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

She hoped a nurse would come back in before Lacke woke up. Yes. The very best thing would be if he could sleep until it was over.

But that was probably too much to hope for.

The sun caught up with Eli in the courtyard, a glowing tong that pinched his mauled ear. Instinctively, he backed up into the shade of the vaulted entrance to the yard, squeezed the three plastic bottles of denatured alcohol to his chest, as if to shield them from the sun as well.

Ten steps away was his front door. Twenty steps to Oskar's. And thirty steps to Tommy's.

I can't do it.

No, if he had been healthy, strong, he would perhaps have tried to make it to Oskar's entrance through the flood of light that grew in intensity for every second he waited. But not to Tommy's. And not now.

Ten steps. Then up the stairs. The big window in the stairwell. If I trip. If the sun…

Eli ran.

The sun threw itself over him like a hungry lion, biting itself into his back. Eli almost lost his balance as he was thrown forward by the sun's physical, howling force. Nature vomited its disgust at his transgression: to show himself in sunlight for even one second.

It sizzled, bubbled, like someone pouring boiling oil on Eli's back when he reached the front door, threw it open. The pain almost made him faint and he moved toward the steps as if drugged, blinded; didn't dare open his eyes for fear that they would melt.

He dropped one of the bottles, heard it roll away across the floor. Couldn't be helped. With head bent, one arm wrapped around the remaining bottles, the other on the banister, he limped up the stairs, reached the landing. One flight left.

Through the window the sun delivered a last swipe at his neck, snapped at him, then bit him in the thighs, calves, heels while he moved up the stairs. He was burning. The only thing missing was flames. He got the door open, fell into the wonderful, cool darkness inside. Slammed the door shut behind him. But it was not dark.

The kitchen door was open and in the kitchen there were no blinds in front of the window. The light was weaker, grayer than what he had just experienced and, without hesitation, Eli dropped the bottles onto the floor, continued on. While the light clawed relatively tenderly at his back as he crawled down the corridor to the bathroom the smell of burnt flesh wafted into his nose.

I will never be whole again.

He stretched his arm out, opened the bathroom door, and crawled into the compact darkness. He pushed a couple of plastic jugs out of the way, closed the door, and locked it.

Before he slid into the bathtub he had time to think:

I didn't lock the front door.

But it was too late. Rest turned him off at the same moment as he sank down into the wet darkness. He wouldn't have had the energy anyway.

Tommy sat still, pressed into the corner. He held his breath until his ears started to ring and he saw shooting stars in front of his eyes. When he heard the cellar door slam shut he dared to let his breath out in a long panting exhalation that rolled along the cement walls, died out.

It was completely quiet. The darkness was so complete that it had mass, weight.

He held one hand in front of his face. Nothing. No difference. He touched his face as if to convince himself that he existed at all. Yes. His fingertips touched his nose, his lips. Unreal. They flickered to life under his fingers, disappeared.

The little figurine in his other hand felt more alive, more real than he did. He squeezed it, held it close.

Tommy had been sitting with his head bent down between his knees, his eyes tightly shut, his hands held against his ears in order not to have to know, not to hear what was going on outside in the storage unit. It sounded like that little girl was being murdered. He would not have been able to do anything, not dared do anything, and therefore he had tried to deny the whole situation by disappearing.

He had been with his dad. On the soccer field, in the forest, at the Canaan baths. Finally he had paused at the memory of that time on the Racksta field when he and his dad had tried a remote-control airplane that his dad had borrowed from someone at work.

Mom had come along for a while, but in the end she thought it was boring to look at the airplane making circles in the sky, had gone home. He and his dad had kept going until it got dark and the airplane was a silhouette against the pink evening sky. Then they had walked home, hand in hand, through the forest.

Tommy had been in that day, far from the screams, the insanity going on a few meters away. The only thing he was aware of was the furious buzz of the airplane, the warmth of his father's large hand on his back while he nervously maneuvered the plane in wide circles over the field, the graveyard.

Back then Tommy had never been in the graveyard; had imagined people walking aimlessly around the graves, crying large shiny comic book tears that splashed against the headstones. That was then. Then Dad had died and Tommy had learned that graveyards rarely-all too rarely- look like that.

His hands tightly pressed against his ears, killing away those thoughts. Think about walking through the forest, think about the smell of the airplane's special gas in the little bottle, think about…

Only when he-halfway through his soundproofing-heard a lock being turned, had he taken his hands down and looked. To no avail, since the safety room was even blacker than the darkness behind his eyelids. Started to hold his breath when the second wheel thundered into place, kept holding it in case whatever-it-was was still in the basement.

Then that distant bang from the door to the stairwell, a vibration in the walls, and here he was. Still alive.

It didn't get me.

Exactly what "it" was, he didn't know, but whatever it was it had not discovered him. Tommy got up from his crouched position. A tingling trail of ants ran through his numb leg muscles as he groped along the wall, toward the door. His hands were sweaty with fear and the pressure against his ears; the statuette almost slid out of his hand.

His free hand found the wheel of the closing mechanism and started to turn it.

It went about ten centimeters, then it stopped.

What is this…

He pressed harder, but the wheel wouldn't budge. He dropped the statuette in order to be able to grab the wheel with both hands, and it fell to the floor with a

thud.

He froze.

That sounded funny. As if it landed on something… soft.

He crouched down next to the door, tried to turn the lower wheel. Same thing. Ten centimeters, then stop. He sat down on the floor. Tried to think practically.

Damn, am I going to be stuck here.

Like that, sort of.

But it still came creeping… this terror he had had a few months after his dad died. He had not felt it for a long time, but now, locked in, in the pitch blackness, it was starting to make itself known again. Love for his dad that through death had been transformed into a fear of him. Of his body.

A lump started to grow in his throat, his fingers stiffened.

Think now! Think!

There were candles on a shelf in the storage room on the other side. The problem was making his way over there in the dark.

Idiot!

He slapped his forehead, laughed out loud. He had a lighter! And any-

way: what was the use of looking for those candles if there wasn't anything to light them with?

Like that guy with thousands of cans and no can opener. Starved to death surrounded by food.

While he dug around in his pocket for his lighter he reflected that his situation wasn't so hopeless. Sooner or later someone would come down into the basement, his mom-if no one else-and if he could just get some light in here, that would be something.