Twilight Children Episode 16 - Finale
In the end, what are we but stories.
Twilight Children is a horror serialization about care giving, family, and consuming stories. Episodes are released weekly. If you’re new here, you can catch up on episodes on the Twilight Children homepage.
Writing Skins is a reader supporter author newsletter that shares excerpts from Aigner Loren Wilson’s writing journal. Aigner is an award winning and nominated author of literary speculative fiction and nonfiction.
Previously On: In last week’s episode, Ryth turns hunter and Vlad turns monster.
New Email: Assholes
StephanieYou just had to talk about it, Ry Ry. Just had to go and blab it all out. Well, my dad found what you wrote and reported it. But maybe you already know that, since I just got word I’ll be heading upstate to the juvenile mental facility for an extended stay due to delusions of paranoia that have led me to either harm people or believe that I have—either way, they think I’m dangerous.
They think I started all of this. They’re treating my dad like some martyr for turning me in, but you know the truth.
Maybe somehow you and Nos can stop this. I’m not scared or anything, just saying, this would be a great way of disappearing and breaking up the only force in town fighting against the Hungry Ones.
I left you a voice message and texted you. But you didn’t respond. Neither did Nos.
See this and come save me.
All the Days Fold into One
Elaine
There once was an outsider who went for a walk in the snow-locked woods. What a silly thing to do when the snow falls like ash around the mantels. She moved like a stunted bitch and carved through the snowy dark of the before. I was with her then like I am with Vlad now. All that exists is the wandering splitting into thousands of thin makeshift times. The deeper I fall into my memories, the more I have to claw my way back to somewhere else where things are safe and knowable, where my hands don’t melt through faces long gone.
Do you know me? Have you stumbled upon my story as I stumble through my own sorted past? I’ve gone through these journals, trying to piece together all I’ve done, but there is another you in these pages. There are so many of you on these pages, but are they all the same? Or am I the only thing that’s remained unchanged, simply rearranged?
And there I go falling away and through like shit in an overflowing diaper.
Whatever or whoever this ‘you’ here now reading this is, do not let Vlad taste any of this. This is not for public consumption, as they say. This is only for you and me—whoever we may be, now and forever.
When I found the baby, with the woods closed in around that screaming bundle of cloth and flesh, I spun with such joy and fright, and I didn’t know why, but I did, I just couldn’t place it. I couldn’t chase it down, so I ran after it. I ran after Vlad.
Childbirth is not like the books and movies describe. It is more death than life. And even more so when you are the Wandering Woman’s droppings.
There once was a child I had, and it was me.
I am not a proper child, you see, only one of those young and unhurt things you can call a child no matter their age. I was born free and able to love who I could because I was lucky. I had a secret home with others like me. They had been freed or ran away or stole their freedom. We learned from the native tribe around the area that the soil was a good home. At first, no one knew what that meant, but we were smart enough not to argue and simply be shown the way. We built our homes in the ground to keep us warm, safe, and together. And in the soil, like so many others I found love.
Love that sits here at the tip of my fingers with their tender head and whimpering with their supple mouth.
Hold on, we are so close. I will feed you beauty in the cornfield if you feed me meat by the fire. You kiss my knees in response and the snow begins to fall outside.
What they never tell you about falling is that sometimes and in some places, you never stop falling. You fall for eternity. You keep falling like snow for decades.
I try to tell you, my love, but your skin and hair break away like bark from a tree. What is wrong? Why have you turned sour and frozen? Where have all the fires gone?
Very well, my love. I’ll give you teeth and love and hope it makes you rich in death and life. My teeth come out so easy now that I am one of the dead and hungry things. One tooth for your right eye. One tooth for your left.
What is born of bone and flesh will never be like us. Our baby grows from your corpse, an embryo suckling from your hard decomposing leather flesh. It is not really a baby, though. Only a remembrance of death, of a time I was alone and searching for a home, so I made one out of myself and the woods above our grave.
