Let the Right One In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Then they ate and when his dad was done with the dishes they played tic-tac-toe.

  Oskar liked sitting like that with his dad; the graph paper on the thin table, their heads leaning over the page, close to each other. The fire crackled in the fireplace.

  Oskar was crosses and his dad circles, as usual. His dad never let Oskar win purposely and so until a few years ago his dad had always won easily, even if Oskar got lucky now and again. But now it was more even. Maybe it had to do with him practising so much with the Rubik’s cube.

  The games could go on over half the page, which was to Oskar’s advantage. He was good at keeping in mind places with holes that could be filled if Dad did this or that, mask an offensive as a defence.

  Tonight it was Oskar who won.

  Three games in a row had now been encircled and marked with an ‘O’ in the middle. Only a little one, where Oskar had been thinking of something else, had a ‘P’ on it. Oskar filled in a cross and got two open fours where his dad could only block one. His dad sighed and shook his head.

  ‘Well, Oskar. Looks like I’ve met my match.’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  For the sake of the game, his dad blocked the one four and Oskar filled in the other. His dad closed one side of the four and Oskar put a fifth cross on the other side, drew a circle around the whole thing and wrote a neat ‘O’. His dad scratched his beard and pulled out a new sheet of paper. Held his pen up.

  ‘But this time I’m going to…’

  ‘You can always dream. You start.’

  Four crosses and three circles into the game there was a knock at the front door. Shortly after, it opened and you could hear thuds from someone stamping the snow off their feet.

  ‘Hello, hello!’

  Dad looked up from the paper, leaned back in the chair and looked out into the hall. Oskar pinched his lips together.

  No.

  His dad nodded at the new arrival. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Soft thumps from someone walking through the hall with woollen socks on their feet. A moment later Janne came into the kitchen. ‘Oh I see,’ he said. ‘Well aren’t you two having a cosy evening.’

  Dad gestured towards Oskar. ‘You’ve met my boy.’

  ‘Sure,’ Janne said. ‘Hi Oskar, how’s it going?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Until now. Go away.

  Janne thudded over to the kitchen table, the woollen socks had slid down the heels and were fluttering out in front of his toes like deformed flippers. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘I see you’re playing tic-tac-toe.’

  ‘Yes, but the boy is too good for me. I can’t beat him any more.’

  ‘No. Been practising in town? Do you dare play against me, then, Oskar?’

  Oskar shook his head. Didn’t even want to look at Janne, knew what he would see there. Watery eyes, a mouth pulled into a sheep-grin, yes, Janne looked like an old sheep and the blonde curly hair only strengthened the impression. One of Dad’s ‘friends’ who was Oskar’s enemy.

  Janne rubbed his hands together, producing a sound like sandpaper, and in the backlight from the hall Oskar could see small flakes of skin fall to the floor. Janne had some kind of skin disease that in the summer flared up and made his face look like rotten blood orange.

  ‘Well, well. It sure is cosy in here.’

  You always say that. Go away with your revolting face and your old stale words.

  ‘Dad, aren’t we going to keep playing?’

  ‘Of course, but now that we have a guest…’

  ‘Go on, play.’

  Janne leaned back in his chair and looked like he had all the time in the world. But Oskar knew he had lost the battle. It was over. Now it would turn out like always.

  Most of all he wanted to scream, break something, most of all Janne, when Dad walked over to the pantry and brought out the bottle, picked up two shot glasses and put them on the table. Janne rubbed his hands so the flakes danced.

  ‘Well, well. What have we here…’

  Oskar looked down at the paper with its unfinished game.

  He was going to put his cross there.

  But there would be no more crosses tonight. No circles. Nothing.

  There was a light gurgling sound as Dad poured out the shots. The delicate upside-down cone of glass was filled with transparent liquid. It was so little and fragile in Dad’s hand. It almost disappeared.

  And still it ruined everything. Everything.

  Oskar crinkled up the unfinished game and put it in the wood-stove. Dad made no protests. He and Janne had started talking about some acquaintance who had broken his leg. Went on to talk about other cases of broken bones that they had experienced or heard about, refilled their glasses.

  Oskar stayed where he was in front of the stove with the doors open, looking at the paper that burst into flames, blackened. Then he got the other games and put them in the fire as well.

  Dad and Janne took the glasses and the bottle and moved to the living room. Dad said something to Oskar about ‘come and talk a little’ and Oskar said, ‘Later, maybe.’ He sat there in front of the stove and stared into the fire. The heat caressed his face. He got up, got the graph paper from the kitchen table, tore unused pages out of it and put them in the fire. When the whole pad, cover and all, was blackened, he took the pencils and threw them into the fire as well.

  There was something uncanny about the hospital at this time of night. Maud Carlberg sat at reception and looked out over the almost empty entrance hall. The cafeteria and kiosk were closed; only the occasional person came through like a ghost under this high ceiling.

  Late at night like this she liked to imagine that it was she and only she who was guarding this enormous building that was Danderyd Hospital. It wasn’t true, of course. If there was any kind of a problem she only had to push a button and a night guard would turn up within three minutes.

