and named Karl. His English was passable, both spoken and written. He invited me over for a couple of weeks during the summer and told me that the family farm still stood, even though no one had lived there for at least twenty years. He came by as often as his old body would let him, which was once a month to make sure no one had broken in or lived there illegally.



When I arrived in Mora he was at the bus station waiting for me. I had come by bus from Stockholm and he had driven down in an old yellow Volvo. It was in mid June and the weather was very pleasant. While we drove back to Ek he told me a bit about the area and the history. I knew most of it from reading on the internet, but I let the old man talk. It felt like he was a lonely man and liked the company I gave him.



Ek turned out to be a hamlet and not a village. There was a small church made of wood, a school, two grocery stores, one of them was also the post office and the other functioned as the alcohol shop. When I asked Karl about that he explained that in Sweden you can only buy low alcohol beer in a grocery shop, and if you want wine or spirits you had to go to a government owned shop and buy it. Since Ek was so small there was no such place, but you could order the bottles from Mora and the grocery store served as the place to make the order and pick up your bottles. I was thirsty so I asked him to stop so I could buy a drink.



From outside it had looked tiny, but the shop was bigger than I had thought and was filled with all kinds of things, not only food. You could buy books, fishing gear, some clothes and so on. It looked like and old General Store from the Wild West. I located a cooler and took out a bottle of water, but when I got to the counter to pay there was no one there. I waited a minute, then called out. "Hello?"



I heard a voice who spoke a few words which I didn't understand, so I waited. Then I heard footsteps and then a head with blonde hair walked up to me behind a shelf. The head belonged to a young woman, who smiled at me and said something in Swedish.



"Sorry, I only speak English," I said.



"Oh, has the tourist season already begun," she said with a smile.



"I guess. I'm here because my family was originally from this area."



She rang up my water and asked. "What's your last name?"



"Kallberg,"



She put my bottle in a bag and handed it over to me. "There is a Karl Kallberg, I see him sometimes out by the old farm. I have to bicycle past it on my way to and from work."



"He is the one who picked me up."



"He is such a nice man. I hope I'll see you again."



I hope so too, I thought to myself. She was an outstanding example of the female sex. She was wearing jeans that sat perfect on her. On top she had a simple white blouse with a wide neck. Her face was angular with a small nose. Her eyes were blue like mine and her blonde hair was long and slightly curly. What had most attractive part was the fact that she was not wearing a bra. I could clearly see her nipples touch the fabric of her blouse.



"What do you think?"



I drank some of my water and said. "About what?"



Karl smiled and gave me a sideways look. We were driving on an overgrown dirt track between tall pines and leaf trees. "About Annie, of course."



"The girl in the shop?"



"That's the one."



I played it cool. "She was very polite."



"Mm, she usually is."



The way he had said it made me wonder what he was after. "Why do you ask?"



The track was really bad and when we hit a pothole I spilled some water on my pants and shirt.



"Nothing, she is just, how do you say, special."



"She didn't seem retarded."



Karl looked confused, and I guessed he didn't understand the word, so I gestured to my head.



"No, no, her head is fine. Her heart is not."



I was too tired from the long flight to get into a complicated medical discussion with Karl so I drank my water in silence. We drove on for another fifteen minutes until the track ended in an open space about the size of a baseball field. I sat up straight. The area was covered in grass and surrounded by trees on three sides. On the opposite side from where we were was a big two story building painted red with white corners and windows.



"Wow, it's big," I said.



"You had a big family. Sometimes up to fifteen people would live here. Only the main building remains, the others have rotten away over the years."



He put the car in gear and drove across the open space and parked in front of a set of wide stairs leading up to the main door. We got out and I followed him up the stairs.



When Karl opened the door my first reaction came from the smell, or better, the lack of it. I had assumed the place would stink of mildew and rot, but it smelled fresh and dry. The second thing I noticed was that it was clean. The wood floor was polished; the walls were covered in wallpaper, old, but in very good shape. There was no dust in the corners or any other dirt.