In the Ghostwoods, one night, I found it again, the baby that grew from our deaths. I was trying to end my life because Jamilia Barlow decided to bring the devil to town. It wasn’t the best thing to do, and if I would have remembered what I was, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have swallowed the town whole. Every creature, no matter its intelligence or vile. Instead, I tripped through the snow, vomiting down my clothes.
Together Von Northman and his wife, that bat out of hell—Old Lady—stood the two of them together like deer in the snow with a baby at their feet, screaming holy merry and all sorts of curses. Like Old Lady can hear the words her baby was trying to say to stave off its death in the cold, picked the infant up, and pressed it to her ear like a shell.
“Put it down,” Von said, knocking it out of her hands. “We’re not keeping it.”
The baby made this soft thud in the snow before rolling over and screaming even louder as though something this time was so wrong and unfixable that the only thing left to do was get out its last breaths in screams. From where I stood, hiding in the brush, I could see its tiny brown fists shaking and punching at the night.
Your fight is gone, little one, they are taking it before you even have a chance at the title.
Von picked a shovel out of the snow and raised it over the baby. In his hands, he adjusted it so that it was aimed downward, with its sharp point targeting the small trembling body.
Old Lady threw herself over it. “It’s your baby, too.”
“Shut up,” he said, changing targets and beginning to dig a hole. “This is your fault.”
Cooing and lifting the baby out of the snow, Old Lady kissed its broken leg and bleeding scalp. When she sings, it’s beautiful.
Does Von not know of the spirits who wander the soil, searching for bodies to call their home?
Von yanked the baby by its broken leg and dropped it into the hole he had dug before quickly sealing its screams in. When the screaming stopped, Old Lady crab walked away from her baby’s grave and into the darkness of the woods.
“Good riddance,” Von said before leaving the spot, too.
I was too sick and close to death to do anything but watch and weep and pray. But I wasn’t the only one who watched. A tall Black man came out of the woods and to the grave. Using his hands, he dug up the snow. In the ground, he must have found the baby dead or at least close enough to it. Gentle and slow, he cradled the baby up out of the frost and pulled his jacket off to wrap around it.
He kissed the infant’s head. “You did not deserve this. Go quiet, now.”
The man rocked the baby in his arms until the screaming returned. This time, it was a deeper scream. Not one of death but bothered life, like saying who has awoken me again after all this time.
Once the screaming started, the man stopped rocking the infant, and a snarl came to his face. “There you are.”
He placed the baby back down on the ground, this time leaving it out in the open. Then he left the child, too. Left it screaming holy heaven in the snow. That scream gave me life, and I would do anything to keep it.
And with it—with you in my life, loneliness stayed away for some time until I found myself lost again in all this space and memory just going to rot in my head. I may have made death my child, but she made me live in this world far longer than I would have chosen. Or is it the other way around? Whose life gave way to whose death, mine or Vlad’s? And who needs to die for us both to let go and become a whirl of dust in the snow?
I Don't Like (The Way You Move Me)
VladVlad sat in the corner of the main room, Elaine’s diaries in bitten tatters around her. All the towers of books knocked to a wreck. She wept for the stories she knew and for the memories now emptied from Elaine’s mind and burning inside her. They bonded with the webbing of history in her head from Von. Together, the memories were a scattered collection of hundreds of years of hate, hunger, and suffering.
So much long suffering it opened a cave inside Vlad.
Elaine sat happily munching on cold sausages by the fire. Before Vlad left, she stood above her and watched, listening to that soft sound of the old woman living, breathing, okay in the moment and lost in a memory.
“Hello.” Elaine smiled, blinking up at Vlad. “You remind me of my daughter. What was her name?”
Too many sounds and stories flooded Vlad and the only words that came out, came out in jumbles, running her mouth out. She had to go. Had to leave whatever was left of Elaine alone. So she did. She fled the small cabin she called home with Elaine.
There was a name in Vlad’s mind, a woman thick and sticky enough to take all the painful confusion away. Vlad had to return to a place that made sense. She needed to hear something true from someone true.
“Vlad.” Carmen wasn’t shocked when Vlad climbed into her truck in the Book Hauler’s parking lot. She was anxious. “Vlad, you can’t be here.”
