by Kírk Barrett
(based on characters & situations created by John Ajvide Lindqvist)
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Jagar slugt och vilt i natten |
Thursday 12 November
Luleå.
Oskar watched the shadows of the evening sun turn from ash to gunmetal and finally to pewter before switching on the small desk light and taking up his library book again. The half-drunk cup of coffee in front of him had gone cold. He heard Eli stirring in the bathroom. A little past four in the evening; she was just waking up.
Oskar reading, waiting at dusk for Eli to get up. An old routine. He'd long grown used to it.
Eli came out into the small front room where Oskar sat wearing a high-neck dark blue sweater, her legs bare. Next to the dark glass window, Oskar sat near his reflected twin. Both of them hunched over a book. Neither made indication of her presence.
"What are you reading?' she asked, after a time.
"Mmrm," he replied.
She scowled. He'd been moody for the past few weeks. She did her best to put up with it, but it grew tiresome.
"Vikings." Oskar looked up and flashed a familiar smile, then dropped his head back down to the page. "Mythology. Norse gods."
She licked her lips, shifted her weight. "How bloody. Weren't you reading a Shakespeare comedy yesterday?"
"Uh-huh." He kept his smile to himself this time. "Midsummer Night's Dream, but I finished that. Did you know there was a snow goddess from the Lapplands who ruled over hunting and skiing? Scatha. She's the shadow where the souls of all gods and men passed through at the time of death."
Eli half-listened to Oskar talk and strolled around the front room, into the kitchen, bare feet padding across the tile floor.
Two chairs, a framed picture of Kvarnviken Bay on the wall, a small radio and the light on the reading desk by the window, the thin futon mattress on the floor in the bedroom, and some clothes hanging in the closet. That was all the furniture they had. The chairs, desk, and kitchen appliances all came with the apartment. Eli's old rings and puzzle egg, a broken Rubik's cube, a few books—Shakespeare, Dante, a Mare Kandre paperback; an empty footlocker big enough for Eli to fit in. They didn't own much. None of the ubiquitous modern devices found in most apartments, even here in Luleå, these days.
Nothing more than they could carry away in a rush if needs must.
"When Loki was tied beneath the earth, Scatha hung a snake above him that dripped venom into his face..."
Eli circled back into the front room. Oskar glanced up at her with his eyes, head remained focused on the book in front of him. Eli was pale, gaunt, with dark circles under her eyes and her hair limp, with streaks of ashen color in the black.
"Do you work tonight?"
"Erm, yeah," he said, then waited quietly for a moment. "You hungry?"
She nodded.
Oskar actually liked his job for a change. And Eli's life pleasant as it had ever been.
†
Only two other people were on the eight o'clock train when Oskar and Eli boarded at Luleå. The trip to Sunderby Sjukhus took fifteen minutes. Just long enough to warm up from between their walk to the station and their walk through the cold again to the hospital.
Oskar tried over the years to forget how to be cold, but he never accomplished it. Especially on the few occasions when it dropped towards the magic number where Celsius and Fahrenheit were the same. To avoid drawing attention, Eli wore a coat, hat, and scarf, but Oskar had to remind her sometimes.
They sat in silence on the train—looking like a typical father and daughter, Oskar's satchel next to him on the seat—and Eli noticed Oskar kept making furtive glances at her followed by a bright grin.
"What?" she asked, but he just grinned and shook his head.
She poked him with a gloved finger and hissed, baring her teeth. He hissed back. The other two people on the train did their best not to stare.
Oskar finally grabbed Eli's smaller hands in mid-poke and held them. He looked down at her, to some place deep in her wide, dark mercurial eyes.
"You know what tomorrow is?"
Furrows formed across her brow and she sought some answer that never came. Friday didn't seem to be the answer Oskar was seeking.
He pulled off a glove and dug his hand into a coat pocket, handed her a note. It was worn at the edges and creased from being folded and refolded a thousand times.
Eli didn't recognize it until she read it—I must be gone and live, or stay and die—something she had written for him when they first met. She looked from the note to Oskar.
He was older now; taller, heavier, his blonde hair a shade darker and showing hints of gray. But Eli still sometimes saw the scared little boy she once knew hiding in the rail lines beneath his eyes and marked the lower country of his cheeks.
