Summer Shadows

The Dreyton Manor looked larger than I recalled, dark grey stones that made the framework giving it an almost sinister feel comparable to that of the old mansions in horror movies I loved so dearly. The bright green grass and large ancient oaks that surrounded it helped negate it slightly, but not enough. It loomed above us like a storm cloud as we came to a stop before the large wooden front doors.

I heard Oliver’s door open behind me, and a rush of warm air flooded the cool space. Swallowing, I pried my eyes away from the daunting structure long enough to step out of the car and shut the door again behind me.

“Good to see you back again, although I wasn’t expecting you at least until early September, dear.”

A portly older woman had exited the heavy front door, hands settled comfortably on her hips as she stared down at us from the top step; her attention was set firmly on the boy making his way around the back of the car.

“Sorry for the short notice, Mrs. Russo. Trust me, we weren’t planning on coming back just yet but…” He looked over at me without turning his head, unwilling to speak any further of just what had brought us there; whether if it was for my sake or his, I wasn’t sure.

“Well, all the same, you’re here. And now I’ve got to restock the kitchen again,” she sighed with a shake of her head. “How long exactly are you going to be in town, dear?”

“Four, five days tops,” Oliver replied. “Oh, Maggie, this is Mrs. Russo, our housekeeper. Mrs. Russo, this is Maggie. She’ll be staying with us for a while.”

She nodded, making her way down the steps. “I know who she is, child. Your father informed me of everything when he called to cut my vacation short so he could bring her down to the beach. He still owes me some time off; not that I don’t love having this place to myself, but getting out of this tiny state for a bit more time would be nice.”

I followed the two to the back of the car as she gave me a motherly smile. Her grey hair was cut short in a bob that fell neatly around her face. “Besides, I’m used to having at least two of you around, so if just one showed up here I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself.”

Oliver’s face hardened immediately as he stared down at the contents of the trunk. I bit the inside of my lip, fingers balled around the fabric of the jacket’s sleeves. That statement had seemed uncalled for; a reminder to both of us that there was only one of the Dreyton twins left. I knew the shock of pain that hit me with her words was not felt by me alone; Oliver’s eyes where stony, knuckles white against the edge of the trunk as he stood unmoving at my side. I was standing where Simon should have been, and we both knew it. We were both reminder enough to each other that something dear was gone; a third party’s mention of it was merely salt on the wound.

“I think.” Oliver’s voice was cold, authoritative. “I think it would be wise if you refrained from mentioning unnecessary things like that around either one of us again, Mrs. Russo, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh my, I’m so sorry, I just wasn’t thinking and it slipped—“

“Clearly.” Oliver smiled mechanically as he looked past me and to the housekeeper. “I think we can handle ourselves for now. Don’t you have a kitchen to restock?”

The bitter look on her face brought forth a tension I hadn’t noticed right off; her lips were set in a tight line as she gave him an unwelcoming glare. Without a word, she turned and marched back up the stone steps and into the house.

A sigh pulled from him as I brought my attention once again to the blonde boy; he pushed his glasses up, rubbing his eyes, as he remained hunched over the open trunk. “This trip will be easier on the both of us if we can avoid her as much as possible. Come on, let’s get our things inside.”

“Because evading your housekeeper is going to make this an absolute cakewalk,” I muttered, dragging my bag beyond his reach before he could protest. “Right.”

I was still irritable from our flight; turbulence had shot my nerves through the roof at one point. I remembered how Oliver had heaved a sigh, reaching over to offer my hand a new hold as opposed to the suffering armrests I had a death grip on. I had flinched away from his touch, Darren’s threat ringing in my ears like church bells on a Sunday morning.

Oliver stared at me blankly as I maneuvered out of his way then, avoiding all forms of contact, just as I had done on the plane; just as I had done ever since I had watched him enter the taxi with a dead boy’s words swimming around me like an inescapable nightmare.

I groaned; closing my eyes as from inside the bag came a vibration, shortly followed by another, and then another. By the fourth ring I had managed to extract my phone from the bag. Calvin Huffington’s name on the screen came as no surprise, and I answered the call without so much as a second thought.

“What are you doing up at this time?” I sighed.

A pause met me on the other end, then. “It’s only eight. What are you doing in bed at this time?”

“I’m not in bed, Cal. I’m not even in Charleston. Something came up and I’m in Rhode Island right now, I’ll be back in a few days,” I countered tiredly.

