Let The Right One In aka Let Me In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Why then am I on my way to the City Library?

  He was probably going to take out a book. The fire three years ago had consumed his life, and his book collection. Yes. He could borrow The Queen’s Diadem by Almquist, before he performed his good deed.

  It was quiet inside the City Library this morning. Older men and students, mostly. He quickly found the book he was looking for, read the first few lines,

  Tintomara! Two things are white Innocence-Arsenic and put it back on the shelf. A bad feeling. It reminded him of his earlier life.

  He had loved this book, used it in his class. Reading the first few words made him long for his reading chair. And the reading chair was supposed to be in a house that was his, a house filled with books, and he should have a job again and he should and he would. But he had found love, and that dictated his life nowadays. No reading chair.

  He rubbed his hands together as if to erase the book they had been holding, and walked into an adjacent reading room.

  There was a long table with people reading. Words, words, words. At the very back of the room there was a young man in a leather coat. He had tipped the chair back and was flipping uninterestedly through a book of photographs. Hakan moved in his direction, pretended to be interested in a shelf of geology books, glancing now and then at the youth. Finally the boy lifted his gaze and met Hakan’s, raised his eyebrows in a question: Want to?

  No, he didn’t want to. The youth was around fifteen years old, with a flat, Eastern European face, pimples and narrow, deeply set eyes. Hakan shrugged and walked out of the room.

  Outside the main entrance the youth caught up with him, gestured with his thumb and asked “got a light?” Hakan shook his head. “Don’t smoke,” he said in English.

  “OK.”

  The boy pulled out a lighter, lit his cigarette, and stared at him through the smoke. “What you like?”

  “No, I…”

  “Young, you like young?”

  He pulled away from the youth, away from the main entrance where anyone could come walking by. He needed to think. He hadn’t expected it to be this straightforward. It had only been a kind of game, to check if what Gert had said was true.

  The youth followed him, came up right next to him by the stone wall.

  “How young? Eight or nine? Is difficult, but-”

  “No!”

  Did he really look like such a fucking pervert? Stupid thought. Neither Ove nor Torgny had looked particularly… remarkable. Normal

  guys with normal jobs. Only Gert, who lived on the proceeds of a huge inheritance from his father and could indulge himself in whatever he wanted. After multiple international trips he had acquired a truly appalling appearance. A flaccid mouth, glazed eyes.

  The boy stopped talking when Hakan raised his voice, still studying him through narrowed eyes. Took a puff on his cigarette, then dropped it on the ground and crushed it under his foot, stretched out his arms.

  “What?”

  “No, I just…”

  The boy took half a step closer.

  “What?”

  “I… maybe… twelve.”

  “Twelve? You like twelve?”

  “I… yes.”

  “Boy.”

  “Yes.”

  “OK. You wait. Number Two.” Excuse me?

  “Number two. Toilet.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  The boy zipped his leather jacket and disappeared down the steps.

  Twelve years old. Booth number two. Ten minutes.

  This was really, really dumb. If a policeman came by. They must know about these transactions after all these years. That would be the end. They would connect him to the job he had done yesterday and that would be the end. He couldn’t do this.

  Go over to the bathroom and take a look, that’s all.

  The bathroom was empty. A urinal and three booths. Number two had to be the one in the middle. He put a one crown coin in the lock, turned it, and walked in. Closed the door behind him and sat down on the toilet seat.

  The walls of the booth were covered with scribbles. Not at all what you would expect from the City Library clientele. Here and there a literary quotation:

  Harry me, Marry me, Bury me, Bite me

  but mostly obscene drawings and jokes:

  Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity.

  Here I sit

  I am elated

  Came to shit

  Ejaculated

  as well as an impressive selection of telephone numbers that one could call for a variety of interests. A few of them had the sign and were probably authentic. Not just someone trying to have a joke at someone else’s expense.

  So, now he had checked it out. He should leave. Never knew what the young man in the leather jacket would think of. He stood up, urinated into the toilet, sat down again. Why had he urinated? He didn’t really need to go. He knew why he had done it.

  Just in case.

  The outer door opened. He held his breath. Something in him hoped it was a policeman. A large male policeman who would kick open the door to the booth and beat him up with the baton before he arrested him.

  Low voices, soft steps, a light knock on the door.

  “Yes?”

  Another knock. He swallowed a glob of saliva and unlocked the door.

  A boy about eleven or twelve stood there. Blond hair, heart-shaped face. Thin lips and large, blue eyes devoid of expression. A red puffy jacket that was a little too big for him. Right behind him was the older boy in the leather coat. He held up five fingers.

  “Five hundred.”

  The way he said “hundred” sounded like “chundred.”

  Hakan nodded and the older boy carefully guided the younger one into the booth and shut the door. Wasn’t five hundred a bit much? Not that it mattered but…

  He looked at the boy he had bought. Hired. Was he on drugs? Proba-blv. The look in his eyes was far away, unfocused. The boy stood pressed up against the door half a meter away. He was so short that Hakan didn’t need to tilt his head to look into his eyes.

  “Hello.”

  The boy didn’t answer, just shook his head, pointed to his groin, and

  made a gesture with his finger: unzip your pants. He obeyed. The boy sighed, made a new gesture: take out your penis.

  His cheeks grew hot as he obeyed the boy. That was how it was. He was following the boy’s orders. He had no will of his own. He wasn’t the one doing this. His small penis was not in the least erect, hardly made it down to the toilet lid. A slight tickle when the head touched the cold surface.

  He narrowed his eyes, tried to imagine the boy’s gestures so they more closely resembled his beloved. It didn’t work so well. His beloved was beautiful. This boy, who now bent down and pushed his head toward his groin, was not. His mouth.

  There was something wrong with the boy’s mouth. He put his hand to the boy’s forehead before he reached his goal. “Your mouth?”

  The boy shook his head and pushed on his hand so he could continue his work. But now Hakan couldn’t. He had heard about this kind of thing. He put his thumb against the boy’s upper lip and pulled up. The boy had no teeth. Someone had knocked or pulled them out in order to make him more fit for his work. The boy stood up, a frothy, whispering sound as he crossed his arms across his chest in the puffy jacket. Hakan tucked his penis back into his pants, zipped them, and stared onto the floor. Not like this. Never like this.

  Something came into his line of vision. An outstretched hand. Five fingers. Five hundred.

  He took the pack of bills out of his pocket and handed it to the boy. The boy took off the rubber band, ran his pointed finger across the ten pieces of paper, replaced the rubber band and held the packet aloft. “Why?”

  “Because… your mouth. Maybe you can… get new teeth.” The boy smiled a little. Not a wide grin, but the corners of his mouth pulled up. Perhaps he was only smiling at Hakan’s folly. The boy though
t for a moment, then took a thousand kronor note from the packet and put it in his outer pocket. Put the rest in an inner pocket. Hakan nodded.

  The boy unlocked the door, hesitated. Then he turned to Hakan, stroked his cheek.

  “Sank you.”

  Hakan put his hand over the boy’s, held it against his cheek, and closed his eyes. If only someone could.

  “Forgive me.”

  “Yes.”

  The boy pulled his hand back. Its warmth was still on Hakan’s cheek when the outer door banged shut after the boy. He stayed in the booth, staring at something someone had written on the wall.

  Whoever you are. I love you.

  And right underneath it someone had written,

  Do you want some cock?

  The warmth had long since left his cheek when he made his way back to the subway and bought an evening paper for his last few kronor. Four pages were devoted to the murder. Among others was a picture of the hollow where he had done it. It was full of lighted candles, flowers. He studied the picture and didn’t feel much.

  If you only knew. Please forgive me, but if you only knew.

  ***

  On his way home from school Oskar stopped under the two windows of her apartment. The closest one was only three meters from his own room. The blinds were drawn and the windows formed light gray rectangles against the dark gray concrete walls. Looked suspicious. Probably they were a… strange kind of family.

  Drug addicts.

  Oskar looked around, then walked in the front door and looked at the list of names. Five surnames neatly spelled out in plastic letters. One line was empty. The name that had stood there before, hellberg, had been there so long you could read it from the dark contours left against a sun-bleached background. But no new letters, not even a note.

  He jogged up the two sets of stairs to her door. Same thing there. Nothing. The name plate attached to the mail slot was blank, the way it looked when an apartment was unoccupied.

  Maybe she had been lying. Maybe she didn’t live here at all. But she had walked in this entrance. Sure. But she could have done that anyway. If she—

  The front door downstairs opened.

  He turned away from her door and quickly walked down the stairs. Let it not be her. She would think that he was somehow… But it wasn’t her.

  Halfway down the stairs Oskar met a man he had never seen before. A short, stocky man who was half bald and smiled in an unnaturally wide way. The man saw Oskar, lifted his head and nodded, his mouth still pulled up in that clownlike smile.

  Oskar paused in the front entrance, listening. Heard keys pulled out and a door open. Her door. That man was probably her dad. Granted, Oskar had never seen a real life drug addict, but that man looked sick. No wonder she was strange.

  Oskar went down to the playground, sat on the edge of the sandbox, and kept an eye on her window to see if the blinds had been pulled up. Even the bathroom window looked like it had been covered on the inside. The frosted glass was much darker than in other peoples’ apartments.

  He took his Rubik’s Cube out from his pocket. It creaked and squeaked as he turned it. A copy. The original was much more supple, but cost five times as much and could only be found in the well-guarded toy store in Vallingby.

  Two sides had been completed, all one color, and on a third side only one little bit was out of place. But he couldn’t get it there without destroying the two completed sides. He had saved an article from Expressen that described the various kinds of turns-that was how he had managed to solve two sides, but after that it was much harder.

  He looked at the Cube, tried to think out the solution instead of just turning. He couldn’t. His brain couldn’t manage it. He pressed the Cube against his forehead, as if to delve into its interior. No answer. He placed the Cube on a corner of the sandbox half a meter away. Stared at it. Glide, glide, glide.

  Telekenesis, that was the name for it. In the USA they had run experiments. There were people who could do stuff like that. ESP. Extra Sensory Perception. Oskar would have given anything to be able to do something like that.