  There was a game she liked to play to get these late-night hours to pass.

  She thought of a profession, a place to live and the basic outline of a person’s background. Perhaps an illness. Then she applied all this in her mind to the next person who approached her at the desk. Often the result was…amusing.

  She could imagine a pilot, for example, who lived on Götgatan and had two dogs that a neighbour took care of when the pilot was away on his or her flights. The neighbour was secretly in love with the pilot, whose biggest problem was that he or she saw little green men with red caps swimming around in the clouds when he or she was out flying.

  OK. Then all she had to do was wait.

  Maybe after a while a woman with a ravaged appearance turned up. A female pilot. Had been drinking too much on the sly from those tiny liquor bottles they give you on the planes, had seen the little green men, had been fired. Now she sat at home with her dogs all day. The neighbour however was still in love with her.

  Maud kept going like that.

  Sometimes she lectured herself about her game, because it prevented her from taking people seriously. But she couldn’t help herself. Right now she was waiting for a minister whose passion was expensive sports cars and who loved picking up hitchhikers with the motive of trying to convert them.

  Man or woman? Old or young? How would someone like that look?

  Maud rested her chin in her hands and looked towards the front doors. Not a lot of people tonight. Visiting hours were over and new patients who turned up with Saturday-night injuries—mostly alcohol related in one way or another—were taken to the emergency room.

  The revolving doors started to turn. The sports car minister, perhaps.

  But no, this was one of those cases where she had to give up. It was a child. A waif-like little…girl, about ten or twelve years old. Maud started to imagine a chain of events that would eventually lead this child to become that minister, but quickly stopped herself. The girl looked unhappy.

  She walked over to the large map of the hospital with the colour-coded l
ines marking the routes you had to take to go to this or that place. Few adults could make sense of that map, so how would a child be able to?

  Maud leaned forward and said in a low voice, ‘Can I help you?’

  The girl turned to her and smiled shyly, went over to reception. Her hair was wet, the occasional snowflake that had not yet melted shone white against the black. She didn’t keep her gaze glued to the floor as children often did in a foreign environment, no, the dark sad eyes stared straight into Maud’s as she walked over to the counter. A thought—as clear as an audible utterance—flashed through Maud’s head.

  I have to give you something. But what?

  In her mind, stupidly, she quickly went through the contents of her desk drawers. A pen? A balloon?

  The child stopped in front of the counter. Only her neck and head reached over the top of it.

  ‘Excuse me…I’m looking for my father.’

  ‘I see. Has he been admitted here?’

  ‘Yes, although, I don’t know for sure…’

  Maud looked past her at the doors, looked quickly around the hall and then fixed on the girl in front of her who was not even wearing a jacket. Only a black knitted poloneck where drops of water and snowflakes glittered in the light of the reception area.

  ‘Are you all alone here, dear? At this hour?’

  ‘Yes, I…just wanted to know if he is here.’

  ‘Let’s see about that then shall we. What’s his name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  The girl bent her head, seemed to be looking for something on the ground. When she straightened her head again the large dark eyes were wet with tears and her lower lip trembled.

  ‘No, he…But he is here.’

  ‘But my dear…’

  Maud felt as if something in her chest was breaking and tried to take refuge in action. She bent down and took out her roll of paper towels from the bottom desk drawer, pulled off a piece and handed it over to the girl. At last she was able to give her something, if only a piece of paper.

  The girl blew her nose, and dried her eyes in a very…adult way.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But then I don’t know…so what’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He is…the police took him.’

  ‘But then you’d better turn to them.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re keeping him here. Because he’s sick.’

  ‘Well, what kind of illness does he have?’

  ‘He…I just know that the police have him here. Where is he?’

  ‘Probably on the top floor, but you can’t go up there if you haven’t…made an appointment with them ahead of time.’

  ‘I just wanted to know which window was his so I could…I don’t know.’

  The girl started to cry again. Maud’s throat got so tight it hurt. The girl wanted to know this so she could stand outside the hospital in the snow…and look up towards her father’s window. Maud swallowed.

  ‘I can call them if you like. I’m sure that you can—’

  ‘No, it’s fine. Now I know. Now I can…Thanks, thanks a lot.’

  The girl turned away and walked back to the revolving door.

  My Lord, all these broken families.

  The girl walked out the doors and Maud kept staring at the place where the girl had disappeared.

  Something was wrong.

  In her mind Maud went over what the girl had looked like, how she had moved. There was something that didn’t match up, something you…It took Maud half a minute to remember what it was. The girl had not been wearing any shoes.

  Maud jumped up and ran to the doors. She was only allowed to leave the reception desk unattended under very special circumstances. She decided that this counted as one of them. She trotted through the revolving doors impatiently hurry hurry hurry and then out into the car park. The girl was nowhere in sight. What should she do? The welfare people would have to be brought in; no one had checked to make sure there was someone to look after the girl, that was the only explanation. Who was her father?

  Maud looked around the car park without finding the girl. She ran down one side of the hospital, in the direction of the subway. No girl. On her way back to the reception she tried to figure out who she should call, what she should do.