“Oh,” he offered. In the background came a sound through the static; it sounded like a giggle. “I thought you might have been avoiding me or something.”

“Is that her, Cal? Is that your crush?” A voice sang merrily as he cleared his throat.

I felt my eyebrows raise slightly a trace of amusement hitting me. “No, no. Oliver had my phone yesterday so I couldn’t rightly answer your apparently constant calls.”

“About that,” he stated awkwardly on the other end. “I was just…worried? I mean, Russ said he saw you and Dreyton get into it on the beach and I didn’t know what had gone down.”

“Ooooh it is her, isn’t it? Oh my god, Cal, it totally is! Your face is red!” The third voice chimed once again. I couldn’t stop myself that time; I let out an amused chuckle as I shook my head.

“Well, you never mentioned you had a sister,” I mused. From the corner of my eye I watched Oliver turn slowly, eyebrows scrunched together as he lowered his bag onto the concrete drive.

“What did you just say?” I caught the traces of confusion in Cal’s voice.

“She sounds cute, that’s all. I mean, hate to burst your bubble but I did just hear all of that,” I teased.

A silence settled in through the slight static, seconds rolled by before he spoke again. “That’s not funny, Maggie. Did Dreyton put you up to that?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s really not fucking funny.”

“Wait, what? I don’t—” A dial tone cut me off as I pulled the phone away from my ear, staring in shock at the “Call Ended” screen glaring at me from my hand. I slowly looked up at Oliver, whose face had morphed back in to his mask of passivity. “He just hung up on me.”

“Well, there are some things that shouldn’t be discussed,” he replied carefully, lifting his bag off the ground and making his way up the stone steps. I followed in his wake, frustration dialing up another notch after the short and not-so-sweet phone call with Calvin Huffington.

“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked as we entered the foyer, a grand room I had barely noticed when I had been there before. It was a soft tan, crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling as a deep red carpet lined the stairs that went up and split in two directions at the top. Smaller light fixtures that resembled the room’s centerpiece circled the room’s edge, as large windows brought sunlight to us on the first and second floors. I had glanced around in awe, before I even realized that the mop of blonde in front of me was halfway up the stairs already. I quickly followed him, catching up just as he turned toward the left half of the house.

“It means a lot of things, Maggie. It means what it means; there are things that shouldn’t be discussed. Maybe not right now; maybe not for a while; or maybe not ever.”

“What if…” I paused, swallowing momentarily as we made our way down a familiar hall. “What if there’s something that might need to be discussed, you’re just not sure when, or how to go about it?”

Oliver stopped in front of a door on our right, opening it without a word before stepping back. I stared silently into the room I had abandoned myself to after my father’s death, the place I had spent days in mourning before James had taken me to the humid air and bright sands of Charleston.

At my side the blonde sighed, running a hand through his messy hair before he turned, walking to the door on the opposite side of the hall. “I think things would be much simpler if any of us knew the answer to that.”

***

I couldn’t stay in the room; not after my shower. It was heavy with memories of my father’s recent passing, the realization that Chassie’s funeral was a mere day or two away, and the idea that someone I had caused to die had once inhabited the very space.

Oliver’s door was shut as I stepped softly into the hall, making my way past other various closed doors and back into the large foyer. I made my way down the steps, fingers running lightly across the dark, wooden railing. My feet slowed to a halt as from the right hand door on the base floor, Mrs. Russo stepped carefully into the area. In her arms was a bouquet of yellow roses; bright and beautiful; a stark contrast to the pale, neutral colors she clothed herself in. She looked up as she neared the door, eyes settling on me momentarily before she smiled.

“Hello dear,” she said with a nod. “Hungry? Food in the pantry now, restocked with almost anything you could want. If it’s not there I can get it. I was about to head out now, actually.”

“Where are you going?” I asked, fairly certain I already knew the answer.

The elder woman glanced at the roses momentarily, and then towards the door, before back to me. “I’ve seen you out there. Would you like to come?”

I didn’t hesitate to nod, and she waited by the door as I made my way down the last few steps. On the right side of the house sat a garage large enough to hold at least five cars; one of the two remaining vehicles within it was a white town car. Mrs. Russo passed me the flowers before we got in. As the trees rolled by and silence filled the car my fingers caressed the soft petals, their skin a natural satin as the soft aroma they left filled the car.

