Twilight Children Episode 5
Vlad tries to understand what it means to be a person or whatever it is Vlad is.
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, Elaine, Vlad, and others in the town protest the building of the new bookstore, Book Haulers.
How Not to Drown
Vlad
Elaine’s Bookstore rested between two larger buildings of red brick, making the white stone and wood building blend in with the falling snow and sleet. Vlad loved it. When the small child came with Elaine through the winding tunnels running beneath Ghostwoods, they made sure to drag Elaine out before they reached the store’s basement entrance so they could approach the independent used bookstore all lost and cold in the storm like people who believed they found salvation only to find blood and teeth and disordered books.
“They’re not disordered,” Ryth would always yell at Vlad when Vlad would point out that there were children’s books right beside philosophy books and historical accounts of Ghostwoods. “They are exactly where they need to be. This creates just the right browsing experience. Oh, you came to learn about basket weaving, well have you considered baking a tart instead, or how about reading sonnets? Welcome to Elaine’s where you come in looking for one thing and end up finding yourself or someone you never thought you’d be.”
Vlad loved Ryth, too, though they always treated Vlad like an unwanted stool.
Their words, not Vlad’s.
“Do you mean something to sit on,” Vlad asked, helping Ryth shelve their latest drop-off of comic books. “Or something you shit out?”
“Does it matter?” Ryth asked.
They adjusted the shelves along the stone walls that lead down into the tunnels running beneath Ghostwoods. Gas powered torches lined the walls continuing toward the labyrinth of stone connecting the town and acting as an easy way to move through the snow.
“It matters to me. I’m either an object or waste.”
“Well, fine, you’re none of those, but you are annoying and weird.”
“You like weird and you are annoying.”
“Fair.” Ryth tried to hide their smile, but Vlad caught it and doubled it. “You’re a mystery, Vlad. A black hole on this town’s already sordid history, and I plan on solving you.”
“Solving me?” Vlad handed Ryth several copies of Watchmen and old editions of some manga called Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?. Each smelt of sweaty fingertips dipped in dusty salt. “I am unsolvable. A mixture all my own.”
“Oh god,” Ryth said, rolling their eyes and facing Vlad. “That’s what every basic bitch says. And if we are going to be associated, even loosely through Elaine, you cannot, I repeat, cannot be a one-note, I’m-a-mystery bitch. Know who you are, Vlad.”
Vlad sat on the cold ground of Elaine’s and eyed the covers and spines of books showing all manner of choices, of people, of destinies claimed. Once or twice, Vlad had eaten versions of these stories and knew them like they were their own history. Even now, Vlad could taste the salt of the pages on their tongue and began to salivate while stroking the soft glossy cover of one of the Yuri mangas on the shelf. In adventure stories, usually a dark figure comes in the night and whisks you away toward a family and your identity. A secret finds its way to the surface and despite everything you try to do you have to battle against the consequences or die alone with regret. Friends become lovers and enemies become friends who sacrifice everything to see you happy.
Is that who Vlad is?
Deep down past all the hunger, Vlad believed the secret to what made them so strange and such a mystery lied somewhere deep in the past where only Elaine went to find a baby crying in the snow.
“I’m Elaine’s daughter.”
Ryth shot a glance at Vlad from the corner of their eye as they arranged the new books on the shelf. “Right. Sure. Of course. Her daughter. Makes sense. Absolute. Completely. Not curious even slightly.”
“I am hers. And she is mine.”
This time Ryth slammed the books they were holding on the ground. They did it again and again, but Vlad did not jump. Heather and Bronson Northman, Von Northman’s children, however, stopped as they came up from the tunnel entrance. Heather clutched her little brother to her body.
The small boy asked, “What are you doing?” He said it like an insult but genuinely looked curious.
“Teaching,” Ryth said, pasting a grin on their face. “How may I help you fine young cannibals today?”
Heather scoffed. “Bronson has a school assignment. He needs to write about the founders of Ghostwoods. You should have a display or something out?”
“We don’t but I can help you,” Vlad said, conditioned to know how to find any information on Ghostwoods whether in the store or home.
Ryth stopped Vlad with a wave of their hand. “I’ve got this one. You just watch.”
Beckoning them onward into the story and out of the tunnels, Ryth led them around a shoulder high row of books with a sign saying HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED. Most of the books were actual photocopies of journals that Elaine kept locked away for historical records. There were one or two university press editions of The Making of Ghostwoods written by people who once lived here but have since moved on. Vlad could still smell all of the books previous owners on the fibers.