Eli's appearance hadn't changed much. It waxed and waned with her hunger and feeding, but she still appeared to be 12 years old.
"Twenty-eight years, Eli. November thirteenth, we left Blackeberg together. A Friday, just like this year."
"Twenty-eight years... ?" Eli's voice was faint. She realized as she said it that, to Oskar, that was a long time. Three-quarters of his life. She didn't know why she said the next thing. "Counting the year you spent on your own?"
Oskar turned away. He didn't like thinking of that year. 1995. Not quite the full year, but too long to been alone. He thought he could leave Eli and make something of a life on his own. She went to sleep. He moved away.
He'd come back ten months later. When he woke Eli, she almost bit him. Almost killed him.
Almost.
Oskar faced the window and stared at the train car reflections on the glass. The world speeding past outside was black and invisible.
Eli reread the note. Something stirred inside her—love?—something more than she'd felt for anyone else in her long, young life. That nameless lord who helped Elias escape keep of the man with the black fingernails and taught Elias he might fare better in the world if he were Eli; young ladies had certain worries young lords did not, but they were more likely to be given assistance as well. Eli remembered Sigurð, Kettil, Søren, Håkan, they had all meant something to her—they had all meant a lot to her—but it was only with Oskar she felt like something inside her was a fire that could shine a light so warm she could find her way home through winter's darkest night.
After biting a few throats en route and drinking their blood...
She looked up at Oskar. He faced the window. She searched for the child in his reflection, saw his eyes stained and damp.
The announcement sounded for arrival at Sunderby Sjukhus.
Oskar pulled his glove back on and stood up, holding the hand rail. The train swayed and came to a stop.
Eli folded the note and placed it protectively into her own pocket, followed Oskar out into the cold. She wondered what it felt like to cry. It had been so long, she couldn't remember, and didn't know how to find out.
†
They had certain rules, the two of them, certain agreements they had forged over the years.
Whatever job Oskar took, the employer was given an incorrect address. That would ensure a delay in authorities finding their apartment should anything unfortunate occur.
Wherever they actually lived, they had to be friendly to their neighbors, but never get too close, too personal. It was enough to say hello and not display unusual behavior, but neither would it do to have a neighbor dropping by unannounced to chat or to borrow something from the kitchen.
If anyone ever asked—a friendly neighbor or inquiring official—Eli (or at times, Elias) was merely visiting her father. Oskar's ex-wife (the story would go) lived in Upsalla or Stockholm or Tromsø—somewhere that wasn't here—and no, Oskar didn't recall the name of the school she attended, but he could certainly find out, thank you very much.
For Oskar: Don't steal anything.
It was never a good idea to draw untoward attention to himself.
For Eli: Don't kill anyone unless absolutely necessary.
And if it became necessary—depending upon the specific setting—make it look like a random crime or animal attack.
With forensic evidence collection more commonplace and revealing over the years, their rules and agreements became ever more crucial for their continued survival. Oskar read everything he could to calculate methods which would avoid leaving a trail, and as he grew more accustomed to the brutal reality of how and why Eli needed to feed, he understood what could be left to confuse the evidence that would be found.
By the time he was 19, Oskar had learned enough about anatomy and human physiology to know his way around a hospital, but lacking the credentials of a formal education in medicine, the only sort of jobs he could obtain were those of a custodial or support staff position.
His temperament lead him through a half-dozen jobs in as many years.
They rarely stayed in the same town for more than 18 months.
Eli never complained. Neither of them minded finding someone else to go. They were content wherever they ended up, whatever they had to do. At times, even happy.
They were together.
†
The snow crunched under their boots as they trudged from the station to the hospital. Unseasonable cold set in last week and hadn't let up. Not yet nine o'clock and already -15°. By the end of Oskar's shift at five, it could be -30°.
They came upon a frozen puddle and Oskar paused long enough to stomp on it with the heel of his boot. The ice sounded like cracking glass. Satisfied, he kept walking.
"Do you ever think," Oskar asked, his words freezing in the cold night air, "about what will happen to you when you die?"
Eli smiled, looked up at Oskar, but saw it was one of his serious questions. She squeezed his hand with hers, as if that was her answer.
