As the clouds skated away to reveal a patch of blue sky and sun, the dew dampening the grass began to evaporate, spreading a thin fog across the yard. Lilly watched her mother’s shadowy figure rummage through box after box, tossing countless items into the back of a battered ute, to be taken to the dump.
She began approaching through the mist, wiping sweat from her forehead though her cheeks were pinched with cold.
“Are you gonna help or sulk?” Alexis asked, passing over the house’s threshold.
Lilly shrugged one shoulder, trailing after her mother. “Sulk.” Her voice echoed around the expansive marble lobby, it hadn’t been this empty since the day they had moved in.
Alexis rolled her eyes, turning into the kitchen where more boxes were waiting. “As soon as Jasmine gets here you’re helping,” she called over her shoulder. “You too, Jakob.”
“Never,” Jakob muttered. His hedgehog head bobbed past as he made a runner up the stairs, heading for the deepest darkest vaults of the house. Lilly watched his spiky brown hair and tanned neck vanish into the shadowy corridor upstairs.
Unclipping her long brown hair, Lilly thumped up the stairs to the bathroom.
Her hair fell in black and purple waves to her hips, the colour bringing forth the intense blue of her eyes. She leaned forward, brushing her eyelashes thickly with mascara, enjoying how it suited well with the new colour of her hair. There was a rap at the bathroom door; she tore her eyes from the dirty mirror.
Jakob thumped on the door again. “I gotta piss!”
“Wet yourself,” Lilly muttered, grudgingly unlocking the door to let her brother burst in. There were five other bathrooms in the house, but Jake was curious as to what his big sister had been doing in there for the past hour; Lilly felt it in the air, even through the door.
He ogled Lilly’s new hair colour. “Stop being so hard-core, you’re from Pennsylvania not Transylvania.”
“Watch it, brat,” Lilly snapped as she leant over to gather up the empty hair dye bottles, a pentagram swinging from her neck.
“Learn to take a joke, jeez. It’s not my fault you’re a devil’s spawn.” He lifted the toilet seat and unzipped.
“Urgh, wait till I’m out!”
He shrugged, unfazed. “I told you I really had to go. Ahhhh…”
“Gross. Shouldn’t you be hiding somewhere?” Lilly headed into the corridor, almost colliding with her other younger brother, Daniel.
“Lilly…” he said, a surprised note in his tone. His blue eyes were wide, his blonde hair a mess; it was as though he had suffered an electric shock. “Um… your hair looks…”
“Whatever,” Lilly huffed, sauntering away.
In her bedroom, Lilly threw the hair dye bottles into a pile of junk in the corner and turned to her open suitcase. Clothes spilled out around it, and she began the frustrating task of discarding all of the clothes she rarely wore, and packing the remainder. The task gnawed at her, slowing her pace to an excruciating halt.
Despite all the horrible things that had happened in this house, she’d become attached to it. Despite everything, she couldn’t leave without being certain all those things were real.
The room was empty. Patches on the dusty carpet outlined where a computer desk had once stood, but now the study was as barren as it had been when the Whitmore’s first moved in. The scene tugged painfully at Lilly’s heart, but it wasn’t this room that she wanted to say goodbye to. The study had been Daniel’s domain in which to read and research his various fascinations. Lilly really wanted to say goodbye to the Shadow Room.
No one else knew about the Shadow Room, no one but Lilly had ever been able to get into it. The mysterious door in the study was locked; it always had been – to everyone apart from Lilly. But ever since Luke had vanished without a trace she hadn’t been able to get into the room either.
Lilly closed her fingers around the cool brass door knob. “Come on,” she muttered, shutting her eyes. “Please.” With a twist of her wrist, she tried the door one last time. It was still locked. Lilly sunk to the floor with a sigh, leaning heavily against the old oak door. She could almost hear the Shadows whispering to her, see the black curling smoke in her mind…
Her slender fingers ran subconsciously over the mass of bumpy scars running across the inside of her pale wrists, and she knew. Luke had to have been real. She couldn’t have done all of this to herself, no matter what the psychologists thought. There weren’t enough psychologists and psychiatrists in the world to convince her she was crazy.
She skipped the stairs two at a time and sat on the second landing, squeezing her legs between the vertical bars of the banister as she did when she was young. She observed the lobby below, though it was eventless.
The old house was usually full of noises; creaking floor boards, groaning doors, whistling wind, and rusty plumbing. While growing up, Jakob had been terrified that something was trying to break out of the walls. But today the house was silent, and very still, like the old house had wheezed its last wheeze. It was as though the house had died.
“When will we see you again?” Daniel’s soft mumbled echoed through the grand oak walls. Lilly quietly rose to her feet and padded softly down the stairs, just far enough to see Daniel talking with their adoptive grandmother, Jasmine.
