Shades of Rust and Ruin Read online

  In honor of Christina Rossetti, whose lyrical narrative and evocative descriptions planted wildling seeds in my teen heart, which flourished to a passion for dangerous magic, sisterhood, and devilishly enchanted creatures

  Contents

  1. Sisters and Monsters

  2. Melancholia

  3. Family Ties and Alibis

  4. Puppy Love

  5. Fairy-Cakes and Goblin-Roonies

  6. Waxing Poetic

  7. Creepers Peepers

  8. Death-Iversary

  9. Lemons from Lemonade

  10. Goblin Market

  11. All Hallows’ Eve

  12. Ringmaster

  13. Grunge and Grudges

  14. The Plinth and the Pendulum

  Motherboard

  15. Skin to Bone, Steel to Rust, Ash to Ash, and Dust to Dust

  16. Filigree, Feathers, and Fetlocks

  17. Mystiquiel

  Motherboard

  18. Feels Like Rain

  19. Truth Like Flame and Lies Like Honey

  20. Goblin Fruit

  Motherboard

  21. Magic

  22. The Burden of Masks

  23. Seasons and Treasons

  24. Goblin King

  25. Blood and Skins

  26. Brutal Bargains

  Motherboard

  27. Masque

  28. Mirror

  29. Memory

  30. The Motherboard

  31. Revelations and Predations

  32. No Fairy-Tale Ending

  Acknowledgments

  1

  sisters and monsters

  At the age of fourteen, I found my twin sister dead in the bunk bed beneath mine, and my relationship with goblins began. Not one day since have I regretted their arrival. Without them, I would never have survived the guilt. The very same guilt I battle tonight as I honor a morbid obligation.

  I flip over on my mattress and squint at the eyes glaring back at me from my nightstand. Their faint glow smears the darkness. I blink heavily until the lights resolve to my digital clock’s display in the same instant the alarm begins to sound. Stifling a yawn, I press the off button. My room falls silent, and I open the calendar on my cell phone to wait for the next fifteen minutes to pass as October twenty-ninth becomes the thirtieth.

  Honestly, at this point, I don’t need an alarm. I’ve been waking up at a quarter to midnight the whole month, just like I did the past two years during October. The alarm is a precaution—to ensure the timed awakening will be as spontaneous as blinking by tomorrow night; to ensure Halloween doesn’t sneak up on me and steal away my heartbeats and breaths like it did my sister’s.

  My gaze wanders from my phone to the bookshelves on the wall. It’s where I keep my goblins—locked inside sketch pads, handcuffed to paper with chains of colored ink. I used to visit them when I needed escape, when I felt vulnerable and alone. But lately, their power has been fading.

  As they are now, they’re no match for my sister’s looming death-iversary. Nothing can lift that weight. Not even the sweetest dreams.

  Maybe because on that fated night, before the badness, I had been dreaming of all the best things: sunshine and salted air, laughter and comfort. When I woke, I could still feel grains of sand between my toes—the subliminal embodiment of a summer vacation Lark and I once took with parents only remembered through photos. On that night, what startled me awake wasn’t a schedule or an alarm … it was a jumble of sawing, dragging, and guttural grunts that were completely out of place alongside warm ocean breezes and laughter.

  The commotion made me sit up and strain to listen over my heartbeat. Somehow, the thumpity-thumping had ascended from my chest to my neck and ears, adding to the confusion of wavery silver light that seeped from the window at the head of the bunk beds. Colored-pencil masterpieces I’d sketched earlier that day and sprinkled with glitter—jack-o’-lanterns, ghouls, and a patchwork Frankenstein—had been tacked to the walls and flapped like captive ghosts as the screen rattled behind our open curtains, letting in a chill October gale. With each gust, the seesawing motion of the screen’s wires sliced the moon’s glow into microscopic squares that moved along the walls.

  Weeks later, during an in-depth session with a child psychiatrist, I would describe the shifting light as a strobe effect. I would also remember that the clock said 11:45 p.m., only fifteen minutes before November first arrived, and the window’s screen had been slashed at one corner so the edge curled in the gusts like a rough, lapping tongue.

