Let the Right One In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  ‘Don’t be silly, you can—’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  Eli started to put on the blood-stained shirt and Oskar said, ‘You’re gross, don’t you get it? You’re gross.’

  Eli turned to him with the shirt in his hands. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Eli put the shirt back in the bag.

  ‘What should I take then?’

  ‘Something from the closet. Whatever you like.’

  Eli nodded, went into Oskar’s room where the closets were while Oskar let himself slide sideways on the couch and pressed his hands against his temples to prevent them from cracking.

  Mum, Eli’s mum, my mum. Eli, me. Two hundred years. Eli’s dad. Eli’s dad? That old man who…the old man.

  Eli came back into the living room. Oskar got ready to say what he was planning to say, but stopped himself when he saw that Eli was wearing a dress. A faded yellow summer dress with small white dots. One of his mother’s dresses. Eli stroked his hand over it.

  ‘Is this all right? I took the one that looked the most worn.’

  ‘But it’s…’

  ‘I’ll bring it back later.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  Eli went up to him, crouched down and took his hand.

  ‘Oskar? I’m sorry that…I don’t know what I should…’

  Oskar waved with his other hand to get him to stop. ‘You know that that old guy, that he’s escaped, don’t you?’

  ‘What old guy?’

  ‘The old guy who…the one you said was your dad. The one who lived with you.’

  ‘What about him?’

  Oskar shut his eyes. Blue lightning flashed inside his eyelids. The chain of events he had reconstructed from the papers flashed past and he got angry. He loosened his hand from Eli’s and made it into a fist, hitting against his own throbbing head and said with his eyes still shut: ‘Cut it out. Just cut it out. I know all of it, OK. Quit pretending. Quit lying, I’m so damn tired of that.’

  Eli didn’t say anything. Oskar pinched his eyes shut, breathed in and out.

  ‘The old man has escaped. They’ve been looking for him the whole day without finding him. Now you know.’

  A pause. Then Eli’s voice, above Oskar’s head.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here. In Judarn. The forest. By Åkeshov.’

  Oskar opened his eyes. Eli had stood up, stood there with his hand over his mouth and large, frightened eyes above his hand. The dress was too big, hung like a sack over his thin shoulders and he looked like a kid who had borrowed his mum’s clothes without permission and was now awaiting his punishment.

  ‘Oskar,’ said Eli. ‘Don’t go out. After it gets dark. Promise me that.’

  The dress. The words. Oskar snorted, couldn’t help saying it.

  ‘You sound like my mum.’

  The squirrel darts down the trunk of the oak tree, stops, listens. A siren, in the distance.

  On Bergslagsvägen an ambulance is racing by with flashing blue lights, the sirens on.

  Inside the ambulance there are three people. Lacke Sörensson is sitting on a folding seat and is holding a bloodless, lacerated hand belonging to Virginia Lind. An ambulance technician is adjusting the tube that administers saline solution to Virginia’s body in order to give her heart something to pump around, now that she has lost so much blood.

  The squirrel judges the sound not to be dangerous, irrelevant. It continues down the tree trunk. All day there have been people in the forest, dogs. Not a moment of calm and only now, when it is dark, does the squirrel dare come down out of the oak tree it has been forced to hole up in all day.

  Now the dogs’ barking and the voices have died down, gone away. And the thundering bird that had been hovering over the treetops appears to have returned to its nest.

  The squirrel reaches the foot of the tree, runs along a thick root. It does not like to make its way over the ground in the dark, but hunger forces it on. It makes its way with alertness, stopping to listen, looking around every ten metres. Makes sure to steer clear of a badger den that was inhabited as recently as this summer. He hasn’t seen the family for a long time but you can never be too careful.

  Finally the squirrel reaches its goal; the nearest of its many winter stores. The temperature this evening has sunk below freezing and on top of the snow that has been melting all day there is now a thin, hard crust. The squirrel scratches with its claws through the crust. Stops, listens and digs again. Through snow, leaves, dirt.

