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from both their noses. It dripped down, splashed about, their knuckles were red. But still they kept going. Biff. Bash. Biff. Bash.
    We were given juice and cinnamon buns straight out of the oven, so hot that we had to keep what we bit off between our teeth for a while before we could chew it. Then Niila started playing with the nuts and bolts. He emptied them out onto the sofa, his fingers were trembling, andI realized he’d been longing to do this for ages. He sorted them out into the various compartments in the plastic box, then tipped them out, mixed them up and started all over again. I tried to help him but I could see he was annoyed, so after a while I left to go home. He didn’t even look up.
    The brothers were still at it outside. The gravel had been kicked around by their feet to form a circular rampart. Still the same frenzied punches, the same silent hatred, but their movements were slower now, weariness was creeping in. Their shirts were soaked in sweat. Their faces were grey behind all the blood, powdered lightly with dust.
    Then I noticed they had changed. They weren’t really boys any more. Their jaws had swollen up, their canines were sticking out from between their swollen lips. Their legs were shorter and more massive, like the thighs of a bear, and so big their trousers were splitting at the seams. Their fingernails had turned black and grown into claws. And then I realized it wasn’t dust on their faces, it was hair. They were growing a pelt, dark hair spreading over their fresh, boyish faces, down over their necks and inside their shirts.
    I wanted to shout a warning. Rashly took a step toward them.
    They stopped immediately. Turned to face me. Crouched slightly, sniffed my scent. And then I saw their hunger. They were starving. They were desperate to eat, craved meat.
    I stepped back. An icy chill ran down my spine. They growled. Started advancing shoulder to shoulder, two vigilant beasts of prey. They sped up. Stepped outside their gravel circle. Dug in their claws then pounced.
    A dark cloud loomed over me.
    My scream was stifled. Terror, whimpering, the squeaking of a stuck piglet.
    Ding. Ding dong
.
    Church bells.
    The holy church bells.
Ding dong. Ding dong
. A white-clad being cycled into the courtyard, a shimmering figure ringing his bell in a cloud of floury light. He braked without a word. Grasped the beastswith his enormous fists, lifted them by the scruff of their necks, and banged their turnip-heads together so hard that sparks flew.
    “Dad,” they gasped, “Dad, Dad …”
    The bright light faded, the father flung his sons to the ground, grabbed them by their ankles, one son in each hand, and dragged them backward and forward over the gravel, smoothing out the surface with their front teeth until everything was nice and tidy again. And by the time he had finished, both brothers were crying their eyes out, sobbing, and they’d turned back into boys again. I raced home, galloping as fast as I could. In my pocket I had a bolt.
    * * *
    Niila’s dad was called Isak and came from a big Laestadian family. Even as a little boy he’d been dragged along to prayer meetings in the smoke-filled hut where dark-suited smallholders and their wives in knotted headscarves sat bottom to bottom on the wooden benches. It was so cramped that their foreheads hit against the backs of those in front whenever they were possessed by the Holy Spirit and started rocking back and forth as they intoned prayers. Isak had sat there, hemmed in on every side, a delicate little boy among all those men and women being transformed before his very eyes. They started breathing more deeply, the air grew damp and fetid, their faces turned crimson, their glasses misted over, their noses started dripping as the two preachers sang louder and louder. Their words, those living words weaving the Truth thread by thread, images of evil, of perfidy, of sins that attempted to hide underground but were torn up by their hideous roots