Anatole Lets the Wrong One In
Anatole flopped into her seat, dropping her copy of Let The Right One In onto the table. “I think, perhaps, Fenrir Jarl should start and get it over with.”
The gathered vampires glanced at each other, then to the 12-year-old boy standing next to Anatole’s chair, then back at her.
“Ere, who let him in here?” Dracula asked.
“Are you going to introduce us to your young friend?” Trenchant asked.
“Don’t mind him,” Anatole said. “Fetch yourself a chair from the bar, dear,” she instructed the child.
With eyes wide in terror at the present company, the boy left, attempting unsuccessfully to not turn his back on anyone in the reading room.
Trenchant cleared her throat. “Right. I think, perhaps, we should lay some ground rules before Fenrir Jarl has a go at this.”
The boy returned, dragging a barstool as he went.
“Lift that up, please,” Anatole said. “You are a guest here, so don’t go treating the place like it’s your home.”
“Sorry, Aunt Ana,” the boy said, lifting the stool with effort and depositing it next to her armchair.
“Ground rules,” Fenrir said, his expression level as he tore his gaze away from the boy and focused it on Trenchant.
“We don’t want you going too meta with this,” Anatole said.
Fenrir’s expression didn’t waver.
“He’s human, isn’t he?” Dracula asked, waving his hand in the boy’s direction.
This comment drew some disapproving glances from the others.
The boy’s eyes just about boggled out of his skull.
“Right,” Trenchant said. “Nothing about the loneliness of being immortal or the Vampire as ‘other’.”
Fenrir’s lip twitched in annoyance.
“Aunt Ana?” the boy asked. “Why did the man dressed like Vlad Tepes call me human?”
“You are human. And so are all of us, aren’t we?” Anatole asked pointedly.
“Rude. Never liked that nickname. It’s Vlad, to my friends. Or Dracula if you’re referring to my lands and bequeathment.” Dracula harrumphed and then seemed to realise all eyes were on him. “Yes, um, of course, human,” Dracula said. “I like sunny days at the beach and ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” Fenrir asked.
“A sort of cheese-yoghurt that is drenched in sugar, then frozen,” Dracula added helpfully.
“Shall we try to stay on topic?” Trenchant asked.
“Rules, yes. Nothing about the vampire as the embodiment of evil and nothing as dreary as how much being a vampire sucks,” Anatole said.
Seth D’Asur snorted a laugh, almost spilling his rose tea snifter.
“We’re not going to talk about the boy? No?” Dracula asked.
“Nothing about the ambiguity of sexuality in vampirism,” Trenchant said.
“We’ve not done any of that,” Fenrir said.
“Plenty of that in my book,” Dracula said, scrabbling under the table, coming up holding several books.
“You had three undead wives!” Anatole said.
“And they each annoyed me in a different way.”
“But you hate Jonathan Harker,” Trenchant added.
Dracula scowled at the mention of the name. “And I don’t think that’s suitable conversation to have with a boy here.”
“One cannot hate if one did not love,” Seth said.
“Can it, Two-Pence,” Anatole barked before turning her full bearing on Dracula. “You spent a lot of time berating Harker and his crew, as if they were your arch-nemeses. Are you saying that you had a relationship with him?”
“Of course not!” Dracula said. “Although that Quincy was quite handsome.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re trying to be relevant.”
Dracula held up the small stack of books, ostensibly about him, in self-defence.
“Where did my other seven pence go?” Seth asked.
“To Mr Cavendish to buy my nephew here a drink,” Anatole said before she turned to the boy. “What is it you drink? Bourbon? Chartreuse?”
The boy looked bewildered.
“Chartreuse it is. Mr Cavendish, if you please?”
Mr Cavendish, with brows furrowed in scepticism, prepared a drink that was quite far removed from Chartreuse. It was turning out greenish-yellow regardless.
“But we can at least agree that this book is not about Dracula,” Fenrir said. “Any more ground rules?”
“I’m sure one or two will present themselves as we go along,” Trenchant said. “Why is the boy here, Queen Anne?”
“An outsider’s perspective. I thought it would help. Half the book is from the perspective of a bullied kid. So I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be grand to find out what an actual boy of approximately the same age has to offer the discourse?”
“And?” Trenchant asked. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Tln,” the boy managed.
“Oh, that will get you bullied, a name like that,” Dracula said.
“At least it’s short,” Fenrir added.
“Noctillin,” the boy whimpered. “Friends call me Tillin.”
“Eugh,” Seth said. “And I thought I had it bad.”
“Do you get bullied, Noctillin?” Anatole asked.
The boy seemed reluctant to answer.
Fenrir chuckled into his beard. “A scion? I don’t think our scions get bullied much.”