“I’ll visit as much as possible...” she replied, a slender hand resting on the boy’s shoulder while supporting a cardboard box against her hip.
Lilly waltzed into the kitchen and slumped into a wooden chair. “Why do we have to move?”
“We’ve been through this, Lilly,” Jasmine sighed, though not without kindness in the crinkles around her vivid green eyes.
Lilly folded her arms tightly across her chest. “So go through it again.”
“This house is creepy. It’s old and falling apart, it’s unsuitable to live in.”
“It’s not creepy – you people are paranoid. It’s not old – it’s got character. It’s not unsuitable – it just needs some work...”
“See now, Lilly.” Jasmine set down the boxes, exhaling noisily. “I know that this is a pretty big move,” she tucked her long strawberry blonde hair behind her ears and leaned down to Lilly’s level, “and I know you don’t like changing schools, but, it’s for the best. It really is. You’ll be going to a private school-”
“With a gay uniform-” Lilly interjected.
Jasmine didn’t miss a beat. “-great education-”
“Full of Christians-”
Jasmine’s face hardened. “Your father was Christian.”
“Yeah well, my father’s dead, whatcha gonna do about it?”
“Lilly!” Jasmine’s mouth popped open in a surprised ‘o’ and her hand flew to cover it. Never before had Lilly talked to her grandmother in such a way. “This move isn’t all about you. It isn’t about the crappy house. It’s about your mother and your aunt going back to the place where they were born, and joining their sister and their brother, so you can all be a family again.”
“But you’re our family too,” Lilly sulked, tugging at the thread on her sleeve.
Jasmine shook her head slowly. “I only adopted Alexis, Raven, Vivi and Shayne. They have real family, in Australia.”
“We all know the real reason Raven moved to Australia wasn’t to be with her brother,” Lilly snapped bitterly. “It was to get Daine away from Alexis. So us moving over there will just ruin things for her.”
Daniel gasped. “Lilly, that isn’t it at all-”
“Of course it is! Look at Jakob! He looks exactly like-”
“Have you got everything packed?” Jasmine cut across them in a stern tone, abruptly ending the conversation.
“No.”
“Then why are you standing here?”
Lilly flicked Jasmine off before sauntering back to the Shadow Room. She threw herself against the wooden door, ignoring the pain shooting through her shoulder, over and over.
“Lilly!” Daniel exclaimed, appearing at the door. “Why are you doing that?”
“I wanna,” thump, “get” thump, “in this,” thump, “ROOM!” CRACK!
“Jesus, Lilly, you’re crazy!” Daniel grabbed Lilly’s wrist and pulled her away from the door, which now had a splintery crack through its wood.
“Glad you agree,” Lilly muttered, tugging her wrist away.
“No, sis, I didn’t mean it like that,” Daniel said softly. “I just think you do random, stupid things sometimes.”
Lilly flung herself at her brother, wrapping her arms around him. He hugged her back, and she fought away the moisture behind her eyes.
“We get to start fresh,” Daniel’s voice was thick with tears. “We get to leave behind this horrible place. Leave behind all the pain and bad memories. Lilly, other kids would kill for this opportunity. I can’t for the life of me understand your objection to it.”
No one would ever understand.
Leaving this place would be abandoning any hope, dream, or possibilty of seeing Luke again, so she could prove his existence.
Leaving meant surrendering to insanity.
“I just wanna be left alone,” Lilly sobbed, fleeing from the room.
Daniel scrubbed the tears from his eyes, sniffing quietly. He turned his gaze to the splintered door, which, despite his sister’s obsession with it, had never held much curiosity to him. It seemed no one had ever been interested in the only door in the house that didn’t have a key. If Alexis really wanted to, she could’ve removed the door handle all together and replaced it, but she’d never bothered. No one had ever questioned what was behind it. No one apart from Lilly, who insisted she’d been in it when they first moved in.
Now, a slither of a crack snaked through the dented surface, sunlight visible beyond. It broke the appearance of being completely ordinary, sparking an interest in the back of Daniel’s mind. Without knowing exactly why, the young lad checked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching. Then, letting curiosity get the better of him, he pressed his eye against the crack, and peered into the room that lay beyond.
The sunlight disappeared in a mist of blackness. The dark was alive and reeling in its fury. It glided through the crack towards him, and he jerked away, blinking heavily.
Though the wood was still marked, the crack was gone, as if the door had healed itself.
Meanwhile, Lilly isolated herself in the car, waiting for her mother to finish packing the truck. It was like her own little bubble, where it was completely silent save the rain’s distance pattering on the roof top. She leaned her head against the window and watch water drip down the glass like tears.
Lilly closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep, just sleep until all the moving and changes were over. Sleep until she was in Australia and all work was done, sleep through leaving this place behind, to wake up in a brighter place, with friendlier people, for the fresh start that Daniel was so adamant they needed.
