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

But where is she?

He looked around the room; his eyes stopped at the closed door to the room where Eli had changed her shirt. He took a few steps toward the door, stopped himself. The door lay in shadow. He balled his hands up, sucked on a knuckle.

What if she really… sleeps in a coffin.

Silly. Why would she do that? Why do vampires do that anyway? Because they're dead. And Eli said she wasn't…

But what if…

He sucked on his knuckle, ran his tongue over it. Her kiss. The table with food in his vision. Just the fact that she could make him see that. And… her teeth. A predator's teeth.

If only it wasn't so dark in here.

The switch for the overhead lamp was next to the door. He pushed on it, thinking nothing would happen, but yes, it went on. He screwed up his eyes in the strong light, let his eyes get used to it before he turned to the door, rested his hand on the door handle.

The light didn't help at all. In fact it was only more horrible now that the door was only a normal door. Like the door to his own room. Exactly the same. The door handle felt the same. What if she was lying in there? Maybe her arms neatly folded across her chest?

I have to look.

He pushed the handle down, tentatively; it only offered light resistance. The door must not be locked, then it would only have glided down.

He pushed it down all the way and the door opened, the gap widened. The room inside was dark.

Wait!

Would she be hurt by the light if he opened the door?

No, yesterday she had sat next to the floor lamp without it seeming to bother her. But the overhead light was stronger and perhaps there was a… special kind of bulb in the floor lamp, a light that… vampires could withstand.

Ridiculous. The specialty store for vampire lamps.

And why would she have let the overhead light remain in place if it could be… harmful to her?

Even so, he opened the door cautiously, allowing the cone of light to slowly widen into the room. It was as sparsely furnished as the living room. A bed and a pile of clothes, nothing more. The bed only had a sheet and a pillow. The blanket he had slept with on the couch must have come from there. There was a note taped to the wall next to the bed.

The Morse code.

So it was here she had been lying when she…

He drew a deep breath. He had managed to forget it.

My room is on the other side of this wall.

Yes, he was two meters from his own bed, from his own normal life.

He lay down on the bed, had the impulse to tap out a message on the wall. To Oskar. On the other side. What should he say?

W.H.E.R.E. A.R.E. Y.O.U.

He sucked on his knuckle again. He was here. It was Eli who was gone.

He felt dizzy, confused. Let his head flop down onto the pillow, his face turned out facing the room. The pillow smelled funny. Like the blanket, but stronger. A stale, greasy smell. He looked at the pile of clothes a few meters from the bed.

It's so repulsive.

He didn't want to be here anymore. It was completely quiet and empty in the apartment, and everything was so… abnormal. His gaze traveled over the pile of clothes, stopped at the closets that covered the whole length of the opposite wall, all the way to the door. Two double closets, one single.

There.

He pulled his legs up against his stomach, staring at the closed closet

doors. He didn't want to. His stomach hurt. A shooting pain in his lower belly.

Had to pee.

He stood up from the bed, walked to the door with his eyes glued to the closet doors. He had the same kind of closets in his room and knew she could easily fit inside. That's where she was and he didn't want to see anymore.

Even the light in the hall worked. He turned it on and walked along the short corridor to the bathroom. The door to the bathroom was locked. The colored strip above the handle was red. He knocked on the door.

"Eli?"

Not a sound. He knocked again.

"Eli? Are you in there?"

Nothing. But when he said her name aloud he remembered that it was wrong. That was the last thing she had said as they lay together on the couch. That her real name was… Elias. Ellas. A boy's name. Was Eli a boy? They had… kissed and slept in the same bed and…

Oskar pressed his hands against the bathroom door, rested his forehead against his hands. He tried to think. Hard. And he didn't get it. That he could somehow accept that she was a vampire., but the idea that she was somehow a boy, that that could be… harder.

He knew the word. Fag. Fucking fag. Stuff that Jonny said. To think it was worse to be gay than to be a…

He knocked on the door again.

"Elias?"

A weird feeling in his stomach as he said it. No, he wasn't going to get used to it. She… His name was Eli. But it was too much. Regardless of what Eli was, it was too much. He just couldn't. Nothing about her was normal.

He lifted his forehead from his hands, held the pee back firmly.

Steps outside in the stairwell and shortly thereafter a sound of the mailbox opening, a thud. He walked out there and looked at what it was. Advertising.

Ground beef. 14:90 per kilo.

Garish red letters and numbers. He picked up the advertisements in his hand with dawning comprehension; pressed his eyes against the keyhole while footsteps echoed in the stairwell; more bangs as additional mail flaps were opened and shut.

After half a minute his mom passed by the keyhole, on her way down. He only managed to catch a glimpse of her hair, the collar of her coat, but he knew it was her. Who else would it be?

Delivering the advertising packets in his absence.

With the flyers clenched in his hand, Oskar sank down into a crouch by the front door, leaned his forehead against his knees. He didn't cry. The need to pee was like a stinging nest of ants in his groin that in some way prevented him.

But the thought ran through his head over and over:

I don't exist. I don't exist.

Lacke had spent the night worrying. Ever since he left Virginia, a sneaking anxiety had been intent on gnawing a hole in his stomach. He had spent about an hour with the regulars at the Chinese restaurant Saturday night, trying to share his concerns, but the others wanted none of it. Lacke had sensed things could get out of hand, that there was a danger he would get really ticked off, so he left.

Those guys weren't worth shit.

Sure, it wasn't exactly news to him, but he had thought that… well, what the hell had he thought?

That we were all in on it.

That at least one other person also had the feeling that something damn creepy was going on. There was so much talk, big words, especially from Morgan, but when it came down to it, no one had the gumption to lift a finger to actually do something.

Not that even Lacke knew what to do, but he was at least worried about it. If that helped. He had lain awake most of the night, tried to read a little from Dostoevsky's The Demons but kept forgetting what happened on the previous page, the previous sentence, and he gave up.

But the night brought something good with it; he had made up his mind about something.

Sunday morning he had gone over to Virginia's place, knocked on the door. No one opened and he had assumed that… hoped that she had gone to the hospital. On his way back home he walked past two women

who were talking, heard something about a murderer that the police were searching for in the Judarn forest.

There's a murderer behind every damn hush these days, for god's sake. Now the papers have something else to jump all over.

About ten days had gone by since they captured the Vallingby killer and the newspapers had grown tired about speculating about his identity and possible motive.