U.S. October 31, 2007

The twins finished their dinner, a glowing golden butternut stew, wedges of soft, sharp cheddar, and a crusty, stretchy bread scattered with sunflower seeds, and then searched the house for candy. Mama Esther always hid little stashes of it about on Halloween before she hugged the kids good night and made her way down to her room in the servant’s quarter. The kids spent the evening finding little squirrel stashes of candy corn, and miniature candy bars. Before dinner they had rummaged though the old boxes in the attic, blatantly mixing the beautiful old clothing of generations of Coopers with the costumes that long ago Cooper children had played with then discarded, so that they had come to the table in the favorite bits. Cedric wore a kaki outfit that looked like he should be carving his way though the deepest jungle. It had once belonged to his great grandfather, Theodore, who, as a child had dreamed of finding a lost world of scandalously clad women, brawny but noble warriors and jewels scattered on the shores like sea shells. But where Theodore had towered, even as a child, Cedric was slight for his age and he seemed to swim in the dusty clothing. The pith helmet had had to be discarded for the crime of falling into his eyes, but the jacket had huge pockets that were useful for storing candy. That was a valuable trait in a costume, the twins had decided, especially because Gwen’s concoctions of scarves and costume jewelry, which she optimistically labeled “Gypsy”, had nothing quite as practical as a pocket.
When they had filled Cedric’s pockets with their booty, they lit candles all around the house, turning out the electric lights as they went. It was a large old house, with bright oriental rugs over marble floors, and high echoing ceilings, and it had been made to be lit by little but candlelight. Now it seemed to gain a layer of its former glory for each light that was extinguished, for each candle that flickered into being. Gwen pretended that the flickering shadows birthed in candlelight were guests at their party, long dead relatives and their moldering companions, come back to visit the Cooper house for one last Halloween Gala.
Their ghost guests could have danced well to the music that filled these over-large rooms with deceptive grace. Paul Cooper’s piano, twisted though the house he almost never came to, caressed the brother and sister he never spoke to.
When they were finished, they stood together at the large windows that looked across the garden and then out, out, impossibly far out over Portland, stretched out below them. Down there, children their age were slipping from house to house, loading up on candy and getting slowly vaccinated against the idea of things that go bump in the night. “See? The monsters are really just paint. The masks are rubber. They don’t want your of blood, they want candy corn.” Cedric and Gwen knew better, and they held hands for company in the warm glow of candle-light. The monsters really do want your blood, and forgetting it was just a way to make the moments before they ate you just a bit more tolerable. They had been born knowing that as they had been born knowing so many things.
Cedric wanted to be out among them, sliding though the frosty streets, watching the other kids flit about. He didn’t want to talk to them or play with them, but to move though them, watching, suddenly stirred something in him. He had no words to express the restlessness that he felt, but Gwen knew, as she always did, and laughed her almost silent laugh, smiling at him out of the corner of her wild brown eyes. Barred shadows where the framework for the window glass blocked the glow from the city’s ambient light, cut her face into enigmatic panels so that Cedric saw her in bits and pieces. A stretch of jaw length brown hair was isolated from a swatch of cheek. Her chin seemed to get more than its share of light, shading out to a whiter spot than anything else, except the glow of those bright, amused eyes. Even in slices, it was a good face. Not softly feminine and pretty in any traditional way, but strong, almost feral. There was something of the animal on both children. Age hadn’t separated their looks yet and for this breathless time before puberty worked its wiles on them, they were as close to identical as two fraternal twins could be. A pair of feral children dressed in mixed bits of costume found in the attic, relics of Halloweens past, children long gone, they clung together against a gathering storm.
Their odd mirrored effect broke apart when they moved. Cedric’s stalking pace was in such contrast to his sister’s quiet glide. As confident as if he were Fred Estare, not a 9 year old boy, he tugged her firmly away from the window and then pulled her to him in the first move of a dance that had been old before the first Pilgrim carved a jack-o-lantern and prayed it would protect him from things that go bump in the night.
She let his tug spin her into his arms, relaxing into the music, and with the soft smell of bee’s wax all around them, they flew on marble floors, surrounded by the imaginary guests of long forgotten parties. Flew as if they were one creature, mysterious and wild.
“I remember…,” he started, then trailed off, not sure what he remembered.
She shushed him gently.
When the music faded at last, they curled together in a tangle of cushions they pulled off of the uncomfortable furniture and watched a candle guttering, the rivulets of wax making small rivers across the floor.
“Mama Esther is going to be mad about that,” Cedric observed sadly and Gwen nodded against his arm. There was just so mad their housekeep/nanny would get, and Gwen took her sudden storms in stride better than her brother did.
“She will be fine. We can help her clean up.” And that was that. She snuggled closer against his side and the smell of her hair brought back memories of a hundred nights like this, the two of them curled up like mice in the cold house, hearts beating in time, breath synchronized. Even in separate rooms, they were so tuned to each other that they cold sense the other, know where the other was, but relaxed and touching it was hard to know where he ended and she began.
“Will he come home soon?” he whispered in her hair, and she shook her head. Paul visited rarely, left quickly when he did, and seemed to them both like a distant dream. They loved him, needed him, yearned for his presence like sunshine on their faces, but he seemed almost afraid of them. Most of their days and nights were spent with only Mama Esther and Old Bill, the grounds keeper, both of whom indulged the twins, creating a family for them. When the most recent of their ever changing tutors asked them if they ever got lonely they had given him looks of such perfectly matched amusement that he had quickly changed the subject. Loneliness was for those who walked around with their souls cut in half. Loneliness was for people who actually had room for others. The twins wouldn’t have had space for a companion, would have made no room in their terrible intimacy for another. Mama Esther seemed to know that and gave the children the warmth and love they needed without trying to push her way between them.
Gwen watched the candle burn, feeling Cedric grow still beside her as sleep took him. A storm was coming; she could feel it. “Go to sleep,” she told the candle quietly, and throughout the house, candles winked out, leaving nothing but moonlight and her owl bright eyes.