Let the right one in (50 page)

"This is complete utter insanity."

"Yes, but that's how it is."

Lacke crossed his arms over his chest. With a forced laugh he asked:

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to . . . destroy my heart."

"What? How?"

"However you want."

Lacke rolled his eyes.

"Can you hear yourself? How this sounds? It's crazy. Like I should ... drive a stake into you or something."

"Yes."

"No, no, no. You can forget about it in that case. Have to think of something better." Lacke laughed, shaking his head. Virginia looked at him as he walked to and fro across the room, with his arms still folded across his chest. Then she nodded gently.

"OK."

He walked over to her, took her hand. It felt unnatural that it was .. . restrained. He didn't even have enough room to put both his hands around it. But her hand was the warm one, squeezed his. With his free hand he stroked her cheek.

"Are you sure I shouldn't undo these things?"

"No. It can . . . come back."

"You're going to get well. It'll work out. I only have you. Do you want to know a secret?"

Without letting go of her hand he sat down in the armchair and started to tell her. Told her everything. About the stamps, the lion, Norway, the money. The little cottage they were going to buy. Red Falu paint. Spun out a long fantasy about what the garden was going to look like, what flowers they would have, and how you could put out a small table, make a little shady patio where you could sit. . . .

Somewhere in all of this the tears started to flow from Virginia's eyes. Quiet, translucent pearls that found their way down her cheeks, wet her pillowcase. No sobs, just tears that streamed down, jewels of sadness . . . or joy?

Lacke grew silent. Virginia squeezed his hand, hard.

Then Lacke walked out into the corridor and managed to half-convince, half-plead his way to an extra cot. Lacke positioned it so it was exactly next to Virginia's. Turned out the light, took off his clothes, and crawled down into the stiff sheets, fumbled for and found her hand.

They lay like that for a long time. Then came the words. "Lacke. I love you."

And Lacke did not reply. Simply let the words hang in the air. Become encapsulated and grow until they were a large red blanket that floated around the room, that lowered itself onto him and kept him warm all night.

4:23,
MONDAY MORNING, ICELAND SQUARE:

A number of people in the vicinity of Bjornsonsgatan are awakened by loud screams. One person who calls into the police believes it is an infant crying. When the police arrive on the scene ten minutes later the screams have stopped. They search the area and find a number of dead cats. On some the extremities have become separated from the body. The police find contact information on the cats with collars and make a note of names and telephone numbers with the intention of notifying the owners. Street services are contacted for clean up.

+

Half an hour until sunrise.

Eli is reclining in the armchair in the living room. He has been here all night, morning. Packed up what there is to pack.

Tomorrow evening, as soon as it gets dark, Eli will go to a telephone booth and ring a taxi. He doesn't know which number to call, but it's probably something that everybody knows. Just have to ask. When the taxi comes he'll load his three boxes into the trunk and ask the taxi driver to take him ...

Where?

Eli shuts his eyes, tries to imagine a place he would like to be. As usual, the first image he sees is of the cottage where he lived with his parents, his older siblings. But it is gone. Outside Norrkoping where it once stood there is now a roundabout. The stream where his mother rinsed their clothes has dried up, become overgrown, a depression next to the intersection.

Eli has a lot of money. Would be able to ask the taxi driver to take him anywhere, as far as the darkness allows. North. South. Could sit in the back seat and ask the driver to drive north for two thousand kronor. Then get out. Start over. Find someone who . ..

Eli throws his head back, screams up at the ceiling:

"I don't want to!"

The dusty cobwebs sway slightly in his exhalation. The sound dies in this sealed room. Eli puts his hands up on his face, presses his fingers against his eyelids. Feels it in his body, the approaching sunrise, like a worry. He whispers:

"God. God? Why can't I have anything? Why can't I..." It has been brought up many times before, this question.

Why can't I be allowed to live?

Because you should be dead.