  “Lark …” I remember mumbling my sister’s name in the darkness. “Did you hear something?” It was the lack of her answer that set my spine tingling, causing visions of costumed monsters and bloodied masks from our earlier trick-or-treating venture to rattle through me. At the ladder end of the bed, eerie shadows congregated around Lark’s latest project—deconstructed doll and clock parts—piled atop a desk in the far corner. To avoid them, I held tight to the frame and slid down the mattress’s edge. Balancing the balls of my feet on Lark’s bunk, I nudged her with my big toe. The dim light quavered again, prompting a roiling sensation in a stomach already thick with too much candy.

  The phantosmia of ocean air wilted to a wild stink: animal muskiness soured by a damp, mildew scent. Maybe that’s when I noticed the screen’s flapping tongue … or maybe it was later. But my most indelible observation in that moment was this: I couldn’t feel my sister there.

  Yes, my foot pressed into her side against a barrier of static ribs. Yes, her skin was cool beneath her pj’s, carbon copies of my own save for the fabric—hers a pattern of pink polka dots, mine a striped yellow. What I didn’t feel was her presence in the room beside me. It’s something Lark and I had always shared, a thread that tied our sensory receptors together, making us aware of each other’s physical experiences and emotions via a keen intuition.

  Instead, what I felt—what she was feeling—could only be described as an earthy uprooting … the stench of loam and minerals, the grit of soil, being pulled into a darkness both exhilarating and horrifying.

  I dropped to the floor to link my pinkie with hers. With them interlocked, our thoughts could fully connect. We could deliver messages … ranging from “Are you okay?” to “I’m mad at you” and everything in between, without even speaking. It all depended on how tightly we held. It was a secret kept between us … something we never told anyone. Why try? They wouldn’t understand. They’d either laugh or think we were lying.

  That night, in that moment, I squeezed as if Lark was my lifeline in a choppy sea. When she didn’t squeeze back, I moved closer and my knee shoved aside the opened Goblin Market book. Although she had it turned to our favorite verse, my focus strayed back to her—how her spine curled, stiff and arched, and her limbs twisted at unnatural angles, as if she were a felled tree with snapped branches.

  “Lark?” Hand trembling, I released her pinkie to shove long strands of black hair from her forehead. Moving past her silvery eyebrows (a by-product of our partial albinism, much like the startling white freckles flecking our noses), I stroked her eyelashes—short, clustered, and dark like my own, though hers remained locked in an empty, unblinking stare.

  Repulsed, I yanked my arm back, fingertips grazing her lips. Their bluish tint could’ve been blamed on the shadows, but not the cold absence that met my hand … not the lack of warm breath. Or any breath at all. The strobing moonlight shifted across her face, revealing hollows where I’d never seen them, gutting her eyelids and brows, voiding the space beneath her cheekbones—crevices so deep and yawning it was as though her skin had shrunk to a tight gray sheath and left me caressing a misshapen, monstrous skull. Her arms and legs even appeared to be stubby, withered versions of themselves.
Everything about her was disproportioned.

  I cried out. By the time Uncle Thatch rushed into the room to soothe my sobbing screams, the moonlight had moved again and Lark appeared natural—her face and body the mirror image of mine, except with ashen complexion, eyes agog, and limbs akimbo. I wriggled out of Uncle’s comforting embrace, falling against a wooden floor as harsh and cold as the realization that knifed through my gut: Halloween had stolen away my sister, just like it had taken our parents years before.

  Reliving the memory tonight clogs my throat with anguish, compounded by the sensory overload I’ve been suppressing all month, the inability to go anywhere without being slammed by haunting details. Even school isn’t safe right now—with the miniature jack-o’-lanterns on teachers’ desks, ghostly shoe-polish window decorations, and paper skulls strung from the ceilings. I drag the covers up to my chin while the autumn chill continues to wrap around my bones, unrelenting.

