‘Habba-Habba-soudd-soudd!’
The very vocal group of boys and girls had gotten on at Hötorget. They were maybe Tommy’s age. Drunk. The guys howled from time to time, fell on top of the girls and the girls laughed, beating them off. Then they sang again. The same song, over and over. Oskar looked at them in secret.
I’m never going to be like that.
Unfortunately. He would have liked to. It looked like fun. But Oskar would never manage to be like that, do what the guys did. One of them stood up on his seat and sang loudly: ‘A-Huleba-Huleba, A-ha-Huleba…’
An old man who was dozing in a handicapped seat at one end of the subway car shouted, ‘Keep it down, will you? I’m trying to sleep!’
One of the girls gave him the finger.
‘You can sleep at home.’
The whole gang laughed and started in on the song again. A few seats away a man was reading a book. Oskar craned his neck so he could read the title, but could only see the name of the author: Göran Tunström. Nobody he had ever heard of.
In the nearest block of two-seaters facing each other there was an old woman with a handbag on her lap. She was talking to herself in a low voice, gesturing to an invisible interlocutor.
He had never taken the subway this late before. Were these the same people who in the daytime sat quietly and stared in front of them, or read newspapers? Or was this a special group that only appeared at night?
The man with the book turned the page. Strangely enough Oskar had no book with him. Too bad. He would have wanted to be like that man; reading a book, oblivious to everything around him. But he only had his Walkman and the cube. Had planned to listen to the Kiss tape he had gotten from Tommy, had tried it a little on the bus but got sick of it after only a couple of songs.
He took his cube out of his bag. Three sides were solved. Only an insignificant amount needed to be done on the fourth. Eli and he had spent one evening working on it together, talked about how you could do it and since then Oskar had become better. He looked at all sides and tried to think up a strategy but couldn’t get past thinking of Eli’s face.
What will she look like?
He wasn’t afraid. He was in a state of…yes…he could not be here, at this time, could not be doing what he was doing. It didn’t exist. It wasn’t him.
I don’t exist and no one can do anything to me.
He had called his dad from Norrtälje and his dad had cried on the phone. Said he would call for someone to go and pick up Oskar. It was the second time in his life Oskar heard his father cry. For a moment Oskar was about to give in. But when his dad had gotten worked up and started yelling about how he had to have his own life and be allowed to do as he damn well pleased in his own house, Oskar had hung up on him.
That was when it had really started; that feeling that he didn’t really exist.
The group of boys and girls got off at Ängbyplan. One of the guys turned around and shouted into the subway car:
‘Sweet dreams, my…my…’
He couldn’t think of the word and one of the girls pulled him back with her. Just before the doors closed he tore himself away and ran back, holding one door open, shouting, ‘Fellow passengers! Sweet dreams, my fellow passengers!’
He let go of the door and the train started to go. The reading man lowered his book and looked at the young people on the platform. Then he turned to Oskar and looked him in the eyes. And smiled. Oskar smiled back briefly, then pretended to turn his attention back to the cube.
In his chest a feeling of having…passed muster. The man had looked at him and transmitted the thought You’re all right. What you’re doing is good.
He didn’t dare look up at the man any more. He felt like the man knew. Oskar turned the cube one click, then turned it back.
With the exception of Oskar, two people got off at Blackeberg, from other subway cars. An older guy he didn’t recognise and then a rockabilly guy who appeared very drunk. The rockabilly guy walked up to the older guy and shouted, ‘Hey man, spare a cigarette?’
‘Sorry, don’t smoke.’
The rockabilly guy didn’t appear to hear, because he drew a ten kronor note from his pocket and waved it around. ‘I got ten! One stick is all I need, man.’
The guy shook his head and walked away. The rockabilly guy stood still, swaying, and when Oskar walked past he lifted his head and said, ‘You!’ But his eyes narrowed, he focused them on Oskar and then he shook his head. ‘No. Nothing. Go in peace, brother.’
Oskar kept going up the stairs into the subway station. Wondered if the rockabilly guy was planning to pee on the electric rail. The older guy went out through the exit doors. Except for the ticket collector in his booth, Oskar was alone in the station.
Everything was so different at night. The photo shop, florist and clothing store in the station were dark. The ticket collector sat with his feet up on the counter, reading something. So quiet. The clock on the wall said a few minutes past two. He should be in bed now. Sleeping. Should at the very least be sleepy. But no. He was so tired his body felt hollow, but it was a hollowness filled with electricity. Not sleepiness.
A door down by the platform was thrown open and he heard the rockabilly guy’s voice from down there. ‘And bow down, you officers in your helmets and batons…’
Same song he had been singing. Oskar chuckled and started to run. Ran out the doors, down the hill towards the school, past it and the parking lot. It had started to snow again and the large flakes squelched the heat in his face. He looked up as he was running. The moon was still there, peeking out between the houses.