  Just as it picks up a nut between its paws it hears a sound.

  Danger.

  It takes the nut in its teeth and runs straight up into a pine tree without having time to cover the store. Once in the safety of a branch it takes the nut into its paws again, tries to locate the sound. Its hunger is great and the food only some centimetres from its mouth but the danger must first be located, identified, before it is time to eat.

  The squirrel’s head jerks from side to side, its nose trembles as it looks down over the moon-shadowed landscape below and traces the sound to its source. Yes. Taking the long way around was worth it. The scratching, wet sound comes from the badger den.

  Badgers can’t climb trees. The squirrel relaxes a little and takes a bite of the nut while it continues to study the ground, but now more as a member of a theatre audience, third balcony. Wants to see what will happen, how many badgers there are.

  But what emerges from the badger’s den is no badger. The squirrel removes the nut from its mouth, looks down. Tries to understand. Put what it sees together with known facts. Doesn’t manage it. Takes the nut into its mouth again, dashes further up the trunk, all the way up into the very top.

  Maybe one of those can climb trees.

  You can never be too careful.

  Sunday

  8 November (Evening/Night)

  It is half past eight, Sunday evening.

  At the same time as the ambulance with Virginia and Lacke is driving over the Traneberg bridge, the Stockholm district chief of police holds up a photograph for the image-hungry reporters, Eli chooses a dress out of Oskar’s mother’s closet, Tommy squeezes glue into a plastic bag and draws in the exquisite fumes of numbness and forgetfulness, a squirrel sees Håkan Bengtsson—the first living creature in fourteen hours to have done so—and Staffan, who has been searching for him, is pouring out a cup of tea.

  Staffan has not realised that a sliver is missing from the very tip of the spout and a large quantity of tea runs along the spout, the teapot, onto the kitchen counter. He mumbles something and tips the teapot higher so the tea comes splashing out and the lid tumbles off and into the cup. Scalding hot tea splashes onto his hands and he slams the teapot down, holding his arms stiffly at his sides while in his head he runs through the Hebrew alphabet to quell his impulse to throw the teapot against the wall.

  Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth…

  Yvonne came into the kitchen, saw Staffan bent over the counter with closed eyes.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Staffan shook his head. ‘It’s nothing.’

  Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samech…

  ‘Are you sad?’

  ‘No.’

  Kaf, Resh, Shin, Taf. There. Better.

  He opened his eyes, pointed at the teapot.

  ‘That’s a terrible teapot.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes, it…spills when you try to pour the tea.’

  ‘I’ve never noticed.’

  ‘Well, it does.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

  Staffan pinched his lips together, stretched out his scalded hand towards her with a gesture of Peace. Shalom. Be quiet. ‘Yvonne. Right now I feel such an…intense desire to hit you. So please, don’t say any more.’

  Yvonne took half a step back. Something in her had been prepared for this. She had not admitted this insight to herself, but had sensed that behind his pious façade Staffan stored some kind of rage.

  She crossed her arms,
breathed in and out a few times while Staffan stood still, staring at the teacup with the lid in it. Then she said, ‘Is that what you do?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hit. When something goes wrong.’

  ‘Have I hit you?’

  ‘No, but you said—’

  ‘I said. And you listened. And now it’s all right.’

  ‘And if I hadn’t listened?’

  Staffan looked completely calm again and Yvonne relaxed, lowered her arms. He took both her hands in his, kissed the backs of them lightly.

  ‘Yvonne. We have to listen to each other.’

  The tea was poured out and they drank it in the living room. Staffan made a mental note to buy Yvonne a new teapot. She asked about the search in Judarn forest and Staffan told her. She did her best to engage him in conversation on other topics but finally the unavoidable question came.

  ‘Where’s Tommy?’

  ‘I…don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? Yvonne…’

  ‘Well, at a friend’s house.’

  ‘Hmm. When is he coming home?’

  ‘I think he was…supposed to spend the night. Over there.’

  ‘There?’

  ‘Yes, at…’

  In her head Yvonne went through the names of Tommy’s friends that she knew. Didn’t want to tell Staffan that Tommy was gone for the night without knowing where. Staffan took a parent’s responsibility very seriously.

  ‘…at Robban’s.’

  ‘Robban. Is that his best friend?’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’

  ‘And what’s the rest of his name?’

  ‘…Ahlgren. Why? Is that someone you have…’

  ‘No, I was just thinking.’

  Staffan took his spoon, hit it lightly against the cup. A delicate ringing sound. He nodded.

  ‘Great. You know, I think we’re going to have to call this Robban and ask Tommy to come home for a while. So I can talk to him a little.’

  ‘I don’t have the number.’

  ‘No, but…Ahlgren. You know where he lives, don’t you? All you have to do is look it up in the phone book.’

  Staffan got off the couch and Yvonne bit her lower lip, felt how she was constructing a labyrinth that was getting harder and harder to get out of. He got the phone book and stopped in the middle of the living room, flipping through it and mumbling, ‘Ahlgren, Ahlgren…Hm. Which street does he live on?’

  ‘I…Björnsonsgatan.’

  ‘Björnsonsgatan…no. No Ahlgren there. But there is one here on Ibsengatan. Could it be him?’

  When Yvonne didn’t answer, Staffan marked his place with his finger and said, ‘Think I’ll give him a try at any rate. It’s Robert, right?’

  ‘Staffan…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I promised him not to tell.’

  ‘Now I don’t understand anything.’

  ‘Tommy. I said I wouldn’t tell you…where he is.’

  ‘So he is not at Robban’s?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is he then?’

  ‘I…I promised.’

  Staffan put the phone book on the coffee table, went and sat down next to Yvonne on the couch. She took a sip of tea, held the teacup in front of her face as if to hide behind it while Staffan waited for her. When she put the cup down on the saucer she saw that her hands were shaking. Staffan put his hand on her knee.

  ‘Yvonne. You have to understand that—’

  ‘I promised.’

  ‘I only want to talk to him. Forgive me for saying this, Yvonne, but I think it’s exactly this kind of inability to deal with a situation as it arises that is the reason…well, that they happen in the first place. In my experience, the faster young people have someone respond to their actions, the greater the chance that…take a heroin addict, for example. If someone takes action when he is only doing, say, hashish…’

  ‘Tommy doesn’t do things like that.’

  ‘Are you completely sure of that?’

  Silence fell. Yvonne knew that for each second that went by her ‘yes’ in response to Staffan’s question decreased in value. Tick-tock. Now she had already answered ‘no’ without saying the word. And Tommy did act strange sometimes. When he came home. Something about his eyes. What if he…

  Staffan leaned back, knew the battle was won. Now he was only waiting for her conditions.

  Yvonne’s eyes were searching for something on the table.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My cigarettes, have you—’

  ‘In the kitchen. Yvonne—’

  ‘Yes. Yes. You can’t go to him now.’

  ‘No. You can decide. If you think—’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Before he goes to school. Promise me that you won’t go to him now.’

  ‘Promise. So. What kind of mysterious place is he holed up in anyway?’

  Yvonne told him.

  Then she went out into the kitchen and smoked a cigarette, blew the smoke out through the open window. Smoked one more, cared less about where the smoke went. When Staffan came out into the kitchen, waved away the smoke with his hand and asked where the cellar key was. She said she had forgotten for the moment but it would probably come back to her tomorrow morning.

  If he was nice.

  When Eli had gone Oskar sat down at the kitchen table again looking through newspaper articles. The headache was starting to lessen now that the impressions were taking on more of a pattern.

  Eli had explained that the man had become…infected. And worse. The infection was the only thing in him that was alive. His brain was dead, and the infection was controlling and directing him. Towards Eli.

  Eli had told him, begged him not to do anything. Eli would leave tomorrow as soon as it got dark, and Oskar had of course asked why not leave tonight already?

