Let The Right One In aka Let Me In
John Ajvide Lindqvist
Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city’s edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he’s frightened. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood. John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, a huge bestseller in his native Sweden, is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend; and a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty.
John Ajvide Lindqvist
Let The Right One In aka Let Me In
© 2007
The Location
Blackeberg.
It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. “A respectable life.” You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes to mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That was why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.
It was not a place that developed organically, of course. Here everything was carefully planned from the outset. And people moved into what had been built for them. Earth-colored concrete buildings scattered about in the green fields.
When this story begins, Blackeberg the suburb had been in existence for thirty years. One could imagine that it had fostered a pioneer spirit. The Mayflower; an unknown land. Yes. One can imagine all those empty buildings waiting for their occupants.
And here they come!
Marching over the Traneberg Bridge with sunshine and the future in their eyes. The year is 1952. Mothers are carrying their little ones in their arms or pushing them in baby carriages, holding them by the hand. Fathers are not carrying picks and shovels but kitchen appliances and functional furniture. They are probably singing something. “The Internationale,” perhaps. Or “We Come Unto Jerusalem,” depending on their predilection.
It is big. It is new. It is modern.
But that wasn’t the way it was.
They came on the subway. Or in cars, moving vans. One by one. Filtered into the finished apartments with their things. Sorted their possessions into the measured cubbies and shelves, placed the furniture in formation on the cork floor. Bought new things to fill the gaps.
When they were done, they lifted their eyes and gazed out onto this land that had been given unto them. Walked out of their doors and found that all land had already been claimed. Might as well adjust oneself to how things were.
There was a town center. There were spacious playgrounds allotted to children. Large green spaces around the corner. There were many pedestrian-only walking paths.
A good place; that’s what people said to each other over the kitchen table a month or so after they had moved in.
“It’s a good place we’ve come to.”
Only one thing was missing. A past. At school, the children didn’t get to do any special projects about Blackeberg’s history because there wasn’t one. That is to say, there was something about an old mill. A tobacco king. Some strange old buildings down by the water. But that was a long time ago and without any connection to the present.
Where the three-storied apartment buildings now stood there had been only forest before.
You were beyond the grasp of the mysteries of the past; there wasn’t even a church. Nine thousand inhabitants and no church.
That tells you something about the modernity of the place, its rationality. It tells you something of how free they were from the ghosts of history and of terror.
It explains in part how unprepared they were.
No one saw them move in.
In December, when the police finally managed to track down the driver of the moving truck, he didn’t have much to tell. In his records he had only noted 18 October. Norrkoping-Blackeberg (Stockholm). He recalled that it was a father and daughter, a pretty girl.
“Oh, and another thing. They had almost no furniture. A couch, an armchair, maybe a bed. An easy job, really. And that⦠yeah, they wanted it done at night. I said it would be more expensive, you know, with the overtime surcharge and that. But it was no problem. It just had to be done at night. That seemed real important. Has anything happened?”
The driver was informed of the events, of whom he had had in his truck. His eyes widened, he looked down again at the letters on the page.
“I’ll be damned⦔
He grimaced as if he had developed a revulsion for his own hand writing.
18 October. Norrkoping-Blackeberg (Stockholm).
He was the one who had moved them in. The man and his daughter.
He wasn’t going to tell anyone about it, not for as long as he lived.
PART ONE. Lucky is he who has such a friend
“Love trouble will burst your bubble boys!”
â Siw Malmkvist, “Love Trouble”
trans. Laurie Thompson
“I never wanted to kill. I am not naturally evil
Such things I do just to make myself more attractive to you
Have I failed!”
â Morrissey, “The Last of The Famous International Playboys”
Wednesday
21 October 1981
And what do you think this might be?”
Gunnar Holmberg, police commissioner from Vallingby, held up a little plastic bag of white powder.
Maybe heroin, but no one dared say anything. Didn’t want to be suspected of knowing anything about stuff like that. Especially if you had a brother or a friend of your brother who did it. Shoot horse. Even the girls didn’t say anything. The policeman shook the bag.
“Baking powder, do you think? Flour?”
A mumble of answers in the negative. They didn’t want him to think class 6B was a bunch of idiots. Even though it was impossible to determine what was really in the bag, this lesson was about drugs, so you could draw certain conclusions. The policeman turned to the teacher.
“What do you teach them in Home Economics these days?”
The teacher smiled and shrugged her shoulders. The class laughed; the cop was OK. Some of the guys had even been allowed to touch his gun before class. It wasn’t loaded, but still.
Oskar’s chest felt like it was about to burst. He knew the answer to the question. It hurt him not to say anything when he knew. He wanted the policeman to look at him. Look at him and tell him he was right. He knew it was a dumb thing to do, but he still put his hand up.