"Who cleans it?"



"Annie."



I was surprised. "Why would she do that?"



"Come, I will tell you, but first, we make coffee."



I wasn't a big coffee drinker and I asked if there was any tea. He looked at me like if I was insane, and said. "You are in Sweden, we drink coffee."



I followed him inside and found myself in a large living room, with windows on two sides and in front of us was a staircase leading up and a door. Karl pointed at the stairs. "Eight bedrooms, and three bathrooms on the second floor."



He opened the door and when we walked through I found myself in a big kitchen. The fridge looked like something from the eighties and so did the stove. There was an antique wood stove against the short wall.



"Both stoves work, I suggest you use the electric one, the other one has problems with the smokestack. I think there is a bird's nest in it, but I am too old to get up there and clean it."



I sat down at the long wood table. There was a bench on one side also made in wood and six chairs on the other side. I watched Karl while he made the coffee. He was slow, but knew where everything was. He must have felt my stare because he turned around. "I bought some basic things for you, and left it here. You might want to go to the store in a couple of days."



"Oh, thank you. How do I get to the store?"



"Walk, or use the bicycle I left you locked behind the house. Here are the keys."



He handed me a set of keys, which after I looked at them contained not only the key for the bike but for the house too.



When the coffee was ready he placed two big mugs of the black brew on the table and a plate of cookies with some red jelly in the middle. He took a cookie and dipped it in the coffee and shoved the whole thing in his mouth and chewed slowly. I sipped my coffee and remembered why I didn't like it.



"Do you recall that I told you no one has lived here in twenty years?" he said after sipping from his mug.



"Yeah."



"Well, that is not completely true. There were some people living here about a year ago."



"Who were they and what happened."



He sighed and dunked another cookie in his coffee. When had swallowed it, he said. "I don't know all the details, but there were ten of them, five couples and they moved up from Stockholm. Apparently they were some kind of sect that believed in free love."



"All right, that sound fantastic," I said, thinking about my own shitty sex life.



He nodded his head slowly, like if he knew what I was thinking. "Not so fantastic. One of the men became jealous and killed another man. The man who died was Annie's fiancé."



"Oh, and what happened to the killer?"



"He was arrested, and sent to jail. The other members moved back to Stockholm, but Annie stayed. She once told the woman in the café, that she wanted to stay where, Frank, which was her fiancées name, spirit lived. Since then she has lived in a small house in the forest some ten minutes from here by foot."



"So that's why she cleans the house, to be close to her husband?"



Karl shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe, I don't understand such things. All I know is that behind the happy smile and polite front, she is sad."



He finished his coffee and stood. "I'm leaving. Like I told you, there is food in the fridge and a couple of bottles of beer and wine. I didn't know if you drank, but around here there isn't much else to do."



I thanked him for his help and when he got into his car I closed the door and turned around. It was time to explore my ancestor's home.



I started upstairs with the bedrooms. Seven of them were the same size and had the same furniture. There was a king size bed, a wardrobe, a desk with a chair and a lamp. They were all impeccably clean. The last bedroom was much bigger and the bed was not your standard king size. It was round with pillars on four sides, and a ceiling. It looked like something out of a fairy tail. I lay down on it and as I suspected there were mirrors above me. I lay there for a while listening to the silence. There were sounds coming from outside, birds mostly and the buzzing of a bee bouncing of a window close to me, but the house was dead silent. I got up and checked out the bathrooms. All clean and pretty much standard. The living room like I said was furnished and looking closely I saw it all came from IKEA, which made me smile. I had had some furniture from that company in my house. Now my ex bitchy wife had them.



There was a big book case next to the entrance door with a double door on it. When I opened them there was a plasma TV and a sound system. I turned on the TV and looked for a channel I could understand. I got CNN and left the remote on the table in front of the sofa group. I went back to the kitchen and did a quick inventory, meats, cheeses, ham, bread, milk, and more fucking coffee, all the things I would need, but no tea. I sighed and checked my watch. It was ten to four in the afternoon. The shop would be open, and it would give me an opportunity to talk to Annie again. She interested me.