Once he was in the courtyard he stopped, caught his breath. Almost all the windows were dark, but wasn’t there a faint light coming from behind the blinds of Eli’s apartment?
What will she look like?
He walked up the sloping yard glancing at his own dark window. The normal Oskar was lying in there, sleeping. Oskar…pre-Eli. The one with the pissball in his underpants. That was something he had done away with, didn’t need it any longer.
Oskar unlocked the door to his building and walked through the basement corridor over to hers, did not stop to see if the stain was still on the floor. Just walked past it. It didn’t exist any longer. He had no mum, no dad, no earlier life, he was simply…here. He walked through the door, up the stairs.
Stood there on the landing, looking at the worn wooden door, the empty nameplate. Behind that door.
He had imagined he was going to dash up the stairs, make a dive for the bell. Instead he sat down on the next to last step, next to the door.
What if she didn’t want him to come?
After all, she was the one who had run away from him. She would maybe tell him to go away, that she wanted to be left alone, that she…
The basement storage room. Tommy’s gang.
He could sleep there, on the couch. They weren’t there at night, were they? Then he could see Eli tomorrow evening, like normal.
But it won’t be like normal.
He stared at the doorbell. Things would not simply return to normal. Something big had to be done. Like running away, hitchhiking, making your way home in the middle of the night to show that it was…important. What he was scared of was not that maybe she was a creature who survived by drinking other people’s blood. No—it was that she might push him away.
He rang the bell.
A shrill sound rang out inside the apartment, stopped abruptly when he let go of the button. He stood there, waiting. Rang it again, longer this time. Nothing. Not even a sound.
She wasn’t home.
Oskar sat still on the step while disappointment sank like a stone to his stomach. And he suddenly felt so tired, so very tired. He got up slowly, walked down the stairs. Halfway down he had an idea. Stupid, but why not. Walked up to her door again and with short and long tones of the doorbell he spelled out her name in Morse code.
Short. Pause. Short, long, short, short. Pause. Short, short. E…L…I…
Waited. No sound from the other side. He turned to leave when he heard her voice.
‘Oskar? Is that you?’
And so it was, after all; joy exploded inside his chest like a rocket blasting off through his mouth with an altogether too-loud ‘Yes!’
In order to have something to do, Maud Carlberg got herself a cup of coffee from the room behind the reception desk, sat down at the darkened counter. She should have finished her shift an hour ago but the police had asked her to wait.
A couple of men—not dressed like police officers—were painstakingly brushing a kind of powder onto the floor where the little girl had walked in her bare feet.
The policeman who had questioned her about what the girl had said, done, what she looked like, had not been friendly. Maud got the impression from his tone that she had done the wrong thing. But how could she have known?
Henrik, one of the security guards whose shift often overlapped with hers, came over to the reception desk and pointed at her cup of coffee.
‘For me?’
‘If you like.’
Henrik picked up the cup, took a sip and looked out into the hall. Apart from the men who were brushing the floor for prints there was also a uniformed policeman who was talking to a taxi driver.
‘A lot of people tonight.’
‘I don’t understand any of it. How did she get up there?’
‘No idea. They’re working on it. Looks like she climbed the walls.’
‘But surely that’s not possible?’
‘No.’
Henrik took a bag of licorice boats out of his pocket and held them out to her. Maud shook her head and Henrik took three boats, put them in his mouth and shrugged apologetically.
‘I stopped smoking. Put on four kilos in two weeks.’ He made a face. ‘Christ. You should have seen him.’
‘Him…the murderer?’
‘Yes. It had splattered…over the whole wall. And his face… shit. If I ever have to kill myself it’ll be pills. Just think about the guys who do the autopsy. To have to—’
‘Henrik.’
‘Yes?’
‘Stop.’
Eli was standing in the doorway. Oskar was sitting on the step. In one hand he was squeezing the handle of his bag, like he was prepared to leave at any moment. Eli pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear. She looked completely healthy. A little girl, unsure of herself. She looked down at her hands, said in a low voice, ‘Are you coming?’
‘Yes.’
Eli nodded almost imperceptibly, fidgeting with her fingers. Oskar was still sitting on the step.
‘Can I…come in?’
‘Yes.’
The devil flew into him. ‘Say that I can come in.’
Eli lifted her head, made an attempt to say something, but didn’t. She started to close the door a little, stopped. Shifted her weight between her bare feet, then said, ‘You can come in.’
She turned and walked into the apartment, Oskar followed, closing the door behind him. He put the bag down in the hall, took off his jacket and hung it on the hat shelf with little hooks underneath where, he noted, nothing else was hanging.
Eli was standing in the door to the living room with her arms limp at her side. She was wearing panties and a red T-shirt with the words Iron Maiden on it, over a picture of the skeleton monster they had on their albums. Oskar thought he recognised it. Had seen it in the trash room at some point. Was it the same one?
Eli was studying her dirty feet.
‘Why did you say that?’
‘You said it.’
