by Derek Milman
“Good night, Dario.” She blows me a kiss, followed by a mournful, deflated smile, sashaying toward the tunneling abyss of her bedroom—her lair.
As I head back to my room, I see a strip of light under Oren’s door. Not wanting to go back to bed just yet, and feeling a gnawing loneliness, I get this unexpected urge to talk to my brother. I don’t know. I feel a little bad about how I acted earlier; I’m also curious about what Mistress Moonshadow just told me. My dad wrote and directed every single one of Moldavia’s 150 or so features. I can’t imagine anyone replacing him.
What are Oren’s plans, exactly?
I knock softly. When there’s no answer, I peek inside. Oren is lying on a futon. He’s dressed in red long johns, watching Suspiria on mute while he listens to the soundtrack on vinyl through Skullcandy headphones, which are attached to a record player on the floor, next to the album’s spooky jacket. I remember Oren does this. He likes to storyboard movies in reverse. It’s his way of studying how all the shots are composed. Suspiria was directed by my namesake, Italian horror master Dario Argento.
Oren’s room is slightly bigger than mine, but it’s way more cluttered: VHS tapes and DVDs are scattered everywhere, as well as magazines and books and all these loose papers and torn-open envelopes. It’s basically the room of a shut-in who watches lots of Moldavia movies. On the walls are framed black-and-white photos of severe-looking old people in nineteenth-century immigrant garb. I’m not going to ask about the empty mayonnaise jar perched on the windowsill with a spoon sticking out of it. Oren sees me standing there and slips off his headphones.
“Dario. It’s such an odd sight to see you at my door.”
I lean against the doorframe and nod. I never really know what to say to Oren, and I always seem to realize that too late.
“Was there something you needed?” he asks.
“Um. Just wanted to say . . . nice speech about Dad.”
Oren picks at a loose thread on his shirt. “No it wasn’t.”
“It was good.”
“Thank you for saying so. But I’m no Henry the Fifth.”
“Right. Well, are you okay?”
“I’m deeply sorrowful,” says Oren, accompanying this statement with a loud moan as if to prove it. “But at least we knew this day was coming. I was emotionally prepared. Yes, there were a few hiccups, but for the most part Dad got what he wanted in the end. I’m comforted by that fact.”
It kind of says everything that Oren is comforted by how today went.
“And how are you doing, Dario?”
He does seem genuinely concerned, which makes me relax a little. I puff out my cheeks and slowly exhale a stream of air. “I . . . don’t know. Not sure.”
“Grief is a complicated process,” he says, as if reading the first sentence of a really bad self-help book.
But I don’t feel grief. I just feel numb. And that’s starting to concern me. So I guess I feel concerned? And maybe a little lost. But overall, I don’t think I’m feeling what I’m supposed to be feeling. So now I’m wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
“What’s going to happen now?” I ask, trying to stabilize my thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, now that Dad is gone, who’s going to be directing—”
“I am taking over all directing duties!” Oren says proudly, and loudly, like he’s announcing a presidential appointment.
I can’t stop my lower jaw from falling open a little. Oren. Directing. Holy shit. Who in God’s name would have approved that? But then of course I know: the same man who wished to be buried alive in his own backyard—our dear old departed dad.
It’s suddenly painfully apparent that no one bothered to think through the aftermath of the most planned “natural death” of all time.
I try to reassure myself that I have a tenuous connection to Moldavia now. None of this is really my problem. But still I imagine tentacles unfurling, and coming for me through the castle walls. If things reach a certain level of untenable chaos, this could somehow become my problem. And that scares me—the idea of getting pulled into Moldavia’s insanity like quicksand.
But I should have known Oren would step up to the plate. He hasn’t been watching and studying classic horror films his whole life for no reason.
“Did you ever direct anything before?” I ask.
“Not yet!” he says, his eyes lighting up like someone just plugged in his face. “But I’ve shadowed Dad my whole life. I’m taking over No Chance in Hell. Three scenes still left to shoot on that. Then we’re going into production on The Killer Cauliflowers.”
