Sunday
8 November (Evening/Night)

It is half past eight, Sunday evening.

At the same time as the ambulance with Virginia and Lacke is driving over the Traneberg bridge, the Stockholm district chief of police holds up a photograph for the image-hungry reporters, Eli chooses a dress out of Oskar’s mother’s closet, Tommy squeezes glue into a plastic bag and draws in the exquisite fumes of numbness and forgetfulness, a squirrel sees Håkan Bengtsson—the first living creature in fourteen hours to have done so—and Staffan, who has been searching for him, is pouring out a cup of tea.

Staffan has not realised that a sliver is missing from the very tip of the spout and a large quantity of tea runs along the spout, the teapot, onto the kitchen counter. He mumbles something and tips the teapot higher so the tea comes splashing out and the lid tumbles off and into the cup. Scalding hot tea splashes onto his hands and he slams the teapot down, holding his arms stiffly at his sides while in his head he runs through the Hebrew alphabet to quell his impulse to throw the teapot against the wall.

Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth…

Yvonne came into the kitchen, saw Staffan bent over the counter with closed eyes.

‘Are you OK?’

Staffan shook his head. ‘It’s nothing.’

Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samech…

‘Are you sad?’

‘No.’

Kaf, Resh, Shin, Taf. There. Better.

He opened his eyes, pointed at the teapot.

‘That’s a terrible teapot.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes, it…spills when you try to pour the tea.’

‘I’ve never noticed.’

‘Well, it does.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

Staffan pinched his lips together, stretched out his scalded hand towards her with a gesture of Peace. Shalom. Be quiet. ‘Yvonne. Right now I feel such an…intense desire to hit you. So please, don’t say any more.’

Yvonne took half a step back. Something in her had been prepared for this. She had not admitted this insight to herself, but had sensed that behind his pious façade Staffan stored some kind of rage.

She crossed her arms, breathed in and out a few times while Staffan stood still, staring at the teacup with the lid in it. Then she said, ‘Is that what you do?’

‘What?’

‘Hit. When something goes wrong.’

‘Have I hit you?’

‘No, but you said—’

‘I said. And you listened. And now it’s all right.’

‘And if I hadn’t listened?’

Staffan looked completely calm again and Yvonne relaxed, lowered her arms. He took both her hands in his, kissed the backs of them lightly.

‘Yvonne. We have to listen to each other.’

The tea was poured out and they drank it in the living room. Staffan made a mental note to buy Yvonne a new teapot. She asked about the search in Judarn forest and Staffan told her. She did her best to engage him in conversation on other topics but finally the unavoidable question came.

‘Where’s Tommy?’

‘I…don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? Yvonne…’

‘Well, at a friend’s house.’

‘Hmm. When is he coming home?’

‘I think he was…supposed to spend the night. Over there.’

‘There?’

‘Yes, at…’

In her head Yvonne went through the names of Tommy’s friends that she knew. Didn’t want to tell Staffan that Tommy was gone for the night without knowing where. Staffan took a parent’s responsibility very seriously.

‘…at Robban’s.’

‘Robban. Is that his best friend?’

‘Yes, I guess so.’

‘And what’s the rest of his name?’

‘…Ahlgren. Why? Is that someone you have…’

‘No, I was just thinking.’

Staffan took his spoon, hit it lightly against the cup. A delicate ringing sound. He nodded.

‘Great. You know, I think we’re going to have to call this Robban and ask Tommy to come home for a while. So I can talk to him a little.’

‘I don’t have the number.’

‘No, but…Ahlgren. You know where he lives, don’t you? All you have to do is look it up in the phone book.’

Staffan got off the couch and Yvonne bit her lower lip, felt how she was constructing a labyrinth that was getting harder and harder to get out of. He got the phone book and stopped in the middle of the living room, flipping through it and mumbling, ‘Ahlgren, Ahlgren…Hm. Which street does he live on?’

‘I…Björnsonsgatan.’

‘Björnsonsgatan…no. No Ahlgren there. But there is one here on Ibsengatan. Could it be him?’

When Yvonne didn’t answer, Staffan marked his place with his finger and said, ‘Think I’ll give him a try at any rate. It’s Robert, right?’

‘Staffan…’

‘Yes?’

‘I promised him not to tell.’

‘Now I don’t understand anything.’

‘Tommy. I said I wouldn’t tell you…where he is.’

‘So he is not at Robban’s?’

‘No.’

‘Where is he then?’

‘I…I promised.’

Staffan put the phone book on the coffee table, went and sat down next to Yvonne on the couch. She took a sip of tea, held the teacup in front of her face as if to hide behind it while Staffan waited for her. When she put the cup down on the saucer she saw that her hands were shaking. Staffan put his hand on her knee.

‘Yvonne. You have to understand that—’

‘I promised.’

‘I only want to talk to him. Forgive me for saying this, Yvonne, but I think it’s exactly this kind of inability to deal with a situation as it arises that is the reason…well, that they happen in the first place. In my experience, the faster young people have someone respond to their actions, the greater the chance that…take a heroin addict, for example. If someone takes action when he is only doing, say, hashish…’

‘Tommy doesn’t do things like that.’

‘Are you completely sure of that?’

Silence fell. Yvonne knew that for each second that went by her ‘yes’ in response to Staffan’s question decreased in value. Tick-tock. Now she had already answered ‘no’ without saying the word. And Tommy did act strange sometimes. When he came home. Something about his eyes. What if he…

Staffan leaned back, knew the battle was won. Now he was only waiting for her conditions.

Yvonne’s eyes were searching for something on the table.

‘What is it?’

‘My cigarettes, have you—’

‘In the kitchen. Yvonne—’

‘Yes. Yes. You can’t go to him now.’

‘No. You can decide. If you think—’

‘Tomorrow morning. Before he goes to school. Promise me that you won’t go to him now.’

‘Promise. So. What kind of mysterious place is he holed up in anyway?’

Yvonne told him.

Then she went out into the kitchen and smoked a cigarette, blew the smoke out through the open window. Smoked one more, cared less about where the smoke went. When Staffan came out into the kitchen, waved away the smoke with his hand and asked where the cellar key was. She said she had forgotten for the moment but it would probably come back to her tomorrow morning.

If he was nice.

When Eli had gone Oskar sat down at the kitchen table again looking through newspaper articles. The headache was starting to lessen now that the impressions were taking on more of a pattern.

Eli had explained that the man had become…infected. And worse. The infection was the only thing in him that was alive. His brain was dead, and the infection was controlling and directing him. Towards Eli.

Eli had told him, begged him not to do anything. Eli would leave tomorrow as soon as it got dark, and Oskar had of course asked why not leave tonight already?

Because…I can’t.

Why not? I can help you.

Oskar, I can’t. I’m too weak.

How can that be? You’ve just…

I just am.

And Oskar had realised that he was the reason that Eli was weak. All the blood that had run out in the hall. If the old guy got a hold of Eli it would be all Oskar’s fault.

The clothes!

Oskar got up so violently the chair tipped over.

The bag with Eli’s bloodied clothes was still sitting by the couch, the shirt half hanging out. He pushed it deeper into the bag and the sleeve was like a damp sponge when he pressed it down, tied the bag and…He stopped, looked at the hand that had pressed the shirt down.

The cut he had made in his palm had a crust that had broken up a little, revealing the wound underneath.

The blood…he didn’t want to mix it. Am I…infected now?

His legs carried him mechanically to the front door with the bag in his hand. He listened for sounds outside, didn’t hear anyone and ran up the stairs to the garbage chute, opened it. He pushed the bag in through the opening, held it fast for a moment, dangling in the dark.

A cold breeze whooshed through the chute, chilling his hand where he held it outstretched, squeezed around the plastic knot of the bag. The bag shone white against the black, slightly craggy walls of the duct. If he let go, the bag would not be sucked up. It would fall down. Gravity would pull it down. Into the big garbage sack.

In a few days the garbage truck would come and collect the sack. It came early in the morning. The orange, blinking lights would flash onto Oskar’s ceiling at about the same time as he generally woke up and he would lie there in his bed and listen to the rumbling, masticating crunch as the garbage was crushed. Maybe he would get up and watch the men in their overalls, who tossed the big bags with habitual ease, press the button. The jaws of the garbage truck closing and the men who then hopped into the truck and drove the short distance to the next building.

It always gave him such a feeling of…warmth. That he was safe in his room. That things worked. Maybe there was also a longing. For those men, for the truck. To be allowed to sit in that dimly-lit coach, drive away…

Let go. I have to let go.

The hand was convulsively clenched around the bag. His arm was aching from having been held outstretched so long. The back of his hand was numb from the cold air. He let go.

There was a hissing sound as the bag slipped along the walls, a half second of silence as it fell freely and then a thud when it landed in the sack below.

I’ll help you.

