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

dead. But no one else knows. Because they didn't see what I saw. Did you see it too?"

Gosta lowered his head, whispered,

"It was a child. I saw it coming down the path. It waited for Jocke. In the underpass. He went in… and never came out. Then in the morning he was gone. But he's dead. I know he is.

"What's that?

"No, I can't go to the police. They're going to ask questions. There will be a lot of people and then they will ask… why I didn't say anything. Shine one of those lights in my face.

"It was three days ago. Or four. I don't know. What day is it today? They're going to ask. I can't do it.

"But we have to do something.

"I just don't know what."

Giselle looked up at him. Started to lick his hand.

When Oskar came home from the forest, the knife was smeared with splinters of rotten wood. He washed it under the kitchen tap, drying it off with a dishcloth that he then rinsed clean and held against his cheek.

His mom would soon be home. He had to go out again, needed a little more time-tears were still clumped in his throat, his legs ached. He took the key from the kitchen cupboard, wrote a note: Back soon, Oskar. Then he put the knife back and walked down to the basement. Unlocked the heavy door, slipped in.

The underground smell. He liked it. A reassuring blend of wood, old things, and locked-in-ness. A little light filtered in through a window at ground level and in the dim light the basement promised secrets, hidden treasure.

To his left there was an oblong section divided into four storage compartments. The walls and doors were made of wood, the doors secured with various-sized locks. One of the doors had a reinforced lock; a person who had been robbed.

On the wooden wall at the very end of the area someone had written kiss with a marker. The "S"s were formed like elongated, backward "Z"s.

But the most interesting area was to be found at the end opposite all this. The room for recycling and oversized trash. Oskar had once found a still-intact globe that now stood in his room, as well as several issues of the series The Hulk, and some other stuff.

But today there was almost nothing. It must have been emptied recently. A few newspapers, some folders with the labels "English" and "Swedish." But Oskar had enough folders. He had scavenged a whole bunch from the container outside the printing shop a few year ago.

He walked through the basement room and out to the next stairwell in the building, Tommy's stairwell. Continued on to that basement door, unlocked it, and walked in. This basement had a different smell: a trace of paint, or thinning solution. This basement also contained the safety shelter for the whole complex. He had only been in once, three years ago, when some of the older guys had had a boxing club there. He had been allowed to go with Tommy and watch, one afternoon. The guys had gone after each other with boxing gloves on their hands and Oskar had been a little scared. The groaning and sweating, the tense, concentrated bodies, the sound of the blows muffled by the thick concrete walls. Then someone had gotten hurt, or something like that, and the wheels that you turned in order to pull away the fastening mechanism on the door had been blocked with chains and lock. The end of the boxing.

Oskar turned on the light and walked over to the shelter room. If the Russians were coming it would have to be unlocked.

If they hadn't lost the key.

Oskar stood in front of the massive iron door and a thought appeared. That someone… someone was locked in here. That that's what the chains and lock were for. To restrain a monster.

He listened. There were distant sounds from the street, from people's movements in the apartments above. He really liked the basement. It was like being in another world, while knowing that the other world was still there outside, above you, if you needed it. But down here it was quiet, and no one came and said anything, did anything to you. Nothing you had to do.

Across from the safety room was the clubhouse. Forbidden territory.

Of course, they didn't have a lock, but that didn't mean just anyone was allowed in. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

There wasn't much in this storage unit. Just a badly sagging couch, and an equally sagging armchair. A rug on the floor. A chest of drawers with peeling paint. A clandestine lighting arrangement had been rigged up consisting of a cord feeding from the light in the corridor connected to a single naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. It was turned off.

He had been down here a few times before and knew that all he had to do to turn it on was twist the bulb. But he didn't dare. Enough light filtered in through the gaps between the planks to see. His heart beat faster. If they found him here they would…

What? I don't know. That's what's so horrible. Not beat me up, but…

He kneeled on the rug and lifted a sofa cushion. A few tubes of glue and a roll of plastic bags, a container of lighter fluid. In the other corner of the sofa, under the seat cushion, there were porno magazines. A few well-thumbed issues of Lektyr and Fib Aktuellt.

He took one of the Lektyr and shifted closer to the door where there was more light. Still kneeling he laid the magazine out on the floor in front of him, flipped the pages. His mouth was dry. The woman in the picture lay in a deck chair wearing only a pair of high-heeled shoes. She was pushing her breasts together and pouting. Her legs were spread and in the middle of the bushy hair between her thighs there was a strip of pink flesh with a groove down the middle.

How do you get in there?

He knew the words from talk he had heard, graffiti he had read. Cunt. Hole. Labia. But it wasn't a hole. Only that groove. They had had sex education at school and he knew there was supposed to be a… tunnel leading in from the vulva. But in what direction? Straight up or in or… you couldn't tell.

He kept turning the pages. The readers' own stories. At the swimming pool. A stall in the girls' changing rooms. Her nipples stiffened under her bathing suit. My dick was thumping like a hammer in my swimming trunks. She gripped the clothes pegs, turned her little ass toward me, and moaned, "Take me, take me now."

Did this kind of thing go on all the time, behind closed doors, in places where you couldn't see?

He had started a new story, about a family reunion that took an unexpected turn, when he heard the basement door being opened. He shut the magazine, put it back under the sofa cushion and didn't know what to do with himself. His throat contracted; he didn't dare to breathe. Footsteps in the corridor.

Please God let it not be them. Let it not be them.

He squeezed his knee caps with his hands, clenched his teeth so hard he hurt his jaw. The door opened. Tommy was standing there, blinking.

"What the hell?"

Oskar wanted to say something, but his jaws were locked shut. He simply stayed where he was, kneeling on the rug of light that rolled out from the door, breathing through his nose.

"What the hell are you doing here? And what have you been up to?"

Almost without moving his jaws Oskar managed to press out a "… nothing."

Tommy took a step into the storage area, towering over him.

"With your cheek, I mean? How did you get that?"

"I… it's nothing."

Tommy shook his head, screwed the light bulb so it turned on, and closed the door. Oskar got to his feet, standing in the middle of the room with his hands by his side, unsure of what he should do. He took a step toward the door. Tommy sank down in the armchair and pointed to the couch.

"Sit down."

Oskar sat down on the middle cushion, the one that didn't have anything stashed underneath it. Tommy sat quietly for a few moments, looking at him. Then he said: "Alright, let's hear it."