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

Staffan unfolded the blade of his pocketknife, picked out the piece of paper.

Tommy, of course.

It didn't occur to Staffan to wonder why Tommy needed to rig the lock of a door that he had a key to. Tommy was a thief who hung out here and this was a thief's trick. Therefore: Tommy.

Yvonne had described the location of Tommy's unit for him, and while Staffan walked in that direction he prepared in his head the lecture he was going to hold. He had considered taking the pal route, taking it easy, but this thing with the lock had made him angry again.

He would explain to Tommy-explain, not threaten-about juvenile detention facilities, social services, the age at which you could be legally tried as an adult, and so on. Just so he understood what kind of path he was about to head down.

The door to the storage unit was open. Staffan looked in. Well, what do you know. The bird has flown the coop. Then he saw the stains. He squatted and pulled his finger over one of them. Blood. Tommy's blanket lay on the couch and even that had the occasional

bloodstain on it. And the floor was-he now saw when he was looking for it-covered in blood.

Alarmed, he backed up out of the unit.

In front of his eyes he now saw… a crime scene. Instead of the lecture he was supposed to have delivered, his mind now started to flip through the rulebook for the handling of a crime scene. He knew it by heart, but as he was proceeding through the paragraphs-

immediate recovery of such material as may otherwise be lost… note the exact time… avoid contamination of locations where traces of fibers may potentially be recovered…

– he heard a faint murmur behind him. A mumbling punctuated with muffled thuds.

A stick was threaded through the wheels of the locking mechanism of the safety room. He walked over to the door, listened. Yes. The mumbling, the thuds, were coming from in there. It almost sounded like a… mass. A recited litany that he could not make out the words to.

Devil worshippers…

A silly thought, but when he looked closer at the stick in the door it actually frightened him, because of what he saw at the very tip. Dark red, lumpy streaks that reached about ten centimeters up the stick itself. Thus, and exactly thus, is what knives looked like when they had been used for violent altercations and had partly dried.

The muttering on the other side of the door continued.

Call for reinforcements?

No. There was perhaps something criminal going on behind that door that would be completed while he was upstairs making the call. Had to manage this on his own.

He undid the fastening on his holster in order to make easy access to his gun, unhooked the baton. With his other hand he picked out a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wrapped it around the end of the stick and started to pull it out of the wheels while he listened closely to see if the scraping sound from the stick altered the noises from inside the room in any way.

No. The litany and the thuds continued.

The stick was out. He propped it up against the wall in order not to destroy any hand or fingerprints.

He knew that the handkerchief was no guarantee that prints would not be erased, so instead of grabbing the wheels he used two stiff fingers on one of the spokes and forced it to turn.

The wheel pistons gave way. He licked his lips. His throat felt dry. The other wheel was turned back all the way and the door slid open one centimeter.

Now he heard the words. It was a song. The voice was a high-pitched, broken whisper:

Two hundred and seventy-four elephants

On a teensy spider weeeee -

(Thud.)

– eh!

They thought it was

Such jolly good fun

That they went and got a friend!

Two hundred and seventy-five elephants

On a teensy spider weee -

(Thud.)

– eh!

They thought it was…

Staffan angled the baton away from his body, pushed the door open with it.

And then he saw.

The lump that Tommy was kneeling behind would have been hard to identify as human had it not been for the arm that stuck out of it, half separated from the body. The chest, stomach, face were only a heap of flesh, guts, crushed bone.

Tommy was holding a square stone with both hands that, at a certain point in his song, he thrust down into the butchered remains, which did not provide more resistance than that the stone went all the way through and hit against the floor with a thud, before he lifted it up again and yet another elephant was added to the spiderweb.

Staffan could not tell for sure that it was Tommy. The person holding the stone was covered in so much blood and tissue scraps that it was difficult to… Staffan became intensely nauseated. He restrained a wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, looked down in order not to have to see, and his eyes stopped at a tin soldier lying by the threshold. No. It was the figure of pistol shooter. He recognized it. The figure was lying in such a way so the pistol was aimed straight up.

Where is the base?

Then he realized.

His head spun and, oblivious to fingerprints and crime scene protocol, he leaned his hand against the door post in order not to fall while the song continued repetitively:

Two hundred and seventy-seven elephants On…

He must be pretty shaken up because he was hallucinating. He thought he saw… yes… saw clearly how the human remains on the floor, between each blow… moved. As if trying to get up.

Morgan was a chain smoker; he was already putting out his butt in a flower bed outside the hospital entrance when Larry still had half of his left. Morgan pushed his hands down into his pockets, walked to and fro in the parking lot, swore when water from a puddle seeped in through the hole in his shoe and made his sock wet.

"Got any money, Larry?"

"As you know I'm on disability and-"

"Yeah, yeah. But do you have any money?"

"Why? I'm not going to lend you any if that's-"

"No, no, no. But I was thinking: Lacke. What if we were to treat him to a real… you know."

Larry coughed, looked accusingly at the cigarette.

"What… to cheer him up, you mean?"

"Yes."

"No… I don't know."

"What? Because you don't think it'll make him feel better or because you don't have any money or because you're too cheap to put out?"

Larry sighed, took another puff, coughing, then made a face and put the cigarette out with his foot. Then picked up the butt and put it in a sand-filled receptacle, looked at his clock.

"Morgan… it's half past eight in the morning."

"Yes, I know. But in a couple of hours. When stuff opens."

"No, I have to think about it."

"So you have money?"

"Should we go in, or what?"

They walked in through the revolving door. Morgan pulled his hands through his hair and walked up to the woman at the reception desk to find out where Virginia was, while Larry went and looked at some fish that were swimming sleepily through a large bubbling cylindrical tank.

After a minute Morgan came back, rubbed his hands over his leather vest to wipe off something that had stuck to him, said: "Damn bitch. Didn't want to tell."

"Oh well. Must be in intensive care."

"Can you get in there?"

"Sometimes."

"You seem like you know what you're doing."

"I do."

They moved in the direction of the Intensive Care Unit. Larry knew the way.

Many of Larry's "acquaintances" were in or had been in the hospital. At the moment there were two here at Sabb, excluding Virginia. Morgan suspected that people that Larry had only met briefly became acquaintances or even friends only at that moment that they landed in the hospital. Then he sought them out, went for visits.