He looked at his hand again. The hand that helped. The hand that…

I’ll kill someone. I’ll go in and get the knife and then I’ll go out and kill someone. Jonny. I’ll slit his throat and gather up his blood and then I’ll bring it home for Eli because what does it matter now that I’m infected and soon I will…

His legs wanted to crumple under him and he had to lean on the edge of the garbage chute not to fall over. He had thought it. For real. This wasn’t like the game with the tree. He had…for a moment…really thought about doing it.

Warm. He was warm, like he had a fever. His body ached and he wanted to go lie down. Now.

I’m infected. I’m going to become a…vampire.

He forced his legs to move back down the stairs while he steadied himself with one hand—

the uninfected one

—on the railing. He managed to let himself back into the apartment, into his room, lay on his bed and stared at the wallpaper. The forest. Quickly one of his figures appeared, looked him in the eyes. The little gnome. He stroked his finger over it while a completely ridiculous little thought appeared:

Tomorrow I have to go to school.

And there was a worksheet he hadn’t filled out yet. Africa. He should get up now, sit down at his desk, light the lamp and look up places in the geography book. Find meaningless names and write them down on the blank lines.

That was what he ought to do. He softly stroked the gnome’s little cap. Then he tapped on the wall.

E.L.I.

No answer. Was probably out—

doing what we do.

He pulled the covers over his head. A fever-like chill coursed through his body. He tried to imagine it. How it would be. To live forever. Feared, hated. No. Eli wouldn’t hate him. If they were… together…

He tried to imagine it, he spun out a fantasy about it. After a while the front door was opened. His mum was home.

Pillows of fat.

Tommy stared blankly at the picture in front of him. The girl was pressing her breasts together with her hands so they stood out like two balloons, pursed her mouth into a pout. It looked sick. He had thought he was going to jack off, but there must be something wrong with his brain, because he thought the girl looked like a freak.

He folded the magazine up with unnatural slowness, tucked it back under the sofa cushions. Every little movement directed by conscious thought. Wasted. He was utterly wasted with glue fumes. And that was good. No world. Only the room he was in, and outside that…a billowing desert.

Staffan.

He tried to think about Staffan. Couldn’t. Didn’t get a hold of him. Only saw that cardboard cut-out of the policeman up at the post office. Life-size. To scare off any would-be robbers.

Should we rob the post office?

Man, you must be crazy! Can’t you see the cardboard policeman is there?

Tommy giggled when the cardboard policeman’s face took on Staffan’s features. Assigned as punishment. To guard the post office. There was something written on the cut-out as well, what was it?

Crime doesn’t pay. No. The police are watching you. No. What the hell was it? Watch out! I’m a champion pistol-shooter!

Tommy laughed. Laughed more. Laughed until he shook and thought the naked bulb in the ceiling was swinging to and fro in time with his laughter. Giggled at it. Watch out! The cardboard policeman! With his cardboard gun! And his cardboard head!

There was a knock inside his head. Someone wanted to come into the post office.

The cardboard policeman pricks up his ears. There are two hundred cardboards at the post office. Undo the safety. Bang-bang.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Bang.

Staffan…Mum, shit…

Tommy stiffened. Tried to think. Couldn’t. Just a ragged cloud in his head. Then he calmed down. Maybe it was Robban or Lasse. It could be Staffan. And he was made of cardboard.

Penis-dummy, cardboard-mummy.

Tommy cleared his throat, said thickly, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me.’

He recognised the voice, couldn’t place it. Not Staffan, at any rate. Not paper-Papa.

Barba-papa. Stop it.

‘Who are you, then?’

‘Can you open?’

‘The post office is closed for the day. Come back in five years.’

‘I have money.

‘Paper money?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good.’

He got up off the couch. Slowly, slowly. The contours of things didn’t want to stay put. His head was full of lead.

Concrete cap.

He stood still for a few seconds, swaying. The concrete floor tilted dreamily to the right, to the left, like in the Funny House. He walked forward, one step at a time, lifted the latch, pushed open the door. It was that girl. Oskar’s friend. Tommy stared at her without understanding what he was seeing.

Sun and surf.

The girl was wearing only a thin dress. Yellow with white dots that absorbed Tommy’s gaze. He tried to focus on the dots but they started to dance, move around so he became sick to his stomach. She was maybe twenty centimetres shorter than him.

As cute as…a summer day.

‘Is it summer now all of a sudden?’ he asked.

The girl put her head to one side.

‘What?’

‘Well you’re wearing a…what’s it called…a sundress.’

‘Yes.’

Tommy nodded, pleased that he had been able to think of the word. What had she said? Money. Yes. Oskar had said that…

‘Do you…want to buy something?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Yes, sure.’

‘Say that I can come in.’

Tommy made an exaggerated, sweeping gesture with his arm. Saw his own hand moving in slow-motion, a drugged fish swimming through the air.

‘Step inside. Welcome to the…local branch.’

He didn’t have the energy to stay on his feet any longer. The floor wanted him. He turned around and flopped back on the couch. The girl walked in, closed the door behind her, put the latch back on. He saw her as an enormous chicken, giggling at his vision. The chicken sat down in an armchair.

‘What is it?’

‘No, it’s just…you’re so…yellow.’

‘I see.’

The girl crossed her hands over a little purse in her lap. He hadn’t noticed that she had one. No. Not a purse. More like a cosmetic bag. Tommy looked at it. You see a bag. You wonder what’s inside.

‘What do you have in there?’

‘Money.’

‘Of course.’

Nope. This is fishy. There’s something strange about this.

‘What do you want to buy, then?’

The girl unzipped the case and took out a thousand kronor note. One more. Then another. Three thousand. The bills looked ridiculously large in her small hands when she leaned forward and placed them on the floor.

Tommy chortled, ‘What’s all this?’

‘Three thousand.’

‘Yes. But what for?’

‘For you.’

‘Give me a break.’

‘No, really.’

‘That must be some kind of damn…Monopoly money or something. Isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No.’

‘What’s it for, anyway?’

‘Because I want to buy something from you.’

‘You want to buy something for three thou…no.’

Tommy stretched out one arm as far as he could, snapped up a bill. Felt it, crinkled it with his hand, held it up against the light and saw the watermark. Same king or whoever was printed on the front. The real deal.

‘You’re not kidding, are you?’

‘No.’

Three thousand. Could…go somewhere. Fly somewhere.

Then Staffan and his mum could stand there and…Tommy felt his head clear a little. The whole thing was cuckoo but OK: three thousand. That was a fact. Now the only question was…

‘What do you want to buy? For this you can have…’

‘Blood.’

‘Blood.’

‘Yes.’

Tommy snorted, shook his head.

‘No, sorry. We’re all sold out.’

The girl sat still in the armchair, looking at him. Didn’t even smile.

‘No, but seriously,’ Tommy said. ‘I mean, what?’

‘You’ll get this money…if I get some blood.’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

Tommy suddenly got it.

What the hell…

‘Are you serious?’

The girl pointed at the bills.

‘It’s not dangerous.’

‘But…what…how?’

The girl stuck her hand into the kit, fished something out. A small, white, square bit of plastic. Shook it. It rattled a little. Now Tommy saw what it was. A packet of razor blades. She put it into her lap, took out something else. A skin-coloured rectangle. A large band-aid.

This is ridiculous.

‘No, cut it out now. Don’t you understand that…I could just take that money from you, you know. Put it in my pocket and say, “What? Three thousand? Haven’t seen it.” It’s a lot of money, don’t you realise that? Where did you get it from?’

The girl shut her eyes, sighed. When she opened them again she didn’t look as friendly.

‘Do you want to or not?’

She means it. She really means it. No…no…

‘What, are you, like, going to…swish, and then…’

The girl nodded, eagerly.

Swish? Wait a minute. WAIT a little now…what was it… pigs…

He frowned. The thought bounced around his head like a rubber ball thrown hard inside a room, trying to find a resting place, to stop. And it stopped. He remembered something. Gaped. Looked her in the eyes.

‘No…’

‘Yes.’

‘This is some kind of joke, isn’t it? You know what? Go. I want you to leave.’

‘I have an illness. I need blood. You can have more money if you want.’

She dug around in the kit and took out two more thousand kronor notes, put them on the floor. Five thousand. ‘Please.’

The murderer. Vällingby. His throat slit. But what the hell, this girl…

‘What do you need it for…what the hell, you’re just a kid, you…’

‘Are you scared?’

‘No, I can always…are you scared?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of you saying no.’

‘But I am saying no. This is completely…come off it. Go home.’

The girl sat still in the chair, thinking. Then she nodded, got up and picked the money up off the floor, put it back in the make-up kit. Tommy looked at the spot where it had been. Five. Thousand. A clink as the latch was lifted. Tommy turned over on his back.

‘But…what…are you planning to slit my throat?’

‘No, on the inside of your elbow. Only a little.’

‘But what will you do with it?’

‘Drink it.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

Tommy’s mind turned inward and he saw that chart of the circulatory system projected over his skin like an overhead transparency. Felt, maybe for the first time in his life, that he had a circulatory system. Not just isolated points, wounds where one or more drops came out, but a large pumping tree of veins filled with…how much was it?…four to five litres of blood.

