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

She sat up abruptly, ran doubled-over to the bathroom and threw open the lid to the toilet, leaned her head over the bowl. Nothing came. Just dry, convulsive heaves. She leaned her forehead against the edge of the bowl. The images of the birth started to well up again.

Don'twantdon'twantdon'twantdon'twa -

She banged her forehead hard against the porcelain and a geyser of icy clear pain spurted up in her head. Everything in front of her eyes turned bright blue. She smiled, and fell sideways to the floor, down onto the bathroom rug that…

Cost 14:90, but I got it for ten because a large piece of fuzz came off when the cashier pulled off the price tag, and when I came out onto the square from Ahlen's department store there was a pigeon pecking from a cardboard container where there were a couple of french fries and the pigeon was gray… and… blue… there was… a strong backlight…

She didn't know how long she had been gone. One minute, an hour? Maybe only a few seconds. But something had changed. She was calm.

The fuzz of the bathroom mat felt good against her cheek as she lay there and looked at the rusted pipe that ran down from the sink into the floor. She thought the pipe had a beautiful shape.

A strong smell of urine. She hadn't wet her pants, no, because it was… Lacke's urine she smelled. She bent her body, moved her head closer to the floor under the toilet, sniffed. Lacke… and Morgan. She couldn't understand how she knew that but she knew: Morgan had peed on the side.

But Morgan hasn't even been here.

No, actually. That evening when they had helped her home. The evening when she was attacked. Bitten. Yes, of course. Everything fell into place. Morgan had been here, Morgan had used the bathroom, and she had been lying out there on the couch after having been bitten and now she could see in the dark, was sensitive to light, and needed blood and-

A vampire.

That's how it was. She had not contracted some rare and unpleasant disease that was treatable at the hospital or in a psychiatric ward or with…

Photo-therapy!

She started to laugh, then coughed, turned over on her back, stared up at the ceiling, and went over everything. The cuts that healed so quickly, the effect of the sun on her skin, blood. She said it aloud:

"I am a vampire."

It couldn't be. They didn't exist. But even so something felt lighter. As if a pressure in her head eased. A weight lifted from her. It wasn't her fault. The revolting fantasies, the terrible things she had done to herself all night. It wasn't something she was responsible for.

It was simply… very natural.

She got up halfway, and started to run a bath, sat on the toilet and watched the running water, the bath as it slowly filled. The phone rang. She only registered it as an indifferent noise, a mechanical signal. It didn't mean anything. She couldn't talk to anyone anyway. No one could talk to her.

Oskar had not read Saturday's paper. Now it was spread out in front of him on the kitchen table. He had had it turned to the same page for a while and read the caption to the picture over and over again. The picture he couldn't let go of.

The text was about the man who had been found frozen into the ice down by the Blackeberg hospital. How he had been found, how the recovery work had been undertaken. There was a small picture of Mr. Avila as he stood pointing out over the water, toward the hole in the ice. In the quote from Mr. Avila, the reporter had smoothed out his linguistic eccentricities.

All this was interesting enough and worth cutting out to save, but that wasn't what he was staring at, couldn't tear himself from.

It was the picture of the shirt.

Stuffed inside the man's jacket there had been a child-sized bloodstained sweater, and it was reproduced here, laid out against a neutral background. Oskar recognized the sweater immediately.

Aren't you cold?

The text stated that the dead man, Joakim Bengtsson, was last seen alive Saturday the twenty-fourth of October. Two weeks ago. Oskar remembered that evening. When Eli had solved the Cube. He had stroked her cheek and she had walked out of the courtyard. That night she and… the old guy had argued and the old guy had left.

Was that the night that Eli had done it?

Yes, probably. The next day she had looked a lot healthier.

He looked at the photograph. It was in black and white but the caption said the sweater was light pink. The reporter speculated that the murderer might have yet another young victim on his conscience.

Hang on a minute.

The Vallingby murderer. In the article it said the police now had strong indications that the man in the ice had been killed by the so-called Ritual Killer, who had been captured at the Vallingby swimming pool about a week earlier, and who was now on the loose.

Was it… the old guy? But… the kid in the forest… why?

A lightbulb went on in his head. Understood everything. All of these articles he had cut out and saved, radio, TV, all the talk, the fear…

Eli.

Oskar didn't know what to do. What he should do. So he went to the fridge and took out the piece of lasagna his mom had saved for him. Ate it cold while he kept looking at the articles. When he was done eating he heard a tap on the wall. Closed his eyes so he could hear better. He knew the code by heart at this point.

I.A.M.G.O.I.N.G.O.U.T.

He quickly got up from the table, walked into his room, lay belly-down on his bed, and tapped out an answer.

C.O.M.E.O.V.E.R.

A pause. Then:

Y.O.U.R.M.O.M.

Oskar tapped a reply.

A.W.A.Y.

His mom wouldn't be back until around ten. They still had three hours. When Oskar had tapped the last message he rested his head on the pillow. For a moment he concentrated on formulating words that he had forgotten.

Her top… the paper.

He jumped, was about to get up in order to sweep up all the papers that lay out. She would see them… know that he…

Then he leaned his head back against the pillow, decided he didn't care.

A low whistle outside the window. He got up out of bed, walked forward, and leaned against the windowsill. She stood there below with her face turned up to the light. She was wearing the checkered shirt that was too big for her.

He made a gesture with his finger: Go to the door.

Don't tell him it was me, OK?"

Yvonne made a face, blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth in the direction of the half-open kitchen window, didn't reply.

Tommy snorted. "Why do you smoke like that, out the window?"

The ash pillar of her cigarette was so long it started to bend. Tommy pointed to it, made a duht-duht movement with his finger like he was flicking the ash off. She ignored him.

"Because Staffan doesn't like it, right? The smell of smoke."

Tommy leaned back in his kitchen chair, looked at the ash, and wondered what it actually consisted of that allowed it to get so long without breaking off, waved his hand in front of her face.

"I don't like the smell of smoke either. Didn't like it at all when I was little. But that didn't make you crack the window like this. Oh, see there it goes…"

The pillar of ash broke off and landed on Yvonne's thigh. She brushed it off and a gray streak was left on her pants. She raised the hand holding the cigarette.

"I did so. Most of the time, at least. There may have been times when I had people over or something, when I didn't… and who the hell are you to sit here lecturing me about not liking smoke."

Tommy grinned. "But you have to admit it was a little funny."

"No, it was not. Think about if people had panicked. If people had… and what about that basin, the…"