The following work is fiction based on and derived from the novel Let the Right One In by John A. Linqvist and the film of the same name. The characters and basic story elements in this work were created by Mr. Linqvist. No copyright protection applies.
A Complex Relationship
The long winter had finally released its grip on the land. Warmer weather had brought new possibilities to Oskar and Eli’s search for new shelter. In their expanding explorations of the countryside, they had stumbled upon an abandoned farm. After a few days’ observation from nearby woods, they decided that intruders were unlikely and settled in. The place was nearly in ruins, but under it's weathered, precariously leaning barn they had found an intact root cellar—a perfect day shelter for Eli. The small space had been created a century or more ago for storage of the canned and dried foods that got a rural family through winter. A few dusty glass jars with unknown contents still sat on crude board shelves that lined one of the field stone walls. The place had a musty but not unpleasant odor, a smell Eli liked because of its long association with safety and shelter. They had dragged an old sofa from the house down here to serve as Eli’s bed. Apart from having to avoid two sharp coil springs that had erupted through the crumbling fabric at one end, it was more than adequate for her.
Dawn was spreading across the sky, painting high cirrus clouds crimson, gold and purple. In their cellar refuge, the two of them sat on the sofa in the dull orange glow of an old kerosene lantern. Eli had surrendered to sleep for the day and Oskar’s day was beginning, but he lingered cradling her in his arms. She felt completely limp, and if not for the un-human rattling snore that rose from her—he called it purring—she could easily have passed for dead. But to Oskar, she blazed with life energy even in the depths of her unnatural sleep. There were things he noticed about her now, when he held her at moments like this. If he moved or spoke quietly, a faint smile would dance across her face, and the rhythm of that rattling purr would go on unchanged. This was a sound Oskar had grown to love second only to that of her voice, especially when she hummed to herself. Centuries of miserable loneliness and death were not part of these moments.
Quiet times like this always brought on musings about their extraordinary circumstances. The usual conclusion he drew was that they mattered too much to each other to be overly daunted by those circumstances. It seemed impossible to love her more than he did at any given moment, yet he marveled with each passing week how much more he loved her. In the warmth of these thoughts, looking down at her hugging one of his arms in her sleep, it was difficult to see her as a deadly predator.
But she was. Those caught in the widening wake of death that spread behind her long life might call her a killing machine. Harsh as that label was, it was coldly accurate. Oskar’s mind drifted back to a place he never wished it would go, but often did—the night at the pool when both of their lives were irreversibly changed. He was haunted with questions about the details of that event, but it was something they seemed to have silently agreed never to discuss. Countless times he tried to choreograph the events in his imagination, the sequence of swift and savage death she handed out in well under a minute. He remembered only muffled sounds of an impact, shattering plate glass and screams. He couldn't focus on any of it at the time, preoccupied instead with lungs screaming desperately for air. Then he lost track of events until feeling her iron grip on his arm. He came out of his hypoxic haze to see her hovering there, staring into him. It was a moment of dizzying joy, but the more he recalled it, the more he remembered something unsettling about her eyes. For the briefest instant before her face lit up in a smile bursting with love and relief, he saw a killer’s eyes. It was as if he had caught the last flicker of the primal energy just set loose upon his tormentors. What would those final seconds have been like for them, having her eyes drilling into their souls, telling them that their deaths—and Oskar’s life—were the sole purpose of her existence in that moment?
The more he recalled this instant, the more complex the message in her eyes became. The love and gratitude they felt for each other seemed immeasurable. She had accepted and loved him for who he was. She had given him a reason to live his life…and then saved that life. Oskar offered her the first sincere love she had known since those few precious years with her family. He had given her back part of her stolen childhood…and he had saved her life. But there were moments when he felt as though their connection had gone far beyond love, support and trust. Sometimes it felt as though the very core of his being was taken over by something he could never completely understand—timeless, unimaginably powerful and wild. So many dimensions to Eli…could he ever fully understand and love a force of Nature?