‘What kind of illness is it?’

The girl didn’t say anything, just stood there at the door with the latch in her hand, studying him, and then the lines of veins and arteries of his body, the chart, suddenly took on the character of a…butcher’s chart. He pushed the thought away, and thought instead: become a blood donor. Twenty-five even and a cheese sandwich. ‘So give me the money.’

The girl unzipped the case, took out the bills again.

‘How about if I give you…three now. And two after?’

‘Yeah, sure. But I could just jump you and take the money anyway, don’t you understand that?’

‘No. You couldn’t.’

She held the three thousand out to him, between index and middle finger. He held each one of them up to the light, checking to make sure that they were genuine. Rolled them into a cylinder that he clenched his left hand around.

‘OK. And now?’

The girl put the other two bills on the chair, crouched down next to the couch, dug out the white packet from the kit, shaking out a razor blade.

She’s done this before.

The girl turned the razor blade to see which side was sharper. Then held it up next to her face. A little message, whose only word was: swish.

‘You can’t tell anyone about this.’

‘What happens if I do?’

‘You cannot tell anyone about this. Ever.’

‘No.’ Tommy glanced at his outstretched arm, at the thousand kronor bills on the chair. ‘How much are you going to take?’

‘One litre.’

‘Is that…a lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it so much that I…’

‘No. You can handle it.’

‘Because it comes back.’

‘Yes.’

Tommy nodded. Then watched with fascination as the razor blade, shining like a little mirror, was lowered against his skin. As if it was happening to someone else, somewhere else. Only saw the play of lines. The girl’s jawbone, her dark hair, his white arm, the rectangle of the razor blade that pushed aside a thin hair on his arm and reached its goal, rested for a split-second against the swelling of the vein, somewhat darker than the surrounding skin.

Then it pressed down, lightly, lightly. A point that sank down without puncturing it. Then—

Swish.

Tommy had an involuntary reaction to pull away and he gasped, squeezed his other hand tightly around the bills. A creaking inside his head as his teeth bit down, grinding against each other. The blood streamed out, pressed out in spurts.

The razor blade fell to the floor with a tinkle and the girl grabbed hold of him with both hands, pressing her lips against the inside of his arm.

Tommy turned his head away, only felt her warm lips, her tongue lapping against his skin and again he saw that chart inside his head, the channels that the blood ran through, rushing towards that… opening.

It’s running out of me.

Yes. The intensity of the pain increased. The arm was starting to feel paralysed; he no longer felt the lips, he only felt the strong suction, how it was sucked out of him, how it was…

Flowing away.

He got scared. Wanted to put an end to it. It hurt too much. The tears came to his eyes, he opened his mouth to say something, to… couldn’t. There were no words that would…He bent his free arm towards his mouth, pressed the clenched fist against his mouth. Felt the cylinder of paper that stuck out of it. Bit down on it.

21:17, Sunday evening, Ängbyplan

A man is observed outside the hair salon. He presses his face and hands against the glass, and appears extremely intoxicated. The police arrive at the scene fifteen minutes later. The man has left by this point. The window does not appear damaged in any way, only smeared with traces of mud or earth. In the lighted window display there are numerous pictures of young people, hair models.

‘Are you sleeping?’

‘No.’

A waft of perfume and cold as his mum came into his room, sat down on the bed.

‘Have you had a good time?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing in particular.’

‘I saw some papers. On the kitchen table.’

‘Mmm.’

Oskar pulled the covers more tightly around him, pretended to yawn.

‘Are you sleepy?’

‘Mmm.’

True and not true. He was tired, so tired his head was buzzing. Only wanted to roll himself up in his covers, seal the entrance and not emerge again until…until…but sleepy, no. And…could he even sleep now that he was infected?

Heard his mother ask him something about his dad, and he said ‘fine’ without knowing what he was answering. It got quiet. Then his mum sighed, deeply.

‘Sweetheart, how are you doing, really? Is there anything I can do?’

‘No.’

‘What is it?’

Oskar pressed his face into the pillow, breathing out so that his nose, mouth and lips became hot and moist. He couldn’t do it. It was too hard. Had to tell someone. Into the pillow he said, ‘Iemfecte…’

‘What did you say?’

He lifted his mouth from the pillow.

‘I’m infected.’

His mum’s hand stroked the back of his head, across his neck, continued and the blankets came off a little.

‘How do you mean, inf…but you’re still wearing all your clothes!’

‘Yes, I…’

‘Let me feel you. Are you hot?’ She leaned her cold cheek onto his forehead. ‘You have a fever. Come on. You have to take your clothes off and get into bed properly.’ She stood up and gently shook his shoulder. ‘Come on.’

She was breathing faster now, thinking something else. Said in a different tone of voice, ‘Weren’t you dressed warmly enough when you were at your dad’s?’

‘I was, it’s not that.’

‘Were you wearing a hat?’

‘Yes. It’s not that.’

‘What is it then?’

Oskar pressed his face into the pillow again, squeezed it and said, ‘Agoinbeahmpire…’

‘Oskar, what are you saying?’

‘I’m going to be a vampire!’

Pause. The soft rustling of his mother’s coat as she crossed her arms over her chest.

‘Oskar. Get up. And take your clothes off. And get into bed.’

‘I’m going to be a vampire.’

His mum’s breathing. Deliberate, angry. ‘Tomorrow I am going to throw away all of those books you’re always reading.’

The covers were pulled off him. He got up, slowly took his clothes off, avoided looking at her. Got back into bed, and his mum tucked the covers in around him.

‘Do you want anything?’

Oskar shook his head.

‘Should we take your temperature?’

Oskar shook his head harder. Now he looked at her. She was leaning over the bed, hands on her knees. Searching, concerned eyes.

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘No. Yes.’

‘What?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘No, tell me.’

‘Could you…tell me a story?’

A string of different emotions crossed his mum’s face: sadness, joy, worry, a small smile, a wrinkle of concern. All in a few seconds. ‘I…don’t know any fairy tales,’ she said. ‘But I…I can read one to you if you want. If we have some book…’

Her gaze went up to the bookcase by Oskar’s head.

‘No, don’t bother.’

‘But I’m happy to do it.’

‘No, I don’t want you to.’

‘Why not? You said—’

‘Yes, I did, but…no. I don’t want you to.’

‘Should I…should I sing something?

‘No!’

She pressed her lips together, hurt. Then she decided not to be, since Oskar was sick. ‘I guess I could think of something if that is—’

‘No, it’s fine. I want to sleep now.’

His mum eventually said goodnight, left the room. Oskar lay there, his eyes open, staring at the window. Tried to feel if he was in the process of…becoming. Didn’t know what that felt like. Eli. How had that actually worked when he…was transformed?

To be separated from everything.

Leave. His mum, dad, school…Jonny, Tomas… To be with Eli. Always.

He heard the TV go on in the living room, how the volume was quickly lowered. Distant clatter of the coffee pot from the kitchen. The gas stove being turned on, rattle of a cup and saucer. Cupboards opened.

The normal sounds. He had heard them a hundred times. And he felt sad. So very sad.

The wounds had healed. The only remaining traces of the lacerations on Virginia’s body were white lines, here and there the remnants of scabs that had not yet fallen off. Lacke stroked her hand, pressed against her body with a leather strap, and yet another scab crumbled away under his fingers.

Virginia had resisted. Had violently resisted when she fully came to her senses and understood what was happening. She had torn out the catheter for the blood transfusion, screamed and kicked.

Lacke had not been able to watch as they struggled with her, how she seemed like a different person. Had gone down to the cafeteria and had a cup of coffee. Then another, and another. When he was pouring himself his fourth cup the woman at the register had pointed out in a tired voice that he was only allowed one free refill. Lacke had said that he was broke, felt like he was going to die tomorrow, could she make an exception?

She could. She even offered Lacke a dry mazarin cake that would have been thrown away the next day anyway. He had eaten it with a lump in his throat, thinking about people’s relative goodness, relative evil. Then he went and stood out by the front doors and smoked the second to last cigarette in the packet before he went back up to Virginia.

They had tied her down with straps.

A nurse had received such a blow that her glasses had broken and a sliver had slashed an eyebrow. Virginia had been impossible to calm. They had not dared give her an injection because of her general state and so strapped her arms down with leather straps mainly to prevent—as they put it—‘to prevent her from injuring herself’.

Lacke rubbed a scab between his fingers; a powder as fine as pigment coloured the tops of his fingers red. A movement in the corner of his eye; the blood from the bag hanging from the stand next to Virginia’s bed fell in drops down a plastic tube, and on down through the catheter into Virginia’s arm.

Apparently, once they had identified her blood group, they had first given her a transfusion where they literally pumped in a quantity of blood, but now when her condition had stabilised she received it by the drop. There was a label on the half-full blood bag printed with incomprehensible markings, dominated with a capital ‘A’. The blood type, of course.

