Chapter 13 - Gone Awry

Chapter 13

Disclaimer:
The following is adapted from the novel Let the Right One In by John A. Linqvist and the film bearing the same name. The characters in this work are those of Mr. Linqvist and no copyright protection is asserted to this work.

Oskar stood, shivering, and stared at the door of the mausoleum. A faint brightening of the eastern sky heralded the approaching dawn.

He felt as if an enormous weight had just dropped on top of him, completely unexpected and out of the blue, flattening him and irretrievably altering his life. He tried to focus his frightened, panicky mind. It was only a matter of time before someone else would come along and see the truck, then discover the body.

He wanted to flee, but felt that events were poised at a critical moment: any mistake, and he would fall, forever lost, into deep, dangerous chasms on either side of a continued life with Eli. So he forced his mind to think. Think.

The Rubik’s Cube. My rock. Fingerprints?

He tentatively came out from around the monument and looked in the direction that Eli had gone. There was no sign of her. He ran across the open stretch and to the crypt. But as he passed the truck and approached the entrance, more and more of the groundskeeper’s body became visible through the doorway, and he slowed. By the time that he was within a few meters of the door, he had to force himself to continue.

Heart pounding in his chest, his stomach tied in knots, and covered in a cold sweat, Oskar entered the tomb with his flashlight.

He did not want to look at the body, but it was impossible to avoid because it was so close to the door. He felt disconnected from everything around him. He had been thrust into a new chapter of his life that was wrong, horribly wrong, and was not his. Someone else is doing this, he thought. I’m not here; I’m not seeing it. But of course, he was.

He saw the head that was no longer attached to the body. He saw the hole in the man’s chest, the whitish ends of broken ribs and torn cartilage, pulled back and protruding from the gaping wound. The front of the man’s parka had been shredded, and white insulating material and dark pieces of nylon lay on the floor around the body.

And he saw the blood. Everywhere. Sprayed in mindless patterns over the dusty floor. Dark stains stippling the white marble on the wall to the right, almost completely to the ceiling.

Oskar turned, ran out, and threw up in the bushes around the corner of the mausoleum. And as the bitter, watery fluid rushed up his esophagus and shot out of his mouth to splatter onto the snowy ground, his mind rebelled.

No more—no more. This has to end. Somehow, some way—it must end. He couldn’t take this any more. Couldn’t take living with the fear, the terror, the uncertainty . . . with the vampire. An evil force that had run roughshod over this man’s life, over thousands of other lives that Oskar didn’t know about. A monster that was ruining his life, and—most importantly—Eli’s life. But what to do? He didn’t know.

After he was finished, he blew his nose and again re-entered the crypt. He skirted the body and stepped over the broken marble slab to retrieve the Rubik’s Cube. He grabbed Eli’s clothes and shoes, and scooped up her hat on his way out. He quickly ran around the corner and pocketed his little piece of granite. He stuffed as much of her clothes as he could into his pockets so he could free up his right hand to use the flashlight. Then he began looking for Eli’s footprints on the ground.

With each passing minute, it became easier and easier to see, and his fear of being discovered grew. He pictured an imaginary line from the door of the crypt and off in the direction he had heard Eli run. He walked a short distance, and then found the first set of her footprints.

He was able to track her until the trail turned and entered the dense stand of trees in the back of the cemetery. Then he lost the trail; snow and ice had fallen from the trees in a recent thaw, making the snowy surface underneath pockmarked and irregular. He searched for several minutes, but couldn’t pick it up. And when he at last emerged from the rear of the cemetery grounds, he found himself at the road, whose churned and packed surface offered no clues.

He paused. A wall of trees stood along the opposite side of the road, extending north and south. He trotted across the road to check the snow under the trees there, but it was just as difficult to interpret as the snow in the cemetery. So he turned and began moving, as fast as his flu would allow, back towards their apartment. Along the way, he threw everything he was carrying except his flashlight into a large steel dumpster at an apartment complex he passed. He started to cry as he tossed in the Rubik’s Cube and heard it clunk against the inside of the container.