  That favorite picture book found on the floor by my sister’s bed—a rare 1933 first edition of Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, filled with beautiful illustrations by an artist named Rackham—holds me riveted from its spot beside the clock on the nightstand. It’s another reminder of all I’ve lost, including the mother who passed the book on to her baby girls before leaving forever. I curl my lonely pinkie around the blanket’s edge, then close my eyes and recite that final verse under my breath:

  For there is no friend like a sister

  In calm or stormy weather;

  To cheer one on the tedious way,

  To fetch one if one goes astray—

  I stop before the last two lines. These words, which once made Lark and me feel invincible together, now sever my heart like a monster’s talon. In the Goblin Market poem, the stronger sister saves the weaker. Despite that I was born eight minutes before her, I’d always known Lark was the stronger one. The fact that I lived and she didn’t was infallible proof, because I’d been too weak to help her.

  The coroner cited the cause of her death as an undiagnosed epileptic condition. It explained the seizure-like stasis of her limbs; the guttural and dragging sounds that woke me were due to her inhaling vomit as her fingers snagged the window screen above her head while she thrashed in an asphyxiated state.

  Upon learning how she died, I couldn’t find my REM … couldn’t sleep deep enough to dream. Identical twins form when a fertilized egg splits apart; Lark was half of me, and I of her. More than anyone, I should’ve sensed her struggle—rolled her over and opened her airways. At the very least, I should’ve been wary of the date that claimed our parents’ lives; I should’ve kept us both awake until midnight brought November safely to our bedside.

  Uncle Thatch tried to break my insomniac cycle. Finally realizing the sleeping pills prescribed by the child psychiatrist had no effect, he opted for valerian root. The first night of drinking the tea, I slept long and hard, and my dreams bloomed to life: brilliantly colorful, filled with smog and daggers and snapping metal wings and teeth, each detail so bright with the lux of cyberpunk gloom, my real life in coastal Oregon—gloomy in its own right—paled in comparison.

  The next morning, Uncle Thatch couldn’t hide the troubled twist to his lips as I sketched a rendition of my industrial-faerie tableau on a stray notepad, using a more skilled hand than I’d ever achieved. The setting mirrored our hometown: similar terrain, shops and streets, an endless ocean; yet it was devoid of humans—with brass-hooved horses, copper-feathered birds, and chain-link-tentacled things in place of trollies, cars, or boats. A parallel world powered by magic, voltage, and metal. I scribbled Mystiquiel at the top, having seen it slathered in paint across a dented whitewashed sign along the borders of my dreamscape.

  Frowning, Uncle had tried to explain away the phenomena. “Don’t worry, Nix. Valerian can jack up the subconscious. I’m guessing that picture book your mom gave you doesn’t help, either. We’ll put it in the attic. Then once you don’t need the herbs to relax, your nightmares will stop.”

  Within a matter of days, I could sleep without the tea; yet the goblins and faeries calcimining my subconscious—horrific and disturbingly elegant grotesques that were part lore and part mechanism—remained, regardless that Uncle Thatch had boxed up the Goblin Market book. He was wrong, and I was glad for it, because those nightmares provided sanctuary. Although Mystiquiel couldn’t make me forget the excruciating loss of my other half, it was the one place Lark had never existed, which meant there was no hole left by her absence. In turn, it was the one place I wasn’t a traitor for being the sister who survived.

  Now, three years later, I no longer visit a psychiatrist; Goblin Market occupies my nightstand again; and those first drafts once scribbled on scrap paper have evolved to a collection of graphic novels, chronicling the adventures of my goblins and faeries as seen through my eyes each night when I sleep.

  I’ve composed over a dozen volumes so far, and there appears to be no end to the dreams. However, I’ve recently lost the desire to draw them. I haven’t finished a single scene in months, but I’ve concocted a plan to jump-start my muse. Since it hinges on resurrecting the dead, I’ll need to be well rested.

  My attention returns to the pile of sketch pads cluttering the shelves, and I defer to the one trick that always helps me sleep: counting goblins instead of sheep. Silver paper clip placeholders become spiky metallic spines, scaly copper hides, and tails of electrified coils—each catching glimmers of moonlight as their sharp points and blunt curves frolic within the gently flapping pages. I cast one last drowsy glance at the open window where the breeze sweeps in, then yawning, find my way back to dreams again.