“Was yellow Simon’s favorite color?” I asked, peering out at the approaching gates of the cemetery. My stomach had begun to roll uncertainly; and there was a trace of guilt over the abrupt stop of my visits. It hadn’t been intentional, but by the same hand given the circumstances it wasn’t really avoidable, either.

“Actually, it was green. He hated yellow. But then again, the flowers are my preference and not his. It isn’t like he could have green roses as it is,” she replied, a curt tone taking up residence as she finished. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the Dreyton’s housekeeper at that moment. Yellow roses had started appearing on Simon’s grave a mere three weeks after the tragedy with his mother, and had remained a constant staple ever since. Initially I had thought it James or Oliver, but getting a bit closer I felt neither one had the capabilities for such acts. When Mrs. Russo had appeared on the foyer with them bundled in her arms things had made a bit more sense; it had been her doing all along. Yet it was almost a spiteful notion; why leave flowers the color he had detested on his grave every other week?

“So you did this because you like them, even though he wouldn’t?”

“No, not quite. Oliver favors it, too.”

“Why is it that everything is always all about Oliver?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Why does it seem like everything revolves around him, and how ‘good’ and ‘precious’ Oliver is? Why does Oliver seem to still get the favoritism when from what I’ve seen he isn’t quite as wonderful as everyone painted him? God, I just don’t get it. I don’t get Oliver, I mean, is there something I’m missing, some hidden charm that everyone finds apparent while I struggle to understand him? At least I was able to read Simon, to see past all of that harsh behavior. I can’t do that with Oliver. I just don’t understand…”

She didn’t respond at first; and I silently fumed in the passenger seat. My fingers had begun to pluck at one of the roses, yellow petals falling lightly in my lap as the gates to the graveyard approached.

“No,” she stated finally. “No, I guess you wouldn’t understand. You know less about this family than you seem insistent on believing, and it would do you well to remember that, Ms. Walton. Now, why don’t you go visit the grave before something is said that gets me fired?”

Her words stung like a sharp slap to the face, and my fingers found their way to the door handle before the car had come to a complete stop. Oliver’s desire to avoid the unpleasant housekeeper seemed relevant; I regretted joining her on the excursion to the graveyard.

“I’ll find another ride back, don’t bother waiting around,” I said, slamming the door shut behind me. I walked down the familiar path without looking back as the car’s engine faded into the distance.

The sight of his grave brought on a mixture of emotions; relief and pain were the two main forces vying for control as I slowed to a halt. The old, faded roses had turned a shade of dry brown, and I carefully retracted them from their spot before replacing them with the new ones. It felt wrong though, knowing then that it wasn’t something Simon even liked.

“Sorry about the flowers,” I muttered guiltily. “Ms. Russo insisted. Although at this point I’m inclined to throw them away. But it just doesn’t seem right to leave this place so…empty.”

I waited a few moments for a nonexistent reply that might have come with the breeze; but my surroundings were void of anything, alive or otherwise. I sat down slowly, pulling my knees to my chest as I traced his name with my eyes.

“You know, I thought things were wrong before, when you were still here. God, if only I knew what was in store,” I scoffed. “It’s like I’m living in a nightmare, Simon; and you were a dream, one of the most terribly, tragically beautiful dreams I’ve ever had. I would trade it all to get that back.”

“Did you kill him, too?”

I looked down from the marble headstone, sighing heavily. That wasn’t a voice I wanted to hear; but it was one I was getting used to. I needed a way to counter him; to nullify his hostility. Ignorance had done me no good thus far; it had probably gotten Chassie killed and placed a target on Oliver’s head. Civil conversation seemed like a feat that would go against every desire I had, but maybe it would quell his rage; then again may be it wouldn’t. Regardless it was worth a shot. “You could say that, yeah. He died because of me, unlike you. And also unlike you, he’s gone for good.”

“Lying isn’t going to save you, or anyone. If you’re going to take the blame for one of our deaths you may as well take it for both. My parents had me killed, offed by one of their subordinates because there was a leak about what they did behind closed doors. And you know whom they decided to blame, whom they chose was the weak link without any trace of proof? Me. And it was you all along, you saw something, you knew. So they killed me and fled the country. Don’t stand there and shake your head; I’m not stupid. You took my life; so I’m going to take everything you have,” Darren stated in a low voice. “So who was he? Your boy on the side?”

“Please, the only one who wasn’t faithful in our relationship was you,” I replied quietly. “He was on your side of things in more than one way; his mother was harboring a horrible secret, and because of that he was dead. But he was stuck, just the same as you. He isn’t any more though; he gave it up when he broke a promise.”