He didn’t doubt that she desperately wanted them to lead as normal lives as possible. It was borne out in her efforts to insulate him from the violence of her life. He wondered if she had deliberately risked those few extra seconds at the pool, leaving him in the water a moment longer to spare him seeing her kill three boys...to see her nearly tear one to shreds. It was this care she took, and the countless small signs of devotion every day with her brought, that quieted his doubts. But her most meaningful assurance came bound to a chilling promise—until they found “a better way”, the heart-rending job of killing would always be hers alone. The vision of Oskar serving her needs until he became a soulless, used up hull sickened Eli’s heart as much as forcing down food sickened her body.
Love, acceptance, companionship, darkness, swift death—Eli was all of this. She was at once blessed and cursed with the abilities and needs of a perfect predator, far more capable of surviving alone than any normal human. Yet, she was as achingly incomplete without Oskar as he was without her. Calling their situation complex was beyond understatement, but Oskar did his best not to trouble himself with such matters…at least for now. At least for now—that qualifier hung over every thought he dared entertain about a future fraught with unknowns. But the one bedrock fact he was sure of, a realization that propelled him forward each day, was that her unconditional love made every day a gift. For as long as the Universe allowed, he would do no less for her.
The lantern light rapidly faded as the last kerosene was drawn from its wick. It was time to get on with the day. Oskar slowly rose with Eli still in his arms, turned and gently lowered her onto the makeshift bed. Taking one of her over-sized sweaters from the floor, he arranged it into a pillow and let her head settle into the softness. He pulled a blanket over her, placed a lingering kiss on her forehead and left her with her dreams. As he eased the cellar’s heavy wooden door closed, he paused to listen. A smile spread across his face. A steady rattling purr floated out of the darkness.
Caught In A Predator’s Gaze
The dream was always the same. A rapid-fire sequence of deadly events, a desperate feeling of needing to slow things down, to try to make sense of them. Then…nothing. Blackness and a cold terror that remained upon waking and never let go all day. On good days, the entire experience had such a feeling of unreality that it could almost be dismissed as a terrible dream. On bad days, it seemed like a relentless, consuming thing running amok in the back of the mind, casting a cold shadow over even the most mundane of each day’s experiences. If only it was a dream. This was re-living a real experience, an event that had carved an un-healing gash in Andreas’s young life.
Dr. Johan Nordqvist leaned back in his thickly padded leather chair, pulling his eyes away from the dense scrawl on his notepad and reflectively stroked his closely trimmed beard. The young boy sitting across from him had slumped forward and was sobbing. They hadn’t made any real progress for weeks. Whenever he tried to recall specific events of the night at the swimming pool, Andreas would reach a predictable breaking point, descending into some dark place that left him uncommunicative and convulsed with grief.
The police had determined, at least publicly, that the event was likely to have been a gang reprisal that had caught several boys in the mayhem. The oldest of the three slain boys, Jimmy, was known to have moved in some bad circles in Stockholm. Local authorities had suspected him of selling drugs to kids at a number of suburban schools, but had never produced enough evidence to accomplish more than repeatedly questioning him. This undoubtedly emboldened Jimmy to the point that he tried something that ultimately backfired. It wasn’t difficult for the investigators to theorize that the swimming pool massacre was the outcome of his running afoul of known gangs operating in the city—people that played for keeps and liked to set spectacular examples even if kids got in the way. If and how this tied in with the rest of the bloodshed that had rocked Blackeberg was open to a lot of conjecture. It still dominated local media and café chatter now, over a year later. There was certainly the common element of savagely executed, perhaps ritualistic, murder. A troubled twelve-year-old boy had gone missing, possibly abducted by the perpetrators…or had he just run away? Coincidence certainly could have made the events look related, but no one subscribed to such a simplistic explanation. Jittery and angry residents wanted answers—motives, perpetrators, convictions. The problem was that linkage of all of the events and witness testimony inevitably lead to conclusions so bizarre that no public officials wanted to go on record as supporting them. The deaths of eight people, including an unidentified murder suspect, and the disappearance of a young resident boy and mysterious girl, seemed well on their way to becoming cold cases.
The best known witness, the key to possibly explaining much of it, sat sobbing uncontrollably in Dr. Nordqvist’s office, lost in an impenetrable post-traumatic fog. Emotional shock of this magnitude might take a lot of time and therapy to sort out. In Andreas’s case, a lot of fantasy seemed to have to be separated from fact before repressed memories could be coaxed to the surface. Nordqvist had grown deeply frustrated with their lack of progress, and he wanted to believe that he wasn’t succumbing to pressure from equally frustrated investigating authorities…he wanted to very badly.