Only once after he had been infected did Eli meet another infected person. A grown woman. Just as cynical and hollow as the man with the wig. But Eli received an answer to another question that had been nagging him.

"Are there many of us?"

The woman shook her head and had said with theatrical sadness:

"No. We are so few. So few."

"Why?"

"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my." Her hands fluttered; she said in a shrill voice: "Ooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscience."

"Can
we die?"

"Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or . . ." She held out her index finger and pressed it hard into Eli's chest, above the heart. "There. That's where it is, isn't it? But now my friend, I have a wonderful idea ..."

And Eli had fled from that wonderful idea. As before. As later. Eli put his hand on his heart, felt the slow beats. Maybe it was because he was a child. Maybe that was why he hadn't put an end to it. The pangs of conscience were weaker than his will to live.

Eli got up out of the armchair. Hakan would not turn up tonight. But before Eli went to rest he had to check on Tommy. That he had recovered. He had not become infected. For Oskar's sake he wanted to make sure that Tommy was fine.

Eli turned off all the lights and left the apartment.

Down in Tommy's stairwell all he had to do was pull the cellar door open; a long time ago when he was down here with Oskar, he had tucked a piece of paper into the lock so it would stay unlatched when the door closed. He stepped into the cellar corridor and let the door fall shut behind him with a muted thud. He stopped, listened. Nothing.

No sound of a sleeping person's breathing; only the cloying smell of paint thinners, glue. He walked quickly along the corridor to the storage area, pulled open the door.

Empty.

Twenty minutes until sunrise.

+

During the night, Tommy had glided in and out of a daze of sleep, halfwakefulness, nightmares. He didn't know how much time had gone by when he started to wake up properly. The naked bulb in the cellar was always the same. Maybe it was dawn, morning, day. Maybe school had already started. He didn't care.

His mouth tasted of glue. He looked around bleary-eyed. There were two bank notes on his chest. Thousand kronor notes. He bent his arm to pick them up, felt a tugging on his skin. A large Band-Aid was pasted over the inside of his elbow, a small blood stain in the middle of the patch.
But there was . . . something more.

He turned in the couch, searching along the inside of the cushions, and found the roll he had dropped during the night. Three thousand more. He unfolded the bills, put them together with the bills from his chest, felt the whole lot, made them crinkle. Five thousand. Anything he wanted to do. He looked at the Band-Aid, chuckled. Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.

Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.

What was that? Someone had said it, someone ...

That was it. Tobbe's sister, what was her name . . . Ingela? Turning tricks, Tobbe had told him. And she got five hundred for it, and Tobbe's comment was:

"Not bad for . . ."

Just lying back and closing your eyes.

Tommy squeezed the bills in his hand, scrunched them up into a ball. She had paid for and drunk of his blood. An illness, she had said. But what kind of fucking illness was that? He had never heard of anything like it. And if you had something like that, you went to the hospital, then they gave you . . . You didn't fucking go down into some basement with five thousand and . . .

Swish.

No?

Tommy sat up in the couch, pulled off the blanket.

They didn't exist. No. Not vampires. That girl, the one in the yellow dress, she must somehow believe that she is . . . but wait, wait. It was that Ritual Killer that... the one they were searching for . . . Tommy leaned his head in his hands; the bills crinkled against his ear. He couldn't figure it out. But in any case he was damn scared of that girl now.

Just as he was thinking about going back up to the apartment after all, even if it was still night, come what may, he heard the door to his stairwell open. His heart fluttered like a frightened bird and he looked around.

Weapon.

The only thing he could see was the broom. Tommy's mouth was pulled up into a smile that lasted for a second.

The broom
—
a good weapon against vampires.

Then he remembered, got up and walked to the safety room while he stuffed the money into his pocket. Cleared the corridor in one step and slid into the safety room as the cellar door opened. Didn't dare lock the door since he was afraid she would hear it.

He sank into a crouch in the dark, tried to breathe as silently as possible.

