Let The Right One In aka Let Me In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  “OK. Bye.”

  Oskar put the receiver down, picked up his bag and left for school.

  He felt nothing.

  ***

  Five minutes left until the lesson started and quite a few members of the class were standing in the corridor outside the classroom. Oskar hesitated for a moment, then tossed his bag onto his shoulder and walked toward the door. All eyes turned toward him.

  Running the gauntlet. Gang attack.

  Yes, he had feared the worst. Everyone knew what had happened to Jonny on Thursday, of course, and even though he couldn’t pick Jonny’s face out of the crowd it was Micke’s version they had heard on Friday. And Micke was there, with his idiot grin pasted on his face, like usual.

  Instead of slowing down, preparing to escape in some way, he lengthened his stride, walking quickly toward the classroom. He was empty inside. He didn’t care what happened anymore. It wasn’t important.

  And sure enough: a miracle occurred. The sea parted.

  The group assembled outside the door broke up, created room for Oskar to get to the door. He had not expected anything else actually. If it was because of some strength emanating or because he was a stinking pariah who had to be avoided; it didn’t matter.

  He was different now. They sensed it, and slunk back.

  Oskar walked into the classroom without looking to either side, sat down at his desk. He heard murmuring from the corridor and after a few minutes they streamed back in. Johan gave him the thumbs up when he walked past. Oskar shrugged.

  Then the teacher came in and five minutes after the lesson started, Jonny arrived. Oskar had expected him to have some kind of bandage over his ear, but there wasn’t anything. The ear was, however, dark red, swollen, and didn’t look like it belonged to his body.

  Jonny took his seat. He didn’t look at Oskar, didn’t look at anyone.

  He is ashamed.

  Yes, that must be it. Oskar turned his head to look at Jonny, who pulled a photo album out of his backpack and slipped it into his desk. And he saw that Jonny’s cheeks had turned bright red, matching his ear. Oskar thought about poking his tongue out at him, but decided against it.

  Too childish.

  ***

  Tommy started school at quarter to nine on Mondays so at eight o’clock Staffan got up and had a quick cup of coffee before he went down to have his man-to-man talk with the boy.

  Yvonne had already left for work; Staffan himself was supposed to report for duty at nine in Judarn in order to continue a search of the forest, an undertaking he sensed would be fruitless.

  Well, it would feel good to be outside and it looked like the weather was going to be decent. He rinsed the coffee cup out under the tap, deliberated for a moment, then went and put on his uniform. Had considered going down to see Tommy in his normal clothes, talk to him like a normal person, so to speak. But, strictly speaking, this was a police matter, vandalism, and anyway, the uniform imbued him with a shell of authority

  that he, although he didn’t think he lacked in his everyday person, nonetheless… well.

  And anyway it was practical to be ready for work since he was heading off to work after this. So Staffan pulled on his work clothes, the winter jacket, checked in the mirror to see the impression he made and found it pleasing. Then he took the cellar key that Yvonne had put out for him on the kitchen table, walked out, closed the door, checked the lock (work habit) and walked down the stairs, unlocked the door to the cellar. And speaking of work…

  There was something wrong with this door. No resistance when he turned the key, the door could simply be opened. He crouched down and checked the mechanism. Aha. A wad of paper.

  A classic trick of burglars: make up some excuse to visit a place you wanted to rob, tamper with the lock, and then hope the owner wouldn’t notice it when they left.

  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.

  Why he did this, Morgan had just been about to ask when they reached the swinging doors of the ICU, pushed them open, and caught sight of Lacke at the far end of the corridor. He was sitting in an armchair, in only his underpants. His hands were clutching the arms of the chair while he stared into a room in front of him that people were hurrying in and out of.

  Morgan sniffed: “What the hell, are they cremating someone or what?” He laughed. “Damn conservatives. Budget cuts, you know. Let the hospitals take over the…”

  He stopped talking when they reached Lacke, whose face was ashen, his eyes red and unseeing. Morgan sensed what must have happened, let Larry take the lead. Wasn’t good at this kind of thing.

  Larry walked over to Lacke, put a hand on his arm.

  “Hey there, Lacke. How’s it going?”

  Chaos in the room closest to them. The windows visible from the door were wide open but despite this the sour smell of ash drifted out into the corridor. A thick cloud of dust was floating through the air, people were standing in its midst talking loudly, gesturing. Morgan caught the words “hospital’s responsibility” and “we have to try…”

  What they had to try he didn’t hear because Lacke turned to them, staring at them like they were two strangers, said: “… should have realized…”

  Larry leaned over him.