“Nonsense, being this short must count against him in social circles,” Anatole said.
“I think you’ll find that other kids his age are around the same size,” Seth said.
Anatole continued unperturbed: “Go on, you can tell us.”
“I’m guessing the boy is learning what being bullied feels like right about now,” Trenchant said, smoothing her dress.
Anatole blanched, her mouth a tight line. “One example, then you can go.”
“Once, a long time ago,” Noctillin managed.
Anatole sat back with her arms crossed; her eyes closed in vindication. “See? There’s the fresh perspective I was looking for. Tell us what happened. Go on!”
Tillin shifted uneasily on his stool. “A boy made fun of my name.”
“Called it,” Dracula said.
Anatole shushed him with a glance and made an encouraging gesture towards Tillin.
“I told him to stop, but he didn’t,” Tillin said, looking cornered.
“And then?” Anatole said.
“I scared him away using my secret power.”
“Oh,” Anatole said, deflating.
“He ran and ran, screaming.”
“Okay, Tillin, is it? That’s fine,” Anatole consoled.
“He ran until he got to the road,” Tillin went on, eyes glazing over with the memory. “There was a car.”
The collected vampires flinched.
“The car missed him, but swerved. It fell off a cliff.”
Mr Cavendish arrived with the drink, about to place it in front of the boy.
“-Everybody died,” Tillin whispered.
Mr Cavendish turned on his heel back to the bar, deciding that perhaps Chartreuse had been the correct call.
“His parents took him out of the school, and we never saw him again. Some people said he was so upset about what happened that he threw himself off that same cliff, and that’s why we never saw him, but I think he just went crazy and lives in an asylum somewhere.”
There was a silence only broken when Mr Cavendish returned with the better drink, and the glass clinked on the table.
“I guess the bloodline runs true, Queen Anatole of the Black Waters,” Fenrir said.
“Didn’t get bullied much after that, I suspect,” Seth said.
“Yes, home-schooled would be my suggestion,” Trenchant added.
“Well, yes, okay. It’s not like all your ideas all work out perfectly, Nine Pence. I just grabbed the first likely lad I found at the estate. How would I know who did what to whom?” Anatole huffed. “Haven’t lived there since the 1920s, now have I?”
“What?” The boy whimpered.
“So, Fenrir Jarl,” Trenchant said. “How about you give us your opinion?”
Fenrir took a deep breath. Then breathed out, seemingly calming a great storm on the inside.
The boy started counting on his fingers. When he ran out of those, he looked with a rising panic at his shoes, which were moving slightly from his efforts to wriggle his toes mathematically.
“Well?” Anatole said. “Can I have my turn?”
“It was the best one yet,” Fenrir said breathlessly.
“What?” Dracula said. “Better than mine?”
“I think the one with the boats was better than yours, Draccy-boy,” Anatole added.
“And the one with the no-shirts,” Trenchant added.
Dracula blanched and sat back. “Which one?”
“Any of them,” Trenchant clarified.
“Now you’re just being mean,” Dracula finished.
The boy stared straight ahead. “Black Waters,” he muttered.
“Care to elaborate, Fenrir Jarl?” Trenchant said.
Fenrir took in a deep breath again but deflated. “It’s the best yet.”
“Come now, you-” Anatole started.
Fenrir interrupted in a rapid-fire stream: “The book perfectly encapsulates the loneliness of the Other that is a creature of night in a world made during the day, the struggles of belonging when your mere existence necessitates the destruction of others, the cruelty of normalcy when the individual can only be considered normal statistically, the duality of good and evil within each sentient creature, and how the bad brings out the good, and who thus need each other to avoid sins committed in broad daylight be attributed to the Other, instead of the to the everyday mundane evil that is sentient existence.”
A moment of silence reigned.
“Well-” Seth started.
Fenrir sucked in a breath. “Not done. This book then further poses the question of belonging; how family and other connections that one cannot choose, such as children at a school, which traditionally is considered an important identifier for an individual, serves only to alienate and ‘other’ an individual should that individual not conform immediately to the vision of belonging that said connections deem acceptable. In contrast, chosen friends, in this case, Eli and Oscar, Jocke and Lacke, can go right. Also, where chosen connections could go wrong, such as the warped love between Hakan and Eli.”
The new silence brooded.
“Feel better?” Anatole asked tentatively.
“Never agreed to follow your rules,” Fenrir said.
“We didn’t expect you to,” Trenchant said. “At least now, all of that is out of the way.”
The boy, seemingly not having heard anything that the others had said, turned pale. Unwillingly, his eyes tracked to Anatole. Then equally unwillingly left her face to track the others.