But…wait a minute…

Lacke had blood type B. He now recalled that he and Virginia had talked about it one time, that Virginia also had the blood group B and therefore he could…yes. That was exactly right. That they could give blood to each other because they had the same blood type. And Lacke had B, he was completely sure of that.

He got up, walked out into the corridor.

Surely they don’t make these kinds of mistakes?

He got hold of a nurse.

‘Excuse me, but…’

She glanced at his worn clothes, put on an aloof air. ‘Yes?’

‘I was just wondering. Virginia…Virginia Lind who you… admitted a while ago…’

The nurse nodded, looked positively dismissive now. Had perhaps been present when they…

‘Well, I was just wondering…her blood type.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, I saw there’s a big “A” on the bag that…but she doesn’t have that.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not following this.’

‘You see…uh…do you have a moment?’

The nurse looked down the corridor. Perhaps to check if there was help to be had if this deteriorated into something, perhaps to underscore that she had more important things to do, but she did agree to accompany Lacke into the room where Virginia lay with closed eyes, the blood slowly dropping down the tube. Lacke pointed to the bag of blood.

‘Here. This “A” it means that…’

‘That it contains type A blood, yes. There is such a shortage of blood donors these days. If people knew how—’

‘Excuse me, yes. But she has blood type B. Isn’t it dangerous to…’

‘Of course it is.’

The nurse was not unfriendly exactly, but her body language suggested that Lacke’s right to question the competence of hospital staff was minimal. She shrugged lightly, said, ‘If one has blood type B. But this patient does not. She has AB.’

‘But…the bag says A…’

The nurse nodded, as if she was explaining to a child that there were no people on the moon. ‘People with the blood type AB can receive blood from all blood groups.’

‘But…I see. Then she has changed her blood type.’

The nurse raised an eyebrow. The child had just claimed that it had been to the moon and seen people up there. With a hand gesture as if she were slicing a ribbon she said, ‘That’s just not possible.’

‘Is that a fact? Well, she must have been wrong, then.’

‘She must have been. If you’ll excuse me I have other things to attend to.’

The nurse checked the catheter in Virginia’s arm, adjusted the IV-stand slightly and with a last look at Lacke that said that these were important things and God save him if he so much as looked at them, she left the room with energetic steps.

What happens if you get the wrong kind of blood? The blood…coagulates.

No. It must have been Virginia who couldn’t remember correctly.

He walked to a corner of the room where there was an armchair, a small table with a plastic flower. Sat down, looked around the room. Bare walls, shining floor. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Virginia’s bed of metal tubing, over her a pale yellow blanket printed with ‘County Administration’.

This is how things end up.

In Dostoevsky illness and death were almost always dirty, impoverished affairs. Crushed beneath wagon wheels, mud, typhus, blood-stained handkerchiefs. And so on. But damned if that weren’t preferable to this. Slow disintegration in a polished machine.

Lacke leaned back into the armchair, closed his eyes. The chair back was too short, his head slumped back. He straightened up, put his elbow on the armrest and leaned his head in his hand. Looked at the plastic flower. It was as if they put it there to emphasise the fact that no life was allowed here; here order reigned.

The image of the flower stayed on his retina when he shut his eyes again. It transformed into a real flower that grew, became a garden. A garden attached to the house they were going to buy. Lacke stood in the garden, looked at a rose bush with shining red flowers. From the house came the long shadow of a person. The sun set hastily and the shadow grew, became longer, stretched out over the garden…

He jumped and was suddenly awake. His palm was wet with saliva that had run out of the corner of his mouth as he was sleeping. He rubbed his mouth, smacked his lips together and tried to straighten his head. Couldn’t. His neck had seized up somehow. He forced it to straighten out with a crackling of the ligaments, stopped.

Wide open eyes staring right at him.

‘Hi! Are you…’

His mouth closed. Virginia was on her back, restrained by the straps, with her face turned towards him. But her face was much too still. Not a flicker of recognition, joy…nothing. Her eyes didn’t blink.

Dead! She is…

Lacke flew up out of the armchair and something cracked in his neck. He threw himself on his knees next to the bed, grabbed the metal tubing and moved his face close to hers as if to will her soul back into her face, from her depths, by the sheer force of his presence.

‘Ginja! Can you hear me?’

Nothing. And yet he could have sworn that her eyes in some way looked back into his, that they were not dead. He looked for her, all the way through them; casting hooks from deep within himself, into the holes that were her pupils in order to reach through the darkness for…

Her pupils. Is that what you look like when you…

Her pupils were not round. They were stretched lengthwise, to little points. He made a face when a cold stream of pain washed over his neck, put his hand on it, rubbed.

Virginia blinked. Opened her eyes again. And was there.

Lacke gaped idiotically, still rubbing his neck mechanically. A wooden click as Virginia opened her mouth, asked: ‘Are you in pain?’

Lacke removed his hand from his neck, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

‘No, I just…I thought you were…’

‘I’m tied down.’

‘Yes, you…put on a bit of a fight before. Wait a second and I’ll…’ Lacke put his hand in between two of the bars on the bed frame and started loosening one of the straps.

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t do it.’

Lacke hesitated, the strap in his fingers.

‘Are you planning to do some more fighting?’

Virginia half-closed her eyes.

‘Don’t do it.’

Lacke dropped the strap, didn’t know what to do with his hands now they had been robbed of their task. Without getting up he turned on his knees, pulled over the little armchair to the bed—with a new burst of pain in his neck as a result—and clumsily crawled up into it.

Virginia nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Have you called Lena?’

‘No. I can—’

‘Good.’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘No.’

A silence fell between them. The kind of silence particular to hospitals, which stems from the fact that the very situation—one person in the bed, sick or injured, and a healthy person at her side— says it all. Words become small, superfluous. Only the most important ones can be said. They looked at each other for a long time. Said what could be said, without words. Then Virginia turned her head in line with her body, stared at the ceiling.

‘You have to help me.’

‘I’ll do anything.’

Virginia licked her lips, breathed in, and let out the air with a sigh so deep and long that it seemed to draw on hidden reserves of air in her body. Then she let her gaze slide up Lacke’s body. Searching, as if she was taking a last goodbye of the body of a loved one and wanted to imprint his image in her mind. She rubbed her lips against each other and finally got out the words.

‘I am a vampire.’

The corners of Lacke’s mouth wanted to pull up into a silly grin, his mouth say something soothing, perhaps funny. But the corners of his mouth didn’t move and the comment took a wrong turn somewhere, never got anywhere near his lips. Instead all he got out was ‘No!’

He massaged his neck to change the atmosphere, to break the stillness that made all words the truth. Virginia spoke in a low voice, controlled.

‘I went to Gösta. To kill him. If it hadn’t happened. What happened. I would have killed him. And then…drunk his blood. I would have done that. It was my intention. With it all. Do you understand?’

Lacke’s gaze wandered over the walls of the room as if it were searching for the mosquito, the source of the insufferable, buzzing sound that in the silence was tickling his brain, making it impossible to think. It finally stopped at one of the overhead lights.

‘That damned sound.’

Virginia looked up at the light. ‘I can’t stand light. I can’t eat. I have horrible thoughts. I’m going to hurt people. You. I don’t want to live.’

Finally something more concrete, something he could respond to.

‘You can’t say things like that,’ Lacke said. ‘Ginja, you are not allowed to talk like that, you hear? Do you?’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘No, I probably don’t. But you are not going to die, damn it. Here you are, you’re talking, you are…it’s OK.’

Lacke got up out of the chair, took a few aimless steps over the floor, held his arm out.

‘You’re not allowed to…you’re not allowed to say those things.’

‘Lacke. Lacke?’

‘Yes!’

‘You know. That’s it’s true. Don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘What I’m talking about.’

Lacke snorted, shook his head while his hands patted his chest, his pockets. ‘Need a smoke. That…’

He found the crumpled cigarette packet, the lighter. Managed to get out the last cigarette, put it into his mouth. Then he remembered where he was. Took the cigarette out.

‘Damn, they’ll have me out on my behind if I…’

‘Open the window.’

‘Now you’re telling me to jump too?’

Virginia smiled. Lacke walked over to the window, opened it all the way and leaned out as far as he could.

The nurse he had talked to could probably catch the whiff of a cigarette a mile away. He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, making an effort to exhale the smoke so it didn’t blow back in the window. Looked up at the stars. Behind him Virginia started to talk again.

‘It was that child. I’ve been infected. And then…it has grown. I know where it’s centred. In my heart. The whole heart. Like cancer. I can’t control it.’

Lacke blew out a column of smoke. His voice echoed between the tall buildings around them.

‘Nonsense. You seem…normal.’

‘I’m making an effort. And they’ve given me blood. But if I let go. At any moment I could let go. And then it would take over. I know it. I feel it.’

Virginia took a few deep breaths, continued.

‘You are standing there. I’m looking at you. And I want to…eat you.’

Lacke didn’t know if it was the kink in his neck or something else that sent a shiver down his spine. He suddenly felt vulnerable. He quickly stubbed out the cigarette against the wall, flicked the butt away in an arc. Turned back into the room.