“I wish it had killed me too…don’t want to look at those eyes anymore!” he sobbed.
“Let’s end this for today, Andreas. As always, you’ve been very brave. And as we have discussed before, these things can take time to make sense to us.” Nordqvist felt uneasy handing out generic comfort to the boy. Both of them knew they were getting nowhere with the sessions; Andreas’s agitation only seemed to escalate as they continued struggling towards his recall of the event. Nordqvist knew that he was rapidly approaching a point where professional ethics would force him to relinquish the case to a more clinical setting. Even though Andreas was unable to attend school, had lost most of his social network and had a home environment that was far from ideal, Nordqvist hated the idea of the boy being institutionalized.
Andreas regained his composure, grabbing a fistful of tissues from a nearby table with a trembling hand. He blew his nose and mopped tears from his face. “I want to try again,” he announced, trying to inject resolve into a tremulous voice.
Nordqvist wondered if the boy was somehow sensing his growing doubt about continuing the therapy. “You know you don’t have to do this, your mom’s waiting for you…”
“I don’t care if the police say I’m crazy. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. Maybe I won’t dream about this any more if I can just tell you once and for all exactly…”
Nordqvist started rising from his chair. “But Andreas, we’ve been trying to talk about this for a long time. I think you may not be quite ready yet.” His next patients were probably already in the waiting room, and he did not relish the idea of them seeing a sobbing boy emerge from his office.
Andreas ignored him. He was sitting stiffly upright in his chair now, staring into a place far beyond the warm confines of the office. “I didn’t want Jimmy to do it. None of us did. We just figured that he wanted to scare Oskar real good. He was so mad about him hitting his little brother.”
Nordqvist slowly sank back into his chair. Andreas’s manner was oddly different; perhaps a breakthrough was at hand. In a low, fast voice, he called his receptionist and instructed him to re-schedule the next appointment.
“Do what? What didn’t you want Jimmy to do to Oscar…what was it…” Nordqvist stopped himself; his fists were clenched under his desk and he was blurting out questions like a hardened police detective, not a psychologist specialized in adolescent trauma. “I’m sorry…please just go on with what you were saying,” he said in a more soothing tone.
“We tricked Oskar to come to the pool that night. He thought we wanted to be friends with him…can you believe that? Why did Jimmy have to do it?”
“What did Jimmy do to Oskar?”
Andreas was trembling again. “He told him three minutes. He had to stay under for three minutes or he’d hurt him real bad.”
“Under water?”
Andreas nodded, now wide eyed. “Jimmy grabbed his hair and pushed him under. Nobody can go that long. He really was going to kill Oskar. Conny and Martin wanted to stop it but Jimmy wouldn’t stop…he just told them to shut up and then we didn’t try to stop it anymore.”
Nordqvist tore the crowded sheet from his notepad and began furiously scribbling notes on a fresh sheet. There was dramatically more detail this time—Andreas seemed to be heading in a direction that might finally shed light on possible motives and roles played by the murdered boys, Oskar’s relationship to them, maybe even clues about his disappearance. He also knew that the story was coming to that stubborn point where fantasies took over and supernatural events started happening.
“Oskar wasn’t moving much anymore. I couldn’t watch…I was scared to do anything but just cover my face...I couldn’t stop it…I was killing him too…all of us were!”
Nordqvist spoke softly, his voice cracking in and out of a whisper. “So you stopped looking…covered your face. Then what happened?”
“I heard this crash. The big window on the other side just…exploded. I looked up and all I saw was this like…shadow…fly straight at the guys….it moved so fast I couldn’t make it out…I can never make it slow down so I can see what it is. But now I remember! Now I can remember there’s this girl between Conny and Jimmy…she had hold of Conny’s neck…she just twisted it…his neck snapped and he fell…she bit Jimmy’s neck and grabbed his hair…and his head came off! It looked so strange, like a store dummy with no head, still holding onto Oskar. She cut it right off…Martin was standing there screaming…then he tried to run but she reached back and grabbed him by the neck too…she didn’t even look at him. There was blood all over…coming out of Jimmy and running all over the place…” Andreas’s voice trailed off.