“Yes?”
“It’s heroin, isn’t it?”
“In fact it is.” The policeman looked kindly at him. “How did you know?”
Heads turned in his direction, curious as to what he was going to say.
“Naw⦠I mean, I’ve read a lot and stuff.”
The policeman nodded.
“Now there’s a good thing. Reading.” He shook the little bag. “You won’t have much time for it if you get into this, though. How much do you think this little bag is worth?”
Oskar didn’t feel the need to say anything else. He had been looked at and spoken to. Had even been able to tell the cop he read a lot. That was more than he had hoped for.
He let himself sink into a daydream. How the policeman came up to him after class and was interested in him, sat down next to him. Then he would tell him everything. And the policeman would understand. He would stroke his hair and tell him he was alright; would hold him and sayâ¦
&n
bsp; “Fucking snitch.”
Jonny Forsberg drove a hard finger into his side. Jonny’s brother ran with the drug crowd and Jonny knew a lot of words that the other guys in the class quickly picked up. Jonny probably knew exactly how much that bag was worth but he didn’t snitch. Didn’t talk to the cop.
It was recess and Oskar lingered by the coat rack, indecisive. Jonny wanted to hurt him-what was the best way to avoid it? By staying here in the hallway or going outside? Jonny and the other class members stormed out the doors into the schoolyard.
That’s right; the policeman had his car parked in the schoolyard and anyone who was interested could come take a look. Jonny wouldn’t dare beat him up when the policeman was there.
Oskar walked down to the double front doors and looked out the glass window. Just as he thought, everyone in the class had gathered around the patrol car. Oskar would also have wanted to be there but there was no point. Someone would knee him, another pull his underpants up in a wedgie, policeman or no policeman.
But at least he was off the hook this recess. He went out into the schoolyard and snuck around the back of the building, to the bathrooms.
Once he was in the bathroom he listened, cleared his throat. The sound echoed through the stalls. He reached his hand into his underpants and quickly pulled out the Pissball, a piece of foam about the size of a Clementine that he had cut out of an old mattress and put a hole in for his penis. He smelled it.
Yup, he had pissed in his pants again. He rinsed it under the tap, squeezing out as much water as possible.
Incontinence. That was what it was called. He had read about it in a pamphlet that he had sneaked from the drugstore. Mostly something old women suffered from.
And me.
There were prescription medicines you could get, it said in the pamphlet, but he did not intend to use his allowance so he could humiliate himself at the prescription counter. And he would definitely not tell his mother; she would feel so sorry for him it would make him sick.
He had the Pissball and it worked for now.
Footsteps outside, voices. Pissball in hand, he fled into the nearest stall and locked the door at the same time as the outer door opened. He soundlessly climbed up onto the toilet seat, curling into a ball so his feet wouldn’t show if anyone looked under the door. Tried not to breathe. Pig-gy?
Jonny, of course.
“Hey Piggy, are you here?”
Micke was with him. The worst two of the lot. No, Tomas was worse but he was almost never in on stuff that involved physical blows and scratches. Too smart for that. Was probably sucking up to the policeman right now. If the Pissball were discovered, Tomas was the one who would really be able to use it to hurt and humiliate him for a long time. Jonny and Micke, on the other hand, would just beat him up and that was fine with him. So in a way he was actually luckyâ¦
“Piggy? We know you’re in here.”
They checked his stall. Shook the door. Banged on it. Oskar wrapped his arms tightly around his legs and clenched his teeth so he wouldn’t scream.
Go away! Leave me alone! Why can’t you leave me alone?
Now Jonny was talking in a mild voice.
“Little Pig, if you don’t come out now we have to get you after school. Is that what you want?”
It was quiet for a while. Oskar exhaled carefully.
They attacked the door with kicks and blows. The whole bathroom thundered and the lock on the stall door started to bend inward. He should open it, go out to them before they got too mad, but he just couldn’t.
“Pi-ggy?”
He had put his hand up in class, a declaration of existence, a claim that he knew something. And that was forbidden to him. They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.
They were probably just going to “baptize” him. Shove his head into the toilet bowl and flush. Regardless of what they invented, it was always such a relief when it was over. So why couldn’t he just pull back the lock, that was in any case going to tear off at the hinges at any moment, and let them have their fun?
He stared at the bolt that was forced out of the lock with a crack, at the door that flung open and banged into the wall, at Micke Siskov’s triumphantly smiling face, and then he knew.
That wasn’t the way the game was played.
He couldn’t have pulled back the lock, they couldn’t simply have climbed over the sides of the stall in all of three seconds, because those weren’t the rules of the game.