‘This is complete utter insanity.’

‘Yes, but that’s how it is.’

Lacke crossed his arms across his chest. With a forced laugh he asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to…destroy my heart.’

‘What? How?’

‘However you want.’

Lacke rolled his eyes.

‘Can you hear yourself? How this sounds? It’s crazy. Like I should…drive a stake into you or something.’

‘Yes.’

‘No, no, no. You can forget about it in that case. Have to think of something better.’ Lacke laughed, shaking his head. Virginia looked at him as he walked to and fro across the room, with his arms still folded across his chest. Then she nodded gently.

‘OK.’

He walked over to her, took her hand. It felt unnatural that it was…restrained. He didn’t even have enough room to put both his hands around it. But her hand was the warm one, squeezed his. With his free hand he stroked her cheek.

‘Are you sure I shouldn’t undo these things?’

‘No. It can…come back.’

‘You’re going to get well. It’ll work out. I only have you. Do you want to know a secret?’

Without letting go of her hand he sat down in the armchair and started to tell her. Told her everything. About the stamps, the lion, Norway, the money. The little cottage they were going to buy. Red Falu-paint. Spun out a long fantasy about what the garden was going to look like, what flowers they would have and how you could put out a small table, make a little shady patio where you could sit…

Somewhere in all of this the tears started to flow from Virginia’s eyes. Quiet, translucent pearls that found their way down her cheeks, wet her pillowcase. No sobs, just tears that streamed down, jewels of sadness…or joy?

Lacke grew silent. Virginia squeezed his hand, hard.

Then Lacke walked out into the corridor, and managed to half-convince, half-plead his way to an extra cot. Lacke positioned it so it was exactly next to Virginia’s. Turned out the light, took off his clothes and crawled down into the stiff sheets, fumbled for and found her hand.

They lay like that for a long time. Then came the words. ‘Lacke. I love you.’

And Lacke did not reply. Simply let the words hang in the air. Become encapsulated and grow until they were a large red blanket that floated around the room, that lowered itself onto him and kept him warm all night.

4:23, Monday morning, Iceland Square.

A number of people in the vicinity of Björnsonsgatan are awakened by loud screams. One person who calls the police believes it is an infant crying. When the police arrive on the scene ten minutes later the screams have stopped. They search the area and find a number of dead cats. On some, limbs have been separated from the body. The police find contact information on the cats with collars and make a note of names and telephone numbers with the intention of notifying the owners. Street services are contacted for clean up.

Half an hour until sunrise.

Eli is reclining in the armchair in the living room. He has been here all night, morning. Packed up what there is to pack.

Tomorrow evening, as soon as it gets dark, Eli will go to a telephone booth and ring a taxi. He doesn’t know which number to call, but it’s probably something that everybody knows. Just have to ask. When the taxi comes he’ll load his three boxes into the trunk and ask the taxi driver to take him…

Where?

Eli shuts his eyes, tries to imagine a place he would like to be.

As usual the first image he sees is of the cottage where he lived with his parents, his older siblings. But it is gone. Outside Norrköping where it once stood there is now a roundabout. The stream where his mother rinsed their clothes has dried up, become overgrown, a depression next to the intersection.

Eli has a lot of money. Would be able to ask the taxi driver to take him anywhere, as far as the darkness allows. North. South. Could sit in the back seat and ask the driver to drive north for two thousand kronor. Then get out. Start over. Find someone who…

Eli throws his head back, screams up at the ceiling, ‘I don’t want to!’

The dusty cobwebs sway slightly in his exhalation. The sound dies in this sealed room. Eli puts his hands to his face, presses his fingers against his eyelids. Feels it in his body, the approaching sunrise, like a worry. He whispers, ‘God. God? Why can’t I have anything? Why can’t I…’

It has been brought up many times before, this question.

Why can’t I be allowed to live?

Because you should be dead.

Only once after he had been infected did Eli meet another infected person. A grown woman. Just as cynical and hollow as the man with the wig. But Eli received an answer to another question that had been nagging him.

‘Are there many of us?’

The woman shook her head and had said with theatrical sadness, ‘No. We are so few. So few.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that’s why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my.’ Her hands fluttered, said in a shrill voice: ‘Ooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscience.’

‘Can we die?’

‘Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or…’ She held out her index finger and pressed it hard into Eli’s chest, above the heart. ‘There. That’s where it is, isn’t it? But now my friend, I have a wonderful idea…’

And Eli had fled from that wonderful idea. As before. As later.

Eli put his hand on his heart, felt the slow beats. Maybe it was because he was a child. Maybe that was why he hadn’t put an end to it. The pangs of conscience were weaker than his will to live.

Eli got up out of the armchair. Håkan would not turn up tonight. But before Eli went to rest he had to check on Tommy. That he had recovered. He had not become infected, but for Oskar’s sake Eli wanted to make sure that Tommy was fine.

He turned off all the lights and left the apartment.

Down in Tommy’s stairwell all he had to do was pull the cellar door open; a long time ago when he was down here with Oskar, he had tucked some paper into the lock so it would stay unlatched when the door closed. He stepped into the cellar corridor and let the door fall shut behind him with a muted thud.

He stopped, listened. Nothing.

No sound of a sleeping person’s breathing; only the cloying smell of paint thinners, glue. He walked quickly along the corridor to the storage area, pulled open the door.

Empty.

Twenty minutes until sunrise.

During the night Tommy had glided in and out of a daze of sleep, half-wakefulness, nightmares. He didn’t know how much time had gone by when he started to wake up properly. The naked bulb in the cellar was always the same. Maybe it was dawn, morning, day. Maybe school had already started. He didn’t care.

His mouth tasted of glue. He looked around bleary-eyed. There were two banknotes on his chest. Thousand kronor notes. He bent his arm to pick them up, felt a tugging on his skin. A large band-aid was pasted over the inside of his elbow, a small bloodstain in the middle of the patch.

But there was…something more.

He turned in the couch, searching along the inside of the cushions and found the roll he had dropped during the night. Three thousand more. He unfolded the bills, put them together with the bills from his chest, felt the whole lot, made them crinkle. Five thousand. Anything he wanted to do.

He looked at the band-aid, chuckled. Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.

Not bad for just lying back and closing your eyes.

What was that? Someone had said it, someone…

That was it. Tobbe’s sister, what was her name…Ingela? Turning tricks, Tobbe had told him. And she got five hundred for it, and Tobbe’s comment was ‘Not bad for…’

Just lying back and closing your eyes.

Tommy squeezed the bills in his hand, scrunched them up into a ball. She had paid for and drunk his blood. An illness, she had said. But what kind of fucking illness was that? He had never heard of anything like it. And if you had something like that, you went to the hospital, then they gave you…You didn’t fucking go down into some basement with five thousand and…

Swish.

No?

Tommy sat up in the couch, pulled off the blanket.

They didn’t exist. No. Not vampires. That girl, the one in the yellow dress, she must somehow believe that she is…but wait, wait. It was that Ritual Killer that…the one they were searching for…

Tommy leaned his head in his hands; the bills crinkled against his ear. He couldn’t figure it out. But in any case he was damn scared of that girl now.

Just as he was thinking about going back up to the apartment even if it was still night, come what may, he heard the door to his stairwell open. His heart fluttered like a frightened bird and he looked around.

Weapon.

The only thing he could see was the broom. Tommy’s mouth was pulled up into a smile that lasted for a second.

The broom—a good weapon against vampires.

Then he remembered, got up and walked to the safety room while he stuffed the money into his pocket. Cleared the corridor in one step and slid into the safety room as the cellar door opened. Didn’t dare lock the door since he was afraid she would hear it.

He sank into a crouch in the dark, tried to breathe as silently as possible.

The razor blade glimmered on the floor. One corner was stained with brown, like rust. Eli tore off a corner of the cover of a motorcycle magazine, wrapped the paper around the razor blade, put it into his pocket.

Tommy was gone, that meant he was alive. He had left on his own, gone home to sleep, and even if he put two and two together he didn’t know where Eli lived, so…

Everything is as it should be. Everything is…great.

There was a wooden broom with a long handle leaning against the wall.

Eli took it, broke it over his knee, almost as far down as the head of the broom. The surface of the break was rough, sharp. A thin stake, about an arm’s length. He put the point against his chest, between two ribs. Exactly where the woman had put her finger.

He took a deep breath, squeezed the shaft and tried on the thought.

In! In!

Breathed out, loosened his grip. Squeezed again. Pressed.

For two minutes he stood with the point one centimetre from his heart, the shaft held firmly in his hand, when the handle of the cellar door was slammed down and the door glided open.

He removed the wooden stake from his chest, listened. Heard slow, tentative steps in the corridor like from a child who had just learned to walk. A very large child who had just learned to walk.

Tommy heard the steps and thought: Who?

Not Staffan, not Lasse, not Robban. Someone who was sick in some way, who was carrying something very heavy…Santa Claus! His hand went up to his mouth to smother a giggle as he imagined Santa Claus, the Disney version—

Hohoho! Say ‘Mama!’