“The what?”
“It’s my own script.”
I furiously scratch an eyebrow. “You’re spelling Killer with a k, right?”
“I am.”
I know he isn’t. “What is it about?”
“An evil shaman puts a spell on a rival farmer, and his vegetable patch gives birth to these mutant vegetable monsters that attack all the villagers. We’re trying to hit that sweet spot of the Eastern European horror vegan market.”
“Oh. That sweet spot.”
“Dad loved the idea.”
“He did?”
“Yes. There was just a lot on the docket, and he kept pushing it back so he could focus on projects that were already in planning stages.”
I wait for more—for Oren to tell me he’s kidding, but he doesn’t.
“Are cauliflowers scary, though?” I try to phrase this in a calm, constructive, test-screening sort of tone, but my voice warbles and sounds too high. I can’t imagine our dad loving this idea at all.
Oren sits up. “You’ve seen the Pumpkinhead films?”
I gnash my teeth a little. “I know of them.”
“It’s like that.”
“I don’t think that monster was literally a pumpkin, though.” That movie is about a dad whose son gets killed by teenagers on dirt bikes. Then the dad finds a witch, and they create a horrible monster to get revenge on the teenagers. So . . .
“This is going to be an instant classic,” Oren informs me.
I nod, imagining cauliflowers, which I guess are pretty weird looking if you think about it long enough. And apparently Oren did.
Maybe this could work? Maybe Oren could pull this together? Maybe he’s really an undiscovered auteur, a latent genius? Oh man, I really want to believe all that.
“Um . . . maybe just rethink the title?” I suggest, like that’s the only issue here.
“Any ideas?”
“Haunted House Salad?”
“Oh.”
“The Creeping Crudité?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “You’re mocking me.”
“Just a little.” I’m joking because I don’t know what else to do.
Oren reaches for his headphones. “Well. It’s nice to have you back here, however briefly. How much school do you have left?” He frowns. “How does all that even work?”
“How does what work? I go to school like anybody else. Then I go home.”
“Home. To that bacteria-ridden orphanage?”
“There’s bacteria here too, Oren. Just different strains.” I rap my knuckles against the door. “Anyway. Look. I’m sorry I freaked out earlier.”
“I understand. It’s a lot. I’m sure it’s hard to be back.”
“Yeah. It is.” I hesitate; it’s not exactly uncharted territory trying to talk to Oren about the bad shit that went down here when I was a kid. But he’s never directly acknowledged it, and I’ve always wondered if he could without being dismissive. “You know I had a rough time growing up here. Right?”
Oren makes a strangled hmmph sound, like here we go again. He sticks his hand out. “I assumed. You did get emancipated. You did move to an orphanage.” He rubs his chin, glances at the TV screen, then back at me, his eyes searching, offering a hint of vulnerability, of something more. But then I see him swallow everything; his demeanor resets into his default mode with me. “You have some bad memorie
s? Is that it? We all do.” His voice is flat, listless.
I look down, and nod. “Bad memories” doesn’t really sum it all up, but it’s clearly easier for Oren to digest, so let’s just go with that.
“Is it about Mom?” He’s fiddling with his headphones. He’s treating this conversation like I’ve paid him for therapy, and I’m his most needy patient.
Oren doesn’t like to talk about the stuff that went haywire with our family. I wish there was an easier way to connect with him. All that pain keeps us apart, but it’s also the main thing we have in common.
“For sure about Mom,” I answer. “But also making Zombie Children.”
“I was supposed to be first A.D. on that one,” says Oren. “But I got pneumonia. I was bedridden for weeks. So I wasn’t able to protect you during—”
“There were other times.”
“Other times?”
I hate when he repeats shit back to me as a question, in that light, innocent tone of his. I level my gaze at him. “When you could have protected me.”