"Thinking of having a viking funeral for me?"
"That hunting goddess I read about. Scatha. She reminds me of you."
"I'm a shadow of death?" Eli asked, levity in her voice. She snarled, death-like.
Oskar replied with an unintelligible murmur.
They reached the tall, bright windows of the hospital entrance and paused outside.
"You need a couple hours?"
"Yeah, give me some time to find someone." He lifted his satchel a bit, as if it held the answers to all their problems. "Probably on the second floor."
"Don't take too long." Her voice had become all edges. She was hungry. "And check for medications. That stuff tastes awful." She scrunched her face to show her distaste and that finally got a reaction from Oskar.
He smirked, and when he walked inside, lingered at the open doors for another moment waiting for something more.
"Come in when you like," he told her, then turned and carried his smile and satchel into the hospital.
There were floors to mop before he could look around for Eli's dinner.
†
It was a simple IV tube, 16 gauge needle and roller clamp on one end, and on the other end, a rigged device that looked like some kind of horrific dental mold from a Cocteau film.
When Oskar first started working as a overnight hospital custodian, he used Halothane—like Håkan had—since that wouldn't seem odd given the setting, and once the victim ... patient ... was unconscious, he drew blood as quickly as possible, draining it into an IV bag. But that process still carried extreme risks—medical complications, coma, shock, in one case, death.
After that, Oskar abandoned the Halothane and came up with the idea of a feeding tube directly from patient to Eli. With a few modifications, they had developed its present incarnation. A large enough needle to let the blood flow quickly, but not too big to draw curious attention to the puncture wound. Post-operative patients were usually the best, depending on the drugs used to put them under and to quell their pain.
Opioids had a powerful effect on Eli, and made it virtually impossible for her to do anything for several hours afterward. Oskar once had to quickly clean her up after a drugged feast and carry her to a couch in the waiting room to sleep it off. She could barely make it to the train in the morning to get home before dawn.
Even with their increased precautions, Oskar rarely kept a job more than a year. They'd moved to Luleå in the spring of 2007, and they been careful enough for him to still be working at Sunderby 16 months later. There had been two close calls—a doctor making an unscheduled check-up who noticed the puncture wound where there had been none earlier in the day, and a nurse Oskar had to divert from entering the room where Eli was feeding—but their system worked and was as safe as any Eli had ever devised.
She hadn't killed anyone in four years.
Twice a week she accompanied Oskar to work. She kept to herself outside or in the surgical waiting room until it was time, and when she was done either flew home or hung around until Oskar's shift ended.
Tonight was clear and cold. The stars shone like frozen glass beads and Eli sat perched on the ledge of the third floor. Her breath on the window formed icy patterns. She waited for the moon to rise over the swale of wooded land surrounding the hospital.
Oskar was inside somewhere, mopping a hallway and thinking about the shades of gray he'd seen at sunset, ancient Nordic gods, and the emptiness that exists between the light and dark.
He slopped the mop into the bucket and traced arcs across the tile floor.
Outside, Eli breathed on the window, the moisture forming a crystal flower pattern, and then with a gloveless fingertip, she drew a heart on the glass.
†
The crescent sliver of moon rose at 1:30. Another hour passed before Eli went inside. She took the stairs to the second floor one at a time, slower than she intended. Each step was steeper than the one before it. Each step heavier. The snow boots feeling foreign on her feet. She didn't like shoes. She didn't like elevators.
She was hungry.
The second floor was quiet, most of the hall lights were off. Motion sensors. A modern feature she rarely triggered. It wasn't so much that she had a preternatural a sense of where Oskar was, nor did she follow a trail as if by smell, it was just a matter of... instinct. Of knowing. Like the understanding of where restrooms were at a restaurant you've never been to.
A flicker of incandescent lights came on down the hall and Oskar's silhouette stepped out of a room. He waved to her then stepped back in.
A moment later, Eli stood hesitant at the doorway. She waited just outside.
Oskar prepared the needle. His satchel on the floor at his feet was open. The tubing in his hands. Two patients in the room, their breathes rising and falling with pharmaceutical sleep.
"The nurse just made her rounds. She shouldn't be back for a half hour, at least."
