Let the Right One In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  ‘Aaaaa…’

  Håkan’s hand around one edge of the doorframe and then the body that came staggering out of the storage unit, hands groping the air in front of him. Eli pressed his back into the wall, waiting for the right moment.

  Håkan came out, a few tentative steps, then stopped exactly in front of Eli. Listened, sniffed.

  Eli leaned forward so that his hands were the same height as Håkan’s shoulders. Then he braced himself against the wall, rushed forward and put everything into throwing Håkan off balance.

  He succeeded.

  Håkan took a mincing step to the side and fell against the door to the shelter. The crack in the door, that Eli had seen as a black line, widened as the door opened inwards and Håkan tumbled into the darkness. Eli started to fall headlong into the corridor, managed to stop himself before the floor met his face, then crawled to the door, and grabbed the lower of the two locking wheels.

  Håkan lay still on the floor inside as Eli pulled the door shut and turned the wheel, locked it. Then he crawled out to the cellar office, got the stick and threaded it in between the locking wheels so that it could not be unlocked from the inside.

  Eli continued to concentrate his energy on healing his body and started to crawl out of the basement. A rivulet of blood snaked out of his ear. At the door out of the cellar he was healed enough to stand up. He pushed the door open and managed to go up the stairs on wobbly legs.

  rest rest rest

  He pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out into the hall lamp. He was beaten, humiliated and the sunrise threatened just under the horizon.

  rest rest rest

  But he had to…exterminate. And there was only one way he knew to do that. Fire. Staggering he made his way across the yard, heading to the only place he knew where he could find it.

  7:34, Monday morning, Blackeberg

  The burglar alarm at the ICA grocery store on Arvid Mörne’s Way is set off. The police arrive at the scene eleven minutes later and find the store window broken. The store owner, who lives next door, is there. He says that from his window he saw a very young, dark-haired person leave the place running. But upon searching the store nothing is found to be stolen.

  7:36, sunrise

  The hospital blinds were much better, darker, than her own. There was only one place, where the blinds were damaged, where they let in a thin ray of morning light that made a dust-grey slash in the dark ceiling.

  Virginia lay outstretched, stiff, in her bed, staring at the grey slice of light that trembled when a gust of wind made the window vibrate. Reflected, weak light. No more than a mild irritation, a grain of sleep in her eye.

  Lacke snuffled and wheezed in the bed next to her. They had stayed awake for a long time, talking. Memories, mostly. Close to four in the morning Lacke had finally fallen asleep, with his hand still in hers.

  She had had to disentangle her hand from his an hour later when a nurse had come in to check her blood pressure, found it satisfactory and left them with a glance, actually a tender look at Lacke. Virginia had heard how Lacke pleaded to stay, the reasons he had given. Thus the tender glance, she supposed.

  Now Virginia lay with her hands folded on her chest, fighting her body’s desire to…turn off. Fall asleep was not an adequate expression for it. As soon as she did not consciously concentrate on her breathing, it stopped. But she needed to stay awake.

  She hoped a nurse would come back in before Lacke woke up. Yes. The very best thing would be if he could sleep until it was over.

  But that was probably too much to hope for.

  The sun caught up with Eli in the courtyard, a glowing tong that pinched his mauled ear. Instinctively, he backed up into the shade of the entrance to the yard, squeezed the three plastic bottles of T-red to his chest, as if to shield them from the sun as well.

  Ten steps away was his front door. Twenty steps to Oskar’s. And thirty steps to Tommy’s.

  I can’t do it.

  No, if he had been healthy, strong, he would have tried to make it to Oskar’s entrance, through the flood of light that intensified every second he waited. But not to Tommy’s. And not now.

  Ten steps. Then up the stairs. The big window in the stairwell. If I trip. If the sun…

  Eli ran.

  The sun threw itself over him like a hungry lion, biting into his back. Eli almost lost his balance as he was thrown forward by the sun’s howling force. Nature vomited its disgust at his transgression; to show himself in sunlight for even one second.