“From Mom? Oh, I doubt—”
“After. After she left.”
He fucking knows what I’m talking about.
I step into his room. There’s a heavy pause. I run my hand down the back of my neck, trying to unknot all the muscles that are suddenly tightening up.
Oren turns his attention back to the movie and writes something down, staring at the screen, licking his lips in concentration, lightly shaking his head. “It’s just that . . . sometimes you have a tendency to whine.”
And here we go with this.
Oren loves to bait me. He has a couple of things in his repertoire, this routine he’s created just for me. One of them is mocking Keenan House, and everyone there, as decrepit thieving vagrants fighting over morsels of food in a leaking, reeking hellhole.
That dovetails into the other thing he loves to do: paint me as this selfish ingrate who left Moldavia as part of some extended tantrum. That’s convenient for him, I’m sure, because it absolves him, offsets whatever guilt he feels at being a shitty older brother, and masks the real reasons I had to get the hell out of here.
But the thing is, it works. He can really piss me off. I’ve been determined not to let him get to me since I’ve been back. “Look, man,” I say, keeping my voice steady, “I can’t keep going down this path with you where I constantly have to justify why I left, or apologize for leaving—”
“I haven’t asked you to do either—”
“When really, you should be the one apologizing to me—”
“Ohhh, is that right—”
“Yeah, it is right.” I take a breath. I unball my fists. I’m not going to take the bait. “I just don’t like this . . . defensiveness I’ve been feeling since I’ve been back.”
“Yes, well, you can’t blame others for the way you feel, Dario—”
“Partly because you think I’m this self-involved brat who just abandoned—”
He holds out his hands. “Your words.”
I let out a low whistle. I put my hands over my eyes, trying to quell the anger rising up. I hate that he still plays these games. I keep trying with him, just like I did with our dad—and it’s impossible to get anywhere.
I turn my gaze to Oren’s TV and let the movie give me a dose of escapism. It’s about a witches’ coven disguised as a ballet school. It’s filmed in bright, off-putting candy colors. I smile at that. It’s a bold choice. I like bold choices.
“Look,” says Oren, “I’m sorry you felt like you needed to escape your home. That I wasn’t there for you, that I ignored your plight. Okay? Happy now? This family has had its tragedies. I suppose we both had our own concerns and put ourselves first. That’s the Heyward way, though, isn’t it?”
I look at him. “Is that really supposed to be a fucking apology?”
“That’s what you really want from me? An apology?”
“Jesus.” I walk over to the window and squint outside. It’s so black and quiet and vast out there that the night swims in my eyes. Oren’s right. What would saying sorry even accomplish? It’s just bullshit people say so they can move on, like pressing a button or something. Forgiveness is pointless, in any case. Usually the damage is already done.
I barely know Oren, and that’s sure as hell not my fault. People with much older siblings generally don’t know them well, usually because the older sibling leaves home. Not the other way around. Everything around here is too backward to get a proper handle on. I feel like an asteroid flying through space. I can’t catch up. Moldavia and the fragments of what once was my “family” are so unknowable to me at this point, it’s like why even try.
“This was always your true home, even if you renounced it,” says Oren. “We’re still your family, even if you renounced us. You left part of yourself here. Maybe you’re just now realizing that.”
It’s statements like that that make the hives and all the itching come back.
Oren puts his headphones back on and redirects his attention to Suspiria, where a blind man is getting his throat torn out by his possessed guide dog in a German plaza.
I step away from the window and shake my head at him.
“Good night, Dario,” he says, not looking at me.
He gives me a little wave as I close the door. As I’m walking back to my room, I run into Hayley, carrying a cup of steaming tea on a saucer. She starts a little, like she forgot I was back.
“Does anyone sleep around here?”
“Apparently not you,” she says, taking a sip of tea. “Sometimes I walk the halls at night. Insomnia.”
We just stare at each other, something we keep doing. I guess we’re still not used to seeing each other all grown up.