He looked up, cocked his head to one side, his voice hushed. "Oh. Yeah. Come in, come in."
Eli stepped into the door and, soft as snowfall, stood next to Oskar at the bedside nearest the window. A woman lying there. Fifty, perhaps, maybe older.
Oskar slipped the needle into the fold of her arm. The bright red fluid flooded the transducer, stopped by the roller clamp on the plastic tube.
Eli trembled. The tip of her dark tongue touched her top lip. The room faded around her. All she saw, smelled, tasted, breathed, was the anticipation of her feast.
Oskar didn't like to see her when she got like this. She didn't look like the Eli he knew at other times. She was menacing, old. Her eyes wild and predatory.
He handed her the soft plastic dental bite at the end of the tube. Vacantly she took it, raised it to her mouth.
The plastic bite didn't offer the feral satisfaction of flesh—she sometimes missed that—but it provided a barrier from the burden of remorse. The responsibility she carried for ten thousand murders.
Oskar rolled open the clamp on the IV line. Warm blood flowed through the tube. The red stream reaching the end.
Eli lapped it up.
Oskar took a step back, feeling the cold glass of the window behind him, checked his watch for the time.
Two minutes is all he could give her. About one liter of blood.
50 seconds passed. Eli drank.
60. 70. 80 seconds.
Lights in the hall flickered on.
85 seconds.
A whispered voice from the hall sounded amplified in the quiet room. "I know you're sleeping Mrs. Lagerfelt, but I forgot—"
A shadow turned in the doorway. Suddenly stopped, staring at Oskar and Eli. The nurse's initial confusion fled quickly when she saw the IV tube leading up to Eli's mouth.
"Oh my God!"
Plastic and glass falls to the tile floor. A swallowed scream is followed by a louder one. A murmur rises from the other bed.
Oskar looks up from his watch, eyes wide.
90 seconds. Have to stop Eli, tumbles under the thought, have to stop the nurse.
"What are you doing—?" The nurse steps into the room. "Oh, God!"
Then she turns and is running.
So is Oskar.
Alone in the darkened room, Eli crouches at the side of the bed. Teeth sunk into the plastic bite, she devours the warm blood.
Two minutes pass. Eli continues feeding.
The nurse continues running.
Oskar chases her. He knows this is going to get worse and wonders if he should turn around and get Eli out of the hospital, but he keeps running.
The nurse makes it to the station at the crossroads of the second floor hallways. She's the only one on duty, needs to get to the telephone. She rushes behind the desk. Her fingers dial the numbers before her mind can clearly recall what they are.
112.
"Security, second floor," her voice hysterical.
Oskar reaches the desk and yanks the phone away from her, but it's too late. She screams again.
Flushed with rage, Oskar strikes her with the telephone. His swing knocks her backward and she collapses on the floor. He's about to jump over the desk after her but remembers Eli. She's still in the room with her blood donor.
Oskar runs back, afraid of what he'll find.
†
Eli slumped against the wall beneath the window. Her face smeared dark red, eyes glazed. The plastic tube was still attached to the needle in the woman's arm, but blood no longer flowed through it. A faint shrill siren sounded from the EKG machine on the wall.
Flatline.
Oskar ran to the bed and pulled the needle out of the woman's arm. The lady in the bed next to her was half-awake and muttering through layers of sleep.
"Nurse, I think there's something wrong in here."
"Yes, ma'am," Oskar told her with calm authority, "Someone will be in here shortly."
The sound of the elevator chime came from down the hall. Rubber-soled footsteps running.
Oskar threw a blanket around Eli and picked her up. He slipped out of the room just as two attendants arrived. Oskar was quick to avoid any questions.
"Mrs. Lagerfelt's grand-daughter shouldn't see this," he told them as they rushed past, and hurried towards the stairs.
The attendants ducked into the room and set about trying to revive a dead woman.
Oskar bounded down the stairs carrying Eli in his arms.
†
"Eli. Eli!" He slapped her. "We've got to get out of here."
Eli's eyes focused on him. She smiled for a moment, then everything came back to her in a rush. She tried to get up but couldn't get her legs to function.
They sat on the white tiles of the men's rest room on the ground floor. Oskar locked the door behind them with his custodian's key, but it wouldn't take long for hospital security to figure out where they went.