‘Yes. Oskar…’
She hesitated. Oskar stayed in the same position, with his hand on the jacket he had just hung up. He looked at the jacket as he asked:
‘Are you a vampire?’
She wrapped her arms around her body, slowly shook her head.
‘I…live on blood. But I am not…that.’
‘What’s the difference?’
She looked him in the eyes and said somewhat more forcefully, ‘There’s a very big difference.’
Oskar saw her toes tense, relax, tense. Her naked legs were very thin, where the T-shirt stopped he could see the edge of a pair of white panties. He gestured to her. ‘Are you kind of…dead?’
She smiled for the first time since he had arrived.
‘No. Can’t you tell?’
‘No, but…I mean…did you die once, a long time ago?’
‘No, but I’ve lived for a long time.’
‘Are you old?’
‘No. I’m only twelve. But I’ve been that for a long time.’
‘So you are old, inside. In your head.’
‘No, I’m not. That’s the only thing I still think is strange. I don’t understand it. Why I never…in a way…get any older than twelve.’
Oskar thought about it, stroking the arm of his jacket.
‘Maybe that’s just it, though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean…you can’t understand why you’re only twelve years old, because you are twelve years old.’
Eli frowned. ‘Are you saying I’m stupid?’
‘No, just a bit slow. Like kids are.’
‘I see. How are you doing with the cube?’
Oskar snorted, met her gaze and remembered that thing about her pupils. Now they looked normal but they had looked really strange before, hadn’t they? But still…it was too much. Couldn’t believe it.
‘Eli. You’re just making all this up, aren’t you?’
Eli stroked the skeleton monster on her belly, let her hand stop right over the monster’s gaping mouth.
‘Do you still want to be blood brothers?’
Oskar took half a step back.
‘No.’
She looked up at him. Sad, almost accusing.
‘Not like that. Don’t you understand…that…’
She stopped. Oskar finished her sentence for her.
‘That if you had wanted to kill me you would have done it a long time ago.’
Eli nodded. Oskar took another half step back. How quickly could he get out the door? Should he leave the bag behind? Eli didn’t seem to notice his anxiety, his impulse to flee. Oskar stayed put, his muscles tensed.
‘Will I get…infected?’
Still looking down at the monster on her T-shirt, Eli shook her head. ‘I don’t want to infect anyone. Least of all you.’
‘What is it then? This alliance.’
She lifted her head to the point where she thought his face would be, saw that he was no longer there. Hesitated. Then walked up to him, took his head between her hands. Oskar let her do it. Eli looked…blank. Distant. But no hint of that face he had seen in the cellar. Her fingertips brushed against his ears. A sense of calm welled up quietly inside of his body.
Let it happen.
No matter what.
Eli’s face was twenty centimetres from his own. Her breath smelled funny, like the shed where his dad kept metal scraps and parts. Yes. She smelled…rusty. The tip of her finger stroked his ear.
‘I’m all alone,’ she whispered. ‘No one knows. Do you want to?’
‘Yes.’
She quickly brought her face up to his, sealed her lips over his upper lip, held it firm with a light, steady pressure. Her lips were warm and dry. Saliva started in his mouth and when he closed his own lips around her lower one it moistened it, softened. They carefully tasted each other’s lips, let them glide over each other and Oskar disappeared into a warm darkness that gradually lightened…
became a large room, a large room in a castle with a table in the middle laden with food, and Oskar…runs up to the delicacies, starts to eat from the platters with his hands. Around him there are other children, big and small. Everyone eats from the table. At the far end of the table there is a…man?…woman…person wearing what has to be a wig. An enormous mane of hair covers the person’s head. The person is holding a glass filled with a dark red liquid, comfortably reclining in the chair, sipping from the glass and nodding encouragingly to Oskar.
They eat and eat. Farther away, against a wall, Oskar can see people in poor clothes anxiously following the events at the table. He sees a woman with a brown shawl over her head and her hands clamped tight over her stomach and Oskar thinks ‘Mama’.
Then there is the ding of a glass and all attention is directed towards the man at the far end of the table. He stands up. Oskar is afraid of him. His mouth is small, thin, unnaturally red. His face is chalk-white. Oskar feels saliva run out the corner of his mouth, a little flap of flesh has loosened from the inside of his cheek towards the front, he runs his tongue over it.
The man is holding up a suede bag. With an elegant motion he opens the hand holding the bag shut and out roll two large white dice. It echoes in the large room when the two dice roll, come to a stop. The man takes up the dice in his hand, holds them out to Oskar and the other children.
The man opens his mouth to say something but at that moment the little flap of flesh falls out of Oskar’s mouth and…
Eli’s lips left his, she let go of his head, took a step back. Even though it scared him, Oskar tried to hold onto the image of the castle room again, but it was gone. Eli scrutinised him. Oskar rubbed his eyes, nodded.
‘It really happened, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
They stood there for a while, not saying anything. Then Eli said, ‘Do you want to come in?’