Sometimes I wondered if it was for the best; if Simon’s final passing was actually a relief for the ghost. He was trapped in an in-between after all; a void past life but not reaching what was beyond—if in fact there was anything at all. One constant companion while the world swam around you all but oblivious to your existence seemed like a maddening sensation. But how awful had it been when you factored in the other issues? Like how possessions seemed more draining as the time passed, and how then and only then did he seem to realize that he couldn’t feel a single thing?

Looking over at Darren, with his stony face and hard eyes, I wondered, how did that affect him? Had he even realized? Could I possibly use that against him if he hadn’t?

“Tell me, does it bother you that you can’t feel—you can touch—but you can’t feel anything at all?”

The ghost remained quiet for a moment before speaking again, “I haven’t thought about that.”

“Can you feel the sun? The warmth of the weather? How hot you should be bundled in all that clothing? Can you feel any of it?” I asked as he calculated my words. I didn’t miss his fingers rubbing against the fabric of his jeans, or his other hand clenching in and out of a fist. “You can’t, can you? You can’t feel anything, but you remember it. So tell me, does it bother you, and what happens when those memories fade and you can’t even remember how the touch of another human being feels, Darren?”

“I don’t…”

“Killing me, or anyone I know won’t bring that back. I mean, what happens when you succeed? What happens when I’m gone, with everyone else you took out blindly because of something I didn’t do? No one will even know you exist. No one will speak to you. You will be a memory trapped in a changing world that’s going to forget about you.” I watched my words slowly begin to process in his mind, face falling. “But it doesn’t have to be like that, Darren. You don’t have to be alone. I can help you; I can be there for you and speak to you when no one else can, if you will let me. I just need you to believe that I had nothing to do with what happened to you. I just… stop all of this, please.”

Darren crouched down to my level, heaving a heavy sigh as he stared at the ground below us. His fingers drummed against his leg steadily. It was a habit I recognized almost immediately; he was deep in thought, mulling my words over in the silence of the graveyard.

“Of all people, you want me trust you? To depend on you to speak to me when no one else can? Is that what you’re asking?” He looked up. “Because you’re the ‘only one’ who can acknowledge me, right?”

The edge in his tone rattled me. I nodded slowly, fingers pressing into the skin of my arms anxiously as I waited for his answer.

“Wrong.”

An explosion of needles seemed to disperse itself through my body as his face fell back into its scowl, lips turned up in a cruel grin. “What do you mean?”

“The dead aren’t as alone as you think, Maggie. We’ve always got each other. You’re just an anomaly, a true freak of nature. Why on Earth would I need to keep you around when there are others like me?”

“Because I’m alive, and I’m your tie to the world of the living. Do you like keeping company with shadows, things that will never be anything more?” I replied in desperation.

Darren’s eyebrows rose, and he gave a nod to the gravestone. “I think I’ll pass. I mean, you were that guy’s, and look where it got him.”

Look where it got him.

Look where my presence got anyone who cared about me; in a grave or on his or her way to one. Maybe I really was the toxic one; death hovered around me in the forms of the deceased, and the living in the near vicinity seemed liable to fall into its bony grasp at any time.

“Despite that, though, someone on this side still seems rather fond of you. Maybe it’s because you keep giving them more and more company to help pass this eternity in limbo.”

I swallowed hard; unwillingly giving Darren my attention once again. He looked almost pleased—but a trace of annoyance danced in his dark eyes. “What?”

“I was relayed a message, by another on this side of the grave,” he said idly, plucking a piece of grass from the ground before twirling it between his fingers.

“A message? A message from who?”

Darren shook his head. “See, that’s the thing about having a ghost as your middle-man. There’s absolutely nothing to threaten them with to get the name of their source. I mean, we’re dead after all, so what do we have to lose? Family? I don’t even know if hers are alive anymore, and if they are, who they may be. Precisely why the warning she delivered means absolutely nothing to me. In fact, you could say it’s inclined me to do just the opposite.”

“What warning, Darren?” I pressed, throat tightening. My stomach tingled; the dead relaying messages; the dead speaking. There was a chance my father was still around, possibly. Or maybe Chassie. Maybe they weren’t gone for good, after all.

The grin on Darren’s face was maniacal as he looked up, meeting my eyes. “To stay the hell away from you, of course.”