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

His dad was standing below the stairs, nodded and said "hum" to the old lady. Oskar climbed off the bus, stood still for a second in front of his dad. This last week things had happened that had made Oskar feel bigger. Not adult. But bigger, at any rate. All that fell away as he stood in front of his father.

His mom claimed his dad was childlike, in a bad way. Immature, couldn't handle responsibility. Oh, she said some nice things about him too, but that was what she always came back to. The immaturity.

For Oskar, his dad was the very image of an adult as he now stretched out his broad arms and Oskar fell into them.

His dad smelled different from all the people in the city. In his torn Helly Hansen vest fixed with Velcro there was always the same mixture of

wood, paint, metal, and above all, oil. These were the smells but Oskar didn't think of them in that way. It was all simply "Dad's smell." He loved it and drew a deep breath through his nose as he pressed his face against his dad's chest.

"Well hey there."

"Hi Dad."

"Your trip go OK?"

"No, we ran into an elk."

"Oh no. That must have been something."

"Just joking."

"I see. I see. But you know, I remember a time…"

As they walked toward the store, Dad started telling a story about how once a truck he was driving had collided with an elk. Oskar had heard the story before and looked around, humming from time to time.

The Sodervik store looked as trashy as ever. Signs and streamers that had been allowed to stay up in anticipation of next summer made the whole store look like an oversized ice cream stand. The large tent behind the store, where they sold garden tools, soil, outdoor furniture, and such, was tied up for the season.

In summer the population of Sodervik increased four-fold. The whole area down toward Norrtaljeviken Bay, Lagaro, was an unruly conglomeration of summer houses, and even though the mailboxes down toward Lagaro were hung in double rows of thirty, the mailman almost never had to go there at this time of year. No people, no mail.

Just as they reached the moped his dad finished the story with the elk.

"… and then I had to hit him with a crowbar that I had for opening drawers and that kind of thing. Right between the eyes. He twitched like this and… yes. No, it wasn't so nice."

"No, of course not."

Oskar jumped up on the trailer, pulling his legs in under him. His dad dug around in a pocket on the vest and pulled out a cap.

"Here. It'll get cold around your ears."

"No, I have one."

Oskar took out his own cap and put it on. Dad put the other one away.

"What about you? It'll get cold around your ears."

Dad laughed.

"No, I'm used to it."

Of course Oskar knew that; he was just teasing. He couldn't remember ever seeing his dad in a wool cap. If it got really cold and windy he put on a kind of bearskin hat with ear flaps that he called his "inheritance," but that was the limit.

His dad kick-started the moped and it roared like an electric chain saw. He shouted something about the idling and put it in first. The moped jumped forward, almost causing Oskar to fall backwards; his dad yelled something about the gears and then they were off.

Second, third gear. The moped flew through the town. Oskar sat with his legs crossed in the clattering trailer. He felt like a king of the world and would have been able to keep going like this forever.

A physician had explained it to him. The fumes he had inhaled had burned away his vocal chords and he would probably never be able to speak normally again. A new operation would be able to give him a rudimentary ability to produce vowels, but since even his tongue and lips were badly injured there would have to be additional operations to enable the possibility of uttering consonants.

As a former Swedish teacher Hakan could not help but be fascinated at the thought: to create speech by surgical means.

He knew quite a bit about phonemes and the smallest components of language, common across many cultures. He had never reflected much over the actual tools of production-the roof of the mouth, lips, tongue, vocal chords-in this way. To coax speech from this shapeless raw material with a scalpel.

But it was meaningless anyway. He did not intend to speak. In addition, he suspected that the doctor was talking that way for a special reason. He was considered suicide-prone. Therefore it was important to imprint him with a linear sense of time. To recreate the feeling of life as a project, a dream of future conquests.

He didn't buy it.

If Eli needed him he could consider living. Otherwise he could not. Nothing indicated that Eli needed him.

But how would Eli be able to contact him in this place?

From the tree tops outside his window he sensed that he was high up. And furthermore, he was well-guarded. In addition to the doctors and nurses there was always at least one policeman nearby. Eli could not reach him and he could not reach Eli. The thought of escaping, of getting in touch with Eli one last time had gone through his head. But how?

The throat operation had made him capable of breathing on his own again. He no longer had to be attached to a respirator. But he could not get down food in the normal way (even this would be repaired, the doctor had assured him). The feeding tube dangled constantly at the edge of his vision. If he pulled it out an alarm would go off somewhere, and anyway he couldn't see very well. To escape was basically unthinkable.

A plastic surgeon had taken the opportunity to transplant a piece of skin from his back to his eyelid so he could shut his eye.

He shut his eye.

The door to his room opened. It was time again. He recognized the voice. The same man as before.

"Well, well," said the man. "They tell me there won't be any talking in the near future. That's too bad. But I have this stubborn thought that we could still manage to communicate with each other, you and me, if you're up for it."

Hakan tried to remember what Plato said in The Republic about murderers and violent offenders, what you were supposed to do with them.

"I see you can shut your eye now. That's good. You know what? I'll try to make this a little more concrete for you. Because it struck me that maybe you don't believe we're going to identify you. But we will. I'm sure you remember you had a wristwatch. Luckily it was an older watch with the manufacturer's initials, serial number, and everything. We're going to trace it within a couple of days, in one way or another. A week maybe. And there are other things.

"We'll find you, that's a certainty.

"So… Max. I don't know why I want to call you Max, it is entirely provisional. Max? You maybe want to help us out a little here. Otherwise we'll have to take a picture of you and send it to the papers and… well, you see. It will be… complicated. Much easier if you talk… or something… with me now.

"You had a piece of paper with the Morse code in your pocket. Do you know the Morse code? Because in that case we can talk by tapping."

Hakan opened his eye, looked in the direction of the two dark spots in the white, blurry oval that was the man's face. The man clearly chose to interpret this as an invitation. He continued.

"This man in the water. It wasn't you who killed him, was it? The pathologists say that the bite marks in his neck were probably made by a child. And now we've had a report that I unfortunately can't give any details of, but… I think you are protecting someone. Is this correct? Lift your hand if this is correct."

Hakan shut his eye. The policeman sighed.

"OK, then we'll let the machine keep working. Is there anything else you would like to tell me before I go?"

The man was about to get up when Hakan lifted one hand. The policeman sat down again. Hakan lifted the hand higher. And waved.