Thicker than Blood

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. When Monroe first told Lewellyn about the cabin he stumbled upon, she was too sullen to care. Spending part of her summer in something called Winterlust Lodging was beyond her. The property belonged to their grandfather and would belong to them one day. If Lewellyn inherited the lodging, she would sell this dead end place in a heartbeat. With barely any phone reception, Lewllyn's restless thoughts were stifled by the never-ending drawl of crickets and squawks that echoed through the surrounding bushland. One of the many downsides of living with just Allen, their introverted father, meant that she and her brother had to accompany him on one of his writing sabbaticals. Their father hadn’t liked it any more than she had. Monroe didn’t seem to mind, but then again, he always had a vivid imagination and played alone.

Lewellyn on the other hand had left behind her two best friends and Damien, her almost-boyfriend. Or so she'd hoped. In her absence, he was sure to ask Dani out, the prettiest girl in their grade. Lewellyn knew her mother would demand she think otherwise. Her mother, the great Rozanne that everybody loved, with honey hair that shimmered beneath the sunlight. Her laughter sweet and melodic, a morning bird song from the kitchen. Rozanne always gave Lewellyn compliments about her high cheekbones and so-called intelligent emerald eyes that were just like her father’s. These affirmations had once instilled a self-confident air about Lewellyn when she’d walk into a room full of strangers. Her lips turned upwards in pride if she caught her own reflection in a passing window. Her mother’s championing would have once comforted her, as she laid there trapped in thought, inside the cold wooden lodging in the middle of nowhere. But the very thought of her mother boiled angry sludge in the pit of her stomach, its overflow leaked tears to the corners of her eyes. Lewellyn couldn’t trust one word her mother had said, and this made her want to shrink away like plastic on fire. Rozanne had lied to them all.

“What?” Lewellyn retorted. She took her headphones out and paused the Walkman.

“Lew, I found this old cabin. Come check it out with me?” said Monroe, whacking whatever came into his path with a stick he collected from the overgrown terrain that was their backyard for the next week. Excitement rounded Monroe's eyes.

“You mean the groundskeeper’s shed?” Allen chimed in as he briskly poured himself a cup of water and washed his plate of crumbs in one motion.

Allen shot his children a distracted glance through the top of his black rimmed glasses. His movements were efficient and precise. Every step, every extension of his limbs was a secondary task. A supporting act. A testament to his superior multi-tasking abilities. Allen hadn’t really cared about their answer or the abandoned cabin before he was back in his study with the door closed. All Allen could see were black and white text crashing around in his head. His story unfolding at the pace of a blooming sunflower on a time-lapse. The pressure of his deadline and financial disarray after Rozanne, built a fortress within him. Blocking out all external stimulus with the vigour of an electric insect zapper.

That afternoon, Monroe and Lewellyn were the flies.

“Maybe later Roe.” She dismissed her little brother. Lewellen pressed play on her Walkman and watched Monroe’s disappointed shoulders slouch even lower until boredom and frustration spilled from his toes. He kicked Lewellyn’s suitcase on the way out hoping for a reaction.

“Pleeease?” He turned back at his sister through gritted teeth.

He couldn’t understand why she never played with him anymore. He wanted her expertise. He needed her help to decipher what kind of metal symbols and tools lined the cabin. Were they really for gardening? He thought he recognised the star symbol and the animal inside it. It was the same symbol on his mother's ring. He remembered asking Rozanne about the ring that had been in her family for centuries. It had little specks of ruby and saphire, which stared back at him like beady eyes that knew secrets. Monroe hadn't understood what an heirloom was. Rozanne had picked him up that day and spun him around in her eccentric manner. The kind of giggling and spinning that felt as though it was just Monroe and his mother alone in the blurry world. She explained that an heirloom was something special, something magical that was meant to be passed on to himself or Lewellyn for generations to come.

Monroe felt a lump tighten in his throat. He whacked his stick hard at the door to bury the feeling. He couldn't wait to explore the cabin.

Lewellyn rolled over to face the wall and turned her back on Monroe.

That bitter afternoon was the last time Lewellyn saw her little brother as the boy she'd grown up with. When they found Monroe in the cabin six hours later, he was never the same again.

***

The second rental property Allen moved them to smelt faintly of niccotine and damp.