+

The razor blade glimmered on the floor. One corner was stained with brown, like rust. Eli tore off a corner of the cover of a motorcycle magazine, wrapped the paper around the razor blade, put it into his back pocket.

Tommy was gone; that meant he was alive. He had left on his own, gone home to sleep, and even if he put two and two together he didn't know where Eli lived, so ...

Everything is as it should be. Everything is... great.

There was a wooden broom with a long handle leaned up against the wall.

Eli picked it up, broke it over his knee, almost as far down as the head of the broom. The surface of the break was rough, sharp. A thin stake, about an arm's length. He put the point against his chest, between two ribs. Exactly the place that the woman had put her finger.

He took a deep breath, squeezed the shaft, and tried on the thought.
In! In!

Breathed out, loosened his grip. Squeezed again. Pressed.

For two minutes he stood with the point one centimeter from his heart, the shaft held firmly in his hand, when the handle of the cellar door was slammed down and the door glided open.

He removed the wooden stake from his chest, listened. Heard
slow,
tentative steps in the corridor like from a child who had just learned to walk. A very large child who had just learned to walk.

+

Tommy heard the steps and thought:
Who?

Not Staffan, not Lasse, not Robban. Someone who was sick in some way, who was carrying something very heavy... Santa Claus! His hand went up to his mouth to smother a giggle as he imagined Santa Claus, the Disney version—

Hohoho! Say "Mama!"

—come staggering through the corridor with his enormous bag on his back.

His lips trembled under his hand and he clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering. Still in a crouch, he shuffled back from the door, one step at a time. Felt the corner of the room at his back at the same time as the spear of light from the door was darkened.

Santa Claus had stopped between the light and the shelter. Tommy put his other hand over the first to stop himself from screaming, waited for the door to open.

+

Nowhere to run to.

Through cracks in the door he could see a fragmented outline of Hakan's body. Eli stretched the stake out as far as it went, nudged the door. It swung out about ten centimeters, then the body outside stopped it. One hand grabbed hold of the edge of the door, threw it open so it banged into the wall, tearing off one of the hinges. The door sagged, swung back leaning on its only remaining hinge, hitting against the shoulder of the body that now filled the door opening.

What do you want from me?

There were still patches of blue on the shirt that covered the body to the knees. The rest was a dirty map of earth, mud, stains of something Eli's nose identified as animal blood, human blood. The shirt was torn in several places revealing white skin etched with scratches that would never heal.

His face had not changed. It was still a clumsily fashioned mass of naked flesh with one single red eye thrown in as if for fun, a ripe cherry to top a rotten cake. But his mouth was open now.

A black hole in the lower half of the face. No lips that could cover the teeth that were therefore revealed; an uneven semicircle of white that made the oral cavity seem even darker. The hole increased and decreased in size with a chewing motion and out of it came: "Eeeiiiijj." You couldn't hear if the sound was supposed to mean "Hi," "Hey" or

"Eli" since the "L" had to be formed without the help of lips or tongue. Eli pointed the stake at Hakan's heart, said, "Hi."
What do you want?

The undead. Eli knew nothing about them. Didn't know if the creature in front of him was limited by the same restrictions as he was. If it even helped to destroy the heart. That Hakan was standing still in the doorway seemed to imply one thing: that he needed an invitation.

Hakan's gaze ran up and then down over Eli's body, which felt unprotected in the thin, yellow dress. He wished there were more to the fabric, more protection between his body and Hakan. Tentatively Eli held the stake closer to Hakan's chest.

Can he feel anything? Can he even feel... fear now?

Eli experienced a feeling that he had almost forgotten: fear of pain. Everything healed of course, but there was such an overpowering sense of threat emanating from Hakan that.. .

"What do you want?"

A hollow, rasping sound as the creature pressed out air and a drop of yellowish, viscous liquid ran out of the double hole where the nose had been. A sigh? Then a damaged whisper: "Aaaaaaijjjj . . ." and one arm flinched quickly, cramplike,