Let the Long Night End (Complete)

[dongregg]

You're right Even I have some. Way off topic. I staggered out of a saloon one sunny afternoon. Feeling sleepy, I lay down in the gutter next to a pig. Two ladies were walking by, and one stopped and said, "You can always tell a lot about someone by the company they keep." And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

Ha ha! Tell that one to your pig farmer friend.

[dongregg]

Duplicate. I couldn't delete it. You're right Even I have some. Way off topic. I staggered out of a saloon one sunny afternoon. Feeling sleepy, I lay down in the gutter next to a pig. Two ladies were walking by, and one stopped and said, "You can always tell a lot about someone by the company they keep." And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

Ha ha! Tell that one to your pig farmer friend.

[sauvin]

The thing about rural versus cosmopolitan areas that sticks out in my mind stems from something somebody once told me about Podunk Holler, population 100 (give or take): everybody knows what kind of underwear you're wearing today. In one of the Ring movies, the grand old lady told the journalist "your cold is everybody's cold" in her tiny little community. Stephen King's people on Little Tall (an island) did a pretty good job of keeping their dirty little secrets from each other until the demon came, but everybody knew everybody, and there wasn't a soul on that island who wouldn't be missed.

It's the opposite, even in smaller "cosmopolitan" areas like Detroit. People fall under the radar and take up residence in the boxes your refrigerator came in - what happens to them after that is anybody's guess, but I've heard that the five year survival rate on the streets in any city is astonishingly low. Detroit might not be the murder capital anymore, but the drugs and the bullets haven't moved out. I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts only a fraction of the bodies are ever found. A sizeable proportion of the bodies they do find go unidentified.

Another common characteristic of major metropolitan areas is water. Forget sewers, they're usually blocked off with gratings and screens and suchlike, but most large cities more than a few decades old are sited on major bodies of water, or on rivers large enough to sustain substantial barge traffic. Most major bodies of water have lots and lots of nice, hungry fish who'll be only too delighted to accept anybody's table scraps.

A third common characteristic of older metropolitan areas is underground. This is particularly true of places like Paris, Rome and Moscow, with $deity alone knows or could possibly remember how many miles of tunnels there might be, where all the long-lost vaults are or just how deeply stacked these warrens might be.

The kids want easy access to a smorgasbord of long pork and to be able to hide? Even the younger, tinier urban areas like Detroit have all sorts of boons to offer. By comparison, my feeling is that trying to hang out in Podunk Holler is a lot like wearing a Day-Glo target on your back.

[metoo]

But on the subject of body disposal in general, it's actually a little hard to imagine Eli going through with the process of hiding a body in any but the most crude ways (fire, for instance).

Well, for Eli to kill people on a weekly basis undetected to be at least somewhat plausible, he would have to cover up rather well. This could be achieved either through always using proxies to obtain blood, or by "going himself" and hiding the victims sufficiently afterwards. Now, Eli seems not to be too happy about having helpers, but neither does he seem to like doing it himself. The novel doesn't say what would be his most common modus operandi - having a helper or living alone. But I think that he would live alone at least occasionally, and then he would have to cover up. If he didn't, someone would have reacted on the dead bodies all displaying a severely broken neck. Realistically, that is, and I like to keep the realistic part of the story as realistic as possible.

I had some other ideas as well before settling on my particular choice: for instance, as you mention, a churchyard. Graves are pre-dug in many areas days in advance of a funeral, so nobody would look twice at seeing someone working late at night digging one up. Eli could dig further down into the grave, bury the body beneath the initial layer of dirt, and then the next day or day after it's properly hidden by a casket and gravestone. Economy-class graves for the dead. It was discarded in favor of an alternative approach, but I might save it for a special occasion later on in the story.

Well, I think you are mistaken that nobody would notice someone digging late at night in a graveyard. This is normally done at daylight, using machinery, by churchyard personnel. Anybody observing nightly digging would notice it, and plausibly raise the alarm.

[metoo]

I also raised the idea of burials at sea, but they are too young to own a boat and to be licensed to operate it in the Öresund at night. Or are they? Do you know?

You don't need a license to "borrow" a small boat and sail or row it into sufficiently deep waters. The problem rather is that you would have to carry a dead body down the beach or the boardwalk to the boat, which has a rather high risk of detection...

[metoo]

[...]Another common characteristic of major metropolitan areas is water. Forget sewers, they're usually blocked off with gratings and screens and suchlike, ...