"It's really not that bad." He told them. He wasn't fooling any of them including himself.

"I just need to finish this guys." He directed this to both of his children, but held Monroe's gaze the longest to ensure Monroe understood.

It was Monroe who was expelled from school. Allen drove him to every therapy session for his night terrors and well, let's just say behaviours that an 11 year old just shouldn't have. Cognitive behavioural therapy, his colleagues recommended. It costed Allen an arm and a leg he didn't have.

Allen knew that Lewellyn understood just how important it was for him to finish his book. Not just financially, but psychologically. He hated leaning on his eldest for support. It wasn't fair on her. Maybe it would encourage her to talk to her brother while Allen focused on providing. Allan's obsessive mind had to finish things. He needed routine and order. If something didn’t go according to plan, irritated was an understatement.

Allen soon began creating unnecessary order in places that didn’t require tampering. First, he rearranged the kitchen. Then the garage, until it grew to the entire tattered rental, including flipping their living arrangements around for no obvious benefit.

Lewellen begrudgingly swapped bedrooms with Monroe.

Lewellen felt uneasy watching her father try and cope with the overwhelming stress of losing every known structure in his life. The loss of work with his unfinished book and his ruptured family unit ventured him into unforeseen territories.

Allen started to unravel.

As the two children watched their father pacing down the hallway, they both had thoughts of blaming themselves. Monroe blamed himself for going missing last summer, but Lewellyn knew that it was she who was to blame for not keeping an eye on her brother. Guilt pierced through Lewellen’s body like daggers every time she thought about Monroe leaving their Winterlust Lodging.

The way she turned her back on Monroe.

The only way to get rid of her guilt was to transfer it. Because deep down the truth was that none of this would have happened if Rozanne hadn’t left them.

Rozanne had popped out to get mint choc chip ice cream from the local grocer, but hung herself from a nearby tree instead. She left the engine running, ice cream melting in the passenger seat.

The truck headlights shone a spotlight on the great Rozanne that everybody once loved. Her dishevelled honey hair shimmered silver in the moonlight. So did the rope around her neck.

"I'll be right back before the commercial break." She had assured them.

Rozanne had lied.

This was the fourth time Monroe had begged Lewellyn to take him back to the cabin in the middle of the woods. To hell with that she thought each time. She didn't trust that place and a part of her didn't trust Monroe anymore.

The first time Lewellyn shot him down, Monroe had burst into tears and yelled, "You don't understand what's going on!"

"Then tell me." Lewellyn begged, putting a comforting hand on Monroe's shoulder. Out of nowhere, Monroe broke into a violent frenzy that ended with him smashing the walls and windows of their last house.

She no longer touched her little brother after that.

Since their bedrooms had been swapped, Monroe began sleepwalking into Lewellyn's room. On occasions, she had become afraid of her brother, although she never said anything to spare his feelings. Nor did she confide in Allen. He had too much on his plate.

One night Lewellyn woke to the sounds of shuffling, only to find Monroe hiding in the corner shadows of her room.

"Monroe?"

No answer.

"Get out out!" She hissed.

He just stared at her in the darkness. Breathing in and out. Sleepwalking.

Allen said Monroe's therapist warned the family to never, ever wake a person up from their sleepwalking state. So Lewellyn would pull the sheets over her head and listen to the sounds of Monroe’s footsteps as they circled her bed.

Around and around.

Until she fell back to sleep.

Some nights she could make out his whispers. His coversations in jibberish. Perhaps they were a strange language to a new imaginary friend.

Lewllyn found that she was avoiding her little brother and she hated herself for it. When Lewellen and her father found Monroe alone in the dark cabin last summer holding a lit candle, they had been worried. Confused. Allen carted his family out of their lodging the very next day. Neither Allen, Lewellyn, nor the therapist elicited any real answers out of Monroe on what really happened that night.

The main solution fitted the narrative of a game gone wrong. He had simply locked himslef in the cabin and become terrified of the dark.

Lewellyn hadn't bought it though. She knew something else had to have happened because he was a different kid after that. He liked to play in the dark.

Allen was dragging the couch around the living room in a trance. Lewellyn felt like a sponge in this household. Accumulating everyone's stress including her own.

