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

He had no plan, no thoughts. Nothing except this: to get to Virginia and get rid of whatever that was on her back. She lay in the snow next to the path with that black mass crawling on her.

When he reached her he directed all of his force into a kick at the black thing. His foot made contact with something hard and he heard a sharp crack, as when ice breaks up. The black thing was thrown from Virginia's back and landed in the snow next to her.

Virginia lay completely still; there were dark stains on the white ground. The black thing sat up.

A child.

Lacke stood there staring into the prettiest little child's face imaginable, framed by a veil of black hair. A pair of enormous dark eyes met his.

The child got up on all fours, cat-like, preparing to lunge. The face changed as the child drew back its lips and Lacke could see the rows of sharp teeth glow in the dark.

They remained like this for a few panting breaths, the child on all fours, and Lacke could now see that its fingers were claws, sharply defined against the snow.

Then a grimace of pain contorted the child's face, she got up on two legs and ran off in the direction of the school with long rapid steps. A few seconds later she reached the shadows and was gone.

Lacke stood where he was and blinked away the sweat running into his eyes. Then he threw himself down next to Virginia. He saw the wound. Her whole throat was ripped up. Dark strands of blood ran all the way up into her hair, down her back. He stripped off his jacket, pulled off the sweater he was wearing underneath, bunched it up into a ball, and pressed it against the wound.

"Virginia! Virginia! My darling, beloved…"

At last he was able to get the words out.

Saturday 7 November

On his way to Dad's house. Every bend in the road familiar; he had taken this route… how many times? Alone, maybe only ten or twelve, with his mom maybe another thirty, at least. His mom and dad had divorced when he was four, but Oskar and his mom had kept coming out on weekends and holidays.

The last three years he had been allowed to take the bus by himself. This time his mom hadn't even come with him to the Tekniska Hogskolan stop where the buses left. He was a big boy now, had his own book of prepaid tickets to the subway in his wallet.

Actually the main reason he had the wallet was to have a place to keep the prepaid tickets but now there was also twenty kronor to buy sweets and such, as well as the notes from Eli.

Oskar fiddled with the Band-Aid on his palm. He didn't want to see her anymore. She was scary. What happened in the basement was-

She showed her true face.

– there was something in her, something that was… Pure Horror. Everything you were supposed to watch out for. Heights, fire, shards of glass, snakes. Everything that his mom tried so hard to keep him safe from.

Maybe that was why he hadn't wanted Eli and his mom to meet. His mom would have recognized it, forbidden him to get near it. Near Eli.

The bus exited the freeway and turned down toward Spillersboda. This was the only bus that went to Radmanso Island. That was why it had to wind its way up and down all the roads-in order to drive through as many settlements as possible. The bus drove past the mountainous landscape of piled timber at the Spillersboda Sawmill, made a sharp turn and almost slid on its back down toward the pier.

He had not waited for Eli Friday evening.

Instead he had taken the Snow Racer and gone by himself to Ghost Hill. His mom had protested since he had stayed home from school that day with a cold, but he said he felt better.

He walked through China Park with the Snow Racer on his back. The sledding hill started a hundred meters past the last park lights, a hundred meters of dark forest. The snow crunched under his feet. There was a soft soughing from the forest, like breathing. The moonlight filtered through the trees and the ground between them turned into a woven tapestry of shadows where figures without faces waited, swaying to and fro.

He reached the place where the path started to bear down strongly toward Kvarnviken Bay, and climbed onto his Snow Racer. The Ghost House was a black wall next to the hill, a reprimand: You are not allowed to be here in the dark. This is our place now. If you want to play here, you'll have to play with us.

At the bottom of the hill he could see the occasional light shining

from the Kvarnviken boat club. Oskar inched himself forward a few centimeters, the incline took over, and the Snow Racer started to glide. He squeezed the steering wheel, wanted to close his eyes but didn't dare to because then he could veer off the road and down the steep slope toward the Ghost House.

He shot down the hill, a projectile of nerves and tensed muscles. Faster, faster. Formless, snow-covered arms stretched out from the Ghost House, grabbing for his hat, brushing against his cheek.

Maybe it was only a sudden gust of wind but at the very bottom of the hill he drove into a viscous, transparent, filmy barrier stretched out over the path that tried to stop him. But his speed was too great.

The Snow Racer drove into the filmy barrier and it glued itself onto his face and body, was stretched until it burst, and then he was through.

The lights were glittering over Kvarnviken Bay. He sat on his Snow Racer and stared out over the spot where he had knocked down Jonny yesterday morning. Turned around. The Ghost House was an ugly shack of sheet metal.

He pulled the Snow Racer up the hill again. Slid down. Up again. Down again. Couldn't stop. And he went on. Went on until his face was a mask of ice.

Then he walked home.

He had only slept four or five hours, afraid that Eli was going to come. Of what he would be forced to say, to do if she did that. Push her away. Therefore he fell asleep on the bus to Norrtalje and didn't wake up until they were there. On the Radmanso bus he had kept himself awake, made a game out of trying to remember as much as possible along the way.

Soon there will be a yellow house with a windmill on the lawn.

A yellow house with a snowy windmill on the lawn passed by outside the window. And so on. In Spillersboda a girl got on the bus. Oskar gripped the back of the seat in front of him. She looked a little like Eli. Of course it wasn't her. The girl sat down a few seats in front of him. He looked at her neck.

What's wrong with her?

The thought had come to him even as he was in the cellar gathering the bottles together and wiping the blood away with a piece of cloth from the garbage: that Eli was a vampire. That explained a lot of things.

That she was never out in the daytime.

That she could see in the dark; he had come to understand that she could.

Plus a lot of other things: the way she talked, the cube, her flexibility, things that of course could have a natural explanation… but then there was also the way that she had licked his blood from the floor, and what really made him shiver was when he thought about the:

"Can I come in? Say that I can come in."

That she had needed an invitation to come into his room, to his bed. And he had invited her in. A vampire. A being that lived off other peoples' blood. Eli. There was not one person who he could tell. No one would believe him. And if someone did believe him, what would happen?

Oskar imagined a caravan of men walking through Blackeberg, in through the covered entrance where he and Eli had hugged, with sharpened stakes in their hands. He was afraid of Eli now, didn't want to see her anymore, but he didn't want that.

Three quarters of an hour after he had boarded the bus in Norrtalje he arrived in Sodersvik. He pulled on the string and the bell rang up front by the driver. The bus pulled over right in front of the store and he had to wait for an old lady, whom he recognized but didn't know the name of, to get off.