  It sizzled, bubbled, like someone pouring boiling oil on Eli’s back when he reached the front door, threw it open. The pain almost made him faint and he moved towards the steps as if drugged, blinded; didn’t dare open his eyes for fear that they would melt.

  He dropped one of the bottles, heard it roll away across the floor. Couldn’t be helped. With head bent, one arm wrapped around the remaining bottles, the other on the banister, he limped up the stairs, reached the landing. One flight left.

  Through the window the sun delivered a last swipe at his neck, snapped at him, then bit him in the thighs, calves, heels while he moved up the stairs. He was burning. The only thing missing was flames. He got the door open, fell into the wonderful, cool darkness inside. Slammed the door shut behind him. But it was not dark.

  The kitchen door was open and in the kitchen there were no blinds in front of the window. The light was weaker, greyer than what he had just experienced and without hesitation Eli dropped the bottles onto the floor, continued on. While the light clawed relatively tenderly at his back as he crawled to the bathroom, the smell of burnt flesh wafted into his nose.

  I will never be whole again.

  He stretched his arm out, opened the bathroom door and crawled into the compact darkness. He pushed a couple of plastic jugs out of the way, closed the door and locked it.

  Before he slid into the bathtub he had time to think:

  I didn’t lock the front door.

  But it was too late. Rest turned him off at the same moment as he sank down into the wet darkness. He wouldn’t have had the energy anyway.

  Tommy sat still, pressed into the corner. He held his breath until his ears started to ring and he saw shooting stars in front of his eyes. When he heard the cellar door slam shut he dared to let his breath out in a long panting exhalation that rolled along the cement walls, died out.

  It was completely quiet. The darkness was so complete that it had mass, weight.

  He held one hand in front of his face. Nothing. No difference. He touched his face as if to convince himself that he existed at all. Yes. His fingertips touched his nose, his lips. Unreal. They flickered to life under his fingers, disappeared.

  The little figurine in his other hand felt more alive, more real than he did. He squeezed it, held it close.

  Tommy had been sitting with his head bent down between his knees, his eyes tightly shut, his hands held against his ears in order not to have to know, not to hear what was going on in the storage unit. It sounded like that little girl was being murdered. He would not have been able to do anything, not dared do anything and therefore he had tried to deny the whole situation by disappearing.

  He had been with his dad. On the soccer field, in the forest, at the Canaan-baths. Finally he had paused at the memory of that time on the Råcksta field when he and his dad had tried a remote-control aeroplane that his dad had borrowed from someone at work.

  Mum had come along for a while but she thought it was boring to look at the aeroplane making circles in the sky and had gone home. He and his dad had kept going until it got dark and the aeroplane was a silhouette against the pink evening sky. Then they had walked home, hand in hand, through the forest.

  Tommy had been in that day, far from the screams, the insanity going on a few metres away. He was only aware of the furious buzz of the aeroplane, the warmth of his father’s large hand on his back while he nervously manoeuvred the plane in wide circles over the field, the graveyard.<
br />
  Back then Tommy had never been in the graveyard; had imagined people walking aimlessly around the graves, crying large shiny comic-book tears that splashed against the headstones. That was then. Then Dad had died and Tommy had learned that graveyards rarely—all too rarely—look like that.

  His hands tightly pressed against his ears and away with those thoughts. Think about walking through the forest, think about the smell of the aeroplane’s special gas in the little bottle, think about…

  Only when he—halfway through his soundproofing—heard a lock being turned, had he taken his hands down and looked. To no avail, since the safety room was even blacker than the darkness behind his eyelids. Started to hold his breath when the second wheel thundered into place, kept holding it as whatever-it-was was still in the basement.

  Then that distant bang from the door to the stairwell, a vibration in the walls and here he was. Still alive.

  It didn’t get me.

