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

Benke walked over and put his hands on the man's struggling body. The man's un-deformed hand shot out and grabbed Benke's wrist. Damn, he was strong. Benke had to use both hands to free himself from the man's grip.

The only thing at hand to put over the man to warm him was the standard-issue morgue sheet. Benke took three of them and spread them over the man, who was writhing like a worm on a hook, still making that sound. He leaned down over the man, calmer now since Benke had covered him with the sheets.

"I'll take you down to the emergency room, OK? Try to keep still."

He pushed the stretcher to the door and, despite the situation, he remembered that the door opener wasn't working. He walked over to the head of the gurney and opened the door, looked down at the man's head. Immediately wished he hadn't done so.

The mouth, which was not a mouth, was opening.

The half-healed wound tissue came apart with a sound like when you skin a fish; single strips of pink skin refused to tear, stretched out when the hole in the lower half of the face widened, kept widening.

"AAAAAA!"

The howl echoed through the empty corridors and Benke's heart was beating faster.

Keep still! Be quiet!

If he had had a hammer in his hand in that moment there would have been a great likelihood that he would have smashed it right into that revolting, quivering mass with that staring eye, those strips of skin over the mouth hole that now snapped like overstretched rubber bands, and Benke could see the man's teeth glow white in all that reddish brown fluid that was his face.

Benke walked back to the foot end of the gurney again, started to push it through the corridors, toward the elevator. He half-ran, afraid that the man was going to twist so much he fell off.

The corridors stretched out endlessly before him, like in a nightmare. Yes. It was like a nightmare. All thoughts of a "good story" were gone. He wanted to come up to the surface where there were other people, living people who could rescue him from this monster who was screaming on the gurney.

He reached the elevator and pressed the button that would get it to come, visualizing the route to the ER. Five minutes and he would be there.

Already up on the ground floor there would be other people who could help him. Two minutes and he would be back in real life.

Come on, damn you!

The man's healthy hand was waving.

Benke looked at it and closed his eyes, opened them again. The man was trying to say something, softly. He was indicating for Benke to come closer. He was clearly conscious.

Benke stepped next to the gurney, bent down over the man. "Yes, what is it?"

The hand suddenly grabbed hold of his neck, pulled his head down. Benke lost his balance, fell down over the man, the grip on his neck iron-hard as the hand pulled him down to that… hole.

He tried to grab hold of the metal bars at the top end of the stretcher in order to resist, but his head twisted to the side and his eyes ended up only a few centimeters from the wet compress on the man's neck.

"Let go of me, for…"

A finger pushed into his ear and he heard the bones in the ear canal crackle and give way as the finger forced itself in, further in. He kicked out with his legs and when his shin hit the metal bars under the gurney he finally screamed.

Then teeth clamped down on his cheek and the finger in his ear reached a point where it turned something off, something turned off and… he gave up.

The last thing he saw was how the wet compress in front of his eyes changed color and grew pink as the man chewed on his face.

The last thing he heard was a

pling

as the elevator arrived.

They lay next to each other on the couch, sweating, panting. Oskar was sore all over, exhausted. He yawned so wide his jaws cracked. Eli also yawned. Oskar turned his head to her.

"Give it up." Excuse me?

"You aren't really sleepy, are you?"

"No."

Oskar made an effort to keep his eyes open, was talking almost without moving his lips. Eli's face was starting to appear foggy, unreal.

"What do you do? To get blood."

Eli looked at him. For a long time. Then she seemed to make up her mind about something and Oskar saw how something moved inside her cheeks, lips, as if she was swirling her tongue around in there. Then she parted her lips, opened wide.

And he saw her teeth. She closed her mouth again.

Oskar turned away and looked up at the ceiling, where a thread of dusty cobwebs stretched down from the unused overhead light. He didn't even have the energy to be surprised. Oh. She was a vampire. But he already knew that.

"Are there a lot of you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know."

"No, I don't."

Oskar's gaze roamed the ceiling, trying to locate more cobwebs. Found two. Thought he saw a spider crawling on one of them. He blinked. Blinked again. Eyes full of sand. No spider.

"What do I call you, then? This thing that you are."

"Eli."

"Is that really your name?"

"Almost."

"What's your real name?"

A pause. Eli shifted away from him, against the back of the couch, turned around onto her side.

"Elias."

"But that's a… boy's name."

"Yes."

Oskar closed his eyes. Couldn't take any more. His eyelids had glued themselves shut onto his eyeballs. A black hole was growing, enveloping his whole body. There was a faint impression somewhere far away at the very back of his head that he should say something, do something. But he didn't have the energy.

The black hole exploded in slow motion. He was sucked forward, inward, turned a slow somersault in space, into sleep.

Far away he felt someone stroke his cheek. Didn't manage to articulate the thought that, because he felt it, it must be his own. But somewhere, on a planet far far away, someone gently stroked someone's cheek.

And that was good.

Then there were only stars.

"We are the troll company, we don't let anyone go free!"

– Rune Andreasson, Bamse The Magic Forest

[popular Swedish children's comic book]

8 November

The Traneberg Bridge. When it was unveiled in 1934 it was hailed as a minor miracle of engineering. The longest concrete single-span bridge in the world. One single mighty arc that soared between Kungsholmen and the western suburbs, which at that time consisted of the little garden cities of Bromma and Appelviken. The single-family-house movement's prefabricated prototypes were in Angby.

But the modern was already on its way. The first real suburbs of three-story apartment buildings were already finished in Traneberg and Abra-hamsberg, and the state had bought up large areas further west in order to start constructing everything that would one day become Vallingby, Hasselby and Blackeberg.

To all this, the Traneberg Bridge was the link. Almost everyone who traveled to or from the western suburbs used the Traneberg Bridge.

Already in the 1960s reports had started to come in about how the bridge was slowly disintegrating as a result of the heavy traffic it was subjected to. It was renovated and reinforced from time to time but the large-scale renovation and new construction that came up in talks was still a thing of the future.

So on the morning of the eighth of November 1981 the bridge looked tired. A life-weary senior, sorrowfully pondering the days when the heavens were brighter, the clouds lighter, and when it was still the longest single-span concrete bridge in the world.

The snow had started to melt toward morning and snow-slush ran down into cracks in the bridge. The city didn't dare to salt it because it could eat away further at the aging concrete.