Cherishing the touch we were sharing, we left town and climbed the hills. On the other side was the forest, Shadow Lake, and somewhere hidden in the trees was the plantation. It was hidden but not lost, we both knew exactly where it was. There wasn't a kid on the island who hadn't run up to it's gates, hoping to see a ghost. We could walk there blindfolded.
Which explained how Andie knew we were going the wrong way.
“We’re going to wrong way.” Told you so. She'd waited a good while, clearly giving me the benefit of the doubt. “You’re not going to kill me are you?”
I scoffed. “Please I’m the first person they’d come after.”
“It’s always the love interest.” She concurred.
“Love interest? Well that’s good to know, I was more referring to a stalker.”
She laughed. “Now that I think about it that does suit you better.”
“Harsh.”
“Seriously though, where are you taking me?”
“The other day Victoria and I found something out here. I want to see if I can find it again.” Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. So I led Andie through the general path I remembered taking. No luck. There wasn’t a pond of oil, there wasn’t even a clearing in sight. It was just gone. Andie who was a walking saint let me search and lead her around for some time, but it just wasn’t there.
I couldn’t help but laugh and lean against a tree.
“What’s wrong.”
“It’s gone.” I laughed, and then straightened up. “They said they’d take care of it, and they did.” The train people must have filled the hole in, and gone home, wherever that was. I would never know, and that was starting to seem more and more like a blessing.
“What’s gone?”
“It’s hard to explain but we fell in a big hole the other night and… I guess it got filled in.”
“That was actually really easy to explain.” Andie reached out to touch my forehead. “And you didn’t hit your head or anything?”
“Actually I did.” I thought back to slamming my head against a tree and nearly passing out.
“Hmm.” Andie gave me a long once over. “I think it may have made you a little loopy.”
“I think you’re right.” I took her arm, and together we corrected our course to the plantation. Any thoughts of monsters or otherworldy visitors were buried under twenty feet of earth, just the way I liked it.
The plantation was waiting for us, right where we’d always left it. Like all ruins it was more impressive back in it’s day. The banana trees stretched on for as far as your eye could see. You also had half the island tending to the crop, in less than stellar conditions. Now a days it was a vine covered haunt whose gates still kept out the unworthy. “Creep city.” Andie said with a smile.
“How do you think this is going to work?” I asked before shouting to the house. “Hey! Is anybody in there?”
“Stop!” She laughed and pushed my chest.
Pretty soon an unfriendly looking guy in a hoodie approached. “What do you want?” He asked, I was trying to see if I recognized him from the store or not. “We’re here to see Ian, he said we could have a look around.”
He seemed to look at us for a little too long, before vanishing back into the house. He didn't seem to have the same easy smile, and charm as the guy we'd met at the store. Suddenly being two dumb students in the middle of a forest was seeming a little too storybook for our comfort.
“We should go right?” I asked Andie.
“Absolutely.” We both did an about face and started speed walking down what was left of the road that led into town. Now that I was thinking about it ‘Clubhouse’ was a great euphemism for drug den.
“Hey! Heeeey!” We turned to see that Ian had come out and was jogging after us. “Don’t let that guy scare you off!”
“Sorry man.” I said, avoiding eye contact. “We didn’t mean anything by come here.”
Ian was a decently fast guy and managed to catch up with us. “Hey I know you!” He stopped in front of us. “The guys from the hardware store.”
“Yeah.” Andie rubbed her neck anxiously. “Sorry to barge in on you. I guess we, thought we were invited.”
Ian stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah I was really just being nice.” He laughed. “Man you guys are friendly here though.” He shrugged. “Listen, you came all this way, let me give you the tour.”
“Didn’t you say something about a boss?” I was desperately trying to find a way to get out of this.
“Oh now you’re worried about that.” He shrugged again. “I’m already going to get in trouble for this, might as well go all the way.”
“We really didn’t mean to get you in any trouble.” Andi promised him.
“Oh forget about it.” He waved us both away and started walking towards the mansion. “I am trouble.”
I was ready head back to town and admit total defeat. The best part about this date had been a clown giving Andie a piece of candy. There must have been bravery in it, because she started to follow Ian, and when she saw I wasn’t going to follow she dragged me by the hand anyways. I remember thinking that was really cool.
“All of this used to be Banana trees.” Ian said holding his hands out to the overgrown grounds. “Banana’s are pretty much clones of themselves, and have basically no immune system. That means when you’re keeping them, you have to burn and maintain a mile thick clearance line between them and any other tree. They’re pound for pound one of the worst crops for the environment.”
“This place just gets better and better.” I said, looking around. I could hardly believe it, I was actually on the other side of the fence. The thing that had kept me safe from ghosts for so many childhood adventures. It was just as creepy as I imagined. Doll heads and tricycles littered the ground like pagan offerings. The new tenants were apparently unconcerned with landscaping at the moment.
The whole ground was covered in a lick layer of rotting leaves, and it all smelled earthy and wet. The house itself had once been painted white, but that had cracked and peeled long ago. The dark wood beneath broke through and with the ivory growing over it, the house brought to mind a bad case of skin cancer.
“Is this place really salvageable?” I asked.
“Between the leaks, the creaks, and the ghosts? I don’t think so.” He opened the front door, which creaked out a welcome. “Come see for yourself.”
This was definitely the part where we should have turned back, but Andie went on inside with me at her heels. He hadn’t been joking about the creaking. Every step we took was it’s own symphony of moaning wood, and rusting nails.
The inside of the house was nicer, but clearly hadn’t always been. Most debris, foliage, and dead rats had been cleared out. That just left you with an ever-dripping leak, some sunken floorboards ,and the smell of mold and dead rats.
A few sleeping bags were collected in a dry corner, along with a portable stove. There I saw about five other guys, just laying about talking to each other. It was fairly late in the day, but it was so hard to tell on The Twilight Islands. Stores were open around the clock, and people pretty much slept whenever they liked. Everyone here could have just been waking up, or getting ready for bed.
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“We’ve got the parlor, kitchen, dining room, and ballroom on this floor.” Ian said pointing to each location in turn. Some walls were missing so you could look straight through one room into another.
“You guys can’t seriously sleep here?” I asked aghast. “The mold will kill you.”
“Oh take it easy.” Ian slapped me on the back. “We’ve all got our shots.”
I don’t know what that was going to do for spores in your lungs, but I didn’t want to antagonize our host. “If you say so.”
“Let me show you the Library.” Ian offered.
“Is it up that staircase.” Andie asked, pointing to a grand curving staircase that was missing as many steps as a piano had black keys.
“It is indeed.”
The stairs were by far the squeakiest place in the mansion, but Ian showed us a little jumping game to get up them. From there he took us to the moldiest section. The library I’m sure was pretty impressive at one point, but paper and leaky roofs do not mix. The large room which was surrounded and bisected by shelves reeked of decay. Inside there was an older man with a long white ponytail. He was hunched over a table. The generator they’d brought from us was being used to power something I couldn’t really recognize. It was kind of like book filled with buttons, with some kind of light that would show him images. The man was wearing white pants, a white button up, and a yellow sweater vest.
“Hart. I want you to meet some of my friends.” Ian said as we entered the library with him.
“Really sorry to barge in on you.” Andie began.
“Yeah Ian said we could stop by any time.”
“I absolutely did not.” Ian laughed.
“Oh it’s no bother.” The man, Hart looked up from the books he’d been working on. He turned to us and looked quite kind. He had as shabby white beard, and small blue eyes hidden behind big round glasses. “We were just about done for the day anyway.” He was a soft spoken man, but still carried a sense of authority to him. He seemed like the type of guy you followed because he was wise.
“What are you looking at?” Andie moved past Ian and went directly up to the old man. Totally fearless that he was a drug lord about to have us fed to the pigs.
“It’s good to have a sense of curiosity.” Hart laughed, and handed Andie a magnifying glass. “I’m investigating the old records of this place. Time has destroyed much of what it has to offer, but anything than can be recovered can tell us so much.”
“Like what?” I asked, still behind Ian. He’d either heard this speech before or just didn’t care. I recognized the glazed look on his eyes. I had him pegged as a slacker from the moment I saw him. I wondered how he fit in with the professor over there.
“Births, deaths, marriages. Everyone says that their families used to live on these plantations, but so few really know.”
I crossed my arms. “Maybe it’s for the best. This place is from a time a lot of people would like to leave forgotten.”
Hart then looked at me. “Ah, but then you forget about the people who lived through it. The Plantation owners tried so hard to erase your ancestors, and now you do it willingly because it’s unpleasant to consider.”
I had no retort to that.
“Are you a professor?” Andie asked. She was using the magnifying class to look through the smudged records Hart had been looking over. Who knows what she was searching for, if anything.
“Aspiring.” Hart said with a healthy dose of self deprecation. “I’m searching for, what I call the soul of the island.”
“The Soul?” I looked to Ian to see if he was following. All he had to contribute was one of his shrugs.
“Yes.” Hart nodded. “Kind of like our Identity. A single anchor point that symbolizes The Twilight Islands as a whole. I think the psychological damage this place has done to generations of the populace, makes it a strong candidate. Not to mention many families cite it as the origin story for their line. All previous histories having been repressed by the ruling class.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it.” Ian snorted and patted me on the back encouragingly. “You’re saying all we are is some rotten old mansion in the middle of nowhere? This was hundreds of years ago, haven’t we grown beyond this place?”
Hart didn’t look annoyed by the question. His smile was wider than ever. I had the feeling he may have been in the debate club when he was my age. “That’s exactly what I’m seeking to understand. If not here? Where?”
“What about The Clock Tower?” Andie asked looking up from her book. “Everybody every day follows the clock. They get up, leave work, go to bed according to it.”
Hart considered this. “It’s certainly the core of communal living, but does that make it the soul? It’s my thesis that there should be a strong emotionality connected to what I’m seeking. Like this young man’s reaction to this building.” He gestured to me. “Do you have any strong feelings towards the clock?”
“Only when it wakes me up.”
He grinned. “A late raiser, a sure sign of genius.”
I’ll take a compliment when I can get one. “So Ian made it sound like you guys were repairing this place, but you’re what? Writing a paper?”
Hart crossed his arms and leaned against the table. His brows were creased in concentration. “That’s the thing. At the start of the endeavor I was sure I knew what I was looking for. I thought refurbishing the old girl would do us all some good. Now I’m not so sure, plus the ghosts of make it bloody impossible to get any work done!”
-----
From the top of Twilight Tower you could see everything, and that’s no an exaggeration. The islands, the towns, the sunset. Everything in the whole wide world was yours. I’d taken Andie there after the mansion, I couldn’t just let our date die in the bowls of a mold old mansion filled with nerds and repairmen.
“I think I’m coming around to your theory.” I said, kicking my legs off the side of the tower.
“Right?” She smiled at me, her face bathed in the most gorgeous golden lights the sun had to offer. “I guess I get what he was saying about that place being our history, but I think this tower is home.”
Wherever she called home is where I wanted to be, but I felt like that was too romantic. My mind drifted back to the train folk, and the offer I’d almost been made. “If you could leave here, would you do it?”
Andie looked at me, then down at our home island. From here we could see the hardware store, even our houses. Even from this height you could see the walls and streets flooded with our fliers. I was strangely proud of our terraforming efforts. “Like to a different island? Maybe, but all our friends are on Cilla.”
“I mean somewhere else, not on The Twilight Islands.”
She gave me a confused look. “There is nowhere else.”
“I know…” I scratched my head. “It’s just a question. Like…” I pointed at the sun. “Just over the horizon we discover a new island. It’s got it’s own people over there, doing their own thing. Would you go live there?”
She smiled awkwardly. “Seems worse than moving to Skia. What if they spoke a different language, or had different money.” She nudged me, dangerous business so far in the sky, but I forgave her. “They might even be a society of warrior women. You’d be stuck in a marriage with one woman and three men, I bet you’d miss the Hardware store then.”
I shrugged. “I mean that’s pretty much the arrangement we have at the hardware store, with less perks.”
“Stop.” She laughed. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. Like you said all my friends are here, and I have such a fulfilling career.” The sarcasm is implied there. “But the thought of going somewhere where nobody knows where I am, is pretty tempting.”
“Why’s that?”
“Here I’ve acted like a loser long enough, it’s become my brand. No one expects anything different from me.”
“People don’t think you’re a loser.” She looked at me seriously. “I don’t.”
I paused and gave her the same serious look. “I’m dropping out of school.”
“What?” She was surprised and rightfully so. This was a woman who’d drug her butt to school on no sleep, while working, while taking care of her dad. “Why?”
“I’m not happy, and I don’t think I’ll be happy when I graduate. I figure I’ll use my savings to pay my loans back, and then just work.”
She considered my words. “That doesn’t sound like It’ll make you happy either.”
I laughed. “No I guess not. Maybe this is just my way of getting it out of the way.”
There was a long pause, and I knew I’d ruined another leg off our date. The jump down was looking mighty tasty right about now. “I’m sad you’re sad.” She said at last. “How long have you been like this?”
“Not since you shot me down if that’s what you’re thinking.” I laughed.
She rolled her eyes. “I had hoped.”
“I don’t know, it’s been a while. Honestly I wander around campus just feeling like a total poser. I keep wondering when I’ll feel like I really arrived.”
She nodded. “You’re waiting for you life to begin.”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“Guess what?” She smirked at me. “You and everyone else, and guess what again? It never does. You’re living your life right now.” She looked at me. “You just have to see what’s in front of you.”
I threw my hands up. “Andie I’m going to be honest, I asked you out and you said no. I’ve tried to respect that. Lately my head isn’t right, and I’m having a hard time reading some signals I think I’m getting from you.”
“Yorick do you want to go out?”
I nearly pitched over the side. I caught myself and raised my hand. “I do, and I also want to use a line I thought of a few minutes ago, when I was trying to respect our friendship.”
“Fine.”
“Okay you were talking about the clock tower being home. So I was going to say, ‘anywhere you call home is where I want to be.’ That’s pretty good right?”
“Very good.” She leaned forward.
That signal I could read just fine, and I leaned in to meet her. That’s when we shared one of the better kisses to ever take place under our orange sun. Top three hands down, five if you’re counting animals. That kiss was my destiny. Suddenly the far away strangers on distant islands, and in magical trains didn’t make any sense. This had been that destiny I was waiting for. This kiss, this woman. Andie had been wrong, your life does start at some point, and mine started that moment her lips touched mine.
It's like I was rejoining the human race. I'd been a homunculus for so long, no emotions other than my own vague sense of self pity. I'd been like a ghost on that train, or in the plantation. I didn't belong to that world. It was so bad I almost tried to escape to another, and I'm sure I would have found no peace there either. Some of the things I do in the future won't make sense if you forget about this moment. This kiss is when Andie made me human again.