  Exactly what ‘it’ was, he didn’t know, but whatever it was it had not discovered him. Tommy got up from his crouched position. A tingling trail of ants ran through his numb leg muscles as he groped along the wall, towards the door. His hands were sweaty with fear and the pressure against his ears, the statuette almost slid out of his hand.

  His free hand found the wheel of the closing mechanism and started to turn it.

  It went about ten centimetres, then it stopped.

  What is this…

  He pressed harder, but the wheel wouldn’t budge. He dropped the statuette in order to be able to grab the wheel with both hands, and it fell to the floor with a

  thud.

  He froze.

  That sounded funny. As if it landed on something…soft.

  He crouched down next to the door, tried to turn the lower wheel. Same thing. Ten centimetres, then stop. He sat down on the floor. Tried to think practically.

  Damn, am I going to be stuck here?

  Like that, sort of.

  But it still came creeping…this terror he had had a few months after his dad died. He had not felt it for a long time, but now, locked in the pitch-blackness, it was starting to make itself known again. Love for his dad that through death had been transformed into a fear of him. Of his body.

  A lump started to grow in his throat, his fingers stiffened.

  Think now! Think!

  There were candles on a shelf in the storage room on the other side. The problem was making his way over there in the dark.

  Idiot!

  He slapped his forehead, laughed out loud. He had a lighter! And anyway: what was the use of looking for those candles if there wasn’t anything to light them with?

  Like that guy with thousands of cans and no can opener. Starved to death surrounded by food.

  While he dug around in his pocket for his lighter he reflected that his situation wasn’t so hopeless. Sooner or later someone would come down into the basement, his mum—if no one else—and if he could just get some light in here, that would be something.

  He got the lighter out of his pocket, lit it.

  His eyes that had grown used to the dark were momentarily blinded by the light, but then when they adjusted he saw that he was not alone.

  Outstretched on the floor, right next to his feet, was…

  …Dad…

  The fact that his father had been cremated did not register with him as he, in the fluttering flame of the lighter, saw the face of the corpse. It met his expectations of how one would look after having been in the earth for many years.

  …Dad…

  He screamed straight into the lighter so the flame went out, but the split-second before the light went out he had time to see his dad’s head jerk and…

  …it’s alive…

  The contents of his bowels spilled into his pants in a wet explosion that splattered warmth over his rear end. Then his legs crumpled up, his skeleton dissolved and he fell into a heap, dropped the lighter so it bounced across the floor. His hand landed straight on the corpse’s cold toes. Sharp nails scratched the palm of his hand and while he continued to shriek—

  But Dad! Haven’t you trimmed your toenails?

  —he started to pat, to stroke the cold foot as if it were a frozen puppy that needed comforting. Kept petting up the shinbone, the thigh, felt the muscles tense under the skin, move while he screamed in fits and starts, like an animal.

  The tips of his fingers felt metal. The statuette. It lay nestled between the thighs of the corpse. He grabbed the figurine by the chest, stopped screaming and returned for a moment to the practical.

  A club.

  In the silence after his scream he heard a dripping, sticky sound when the corpse raised its upper body and when a cold limb nudged the back of his hand he pulled it back, squeezing the statuette.

  It is not Dad.

  No. Tommy drew back, away from the corpse, with excrement clinging to his buttocks and thought for a moment that he could see in the dark as his sound impressions transformed into vision and he saw the corpse rise up in the darkness, a yellowish shape, a constellation.

  With his feet tap dancing over the floor he shuffled backwards to the wall. The corpse on the other side uttered a short exhalation, ‘…aa…’

  And Tommy saw…

  A little elephant, an animated elephant and here comes (toooot) the BIG elephant and then…trunks up!…and toot ‘A’ and then Magnus, Brasse and Eva enter and sing ‘There! Is Here! Where you are not…’

  No, how did it go…

  The corpse must have bumped into the stack of boxes because he could hear thuds, the rattle of stereo equipment that fell to the floor as Tommy pressed up against the wall, hitting the back of his head and seeing a kind of static. Through the roar he could hear the smack of stiff, bare feet walking across the floor, searching.

