Twilight Children Episode 8
The town comes to Vlad's aid in Elaine's absence.
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, Vlad and Ryth went looking for Elaine after she disappeared in the wake of Vlad’s sudden strange aging.
We Together
Vlad
Vlad tried to remember every memory and moment Elaine and her shared while perched atop her creaky bed in her messy room, licking at the pages of Neruda and reciting lines all wrong. Somewhere in there, in time, Elaine was waiting for Vlad to save her. But if she wasn’t haunting the construction sites or the shelves of the bookstore, where the fuck was she? Vlad had searched everywhere, everywhere she could think Elaine would go if she was scared or lost.
Residence on Earth slipped out of her hands, so she could catch the few tears that fell at the thought of Elaine somewhere frightened, possibly close to death—closer than she normally was at least. But Elaine couldn’t die. Elaine was something more than simple human stock. Time couldn’t destroy her. And death? Death was just a name Elaine called a nap when she grew restless and cranky. Vlad would find Elaine, and she’d find her alive, fine, and hungry for a book by the fire.
And hungry for Vlad.
A knock came from the front door of the small wooden cottage, but Vlad wasn’t about to answer it. If it wasn’t Elaine, then it must be someone who didn’t know any better. She had no time for them. Grabbing the teeth-raked poetry book from the floor, Vlad shoved it into her coat pocket and draped the long jacket over herself. Quiet as she could, Vlad slipped out her open window.
“Vlad?” Eddie Barlow, the mayor’s husband, said her name like he was spitting out a worm he found in an apple, sleeping and full. “Honey!”
Ghostwoods’ young Black mayor Jamilia Barlow came running around the house. She had pieces of paper in her arm and a forced smile on her face. “Vlad, hello,” she ventured, taking a step toward the retreating teen.
If Vlad made a break for it, they wouldn’t be able to catch her. She knew that, and they didn’t. “What do you want?” she asked.
Jamilia handed Vlad one of the bright blue papers in her hands. “Ryth told us about Elaine. She’s been missing? That’s just awful. I wish we would have known from the get.”
Vlad stopped retreating. “Why? So, you could help chase her out? Run her down?”
Eddie and Jamilia exchanged looks.
“You don’t gotta be alone out here,” Eddie said. “Elaine never did like help, but you’re just …”
Something invisible dropped from Jamilia’s face, like a weight flying away from her. “What we mean to say is, we don’t care what you are. We’re here to help one of our own.”
Vlad looked at the poster in her hand and saw Elaine’s face sneering back at her with a crown of letters that said:
HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
A necklace of numbers appeared beneath the photo. “What is this?”
“Missing posters. We’re going to hang them around town.” Eddie stepped toward his wife and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Jamilia thought you’d want to help. And we know y’all don’t have any electricity or phone service out here, so that number there routes back to the sheriff’s office. Anyone knows anything, they’ll call.”
Help? They wanted to help. The bastards? The assholes? The murderers? Vlad had read about the town in Elaine’s history books and heard Elaine tell disjointed story after disjointed story about the horrors of Ghostwoods folk. She had tasted the way they hollowed the earth for mines and how they stripped what Ghostwoods used to be into something new and different they could call home. But in all those books, help was never offered.
“Why?” Vlad asked, staring into Elaine’s frozen eyes on the poster.
“We’re all Ghostwoods, you know?” Eddie said, approaching Vlad and coaxing her toward their truck. “From experience, folks around here don’t mind weird as long as you stick with the mess. You understand? Don’t make your own.” Vlad hadn’t realized it, but she had placed the poster of Elaine into her mouth and was sucking on the ink and color. Gently, Eddie removed the paper. “Save that for later. No need to show your fangs now.”
His laugh was like the forced heat in their four-door truck. It enveloped Vlad and pulled her into a world so unlike her own she felt as though she slipped under a veil. Is this what it was like within the town’s embrace instead of on the outer limits?
Vlad stayed on her guard, but Eddie and Jamilia did exactly what they said they were going to do. They drove from storefront to shop and hung not one but at least three posters in the windows with Vlad’s help. Some people did laugh and jeer like Von Northman, but some took stacks of posters to hand out to the people they saw.
There was care here. Vlad would have to tell Elaine when she found her.
After getting rid of the stack of posters they had, Eddie and Jamilia took Vlad back home. But not before handing her two large grocery bags of cans, drinks, and toilet paper.
“Do you want us to check on you? You know, from time to time to make sure you’re making out all right?” Jamilia asked from the driver’s side window after Vlad stepped out of the truck.
Vlad didn’t answer and hoped they’d leave her alone.
They didn’t.
The next day a tall Black man in a thick coat draped over a multicolored sweater showed up at the door. He knocked and called out until Vlad came running draped in her soiled blankets. He did not give in to fright and stood his ground as Vlad shoved him back.
“Why are you here?” she barked.
How she must look to this stranger! Deranged. Depressed. Wanting? It would have made Elaine cackle.
“Hello,” he said, dropping the hood around his Northface jacket. Vlad recognized it as one of the nice company ones the construction workers also wore. “You must be Vlad. My name is Ron. On behalf of the Book Haulers, we deeply regret your loss.”