Oskar didn’t reply. Eli lifted her hands, let them fall.
‘I’m never going to hurt you.’
‘I know that.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘That T-shirt. Is it from the rubbish room?’
‘…yes.’
‘Have you washed it?’
Eli didn’t answer.
‘You’re a little gross, you know that?’
‘I can change, if you like.’
‘Good. Do that.’
He had read about the man on the gurney, under the sheet. The Ritual Killer.
Benke Edwards had wheeled all sorts through these corridors, to cold storage. Men and women of all ages and sizes. Children. There was no particular gurney for children and few things made Benke feel as uncomfortable as seeing the empty space on the trolley when he was transporting the body of a child; the little figure under the white cover, pushed up against the headboard. The whole lower half empty, the sheet smooth. That flat sheet was death itself.
But now he was dealing with a grown man, and not only that, a celebrity.
He guided the gurney through the silent corridors. The only sound was the squeak of the rubber wheels against the linoleum floor. There were no coloured markings on this floor. On the few occasions they ever had a visitor here they were always accompanied by a member of the staff.
Benke had waited outside the hospital while the police took photographs of the body. A few members of the press had been standing around with their cameras, outside the restricted area, taking pictures of the hospital with their powerful flashes. Tomorrow the pictures would be in the papers, complete with a dotted line showing how the man had fallen.
A celebrity.
The lump under the sheet gave no indication of any such thing. A lump of flesh like any other. He knew the man looked like a monster, that his body had exploded like a water balloon when he hit the ground, and he was thankful for the cover. Under the cover we are all alike.
Even so, many people were probably grateful that this particular lump of no longer living flesh was now being wheeled into cold storage, awaiting later transport to the crematorium when the police pathologists were done with it. The man had a wound in his throat that the police photographer had been particularly interested in getting on film.
But did it matter?
Benke saw himself as a philosopher of sorts. Probably came with the job. He had seen so much of what people really were when you got down to it, and he had developed a theory which was relatively uncomplicated.
‘Everything is in the brain.’
His voice echoed in the empty corridors as he stopped the gurney in front of the doors to the morgue, entered in the code and opened the door.
Yes. Everything is in the brain. From the beginning. The body is simply a kind of service unit that the brain is forced to be burdened with in order to keep itself alive. But everything is there from the beginning, in the brain. And the only way to change someone like this man under the sheet would be to operate on the brain.
Or turn it off.
The lock that was programmed to keep the door open for ten seconds after the code had been entered had still not been repaired and Benke was forced to hold the door open with one hand as he grabbed the gurney with the other and guided it into the room. The trolley bumped against the doorjamb and Benke swore.
If this had been the OR, it would have been fixed at once.
Then he noticed something unusual.
On the sheet, to the left of and slightly underneath the raised area that was the man’s face, there was a brownish stain. The door locked behind them as Benke bent down to take a closer look. The stain was slowly growing.
He’s bleeding.
Benke was not one to be easily shaken. This kind of thing had been known to happen before. Probably an accumulation of blood in the skull that had been jolted and started to drain when the trolley hit the doorframe.
The stain on the sheet grew larger.
Benke went over to a first aid cabinet and took out surgical tape and gauze. He had always thought it was funny that there was one in a place like this, but of course the supplies were here in case a living person injured themselves; got their finger caught on a gurney or some such thing.
With his hand on the sheet slightly above the stain he steeled himself. He was not afraid of dead bodies but this one had looked pretty bad. And now Benke had to bandage him up. He was the one who would get in trouble if blood spilled and messed up the floor in here.
So he swallowed, and folded the sheet down.
The man’s face defied all description. Impossible to imagine how he had lived for a week with this face. Nothing there that looked even remotely human, with the exception of an ear and an…eye.
Couldn’t they have…taped it shut?
The eye was open. Of course. There was hardly any eyelid to close it. And the eye itself was so badly damaged it looked as if scar tissue had formed in the eyeball.
Benke tore himself away from the dead man’s gaze and concentrated on the task at hand. The source of the stain appeared to be that wound on his throat.
He heard a soft dripping sound and quickly looked around. Damn. He must be a little on edge after all. Another drip. That came from his feet. He looked down. A drop of water had fallen from the gurney and landed on his shoe. Plop.
Water?
He examined the wound on the man’s throat. The liquid had formed a small pool underneath it and was spilling out over the metal rim of the stretcher.
Plop.
He moved his foot. Another drop fell onto the tile floor.
Plip.
He stirred the pool of liquid with his index finger, then rubbed his finger and thumb together. It wasn’t water. It was some slippery, transparent fluid. He smelled his hand. Nothing he recognised.
When he looked down at the white floor he saw a veritable puddle had formed there. The liquid was not transparent after all, it had a pink tinge. It reminded him of when blood separates in transfusion bags. The stuff that is left over when the red blood cells sink to the bottom.
Plasma.
The man was bleeding plasma.