  Here. Is There. Where you are not. No. Yes.

  Just like that. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t see himself, couldn’t see the thing that was making the noise. So it was only sound. It was just something he was listening to as he stared into the black mesh of the speaker. This was something that didn’t even exist.

  Here. Is There. Where you are not.

  He almost started to sing out loud, but a sensible remnant of his consciousness told him not to. The white buzz started to die down leaving an empty surface where he started to stack new thoughts, with effort.

  The face. The face.

  He didn’t want to think about its face, did not want to think about…

  Something about the face that had been momentarily illuminated by the lighter.

  It was getting closer. Not only did the footsteps sound closer, now hissing across the floor. No, he could feel its presence like a shadow more impenetrable than the darkness.

  He bit down on his lower lip until he tasted blood, shut his eyes. Saw his own two eyes disappear out of the picture like two…

  Eyes.

  It doesn’t have eyes.

  A faint breeze on his face as a hand went through the air.

  Blind. It is blind.

  He wasn’t sure, but the lump on the creature’s shoulders had not had any eyes.

  When the hand went through the air again Tommy felt the caress of air on his cheek one tenth of a second before it reached him, had time to turn his face so the hand only brushed against his hair. He finished the movement and threw himself flat on the floor, started to snake along the floor with his hands circling in front of him, swimming.

  The lighter, the lighter…

  Something poked into his cheek. A wave of nausea when he realised it was the thing’s toenail, but he quickly rolled over so he wouldn’t be in the same place when the hands came groping for him.

  Here. Is There. Where I am not.

  An involuntary chuckle issued from his mouth. He tried to stop it, but couldn’t. Saliva sprayed out of his mouth and out of his hoarse-from-screaming throat came hiccoughs of laughter or crying, while his hands, two radar beams, continued searching the floor for the only
advantage he maybe, maybe had over the darkness that wanted to devour him.

  God, help me. Let the light of thy face…God…sorry about that thing in church, sorry about…everything. God. I will always believe in you, however you want if you just…let me find the lighter…be my friend, please God.

  Something happened.

  At the same moment that Tommy felt the thing’s hand flailing across his foot, for a split-second the room was illuminated with blue-white light, like from a flash, and during that split-second Tommy really did see the boxes that had tumbled to the floor, the uneven surface of the walls, the passageway into the storage rooms.

  And he saw the lighter.

  It was only a metre from his right hand, and when the darkness engulfed him again the location of the lighter was burned onto the inside of his eyelid. He yanked his foot from the thing’s grip, flung his arm out and managed to grab the lighter, held it firmly in his hand, jumped up onto his feet.

  Without thinking about whether it was too much to ask, he started to chant a new prayer inside his head.

  Let the thing be blind, God. Let it be blind. God. Let it be blind…

  He flicked the lighter. A flash, like the one he just experienced, then a yellow flame with a blue centre.

  The thing stood still, turned its head towards the sound. Started to walk in that direction. The flame flickered when Tommy slid two steps to the side and arrived at the door. The thing stopped where Tommy had been three seconds earlier.

  If he had been able to feel joy, he would have. But in the weak light from the lighter everything suddenly became mercilessly real. It was no longer possible to escape into some fantasy that he was really not here at all, that this wasn’t happening to him.

  He was locked into a sound-proofed room with the thing he was most afraid of. Something turned in his stomach but there was nothing more to be emptied. All that came was a little fart and the thing turned its head again, towards him.

  Tommy pulled at the wheel of the locking mechanism with his free hand so that the hand holding the lighter trembled, and the flame went out. The wheel didn’t budge, but out of the corner of his eye Tommy had time enough to see how the thing was coming towards him, and he threw himself away from the door, in the direction of the wall where he had been sitting before.