—come staggering through the corridor with his enormous bag on his back.

His lips trembled under his hand and he clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering. Still in a crouch, he shuffled back from the door, one step at a time. Felt the corner of the room at his back at the same time as the spear of light from the door was darkened.

Santa Claus had stopped between the light and the shelter. Tommy put his other hand over the first to stop himself from screaming, waited for the door to open.

Nowhere to run to.

Through cracks in the door he could see a fragmented outline of Håkan’s body. Eli stretched the stake out as far as it went, nudged the door. It swung out about ten centimetres, then the body outside stopped it.

One hand grabbed the edge of the door, threw it open so it banged into the wall, tearing off one of the hinges. The door sagged, swung back leaning on its remaining hinge, hitting against the shoulder of the body that now filled the door opening.

What do you want from me?

There were still patches of blue on the shirt that covered the body to the knees. The rest was a dirty map of earth, mud, stains of something Eli’s nose identified as animal blood, human blood. The shirt was torn in several places revealing white skin, etched with scratches that would never heal.

His face had not changed. It was still a clumsily fashioned mass of naked flesh with one single red eye thrown in as if for fun, a ripe cherry to top a rotten cake. But his mouth was open now.

A black hole in the lower half of the face. No lips to cover the teeth that were revealed; an uneven semicircle of white that made the oral cavity seem even darker. The hole increased and decreased in size with a chewing motion and out of it came: ‘Eeeiiiij.’

You couldn’t hear if the sound was supposed to mean ‘Hi’, ‘Hey’ or ‘Eli’ since the ‘L’ had to be formed without the help of lips or tongue. Eli pointed the stake at Håkan’s heart, said ‘Hi’.

What do you want?

The undead. Eli knew nothing about them. Didn’t know if the creature in front of her was limited by the same restrictions as she was. If it even helped to destroy the heart. That Håkan was standing still in the doorway seemed to imply one thing: that he needed an invitation.

Håkan’s gaze ran up and then down over Eli’s body which felt unprotected in the thin, yellow dress. He wished there was more to the fabric, more protection between his body and Håkan. Tentatively Eli held the stake closer to Håkan’s chest.

Can he feel anything? Can he even feel…fear now?

Eli experienced a feeling that he had almost forgotten: fear of pain. Everything healed of course, but there was such an overpowering sense of threat emanating from Håkan that…

‘What do you want?’

A hollow, rasping sound as the creature pressed out air and a drop of yellowish, viscous liquid ran out of the double hole where the nose had been. A sigh? Then a damaged whisper, ‘Aaaaaaijjjj…’ and one arm flinched quickly, cramplike, baby movements, clumsily grabbed the shirt down at the hem, pulled it up.

Håkan’s penis stood out from his body to one side, craving attention, and Eli looked at its stiff swollenness crisscrossed with veins and—

How can he…he must have had it the whole time.

‘Aaeejjlll…’

Håkan’s hand pulled the foreskin aggressively up and back, up and back and the head of his penis appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared like a jack in the box while he uttered a sound of pleasure or suffering.

‘Aaaee…’

And Eli laughed with relief.

All this. To be able to jack off.

He could stand there, rooted to the spot until…until…

Can he even get it off? He’s going to have to stand there… forever.

Eli imagined one of those obscene dolls that you wound up with a key; a monk whose cape went up and he started masturbating as long as the mechanism allowed.

clickety-click, clickety-click…

Eli laughed, was so occupied with the crazy image that he didn’t notice when Håkan stepped into the room, uninvited. Didn’t notice anything until the fist that had just been sealed around an impossible pleasure was raised above his head.

With a flashing spasm the arm came down and the fist landed over Eli’s ear with a force that could have killed a horse. The blow came sideways and Eli’s ear was folded in with such force that the skin split and half the ear was separated from his head, which met the cement floor with a muffled crack.

When Tommy realised that the thing that was out in the corridor was not on its way to the shelter, he dared to take his hand from his mouth. He sat pressed into the corner and listened, trying to understand.

The girl’s voice.

Hi. What do you want.

Then her laugh. And then that other voice. Didn’t even sound like it came from a human being. Then muffled thuds, the sounds of bodies moving.

Now there was some kind of…rearranging going on out there. Something was dragged across the floor and Tommy was not planning to find out what it was. But the sounds disguised those he could make as he stood up and felt his way along the wall to the stacked boxes.

His heart was smattering like a toy drum and his hands shook. He didn’t dare flick his lighter, so to concentrate better he shut his eyes and searched with his hand over the top of the boxes.

His fingers clenched around what they found. Staffan’s shooting trophy. He carefully lifted it from its place, tested it in his hand. If he held the figure’s chest the stone base made a kind of club. He opened his eyes, found that he could vaguely make out the outline of the little silver pistol shooter.

Friend. My little friend.

With the trophy pressed against his chest he sank down into the corner again, and waited for all this to be over.

Eli was being handled, like an object.

While he was swimming to the surface of the darkness he had sunk into, he felt how his body, at a distance, in another part of the sea…was being handled.

Intense pressure against his back, legs that were forced up, back and iron rings pulled tight around his ankles. Now the ankles with their iron rings were on either side of his head and his spine was tight, so stretched it felt like it was about to snap.

I’m going to break.

His head felt like a container of gleaming pain, as his body was doubled over by force, folded up like a bale of fabric and Eli thought he was still having an hallucination because when his eyes started to see again, they only saw yellow. And behind the yellow a massive, billowing shadow.

Then came the cold. Something was rubbing a ball of ice across the thin skin between his buttocks. Something tried, first poking, then thrusting to force its way into him. Eli gasped; the fabric of the dress that had been spread over his face was blown aside, and he saw.

Håkan was lying over him. His only eye was staring fixedly at Eli’s spread buttocks. His hands were locked around Eli’s ankles, whose legs had been brutally bent back so that his knees were pressed to the ground on either side of his shoulders. When Håkan pressed harder, Eli heard how the tendons in the back of his own thighs broke like tightly pulled strings.

‘Noooo!’

Eli screamed into Håkan’s shapeless face where no feelings at all could be discerned. A strand of drool came out of Håkan’s mouth, stretched and broke, falling onto Eli’s lips and the taste of corpse filled his mouth. Eli’s arms fell out from his body as limp as a rag doll’s.

Something under his fingers. Round, hard.

He tried to think, forced himself to create a sphere of light inside the black, whirling insanity. And envisioned himself in the pool of light, holding the stick in his hand.

Yes.

Eli squeezed the handle of the broom, locking his fingers around the delicate saviour while Håkan kept pushing, poking, trying to enter.

The point. The point has to be on the right side.

He turned his head to the stick and saw it was lying the right way.

A chance.

Everything went quiet inside Eli’s head as he visualised what he had to do. Then he did it. In one movement he raised the stick from its prone position and thrust it up towards Håkan’s face with all his might.

His underarm brushed against the side of his thigh and the stick formed a straight line that…stopped a few centimetres from Håkan’s face when Eli, because of his position, could not manage to move his arm any further.

He had failed.

For one second Eli had time to think that maybe he possessed the ability to will his body to die. If he turned off all…

Then Håkan thrust himself forward and at the same time dropped his head down. With the soft sound of a wooden spoon pushed down into thick porridge, the sharp end of the stick went into his eye.

Håkan did not scream. Perhaps he did not even feel it. Maybe it was simply surprise at not being able to see that made him loosen his grip around Eli’s ankles. Without feeling anything from his damaged legs, Eli wriggled his feet free and kicked straight out at Håkan’s chest.

The soles of his feet met skin with a moist smacking sound and Håkan fell back. Eli pulled his legs under him and with a wave of cold pain from his back he got to his knees. Håkan had not fallen, only been folded up and like an electric doll in a ghost house he now straightened up again.

They faced each other, on their knees.

The stick in Håkan’s eye was pulled downward in stages, inching down with the regularity of a second hand and then fell out, drummed out a few beats on the floor and then it lay still. A translucent fluid started to seep out of the hole where it had been, a teary flood.

Neither of them moved.

The fluid from Håkan’s eye trickled down onto his naked thighs.

Eli concentrated all of his strength into his right arm, made a fist. When Håkan’s shoulder jerked to life and his body made an effort to stretch out to Eli, to pick up where it had left off, Eli hit his right hand straight into the left side of Håkan’s chest.

The ribs cracked and the skin was stretched to its limit for a moment, then gave way, broke.

Håkan’s head bent down to see what it couldn’t see as Eli fumbled inside his chest cavity and found his heart. A cold, soft lump. Unmoving.

It’s not alive. But it has to…

Eli squeezed the heart until it went to pieces. It gave way too easily, allowed itself to be broken like a dead jellyfish.

Håkan only reacted as if a particularly persistent fly had settled on his skin. He moved his arm up to remove the irritating element and before he had time to grip Eli’s wrist, Eli pulled his hand out with remnants of the heart quivering in the clenched fist.