“What’s left?” Seth asked.
“Sexuality,” Dracula said with the good grace of seeming embarrassed.
“And how much being a vampire sucks,” Seth added.
“Vampires,” the boy murmured.
“Zut,” Trenchant said, gaze narrowed with dislike. “I don’t see the point of discussing that.”
“That’s very much in the spirit of the book,” Seth said.
“To be entirely fair, being human in that world sucks just about as much,” Anatole said. “One character became a vampire, decided it sucked so much that she killed herself via sunlight the moment she had the chance.”
The vampires around the table all flinched in varying degrees at the idea.
The boy took this moment to try to make a run for it. He only managed to move an inch or so from his chair before Anatole snatched him by the collar on reflex.
“We’re not leaving yet, don’t be rude,” she said. “You know, let’s look for the brighter side.”
The vampires flinched audibly this time.
The boy had gone rigid. “You’re not aunt Ana. You’re Anatole, the Queen of the Drowned,” he muttered. “And that’s Fenrir, the Nightwolf.” He turned to Trenchant, her blue dress incorporating elements of armour to match the sword belted to her side. “The Lady Knight.”
His eyes went to Seth, but nearly crossed in incomprehension, not in recognition.
Seth’s expression went from regal intensity to just plain dejected.
“I am the God-King,” he whispered.
“Sure you were, buddy,” Trenchant whispered back.
“Well, I was,” Seth said, expression just as sour.
Lastly, the boy’s eyes went to Dracula. “And… Dracula?”
Dracula smiled seductively.
“Stop that,” Anatole said. “Oh, I guess he’s done here, fat lot of use he turned out to be.”
She let go of his collar. “Go on, run on home.”
The boy collapsed next to his stool but shot up apoplectically, making his way to the beaded curtain exit.
“That wise?” Fenrir asked, his voice low.
Anatole soldiered on. “He’s a scion; he’ll be fine. He’s got his secret power.”
The boy started running as soon as his legs got the whiff of freedom.
Anatole wrinkled her nose in annoyance. “What I’m saying, in the book, in the end, the good guys got out.”
“Wouldn’t call anyone in that book good,” Trenchant said.
There was the sound of screeching tires from up the front of the shop.
Anatole’s expression was iron.
“And Oskar is destined to become the new Hakan,” Seth said. “So there’s a dreadful future to look forward to.”
“I heard there’s a follow-on short story that delves into what happened to those two after they got on the train,” Anatole said, quite deliberately. “Anyone read it?”
Fenrir shook his head, listening for further sounds from outside. “The text is the text. Any extra information that has a bearing on the text is its own text. Attempts at recontextualisation leave a bad taste in my mouth.”
Mr Cavendish, after a concerned glance at the collected vampiry seated around the table, went to investigate the commotion.
“Pretty much like the book then,” Seth said.
“Well, there’s a plus,” Anatole said. “At least we can all agree that we feel better about everything because at least we’re not characters in this book.”
Mr Cavendish returned with a stony expression and quietly resumed his seat at the bar.
“There is but one difference between us and the vampires in the book,” Fenrir said. “We have our trueborn kin.”
“So sexuality is important then?” Dracula said, smiling salaciously.
Forgive me,” Trenchant exclaimed. “But I fail to see why this is even a topic of discussion! What point is sexuality if procreation happens from one individual, no matter her proclivities, biting another individual? This is true for us as well as for the vampires in this book. We pick what we wear mostly out of tradition, or an attempt to titillate!” Her eyes shone wildly. The candle flickered in a sudden gust. “Humans are obsessed with sex because that is a biological imperative for them. We’re obsessed with blood because that is a biological imperative for us!”
“At least we don’t have to murder if the blood is truly of our line,” Fenrir said. “But then again, the Undercity and our history are filled with the consequences of feeding on impure blood.”
“If we did not have blood from those of our blood,” Anatole said. “Do you think our fates may have been the same as the vampires in this story? Needing to murder to the point of losing the will to be?”
“Eli did mention that fact being the reason why there were so few vampires in that world. A fact graphically visualised with the fate of Victoria.”
A shudder again went through the collected vampires.
“So this book,” Seth said. “…Is good because it makes you feel bad? Makes you think about how bad things could be.”
The group descended into an uncomfortable silence.
“I guess I should go see if Tillin is okay,” Anatole said with abrupt dismissal.
“And I need to tend to my family,” Fenrir said, standing up.
Trenchant stood as well. “I wonder how Lucienne is doing?”
The party broke up with solemn uncertainty.
Soon it was only Seth And Dracula seated at the table.
“You don’t have any family?” Seth asked.
“All I got is a jar of dirt,” Dracula mumbled.
