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

Toward nine o'clock in the evening they were able to narrow the list to a single person. One Hakan Bengtsson who had been a Swedish teacher at the high school and who had left Karlstad after his house burned down under unclear circumstances.

They called the principal of the high school and were told that yes, there had been rumors about Hakan Bengtsson… liked children a little bit too much, you could say. They had the prinicipal go to the school on a Saturday evening and produce a photo of Hakan Bengtsson from the school archives, taken for the school catalogue in 1976.

A Karlstad police officer, who needed to be in Stockholm on Sunday anyway, faxed over a copy and then started driving up with the original late Saturday night. It reached the Stockholm headquarters at one o'clock Sunday morning, that is to say, about a half hour after the man in question had fallen from his hospital window and been declared dead.

Sunday morning was devoted to verifying through dental and medical

records from Karlstad that the man in the snapshot was the same man who, until the preceding evening, had been bound to his hospital bed, and yes: it was him.

Sunday afternoon there was a meeting at the station. They had counted on slowly being able to unravel what the dead man had done since leaving Karlstad, see if his deeds were part of a larger context, if he had left more victims strewn in his wake.

But now the situation had changed.

The man was still alive, was on the loose, and the most important thing at this point appeared to be locating where the man had lived since there was a small chance he would try to return there. His movements toward the western suburbs seemed to indicate as much.

Therefore it was decided that if the man was not apprehended before the press conference one would turn to the somewhat unreliable but oh so many-headed hunting dog, The General Public.

It was possible that someone had seen him during the time when he still looked like he did in the photo and maybe had some sense of where he had lived. And anyway, of course it was only a secondary concern. One needed a bone to throw the media.

So now the three police officers were sitting there at the long table up by the podium, and a ripple went through the assembled journalists when the police chief-with the simple gesture that he well knew was the most effective, theatrically speaking-held up the enlarged school photo of Hakan Bengtsson, and said:

"The man we are looking for is called Hakan Bengtsson and before his face was damaged he looked… like this."

The police chief paused while the cameras clicked and the flashes transformed the room into a stroboscope for a while.

Of course there were copies of the grainy picture on hand to be passed out among the journalists but, above all, the foreign papers were most likely to prefer the more emotionally expressive staging of the police chief with the murderer-so to speak-in his hand.

When everyone had gotten their photos and the investigative team had reported on their activities, it was time for questions. The first one came from a reporter from Dagens Nyheter, the big morning paper.

"When do you expect to apprehend him?"

The police chief took a deep breath, decided to put his reputation on the line, and said:

"Tomorrow at the latest."

Hey there."

"Hi."

Oskar went in before her, straight to the living room in order to get the record he wanted. Flipped through his mom's thin record collection and found it. The Vikings. The whole group was assembled in something that looked like the skeleton of a Viking ship, misplaced in their shiny costumes.

Eli didn't come in. With the record in his hand he went back into the hall. She was still standing outside the front door.

"Oskar, you have to invite me in."

"But… the window. You have already…"

"This is a new entrance."

"I see. OK you can…"

Oskar stopped himself, licked his lips. Looked at the picture on the album cover. The picture had been taken in the dark, with a flash, and the Vikings glowed like a group of saints about to walk onto land. He stepped toward Eli, showed her the album.

"Check it out, they look like they're in the belly of a whale or something."

"Oskar…"

"Yes?"

Eli stood still, with her arms hanging by her side, and looked at Oskar. He smiled, went up to the door, waved his hand in the air between the door frame and the door jamb, in front of Eli's face.

"What? Is there something here or what?"

"Don't start."

"But seriously. What happens if I don't do it?"

"Don't. Start." Eli gave a thin smile. "You want to see? What happens? Do you? Is that what you want?"

Eli said it in a way that was clearly intended for Oskar to say no: the promise of something terrible. But Oskar swallowed and said: "Yes. I do. Show me."

"You wrote in the note that…"

"Yes, I know. But let's see it. What happens?"

Eli pinched her lips together, thought for a second, and then took a step forward, over the threshold. Oskar tensed his whole body, waiting for a blue flash, or for the door to swing forward through Eli and slam shut or something like that. But nothing happened. Eli went into the hallway, closed the door behind her. Oskar shrugged his shoulders.

"Is that all?"

"Not exactly."

Eli stood still, in the same way as she had outside the door, her arms along her sides and her eyes glued to Oskar's. Oskar shook his head.

"What? There's nothing…"

He stopped when he saw a tear come out of the corner of one of Eli's eyes; no, one in each eye. But it wasn't a tear, since it was dark. The skin in Eli's face started to flush, became pink, red, wine-red, and her hands tightened into fists as the pores in her face opened and tiny pearls of blood started to appear in dots all over her face and throat.

Eli's lips twisted in pain and a drop of blood ran out of the corner of her mouth, joined with the pearls emerging on her chin and, growing larger, trickled down to join the drops on her throat.

Oskar's arms became limp; he let them fall and the record fell out of its sleeve, bounced once with its edge against the floor, then fell flat onto the hall rug. His gaze went to Eli's hands.

The backs of her hands were damp with a thin covering of blood and more was coming out.

Again he looked Eli in the eyes, didn't find her. Her eyes looked like they had sunk into their sockets, were filled with blood flowing out, running along the bridge of her nose over her lips into her mouth, where more blood was coming out, two streams running out of the corners of her mouth down over her throat, disappearing under the collar of her T-shirt where dark spots were starting to appear.

She was bleeding out of all the pores in her body.

Oskar caught his breath, shouted: "You can come in, you can… you are welcome, you are… allowed to be here!"

Eli relaxed. Her clenched fists loosened. The grimace of pain disappeared. Oskar thought for a moment that even the blood would somehow dissolve, that it would all sort of not have happened once she was invited in.

But no. The blood stopped running, but Eli's face and hands were still dark red, and while the two of them were standing in front of each other without saying anything, the blood started to coagulate, form darker stripes and lumps in the places it had flowed, and Oskar picked up a faint hospital smell.

He picked the record up off the floor, put it back in its sleeve and said, without looking at Eli: "Sorry, I… I didn't think…"

"It's alright. I was the one who wanted to do it. But I think I should probably have a shower. Do you have a plastic bag?"

"Plastic bag?"

"Yes. For the clothes."

Oskar nodded, went out into the kitchen and dug a plastic bag with the logo ica-eat, drink, and be happy on it from the recess down below the sink. He walked into the living room, put the record on the coffee table, and stopped, the bag crinkling in his hand.