Have to get away from here.

Eli wanted to get up but his legs would not obey him. Håkan was groping blindly, arms out in front, trying to find him. Eli rolled over on his stomach and started to crawl out of the room, his knees whispering on the concrete. Håkan turned his head towards the noise, put his arms out and got a hold of the dress, managed to tear off one sleeve before Eli reached the door, got up on his knees again.

Håkan stood up.

Eli had a few seconds of reprieve before Håkan found the door. He tried to order his broken joints to heal enough to enable him to stand, but by the time Håkan reached the door Eli’s legs were only strong enough to allow him to stand braced against the wall.

Splinters from the rough planks punctured the tops of his fingers as his hand scratched along them in order not to fall. And he knew now. That without a heart, blind, Håkan would pursue him until…until…

Must…destroy…must…destroy him.

A black line.

A vertical, black line in front of his eyes. It had not been there before. Eli knew what to do.

‘Aaaaa…’

Håkan’s hand around one edge of the doorframe and then the body that came staggering out of the storage unit, hands groping the air in front of him. Eli pressed his back into the wall, waiting for the right moment.

Håkan came out, a few tentative steps, then stopped exactly in front of Eli. Listened, sniffed.

Eli leaned forward so that his hands were the same height as Håkan’s shoulders. Then he braced himself against the wall, rushed forward and put everything into throwing Håkan off balance.

He succeeded.

Håkan took a mincing step to the side and fell against the door to the shelter. The crack in the door, that Eli had seen as a black line, widened as the door opened inwards and Håkan tumbled into the darkness. Eli started to fall headlong into the corridor, managed to stop himself before the floor met his face, then crawled to the door, and grabbed the lower of the two locking wheels.

Håkan lay still on the floor inside as Eli pulled the door shut and turned the wheel, locked it. Then he crawled out to the cellar office, got the stick and threaded it in between the locking wheels so that it could not be unlocked from the inside.

Eli continued to concentrate his energy on healing his body and started to crawl out of the basement. A rivulet of blood snaked out of his ear. At the door out of the cellar he was healed enough to stand up. He pushed the door open and managed to go up the stairs on wobbly legs.

rest rest rest

He pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out into the hall lamp. He was beaten, humiliated and the sunrise threatened just under the horizon.

rest rest rest

But he had to…exterminate. And there was only one way he knew to do that. Fire. Staggering he made his way across the yard, heading to the only place he knew where he could find it.

7:34, Monday morning, Blackeberg

The burglar alarm at the ICA grocery store on Arvid Mörne’s Way is set off. The police arrive at the scene eleven minutes later and find the store window broken. The store owner, who lives next door, is there. He says that from his window he saw a very young, dark-haired person leave the place running. But upon searching the store nothing is found to be stolen.

7:36, sunrise

The hospital blinds were much better, darker, than her own. There was only one place, where the blinds were damaged, where they let in a thin ray of morning light that made a dust-grey slash in the dark ceiling.

Virginia lay outstretched, stiff, in her bed, staring at the grey slice of light that trembled when a gust of wind made the window vibrate. Reflected, weak light. No more than a mild irritation, a grain of sleep in her eye.

Lacke snuffled and wheezed in the bed next to her. They had stayed awake for a long time, talking. Memories, mostly. Close to four in the morning Lacke had finally fallen asleep, with his hand still in hers.

She had had to disentangle her hand from his an hour later when a nurse had come in to check her blood pressure, found it satisfactory and left them with a glance, actually a tender look at Lacke. Virginia had heard how Lacke pleaded to stay, the reasons he had given. Thus the tender glance, she supposed.

Now Virginia lay with her hands folded on her chest, fighting her body’s desire to…turn off. Fall asleep was not an adequate expression for it. As soon as she did not consciously concentrate on her breathing, it stopped. But she needed to stay awake.

She hoped a nurse would come back in before Lacke woke up. Yes. The very best thing would be if he could sleep until it was over.

But that was probably too much to hope for.

The sun caught up with Eli in the courtyard, a glowing tong that pinched his mauled ear. Instinctively, he backed up into the shade of the entrance to the yard, squeezed the three plastic bottles of T-red to his chest, as if to shield them from the sun as well.

Ten steps away was his front door. Twenty steps to Oskar’s. And thirty steps to Tommy’s.

I can’t do it.

No, if he had been healthy, strong, he would have tried to make it to Oskar’s entrance, through the flood of light that intensified every second he waited. But not to Tommy’s. And not now.

Ten steps. Then up the stairs. The big window in the stairwell. If I trip. If the sun…

Eli ran.

The sun threw itself over him like a hungry lion, biting into his back. Eli almost lost his balance as he was thrown forward by the sun’s howling force. Nature vomited its disgust at his transgression; to show himself in sunlight for even one second.

It sizzled, bubbled, like someone pouring boiling oil on Eli’s back when he reached the front door, threw it open. The pain almost made him faint and he moved towards the steps as if drugged, blinded; didn’t dare open his eyes for fear that they would melt.

He dropped one of the bottles, heard it roll away across the floor. Couldn’t be helped. With head bent, one arm wrapped around the remaining bottles, the other on the banister, he limped up the stairs, reached the landing. One flight left.

Through the window the sun delivered a last swipe at his neck, snapped at him, then bit him in the thighs, calves, heels while he moved up the stairs. He was burning. The only thing missing was flames. He got the door open, fell into the wonderful, cool darkness inside. Slammed the door shut behind him. But it was not dark.

The kitchen door was open and in the kitchen there were no blinds in front of the window. The light was weaker, greyer than what he had just experienced and without hesitation Eli dropped the bottles onto the floor, continued on. While the light clawed relatively tenderly at his back as he crawled to the bathroom, the smell of burnt flesh wafted into his nose.

I will never be whole again.

He stretched his arm out, opened the bathroom door and crawled into the compact darkness. He pushed a couple of plastic jugs out of the way, closed the door and locked it.

Before he slid into the bathtub he had time to think:

I didn’t lock the front door.

But it was too late. Rest turned him off at the same moment as he sank down into the wet darkness. He wouldn’t have had the energy anyway.

Tommy sat still, pressed into the corner. He held his breath until his ears started to ring and he saw shooting stars in front of his eyes. When he heard the cellar door slam shut he dared to let his breath out in a long panting exhalation that rolled along the cement walls, died out.

It was completely quiet. The darkness was so complete that it had mass, weight.

He held one hand in front of his face. Nothing. No difference. He touched his face as if to convince himself that he existed at all. Yes. His fingertips touched his nose, his lips. Unreal. They flickered to life under his fingers, disappeared.

The little figurine in his other hand felt more alive, more real than he did. He squeezed it, held it close.

Tommy had been sitting with his head bent down between his knees, his eyes tightly shut, his hands held against his ears in order not to have to know, not to hear what was going on in the storage unit. It sounded like that little girl was being murdered. He would not have been able to do anything, not dared do anything and therefore he had tried to deny the whole situation by disappearing.

He had been with his dad. On the soccer field, in the forest, at the Canaan-baths. Finally he had paused at the memory of that time on the Råcksta field when he and his dad had tried a remote-control aeroplane that his dad had borrowed from someone at work.

Mum had come along for a while but she thought it was boring to look at the aeroplane making circles in the sky and had gone home. He and his dad had kept going until it got dark and the aeroplane was a silhouette against the pink evening sky. Then they had walked home, hand in hand, through the forest.

Tommy had been in that day, far from the screams, the insanity going on a few metres away. He was only aware of the furious buzz of the aeroplane, the warmth of his father’s large hand on his back while he nervously manoeuvred the plane in wide circles over the field, the graveyard.

Back then Tommy had never been in the graveyard; had imagined people walking aimlessly around the graves, crying large shiny comic-book tears that splashed against the headstones. That was then. Then Dad had died and Tommy had learned that graveyards rarely—all too rarely—look like that.

His hands tightly pressed against his ears and away with those thoughts. Think about walking through the forest, think about the smell of the aeroplane’s special gas in the little bottle, think about…

Only when he—halfway through his soundproofing—heard a lock being turned, had he taken his hands down and looked. To no avail, since the safety room was even blacker than the darkness behind his eyelids. Started to hold his breath when the second wheel thundered into place, kept holding it as whatever-it-was was still in the basement.

Then that distant bang from the door to the stairwell, a vibration in the walls and here he was. Still alive.

It didn’t get me.

Exactly what ‘it’ was, he didn’t know, but whatever it was it had not discovered him. Tommy got up from his crouched position. A tingling trail of ants ran through his numb leg muscles as he groped along the wall, towards the door. His hands were sweaty with fear and the pressure against his ears, the statuette almost slid out of his hand.

His free hand found the wheel of the closing mechanism and started to turn it.

It went about ten centimetres, then it stopped.

What is this…

He pressed harder, but the wheel wouldn’t budge. He dropped the statuette in order to be able to grab the wheel with both hands, and it fell to the floor with a

thud.

He froze.

That sounded funny. As if it landed on something…soft.

