Little Star

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Lennart carefully folded the paper and rested his hands on it. ‘Jerry. What do you want?’

  Jerry got up, still holding the girl in his arms. ‘Nothing in particular. How long were you intending to carry on like this?’ He held the girl out to Lennart, but when Lennart reached up to take her, he pulled her away and gave her to Laila.

  Lennart’s fingers itched but he controlled himself. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Keeping her hidden like this. I mean, somebody’s going to find out in the end. Somebody’s bound to say something.’

  Lennart managed to keep his tone indifferent as he asked, ‘There’s just one thing puzzling me. How did you find out we had her?’ He glanced at Laila, whose lips were tightly clamped together.

  Jerry shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just glanced through the cellar window. And there she was. Anyway. I’ve been thinking.’

  Lennart stopped listening. There was something wrong here. Why would Jerry decide to ‘just glance’ through the cellar window? And anyway, could you actually see the cot properly from the window?

  Jerry’s hand waved in front of his eyes. ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A computer. I want a computer.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You’re always complaining that I’m not interested in anything,’ said Jerry. ‘Well, now I am. Computers. I want a computer. A Mac.’

  It had indeed been a hostage situation; it was still a hostage situation even though Jerry had handed over the child.

  ‘How much,’ Lennart asked. ‘How much does one of those cost?’

  ‘It’s a Classic I have in mind,’ said Jerry. ‘A Macintosh Classic. Ten thousand kronor, more or less.’

  ‘And what do I get for that?’

  Jerry snorted and punched Lennart on the shoulder. ‘You know what I like about you sometimes, Dad? You cut to the chase. No pissing about.’ Jerry rubbed the back of his neck and thought it over. Then he said, ‘A year. Or six months. Roughly. Something like that.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we’ll see.’

  Lennart hid his face in his hands and rested his elbows on the kitchen table. At some point during Jerry’s worst years, Lennart had wished his son dead. Now he was doing it again. But what use was that? He heard Laila’s voice beside him.

  ‘Well, it’s good if Jerry has an interest. That’s what I think.’

  Lennart dug his nails into his scalp and said, ‘Not a word. Not one word.’ Then he raised his head and turned to Jerry. ‘Would you like the home delivery service as well?’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice. Cool. Thanks.’

  Lennart’s throat was so constricted with rage that he could barely manage a whisper. ‘You’re welcome.’

  As Jerry moved towards the door, Laila got up and handed the child to Lennart without looking at him. She went over to Jerry, lowered her head and said quietly, ‘Jerry, can’t I come with you?’

  Jerry frowned and he looked from Laila to Lennart. Then he seemed to realise what was going on, and said, ‘I couldn’t give a fuck what you two get up to, actually. But let’s put it this way.’ He turned to Lennart. ‘If you so much as touch Mother…you can forget the kid. Got it?’

  It wasn’t only Lennart’s throat that was constricted. Every muscle in his body had been twisted into ropes and pulled as tight as possible, until they started to tremble. Jerry took a step towards him. ‘I’m asking you if you’ve got it. You leave Mother alone. One bruise, that’s all it will take. Gone. OK?’

  Lennart managed to move his head up and down in a stiff nod. The child moved uneasily in his arms. Jerry stroked the girl’s cheek and said, ‘Toot, toot, toot.’

  Then he left. Laila didn’t go with him.

  Jerry was named after Jerry Lee Lewis.

  For a few years it looked as though he too would go down a musical path, hopefully without the tragic consequences suffered by Jerry Lee. Under Lennart’s supervision he started to practise on a little guitar when he was five years old. By the time he was seven he was already able to move through the basic chords with ease, and produce simple rhythms.

  Lennart didn’t quite see himself as a Leopold with a young Wolfgang to raise, but with some decent training Jerry could well become a competent musician, and that would do nicely.

  Then came the business of the Swedish charts and ‘Tell Me’.

  Laila never revealed that Lennart was responsible for the demolition of her knee. She said she had fallen on a sharp stone and even when she was pressed she never changed her story. She spent ten days in hospital and underwent a series of operations.

  When she came home, the atmosphere in the house had changed forever. Lennart showed no regret for what he had done; instead he started to regard Laila as some kind of not-quite-human being and treated her accordingly.

  He started to hit her. Not much and not often, just when he felt she had stepped outside her not-quite-human boundaries. Laila had two choices: leave or put up with it.

  The years passed and since Laila never did make a decision, it was made for her. Day by day, a new skin was painted onto her body until she became the person Lennart thought she was. Half a person. Cowed.

  Jerry did his guitar practice without making any significant progress, but he plodded on. In the emotional chill that pervaded his home he became skinny and introverted, like a child who is cold all the time. The bullying started at junior school. Not much and not often, but enough to make sure he knew his limits, and to keep him well within those limits.

  He had just turned twelve when he discovered David Bowie or, more accurately, he discovered ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. And if he played that record until the needle started to wear the grooves away, he played ‘Starman’ until it wore a hole in the vinyl.

  He didn’t completely understand the words, but he understood the feeling and the atmosphere, and found the whole thing a great consolation. He also wanted to believe there was someone out there waiting, someone who could put everything right. Not God, but a starman with superpowers.