In the backseat where they last were together, there were suitcases and plastic bags of food.
“You’re leaving.” Vlad was surprised she had a mouth to speak with and a body so empty.
Carmen’s eyes drifted to the clothes in the backseat. “I’m sorry. I really am, but you have to go. I need to get Stephanie.”
“Elaine said your dad was my dad. Why would she lie to me about you?” Vlad watched Carmen’s face drop.
“Ron’s not my dad.”
“What?”
“Stephanie and I are adopted.”
“You lied to me, too?” The memories Vlad had inside of her spanned such a distance and still there were lies separating her from the truth. “I stopped Von for you. I saved you and your sister.”
Carmen shook her head. “No, you killed him for Ron. He told me to tell you that stuff about Von. Ron made me do everything.”
What was happening? It was like someone had taken Vlad’s memories and eaten them, changed them.
“You said you loved me.”
“I just did it to keep me and Stephanie safe. That was the deal.” Carmen gulped. “Our lives for you.”
There were many things Carmen didn’t know about Vlad. Vlad held secrets, too. She had been watching Carmen closely and saw her inching for her phone in the cup holder of the car door. Carmen thought Vlad a woman like the rest, but she was more. She was an unrecognizable beast lost in the snow.
Grabbing Carmen by the wrist, Vlad pulled her onto her lap. “Vlad, please,” Carmen whispered.
If it wasn’t for the change happening inside of Vlad and the horror painted across Carmen’s face, Vlad would think it was all okay. But what she did wasn’t anything close to okay.
Like with Elaine’s journals, Vlad knew what to do, how to get to the truth. It was just one bite and then another. Carmen tried to fight, to claw, to kick out, but she didn’t realize how hungry Vlad was, how strong she had become. She had gotten a taste of the truth and of the memories hidden beneath the flesh.
Now, Vlad wanted more.
She wanted all of it.
Every story that came to be about her, she wanted to erase them through her lips and grind them to dust.
Living On Inside Her
Ryth
Hi? It is Ryth. I’m a caster of death, destroyer of doubt, and delicacy of your nightmares.
Song of the Day:
Guess I’m just another one of the dead now. Eaten and displaced. But my story, my story, lives on. Who even is there to find my ending written across Vlad’s skin like stretch marks? Lemonade piss memories of Von course through her. More moments and stories come to mix with mine, and, dear reader, I am scared and pissed, and there are people in here with me that I know aren’t me.
Fuck all of this.
If I’m not careful, I’ll get lost in the mess inside, all these parts of Carmen, Von, and Elaine. Elaine’s voice sings through all of the mucky black. Oh, babe, you ate everything you could find, didn’t you? You ate Carmen’s heart. You ate Von’s brawn. And you ate Elaine’s words. Not all of them, though. If you can hear me, Vlad, I hope you can connect to the truth that Elaine hasn’t been erased. There are scraps and remains of her back at the bookstore, locked away in a safe filled with her journals and diaries.
Nos’ voice echoed to me. “Your dad did this … It’s the only thing that makes sense … he scheduled me the new midnight shift … trying to kill me.”
Like a foolish mortal, I reached for him. There is nothing of me close to a body to grab or to hold. There’s just this thing we all make inside of Vlad, this cacophony of years, screaming on into a pit.
Nos spoke again. “We need to get the fuck out of town … cage is coming down … We killed people.”
That wasn’t Nos. Well, it wasn’t the Nos I feel and sense in here with me. No, that Nos is as lost, scared, and frustrated as I am. Maybe he is even me now. Does a hot dog stop being a hot dog when it's devoured? Or does it become an apple in the belly of the beast?
Nos’ words were a memory, just another memory among the horde.
“We run,” I said from a mouth long dead. “We just get out.”
But we didn’t. Because I couldn’t leave Vlad. I couldn’t leave Elaine. As much as Nos and Stephanie had become my family over the months, Elaine and Vlad were my original kin.
Living in a memory inside someone filled with memories is like hitting the 24x speed on your remote. It all just rushes by, and you try to stop it to go in reverse back to the part you remember being at, but you can never seem to land on the right scene.