He crouched down next to the door, tried to turn the lower wheel. Same thing. Ten centimetres, then stop. He sat down on the floor. Tried to think practically.

Damn, am I going to be stuck here?

Like that, sort of.

But it still came creeping…this terror he had had a few months after his dad died. He had not felt it for a long time, but now, locked in the pitch-blackness, it was starting to make itself known again. Love for his dad that through death had been transformed into a fear of him. Of his body.

A lump started to grow in his throat, his fingers stiffened.

Think now! Think!

There were candles on a shelf in the storage room on the other side. The problem was making his way over there in the dark.

Idiot!

He slapped his forehead, laughed out loud. He had a lighter! And anyway: what was the use of looking for those candles if there wasn’t anything to light them with?

Like that guy with thousands of cans and no can opener. Starved to death surrounded by food.

While he dug around in his pocket for his lighter he reflected that his situation wasn’t so hopeless. Sooner or later someone would come down into the basement, his mum—if no one else—and if he could just get some light in here, that would be something.

He got the lighter out of his pocket, lit it.

His eyes that had grown used to the dark were momentarily blinded by the light, but then when they adjusted he saw that he was not alone.

Outstretched on the floor, right next to his feet, was…

…Dad…

The fact that his father had been cremated did not register with him as he, in the fluttering flame of the lighter, saw the face of the corpse. It met his expectations of how one would look after having been in the earth for many years.

…Dad…

He screamed straight into the lighter so the flame went out, but the split-second before the light went out he had time to see his dad’s head jerk and…

…it’s alive…

The contents of his bowels spilled into his pants in a wet explosion that splattered warmth over his rear end. Then his legs crumpled up, his skeleton dissolved and he fell into a heap, dropped the lighter so it bounced across the floor. His hand landed straight on the corpse’s cold toes. Sharp nails scratched the palm of his hand and while he continued to shriek—

But Dad! Haven’t you trimmed your toenails?

—he started to pat, to stroke the cold foot as if it were a frozen puppy that needed comforting. Kept petting up the shinbone, the thigh, felt the muscles tense under the skin, move while he screamed in fits and starts, like an animal.

The tips of his fingers felt metal. The statuette. It lay nestled between the thighs of the corpse. He grabbed the figurine by the chest, stopped screaming and returned for a moment to the practical.

A club.

In the silence after his scream he heard a dripping, sticky sound when the corpse raised its upper body and when a cold limb nudged the back of his hand he pulled it back, squeezing the statuette.

It is not Dad.

No. Tommy drew back, away from the corpse, with excrement clinging to his buttocks and thought for a moment that he could see in the dark as his sound impressions transformed into vision and he saw the corpse rise up in the darkness, a yellowish shape, a constellation.

With his feet tap dancing over the floor he shuffled backwards to the wall. The corpse on the other side uttered a short exhalation, ‘…aa…’

And Tommy saw…

A little elephant, an animated elephant and here comes (toooot) the BIG elephant and then…trunks up!…and toot ‘A’ and then Magnus, Brasse and Eva enter and sing ‘There! Is Here! Where you are not…’

No, how did it go…

The corpse must have bumped into the stack of boxes because he could hear thuds, the rattle of stereo equipment that fell to the floor as Tommy pressed up against the wall, hitting the back of his head and seeing a kind of static. Through the roar he could hear the smack of stiff, bare feet walking across the floor, searching.

Here. Is There. Where you are not. No. Yes.

Just like that. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t see himself, couldn’t see the thing that was making the noise. So it was only sound. It was just something he was listening to as he stared into the black mesh of the speaker. This was something that didn’t even exist.

Here. Is There. Where you are not.

He almost started to sing out loud, but a sensible remnant of his consciousness told him not to. The white buzz started to die down leaving an empty surface where he started to stack new thoughts, with effort.

The face. The face.

He didn’t want to think about its face, did not want to think about…

Something about the face that had been momentarily illuminated by the lighter.

It was getting closer. Not only did the footsteps sound closer, now hissing across the floor. No, he could feel its presence like a shadow more impenetrable than the darkness.

He bit down on his lower lip until he tasted blood, shut his eyes. Saw his own two eyes disappear out of the picture like two…

Eyes.

It doesn’t have eyes.

A faint breeze on his face as a hand went through the air.

Blind. It is blind.

He wasn’t sure, but the lump on the creature’s shoulders had not had any eyes.

When the hand went through the air again Tommy felt the caress of air on his cheek one tenth of a second before it reached him, had time to turn his face so the hand only brushed against his hair. He finished the movement and threw himself flat on the floor, started to snake along the floor with his hands circling in front of him, swimming.

The lighter, the lighter…

Something poked into his cheek. A wave of nausea when he realised it was the thing’s toenail, but he quickly rolled over so he wouldn’t be in the same place when the hands came groping for him.

Here. Is There. Where I am not.

An involuntary chuckle issued from his mouth. He tried to stop it, but couldn’t. Saliva sprayed out of his mouth and out of his hoarse-from-screaming throat came hiccoughs of laughter or crying, while his hands, two radar beams, continued searching the floor for the only advantage he maybe, maybe had over the darkness that wanted to devour him.

God, help me. Let the light of thy face…God…sorry about that thing in church, sorry about…everything. God. I will always believe in you, however you want if you just…let me find the lighter…be my friend, please God.

Something happened.

At the same moment that Tommy felt the thing’s hand flailing across his foot, for a split-second the room was illuminated with blue-white light, like from a flash, and during that split-second Tommy really did see the boxes that had tumbled to the floor, the uneven surface of the walls, the passageway into the storage rooms.

And he saw the lighter.

It was only a metre from his right hand, and when the darkness engulfed him again the location of the lighter was burned onto the inside of his eyelid. He yanked his foot from the thing’s grip, flung his arm out and managed to grab the lighter, held it firmly in his hand, jumped up onto his feet.

Without thinking about whether it was too much to ask, he started to chant a new prayer inside his head.

Let the thing be blind, God. Let it be blind. God. Let it be blind…

He flicked the lighter. A flash, like the one he just experienced, then a yellow flame with a blue centre.

The thing stood still, turned its head towards the sound. Started to walk in that direction. The flame flickered when Tommy slid two steps to the side and arrived at the door. The thing stopped where Tommy had been three seconds earlier.

If he had been able to feel joy, he would have. But in the weak light from the lighter everything suddenly became mercilessly real. It was no longer possible to escape into some fantasy that he was really not here at all, that this wasn’t happening to him.

He was locked into a sound-proofed room with the thing he was most afraid of. Something turned in his stomach but there was nothing more to be emptied. All that came was a little fart and the thing turned its head again, towards him.

Tommy pulled at the wheel of the locking mechanism with his free hand so that the hand holding the lighter trembled, and the flame went out. The wheel didn’t budge, but out of the corner of his eye Tommy had time enough to see how the thing was coming towards him, and he threw himself away from the door, in the direction of the wall where he had been sitting before.

He sobbed, snuffled.

Let this end. God, let it end.

Again the big elephant who raised his hat and with his nasal voice said, This is the eeeend! Blow the trumpet, trunk, toooot! This is the end!

I’m going crazy, I…it…

He shook his head, flicked the lighter on again. There on the floor in front of him was the trophy. He bent over, picked it up and jumped a few steps to the side, kept going towards the other wall. Looked at the thing groping the space where he had just been.

Blind man’s bluff.

The lighter in one hand, the trophy in the other. He opened his mouth to say something but only managed a hoarse whisper.

‘Come on, then…’

The thing appeared alert, turned around, came towards him.

He raised Staffan’s trophy like a club and when the creature was half a metre away he swung it at its face.

And like in a perfect penalty kick in soccer, when at the same moment as your foot meets the ball you feel that this one…this one has hit the spot exactly; Tommy felt the same thing already halfway into his swing, that—

Yes!

—and when the sharp stone corner met the thing’s temple with a force that continued in an arc along Tommy’s arm, he was already feeling triumph. It was only a confirmation of this feeling when the skull crumpled and with a crack of splitting ice, cold liquid splashed onto Tommy’s face and the thing crashed to the ground.

Tommy remained in place, panting. Looked at the body that was laid out on the ground.

He has an erection.

Yes. The thing’s penis was sticking out like a minimal, half overturned gravestone and Tommy stood there staring, waiting for it to wilt. It didn’t. Tommy wanted to laugh, but his throat hurt too much.

A throbbing pain in his thumb. Tommy looked down. The lighter had started to burn the skin on his thumb that was holding the gas tab down. Instinctively he let go. But his thumb didn’t obey him. It was locked in a cramp over the tab.

He turned the lighter the other direction. Didn’t want to turn it off anyway. Didn’t want to be left in the dark with this…

A movement.

And Tommy felt how something important, something he needed in order to be Tommy, left him when the creature lifted its head again, and started to get up.

An elephant balancing on the little, little thread of a spider web!

The thread broke. The elephant fell through.

And Tommy hit again. And again.

After a while he started to think it was fun.