  2

  melancholia

  The trolley door opens, and damp air snakes over my seat in the back row, setting the perfect tone for a portrait of a ghost.

  I’ve spread Lark’s velvet hoodie across the wooden bench on the other side of the aisle. Studying the sketch pad in my lap, I shade the lines with my pencil, having already captured the wrinkles in the hoodie’s form and the shape of the glittery wings with elasticized straps stretched around the shoulder seams.

  A group of commuters step single file off the trolley and onto the rain-drenched street. Goose bumps erupt across my exposed nape and I flip up my leather jacket’s collar, inhaling the wet scent. I smile sadly, thinking of the day Lark and I learned the word “petrichor” for the third-grade spelling bee, when our teacher taught us it was easier to say than the mouthful “that fresh sweetness on the air during a long-overdue rain.”

  Back then, I loved this kind of setting—the promise of newness hidden behind a curtain of fog, the chill of a storm’s fingernails parting my hair and scuffing along my neck, and the squelch of moss, mud, and spongy leaves beneath my boots. Now, it’s just another detail that seeps through the sieve of my heart, reminding me how as kids Lark and I waded in water puddles, raced paper boats, and mixed mud pies; we did everything together, until we turned twelve and began to argue over who had to mop the floor or who got to hold the umbrella … until we started growing apart.

  Up front, a family of five and two older girls wait for the people exiting so they can board. My throat constricts on a stifled demand that everyone stay to the unoccupied middle sections. Given the date, Sam, the official afternoon conductor, would’ve kept the entire back row taped off as a personal favor to me (perks of having an uncle who owns one of the city’s most beloved and lucrative bakeries … fellow locals will bend over backward for a free cupcake or macaron). Unfortunately, Sam’s visiting his sick brother, and Patty, his temporary replacement, has only lived here a little over a month. I tried to explain the situation to her, but she only frowned and said she was here to man the controls, not play favorites.

  I squint, locking my lashes in a thick clutch of mascara while I dig the phone from my jacket pocket and scroll through my earlier text to Clarey.

  Sam’s MIA. Open seating. Want to drive over to Maritime Museum and hop on the trolley? You can keep any unwelcome flies
out of my web.

  My hold tightens around the phone as I reread the response:

  Sorry to flake out. Makeup malfunction.

  I’ll meet you at 11th with bug repellent prepped and ready. Flannie is always up for noshing flies.

  Clarey was with us on Lark’s final October thirtieth, when alongside a group of friends, we took a city bus after classes let out. We jumped off at Maritime Memorial Park, strolled the Riverwalk, then hopped the trolley and claimed the two back rows as our own. Our destination was Eleventh Street, where shop owners had set up temporary booths along the sidewalks to hand out goodies—totes full of candies, toys, and bottled water with labels displaying the participating shops’ logos. It was the practice run for their updated versions of trunk-or-treat, a means to boost the economy along with the children’s pride in their port city. Lark and I had so much fun on the outing, we finally began to bridge the giant rift I’d put between us.

  Sighing, I tuck the phone away. My pencil taps the corner of the sketch pad. Using the empty hoodie and wings as a prop, I’ve drawn Lark exactly how she was that afternoon: the way her arms filled those sleeves; the way she rolled the hems so her shirt’s lacy cuffs would stick out, perfectly framing a French manicure that shimmered with carnation-pink polish to match the fairy costume she would wear the following day for Halloween.

  My fingers twitch as I prepare to complete the portrait. From the open army duffel at my side, resting atop a few of my latent graphic novels, the blendable markers taunt me. I have to force myself to look at them, because I’m afraid of what I’ll see. Or rather, what I won’t. Sure enough, no matter how hard I stare, the colors are lost on me—each pigment as indecipherable as shades of ash. The flavor of frustration sits bitter on my tongue.

  I can no longer create the perfect blush for her nails, or the lavender for her hoodie; and simply choosing a marker for its name won’t commit her memory to paper accurately. I thought if anything could pump the vividness of color back into my art, into my vision, into my life, it would be portraying Lark on this day, when she was at her happiest.