Let the right one in (57 page)

The shoelaces were dirty, one about to become untied. A metal hook toward the top had been bent open. He walked slightly pigeon-toed; the leather imitation on both shoes was slightly stretched at the heels, worn to a shine. Even so he was going to be wearing these boots all winter, most likely.

Cold in his wet pants. He lifted his head.

I won't let them win. I. Won't. Let. Them. Win.

Warmth streamed into his legs. The straight masonry lines of the brick facade dropped away, were rubbed out, disappeared as he started to run. His legs stretched out, the dirt squelched and sprayed up around his feet. The ground flowed out from under him and now it felt as if the Earth was turning too fast, he couldn't keep up.

His legs took him stumbling past the high-rises, the old Konsum store, the coconut factory, and with his speed in combination with old habits he rushed into the courtyard, past Eli's door, and straight to his own building.

He almost ran into a police officer who was heading the same way. The officer opened his arms, received him.

"Hey there! You're in quite a hurry."

His tongue stiffened. The officer let go of him, looked at him . . . with suspicion?

"Do you live here?"

Oskar nodded. He had never seen this police officer before. Admittedly he looked quite nice. No. He had a face that Oskar would
normally
think looked nice. The officer pinched his nose and said:

"You see ... something's happened here. In the building next door. So now I'm going door to door around here asking if anyone's heard anything. Or seen anything."

"Which ... which building?"

The officer nodded his head toward Tommy's building and the immediate panic left Oskar.

"That one. Well, not in the building per se . .. more like, the basement. You wouldn't have happened to hear or see anything unusual around there? The past few days?"

Oskar shook his head, his thoughts spinning so chaotically that he technically wasn't thinking anything at all, but he suspected his anxiety was shining from his eyes, fully visible to the officer. And the officer really did incline his head, scrutinizing him.

"How are you doing?"

". . . fine."

"There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all. . . over now. So there's nothing you need to be worried about or anything. Are your parents home?"

"No. My mom. No."

"OK. Well, I'm going to be walking around here for a while, so . . . you can always think a little about what you may have seen." The police officer held the door open for him. "After you."

"No, I was going to ..."

Oskar turned and did his best to walk naturally down the hill. Halfway down he turned and saw the police officer go into his building.
They've taken Eli.

His jaws started to chatter, his teeth clicking an unclear Morse code message through his bones while he pulled open the door to Eli's building, continued on up the stairs. Would they have put that kind of tape on the door, sealed it off?

Say that I can come in.

The door was ajar.

If the police have been here, why did they leave the door open? That wasn't something they did, was it? He put his fingers on the handle, pulled the door open gently, crept into the hallway. It was dark in the apartment. One of his feet bumped into something. A plastic bottle. At first he thought there was blood in the bottle, then he looked and saw it was lighter fluid.

Breathing.

Someone was breathing.

Moving.

The sound came from the corridor in the direction of the bathroom. Oskar walked toward it, one step at a time, folded his lips inward to stop his teeth from chattering and the shivering moved down toward his chin, his neck, the suggestion of an Adam's apple on his neck. He turned the corner, looked into the bathroom.

That's not a policeman.

A man in shabby clothes was kneeling next to the bathtub, his upper body leaning over the edge, outside Oskar's field of vision. He only saw a pair of dirty gray pants, ripped up shoes with the tips pointed down toward the tiled floor. The hem of a coat.
The old guy!

But he's... breathing.

Yes. Hissing inhalations and exhalations, almost like sighs, came from the bathroom and Oskar crept closer without consciously thinking about it. Little by little he saw more of the bathroom, and when he was almost level with the bathtub itself he saw what was happening.

+

Lacke couldn't do it.

The body at the bottom of the tub looked completely defenseless. It wasn't breathing. He had put his hand on its chest and registered the fact that its heart was beating but only with a few beats a minute. He had been expecting something . . . terrifying. Something in proportion to the horror he had experienced at the hospital. But this little bloody rag of a person didn't look as if it could ever get up again, much less hurt anyone. It was only a child. A wounded child.

Like seeing someone you love wasting away with cancer, and then being shown a cancer cell through a microscope. Nothing.
That?
That did this?

That little thing? Destroy my heart.

He let out a sob, his head falling forward until it hit the edge of the bathtub with a dull, echoing thud. He could. Not. Kill a child. A sleeping child. He simply couldn't. Even though . . .
That's how it has managed to
survive. It. It. Not a child. It.

It had attacked Virginia and ... it had killed Jocke. It. The creature lying in front of him. This creature who would do it again, to other people. This creature that was not a person. It wasn't even breathing, and even so its heart was beating ... like an animal in hibernation.
Think about the
others.

A poisonous snake living among people. You think you shouldn't kill it, simply because for the moment it appears defenseless?

But in the end that wasn't what helped him make up his mind. It was when he looked at the face again; the face covered in a thin film of blood, and he thought it looked like it was . . . smiling. Smiling at all the evil it had done.
Enough.

He raised the kitchen knife above the creature, moved his legs back a little so he could put all his weight behind the thrust and—

"AAAAHHH!"

+

Oskar screamed.

The old guy didn't flinch; he simply froze, turned his head toward Oskar and said slowly: "I have to do it. Do you understand?" Oskar recognized him. He was one of the drunks who lived in the apartment complex and said hello to him from time to time.

Why is he doing this?

But that was neither here nor there. The important thing was that the guy had a knife in his hands, a knife that was pointing directly at Eli's chest as he lay there in the bathtub naked, exposed.

"Don't do it."

The guy's head moved to the right, to the left, more as if he was looking for something on the floor than signaling refusal.

"No . . ."

