by Shining in the Dark- Celebrating 20 Years of Lilja's Library (retail) (epub)
And yet the visitor was fifteen feet away from Albert, next to the low fence surrounding the Ingessons’ yard, closely observing his every movement. It was time to make a decision.
Was Albert capable of summoning up cosmic horrors, or was he soft in the head? He had no verifiable evidence to go on, so ultimately it was a question of faith. He examined the area of the sidewalk in which the creature was located and tried to think it away, to see only the paving stones and the Ingessons’ white, slightly flaking fence, tried to convince himself that the silent presence was a mere figment of his imagination.
It was impossible. In spite of its lack of physicality, the visitor was as present as the sun up in the sky. There was nothing Albert could do about it, and he thought he was more likely to go insane if he denied it. The creature existed, however ethereal it might be. From now on, Albert would act accordingly. His feet began to move. Heading for home.
* * *
During the days that followed Albert tried to adapt to the new situation. The visitor was constantly by his side. It kept its vigil over him as he slept at night, and it was there when he got up in the mornings. Out on the street he was aware of its drifting, hovering presence, and when he entered a room it wasn’t many seconds before he felt it watching him from a corner. Sometimes he would close his eyes, smack himself on the head or hum loudly just to avoid hearing that giggle, but to no avail. As soon as he fell silent and opened his eyes, he instantly knew that he was being observed and he could hear that sound, which seemed to come from something that was expectantly awaiting the outcome of a grotesque joke.
* * *
Just over a week after the creature came into Albert’s life his class was involved in a volleyball tournament with a parallel group. Albert was useless when it came to anything involving a ball, and hardly anyone passed to him. The creature was sitting by the equipment store cupboard, following Albert’s clumsy attempts to get the ball up in the air when it did occasionally come in his direction. This annoyed him. In some obscure way he wanted to be worthy of the visitor, but the ball slipped through his fingers as if they were made of smoke, and his team mates groaned.
He was in a foul mood in the shower afterwards, and it didn’t help when Felix, a beefy idiot from the other class, started giving him grief. “Don’t forget to wash your peanut-sized prick, Bilbo. If you can find it.” Felix waggled his own penis, which was at least twice the size of Albert’s.
Albert lowered his head and felt his cheeks redden. He was a thousand times cleverer than Felix and would probably be a success in life, while Felix would end up working for a removals firm or in some other dead-end job until he got fat on burgers and fries and drank himself to death.
Right now, however, they were next to one another in a scruffy, white-tiled shower room, and the only thing that counted was that Felix had more muscles and a bigger cock. Except for the creature’s formless, malevolent presence emanating from the corner between the lockers and the toilet. It was watching Albert as he stood beneath the stream of water, with his head bent and his cheeks burning.
Felix twisted his towel a couple of times and whacked Albert across the backside. Albert only had to say the word, formulate the command in his mind. Tear him to pieces. Instead he grabbed his own towel and held it under the water until it was soaking wet. As Felix was on his way out of the room, Albert twisted his sodden towel into a hard sausage, then followed Felix and said: “Listen, asshole.”
Felix spun around, the corners of his mouth turning up in a grimace that was a mixture of expectation and annoyance. Before he had time to do or say anything, Albert walloped the other boy’s cock with the heavy toweling cosh. The corners of Felix’s mouth turned down and he fell to his knees on the tiles, whimpering like a puppy. With every scrap of strength he could summon up, Albert brought the cosh down on his back. The sound of the blow bounced off the walls, and Felix shuddered.
“You need to keep your fucking mouth shut!” Albert yelled, twisting the wet towel even tighter. A thick, dark red weal appeared on Felix’s back where the first blow had landed. Albert gathered his strength once more, all the way up from his toes; he swung the towel once more and brought it down in exactly the same place with such force that Felix fell forward and lay there on his stomach, shaking.
The skin above his hip had split, and a trickle of blood ran down onto the wet floor. Albert took aim once more and hit the wound so that it opened up, spattering his towel with blood. He dropped it, then bent down and picked up Felix’s damp towel, which he used to dry himself. When he looked up he saw five or six boys standing in the doorway staring.
He wound Felix’s towel around his hips. Now was the time to say something everyone would remember and repeat when they were sharing the story with friends or on social media, but his head was empty. Fortunately, Felix came to his assistance. With his cheek still glued to the tiles, he mumbled: “I’m going to… kill you… you fucking…”
Before Felix could come up with a suitable epithet, Albert interrupted him: “It might seem that way now. But when you think about it, insofar as you’re capable of rational thought, you’ll realize that’s not a very good idea. You will be the one who dies, if you try anything. And that’s a promise.”
As Albert left the room he noticed that a couple of the boys had got out their phones. Hopefully only his final comment had been filmed.
* * *
That was indeed the case. The others had been too busy watching what was going on, and it had all happened so fast. However, Felix and Albert’s final exchange was preserved for posterity to enjoy. In spite of the fact that the clip went viral among the students, it never came to the attention of any adult, and Felix wasn’t the type to run crying to the principal. Nor did he make any attempt to carry out his threat to kill Albert.
Albert gave a great deal of thought to what had gone on. He had never used physical violence against anyone, nor did he have any desire to do so again. If he had felt that way, it would have been reasonable to suspect that the creature had driven him to act as he did, and was now aiming to ramp up the bloodshed. Stories like that did exist, after all, at least in the movies.
But Albert was pretty sure it wasn’t about that. In the shower room the creature’s only influence had consisted of its presence: it was there as a kind of guarantee, and Albert knew it. If Felix decided to jump him with a knife, Albert always had a way out. One word from his lips and the problem would be solved, without the slightest possibility that he could be suspected of having done what the creature was capable of.
Because he knew the creature now. During the time that had passed since he summoned it, he had felt a hint of a contact on a couple of occasions, and now and again—in a certain light, against a certain background—he had caught a glimpse of it.
It was more than a vampire, it was the embodiment of the very idea of a vampire, lacking all attributes except that which was needed to carry out its only task. To. Drain. Blood. The knowledge of its presence, always at the ready, gave Albert the courage to step beyond his previous limitations, as if he constantly had a loaded gun in his hand.
* * *
His old friends became less important to him, and role playing was something that belonged to the past. Albert changed. He had already had a high opinion of himself and his abilities, but now he acquired a physical stature that was in tune with his inner confidence. He started going to the gym. He had wanted to do it for a long time, but had been scared off by the bulging bodies working out behind the huge windows.
Now he had stopped apologizing for himself. The creature watched as Albert ploughed through a dozen pieces of equipment three times a week, but he hardly gave it a thought. The ripped guys were either pleasant towards him or ignored him completely.
At the end of October Albert got together with Olivia. A party, a kiss, a few text messages and phone calls, and then what had seemed unattainable became a reality. He had a girlfriend—not only that, she was the second hottest girl in the
class. Wilma, who looked like a model, had never been seen with a boy, and to be honest that was unlikely to happen until Chris Hemsworth came knocking on the door. Or smashed it down with his hammer.
Having a girlfriend was fantastic. They talked, snuggled up on the sofa, watched films together; things went so far that Albert started sending emojis, something he had always regarded with the deepest contempt. But Olivia loved everything sweet, and once Albert had started, he just couldn’t stop.
There was only one problem: the business of sex. Olivia had never been with anyone, so she wasn’t exactly pushing, but once they had passed the stage of serious kissing and cuddling and dry humping there was a natural progression, to put it politely. You could only carry on slurping and squeezing for so long. Unfortunately, as soon as things got serious, when Olivia started taking off her clothes or undressing Albert, his cock went limp, and nothing helped.
He knew the reason, and it was also the reason why he had ended up lying in his bed helplessly caressing Olivia: the creature. He just couldn’t do it with the creature sitting there watching him, couldn’t perform in front of an audience, even if the audience was invisible and preternatural.
Albert made one excuse after another, but he could tell that Olivia was hurt. He might have begun to develop muscles, and following the incident with Felix no one dared give him a hard time, but what use was that if he was impotent? Sooner or later Olivia would talk to a friend, who would talk to another friend who would put something on Facebook, and that would be the end of that…
Besides which he wanted to do it, desperately. His groin was aching with lust, and his failure was giving him headaches. A week earlier Olivia had blushed as she confided that she was now on the pill, and if that wasn’t an invitation, what was?
There was, of course, one obvious solution: he could simply say to the creature: “Go away and don’t ever come back”. However, for one thing he wasn’t convinced that it would leave without slaking its thirst for blood, and for another… should he throw away a cosmic power factor just so that he could screw a girl? Sometimes he thought he should. More and more often, in fact.
What prevented him from acting was a lack of certainty about who he was without the creature. He was enjoying his status within the school, and didn’t know if he would be able to maintain it without the creature’s reassuring presence. Once you have acquired the taste for power over other people, it’s hard to let it go.
* * *
One Friday evening when his parents had gone to the theatre to see some interminable play by Lars Norén, he invited Olivia ’round with the firm intention of doing it at long last. He had decanted a bottle of white wine from his parents’ most recent wine box purchases, and he had bought prawns. It felt like such a cliché, but he didn’t know what else to do.
He drank most of the wine himself to give him courage, and eventually his fingers stopped shaking enough to allow him to peel a couple of prawns and stuff them in his mouth. When they had cleared away they went to his room and lay down on the bed.
Albert had a very simple strategy. He turned off the light. He had already pulled down the blind, so the room was now pitch dark. They got undressed. Albert could feel the creature’s gaze burning into him from the corner of the room, and who knows, maybe it could see in the dark. He had a strategy to deal with that eventuality too. When they were both naked, he drew his king-size duvet over them.
It was hot and sweaty inside their cocoon, but at last, at long last he got an erection and kept it up. His worst fear had been that the creature wouldn’t accept his disappearing from view, and would find its way into the limited space, but that didn’t happen.
It was still out there, but the wine had dulled his perceptions, and he was able to ignore its presence. When he finally thrust into Olivia everything else was swept away in a wave of warm, wet bliss. It was even better than he could possibly have imagined.
After a couple of minutes he just couldn’t hold back, and it was as if every nerve in his body contracted into a tight, taut bundle before exploding outwards and downwards in a network of sparkling threads. As he rolled off Olivia and threw back the duvet, he knew that he had experienced something he never wanted to be without.
He switched on the bedside lamp and they lay there naked, caressing each other’s sweaty skin. Albert felt a sense of calm that was almost as wonderful as the act of love itself, but in a tranquil way. Something had been emptied out of him, and peace had seeped in in its place. His normal defense mechanisms were down, and before he could stop himself the words slipped out: “Olivia, do you get the feeling that something’s… watching us?”
Instinctively Olivia covered her breasts with the duvet and looked around the room. “What do you mean?”
“No, it’s just, I mean, wow, that was fantastic.”
The heat in Albert’s face increased noticeably. It was many years since he had come out with such an atrocious sentence. Olivia smiled and said “Mmm,” then got out of bed to go to the bathroom. Albert stayed where he was and watched her go. His thoughts were flowing freely, and as if it had never been a problem he formed the command in his head and transmitted it towards the corner: Go away. Leave me.
Nothing happened. The creature carried on looking at him. Now he had formulated the thought, Albert realized this was what he wanted. He no longer needed the creature’s guarantee, he wanted to be free to live his life without its constant surveillance, he wanted to be able to do that wonderful thing with Olivia without resorting to special measures. He could hear the shower running in the bathroom, and he propped himself up on one elbow and said the words out loud: “Go away. Leave me.”
He could feel the nature of the creature’s attention shift; he knew it had heard and understood what he said. But it didn’t leave him, it didn’t move a fraction of an inch from its place. Albert slumped back on the pillow and covered his eyes with his arm.
This can’t go on. I have to put an end to it.
By the time Olivia emerged from the bathroom, Albert was up and dressed.
“What are you doing?” she said, holding a towel in front of her as if she was suddenly conscious of her nakedness.
“I’m sorry,” Albert said, “but I forgot—there’s something I have to do.”
“Now? It’s after ten!”
“I know. But I have no choice.”
“So… Do you want me to leave, or what?”
“You can stay if you like. I’ll be back.”
“Oh yes, I can have a nice chat with your mom and dad, tell them what it was like having sex for the first time.”
“Listen, I’m really sorry…”
“So am I.”
With tears in her eyes, Olivia gathered up her clothes and got dressed. Albert sat on the bed watching her, not saying a word. The creature sat in the corner, watching him. As Olivia was on her way out through the door, Albert said: “Olivia? I love you.”
She glanced over her shoulder and said: “Prove it, then”. Albert could hear her crying as she opened the front door and closed it behind her. He glowered at the corner of his room and whispered: “Go away! Go away!”
Nothing happened.
* * *
Oswald was surprised when Albert called him. He said it wasn’t really convenient, and Albert had to entice him with the promise of both future Cthulhu sessions and friendship—neither of which he intended to provide—before Oswald gave in and said he could come ’round.
Oswald was one of the few members of the class who didn’t live in a house. It felt kind of exotic as Albert took the subway to Blackeberg, then used the GPS on his phone to find his way to Elias Lönnrots väg. The slums, you could say. The shabby three-storey apartment blocks, the broken street lamps, the uneven sidewalks, the gaping potholes.
Oswald lived right down at the end, in the innermost section off a gloomy courtyard with not a tree or a shrub in sight, just carelessly parked cars and chained-up bicycles with no air in the tires. The sound of Albert’
s footsteps bounced off the dark facades as he made his way over to the outside door of Oswald’s block and yanked it open.
The hallway reeked of fried food and cheap detergent, and by the time Albert rang Oswald’s doorbell he felt as if he was coming down with something. The ugliness of the place was like an infection, and the situation didn’t improve when Oswald opened the door. A musty, yeasty smell mingled with smoke seeped out into the already noxious stairwell, and Albert had to stop himself from covering his nose with his hand.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Oswald replied, making no move to let him in. Oswald was wearing a faded black T-shirt with the words Miskatonic University School of Literature on it. He looked pale and unwell.
“Can I come in?”
“What for?”
“Like I said… I really need to talk to you. It’s very, very important, and you’re the only one who can help me.”
Oswald sighed and his shoulders drooped. “Don’t bother taking off your shoes,” he said. “Just come in.”
Once Albert was in the hallway, Oswald steered him towards an open door, but Albert still had time to notice the state the apartment was in. The wallpaper was peeling, and there were heaps of old newspapers everywhere, stuff all over the place. As Albert passed the kitchen he saw piles of dirty dishes.
Before he went into Oswald’s room he glanced into the living room. It was in darkness, but the light from the hallway enabled him to see a table covered with bottles and overflowing ashtrays, and a woman slumped on the sofa, her long, dirty hair trailing onto the floor.
What a fucking dump.
Albert had never experienced anything like this. Oswald’s apartment was like a dirty parody of a haunted house, so disgusting that it didn’t feel real. Fortunately Oswald’s room was a slight improvement, even though Albert’s nose told him it hadn’t been cleaned for quite some time. Two large bookcases dominated the space, which was otherwise occupied only by a desk with an ancient desktop computer, and a bed which surprisingly enough had been made. Albert went over to the shelves and ran his finger over the spines of the books.