  As the hormones began to kick in among his classmates, the bullying moved up a gear. Humiliating Jerry in front of the girls turned into a sport among the other boys. He went deeper into himself, and clung to his only secret: the fact that he could play the guitar.

  ‘Space Oddity’ replaced ‘Starman’ as his favourite song. He understood every single word, and identified completely with Major Tom, who decides to cut all ties with life on earth and floats away into infinite space.

  Everything could have been different. It’s frightening to think how apparently insignificant events can influence the direction of our lives. If Lennart hadn’t forgotten his wallet, if Tropicos hadn’t been competing for a place in the chart that same Sunday and so on. Something similar happened with Jerry.

  His teacher had found out that he could play the guitar. She managed to persuade him to perform in front of the class during Fun Time one Friday. Jerry already knew ‘Space Oddity’ perfectly, but from the Monday onwards he practised until his fingers ached.

  On Thursday evening he played and sang to Lennart and Laila. Even though they didn’t like David Bowie, they sat there dumbstruck. They’d had no idea. Both of them had tears in their eyes when he played the final chord. It was perhaps the best hour they’d spent together for several years.

  Jerry found it hard to sleep that night. Fantasies that were all too appealing took over his mind. This would be his vindication. Just like in the films. He had the knack of hearing and seeing himself from the outside when he played, and he knew he performed the song brilliantly. Perhaps better than Bowie. His classmates would have no choice but to acknowledge that fact.

  When the time came, Jerry took his guitar out of its case; he was perfectly calm. Regardless of what his classmates thought of the song, he would show them. He would show them that he could do something, and do it well. They might carry on treating him badly, but at least he
would know that they knew.

  He sat down on a chair next to the teacher’s desk with the guitar resting on his knee, and gazed out over the room. Sceptical expressions, scornful smirks. He struck the first chord and began to sing, hitting the first note perfectly.

  A crackling sound came from the school’s internal loudspeaker system. Jerry stopped playing as a voice rang out. ‘Good afternoon. This is the Principal speaking. Those pupils who wish to do so may go to the main hall and watch the television; Ingemar Stenmark will be making his second run in five minutes. We will then finish school for the day. Come on Sweden!’

  There was the concerted sound of scraping and clattering as twenty-two chairs were pushed back and the whole class rose as one and raced to the hall to watch the Swedish hero celebrate yet another triumph.

  In thirty seconds the classroom was empty, leaving Jerry alone with the teacher. She sighed and said, ‘That was a shame, Jerry. But there’ll be other times. Maybe we can do it next Friday instead?’

  Jerry nodded and stayed in his seat as the teacher hurried off to join the Stenmark supporters in the hall. He didn’t scream, he didn’t cry, he didn’t set fire to the school. He got up slowly, put his guitar back in its case and gave up.

  If the Alpine Skiing World Cup had been another day, if Stenmark had done his run five minutes later, if the Principal hadn’t been in such a good mood…

  Everything could have been different.

  Jerry didn’t play the following Friday, nor any other Friday. He couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm again. He knew his opportunity had slipped through his fingers. Stenmark won, by the way. As always.

  Jerry’s remaining years at junior school were spent in the special limbo reserved for the victim of low-grade bullying. It wasn’t so bad that he refused to go to school, and he wasn’t sufficiently ostracised to let him feel calm when he was there. He simply stuck it out.

  He stopped playing the guitar and devoted his time to comics about superheroes, glam rock and model planes. Lennart tried to force him back to music, but Jerry had a strong will, at least when it came to negatives. He flatly refused. He had shoved the guitar under his bed, and there it stayed.

  The signs started to announce themselves during his last term in Year 9. Jerry’s body was changing. He grew five centimetres in just a few months, and everything began to bulk up. When school finished it was as if he had been released from a press, and his body blew out in every direction.

  He had to eat more just to keep up with this hothouse growth, and became a frequent visitor at the pizzeria on the main square in Norrtälje. It was there he got to know Roy and Elvis. They were two years older than Jerry and had also, improbably enough, been named after music legends. Perhaps that influenced them to let Jerry become one of the gang. Elvis, Roy and Jerry. It sounded good.

  In the autumn Jerry started at the grammar school, taking mainly technical subjects. Nobody from his old class was there and he was able to make a fresh start. He was a fairly big lad with something sly in his expression; it was probably best not to mess with him.

  In October Roy and Elvis initiated him into their speciality: burgling holiday houses. They would head off on their mopeds to isolated cottages with feeble locks and ransack them for anything of value, mostly garden equipment and household items that Roy sold for next to nothing to a guy he knew in Stockholm.

  Sometimes they found booze, and Jerry was happy to join in with the celebration after a successful outing. Roy had his own cottage with a TV and video player, where they could drink their haul undisturbed while enjoying films like The Driller Killer, Maniac, and I Spit on Your Grave. At first the graphic violence made Jerry feel slightly ill, but that soon passed.