By the time Oskar got back, it was early morning. He was relieved to see that their apartment door was still locked, as he’d left it four hours before. When he began to turn the lock, he wondered whether she’d had a key. He didn’t think so, because she’d been wearing his pants, and—but what if she’d had her key in her coat? He paused, just as the deadbolt clicked back into the door.

If she’s in there, she’ll be asleep. Won’t be able to hurt me.

Although he was still frightened, Oskar opened the door and went inside. It was dark because most of the lights were off, but nothing looked different or amiss. His confidence level slowly grew until he looked down the hall toward the bathroom.

The bathroom door was shut. Had he shut it before he’d left? He couldn’t remember. He swallowed and slowly walked down to the door. Put his ear to it, but heard nothing.

Oskar suddenly felt completely fatigued and exhausted. He closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the wall in the hallway with his head down, breathing through his mouth. He no longer had the energy to be scared.

If she’s in there, she’s in there. Don’t care how she looks. Don’t care what happens. He opened the door.

The bathroom was empty. He exhaled heavily and slumped against the doorjamb.

Oskar thought about packing up and leaving. Just leaving. But the thought quickly died. He simply had no energy; couldn’t think any longer. So he stripped off his ski suit and clothes, took some more Tylenol, and went to bed.

* * *

Eli opened her eyes. She pulled the tarp off of her face, and crawled out from behind three industrial trash containers that ran along the wall of storage shed she had found last night.

Although she had just fed, she was hungry again. From the moment she awoke, the hunger gnawed at her stomach, and wormed its way into her conscious thought.

She thought about the boy at the cemetery last night. The one who had been hiding behind the angel monument, watching her. She had spared him because she had felt the approaching dawn; had sensed the coming of the sun in the growing lightness of the sky. Had she killed the boy, she might not have had time to find a hiding place, and as it was, her hunger had been temporarily abated by the man who had fallen into her trap.

She opened the door of the shed and peered out into the darkness, and as she did, her thoughts remained on the boy. The boy was a threat to her. Somehow he knew who she was, had known her before.

She strained her mind to think. How? How did he know her? But she could summon only an image of his face; could not connect his face to a memory of their first contact. She reasoned that it must have been a brief, chance encounter; otherwise, she would remember better. But this conclusion did not seem right. There was something she was forgetting.

The boy was the only person who knew her. She could not remember why she had allowed him to know her, but now that mistake needed to be corrected, for he was too young and weak to be of any help to her. Therefore, she would hunt him down and kill him, as she would have done last night had there been enough time. He would be easy to kill.

She closed her eyes and pictured the place that she had been before she had fallen asleep. An apartment?—yes, it had been. Not far from the cemetery; not very far from here. A mental image of the front of the apartment building formed in her mind. Bicycles in a rack—

(bicycle I know how to ride one?)

. . . and a driveway area for cars

(or taxis)

not too far from the main door, with a sign hanging on the wall. Yes, she could visualize the sign; could now recall the address.

She surveyed the large, paved parking lot before her. It seemed deserted. A few cars were parked here and there under several fluorescent lights that marched across the lot at regular intervals on tall, metal poles. On the other side of the lot was a large, gray industrial building. A series of doors and loading docks ran the length of the building.

She was still weak from her hibernation, and would require several more nights of feeding before she would be able to fly. She hated the long sleeps for robbing her of her powers and memories. She was weakened both physically and mentally. Her finely honed instincts and keen predatory intellect were blunted during these times by periods of confusion which came in waves. As the night wore on and she remained active, these episodes were more likely to occur. Feeding seemed to abate them. If she did not feed, they grew longer, and her strength ebbed away as well.

She saw no people around, and therefore no obvious prey. She knew it was still early evening, and that she would be more likely to find the boy in the apartment later that night, when he would likely be asleep. Therefore, she decided to wait in the shed for a time, and allow the night to grow old.

* * *

Oskar woke up. He sighed and rolled onto his side; looked sleepily at his wall. Then he checked his alarm clock--6:13. He felt disoriented. 6:13? That meant he had slept for almost ten hours. The whole day had come and gone, and it was now night again.

He turned on his portable TV set to check the local news. As a commercial blared through the tinny speaker, he sat up and realized his fever had broken while he had slept. He wasn’t dizzy, and felt much better. He actually had an appetite.