Monroe tugged at her sweater, which almost made her jump.

"Lew, my doctor says I have PTSD. I just want to understand why I'm acting the way I am." Her little brother was crying out for help.

He spoke to her calmly. "She told me I have to return to the scene of the trauma. For exposure treatment. Or something."

“It would help with the sleepwalking and my um… episodes” He averted is eyes to the ground, noticably ashamed.

Lewellyn remained silent watching her father pointlessly rearrange the furniture.

“C’mon Lew. You just got your license. Please, let me try and fix this.” He pleaded earnestly, one last time.

Lewellyn did feel sorry for him. She missed him terribly. The old Monroe.

Her chipped orange fingernails reached for Allen’s set of car keys.

Monroe was right, anything to fix this.

Anything to help him remember.

***

The door to the cabin was unlocked and Monroe turned the handle with ease. They had grossly underestimated how long it would take for a teenager and her kid brother to navigate their way to Winterlust Lodging on their own using a roadmap. They clearly hadn't been graced with Allen's time management skills, instead receiving Rozanne's carefree spontaneity.

Lewellyn's heroic decision made in blistering daylight now took on a serious undertone as nightfall crept up fast.

From behind Monroe, Lewellyn could see that the cabin was completely vacant. Adorned only by two burning candles in the centre of the room, held upright by their own melted mess which had stuck to the wooden floor. The wood was shiny and clean as though it had recently undergone a fresh coat of varnish.

This made the hairs on Lewellyn’s neck rise. She had sworn that last summer, the cabin was riddled with dust and weird metal statues. Had someone come back and cleaned it out?

Lewellyn's toes felt prickly.

Something was very wrong.

She wanted to run, but she couldn’t leave her brother behind.

Not again.

As she followed Monroe into the empty candlelit cabin, Monroe said through strained eyes, “This is Turak.”

Lewellyn traced her brother’s gaze to the far-right corner. At first it was too dark to see anything. Until Lewellyn caught a brief reflection of light bouncing off two indescribable shapes.

The more the candlelight flickered.

The more Lewellyn squinted to comprehend a tall, thin figure lurking in the darkness.

The way her legs began to tremble, validated her sinking feeling.

They were not alone.

Her eyes adjusted to two dark horns, turning Lewellyn's muscles to stone. She couldn't take a breath.

The thing shifted its weight and the wooden floor creaked loudly beneath it.

Lewellyn turned to her brother for help and a strange look gleamed over his almond eyes as they began to water in the dim light.

He mouthed the words to his sister, “I’m sorry.”

All Lewellen saw from the dark corner was a patient smile. It crept closer and closer toward them. Its eyes, as black as the shadow it was hiding in.

"He said he knew our mother." Monroe offered.

“Nice to finally meet you, Lewellyn.” Turak said in the lowest voice she’d ever heard. The voice could be mistaken for some kind of engine.

"What do you want from us?"

"I want you to finish what she started," Turak spat.

Suddenly, the door slammed shut with such force it caused the candles to come alive. Their flames twirled and jumped around, dancing in a finale. Right before the cabin went pitch black, squashing the room with a curtain of darkness.

Ringing echoed through the cabin, piercing Lewellyn's ears.

The ringing grew louder until Lewellyn could distinctly hear the sounds of her mother.

Screaming. Wailing.

Her mother's words screeched, "Don't do it!"

Rozanne's warning tore through her mind like fingernails on a chalkboard.

***

The cabin lit up with blue and red flashing lights, filling Lewellyn's inside with a combination of hope and dread.

The varnished door flung open to reveal a startled Allen. A stoic police officer trailed closely behind him, his head bobbing above Allen's shoulders in the futile hope of reclaiming his rightful position at the front. Both Lewellen and Monroe sat side-by-side in the middle of the bare wooden cabin in the middle of nowhere. Each of them holding a lit candle. A snowy mountain of wax clung to their cross-legged laps.

To both onlookers the cabin appeared eerily silent.

Not to Lewellen and Monroe.

They were fixated on the sounds of Turak coaching them in low, persistent whispers. The weight of his clawed fingers resting neatly on their little shoulders. Invisible to everyone except the two siblings who were now bound forever by a greater purpose. Something bigger, something thicker than blood.