“Wanna see something cool?” she says.
I follow her down drafty stone hallways until we reach the grand ballroom in the Carpenter Wing. The room has been cleared out and turned into a huge makeshift graveyard, with real mounds of dirt. Papier-mâché ghouls, reinforced with wires, are crawling out of ripped-open graves.
The matte paintings stacked against the walls, created by Joaquin Joseph’s production design team on the upper floors of the castle, depict toothlike gravestones protruding through miles of foggy, moonlit night. This was always the thing about living here: you never knew what room was going to be turned into what.
I used to spend time in the library of the Lugosi Wing, where old books were stacked from floor to ceiling. It was the only place I could read and be alone for a while. But one morning I walked in there and found all the bookshelves gone and the room transformed into an evil chemistry lab for Dr. Vernon Landover in The Cyberian Experiments. Glass vials were bubbling, beakers were smoking, and there were mashed-faced fetuses in jars filled with brightly colored liquids.
They needed the library because it got great afternoon light.
Hayley and I sit across from each other on the ground, in the middle of the huge dirt-filled set. The room looks so real, and the castle is so drafty anyway, it feels like we’re sitting in the middle of an actual graveyard.
I stare into my lap. “Hayley . . . I wanted to say . . . I’m so sorry.”
She blows into the cup. “About what?”
“That I didn’t go to the funeral.”
She frowns.
“Your mom. I loved Aida so much.”
Hayley’s eyes instantly get shiny. “She loved you a lot too.”
I was trying all day to bring this up and I didn’t know how. “I should have reached out.”
She nods. “It was pancreatic. We knew for a while. It wasn’t a shock.” She takes another sip of tea. “How did you hear?”
“A horror zine, I think? Online.” I hug myself as the wind whistles outside the castle walls. “I could have called, or sent flowers or something. I totally suck.”
The edges of Hayley’s curls glint in the weak bronze light. She looks contemplative. I can tell she’s holding a lot back. “You left. This place wasn’t a part of you
anymore.”
Except I’m realizing, more and more, each minute I’m back, how untrue that is. It’s just been one long fight with myself pretending Moldavia didn’t matter anymore. Oren’s right: I left part of myself here. I spent two days sobbing when I heard about Aida. I missed school and everything. I should have called Hayley. But I had to continue my pathetic illusion, proving nothing. As a result, I wasn’t there for her, and I never got a chance to pay my respects to her mom.
It hurts to think how Hayley’s continued on here, without me or her own family. There must be a constant onslaught of memories, just like there are for me—except she still lives here. They’re not temporary for her.
Hayley takes a sip and gives me a little nudge. “How did things go with Oren? I saw you coming out of his room.”
I lean back on both hands. “He says he’s taking over as principal director.”
Hayley nearly chokes on her tea. “Let’s not make any assumptions. We haven’t even heard the will yet.”
“Do you know something I don’t?”
She rests the empty teacup beside her on the saucer. “Not at all. But Oren doesn’t get to just appoint himself anything.”
“You might want to tell that to Oren.”
“He’ll figure it out.”
The politics of this place confuse me. There are so many mysterious rules. I’ve barely been back, and I already feel lost in its fumes. I don’t get how Moldavia’s engine is supposed to run, with all its moving, intricate parts. But Hayley seems to know a lot more, which makes sense, I guess, since she’s been here all this time. She also seemed very in tune with what my dad was thinking about his funeral, and how he wanted “to take on death.” I can’t imagine him talking about that with just anyone. He pretty much expressed everything he thought or felt through his films.
I wonder how afraid and alone he actually felt at the end there.
Hayley catches me eyeing the locket around her throat. She reaches behind her neck to undo the clasp. “You should have this. It really belongs to you.”
“No, no, no, don’t.” I put my hand on her arm. “Just . . . what’s the story?”
“Your mom didn’t want to keep it at the hospital. There had been some thefts. She gave it to me as a gift on my sixteenth birthday.”