  “Should have realized what?”

  “That it would happen.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Lacke’s eyes cleared and he looked toward the foggy, dreamlike room, said simply: “She burned.”

  “Virginia?”

  “Yes. She went up in flames.”

  Morgan took a couple of steps toward the room, peeked in. An older man with an air of authority came over to him.

  “Excuse me, this is not a public exhibition.”

  “No, no. I was just…”

  Morgan was about to say something witty about looking for his boa constrictor, but dropped it. At least he had had time to see. Two beds. One with wrinkled sheets and a blanket thrown to one side as if someone had gotten out of it in a hurry.

  The other was covered with a thick gray blanket that stretched from the foot end to the pillow. The wood of the headrest was covered with soot. Under the blanket he could see the outline of an unbelievably thin person. Head, chest, pelvis were the only details he could make out. The rest could just as well be folds, irregularities in the blanket cloth.

  Morgan rubbed his eyes so hard that his eyeballs were pressed a centimeter or so into his head. It’s true. It’s fucking true.

  He looked around the corridor, looking for someone to work through his confusion on. Caught sight of an older man leaning against a walker, an IV stand next to him, trying to get a glimpse into the room.

  “What are you looking at, you old fool? Want me to kick your walker out from under you too?”

  The man started to retreat, in tiny intervals. Morgan balled his hands into fists, tried to control himself. Remembered something he had seen in the room, turned abruptly and went back.

  The man who had spoken to him was on his way out.

  “Excuse me, but what…”

  “Yes, yes, yes…” Morgan shoved him out of the way,”… just getting my friend’s clothes for him, if that’s alright. Or do you think he should keep sitting out there in the buff?”

  The man crossed his arms over his chest, let Morgan pass.

  He grabbed Lacke’s clothes from the chair next to the unmade bed, threw another glance at the other bed. A charred hand with outstretched fingers poked out from under the sheet. The hand was unrecognizable; the ring that sat on the middle finger was not. Gold, with a blue stone, Virginia’s ring. Before Morgan turned away he also noted that a leather strap was fastened across the wrist.

  The man was still standing in the door, his arms crossed.

  “Happy now?”

  “No. But why the hell was she restrained like that?”

  The man shook his head.

  “You can let your friend know the police will be here shortly and they will no doubt want to talk to him.
”

  “What for?”

  “How should I know? I’m not the police.”

  “No, of course not. Easy to make that mistake, though, isn’t it.”

  Out in the corridor, they helped Lacke get into his clothes, and had just finished when two police officers arrived. Lacke was completely spaced out, but the nurse who had pulled the blinds up had enough presence of

  mind to be able to vouch for the fact that he had had nothing to do with it. That he had still been sleeping when the whole thing… began.

  She was comforted by one of her colleagues. Larry and Morgan led Lacke out of the hospital.

  When they had gone through the revolving front door Morgan drew a deep breath of the cold air and said: “Sorry, have to barf,” leaned over the flower beds and deposited the remains of yesterday’s dinner mixed with green slime over the bare bushes.

  When he was done he wiped his mouth with his hand and dried his hand on his pant leg. Then held up the hand as if it were exhibit A and said to Larry:

  “Now look here, you’re fucking going to have to cough up.”

  ***

  They made their way back to Blackeberg and Morgan was given one hundred and fifty to spend at the alcohol shop while Larry took Lacke back to his place.

  Lacke allowed himself to be led. He had not said a single word the whole time they were on the subway.

  In the elevator up to Larry’s apartment on the sixth floor he started to cry. Not quietly, no, he wailed like a kid, but worse, more. When Larry opened the elevator door and pushed him out onto the landing the cry deepened, started to reverberate against the concrete walls. Lacke’s scream of primal, bottomless sorrow filled the stairwell from top to bottom, streamed through the mail slots, keyholes, transformed the high-rise into one big tomb erected in the memory of love, hope. Larry shivered; he had never heard anything like it before. You don’t cry like this. You’re not allowed to cry like this. You die if you cry like this.

  The neighbors. They’re going to think I’m killing him.

  Larry fumbled with his keys while thousands of years of human suffering, of helplessness and disappointments, that for the moment had found an outlet in Lacke’s frail body continued to pour out of him.

  The key finally made it into the lock and, with a strength he had not believed he possessed, Larry basically carried Lacke into the apartment