How that was possible was a question the experts would have to deal with tomorrow, or rather, later today. His job was simply to patch it so it didn’t make a mess. Wanted to go home now. To crawl into bed beside his sleeping wife, read a few pages of The Abominable Man from Säffle, and then sleep.
Benke folded the gauze into a thick compress and pressed it against the wound. How the hell was he supposed to secure it with tape? The rest of the man’s neck was so mangled there was almost no area of undamaged skin to attach the tape to. But what did he care? He wanted to go home now. He pulled off long strips of adhesive, weaving them this way and that across the neck, an arrangement he would probably be criticised for later, but what the hell.
I’m a janitor, not a surgeon.
When the compress was in place he wiped off the stretcher and mopped the floor. Then he rolled the corpse into room four, rubbed his hands together. Mission accomplished. A job well done and a story to tell in the future. While he made a last check and turned off the light he was already working on it.
You know that murderer who fell from the top floor? Well, I was in charge of him later and when I wheeled him down to the morgue I saw something strange… He took the elevator up to his room, washed his hands thoroughly, changed and threw his coat into the laundry on his way out.
He walked down to the parking lot, got into his car and smoked a single cigarette before he started the engine. After he stubbed it out in the ashtray—which really needed to be emptied—he turned the key in the ignition.
The car was resisting as it always did when it was cold or damp. It always started in the end, though. You only had to keep at it. As the wah-wah sound on the third attempt transformed into a hacking engine roar he suddenly realised:
It doesn’t coagulate.
No. The stuff seeping out of the man’s neck was not going to coagulate under the compress. It would soak through and then spill onto the ground…and when they opened the door in a few hours…
Shit!
He pulled the key out of the ignition, thrust it angrily into his pocket, got out of the car and headed back to the hospital.
The living room was not as empty as the hall and the kitchen. Here there was a sofa, an armchair and a large coffee table with a lot of little things on it. A lone floor lamp sent a soft yellow glow over the table. But that was all. No carpets, no pictures, no TV. Thick blankets had been draped over the windows.
It looks like a prison. A big prison cell.
Oskar whistled, tentatively. Yes. There was an echo, but not too much. Probably because of the blankets. He put his bag down next to the armchair. The click when the bottom of it landed on the hard cork flooring was amplified, sounded desolate.
He had started to look at the things on the table when Eli came out of the next room, now wearing her too-big chequered shirt. Oskar waved his arm indicating the living room.
‘Are you two moving?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I was just thinking.’
You two?
Why didn’t he think of it before? Oskar let his gaze travel over the things on the table. Looked like toys, every last one of them. Old toys.
‘That old man who was here before. That wasn’t your dad, was it?’
‘No.’
‘Was he also…?’
‘No.’
Oskar nodded. Looked around the room again. Hard to imagine anyone could live like this. Except if…
‘Are you sort of…poor?’
Eli walked over to the table, picked up a box that looked like a black egg and handed it to Oskar. He leaned over, held it under the lamp in order to see better.
The surface of the egg was rough and when Oskar looked more closely he saw hundreds of complex strands of gold thread. The egg was heavy as if the whole thing was made of some kind of metal. Oskar turned it this way and that, looked at the gold threads embedded on the egg’s surface. Eli stood next to Oskar, he smelled it again…the smell of rust.
‘What’s it worth, do you think?’
‘Don’t know. A lot?’
‘There are only two of them in the world. If you had both of them you could sell them and buy yourself…a nuclear power plant, maybe.’
‘Nooo…?’
‘Well, I don’t know. What does a nuclear power plant cost? Fifty million?’
‘I think it would cost…billions.’
‘Really? In that case I guess you couldn’t.’
‘What would you do with a nuclear power plant?’
Eli laughed.
‘Put it between your hands. Like this. Cup them. And then you let it roll back and forth.’
Oskar did as Eli said. Rolled the egg gently back and forth in his cupped hands and felt the egg…crack, collapse between his palms. He gasped and removed the upper hand. The egg was now just a heap of hundreds…thousands of tiny slivers.
‘Gosh, I’m sorry. I was careful, I—’
‘Shhh. It’s supposed to be like that. Make sure you don’t drop any of it. Pour them out onto this.’
Eli pointed to a piece of white paper on the table. Oskar held his breath as he gently let the glittering shards fall from his hand. The individual pieces were smaller than drops of water and Oskar had to used his other hand to wipe his palm free of every last one.
‘But it broke.’
‘Here. Look.’
Eli pulled the lamp closer to the table, concentrated its dim light on the heap of metal slivers. Oskar leaned over and looked. One piece, no bigger than a tick, lay on its own to one side of the stack, and when he looked very closely he could see that it had indentations and notches on a few sides, almost microscopic light bulb-shaped protrusions on the other. He got it.
‘It’s a puzzle.’
‘Yes.’
‘But…can you put it together again?’
‘I think so.’
‘It must take forever.’
‘Yes.’