To my surprise the bike Karl had left me was not an old iron thing from the last century, but a pretty new looking Mountain Bike. I got on it and headed out across the open space and into the woods.



It took me half an hour to get to Ek, which wasn't bad considering I was out of shape and hadn't used a bike in a long time. I made it to the grocery store and when I walked in, Annie was talking to two elderly women. I browsed the shelves and picked up two boxes of Lipton Yellow, and some snacks for the evening. Karl hadn't left me any chips or other unhealthy food. When the women had left I walked up to the counter with my things. "Hi again,"



She smiled and rang up the items. "It's nice to see you again, and so soon."



"I don't like coffee and Karl didn't leave any tea."



"What about these," she said and held up two big bags of BBQ flavored chips.



"Guilty, I like my snacks, and since I'm using a bike I can keep fit."



Her eyes ran over me, top to bottom. "You look pretty fit for a man your age."



I made a face. "My age? I'm only forty five, but thanks anyway."



She rang up the last item and put everything in a bag. "Like I said, your age. You need to be careful about what you eat. High cholesterol can lead to heart problems."



"Yes, doctor," I said and looked down.



"You know what's good for your heart?"



"Exercise, I suppose."



She gave me a wink, and leaned over the counter. "Sex, and lots of it."



I just stared at her. Was she coming on to me? She couldn't be more than half my age, tops. I had heard Swedish girls were hot, but this was too much. I regained my composure, and said. "Well, I would, but I'm single at the moment."



She looked down at my hand that was on the counter. "That looks like the mark from a wedding ring."



"A divorce and it took me a long time to accept it. I just took the ring off a couple of months ago."



"Sorry about that, then I guess sex is out of the question, at least for the moment."



"I guess so. Ek doesn't seem to be a place full of young women looking for middle aged men."



She laughed and her teeth were perfect and white. She looked beautiful when she laughed and the sound of it was like nothing I had heard in a long time.



"Anyway, I won't be here long enough for a relationship. By the way, you don't happen to have a bottle of whiskey or vodka somewhere?"



She thought for a second, and without a word disappeared down the shelves. I heard a door open and close. A couple of minutes later it opened and closed again and I could see her blonde head move towards me behind a shelf. When she was visible she was carrying two bottles.



"I got whiskey, but no vodka. Will Gin do?"



I couldn't believe my luck. After what Karl had told me I was sure she wouldn't have any. She must have noticed the surprise, and said. "These belong to Mr. Jarlsson, but he is an alcoholic and shouldn't drink. I'll just tell him they messed up in Mora and his bottles didn't arrive."



"Thank you so much."



"Have a nice evening, and come back soon."



When I came back home after carefully bringing my bottles and other goods back on the bike I made myself a long drink with Whiskey, ice and water. When I had looked for the bike I found that on the back of the house there was a deck with some chairs and a table made out of planks. I sat down and enjoyed the evening wondering what it had been like to live there two hundred years ago. I must have drifted off when I heard someone call my name. I opened my eyes and looked around. Then I saw Annie straddling her bicycle. She was maybe fifty yards from me and I realized there was another track in the forest. She waved at me and I got up. I walked through the undergrowth and made it to where she was.



"Hi, did you have a nice snooze?" she said.



I looked back to the house and it was impossible that she could have seen that I had my eyes closed. "How did you know?"



"I heard you, you snore loudly."



"Oh, I'm sorry."



"No need to be, I guess it's a good way to keep the wolves away."



I looked around. No one had told me about wolves. "Are you sure?"



She giggled. "You are safe. No one has seen one in years. I have been told that years ago, it was quite common to hear them at night, but not any longer. It's kind of sad, you know."



Hell no, I thought. The fewer wolves I had in my backyard the happier I was.



