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

As usual, the first image he sees is of the cottage where he lived with his parents, his older siblings. But it is gone. Outside Norrkoping where it once stood there is now a roundabout. The stream where his mother rinsed their clothes has dried up, become overgrown, a depression next to the intersection.

Eli has a lot of money. Would be able to ask the taxi driver to take him anywhere, as far as the darkness allows. North. South. Could sit in the back seat and ask the driver to drive north for two thousand kronor. Then get out. Start over. Find someone who…

Eli throws his head back, screams up at the ceiling:

"I don't want to!"

The dusty cobwebs sway slightly in his exhalation. The sound dies in this sealed room. Eli puts his hands up on his face, presses his fingers against his eyelids. Feels it in his body, the approaching sunrise, like a worry. He whispers:

"God. God? Why can't I have anything? Why can't I…"

It has been brought up many times before, this question.

Why can't I be allowed to live?

Because you should be dead.

Only once after he had been infected did Eli meet another infected person. A grown woman. Just as cynical and hollow as the man with the wig. But Eli received an answer to another question that had been nagging him.

"Are there many of us?"

The woman shook her head and had said with theatrical sadness:

"No. We are so few. So few."

"Why?"

"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my." Her hands fluttered; she said in a shrill voice: "Ooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscience."

"Can we die?"

"Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or…" She held out her index finger and pressed it hard into Eli's chest, above the heart. "There. That's where it is, isn't it? But now my friend, I have a wonderful idea…"

And Eli had fled from that wonderful idea. As before. As later.

Eli put his hand on his heart, felt the slow beats. Maybe it was because he was a child. Maybe that was why he hadn't put an end to it. The pangs of conscience were weaker than his will to live.

Eli got up out of the armchair. Hakan would not turn up tonight. But before Eli went to rest he had to check on Tommy. That he had recovered. He had not become infected. For Oskar's sake he wanted to make sure that Tommy was fine.

Eli turned off all the lights and left the apartment.

Down in Tommy's stairwell all he had to do was pull the cellar door open; a long time ago when he was down here with Oskar, he had tucked a piece of paper into the lock so it would stay unlatched when the door closed. He stepped into the cellar corridor and let the door fall shut behind him with a muted thud.

He stopped, listened. Nothing.

No sound of a sleeping person's breathing; only the cloying smell of paint thinners, glue. He walked quickly along the corridor to the storage area, pulled open the door.

Empty.

Twenty minutes until sunrise.

During the night, Tommy had glided in and out of a daze of sleep, half-wakefulness, nightmares. He didn't know how much time had gone by when he started to wake up properly. The naked bulb in the cellar was always the same. Maybe it was dawn, morning, day. Maybe school had already started. He didn't care.

His mouth tasted of glue. He looked around bleary-eyed. There were two bank notes on his chest. Thousand kronor notes. He bent his arm to pick them up, felt a tugging on his skin. A large Band-Aid was pasted over the inside of his elbow, a small blood stain in the middle of the patch.

But there was… something more.

He turned in the couch, searching along the inside of the cushions, and found the roll he had dropped during the night. Three thousand more. He unfolded the bills, put them together with the bills from his chest, felt the whole lot, made them crinkle. Five thousand. Anything he wanted to do.

He looked at the Band-Aid, chuckled. Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.

Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.

What was that? Someone had said it, someone…

That was it. Tobbe's sister, what was her name… Ingela? Turning tricks, Tobbe had told him. And she got five hundred for it, and Tobbe's comment was:

"Not bad for…"

Just lying back and closing your eyes.

Tommy squeezed the bills in his hand, scrunched them up into a ball. She had paid for and drunk of his blood. An illness, she had said. But what kind of fucking illness was that? He had never heard of anything like it. And if you had something like that, you went to the hospital, then they gave you… You didn't fucking go down into some basement with five thousand and…

Swish.

No?

Tommy sat up in the couch, pulled off the blanket.

They didn't exist. No. Not vampires. That girl, the one in the yellow dress, she must somehow believe that she is… but wait, wait. It was that Ritual Killer that… the one they were searching for…

Tommy leaned his head in his hands; the bills crinkled against his ear. He couldn't figure it out. But in any case he was damn scared of that girl now.

Just as he was thinking about going back up to the apartment after all, even if it was still night, come what may, he heard the door to his stairwell open. His heart fluttered like a frightened bird and he looked around.

Weapon.

The only thing he could see was the broom. Tommy's mouth was pulled up into a smile that lasted for a second.

The broom - a good weapon against vampires.

Then he remembered, got up and walked to the safety room while he stuffed the money into his pocket. Cleared the corridor in one step and slid into the safety room as the cellar door opened. Didn't dare lock the door since he was afraid she would hear it.

He sank into a crouch in the dark, tried to breathe as silently as possible.

The razor blade glimmered on the floor. One corner was stained with brown, like rust. Eli tore off a corner of the cover of a motorcycle magazine, wrapped the paper around the razor blade, put it into his back pocket.

Tommy was gone; that meant he was alive. He had left on his own, gone home to sleep, and even if he put two and two together he didn't know where Eli lived, so…

Everything is as it should be. Everything is… great.

There was a wooden broom with a long handle leaned up against the wall.

Eli picked it up, broke it over his knee, almost as far down as the head of the broom. The surface of the break was rough, sharp. A thin stake, about an arm's length. He put the point against his chest, between two ribs. Exactly the place that the woman had put her finger.

He took a deep breath, squeezed the shaft, and tried on the thought.

In! In!

Breathed out, loosened his grip. Squeezed again. Pressed.

For two minutes he stood with the point one centimeter from his heart, the shaft held firmly in his hand, when the handle of the cellar door was slammed down and the door glided open.

He removed the wooden stake from his chest, listened. Heard slow,tentative steps in the corridor like from a child who had just learned to walk. A very large child who had just learned to walk.

Tommy heard the steps and thought: Who?

Not Staffan, not Lasse, not Robban. Someone who was sick in some way, who was carrying something very heavy… Santa Claus! His hand went up to his mouth to smother a giggle as he imagined Santa Claus, the Disney version-

Hohoho! Say "Mama!"