Oskar looked at more pieces that were spread out next to the pile. They looked to be identical to the first, but when he looked closer he saw there were subtle variations. The notches were not in exactly the same place, the protrusions were at another angle. He also saw a piece was all smooth, except for a gold border a hair’s width across…A piece of the outside.
He slouched down into the armchair.
‘It would drive me crazy.’
‘Think about the guy who made it.’
Eli rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out so she looked like the dwarf Dopey. Oskar laughed. Ha-ha. When he stopped the sound still vibrated in the walls. Desolate. Eli sat down on the couch and crossed her legs, looking at him with…anticipation. He looked away and looked at the table, and the toys that made a landscape of ruins.
Desolate.
All at once he felt tired in that way again. She wasn’t ‘his girl’, couldn’t be that. She was…something else. There was a big distance between them that couldn’t be…he shut his eyes, leaned back in the armchair, and the black behind his eyelids was the space that separated them.
He dozed off, gliding into a momentary dream.
The space between them was filled with ugly, sticky insects that flew at him and when they got closer he saw they had teeth. He waved his hand to get rid of them, and woke up. Eli was sitting on the couch watching him.
‘Oskar. I’m a person, just like you. It’s just that I have…a very unusual illness.’
Oskar nodded.
A thought wanted to get out. Something. A context. He didn’t catch hold of it. Dropped it. But then that other thought came out, the terrifying one. That Eli was just pretending. That there was an ancient person inside of her, watching him, who knew everything, and was smiling at him smiling in secret.
But that can’t be.
In order to have something to do, he dug around in his bag for the Walkman, took out the tape that was in it, read the title, Kiss: Unmasked, turned it over, Kiss: Destroyer, put it back.
I should go home.
Eli leaned forward.
‘What’s that?’
‘This? It’s a Walkman.’
‘Is it for…listening to music?’
‘Yes.’
She doesn’t know anything. She’s super-intelligent but she doesn’t know anything. What does she do all day? Sleep, of course. Where does she keep the coffin? That’s right. She never slept those times she came over. She simply lay there in my bed and waited for the sun to come up. I must be gone…
‘Can I try it?’
Oskar held it out to her. She took it and looked as if she didn’t know what to do with it, but then put the headphones on and looked inquiringly at him. Oskar pointed at the buttons.
‘Press the one that says Play.’
Eli read the top of the buttons, selected play. Oskar felt a calm settle over him. This was normal; playing your music for a friend. He wondered what Eli would think of Kiss.
She pushed in the button, and even from his armchair Oskar could hear the whispery, noisy jangle of guitar, drums and vocals. She had ended up in the middle of one of the heavier songs.
Eli’s eyes opened wide, she screamed in pain. Oskar was so shocked he was thrown back in the armchair. It tipped back, almost falling over while he watched Eli tear the headphones off so violently that the wires detached, threw them down, pressed her hands against her ears, whimpering.
Oskar gaped, staring at the headphones that had hit the wall. He got to his feet, picked them up. Completely destroyed. Both of the wires had been torn out of the earpieces. He put them on the table and sank down into the armchair again.
Eli removed her hands from her ears.
‘Sorry, I…it hurt so much.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Was it expensive?’
‘No.’
Eli took down a box that was stacked on top of the others, reached into it and fished out a couple of banknotes, holding them out to Oskar.
‘Here.’
He took them, counted them out. Three thousand-kronor bills and two hundreds. He felt something akin to fear, looked at the carton she had taken the money from, back at Eli, back at the money.
‘I…it cost fifty kronor.’
‘Take it anyway.’
‘No, but, it…it was only the headphones that broke and they…’
‘But you can have it. Please?’
Oskar hesitated, then crumpled the notes into his pants pocket while he mentally calculated their worth in advertising flyers. Around one year of Saturdays, maybe…twenty-five thousand delivered flyers. One hundred and fifty hours. More. A fortune. The bills in his pocket rubbed uncomfortably against him.
‘Thanks.’
Eli nodded, picked something up off the table that looked like a knot of wires but was probably a brain teaser. Oskar looked at her as she fiddled with the knots. Her bent neck, her long thin fingers that flew over the wires. He went over everything she had told him. Her dad, the aunt who lived in the city, the school she went to. Lies, all of it.
And where had she gotten the money from? Stolen?
He was so unaccustomed to the feeling he didn’t even know what it was at first. It started like a kind of tingle in his head, continued into his body, then made a sharp cold arc from his stomach to his head. He was…angry. Not desperate or scared. Angry.
Because she had lied to him and then…and who had she stolen the money from anyway? From someone she had…? He crossed his arms over his stomach, leaned back.
‘You kill people.’
‘Oskar…’
‘If this is true then you must kill people. Take their money.’
‘I’ve been given the money.’
‘You’re just lying. The whole time.’
‘It’s true.’
‘What part is true? That you’re lying?’
Eli put down the tangle of knots and looked at him with wounded eyes, threw her arms out. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Prove it to me.’
‘Prove what?’
‘That you are…who you say you are.’
She looked at him for a long time. Then she shook her head.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Why not.’
‘Guess.’
Oskar sank deeper into the armchair. Felt the small wad of bills in his pocket. In his mind saw the bundles of advertising flyers that had arrived that morning. That had to be delivered before Tuesday. Grey fatigue in his body. Tears in his head. Anger. ‘Guess.’ More games. More lies. Wanted to leave. To sleep.
The money. She gave me money so I would stay.
He got up out of the armchair, took the crumpled bills from his pocket, placed everything on the table except a hundred kronor note. Put it back in his pocket and said, ‘I’m going home.’
She leaned over, grabbed his wrist. ‘Stay. Please.’
‘Why? All you do is lie.’
He tried to move away from her, but her grip on his wrist hardened.
‘Let me go!’
‘I’m not some freak from the circus!’
Oskar clenched his teeth, said calmly, ‘Let me go.’
She did not let go. The cold arc of anger in Oskar’s chest started to vibrate, sing, and he threw himself on top of her. Landed on top of her and pressed her backwards into the couch. She weighed almost nothing and he had her pinned up against the armrest, sat down on her chest while the arc bent, shook, made black dots in front of his eyes as he raised his arm and hit her in the face as hard as he could.
A sharp slapping sound bounced between the walls and her head jerked to the side, drops of saliva flew out of her mouth and his hand burned. The arc cracked, fell to pieces and his anger dissolved.
He sat on her chest, looked bewildered at her little head, turned in profile against the black leather of the couch, as a flush bloomed on the cheek he had struck. She lay still, her eyes open. He rubbed his hands over his face.
‘Sorry. Sorry. I…’
Suddenly she turned around, threw him off her chest, pushed him up against the back of the couch. He tried to get a grip on her shoulders, but missed, got a hold of her hips and she landed with her belly right over his face. He threw her off, twisted around and both of them tried to get a hold of the other.
They rolled around on the couch, wrestling. With tensed muscles and utter concentration. But with care, so that neither would hurt the other. They snaked around each other, bumped against the table.
Pieces of the black egg fell to the floor with the sound of raindrops on a metal roof.
He didn’t bother going up to his room to get his coat. His shift was over.
This is my time off, and this is something I’m doing for the sheer pleasure of it.
He could help himself to a spare pathologist’s coat in the morgue if it was really…messy. The lift came and he walked in, pushed the button for lower level 2. What would he do in that case? Call the ER and see if someone could come down and sew him up? There was no protocol for this kind of situation.
Probably the bleeding, or whatever it was called, had already stopped, but he had to make sure. Would not be able to sleep otherwise. Would lie there and hear the dripping.
He smiled to himself as he got out of the lift. How many normal people would be prepared to take care of this kind of thing without batting an eye? Not many. He was pretty pleased with himself for…well, for doing his duty. Taking responsibility.
I’m not completely normal.
And he couldn’t deny it: there was something in him that was actually hoping that…that the bleeding had continued; that he would have to call the ER, that there would be a scene. However much he wanted to go home and sleep. Because it would make a better story, that’s why.
No, he was not completely normal. He had no problems with the corpses; organic machines with the brains turned off. But what could make him a little paranoid were all these corridors.
Simply the thought of this network of tunnels ten metres underground, the large rooms and offices in some kind of administrative department in hell. So large. So quiet. So empty.
The corpses are a picture of health by comparison.
He punched in the code, automatically put his finger on the opener which only answered with a helpless click. Pushed the door open manually and walked into the morgue, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves.
What was this?
The man he had left covered in a sheet now lay fully exposed. His penis was erect, pointing to one side. The sheet lay on the floor. Benke’s smoke-damaged airways squeaked as he gasped for breath.
The man wasn’t dead. No. He couldn’t be dead…since he was moving.
Slowly, in an almost dream-like way, the man turned over on the gurney. His hands fumbled for something and Benke instinctively took a step back as one of them—it didn’t even look like a hand— swept past his face. The man tried to get up, fell back onto the metal stretcher. The lone eye stared straight ahead without blinking.
A sound. The man was uttering a sound.
‘Eeeeeeeeee…’
Benke rubbed his face. Something had happened to his skin. His skin felt…he looked at his hand. Rubber gloves.
Behind his hand he saw the man make another attempt to get up.
What the hell do I do?
Again the man fell down onto the gurney with a moist boom. A few drops of that fluid splattered onto Benke’s face. He tried to wipe it away with the rubber glove but only managed to smear it around.
He took up a corner of his shirt and wiped himself with it.
Ten storeys. He fell ten storeys.
OK, OK, you’ve got a situation here. Deal with it.
If the man wasn’t dead, he was surely in the process of dying. Needed care.