"There's a window, but it's double-paned. It won't open and I can't break it."
Eli got to her feet, staggered. "What was in her blood, Oskar? I can't—"
"I don't know, Eli, but you got to get up. The police—"
Eli struggled to her feet. Balanced herself between two sinks until she got her feet under her. She held the hospital blanket up against the window and punched the glass. Her hand went through both thick panes. Shattered glass scattered across the rest room floor and into the snow outside. Eli jumped through the open window with none of the speed nor grace she usually had, and landed sprawled on the icy ground.
Oskar boosted himself up on the ledge and swung his legs out. His foot caught a shard left hanging in the frame. He lost his balance and tumbled, landing on his back just below the window. The triangle of glass fell like the blade of a revolutionary guillotine.
He saw it falling towards him. Felt the spectral fingers of snow dusting his face. Steam rose from his nose and mouth as he gasped for breath.
At first he lay still, enjoying the sensation of a thousand frozen pinpricks on his skin. Then the warm wetness spread across his shoulders, under his back.
Eli was dizzy but got up and pulled Oskar to his feet. Oskar stood upright for all of two steps, but the world spun far too fast and he fell again. That's when she saw the blood spilling from his neck, staining the snow around him.
"Oskar..." Eli said, but couldn't bring herself to tell him. He was bleeding too quickly. And the state she was in, she couldn't carry him. She sank to her knees in the white and scarlet drift.
Oskar's eyes blurred with pain. He opened his mouth but didn't know what to say. His breath glittered like tiny silver crystals in the cold night air.
Fingers reached up to her but only touched the empty space between them.
"Eli," her name came out almost silent in a breath of steam. "I'm sorry..."
She dragged him closer to her. Looked back at the broken window. Hospital security would find them in a few minutes but she stayed where she was, hunched in the snow with Oskar.
"Eli, remember when we met, you told me to be you for a while?"
Her laugh held no mirth. She cradled Oskar's head in her lap. Her eyes fixed on his. Hands stroked his cheeks. She nodded.
"Twenty-eight years I've tried to be you. Seen myself through your eyes. I always wanted to be bright, beautiful..." His breath gurgled, like a broken pump in a fish tank. His eyes towards her but focused on some place far beyond where she sat. "'Choose love by another's eyes, swift as a shadow, short as any dream; brief as lightning in the collied night. The jaws of darkness devour it up. And so quick bright things come to confusion.' Heh, I never figured out what a collied night was..."
Oskar's mouth kept moving but all his other words were wet and red. His face was slack and smooth. For a moment, he was the little boy she'd first seen in Blackeberg. The years passed all at once. Tears frozen in the corners, his eyes turned glassy and sightless and his body twitched once as he fell into the embrace of every dark.
Beneath a coal black sky scattered with ice and diamonds, Eli held him.
"I love you, Oskar," she whispered, but he was no longer there to hear.
She leaned in and kissed him once and then was gone.
†
Friday 13 November 2009
Eli hid from the morning light. He'd have to take what he could and go somewhere else tonight. Maybe Helsinki. Or back to Stockholm. Copenhagen, perhaps. He'd never been there.
He lay in the bathtub, doors locked and shades drawn. The police would go to the address they had for Oskar Eriksson, and they'd eventually find their way here. But not today.
Not that Eli had much of a choice as to where to go in the daylight.
He unfolded the note again. Oskar had carried it around for twenty-eight years.
Most of a lifetime.
Brief as lightning; short as any dream.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die. Yours, Eli.
He thought of the Norse goddess Oskar told him about. Patron of hunting and skiing. The shadow at the end of all things.
Is that where Oskar was now? In a great deep shadow waiting for Eli to finally arrive?
Eli folded the note and tucked it back into his pocket. He pulled the blanket over his head and squeezed his eyes shut.
Instead of going to a city somewhere, maybe he could find a place to hibernate for a while.
Someplace underground, maybe. Temperature didn't matter so much, so long as he was secure.
Undisturbed.
Someplace safe.
Quiet. Dark.
Eli drifted on the edge of sleep and, alone in the shadows, he remembered how to cry.
†††
© 2009 Kírk Barrett