Well, there are manholes with covers that can be lifted. A supernaturally strong child vampire wouldn't have any trouble accessing a sewer, and the manholes are ubiquitous.

... but most large cities more than a few decades old are sited on major bodies of water, or on rivers large enough to sustain substantial barge traffic. Most major bodies of water have lots and lots of nice, hungry fish who'll be only too delighted to accept anybody's table scraps.

The trouble with dumping bodies into water is that the bodies tend to float up due to the gases produced in the intestines. You need to weigh a body down rather well to keep it submerged.

A third common characteristic of older metropolitan areas is underground. This is particularly true of places like Paris, Rome and Moscow, with $deity alone knows or could possibly remember how many miles of tunnels there might be, where all the long-lost vaults are or just how deeply stacked these warrens might be.

Which is another reason why I prefer a city setting for my fan fiction.

The kids want easy access to a smorgasbord of long pork and to be able to hide? Even the younger, tinier urban areas like Detroit have all sorts of boons to offer. By comparison, my feeling is that trying to hang out in Podunk Holler is a lot like wearing a Day-Glo target on your back.

Yes, I agree. Notwithstanding if Oskar is turned or not, he and Eli would have a harder time to go unnoticed in a rural setting than in a city.

[dongregg]

I also raised the idea of burials at sea, but they are too young to own a boat and to be licensed to operate it in the Öresund at night. Or are they? Do you know?

You don't need a license to "borrow" a small boat and sail or row it into sufficiently deep waters. The problem rather is that you would have to carry a dead body down the beach or the boardwalk to the boat, which has a rather high risk of detection...

That's not what I asked. Do you know?

[dongregg]

Fan fiction writers have put the kids all over the place. They do well (or not) in whatever hunting ground they're placed in. And sometimes they are on the run from one environment to the next.

In other words, our great fan fiction writers are creative enough to write credible stories regardless of the setting.

[SpartanAltego]

I had some other ideas as well before settling on my particular choice: for instance, as you mention, a churchyard. Graves are pre-dug in many areas days in advance of a funeral, so nobody would look twice at seeing someone working late at night digging one up. Eli could dig further down into the grave, bury the body beneath the initial layer of dirt, and then the next day or day after it's properly hidden by a casket and gravestone. Economy-class graves for the dead. It was discarded in favor of an alternative approach, but I might save it for a special occasion later on in the story.

Well, I think you are mistaken that nobody would notice someone digging late at night in a graveyard. This is normally done at daylight, using machinery, by churchyard personnel. Anybody observing nightly digging would notice it, and plausibly raise the alarm.

Perhaps so. However, Eli's enhanced senses and the almost ready-made grave would tip the balance toward non-discovery. All it would take is an extra foot of dirt being dug (easy enough when you can change your hands and have beyond human strength), dump the body, kick the dirt back in. Probably a job of a few minutes at most, and apart from the actual process of digging or handling the body there is little risk of being discovered and also seen as a cause for alarm. A kid running around in a graveyard would be waved off as dumb ghost hunting shenanigans (at least, they were when I did it).

Also, I think readers may be overestimating how rural and interconnected this particular area of Virginia is. Waynesboro is a very small city, but a city of thousands nonetheless, and is surrounded by multiple smaller towns and districts in pretty much all directions. There's enough distance and people between them all that, provided a means of transportation, Eli could "hit" a different location each time a feeding was necessary (Hakan is shown to have done the same) and change methodology for body disposal. In one town, the person is hidden away in a grave. In another, house fire. Another victim is stabbed through the neck fed on without biting, thereby circumventing the need to leave a distinctive neck snap. Authorities will have a tougher time tying together a missing person (semi-rural area, lots of things can happen in the wilderness to a hunter or hiker), a house fire (could be ruled as foul play through forensics, true) and a murder in separate districts as being the work of a single killer.

But I'm really debating just for the sake of it at this point - I've got an alternative, non-murderous blood procurement method in mind. All while keeping the necessary caveat of fresh (within an hour or two since procurement) and human blood.

It sure is a good thing I'm not on anyone's bad side here. I'd be kind of scared to earn the ire of anyone so knowledgeable about body disposal. >.>

[dongregg]

It sure is a good thing I'm not on anyone's bad side here. I'd be kind of scared to earn the ire of anyone so knowledgeable about body disposal. >.>

"Oh pother." Winnie-the-Pooh said.

Wiktionary - To make a bustle or stir; to be fussy.

With so many different visions of Eli/Elias, somebody won't be happy with your vision. But your vision of Oskar, Eli, and Levi is powerful. "Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes."