John Lindqvist - Let The Right One In aka Let Me In

A banging on the glass door, harder this time. He looked out into the darkness. When the girl opened her mouth and shouted at him he could see… that her teeth… that there was something hanging from her arms. "Say that I can come in!"

Whatever happens.

Micke nodded, said almost inaudibly:

"You can come in."

The girl pulled back from the door, disappeared into the darkness. The stuff that was hanging from her arms shimmered for a moment, and then she was gone. Micke turned back to the pool. Jimmy had pulled Os-kar's head out of the water and taken the stiletto back from Jonny, moving it down to Oskar's face, aiming.

A speck of light was visible in the dark middle window and a split second later it shattered.

The reinforced glass didn't shatter like regular glass. It exploded into thousands of tiny rounded fragments that landed with a rustle at the edge of the pool, after flying out into the hall, over the water, glittering like myriad white stars.

Friday 13 November

Friday the thirteenth…

Gunnar Holmberg was sitting in the empty principal's office, trying to get his notes in order.

He had spent the whole day at the Blackeberg school, studying the scene of the crime, talking with students. Two technicians from downtown and a bloodstain analyst from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science were still securing evidence down by the pool.

Two youths had been killed there last night. A third… had disappeared.

He had even talked to Marie-Louise, the class teacher. Had realized that the missing boy, Oskar Eriksson, was the same one who had raised his hand and answered his question about heroin three weeks ago. Holmberg remembered him.

I've read a lot and stuff.

Also recalled that he had thought the boy would be the first to come out to the police car. He would have taken him for a spin in it, maybe. If possible, bolstered his self-confidence a little. But the boy had not shown up.

And now he was gone.

Gunnar scanned his notes from his conversations with the boys who had been at the pool last night. Their accounts basically matched up, and one word had turned up frequently: angel.

Oskar Eriksson had been rescued by an angel.

The same angel who, according to the witnesses, had ripped Jonny and Jimmy Forsberg's heads off and left them in the bottom of the pool.

When Gunnar told the crime scene photographer, who had used his underwater camera to eternalize the image of the two heads in the place where they had been found, about this angel he had said: "Hardly one from heaven, in that case."

No…

He looked out the window, tried to think of a reasonable explanation.

In the schoolyard the flag was at half-mast.

Two psychologists had been present for the boys' questioning, since several of them were showing worrying signs of talking too lightheart-edly about what they had witnessed, as if it were a film, something that had not happened in reality. And that was what one would most like to believe.

The problem was that the bloodstain technician to a certain extent corroborated what the boys had said.

The blood had run out in such a course, left traces in such places (ceiling, beams), that the immediate impression was that it had been made by someone who was… flying. It was this he was now trying to explain. Explain away.

And would probably succeed in doing.

The boys' gym teacher was in intensive care with a serious concussion and would not be available for questioning until tomorrow at the earliest. He would probably not give them anything new.

Gunnar pressed his hands against his temples so that his eyes narrowed, glanced down at his notes.

"… angel… wings… the head exploded… the stiletto… trying to drown Oskar… Oskar was completely blue… the kind of teeth like a lion… picked Oskar up…"

And the only thing he managed to think was:

I should go away for a while.

Is that yours?"

Stefan Larsson, the conductor on the Stockholm-Karlstad line, pointed to the bag on the luggage rack. You didn't see many of those these days. A real old-fashioned… trunk.

The boy in the compartment nodded and held out his ticket. Stefan punched it.

"Is someone meeting you at the other end?"

The boy shook his head.

"It's not as heavy as it looks."

"No, of course. What have you got in there, if you don't mind my ask-ing?

"A little bit of everything."

Stefan checked his watch, punched the air.

"It will be evening when we arrive, you know."

"Mmm."

"The boxes. Are they also yours?"

"Yes."

"Look, I don't mean to… but how are you going to manage?"

"I'll get help. Later."

"I see. Right. Have a good trip, then."

"Thanks."

Stefan pulled the door to the compartment shut and walked over to the next one. The boy seemed like he knew what he was doing. If Stefan had been sitting there with that much luggage he would hardly have looked so happy.

But then, it's probably different when you're young.