  Oskar lay in bed, waiting for the Werewolf. He felt the inside of his chest churning with rage, despair. From the living room he heard his dad’s and Janne’s loud voices, mixed with music from the tape recorder. The Deep Brothers. Oskar could not actually make out the words but he knew the song by heart.

  We live in the country,

  And soon we found,

  We needed some animals to run around.

  We sold the china, and bought a pig…

  At this point the whole band started to imitate different farm animals. Normally he thought the Deep Brothers were funny. Now he hated them. Because they were part of this. Singing their idiotic songs for Dad and Janne while they got drunk.

  He knew exactly how it was going to go.

  In an hour or so the bottle would be empty and Janne would go home. Then Dad would pace up and down in the kitchen for a while, and finally decide he needed to talk to Oskar.

  He would come into Oskar’s room and he would no longer be Dad. Just an alcohol-stinking, clumsy mess, all sentimental and needy. Would want Oskar to get out of bed. Needed to talk for a while. About how he still loved Mum, how he loved Oskar, did Oskar love him back? Slurring about all the wrongs he had ever experienced, and in the worst-case scenario get himself worked up, become angry.

  He never got violent or anything. But what Oskar saw in his eyes at those times was absolutely the scariest thing he had ever seen. Then there was no trace of Dad left. Just a monster who had somehow crawled into his dad’s body and taken control of it.

  The person his dad became when he drank had no connection to the person he was when he was sober. And so it was comforting to think about Dad being a werewolf. That he in fact contained a whole other person in his body. Just as the moon brought out the wolf in a werewolf, so alcohol brought this creature out of his dad.

  Oskar picked up a Bamse comic, tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. He felt…forlorn. In an hour or so he would find himself alone with the Monster. And the only thing he could do was wait.

  He threw the Bamse comic at the wall and got out of bed, went to get his wallet. One pack of prepaid subway tickets and two notes from Eli. He put Eli’s notes side by side on the bed.

  THEN WINDOW, LET DAY IN, AND LET LIFE OUT

  A heart.

  SEE YOU TONIGHT. ELI.

  And then the second.

  I MUST BE GONE AND LIVE, OR STAY AND DIE.

  YOURS, ELI.

  There are no vampires.

  The night was a black cover over the window. Oskar shut his eyes and thought about the route to Stockholm, raced past the houses, the farms, the fields. Flew into the courtyard in Blackeberg, in through her window and there she was.

  He opened his eyes, stared at the black rectangle of the window. Out there.

  The Deep Brothers had started a song about a bicycle that got a flat tyre. Dad and Janne laughed much too loudly at something. Something fell over.

  Which monster do you choose?

  Oskar put Eli’s notes back in his wallet and put his clothes on. Sneaked out into the hall and put on his shoes, his coat and hat. He stood still in the hall a few seconds, listening to the sounds from the living room.

  He turned to go, saw something, stopped.

  On the shoe rack in the hall were his old rubber boots, the ones he had worn when he was four or five. They had been there as long as he could remember, even though there was no one who could wear them. Next to them were his dad’s enormous Tretorn boots, one with a patch on the heel like the kind you use to fix bicycle tyres.

  Why had he kept them?

  Oskar knew why. Two people grew up out of the boots with their backs to him. His dad’s broad back, and
next to it Oskar’s thin one. Oskar’s arm upstretched, his hand in Dad’s. They walked in their boots up over a boulder, maybe on their way to pick raspberries.

  Suppressed a sob, tears rising in his throat. He stretched out his hand to touch the small boots. A salvo of laughter came from the living room. Janne’s voice, distorted. Probably imitating someone, he was good at that.

  Oskar’s fingers closed over the top of the boots. Yes. He didn’t know why but it felt right. He carefully opened the front door, closed it behind him. The night was icy cold, the snow a sea of tiny diamonds in the moonlight.

  He started to walk up to the main road, with the boots tightly clasped in his hands.

  The guard was sleeping. A young policeman who had been brought in after the hospital staff had protested against having one of them constantly assigned to guard Håkan. The door was, however, secured with a coded lock. That was probably why he had dared to snooze.

  Only a night lamp was on, and Håkan was studying the blurry shadows on the ceiling the way a healthy man might lie in the grass looking at clouds. He was looking for shapes, figures in the shadows. Didn’t know if he would be able to read, but longed to do so.

  Eli was gone and everything that had dominated his old life was coming back. He would get a long prison sentence and he would devote that time to read everything he had not yet read and also to reread everything he had promised himself to reread.

  He was going over all the books by Selma Lagerlöf when a scraping sound interrupted him. He listened. More scraping. It was coming from the window.

  He turned his head as far as he could, looked in that direction. Against the dark sky there was a lighter oval, lit by the night lamp. A pale little blob appeared beside the oval, moving back and forth. A hand. Waving. The hand pulled along the window and that scraping, screeching sound came again.

  Eli.

  Håkan was grateful that he was not connected to an ECG machine as his heart began to race, fluttering like a bird in a net. He imagined his heart bursting out of his chest, crawling over the floor to the window.