Theirs was the intoxication of the hunter, his the terror of the prey. Once they had actually captured him the fun was over and the punishment more of a duty that had to be carried out. If he gave up too early there was a chance they would put more of their energy into the punishment instead of the hunt. That would be worse.
Jonny Forsberg stuck his head in.
“You’ll have to open the lid if you’re going to shit, you know. Go on, squeal like a pig.”
And Oskar squealed like a pig. That was a part of it. If he squealed they would sometimes leave it at that. He put extra effort into it this time,
afraid they would otherwise force his hand out of his pants in the process of punishing him and uncover his disgusting secret.
He wrinkled up his nose like a pig’s and squealed; grunted and squealed. Jonny and Micke laughed.
“Fucking pig, go on, squeal some more.”
Oskar carried on. Shut his eyes tight and kept going. Balled his hands up into fists so hard that his nails went into his palms, and kept going. Grunted and squealed until he felt a funny taste in his mouth. Then he stopped and opened his eyes.
They were gone.
He stayed put, curled up on the toilet seat, and stared down at the floor. There was a red spot on the tile below. While he was watching, another drop fell from his nose. He tore off a piece of toilet paper and held it against his nostril.
This sometimes happened when he was scared. His nose started to bleed, just like that. It had helped him a few times when they were thinking about hitting him, and decided against it since he was already bleeding.
Oskar Eriksson sat there curled up with a wad of paper in one hand and his Pissball in the other. Got nosebleeds, wet his pants, talked too much. Leaked from every orifice. Soon he would probably start to shit his pants as well. Piggy.
He got up and left the bathroom. Didn’t wipe up the drop of blood. Let someone see it, let them wonder. Let them think someone had been killed here, because someone had been killed here. And for the hundreth time.
***
Hakan Bengtsson, a forty-five-year-old man with an incipient beer belly, a receding hairline, and an address unknown to the authorities, was sitting on the subway, staring out of the window at what was to be his new home.
It was a little ugly, actually. Norrkoping would have been nicer. But having said that, these western suburbs didn’t look anything like the Stockholm ghetto-suburbs he had seen on TV: Kista and Rinkeby and Hallonbergen. This was different.
“NEXT STATION: RACKSTA.”
It was a little softer and rounder than those places. Although, here was a real skyscraper.
He arched his neck in order to see the top floors of the Waterworks’ administrative building. He couldn’t recall there being any buildings this tall in Norrkoping. But of course he had never been to the downtown area.
He was supposed to get off at the next station, wasn’t he? He looked at the subway map over the doors. Yes, the next stop.
“PLEASE STAND BACK FROM THE DOORS. THE DOORS ARE CLOSING.”
Was anyone looking at him?
No, there were only a few people in this car, all of them absorbed in their evening newspapers. Tomorrow there would be something about him in there.
His gaze stopped at an ad for women’s underwear. A woman was posing seductively in black lace panties and a bra. It was crazy. Naked skin where
ver you looked. Why was it tolerated? What effect did it have on people’s heads, on love?
His hands were shaking and he rested them on his knees. He was terribly nervous.
“Is there really no other way?”
“Do you think I would expose you to this if there was another way?”
“No, but⦔
“There is no other way.”
No other way. He just had to do it. And not mess up. He had studied the map in the phone book and chosen a forested area that looked appropriate, then packed his bag and left.
He had cut away the Adidas logo with the knife that was lying in the bag between his feet. That was one of the things that had gone wrong in Norrkoping. Someone had remembered the brand name on the bag, and then the police had found it in the garbage container where he had tossed it, not far from their apartment.
Today he would bring the bag home with him. Maybe cut it into small pieces and flush it down the toilet. Is that what you did?
How is this supposed to work anyway?
“THIS IS THE FINAL STATION. ALL PASSENGERS MUST DISEMBARK.”
The subway car disgorged its contents and Hakan followed the stream of people, the bag in his hand. It felt heavy, although the only thing in it that weighed anything was the gas canister. He had to exercise a great deal of self-restraint in order to walk normally, rather than as a man on the way to his own execution. He couldn’t afford to give people any reason to notice him.
But his legs were leaden; they wanted to weld themselves onto the platform. What would happen if he simply stayed here? If he stood absolutely still, without moving a muscle, and simply didn’t leave. Waited for nightfall, for someone to notice him, call for⦠someone to come and get him. To take him somewhere.
He continued to walk at a normal pace. Right leg, left leg. He couldn’t falter now. Terrible things would happen if he failed. The worst imaginable.
Once he was past the checkpoint he looked around. His sense of direction wasn’t very good. Which way was the forested area? Naturally he couldn’t ask anyone. He had to take a chance. Keep going, get this over with. Right leg, left leg.
There has to be another way.
But he couldn’t think of any other way. There were certain conditions, certain criteria. This was the only way to satisfy them.
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