"Would you like to come for dinner," she asked.



"We hardly know each other."



"Then it's even better. What's the point having a dinner conversation with a person, you already know?"



I thought about what she said, and she did have a point. And having dinner with Annie would be much better than eating alone.



"Sure, let me lock up and pick up my bicycle."



"Just bring your keys, it's not far."



I grabbed them and a bottle of wine and after locking up, I ran back to her. "What time is it?" I asked.



"Seven thirty."



We were walking among the trees and it was still very light. The sun shone down threw the crowns and left shadows on the ground. "What time does it get dark around here?"



"During the summer, around ten, but it doesn't really turn into night. The light just dies a little, but you can still see well enough to walk back."



I followed behind her and took the opportunity to check out her ass. In my opinion, there are two kinds of men, the ass men and the boob men. I am defiantly an ass man. When I was in my teens I liked big boobs, but the girl's ass was what turned me on. Annie had a small round ass. At first glance it could be a man's ass. She didn't have the rounded hips most women have. Not that she was manly in any way; she just didn't have the typical female hips. Up front, as I already knew, she was just fine.



We walked and talked for ten minutes and then we reached a clearing. Her cabin looked like something out of a Brothers Grimm story. Low roof and squat, I thought a witch would come out any moment or that the cabin was made out of gingerbread. There were flower beds on either side of the door and in long urns along the windowsills. Red, yellow, and purple were the prominent colors. Even at this time in the evening I could hear bees and Bumble bees. I followed her along a narrow path that twisted and turned among the flower beds. She left her bike leaning against the house and opened the door with her key.



"Welcome to my home."



She stepped aside and I walked in. The place was small. The living room was so tiny it hardly fitted the sofa and the one arm chair it contained. There was a small TV set and a few books lined up on the floor next to it.



"It's not much, but it's mine," she said behind me.



"It's adorable, like something out of a fairy tail."



"Thanks, there is a bathroom and one bedroom. If you need the bathroom, it's over there," she pointed to a corner where I could see a door.



"OK. What are you cooking, something typically Swedish?"



She took my hand and led me into the kitchen to the left and swung me around so I sat down on a wood chair next to a round table in the same material. There was only one other chair. I figured she didn't entertained many guests and if she did, they would arrive one by one.



"Nothing special, some roasted potatoes and beef with onions, very healthy."



"Sounds good."



"Open the wine bottle while a cook and pour me a glass. There are glasses over there, above the sink."



I opened the cupboard and was surprised. Apart from normal drinking glasses there were some very fancy wine glasses. I took one out, and said. "These are really nice."



She turned to me where she was standing by the stove. "Yeah, they belonged to my late fiancé. He was a wine collector. I have over a hundred bottles stored in the little house you saw outside."



When she mentioned it, I did remember seeing a shack outside. I had thought it was for gardening tools. "Oh, you mean the shack."



She laughed. "That's the one. It looks that way because I don't want nosy people in there. It is actually a wine cellar. Some of the bottles are worth over a $1000."



"Aren't you afraid someone will find out and try to steal the collection?"



"Good luck with that. Under the wood is ten inches of steel and concrete. There is an expensive alarm system hooked up directly to a private security firm. In any case, people around here don't drink wine; they are more into beer and schnapps."



While she cooked I went out to the living room with my glass. I found some photos on the coffee table next to the sofa and I figured it was her parents. The books on the floor were best sellers, and all paperbacks. I had read a few of them and I smiled when I realized we had the same taste in authors. On the wall behind the sofa was a photo of a young man, maybe in his early thirties. He had longish hair and stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes were piercing green and he had a funny smile on his face. Like if he knew something I didn't.



"That's Frank, my fiancé."



I turned and Annie was leaning against the door post with her glass in her hand. The sun was coming in through the window in the kitchen and lit up her hair. The light also shone through her blouse and I could see the silhouette of her boobs. They looked tasty, I thought.

