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He had put his hand up in class, a declaration of existence, a claim that he knew something. And that was forbidden to him. They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.
My happiness, my future was the only thing you heard. Real love is to offer your life at the feet of another, and that’s what people today are incapable of.
He was in a hurry. He quickly pulled on his raincoat and got out his tools. A knife, a rope, a large funnel, and a five liter plastic jug. He put everything on the ground next to the boy, looking at the young body one last time. Then he picked up the rope and got to work.
“But the ground underneath . . . where the guy was hanging. There was almost no blood at all. Just a few drops. And he must have gushed out several liters, hanging up like that.”
That was why he didn’t see her eyes change, how they narrowed, took on another expression. He didn’t see how her upper lip drew back and revealed a pair of small, dirty white fangs. He only saw her cheek and while her mouth was nearing his throat he drew up his hand and stroked her face.
He felt the girl’s jaws working up and down against his chin as the pain at his throat grew more intense. A warm trickle of fluid ran down his chest.
Jocke grabbed her head and tried to pull it away from him but it was like trying to tear a fresh branch from a birch tree with your bare hands. Her head was, like, glued to him. Her grip on him was so strong that it pressed the breath from his lungs and didn’t allow him to draw in fresh air.
The risk of infection. You could not allow it to reach the nervous system. The body had to be turned off. That was all he had been told. He had not understood it then, but he did now.
Jealousy was a fat, chalk-white snake in his chest. It writhed slowly, as pure as innocence and childishly plain. Replaceable. He was . . . replaceable.
It was attractive, naturally. This joy, this . . . life. But also frightening, since it was something so foreign to him. He was both hornier and more scared than he had ever been since meeting her.
Through all the screaming and blows to the door he thought about his beloved. The time they had had together. He conjured up the image of his beloved as an angel. A boy angel flying down from heaven, spreading his wings, who was going to pick him up. Carry him off. Take him to a place where they would always be together. For ever.
Where the rest of the face should have been there were only pieces of cartilage and bone sticking out between irregular shreds of flesh and blackened slivers of fabric. The naked, glistening muscles contracted and relaxed, contorting as if the head had been replaced by a mass of freshly killed and butchered eels.
“They are the final words that Christ uttered on the cross. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”
Eli remained outside the door, waiting to be invited in. Right next to the door there was a cast iron hedgehog shoe wiper with prickles made of piassava fibers. Eli used it to cover up the inability to enter.
“I’m nothing. Not a child. Not old. Not a boy. Not a girl. Nothing.”
If you thought about it, it was actually pretty sick. To do this. Burn people up, save the ashes, bury them in the ground, and then call the spot “Grave 104, section D.”
Oskar clenched his teeth. When Jonny was a little more than an arm’s length away, Oskar swung the stick against his shoulder. Jonny ducked and Oskar felt a mute thwack in his hands when the heavy end of the stick struck Jonny square on the ear.
A ghost flew into Eli’s face, distorting it into something so different from the girl he knew that he completely forgot about catching the blood that dropped from his hand. She now looked like the monster they had recently pretended that she was and Oskar jumped back while the pain in his hand intensified.
Tears of fear welled up in Oskar’s eyes. “Eli, stop it. Stop playing. Stop it.” Eli crawled a bit closer, stopped again. She forced her body to contort itself so her head was lowered to the ground and screamed: “Go! Or you’ll die!”
In his drunkenness Håkan had almost immediately put a hand on Eli’s thigh. Eli had let it stay there, taken Håkan’s head between her hands, turned it toward her, and said: “You are going to be with me.”
The child got up on all fours, cat-like, preparing to lunge. The face changed as the child drew back its lips and Lacke could see the rows of sharp teeth glow in the dark.
The thought had come to him even as he was in the cellar gathering the bottles together and wiping the blood away with a piece of cloth from the garbage: that Eli was a vampire. That explained a lot of things. That she was never out in the daytime. That she could see in the dark; he had come to understand that she could.
“Can I come in? Say that I can come in.” That she had needed an invitation to come into his room, to his bed. And he had invited her in. A vampire. A being that lived off other peoples’ blood. Eli. There was not one person who he could tell. No one would believe him. And if someone did believe him, what would happen?
“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.”
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.”
Hi. Hope you’ve slept well. I’m also going to sleep now. I’m in the bathroom. Don’t try to go in there, please. I’m trusting you. I don’t know what to write. I hope you can like me even though you know what I am. I like you. A lot. You’re lying here on the couch right now, snoring. Please. Don’t be afraid of me. Please please please don’t be afraid of me. Do you want to meet me tonight? Write so on this note if you do. If you write No I’ll move tonight. Probably have to do that soon anyway. But if you write Yes I’ll hang around for a while longer. I don’t know what I should write. I’m alone.
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He stopped when he saw a tear come out of the corner of one of Eli’s eyes; no, one in each eye. But it wasn’t a tear, since it was dark. The skin in Eli’s face started to flush, became pink, red, wine-red, and her hands tightened into fists as the pores in her face opened and tiny pearls of blood started to appear in dots all over her face and throat.
She was bleeding out of all the pores in her body. Oskar caught his breath, shouted: “You can come in, you can . . . you are welcome, you are . . . allowed to be here!”
Between the legs she had . . . nothing. No slit, no penis. Just a smooth surface.
Oskar tries to pull his head back, leave the kiss. But Eli, who was prepared for this reaction, cups one hand around the back of his head, pushing his lips against his, forcing him to stay in Eli’s memories, continues.
“The old man has escaped. They’ve been looking for him the whole day without finding him. Now you know.” A pause. Then Eli’s voice, above Oskar’s head: “Where?” “Here. In Judarn. The forest. By Åkeshov.”
“Oskar,” said Eli. “Don’t go out. After it gets dark. Promise me that.” The dress. The words. Oskar snorted, couldn’t help saying it. “You sound like my mom.”
Eli had explained that the old 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. Toward Eli.
Håkan was lying over him. His only eye was staring fixedly at Eli’s spread buttocks. His hands were locked around Eli’s ankles. His legs had been brutally bent back so that his knees were pressed to the ground on either side of Eli’s shoulders and when Håkan pressed harder Eli heard how the tendons in the back of his thighs broke like tightly pulled strings.
Closed his mouth. Then pressed a kiss on Oskar’s lips. For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was . . . himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love. For a few seconds.
In the corner of his eye he thought he saw something fall down from the roof outside. Something banged on the glass door so hard it rattled in its frame. He stood on tiptoe, peeked out of the window of regular glass at the very top, and saw a little girl. She lifted her face up to his.
Micke looked back at what was happening in the pool. Oskar’s body had stopped moving but Jimmy was still leaned over the edge, holding his head down. Micke’s throat hurt when he swallowed.
Oskar Eriksson had been rescued by an angel. The same angel who, according to the witnesses, had ripped Jonny and Jimmy Forsberg’s heads off and left them in the bottom of the pool.
