Let the Right One In

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

‘The suburban mystique is the absence of riddles.’ Johan Eriksson

Everything is in the brain. From the beginning. The body is simply a kind of service unit that the brain is forced to be burdened with in order to keep itself alive. But everything is there from the beginning, in the brain. And the only way to change someone like this man under the sheet would be to operate on the brain.

‘Oskar. I’m a person, just like you. It’s just that I have … a very unusual illness.’ Oskar nodded. A thought wanted to get out. Something. A context. He didn’t catch hold of it. Dropped it. But then that other thought came out, the terrifying one. That Eli was just pretending. That there was an ancient person inside of her, watching him, who knew everything, and was smiling at him, smiling in secret.

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.

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.

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.