Pages fall from the sky like ash and snow.
Cut to the interior of Elaine’s cabin and Vlad straddling her corpse. Freeze frame on Vlad’s skin covered in blood and scratches. Her skin split like bark in some places.
“You want to kill my dad,” Stephanie’s voice floated over it all.
“He did this,” Vlad said as her voice morphed into Carmen’s. “Already had your sister, why not make it a full meal.”
A rush of trees and flashes, flashes of blood, of bodies being thrown, of Stephanie fleeing before it was too late. And good for you, girl, get out. Get out like we should have instead of following Vlad to our own ends. Vlad was a wolf on hands and knees, her belly hanging large beneath her.
We found Ron alone deep in the Outer Limits. And this was before he killed me and Nos with a swift blade across our necks and buried in our guts. Ron is the worst kind of story. His is one of constant taking, constant using. He runs the rivers dry. He is a Hungry One. Elaine’s words confirm it, and the images nestled in Carmen are only that of monsters.
“It ends with you.” I heard Ron say outside in the world at the edge of Vlad’s mouth.
Inside Vlad, Elaine’s memory kicked and squirmed and made Vlad’s teeth itch for blood. Ron was just some small creature. More twilight child than human, who didn’t know the dawn was breaking over him and it had a name.
Vlad.
But she wasn’t alone. We were all here.
Through the yawning cave of Vlad’s mouth, I could hear Ron. “What are you?”
And my heart swelled to hear Vlad say:
“I am Elaine’s.”
New Email: I'm Sorry
Stephanie
I’m sorry I ran. I’m sorry I left you and Nos. You two were more my family than my dad and sister combined. I could never see the world the way they saw it. You don’t deserve what is happening to you. No doubt, my dad fell on you. I should have said something. Told you not to go, told you about how bad he can really be. Told you Ron wasn’t my dad, just some guy who adopted me and Carmen years ago.
Honestly, there’s lots I should of told you. Like I love you, Ryth, and thank you for not leaving me behind. But if I told you all that, I wouldn’t have had time to try and save the people I did.
I doubled back to Nos’ truck. I drove back to town and told everyone everything. The ones who believed me loaded up everything—they actually had bags packed, like they had been expecting this, waiting for someone to tell them, ‘It’s time, let’s go.’ I don’t know how many people I saved in the end, but we formed a small convoy of overloaded trucks. In a town like this, you’d expect at least one gun wielding mob, but no. No one wanted to hurt anyone else, everyone just wanted to help get everyone out or go home to be with their families.
The great resignation didn’t go unnoticed. I heard it as a rumble at first. Knew it wasn’t an airplane, earthquake, or storm winds. It was Vlad.
There was something you and Nos missed back at her place. Her eyes. They weren’t angry or hungry. They were sad. So sad and alone like a kid lost at a mall or something. It was that type of sadness you just know deep in your bones you can’t help, can’t fix it. Vlad had lost something, and I think it was something greater than you, me, or anyone could understand. Elaine was a piece of her. Maybe the biggest part, at least the only human part left.
At the front of the convoy, I rode with Jamilia in Nos’ truck. We saw Vlad first. By that point, Vlad no longer looked like that big beautiful Black woman. Her skin had hardened to a near-stone-like substance. She was huge, big as a pack of trees, tall as a hill, mighty as a snowstorm.
All black and sorrow.
And I know you’re dead, Ryth—you’ve gotta be if she’s here like this—but watching Jamilia trying to drive her town away from a crying humongous Vlad, I get it now. In the end, you want to do the one thing you think will save your soul, your heart.
You tell the truth and reach for family.
Where You Leave Me
Memories are more than just stories we tell ourselves to remind us who we are. They are the scraps we leave out for the hungry ones.
I am a hungry one.
One pained by rough bricks, black tires, and the hundred screaming within me. There is a story here. One of danger. One of love. One of deep sorrow.
More than anything, this story is a warning.
That’s all folks! The story has reached its end. Thank you for reading. I’m in the process of compiling Twilight Children into an e-book for people to download. I’ll share that here once it’s ready.
Thank you again for reaching the end.