Chapter 9 The Shadow

“Have you got anything that you’re looking for?” Auntie Caroline sipped the camomile tea that Sonya made for both of them.

They were having dinner for the second night of the full moon festival. The dishes were served differently in a paradox set of main courses for the Duville and the Stein.

Clayton paused slicing some chunks of half-cooked red meat on his dinner plate. “Some, Auntie. I need to continue doing tomorrow.” He sipped his wine.

The candles were lit up in a chandelier and were put in the middle of the dining table.

Sonya looked at Clayton through the candle lights. She saw his eyes were sparkling under the light reflection. She kept chopping some vegetables on her plate with her fork.

“Are you going to stay in the cabin tonight?” Sonya reached for some dried raisins from the bowl. She saw that Clayton had anything green or fruits on his plate unless his chewy red meats were cooked half-done and served in a raw dish without any ingredients.

Clayton nodded. He wiped his lips with a napkin and Sonya could see some stains of wine on his lips making the lips look more wet and like a cherry blossom.

Sonya wandered her gaze through the window glass in the kitchen room, the thick fog already had come to approach.

Auntie Caroline left Sonya and Clayton in the dining room.

“What is bubbling inside your mind?” Clayton finally sipped all his wine.

Sonya sighed, put their plates together, and stacked those plates up to put into the wash sink.

“How do you know that I was thinking?” Sonya stood in front of Clayton who was sitting in his seat, enjoying some meaty snacks with Lassie.

He stopped playing with Lassie and lifted his head, pointing Sonya with his piercing gaze. After their eyes were clashing for some seconds, Clayton smirked. “Guess! So, what was it all about?” He returned his eyes to Lassie and giggled with that dog as they started playing guessing in which hands where the ball was.

“Still, you remember what you read about Uncle Elbert’s handwritten journal?” Sonya slapped Clayton’s back gently with the towel in her hands. She did it just to make Clayton stop playing with Lassie.

Clayton turned his head and spotted Sonya who just finished washing the dishes. “Which point?” He grabbed his water bottle and filled it fully with water from the dispenser.

“Uncle Elbert wrote that…” Sonya paused telling the story, turning her head to find out whether Auntie Caroline had gone to bed or not. She turned down her voice as she found out that Auntie Caroline was sitting on her lazy chair and watching some news program on television in the next room. “There was a clash of energy when he decided to marry Auntie…” Sonya hissed and dragged a chair for Clayton to sit on.

“I don’t know about that too!” Clayton wiped his nose and turned down his voice too.

Sonya looked at Clayton again, biting her lower lip as she was thinking. “Was it the cause why Uncle Elbert could predict that he couldn’t have a son or he decided not to have a son?” She yanked Clayton’s wrist and asked him to sit.

Clayton put one of his arms on the dining table and took a seat next to Sonya. “Was that important to find it out?” He rubbed his cheek as he perceived that Sonya was going to interrogate him.

Sonya inhaled and turned her head, putting her sight out of the window. “You know what I’m talking about, Clayton! And a such kind of phenomenon out there!” She gritted her teeth and pointed her hand to something out the window as she turned her head to Clayton. “Is that normal?” She asked him with a skeptical expression.

“I don’t know anything about that! I am a student of anthropology; I am neither a student of meteorology nor some witchcraft studies!” Clayton rose from his seat. He walked to the back door, paused his steps as his hand was on the back door’s knob, and turned around to Sonya. “I am going to the cabin now!”

Sonya took a deep breath. “Don’t you bring any torches with you?” She was curious how Clayton would be able to see the path clearly or not because of the thick fog.

Clayton smiled and showed his mobile phone to Sonya in one hand. “I’ve got this!”

Before closing the door and pulling up his collar mantle, Clayton sneaked out from the open slight door. “Have a wonderful journey to find out the mystery, Sonya!” again he smirked with a playful smile and made Sonya want to throw him a towel in her hand.

Sonya blew out the candles after Clayton closed the door and she locked the door from inside. She tugged the key out from the key lobe and put it on the key hook. She decided to go to her bed. She found Auntie Caroline had burned some myrrh and sage in the living room and Auntie Caroline went to bed after doing the ritual.

“Auntie always does that every night in the full moon festivals!” Sonya murmured and stepped on the wooden stairs to her room.

Inside the room, Sonya sat on the boundary of her bed and her eyes captured the music box. She remembered her dream one night before, how the lullaby music that could make her fall asleep had changed into a miserable sound.

Sonya inhaled, taking that music box from the table and examining it carefully. She scrolled the key and listened to the music box playing a gentle lullaby. ‘Nothing wrong with this music box! Perhaps, it was only a dream!’ She remembered how miserable the lullaby sounded and made her goosebump to hear that in her dream. ‘I could remember it so clearly as if I was fully consciously awake instead of dreaming!’

“I need to fill my water bottle!” Sonya grabbed her bottle from the table and decided to go to the kitchen.

She turned on the torch from her mobile phone, the kitchen and the entire rooms in the house were dark, and no candles were lit up as no lamps were turned on during the nights in the full moon festivals in the Duville. Sonya inhaled. ‘I once tried to turn on the lamp during the nights in the full moon festivals and what I did made Mom and Aunty Caroline angry!’ She tried to navigate her steps by touching the wall and something along the way to the kitchen.

She just finished filling her water bottle from the water dispenser and saw that Clayton had left his bottle. ‘He must forget about it!’ Sonya grabbed the bottle from the dining table next to the water dispenser she took some sips of water from her bottle. 

She walked to the back door and stopped for a while in front of the door as she decided to open it. She withdrew her fingers from the door’s knob as she saw someone had grabbed the knob of the door from outside. She kept staring at the movement of the knob as someone was trying to pull it from outside. Cracking sounds appeared as someone outside was pulling the knob, trying to open it with any struggles. With her eyes, Sonya witnessed that the knob was flipped to the right five times before stopping. She kept waiting and standing still. A sensation near to dreadful one almost caught her up. Then, in a few seconds, she realized that the rustled wind had caused it.

She inhaled and pulled her outdoor mantle from the coat hanger.

She wore it and caught the key of the door to open the door. She kept the water bottle of Clayton with her folded arm.

She clicked the key carefully and opened the door quietly. As she stepped outside from the back door and closed it carefully, she saw her surroundings were covered by the thick fog. She inhaled and pointed her mobile phone to give her direction with its radiance in front of her walking tracks.

She opened the gate in the backyard that it never been locked.

“The fog makes the small path look so hard to see!” Sonya tried to talk to herself as she closed the backyard gate. She deeply inhaled and pulled up her mantle’s collar as she walked through the small path.

The wind was blowing rustled. The night was so quiet, there was a full moon’s radiance that it utterly helped her to see the path within the fog.

“Damn, what happened with this light from my phone?” Sonya found the light from her mobile phone started dimming off. She checked it. “The batterie is still on its ninety percent performance! It should be enough energy to make its light turn on!”

She stopped walking on the path and was busy checking her phone. “There’s no any signals though!” She inhaled deeply as she became quite panicked to find it out. She turned her head around. She had walked through halfway to the cabin.

“I should continue to walk to the cabin!” She inhaled.

The rustling wind had swayed some branches of the willow trees and made them look like some dancing spooky creatures within the fog. 

‘This silence almost kills me with fear!’ Sonya looked around and she only heard the bubbling sound of the streaming brook.

She kept walking without any light from her mobile phone. Her eyes only caught darkness and her skin pores were shivered by the rustling wind that was blowing like a miserable shriek from the distance whenever the branches of the trees were stringing each other.

“Everything will be fine, Sonya!” Sonya murmured as she tried to keep conscious aware.

She stopped walking as she felt someone exhale harshly behind her. “Clayton?” Sonya whispered and she knew that the silent tone with some haunted nuance of the shadow of that old mansion beyond the fog that she still could see had beaten her heart rates faster. ‘I don’t like this feeling!’ Sonya rubbed her chin as she felt quite weird with the atmosphere, “Please, don’t play around, Clayton! I just want to bring your water bottle that you left on the table! It’s not funny, you know!” Sonya spoke with her trembling voice. She stood still and was motionless as she waited for Clayton’s response.

“Clayton?” She called his name after a few seconds' pause. No giggles, no warmth of breathtaking air anymore unless her ears started hearing her heart beating so fast and loud.

Sonya turned her head around and exhaled harshly as she found nobody standing behind her. She put her sight around. She saw no one.

She continued walking but she sensed that someone’s eyes were observing her in a detailed way. Sonya stopped her steps.

“Clayton?” She shouted as she saw someone’s back walking through the gate of the family land and stepping to the archway gate of the old mansion.

Sonya pulled up her mantle and tried to turn on the light from her phone. She hit and shook her phone. “Come on! You must be kidding me!” She tried hard to make the light of her phone turned on.

Subsequently, after she pushed the restarting button many times, she could make the light from her phone turn on. She directed the radiance to the path where she just saw the shadow of a man walking to the archway gate of the old mansion.

“Clayton, is that you? Hey, stop!! I am talking to you!” Sonya rushed to follow that man’s walking steps. She walked too fast until her toes bumped into something along the small path and made her tremble.

“Arggh!” Sonya tried to get up and knelt to examine her right kneel but got bruised. “My Gosh!” She tried to reach her phone but was bounced away when she fell. “God!” She got up dusted off her arms and kneels from the dirt, she directed the torch of her phone from her standing position to the shadow of that man. He seemed to walk as he waited for something.

Sonya walked to approach the shadow of Clayton who was standing and she was sure that he was waiting for her to approach.

‘Damn, Clayton! Why are you standing near that mansion?’ Sonya still directed her light to penetrate the thick fog at Clayton’s shadow who was standing in a few metres after her.

“Who’s there?” Sonya stopped walking. She heard something or someone just stepping into some piles of falling leaves. She directed her light to the source of the voice coming from. It seemed coming from the other side of the brookside, near Uncle Elbert’s and Granny’s burials. Sonya started capturing some goosebumps. She halted her breathtaking as she saw her torch light had hit a pair of red sparking eyes. It seemed like a pair of big dog’s eyes. Her ears captured some growling sounds.

Sonya rushed her steps, trying to approach Clayton who was standing in front of the archway gate of the mansion as she felt that the growling sounds were catching up her footsteps from the other side of the streaming brook. She could sense its steps were running to catch her from behind.

She almost caught the gate of the family land but someone’s arm halted her footsteps and held her waist tightly, trying to stop her from running.

“Whoaa!” Clayton crumpled his fingers on Sonya’s mantle. “Where are you going, Sonya?” He asked Sonya with a definitive curious expression.

Sonya wrinkled her forehead as she was surprised that it was Clayton who holding her steps to approach that man. “I thought he was you!”

Clayton smiled at Sonya, “Who?” He took his water bottle from Sonya's hand. “I saw someone was playing a torch through the cabin’s window. I thought it was you. And I was right!” He put his arm on Sonya’s neck and escorted her to return to the family house.

“Hey, thank you for bringing me my water bottle, Cousin!” Clayton kissed Sonya’s forehead as they stopped walking and were standing at the closed back door.

He was staring at Sonya’s back and shrugged at the time Sonya turned around before stepping into the house.

“Don’t forget to lock the door!” Clayton smiled and threw his chin to give a sign to Sonya that he was going back to the cabin.

Sonya smiled and rubbed her forehead. She seemed so confused.

At the time, she turned her back after locking the back door, Sonya found Lassie sniffing her legs and walking behind her as she walked the stairs to the room. The German shepherd dog was trying to guard her and calm her down.

‘Who’s that man? If he weren’t Clayton, then whose shadow that I thought was Clayton’s?’ Sonya repeatedly took deep inhales.