  Because…I can’t.

  Why not? I can help you.

  Oskar, I can’t. I’m too weak.

  How can that be? You’ve just…

  I just am.

  And Oskar had realised that he was the reason that Eli was weak. All the blood that had run out in the hall. If the old guy got a hold of Eli it would be all Oskar’s fault.

  The clothes!

  Oskar got up so violently the chair tipped over.

  The bag with Eli’s bloodied clothes was still sitting by the couch, the shirt half hanging out. He pushed it deeper into the bag and the sleeve was like a damp sponge when he pressed it down, tied the bag and…He stopped, looked at the hand that had pressed the shirt down.

  The cut he had made in his palm had a crust that had broken up a little, revealing the wound underneath.

  The blood…he didn’t want to mix it. Am I…infected now?

  His legs carried him mechanically to the front door with the bag in his hand. He listened for sounds outside, didn’t hear anyone and ran up the stairs to the garbage chute, opened it. He pushed the bag in through the opening, held it fast for a moment, dangling in the dark.

  A cold breeze whooshed through the chute, chilling his hand where he held it outstretched, squeezed around the plastic knot of the bag. The bag shone white against the black, slightly craggy walls of the duct. If he let go, the bag would not be sucked up. It would fall down. Gravity would pull it down. Into the big garbage sack.

  In a few days the garbage truck would come and collect the sack. It came early in the morning. The orange, blinking lights would flash onto Oskar’s ceiling at about the same time as he generally woke up and he would lie there in his bed and listen to the rumbling, masticating crunch as the garbage was crushed. Maybe he would get up and watch the men in their overalls, who tossed the big bags with habitual ease, press the button. The jaws of the garbage truck closing and the men who then hopped into the truck and drove the short distance to the next building.

  It always gave him such a feeling of…warmth. That he was safe in his room. That things worked. Maybe there was also a longing. For those men, for the truck. To be allowed to sit in that dimly
-lit coach, drive away…

  Let go. I have to let go.

  The hand was convulsively clenched around the bag. His arm was aching from having been held outstretched so long. The back of his hand was numb from the cold air. He let go.

  There was a hissing sound as the bag slipped along the walls, a half second of silence as it fell freely and then a thud when it landed in the sack below.

  I’ll help you.

  He looked at his hand again. The hand that helped. The hand that…

  I’ll kill someone. I’ll go in and get the knife and then I’ll go out and kill someone. Jonny. I’ll slit his throat and gather up his blood and then I’ll bring it home for Eli because what does it matter now that I’m infected and soon I will…

  His legs wanted to crumple under him and he had to lean on the edge of the garbage chute not to fall over. He had thought it. For real. This wasn’t like the game with the tree. He had…for a moment…really thought about doing it.

  Warm. He was warm, like he had a fever. His body ached and he wanted to go lie down. Now.

  I’m infected. I’m going to become a…vampire.

  He forced his legs to move back down the stairs while he steadied himself with one hand—

  the uninfected one

  —on the railing. He managed to let himself back into the apartment, into his room, lay on his bed and stared at the wallpaper. The forest. Quickly one of his figures appeared, looked him in the eyes. The little gnome. He stroked his finger over it while a completely ridiculous little thought appeared:

  Tomorrow I have to go to school.

  And there was a worksheet he hadn’t filled out yet. Africa. He should get up now, sit down at his desk, light the lamp and look up places in the geography book. Find meaningless names and write them down on the blank lines.

  That was what he ought to do. He softly stroked the gnome’s little cap. Then he tapped on the wall.

  E.L.I.

  No answer. Was probably out—

  doing what we do.

  He pulled the covers over his head. A fever-like chill coursed through his body. He tried to imagine it. How it would be. To live forever. Feared, hated. No. Eli wouldn’t hate him. If they were… together…

  He tried to imagine it, he spun out a fantasy about it. After a while the front door was opened. His mum was home.