Note for Swedish readers: This is the English translation. You can also find the original Swedish version called Strandliv on this site.
This piece of fan fiction is based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Låt den rätte komma in. Features that have been fetched from the novel are his work, however, he is in no way responsible for the work below.
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“Look! This one’s nice!” Oskar and Eli wrer strolling along the beach, Eli had a small plastic bucket in his hand. Oskar bent down and picked up a stone, it was smooth and soft and beautifully patterned in different colours, it glistened in the bright summer night. He gave it to Eli.
“Yes. We’ll keep it!” Eli put the stone in the bucket, it was already half full of rocks, small dazzling jewels that had been polished by the waves.
They liked the summer in northern Europe. Even if they had to rest most of the time, the days were so long, it was nice to walk in the bright and balmy nights. They had many playmates, the children were off from school and could be outside long. And it was easy to make contact, at the resorts all were strangers.
Oskar and Eli had come up to some tanned children of their own age and younger who were building a big sandcastle. They settled a few feet away and started to build one of their own. The other children looked curiously at the newcomers. After a while, the youngest one turned to them.
“Hi!”
Oskar answered.”Hi!”
“Why are you so white?”
“We can’t be in the sun, we don’t tolerate it.”
“Not at all?”
“Nah.”
“Poor you.” She looked sad for them.
“It doesn’t matter, we can be out at night instead.”
“Can you stay out all night?”
“Yes, we've got to be inside during the day, don’t we?”
“Lucky you, I’ve to go to bed, mom says. Even though it’s not dark.” She looked a little jealous.
Then there was something else she wanted to know. “What are you building? We’re building Dracula's castle. Here's Dracula.” She picked up a small plastic figure.
Oskar exchanged a glance with Eli, then he replied: “The we’re building Dracula's summer home.”
Eli added: “Where the vampire children live.”
One of the other children, a boy with a blue t-shirt, had become interested. “Are there vampire children?”
Eli replied. “I think so.”
“Me too.” The boy nodded in agreement. “They're going out at night. They can not be out...” He stopped, he looked at Oskar and Eli with a stunned expression. “During the day?”
“No, that’s right. But now the sun has set, so they have come out.” Eli took a couple of sticks and stuck them down in the sand castle. “Here they are.”
“Are they going out to bite people in the throat now?” A girl had wondered.
“No, not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“They're not hungry.”
“I would bite anyway, if I was a vampire child.” The girl looked determined.
“Would you?”
“Yes! I would bite all those who are stupid.” She looked angry. “Especially Danny.”
“Is Danny stupid?”
All children are assured that Danny was really stupid.
“He always tramples our sandcastles.”
“He takes our ball and throws it far out into the water. When mom is not here, so we can’t go to get it.”
“He rides a moped.”
“Straight through our sand castle.”
“But you’re not supposed to ride mopeds on the beach.”
Oskar agreed. “Then he is stupid.”
A boy with a blue t-shirt looked at Oskar and Eli. “Can’t you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Bite him.”
Oskar looked at Eli, he seemed as perplexed as Oskar felt. They couldn’t come up with anything to say.
“Can you do it? He’s stupid.”
This had taken an unexpected turn. Oskar looked towards Eli again, Eli shook his head a little.
“We can’t bite Danny, w're no vampire children.”
“Why are you so white, then?”
“We told you, we have sun eczema.”
“I still think you are vampire children.”
Eli tried a new strategy to guide the conversation in another direction. “Okay. But we would still not bite Danny.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not hungry. And he's probably not quite that stupid, I don’t think he deserves it.”
The other children discussed how stupid Dan was, they were not in complete agreement. But stupid he was, in all cases.
Eli summarised. “Okay, he's stupid. But he's not here now.”
“He will be. He comes every night.”
“Okay.” Oskar had this idea. “But perhaps it is enough if we grin evilly at him?”
“Grin evilly, what’s that?”
“Show your teeth, and hiss, like this.” Oskar showed his beautiful white teeth in an angry grimace. “Grrch!”
The other children seemed to question how beneficial it would do, but Oskar stood firm.
“I promise, it's going to work. Practice now, everyone! Grrrrch!”
The children were practicing, they hissed and grimaced, made themselves as fearsome as they could.
“Good! If everyone is grinning evilly when Danny comes, I promise that he’ll leave us alone since.”
The boy with the blue shirt was in, he was virtually enthusiastic. “Yeah! Everybody!” He turned to Oskar and Eli. “Especially you, huh?”
“Sure, especially us. Grrrch!”
Then they went back to their construction business. More sand was dug up, the castles grew in both height and width. Eventually, they had built the sand castles together into a large complex of walls, towers, moats and bridges, where Dracula and the vampire kids walked in the night. It was a fun game. Oskar and Eli were children playing children's games with other children. They were free and blissful.
The moped’s noise was heard a long time before Danny was to be seen. Oskar and Eli reminded the other children about what they should do, then they went to the front of the group and waited.
Danny was a used to the children getting out of his way when he came, and did not realise that something had changed until he almost collided with them. All the kids except the two new at the front showed their teeth and hissed, they looked threatening, all of them. He braked hard, skidded in the loose sand and almost fell over. He was angry.
“Damn, are you nuts?”
One of the two new ones, a blond boy, stepped up to him, grabbed his arm and spoke with a ominous voice.
“You just ended being mean to our buddies. Right?”
“What the hell, the beach is free, isn’ it, I ride where I want to. Let go of my arm!”
“You do not ride where I say you shouldn’t.”
The kid squeezed Danny’s arm, it hurt really bad, Danny got tears in his eyes. And now the kid was grimacing the same way as the other kids, but not quite yet. Danny stared at his grimace.
The boy released Danny’s arm. “You get it? Grrrch!”
The other new kid grimaced in the same way. “Scram! Grrch!”
Danny had hardly any feeling in his arm, it had almost been paralysed by the hard grip. He quickly made up his mind. He didn’t want to be there, near those kids. He started his moped and pulled away.
The other children stood dumbfounded and watched as Dan disappeared. All except the boy in the blue shirt, he had crept forward and peered up at Oskar and Eli. He nodded conspiratorially towrads them. “I knew it!”
Oskar and Eli smiled at him, their smiles were back to normal. “Sure. It works really great to grin evilly, we told you so, didn’t we?”
“Sure. If you grin sufficiently evilly, that is.”