Charlie Spring stood in the light of the window. He rather enjoyed the moon's beam this time of year. Her chill left frost upon the glass. Frost is a friend. It symbolizes the truth. Winter is the season of death. Dia El Los Muertos opens doors to the otherside and allows the spirits of the ancestors to cross over and after they return to the world of the dead the cold sets in.
He's a tortured spirit, that's for certain. Within the cold there is the absence of love. It is the difficult and unexplored territory of human life. Of any life. His eyes diver to the movement coming from one of the baseboards. A rat has punctured it's own stomach trying to break through to the warmth. Silly rat, there's only the chill here.
Charlie visits this room far too often. The power doesn't reach in here. The Orphanage is a tall building on top of a windy hill and he should be with the other boys on the second floor in the room they all share. Harry Greene, Ben Hope, Tau Su, and Issac Henderson have all been asleep for hours. It's almost impossible to sleep when the moon's out. Sleeping at night at all is difficult for Charlie. He prefers to wait until the few hours of the day when he's not required to attend any tasks because when the sun's out that means tomorrow has already came.
Here, in the night, when he doesn't have to sit through a class taught by one of the lifeless pale mentors or scrub floors as a part of daily chores, he can dream. He's got this old piano, you see. It's so easy to use but the sound is awfully soft. He doesn't want to wake anyone up so he writes this off as a good thing. Fifteen years old and alone. Music is his home.
When he plays he watches the spirits. A voice in his head whispers in a deep malicious tone.
It's too cold for you here
Let me hold
Both your hands in...
The holes of my sweater.
He smiles as these shadows find one another in the fragments of light. While they look like monsters, bleeding from the lips, twisting bones till they look broken, growing horns out of places humans don't have the ability too, they make him happy. They love one another. He's certain. He does this for quite some time.
Charlie isn't sure when the hallucinations started. He remembers them being there always. They all have names. They all know him. They protect him. Kendall; the breather. James; the body. Carlos; the destruction. Logan; the repair. Breath falls in and out of the body. What falls apart must be fixed. The four of them are tall and beautiful and dark.
They rarely notice him though. They dance on what feels like a screen between the piano and the window. Kendall with his blonde hair that falls in bangs over his left eye. Pale Logan with the scrubs of a nurse or a surgeon who's mid-operation. James who's only ever wearing jean shorts and hiding his eyes with a helmet of brown hair. Or tan Carlos who's dressed to run and scoots his sneakers to the music hitting the notes and dripping a ghostly sweat.
The breath loves the body but the body loves to destroy it's self. The destruction desires to be repaired but the healer is always trying to breath. Logan's lungs are punctured which is why he wheezes and never speaks. Carlos has blood on his knees and steals the breath from Jame's body because he needs it to run but he never gets anywhere.
Charlie transitions into another song and watches as Carlos runs down hallways that don't exist finding only dead ends and never having his escape he so craves. When this song ends a new one shows Dr. Logan Mitchel botching an operation because the blood beneath his lab coat keeps seeping out and causing him to collapse and forcing the patient to flat line. In the next piece of music Kendall is a boy in love in the drivers seat of a car driving through the back-roads of an autumn day but the love of his life steps out in front of the car and it's manslaughter. Beautiful James is always the one dying in the fantasies. Carlos needs to escape to find help for the pretty boy alone on the floor in the room that every hallway leads back too. Kendall's feet aren't quick enough on the break to prevent the flesh of the lover to press into the shattering windshield. Logan's scalpel slips and punctures the heart of the body every time. Dreams like this are so painful for Charlie but he keeps playing because he's addicted to it. The pain is the only thing reminding him he's real.
The sun's almost here. The night has to end. They know this too. He hates the last song because it brings with it endings. Endings are the worst. The story being over. Charlie has no idea what happens to Kendall, James, Logan, and Carlos when the night is over. Do they all die? Do they return to the land of the dead like his ancestors? Or do they just suffer as invisible entities because the sunlight purges their colors? Still, he gives them the last song because it's the high. A big-time-rush that happens all at once. Where the walls seems to curl inward like the trees in a dying jungle and the technicolor lonesome purple in ultraviolet rays turn ice puddles into strobe lights. He plays the song and all the 'almost's hurt so much more than the rest of it. It's the truest pain.
Then he's playing out the final notes and his skin is once again aware of the chill. The icy blue of a world before it dawns cuts through his pale skin. His bones poke through as he refuses to eat the slop they feed him three times a day. It might be nice, quality food, but to him it's mush and powder. He's got to say goodbye to the monsters and return to bed before anyone else wakes up so he can pretend he'd slept the whole night. They all just think his sleeping in the afternoons are depression naps. Losing both of your parents is rough.
His body is weak and creaking as he goes to stand up. He goes to touch his own skin where it hurts but it comes up with blue bruises. Out into the hallway he steps in a slow icy walk the long corridor isn't as long as it looks. It's just his tired mind. So he's making his way down the staircase and into the second floor. All the adult sleep on the first floor. There's three rooms up here; one for the boys, one for the girls, and one for class.
He turns to walk into the room he shares with four other boys and finds a fifth one standing there looking scared. One of the adults are already awake and there's also an officer in here. The officer is big and scary with his hat and badge. A silver glint is the gun in it's holster on the uniform's hip.
Nick Nelson looks at Charlie Spring and the two of them find it hard to breath. Charlie gets stressed out about new people. All the kids here know he's a mysterious kid. It took them forever to figure that out. New kids like Harry Green and Imogen Heaney still find him to be more 'creepy' than the 'poetic' that the rest of them have settled on. This particular adult 'Mr. Hutcherson' compares Charlie to William Shakespear and Edgar Allen Poe.
"Charlie." Says Mr. Hutcherson knowingly, "Where were you off dreaming this time?"
Mr. Hutcherson is one of the nicer of the seven mentors Moose Edjucation and Rehoming Agency has looking after the children here. He's not too bad looking either but his softness comes across the way Issac's does. There's so much of the modesty there that all his kindness comes across genuine. Even now he's dressed in a long sleeve, turtle neck with a sweater vest and some dressed pants like he's a quiet librarian or a storytelling grandfather who owns a pocket watch.
"I woke up in the attic." It's not exactly a lie and Charlie has never felt the need to lie to Mr. Hutcherson.
The adult, as he always does, comes across with kindness. With a steady approach he takes a knee and pulls an orange out of the baggy side pockets in the sweater vest. In only his eyes Mr. Hutcherson tells Charlie that he's not in trouble but also that Mr. Hutcherson is simply worried about him.
He says, "Eat this. Please. And join officer Hansel and I as we show our newest resident the grounds."
Slowly, albeit confidently, Charlie takes the apple as he sees the desperation in Mr. Hutcherson's eyes. Is it genuine sincerity or fear of the tyrant who leads this house. Charlie and the other kids know that even a strong and pure spirit like Mr. Hutcherson's is afraid of the hierarchy Madam Rossi. She has one power but it's a strong one. The only other orphanage in the city is McCumbie's and it's pretty much where they turn horses to glue and put down mutts. There's a lot of legends about that place and a lot of true actual stories that came out of that place. Elle Argent came from there and she's got journals full of images she carries with her.
All of this is simply said to show that while conditions are livable at Moose they're still painful. The thing about Charlie is that he's okay with his scars and any he gets in the future. He's willing to break the rules if it means doing the right thing for his own spirit. So he peels the orange and follows along beside this new boy because Mr. Hutcherson once again covered up one of his crimes.
Nick Nelson looks sturdy. He's built like a rugby player and he's masking his pain with toughness. Charlie doesn't know how to tell Nick that he's not a threat but he chooses to speak anyhow.
"Hi." It's one word and still it's powerful.
Nick Nelson turns to look at Charlie Spring as they step out of a door on the ground floor and out into the archway of a gardens entrance. There's a faint confusion and slowly Nick's face settles into an ease. A morning butterfly moves from one blue winter rose to another and the blue light of dawn is fracturing with soft whispers of pink.
"Hi." Nick responds and it's one word and it doesn't explain so much of a percentage of all the things he's thinking right now.
Through the first of many pathways in the hedge field they go and as they continue along the pink and blue are cast aside as peasants in the shadows of an evil king snow white on a dark adviser in evergreen. Despite the daylight's insistence to arrive the hedge maze and it's stone statues are parasited by darkness. The red blossoms appear like the crimson in blood. The thorns curl wickedly in places that whisper inaccessible. Cobblestone fountains are cracked and full of ice offering only the chill.
Officer Hansel and Mr. Hutcherson step along the trail chatting about details Nick Nelson wants to forget about. The two young boys stop. While Nick Nelson stares at the gun on the policeman's hip Charlie Spring steps out to pluck patches out of the stone eyes of a young girl figurine in a bush of Blue Brisnel.
"She should be able to see the chill if she's forced to feel it." Says Charlie.
Nick furrows a brow and looks down to the scene taking place close by. Charlie personifying the statue allows Nick Nelson to see the illusion. There's something awfully sweet about this frail pale concrete boy brushing hair out of the eyes of a laughing child playing in the snow. It's just a kid and a statue. It's just a blur in Nick's eyes.
"Come along boys." Offers Officer Hansel.
Charlie leaves a trail of orange peels as he shuffles along. The sprits of citrus spray his tongue and remind him of the spring. He love the chill but there's also something special about new birth. The winter's death is a trial period. A time to survive. To prove one's worth. He's not aware of the stone buried in the fresh white powder when his shoe catches.
Before his face hits the ground an hand grasps firmly under his arm. He's catching his breath. Someone just save him. Slowly, he turns around and balances his feet beneath him.
Nick says, "Please don't injure yourself. It's my first day and I don't want them to think it was me."
"What would you get out of hurting someone who's already lost everything. No one's going to think you tried to hurt me." Charlie rubs his arm through the fabric of his black hoodie and never breaks eye contact with this kid in a jean jacket and sweats. He picks up his orange slices from the snow and hands a couple to Nick.
Nick smiles and bites into one. It's sweet and he can't help but associate this with Charlie.
The four of them round up at the end of the maze. The officer and Mr. Hutcherson step out onto loose gravel and chat for a bit longer as Nick and Charlie sit on the steps to the house. It's a pretty house. The walls are painted white to match the winter but the marble staircase and the candy canes lining the driveway somehow make it seem special and trustworthy.
"You don't have to give your story." Says Charlie, "We don't talk about the past or the future here. Most of the conversation here at Moose revolves around a day to day thing. Sometimes just moment to moment."
Nick Nelson once again looks at Charlie and there's a steady thumping in this sporty boy's chest. Maybe Moose isn't going to be the worst nightmare after all. Or maybe the statue of the screaming woman out on the front lawn who's staring up at the sky is just a window into their souls.