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

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and when he dropped the head it fell down lifeless on Virginia's head. A drop of blood trickled out of the cat's nose.

"Aaaaaah! My baby…"

Gosta reached Virginia and, with tears in his eyes, he started to stroke the cat that even in death stayed attached to Virginia's head.

"My baby, little darling…"

Lacke lowered his gaze and his eyes met Virginia's.

It was her again.

Virginia.

Let me go.

Through the double tunnel that was her eyes Virginia was looking out at everything that was happening with her body, Lacke's attempts to save her.

Let it be.

She wasn't the one fighting them off, her arms going out. It was that other thing that wanted to live, wanted that its… host should live. She had given up when she saw Gosta's throat, taken in the stench of the apartment. This was how it was going to be. And she didn't want a part of it.

The pain. She felt the pain, the cuts. But it would soon be over.

So… let it be.

Lacke saw it. But he didn't accept it.

The farm… two cottages… the garden…

In a panic he tried to tear the cats from Virginia. But they hung on, furry knots of muscles. The few he managed to get off took with them strips of her clothing, leaving deep cuts in the skin underneath, but most of them stayed put like leeches. He tried to hit them, he heard bones cracking, but if one came off another jumped on, because the cats were climbing over each other in their eagerness to…

Black.

Something hit him in the face and he stumbled back about one meter, almost falling, steadied himself against the wall, blinking. Gosta stood next to Virginia fists drawn, staring at him with tearful anger in his gaze.

"You are hurting them! You're hurting them!"

Next to Gosta, Virginia was a boiling mass of mewling, hissing fur. Miriam dragged herself across the floor, got up on her hind legs and bit Virginia in the calf. Gosta saw it, bent down, and shook his finger at her.

"You can't do that, little lady. That hurts]"

All sense of reason left Lacke. He took two steps, aimed a kick at Miriam. His foot sunk into her bloated belly and Lacke felt no revulsion, only satisfaction, when that sack of guts flew from his foot, was crushed against the radiator. He grabbed Virginia's arm-

Out, must get out of here

– and pulled her with him toward the door.

Virginia tried to resist. But Lacke and the will of her sickness were the same, and they were stronger than she. Through the tunnels in her head she saw Gosta fall to his knees on the floor, heard his howl of grief as he took a dead cat in his hands, caressing its back.

Forgive me, forgive me -

Then Lacke pulled her out with him, and her ability to see was blocked as a cat climbed up onto her face, bit her in the head, and all was pain, living needles puncturing her skin, and she found herself in a live iron maiden as she lost her balance, fell, felt herself dragged across the floor.

Let me go.

But the cat in front of her eyes changed position and she saw the apartment door opening in front of her, Lacke's hand, dark red, that pulled her along, and she saw the stairwell, the steps, she was up on her feet again, fighting her way along, in her own consciousness, taking control and-

Virginia pulled her arm free of his hand.

Lacke turned around to the crawling mass of fur that was her body in order get a hold of her again, in order to-

What? What?

Out. In order to get out.

But Virginia forced her way past him and for one second the trembling back of a cat was pressed against his face. Then she was out in the stairwell where the cats' hissing was amplified like excited whispers while she ran toward the edge of the landing and-

Nonono -

Lacke tried to reach her in time to stop her, but like someone convinced of a soft landing or someone who doesn't care if she crashes, Virginia relaxed and toppled forward, let herself fall down the stairs.

Cats that were caught underneath her howled as she rolled and bounced down the concrete steps. Damp crunching sounds as slender bones broke, heavier thuds that made Lacke cringe when Virginia's head-

Something walked across his foot.

A small gray cat that had something wrong with its hind legs dragged itself out into the stairwell, sat down on the top step, and howled sorrowfully.

Virginia came to rest at the bottom of the stairs. The cats that survived the fall left her and went back up the stairs. Went into the hall and started to groom themselves.

Only the little gray one stayed where it was, mourning the fact that it had not been able to take part.

The police held a press conference Sunday evening.

They had chosen a conference room at the police station with room for forty people, but it had turned out to be too small. A number of reporters from European newspapers and television stations turned up. The fact that the man had not been recaptured during the day made the news more sensational, and a British journalist gave the best analysis of why the whole thing had attracted such attention.

"It's a search for the archetypal Monster. This man's appearance, what he's done. He is The Monster, the evil at the heart of all fairy tales. And every time we catch it, we like to pretend it's over for good."

Already, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, the air in the poorly ventilated room was warm and humid, and the only ones who did not complain were the Italian TV team who said they were used to worse conditions.

They moved the event to a larger room and at exactly eight o'clock, the Stockholm district's chief of police came in, flanked by the commissioner who was spearheading the investigation and who had questioned the Ritual Killer in the hospital, as well as the patrol leader who had directed operations in Judarn forest earlier that day.

They were not afraid of being torn limb from limb by the reporters, because they had decided to throw them a bone.

They had a photograph of the man.

The investigation of the watch had finally yielded results. On Saturday a watchmaker in Karlskoga had taken the time to go through his index file of outdated proof-of-insurance forms and had come across the number the police had asked him and other watchmakers to try to locate.

He called the police and gave them the name, address, and phone number of the man who was registered as the buyer. The Stockholm police entered the man's name into their register and asked the Karlskoga police to go to the address to see what they could find.

There was some excitement at the station when it turned out that the man had been prosecuted for attempted rape of a nine-year-old, seven years earlier. Had spent three years locked up in an institution, deemed mentally ill. Was thereafter determined to be recovered and subsequently released.

But the Karlskoga police found the man at home, in good health.

Yes, he had had a watch like that. No, he couldn't remember what had happened to it. It took a couple of hours of interrogation at the station in Karlskoga, reminders that there were conditions under which a psychiatric certificate of good health could be subject to reevaluation, before the man recalled who he had sold the watch to.

Hakan Bengtsson, Karlstad. They had met somewhere and done something, he couldn't remember what. He had sold him the watch, at any rate, but he had no address and could only give a vague description of him, and could he please be allowed to go home now?

There was nothing on Hakan Bengtsson in the police records. There were twenty-four Hakan Bengtssons in the Karlstad area. About half of them could immediately be disregarded because of age. The police started to call around. The search was simplified by the fact that the ability to speak immediately disqualified someone as a viable candidate.