  He wasn’t sick in the head. He didn’t feel the slightest desire to do those kind of things, and he thought the debate about moral harm that was raging just then was ridiculous. But somehow the films captured how it felt. Once he had got used to it, he felt nothing but a great sense of calm as he watched Leatherface hang the girl up on the meat hook. It was right, somehow. That was how it was. Life and everything.

  His final grades in Year 9 had been less than impressive, and he had only just got into grammar school. Things were going better now. Not despite but because of his leisure activities, he felt contented with life. His homework might possibly have suffered, but on the other hand he was able to concentrate when he was in school, because he didn’t have to be on his guard all the time.

  He finished the year with a much better grade than anyone could have hoped for. Lennart and Laila rewarded him with a computer, a ZX81 which absorbed a great deal of his attention in the weeks after he left school. A charming little story, all in all.

  Everything could have been different.

  At the beginning of July he met Roy and Elvis at the pizza place as usual. Elvis was a bit agitated. A friend of a friend had been to Amsterdam and brought back a decent lump of hash; he had given Elvis a little taster.

  Well, you have to try these things. Later in the evening they sat down behind a tree in the local park and, with a fair amount of difficulty, rolled a joint; they passed it around, then did it again.

  Jerry thought it was fantastic. He had heard that hash made you feel heavy and dull, but he felt completely on top of the world. It might possibly be a little bit more difficult to move his body than usual, but his mind! He could see everything so clearly, he knew exactly what was what.

  Arms slung around each other, they strolled off towards Love Point where people usually gathered in the evenings. They were invincible, they were the Three Musketeers, they were the entire bloody history of rock and roll in one package.

  There was some kind of party going on, a gang of people about their own age sitting around a bonfire. Someone was strumming away on a guitar. In walked Los Rockers making one hell of a racket! There was no messing about, people just had to make some room for them. Roy grabbed a bottle of wine to share with his compadres.

  Jerry couldn’t take his eyes off the guitar. It woke something in him. His fingers began to grope in thin air, remembering the wood, the strings, the frets. He could still do it. The guitar was longing for his fingers to release the music hidden inside it…

  Someone spoke. A voice was tapping away at his consciousness, saying his name. With difficulty he dragged himself out of the guitar’s hypnotic power, turned his head towards the voice and said, ‘What?’

  Two metres away sat Mats, known as Mats the Love Machine ever since he started driving around a couple of years earlier on a souped-up moped with an imitation leopard’s tail dangling from the antenna. He had once pissed on Jerry in the showers. Among other things.

  Mats leaned forward and said, ‘I’m talking to you: wanna play, fat boy?’

  It happened so fast. Everything had been moving in slow motion for a while and now somebody had pressed fast forward. Before Jerry had time to think, he had grabbed a lump of wood that was sticking out of the fire, walked over to Mats and smashed him across the face with the burning end.

  Mats fell backwards with a scream and Jerry looked at the cooling, pointed piece of wood in his hand. He looked at Mats, writhing on the ground with his hands over his face. His mind started working again, his thoughts crystal clear. He could see exactly what the situation was. Mats was in fact a vampire. Simple as that.

  Which meant there was only one thing for it. He grabbed the glowing stake with both hands and drove it into Mats’ chest. Sparks flew, there was a hissing sound, and by the time Elvis and Roy got hold of Jerry, Mats had already started coughing up blood like the vampire he was. Or had been.

  Events that had taken perhaps fifteen seconds would define Jerry’s life for a long time to come. It involved police and lawyers, social services and youth services. Mats survived; he got away with the loss of an eye, a few shattered ribs and slight damage to one lung.

  But something had gone wrong inside Jerry’s head during the cannabis rush, and it refused to go back to normal. In that moment
of clarity when he realised he had to free the world from a repulsive blood-sucker, an insight had taken root in his mind and refused to let go when the rush subsided.

  There was a truth in what he had seen.

  During a meeting with the family therapist, Laila explained what had really happened to her knee. The therapist regarded this as a possible breakthrough and a chance to move on, but for Jerry it merely provided further confirmation of what he already knew: the world was evil, people were evil, and there was no point in even trying.

  When all the investigations and analyses were over, Jerry had slipped so far behind in his schoolwork that he couldn’t go back. Didn’t want to anyway. During his absence Elvis had passed his driving test, which opened up all kinds of new possibilities.

  Freed from the burden of normality, Jerry let go of any semblance of ambition. The three of them moved on from summer cottages to bigger houses, and robbed a couple of petrol stations before they got caught. Jerry got a year in a youth offenders’ institution, which only served to reinforce his view of the world.

  When he came out, they started again. An old man was at home in one of the houses, and they knocked him down. When he started screaming abuse at them, they kicked him a few times until he shut his mouth. This played on Jerry’s conscience for a time, but it passed. He was becoming hardened.

  One day when he was shaving, he caught sight of himself and looked carefully. He examined his feelings, and realised he had crossed an important line. He could kill someone without it breaking him. If necessary. That was definitely progress.

  His mother and father carried on with the usual shit, and he took no notice whatsoever. They didn’t want him at home anymore, but he thought it worked very well; he liked having his room as a sort of hole to crawl back into from time to time. He didn’t listen to a word they said in any case.