Note for Swedish readers: This is the English translation. You can also find the original Swedish version called Budskap från vänner on this site.
Spoiler alert: This text builds upon JAL's Let the Old Dreams Die, so it contains some spoilers. You may want to wait reading this until after you have read Let the Old Dreams Die.
This piece of fan fiction is based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Låt den rätte komma in and his short story Låt de gamla drömmarna dö. Features that have been fetched from the novel and the short story are his work, however, he is in no way responsible for the work below.
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A lonely man was sitting in thoughts on the veranda of a small house on Rådmansö. There was a glass of wine on the table, it was half empty. The house was owned by his best friends, but they were not here now. He had been allowed to stay in their house when he wanted, he had a key of his own. The friends had disappeared without trace a few years earlier; their last known whereabouts had been a hotel in Barcelona, they had gone there and stayed there. He had reported the disappearance after a week or two, the police had made an investigation and surely suspected him for a while. Especially when the will was found, the house was left to him. But in the end the police had decided that the simplest explanation was the one the man had given. The couple had disappeared in an unknown manner. But the man could not receive his inheritance until the couple had been pronounced dead, so in the meanwhile the couple's assets were managed by a trustee. The trustee had not seen any problems with the man using and maintaining the house. So now he was sitting here on the porch, like he had used to do before, though he now sat alone.
“Hello.”
The man gave a start, was pulled out of his reveries. He looked up, there was a person in the shadows outside the porch. A small person.
“Hello to you. What can I do for you?”
“May we come in? Would you please say that we may come in?”
The man looked puzzled, then he nodded.
“Sure, come on in, you.”
“There are two of us, would you please invite both of us?”
The man sat up more erect and looked out onto the garden, squinted a bit. Yes, there were two shadows in the dark just outside the porch. He looked mystified, the situation was a bit strange.
“What do you want?”
“We have a message for you, from old friends, we would like to to deliver it.”
A few moments passed, then the man became alert and urgent.
“Of course. Come in, come in, both of you!”
The children stepped into the porch, it was a boy and a girl. The man looked searchingly at them a few seconds, then he nodded affirmatively. The children in the picture from Barcelona, the image that was the reason that his old friends had disappeared so without any trace.
“Please take a seat. Can I get you something?” The man pondered for a couple of seconds. ”I have soft drink, or maybe you’ll prefer to have tea? I can make sandwiches, would you like some?”
“No thanks, but thanks anyway. We have eaten, and we are kind of allergic, we have to eat special food.”
The man smiled, looked knowingly at the children.
“Special food, you say. Yes, you might express it that way.”
The children giggled, smiled back to him in agreement.
“Yes, you might.”
The man turned a more serious face.
“As you understand I’ve guessed who you are, and who sent you, my old friends Stefan and Karin.” The children nodded affirmatively. ”So they found you at last, I have been wondering. How are they doing, can you tell me that?”
The children shook their heads, looked a bit sad. ”No, we can’t tell. We don’t know what path they chose, they asked us not to try to find out. We promised them that.”
They sat in silence for a moment, thinking, all three of them.
“But could you tell me about how they were able to find you? Barcelona is a big city, many people live there. And there are lots of tourists, how did they find you there?”
The children sat together on the sofa, close together.
“They did not find us, it was us who found them.”
The children were holding hands, they lifted them a bit, as if to show. Their hands were intertwined. Then they told their story, both of them spoke, alternating.
“We saw Stefan and Karin walking hand in hand, they were holding hands like this, like we do. Like we always do. It is not so common, so we noticed it. They were so close, we wanted to see more.”
The man nodded, Stefan’s and Karin's closeness had been obvious, people used to notice it.
“So we followed them. After a while Stefan saw us, he turned by incident, there was something in a shop window. We saw that he recognised us, he smiled.”
“Karin must have noticed something, for she turned too, and she also recognised us. She called my name.”
“We knew we didn’t have to hide from them, they wouldn’t want to do us any harm.”
“We felt it, they were friendly. And they walked holding hands like we do.”
“So we talked with them, and we followed them to their hotel room.”
“They had a lot to ask, Stefan would soon die, and they wanted to learn about us, before.”
“It was Karin who wanted to know, but we think she didn’t want to live on alone afterwards. We have thought about it, to live alone afterwards. We don’t think we'll want to.”
“Karin probably wouldn’t want to, so she needed to know while Stefan was alive, otherwise she would never know.”
“So we answered all their questions.”
“They were nice people, and they were sorry that they had caused trouble for you.”
“This is the message they wanted to send you, that they were sorry that they left you like that. We should tell you that they had wanted to organise it better, but that there had been neither time nor opportunity. And we should say that they will not return here. They wanted you to submit an... What did they say?”
“Request for a declaration of death in absentia.”
“That's right, a request for a declaration of death in absentia, so you can take over the house here.”
The man's eyes filled with tears, his face crumpled. He sat for a while and struggled with himself, then he sniffled and rubbed his eyes.
“I'll do it. I have not wanted to do it before, but I'm going to now.”
The children looked relieved.
“Good. Stefan and Karin said it many times, that we should convince you of it.”
They sat still for a long while. It was a beautiful August evening, at a the distance shouting and glam could be heard from a crayfish party, but it wasn’t a nuisance. Quite the contrary, it was nice to hear happy people, it made one’s own trouble less important. Worry was not all there was in this world.
The man sat thoughtfully in his chair and looked toward the horizon, sometimes he cast a glance at the kids, but then he returned to his thoughts. But then something came to his mind, something that had been said earlier.
“You said you did not know which way Stefan and Karin chose, what did you mean by that?”
The children sat in silence for a moment, then the boy replied.
“They wanted to be able to choose to continue their life together. We gave them the option.”
“But we do not know how they chose. It's a hard life to live, for people like Stefan and Karin, but it is hard to part as well.”
They had been sitting on the porch for hours, talking about Stefan and Karin, and the lives of the children and the man. The children now prepared to leave. The boy had a question:
“We would like to see you again. Would you want that? May we come here again?”
The man looked a bit surprised.
“But of course, you are certainly welcome back. Why do you ask?”
“At first, when I chose to live with Eli, we thought we would be each other's only friend, the only one we would need.”
“But we now understand that we need other friends too. Though it is not easy for us to make friends.”
“One can not be a true friend if one doesn’t know each other. And we cannot tell the truth, we have to lie. We scare most people. But you’re not afraid, even though you know.”
“So we collect friends, real friends. Would you want to be our friend?”
The man sat still for a moment, taken aback. Then he gathered himself.
“Yes, I would. I want to be, I am your friend.”