He turned back to the tub, to the knife. Oskar wanted to explain. That the thing in the bathtub was his friend, that it was his... that he had a present for the thing in there, that. . .
that it was Eli.

"Wait."

The point of the knife lay against Eli's chest, pressed in so hard it almost punctured Eli's skin. Oskar didn't know exactly what he was doing when he shoved his hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out the Cube, showed it to the guy.

"Look!"

Lacke only saw it in the corner of his eye as a sudden burst of color in the midst of all the black, gray that surrounded him. Despite the bubble of determination that enveloped him he couldn't help turning his head toward it, to see what it was.

One of those Cubes in the boy's hand. Bright colors.

Looked completely sick in the current context. A parrot among crows. For a second he was hypnotized by the toy's vividness. Then he turned his

gaze back to the bathtub, to the knife that was on its way down between the ribs.

All I need to do is ... press...

A
change.

The creature's eyes were open.

He tensed in order to drive the knife in all the way, and then his temple exploded.

+

The Cube creaked when one of the corners smashed into the guy's head and it was wrenched from Oskar's hand. The guy fell to one side, landing on a plastic jug that gave way, hitting the side of the tub with a thundering noise like a bass drum.

Eli sat up.

From the bathroom doorway Oskar could only see the back of his body. The hair was plastered against the back of his head and his back was one big open wound.

The guy tried to get back on his feet but Eli didn't so much jump as fall out of the bathtub, landed in his lap: a child seeking comfort from his father. Eli wrapped his arms around the guy's neck and pulled his head to him to whisper tender words.

Oskar backed away from the bathroom as Eli bit the guy's neck. Eli hadn't seen him. But the guy saw him. His gaze locked with Oskar's, held him fast as Oskar moved backward toward the hall.

"Sorry."

Oskar didn't manage to get any sound out, but his lips formed the word before he turned the corner and the eye contact was broken.

He stood with his hand on the door handle as the guy screamed. Then the sound stopped abruptly as if a hand had been clamped over his mouth.

Oskar hesitated. Then he closed the door. And locked it.

Without looking to the right he walked down the hall to the living room. Sat down in the armchair.

Started to hum in order to drown out the noise from the bathroom.

Part Five

These days this is

my only chance to say my piece...

—bob hund, "Struggling Against the Current"

Let the right one in Let the old dreams die Let the wrong ones go They
cannot do What you want them to do

—Morrissey, "Let the Right One Slip In"

From
The Daily Update
16:45, Monday, 9 November, 1981

The so-called Ritual Killer was apprehended by police on Monday morning. He was tracked down in a basement office in Blackeberg, in west Stockholm.

Police spokesman Bengt Larn:

"A person has been apprehended. That is correct."

"Are you sure that it is the same man you have been looking for?"

"Quite sure. Certain factors, however, complicate a positive identification at this time."

"What kind of factors?"

"Unfortunately I can't go into further details at the moment." After the man was apprehended he was transported to the hospital. His state was described as critical.

Together with the suspect, the police also found a sixteen-year-old boy. The boy was physically unharmed but is said to be in a state of severe shock and has been taken to the hospital for further monitoring. The police are searching the area in order to gather further information regarding the chain of events.

His Royal Highness Carl Gustaf today opened the new bridge over the Almo sound in Bohuslan. During the opening speech . ..

From diagnostic notes made by the surgeon Professor T. Hallberg,
copied for police files

... preliminary investiga-erto unobserved ... severely

tion complicated by... spasmodic muscle action ... unlocalized stimulation of central nervous system ... heart function suspended ... Muscle movement stops at 14:25 . .. autopsy yields hith-deformed inner organs... Like the eel that dead and butchered jumps in the frying pan ... never before observed in human tissue ...
ask
to retain the cadaver ... sincerely

...

From the newspaper
Western Suburbs,
week 46

WHO KILLED OUR CATS?

"The only thing I have left is her collar," says Svea Nordstrom, pointing to the slushy

field where her pet and eight others belonging to neighboring homeowners were found...

From the television news program
Current Events,
Monday, 9

November, 21:00

Earlier this evening police occupied, although there are

entered the apartment believed to belong to the so-called Ritual Killer, who was apprehended this morning.

A call from a member of the public helped police to finally locate the apartment in Blackeberg, some fifty meters from the place where the man was apprehended.

We have our reporter Folke Ahlmarker at the scene:

"Emergency technicians are right now carrying out the body of a man found in the apartment. The man's identity is not known at this time. It appears the apartment is un-certain indications that people have been in the apartment recently."

"What are the police doing right now?"

"They have been going door to door all day but if they have gained any further information in the process they have made no announcement to that effect."

"Thank you, Folke."

The Tjorn bridge, which was finished
six
weeks before the estimated completion date, was opened today by His Royal Highness, Carl Gustaf...

Monday

9 NOVEMBER

Pulses of blue light across the bedroom ceiling.

Oskar is lying in bed with his hands behind his head.

Under his bed there are two cardboard boxes. There is money in one, masses of bills, and two bottles of T-Rod; the other is filled with puzzles.

The box of clothes was left behind.

In order to conceal the boxes Oskar has placed his hockey game at an angle in front of them. Tomorrow he'll carry them down into the basement, if he has the energy. His mom is watching TV, shouting out something about how their building is on the screen. But he only has to get up and go to the window to see the same thing, from another angle.

+

He threw the boxes from Eli's balcony over to his own while it was still light, while Eli was washing himself. When he came out of the bathroom the wounds on his back had healed and he was slightly intoxicated from the alcohol in the blood.

They lay in bed together, held each other. Oskar told him what had happened in the subway. Eli said: