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

"Are you all alone here, dear? At this hour?"

"Yes, I… just wanted to know if he is here."

"Let's see about that then, shall we? What's his name?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

The girl bent her head, seemed to be looking for something on the ground. When she straightened her head again the large dark eyes were wet with tears and her lower lip trembled.

"No, he… But he is here."

"But my dear…"

Maud felt as if something in her chest were breaking and tried to take refuge in action; she bent down and took out her roll of paper towels from the lowest desk drawer, pulled off a piece, and handed it over to the girl. At last she was able to give her something, if only a piece of paper.

The girl blew her nose, and dried her eyes in a very… adult way.

"Thank you."

"But then I don't know… so what's wrong with him?"

"He is… the police took him."

"But then you'd better turn to them."

"Yes, but they're keeping him here. Because he's sick."

"Well, what kind of illness does he have?"

"He… I just know that the police have him here. Where is he?"

"Probably on the top floor, but you can't go up there if you haven't… made an appointment with them ahead of time."

"I just wanted to know which window was his so I could… I don't know."

The girl started to cry again. Maud's throat got so tight it hurt. The girl wanted to know this so she could stand outside the hospital in the snow… and look up toward her father's window. Maud swallowed.

"I can call them if you like. I'm sure that you can-"

"No, it's fine. Now I know. Now I can… Thanks, thanks a lot."

The girl turned away and walked back to the revolving door.

My Lord, all these broken families.

The girl walked out the doors and Maud kept staring at the place where the girl had disappeared.

Something was wrong.

In her mind Maud went over what the girl had looked like, how she had moved. There was something that didn't match up, something you… It

took Maud half a minute to remember what it was. The girl had not been wearing any shoes.

Maud jumped up and ran to the doors. She was only allowed to leave the reception desk unattended under very special circumstances. She decided that this counted as one of them. She trotted through the revolving doors impatiently hurry hurry hurry and then out into the parking lot. The girl was nowhere in sight. What should she do? The social welfare people would have to be brought in; no one had checked to make sure there was someone to look after the girl. That was the only explanation. Who was her father?

Maud looked around the parking lot without finding the girl. She ran down one side of the hospital, in the direction of the subway. No girl. On her way back to the reception she tried to figure out who she should call, what she should do.

Oskar lay in bed, waiting for the Werewolf. He felt the inside of his chest churning with rage, despair. From the living room he heard his dad's and Janne's loud voices, mixed with music from the tape recorder. The Deep Brothers. Oskar could not actually make out the words but he knew the song by heart.

"We live in the country, and soon we realized

we're country fellas and then it hit us

We needed something for the barn

We sold the china, all nice and fine

and bought ourselves a great big swine…"

At this point the whole band started to imitate different farm animals. Normally he thought the Deep Brothers were funny. Now he hated them. Because they were part of this. Singing their idiotic songs for Dad and Janne while they got packed.

He knew exactly how it was going to go.

In an hour or so the bottle would be empty and Janne would go home.

Then Dad would pace up and down in the kitchen for a while, and finally decide he needed to talk to Oskar.

He would come into Oskar's room and he would no longer be Dad. Just an alcohol-stinking, clumsy mess, all sentimental and needy. Would want Oskar to get out of bed. Needed to talk for a while. About how he still loved Mom, how he loved Oskar, did Oskar love him back? Slurring about all the wrongs he had ever experienced, and in the worst case scenario get himself worked up, become angry.

He never got violent or anything. But what Oskar saw in his eyes at those times was the absolutely scariest thing he had ever seen. Then there was no trace of Dad left. Just a monster who had somehow crawled into his dad's body and taken control of it.

The person his dad became when he drank had no connection to the person he was when he was sober. And so it was comforting to think about Dad being a werewolf. That he in fact contained a whole other person in his body. Just as the moon brought out the wolf in a werewolf, so alcohol brought this creature out of his dad.

Oskar picked up a Bamse comic, tried to read but couldn't concentrate. He felt… forlorn. In an hour or so he would find himself alone with the Monster. And the only thing he could do was wait.

He threw the Bamse comic at the wall and got out of bed, went to get his wallet. One pack of prepaid subway tickets and two notes from Eli. He put Eli's notes side by side on the bed.

THEN WINDOW, LET DAY IN, AND LET LIFE OUT.

A heart.

SEE YOU TONIGHT. ELI.

And then the second.

I MUST BE GONE AND LIVE, OR STAY AND DIE. YOURS, ELI.

There are no vampires.

The night was a black cover over the window. Oskar shut his eyes and thought about the route to Stockholm, raced past the houses, the farms, the fields. Flew into the courtyard in Blackeberg, in through her window, and there she was.

He opened his eyes, stared at the black rectangle of the window. Out there.

The Deep Brothers had started a song about a bicycle that got a flat tire. Dad and Janne laughed much too loudly at something. Something fell over.

Which monster do you choose?

Oskar put Eli's notes back in his wallet and put his clothes on. Sneaked out into the hall and put on his shoes, his coat, and hat. He stood still in the hall a few seconds, listening to the sounds from the living room.

He turned to go, saw something, stopped.

On the shoe rack in the hall were his old rubber boots, the ones he had worn when he was four or five. They had been there as long as he could remember, even though there was no one who could use them. Next to them were his dad's enormous Tretorn boots, one of them with a patch on the heel like the kind you use to fix bicycle tires.

Why had he kept them?

Oskar knew why. Two people grew up out of the boots with their backs to him. His dad's broad back, and next to it Oskar's thin one. Os-kar's arm upstretched, his hand in Dad's. They walked in their boots up over a boulder, maybe on their way to pick raspberries.

He suppressed a sob, tears rising in his throat. He stretched out his hand to touch the small boots. A salvo of laughter came from the living room. Janne's voice, distorted. Probably imitating someone, he was good at that.

Oskar's fingers closed over the top of the boots. Yes. He didn't know why but it felt right. He carefully opened the front door, closed it behind him. The night was icy cold, the snow a sea of tiny diamonds in the moonlight.

He started to walk up to the main road, with the boots tightly clasped in his hands.

The guard was sleeping, a young policeman who had been brought in after the hospital staff had protested against having one of them constantly assigned to guard Hakan. The door was, however, secured with a coded lock. That was probably why he had dared to snooze.

Only a night lamp was on and Hakan was studying the blurry shadows on the ceiling the way a healthy man might lie in the grass looking at