“You can find everything you need here,” Ryth said, leaning against the stack. “But if I were you, Bronson, I’d get my story straight from the source.”
The older teen pulled out a copy of The Building and Breaking of Ghostwoods by Monica Northmen.
Heather knocked the copy away. “No, thank you. We’ll stick with something else.”
Ryth shrugged. “What can I say, your mom was quite the historian in her day.”
“Yes, thank you,” Heather gritted through her teeth at Ryth. “We’re aware of who our mother is.”
Like an omen being called by her full name, a young Black woman with twigs and bottle caps in her hair ran past the store’s windows, catching snowflakes in her mouth like a rampaging shark.
“Old Lady,” Vlad said.
Bronson struggled against Heather’s hold. “Don’t call her that.” He kicked his foot out at Vlad but didn’t make contact.
“Come on,” Heather said, taking Bronson by the hand. “We’ll order our books online.” As she left, she muttered loudly, “I can’t wait for the Book Haulers to get here.”
Once they were gone, Ryth said to Vlad, “Now, what have we learned?”
Vlad stared blankly at Ryth.
They sighed. “What were you doing this whole time?”
“Watching.”
“Well, you should have been observing, thinking, wrestling with the content of WHO YOU ARE.”
Out of everyone Vlad had met in their short life, Ryth was no doubt the wisest. They knew things about the town and people that other people seemed too preoccupied to see. Vlad wanted to be like that. Wise and quick. Knowable and dramatic.
“Alright, kiddo,” Ryth said, placing an arm around Vlad’s shoulders. “Time to learn how not to drown.”
They led Vlad with one arm around their shoulder and another one searching out their glasses in their cardigan pockets. Once they were found and fitted onto their face, Ryth smiled down at Vlad as they passed by the back office. Ryth gave Elaine a head nod while Vlad locked eyes with the old woman grouched and mumbling behind her cluttered desk. Elaine smiled and spit in their direction before picking up her pen and scribbling in her journal.
“She’s been doing that shit,” Ryth said, smiling politely at Elaine and steering Vlad toward the front windows. “More and more these days.”
“Writing?” Vlad asked, pressing their hot face against the freezing glass.
“No.” Ryth considered Vlad. “She’s getting old. She was bad when I was young but now, she’s almost as bad as Old Lady.”
“Everyone says that, and she’s as fit as ever.”
“Fit and fine are two different worlds. She’s as lost and mad as The Wandering Woman. Heather and Bronson are a lot like you. Except, when their mom got real sick, they kicked her out. Forgot her and their connection to her. If you asked them who they were, what do you think they’d say.”
“Heather and Bronson.”
“They’d say,” Ryth corrected, “they were Von’s kids. No identity and no sense of self outside the places they come from. You don’t have to be that. Elaine, Ghostwoods, me, we’re all just setting and characters in your story. You choose what we are and what this whole circus is about. To me, Ghostwoods is everything and nothing. It’s the world and hell. That’s how I see things. You think my name is Ryth? Fuck no, my government name is some shit so boring and basic I had to change it. Can’t go around being a Randy or Russel when you know you’re a Ryth—caster of tales, weaver of worlds, and delicacy of your dreams. I am my own creation. What are you?”
Vlad had to bite their tongue to refrain from saying they were Elaine’s. But it was all they ever knew.
“You can only be who you are, not someone else,” Ryth said. “Every other role sucks.”
That made Vlad smile.
“I want to be Elaine’s,” Vlad said softly in case they were wrong again.
Ryth put an arm around Vlad and pulled the child into them. It felt warm. Like home without all the bruises. “I don’t blame you. Someone needs to be there for her. But you’re just a kid. You have to be there for yourself because Elaine can’t be.”
There was a clattering and shout from the back of the store. Like Old Lady, Elaine came at the sound of her name. With her arms over her head like fighting off a murder of crows, she took off toward the back of the store and the tunnels.
“Elaine!” Ryth called after her, but she kept going. “Shit.”
Ryth gazed down the dark tunnel where Elaine vanished. While they decided what to do, Vlad choose. They were Elaine’s. And if they couldn’t protect her the way they were now, then they’d change, become something stronger.
Next Time: The fallout of change.
Twilight Children Episode 6
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.
What did you think? I’m trying things out and everything is an experiment. I’d love to know your thoughts? Love it. Hate it. Absolutely indifferent and confused?