“I haven’t lost anything.”
Ron folded his arms. “I was led to believe you had been left. Abandoned, so to speak.”
“Elaine didn’t leave me.”
“Of course not,” Ron said, smiling in a pitiful way and walking back to his large truck.
And that’s when it came to Vlad. She knew who the man was, knew his truck, knew his smile.
Vlad dropped her blanket into the snow. “I remember you.”
He turned to face her.
“You tried to attack me and Elaine—”
With a raised hand, Ron stopped Vlad mid-sentence. “You are remembering wrong, my dear. I saved you two that night. If it wasn’t for me, my workers would have taken things further than you would have liked no doubt. But I put an end to that. I’m a fan of your Elaine. She’s quite the woman. If you want help looking for her, I’ll take you around. Maybe show you some spots you haven’t been to.”
Like with Eddie’s truck, heat crashed over Vlad and melted all snowflakes that crossed the barrier from outside to inside.
“What do you know?” Vlad asked, backing away from Ron and toward her home, Elaine’s home. “You’re with them—the Book Fuckers.”
He shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “I meant what I said, I do like Elaine and I want to make sure she’s safe.”
Vlad’s eyes narrowed on Ron.
“Fine, don’t come. I’ll go looking for her anyway.” He continued getting into his truck, but before pulling off, he leaned out his window. “If I do find her, I’m guessing she’d rather see your face than mine. You know, give her someone she knows, instead of a Book Fucker like me.”
He was right. Vlad needed to be the one to find her, but she couldn’t do that by hiding away inside, tracing patterns on the carpet, and eating books.
Like he could tell what Vlad was thinking, he turned off his truck and told her, “Go grab a coat and some boots, this snow is only going to get worse.”
Vlad did as she was told, though the cold never bothered her and the snow always made her feel like she was never alone. She changed into some cleanish clothes piled on the floor and met Ron back outside. Ignoring what she thought Elaine would say, Vlad climbed inside the cab of Ron’s truck, and the two took off through the trees and snow toward town.
“I’ve already checked everywhere.” Vlad’s eyes moved rapidly with the passing trees.
“You’ve checked every place in town those folks took you,” Ron corrected.
“No, I’ve also been other places, too. I’ve looked.”
Ron thought for a moment. “Well, back at your place, I saw a diary sitting out on the table. You don’t strike me as a diarist—you’re more of a wild thing than anything.”
“It’s Elaine’s.”
“What’s it say in there? Must have some clue to where she went.”
“Those are for Elaine. Not for me. I don’t touch them. I can’t touch them.”
Glancing at her from the side of his eye, Ron said with a small smile, “Come on now, you’re telling me you’ve never even taken a peak?”
Vlad shrugged. Of course, she looked. But nothing Elaine writes ever makes sense. It’s all in a jumble. One long unending day.
“I bet someone like Elaine has all the stories.”
“She does. She holds everything.” Vlad wrapped her arms around herself and tried to fold in, her eyes narrowing on the buildings in the snowy distance.
“I hold a thing or two, too, you know?” Ron steered his truck toward the woods and away from the heart of town.
The opening to the tunnels under Ghostwoods was as tall and made of reinforced iron and stone to protect it from the harsh winter and forever snowfall. They came upon it quick, splashing snow on the cars lining the road toward the entrance.
Vlad knew everything there was to know about Elaine. She ate on the rug before her fire for the past few months, growing into everything and anything Elaine needed. Vlad was Elaine’s and Elaine was Vlad’s. How could she have parts of herself that existed like pockets outside of Vlad? And worse, worse yet, there was no hope of finding Elaine. She was lost. Vlad just needed to accept it.
“She’s not here. She’s not anywhere.”
Turning off the truck, Ron turned to face Vlad. “That’s not a nice thing to say. I talked to Elaine a few times, and I know for a fact, if you were lost, she wouldn’t give up so easily.”
“I’m not giving up. I’ve searched.”
Ron opened the door. “There’s one place I know you haven’t looked. And because I know Elaine and how much she loved a good story, I’ll tell you one.”
Vlad didn’t want to hear a story or go into the tunnels or do anything but go home. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. What was home without Elaine? Just some shack in the woods filled with books and half-eaten trinkets.
“You see, back before there was a Ghostwoods, there were these tunnels. They were used for mining and transport and escape. When the founders of Ghostwoods came and claimed and took what they could, they dug up everything. Including these tunnels, but they didn’t like everything they found. Some places they marked unsafe.”
Ron led Vlad down the stone tunnel and into the crowded market, where the open space split off into directions leading to various parts of Ghostwoods. They went further into the where the heavy-duty string lights lining the walls hadn’t been maintained in months and flickered between erratic and disturbing. And they went further, into a dark place past a wall of stone and wood where they had to crawl on hands and knees through wet dirt and rock.
There laying in a puddle of her own mess in the dark depths of a section of the tunnels, where painted on the walls in red was the word Hell, was Elaine, cold, starving, and saying softly, “Vlad.”
Next Time: The town comes together to help Vlad in Elaine’s absence.
Twilight Children Episode 9
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?