Let Me In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” where you see a pair of jeans in place of the spark. The whole point of the picture, at least as he saw it, was that these two monumental bodies each came to an end in two index fingers that almost, but not quite touched. There was a space between them a millimeter or so wide. And in this space: life. The sculptural enormity and richness of detail of this picture was simply a frame, a backdrop, to emphasize the crucial void in its center. The point of emptiness that contained everything.

“You only love me to the extent I help you stay alive.” “Yes. Isn’t that what love is?”

Karlsson was so boring he made the clocks stop; you’d get sick of him in two days.

Jealousy was a fat, chalk-white snake in his chest. It writhed slowly, as pure as innocence and childishly plain.

One thing he was completely sure of. He would never end up in the lowest circle. The one where Lucifer himself chewed on Judas and Brutus, standing in a sea of ice. The circle of traitors.

She showed her true face. —there was something in her, something that was . . . Pure Horror. Everything you were supposed to watch out for. Heights, fire, shards of glass, snakes. Everything that his mom tried so hard to keep him safe from.

The person his dad became when he drank had no connection to the person he was when he was sober. And so it was comforting to think about Dad being a werewolf. That he in fact contained a whole other person in his body. Just as the moon brought out the wolf in a werewolf, so alcohol brought this creature out of his dad.