‘Eeeee…’
‘I’m here. I’ll help you. I’m going to take you to the emergency room. Try to lie still, I will…’
Benke walked over and put his hands on the man’s struggling body. The man’s un-deformed hand shot out and grabbed Benke’s wrist. Damn, he was strong. Benke had to use both hands to free himself from the man’s grip.
The only thing nearby to cover the man to warm him was the standard-issue morgue sheet. Benke spread three of them over the man who was writhing like a worm on a hook, still making that sound.
He leaned down over the man. ‘Now I’ll take you down to the emergency room, OK? Try to keep still.’
He pushed the stretcher to the door and, despite the situation, remembered that the door opener wasn’t working. He walked over to the head of the gurney, opened the door and looked down at the man’s head. Immediately wishing he hadn’t done so.
The mouth, which was not a mouth, was opening.
The half-healed wound came apart with a sound like when you skin a fish, single strips of pink skin refused to tear, stretched out when the hole in the lower half of the face widened, kept widening.
‘AAAAAA!’
The howl echoed through the empty corridors and Benke’s heart was beating faster.
Keep still! Be quiet!
If he’d had a hammer in his hand at that moment he would have likely smashed it right into that revolting, quivering mass with that staring eye, those strips of skin over the mouth hole that now snapped like over-stretched rubber bands. Benke could see the man’s teeth glow white in all that reddish-brown fluid that was his face.
Benke walked back to the foot end of the gurney again, started to push it through the corridors, towards the lift. He half ran, afraid that the man was going to twist so much he fell off.
The corridors stretched out endlessly before him, as in a nightmare. Yes. It was like a nightmare. All thoughts of a ‘good story’ were gone. He wanted to come up to the surface where there were other people, living people who could rescue him from this monster who was screaming on the gurney.
He reached the lift and pressed the button that would get it to come, visualising the route to the ER. Five minutes and he would be there.
Already up on the ground floor there would be other people who could help him. Two minutes and he would be back in real life.
Come on, damn you!
The man’s healthy hand was waving.
Benke looked at it and closed his eyes, opened them again. The man was trying to say something, softly. He was indicating for Benke to come closer. He was clearly conscious. Benke moved next to the gurney, bent down over the man. ‘Yes, what is it?’
The hand suddenly grabbed hold of his neck, pulled his head down. Benke lost his balance, fell down over the man. The grip on his neck iron-hard as the hand pulled him down to that…hole.
He tried to grab hold of the metal bars at the top end of the stretcher to resist, but his head twisted to the side and his eyes ended up only a few centimetres from the wet compress on the man’s neck.
‘Let go of me, for…’
A finger pushed into his ear and he heard the bones in the ear canal crackle and give way as the finger forced itself in, further in. He kicked out with his legs and when his shin hit the metal bars under the gurney he finally screamed.
Then teeth clamped down on his cheek and the finger in his ear reached a point where it turned something off, something turned off and…he gave up.
The last thing he saw was how the wet compress in front of his eyes changed colour and grew pink as the man chewed on his face.
The last thing he heard was a
pling
as the lift arrived.
They lay next to each other on the couch, sweating, panting. Oskar was sore all over, exhausted. He yawned so wide his jaws cracked. Eli also yawned. Oskar turned his head to her.
‘Give it up.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You aren’t really sleepy, are you?’
‘No.’
Oskar made an effort to keep his eyes open, was talking almost without moving his lips. Eli’s face was starting to appear foggy, unreal.
‘What do you do? To get blood.’
Eli looked at him. For a long time. Then she seemed to make up her mind about something and Oskar saw how something moved inside her cheeks, lips, as if she was swirling her tongue around in there. Then she parted her lips, opened wide.
And he saw her teeth. She closed her mouth again.
Oskar turned away and looked up at the ceiling where a thread of dusty cobwebs stretched down from the unused overhead light. He didn’t even have the energy to be surprised. Oh. She was a vampire. But he already knew that.
‘Are there a lot of you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know.’
‘No, I don’t.’
Oskar’s gaze roamed the ceiling, trying to locate more cobwebs.
Found two. Thought he saw a spider crawling on one of them. He blinked. Blinked again. Eyes full of sand. No spider.
‘What do I call you, then? This thing that you are.’
‘Eli.’
‘Is that really your name?’
‘Almost.’
‘What’s your real name?’
A pause. Eli shifted away from him, against the back of the couch, turned around onto her side.
‘Elias.’
‘But that’s a…boy’s name.’
‘Yes.’
Oskar closed his eyes. Couldn’t take any more. His eyelids had glued themselves shut onto his eyeballs. A black hole was growing, enveloping his whole body. The faint impression somewhere far away at the very back of his head that he should say something, do something. But he didn’t have the energy.
The black hole exploded in slow motion. He was sucked forward, inward, turned a slow somersault in space, into sleep.
Far away he felt someone stroke his cheek. Didn’t manage to articulate the thought that, because he felt it, it must be his own. But somewhere, on a planet far far away, someone gently stroked someone’s cheek.
And that was good.
Then there were only stars.