  And maybe… maybe he could.

  Today at school hadn’t been so bad. Tomas Ahlstedt had tried to pull his chair out in the cafeteria, but he had seen it in time. That was all. He

  was going to go out into the forest with his knife, to that tree. Make a more serious attempt. Not get all carried away like yesterday.

  Cut into the tree calmly and methodically, hack it apart and concentrate on Tomas Ahlstedt’s face in his mind the whole time. But… there was the whole thing with the murderer. The real murderer who was out there somewhere.

  No, he had to wait with this until the murderer was caught. On the other hand, if there was a normal murderer then the experiment was useless. Os-kar looked at the Cube, imagined a line connecting his eyes to the Cube.

  Glide, glide, glide.

  Nothing happened. Oskar stuffed the Cube into his pocket, got up, brushed some sand from his pants, and looked at her window. The blinds were still drawn.

  He went inside to work on his scrapbook, to cut out and paste the articles about the Vallingby murder. There would probably be a lot of them, in time. Especially if it happened again. He was hoping a little that that would be the case. Hopefully in Blackeberg.

  So the police would come to his school, the teachers would be serious, concerned, that kind of atmosphere. He liked it.

  ***

  Never again. No matter what you say.”

  “Hakan…”

  “No. It’s just-no.”

  “I’ll die.”

  “Then die.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “No. I don’t. But you could do it yourself.”

  “I’m still too weak.”

  “You’re not weak.”

  “Too weak for-that.”

  “Well, then I don’t know. But I won’t do it again. It’s so-horrible, so…

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know. It’s different for you, it is…”

  “What do you know about how it is for me?”

  “Nothing, but at least you’re…”

  “Do you think I like it?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “No, of course not. Well, anyway… I’m not doing it again. Maybe you’ve others who have helped you who have been… better at this than me.”

  “Have you?” “Yes.” I see. “Hakan?” “I love you.” “Yes.”

  “Do you love me, even one little bit?” “Would you do it again if I said I loved you?” “No.”

  “I should love you anyway, you mean.” “You only love me to the extent I help you stay alive.” “Yes. Isn’t that what love is?”

  “If only I thought you would love me even if I didn’t do it…” “Yes?”

  “… maybe I would do it again.” “I love you.” “I don’t believe you.”

  “Hakan. I can manage for a few more days but then…” “Make sure you start to love me, then.”

  ***

  Friday night at the Chinese restaurant. It’s a quarter to eight and the whole gang is there. Everyone except Karlsson who’s at home watching the TV quiz show Nutcrackers and just as well. No great loss there. He’s the sort who’ll probably roll in when everything’s over and tell you how many questions he knew the answers to.

  In the corner table for six nearest the door there’s Lacke, Morgan, Larry, and Jocke. Jocke and Lacke are talking about what kinds of fish can live in both fresh and salt water. Larry is reading the evening paper and Morgan is swinging his leg in time to some song other than the Chinese Muzak softly piped in through the hidden loudspeakers.

  On the table in front of them are some more or less full glasses of beer. Their faces are hanging on the wall above the bar.

  The restaurant owner was forced to flee China in conjunction with the cultural revolution, on account of his satirical caricatures of people in power. No
w he has instead transferred his talents to his regulars. On the wall there are twelve tenderly drawn felt-pen sketches of them.

  All the guys. And Virginia. The pictures of the guys are close-ups, where the irregularities of their physiognomies have been exaggerated.

  Larry’s lined, almost hollowed-out face, and a pair of enormous ears that stick straight out from his head, make him look like a friendly but starving elephant.

  In Jocke’s picture it is his large eyebrows that meet in the middle that have been emphasized and transformed into a rose bush and a bird, perhaps a nightingale.

  Because of his style, Morgan has been given features from the young Elvis. Big sideburns and a “Hunka hunka burnin looooove, baby” expression. The head is perched on a small body holding a guitar, in Elvis-pose. Morgan is more pleased with this picture than he wants to admit.

  Lacke looks mostly worried. Here the eyes have been enlarged and given an intensified expression of suffering. He has a cigarette in his mouth and its smoke has gathered into a rain cloud above his head.

  Virginia is the only one who appears in full body. In an evening gown, shining like a star in her sparkling sequins, posed with outstretched arms, surrounded by a flock of pigs gazing at her in bewilderment. At Virginia’s request the restaurant owner has made a duplicate of this picture that Virginia has taken home.

  Then there are a few others. Some who aren’t part of the gang. Some who have stopped coming. A few who have died.

  Charlie fell down the stairs in his building on his way home from the restaurant one night. Cracked his head on the mottled concrete. The Gherkin got cirrhosis of the liver and died of an internal hemorrhage.

  One evening a few weeks before he died he had pulled his shirt up and showed them a red spider’s web of blood vessels branching out from his navel. “Damn expensive tattoo,” he said, and he died soon thereafter. They had honored his memory by putting his picture on the table and making toasts to it all evening.

  There is no picture of Karlsson.

  This Friday night is going to be the last one they will ever have all together. Tomorrow one of them will be gone forever. One more picture will be nothing more than a memory. And nothing will ever be the same.