News of the shocking graveyard murder came on. Video feeds showed the little, dilapidated mausoleum with the pickup truck parked out front, lit up by bright lights, cordoned off with tape, and crawling with police officers. Another clip showed a body being taken out in a plastic bag. There was a grainy zoom into the interior of the crypt through the open door that showed Eli’s vault in fuzzy, black and white images. Oskar was also startled to see a video of his footprints around the angel monument, and in the snow between it and the crypt, carefully marked off with little stakes in the ground.

A search for the killer had commenced that included Karlstad and all of the municipalities of Värmland Province. Additional video clips showed views of the cemetery from the air, and police cars roaming the streets.

The police were not saying how the investigation was proceeding, but so far no motive had been established, and no suspect had been identified. A curfew had been imposed beginning at 9 p.m. Then the story shifted to human interest feeds of frightened mothers telling reporters about how scared they were to go outside after dark, and how they were keeping their children indoors.

As Oskar watched, he heard the mechanical whir of a helicopter fly low overhead. He went to the window and lifted the blanket covering his window, and for a few seconds he was able to see its lights before they were obscured by the branches of a tree and an adjacent building.

This is real, he thought. I’m involved in a murder. He thought of his boots in the bathroom, and how their size and tread matched the footprints he’d just seen on TV.

Oh, Eli. He put his head in his hands and began to cry. He cried for a long time as the TV continued to stream the seemingly endless coverage about the murder. Finally he switched it off; couldn’t stand to listen to it any more.

He wondered why Eli hadn’t come back to the apartment last night. Of course, he was vastly relieved that she hadn’t, given how scary she’d looked. But still . . . did that mean that she couldn’t remember where the apartment was? Or that she just didn’t have enough time before the sunrise? Had she really seen him, just before she’d left? And if she did, did she remember him? Would she try to hurt him, if she saw him again? A chill ran down his spine at the memory of that demonic face; that bloody maw. She could be on her way back here right now.

He had wanted to track her last night to wherever she’d gone to sleep. Why?

To kill the vampire. To stop all of this horrible bloodletting.

Yes, but that had been a ridiculous idea. What had he been thinking? The vampire was Eli; Eli was the vampire. The two were one and the same. He knew they could not be separated.

He tried to imagine himself thrusting some sharp object through the heart of the beast he’d seen last night. It had been so monstrous, he could actually see himself doing it while it slept.

But what if it changed to look like Eli again? Could he drive a stake into Eli’s heart? No. He knew he would never be able to, unless, maybe . . . she was trying to kill him in some mindless rage? Like . . .

(like that man last night.)

He pushed the train of thought out of his mind. He did not want to follow it to a definite conclusion.

Need to get out of here, he thought. Pack up our stuff and leave. But when? Right away, or would it be better to stay a few days or weeks, and let things simmer down? Yes, probably, assuming the police did not have enough evidence to lead them back here. He couldn’t imagine how they would—unless they found what he’d thrown into the dumpster.

His conclusion that it would be best to stay put for awhile made it easier to think about what Eli might do. Yes, she’d been downright terrifying last night, but she had not eaten for almost seven weeks. Maybe . . . maybe she would be better now; would become more like herself when she came back here. After all, they had been together for two years. He couldn’t imagine that she would forget who he was, and if she did, she would also have forgotten where they lived. Besides, with the curfew in place, there was no way he could leave tonight.

He paused to think about the implications of what he was considering. Of course, he would leave with Eli. She would come back as her old, normal self, and together they would figure out where to go.

But what if she didn’t come back? What if he packed up, but she didn’t return—tonight, tomorrow night, the next night, and so on. What if . . . she never came back? What would he do then?

This thought was somehow even more upsetting than the idea of killing her. To be forever separated from the one person he loved more than anything in the whole world. A life on the run without Eli, or . . . in prison. The idea was completely terrifying. Can’t think about that, he concluded. She will come back; she must come back. I can’t live without her.

After getting cleaned up and dressed, he fixed himself a can of soup. Then he started cleaning up the apartment and packing. He began making trips to the trash chute to throw away things he knew they wouldn’t be taking along.

The first thing to go down the shaft were his boots.