Nordqvist’s mind was racing. Well we’re back to the ”monster” part, but…so much new detail! Now it’s human…order of events is more specific as well…keep him talking…maybe push him just a little more… ” Can you go on son?” he asked, still in a near whisper.
Andreas calmed a little. “Martin was screaming his lungs out…”
“And then?”
“She….jumped into the air with Martin…still had Jimmy’s head…Martin wouldn’t stop screaming. She jumped up and dragged him all the way down to the end of pool…he was screaming and kicking…dragged him like he didn’t weigh anything…I wanted him to stop screaming, then I was afraid she would come for me next if he stopped...he would be dead and she’d come for me. I couldn’t move…couldn’t even close my eyes. I wanted to wake up…just wake up…”
The story that was taking shape was in complete agreement with the police report regarding the condition and placement of the bodies. Nordqvist knew that it was very unlikely that a traumatized child of this age could make up such seamless fantasies. A chill crawled up his spine. Wasn’t it during my internship, twenty years ago? The Norwegian woman obsessed with recounting seeing a young girl fly out of a tree and murder her husband right in front of her…tearing into his neck, drinking his blood…staring up at her, seeming to dare her to watch. It was rural folklore…she had witnessed something she could never emotionally encompass—maybe an animal attack, maybe a deranged family member did it—and she fell back on old country stories, some familiar way of explaining it…of course, everyone agreed it had to be that. But the damn police report said the victim was struck from above at a steep angle, by a massive force that broke his neck…puncture wounds didn’t correspond with any known animal… And there had been a few others over the years as well. Something was tugging mightily at the warm blanket of rationality that had insulated Nordqvist from years of patients’ horrors.
“What did this girl look like, was she grown up?”
“No, she was like maybe Oskar’s age…kind of small.”
“This girl dragged Martin across the water? How did she do that?”
“She just…flew.”
How could any of this happen…? Nordqvist’s mouth was dry, his heart was pounding and he found himself struggling for words—paralyzed by an eleven-year-old boy’s story that, up to now, he had dismissed as a traumatic memory avoidance fantasy.
“Martin stopped screaming and kicking. She dropped him by the side of the pool…fell like rag doll and his head flopped down toward the water like his neck was broke. That’s when she looked at me...”
Nordqvist found his voice. “And…?”
“It was only maybe for a second…looked right at me. I wanted to say I was sorry. I knew now she was there for Oskar…protecting him. She was so mad…blood on her face…wide killing eyes… like a lion or something deciding if she should take me too. Maybe if Oskar hadn’t still been in the water she would have. Maybe she should have…we were so stupid! We all went along with Jimmy…he was so cool and older and everybody was afraid of him. But he was nothing to her...so easy for her to kill him…all of them!”
Another pause. “Go on,” Nordqvist prompted.
“She dropped Jimmy’s head in the pool and started coming toward me really, really fast…jumped and was coming…”
Andreas had buried his face in his hands and sat hunched forward again, shoulders pulling in tight with each deep sob shuddering through his body.
Nordqvist wondered if they had gone too far this time. “Andreas…?“
Andreas straightened and continued. “She was coming for me, to finish it. I’m sure she never took her eyes off of me…but I couldn’t look any more…but I could feel her coming…couldn’t look any more…”
We’re almost there, maybe a little longer…“But she didn’t hurt you. What happened next?” Nordqvist asked.
“I heard something break…pop…some splashing…then nothing for a long time. I don’t know how long it was. I was afraid if I looked up, she would be standing there in front of me...staring. Then I felt the wind coming through that busted window...it was cold…then I looked up and Oskar and the girl were gone. Blood was everywhere…what was left of Jimmy, Conny next to him and Martin down at the end…all in these pools of blood. Blood was in the water…spreading out.”
Andreas fell silent again and Nordqvist refrained from further questioning. The boy had abruptly stopped crying and sat like a statue in his small chair, eyes fixed forward. The vacant, drained look that had taken over his face sent new chills through Nordqvist. He stood and stepped quickly to Andreas’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright? Please say something!”
He responded in an unfamiliar low, barely audible voice; the last words anyone would hear him speak for a long time. “Thank you for helping me to remember everything Doctor Nordqvist. Now can you please tell her stop staring at me?”