Children of the Night

The crescent moon barely lit the crisp night sky as the fall breeze floated the last dying leaves across the yard of the Edgewood Plantation and blew open the latch of Evelynn’s window seat. As the cold air tickled the freckles on her skin Evelynn smirked at the call of the moonlight that spoke to her soul every night. She turned out of bed stepping into her buckled black boots grabbing her readied jacket and scarf from the bed post and made her way to the window seat of her room. Climbing out upon her roof she breathed in the crisp New England fall air, a beautiful scent that can only be understood by true, “nutmeggers.” It smelled of bonfires hidden in the backwoods, pickup parties in the old car lots, and hope for something new. It was clear to Evelynn that people, like trees, had to shed their outer edges every once in a while in order to prepare for the seasons to come. She wanted so badly to shed the suburban shell she had been born into and run away into the night. The sun had never been kind to her for in the daylight hours the expectations of her outweighed her own plans for her life.

Evelynn sat there on that roof as she did every night and pulled her notebook out of her jacket pocket and began to write under the light of the crescent moon.

“The crescent moon lights the movement of my pen,

And I am encompassed by thoughts of running far away,

Away from the place my puzzle piece fits,

To follow the children of the night to where their souls rest in the sunlight”

A rustle from the woods startled Evelynn and she jumped up standing on the incline of her roof barely maintaining her balance from the fright. She knew that sound, it occurred every night around this time. The children of the night, or at least that is what she called them, were out once again and this time she was going to find them. Evelynn began to tip toe towards the tree’s branch that outstretched to her roof so she could make her way down when she heard a tap from the inside of her window. Knowing she was caught she imagined if she just froze there maybe no one would see her but then she heard the familiar voice of her older brother Chapman coming from her window.

“Evelynn, what in the world are you trying to do? You are going to fall off the damn roof! How do you think Mother is going to feel when you are wearing a neck brace to the debutante ball?”

“Would you just shut it Chapman! They are going to hear you and then I am never going to find them!”

“Are you still going on about this dumb ‘children of the night’ thing Evelynn? It is just the leaves rustling in the wind. There is no secret army of teenagers in the night. This is not one of your stupid fiction books Evelynn. This is real life. Now get back inside before you get sick and go to sleep. You are lucky I do not tell Mother and Father about this at breakfast.”

“Fine, but I am not giving up! I am going to prove this one day Chapman, you just wait. I am not just stuck in some fictional world. I know that they are out there and one day I am going to find them. Not all of us are so delicately tied to our trust fund.”

Evelynn crawled back into her bedroom window and gently led her annoying older brother to the door and locked it behind him. She went to hang her jacket back upon her bedpost when she saw something scurry across her roof, and it was much larger than any squirrel she had ever seen. She walked over to the window and looked out but saw nothing. Defeated, she turned away and headed back towards her bed. Maybe her brother was right, maybe the children of the night were just some fiction story she made up in her head to help her escape the suburban hell she was bound to grow up and be stuck in forever. She kicked off her boots and crawled back under her covers and turned over to try to sleep under the breeze of the fall night. Just as she began to drift into a state of rem she felt the edge of her bed go down as if something had fallen upon it. Terrified Evelynn did not open her eyes. She just laid there insistent that if someone was going to come and try to rob her or worse that it would be safer if they just believed her to be asleep.

This fake snoozing was not working. Evelynn could not ignore the heaviness at the edge of her bed. Maybe she was crazy; maybe the cat had snuck into the room when she was leading Chapman out the door or maybe her brother had just come in to scare her. Yes that seemed more likely, it was probably Chapman, so she pulled the blanket close to her face and sternly spoke into the night air, “Chapman please leave my room. This is not funny and you are not going to scare me.”

“Now I do not know who Chapman is,” spoke a rural southern accent from the edge of the bed, “but I do know that you have been looking for us and I have been chosen to figure out why.”

Evelynn jumped her back up to her head board sitting back staring at the boy sitting at the edge of bed. He couldn’t have been much older than her, seventeen maybe eighteen but there was something off about him. It was more than just the southern accent or the torn flannel shirt. His eyes stared into hers and the piercing green with floats of brown looked as though he had traveled the universe and all the wisdom he had taken in just floated there bursting out when the moonlight hit it. Now, after realizing she had probably been staring just long enough to make it awkward, she had some questions she knew she needed to get the answers to.

“What do you mean when you say I have been looking for you?” Evelynn stuttered “And what in the world do you mean when they say they sent you to figure out why? What does it matter what I think I do or do not hear in the middle of the night?”

“Ok, well first off I should probably mention that no one really sent me here but I heard you talking to your brother….”

“Wait a minute,” Evelynn cut him off mid-sentence. “How would you have been able to hear that from the woods? Why would you come here if no one sent you? More importantly, who or what are you.”

“My name is Jacobi, for now that is all the information that I can give you about myself. I suppose you could say that I have extraordinary hearing and I have been listening to you for quite some time. I think you are the one who we have been looking for. I think you are Avalia and if you are then we need you to get back before it is too late my love.”

“That makes no sense. You have the wrong person. My name is Evelynn Edgewood. I am the daughter of Alan and Amora Edgewood, the sister of Chapman Edgewood and I have never been needed by anyone. Also why would I want to help with whatever you needed? I still have no idea who you are.”

“That is not the problem Avalia, the problem is you have no idea who you are.”

Everything went black and then Evelynn woke up in her bed a few hours later like it was all some bad dream. Was it just a bad dream? Evelynn couldn’t shake what Jacobi had said from her mind. Who was this Avalia girl, was it her, had everything she had ever known her whole life been a lie. She tried to imagine this girl, Avalia, and her mind began to wander to the daydream of a little girl in long brown braids sitting on a swing set next to a ragged little red head boy surrounded by a large fence closing them off from the rest of the world. Evelynn had thought fondly of this made up little girl many times in her life but what if she wasn’t just some made up girl that Evelynn used to escape the norm of her everyday life. What if everything that she had ever known about her life was just as made up as everything in her books.

Evelynn descended down the staircase of her home into her foyer to meet the people she had called her family for as long as she could remember in the dining hall sitting down for breakfast. Breakfast at the Edgewood house seemed to be treated more like a meeting than a sit down family breakfast, one that Evelynn never truly felt like she was invited to. Her father sat at one end of the table reading the morning paper while her mother sat at the other writing in her planner like being in charge of the debutante ball was as time consuming as being the CEO of some huge company. Meanwhile, Chapman leaned up against the wall drinking his tea like sitting at the table automatically meant he had to have an actual conversation with their father and since that hadn’t happened in the last three years since Chapman turned down Father’s offer to work for him, Evelynn doubted that was going to change today.

Mr. Edgewood glanced up from his morning paper and froze at the sight of his daughter standing there frozen as if someone had immobilized her.

“Evelynn, are you ok my dear? Why don’t you sit down and have a cup of tea and some toast?”

“Um, I am ok father, it’s just I have a big test to study for and I was wondering if I could use your computer in the office to do some research.”

Technically, none of what Evelynn had told her father was a lie. She did have that ridiculous science test coming up in Mr. Abraham’s class and she did need to do research. The two pieces of information were just not mutually exclusive. Evelynn needed to get all the information she could on whoever Avalia was, if she was even real and this all wasn’t another one of her elaborate dreams her therapist basically told her to bury as deep as she could. It didn’t hurt that her father was the only doctor in their trivial town so if there were any records to find about who ever Avalia is or was then Father’s office was the place to find them.

That brings us to this moment right now. Evelynn is sitting in her father’s brown leather business chair about to change everything she thinks she knows about her entire life. Me? Oh, I am just someone sent to take care of Evelynn, but we will get to me later. Right now we are still talking about the moment in her father’s office.

Evelynn sat in the brown chair staring around the man’s office who she had always known to be her father. She remembered running through his office as a little girl genuinely happy with any time she could spare with her father. Now she wondered if he was ever really her father at all. What if her mother wasn’t her mother? If they were not really her parents, then how did she even end up here? Evelynn’s hands hit the keyboard and she was about to just go to google but something told her to start somewhere else. She opened the folder on her father’s desktop labeled “patient files.” She typed Avalia into the search bar and only one document appeared and it brought the blankest stare upon Evelynn’s face. It was a missing person’s report with a photo of a little girl clipped on the top right corner. Her name was Avalia Edgewood and it was a photo of Evelynn. The girl in the photo even had the long brown braids that Evelynn Remembered. She froze in the chair, she had no idea how to handle this or what to do. She had never heard the name Avalia before last night but here was the name right in front of her on her father’s computer and she was staring at a picture of herself. Something was going on here and she needed to figure out what it was. Why were the “children of the night” so interested in finding Avalia anyway and is this why her brother didn’t want her finding them?

Evelynn quickly printed the file and folded it into her back jean pocket until she could decide what to do with it. For now, she planned to see if she could figure out if she could get Chapman to slip any information by accident. At the time of the photo Chapman was about ten so he must remember who this Avalia girl was, or maybe he knew that Evelynn was Avalia all along. Why would they change her name though? What could a five year old do that was so awful that you have to change everything about them into something else?

Evelynn found her mother in their sitting room and she poked her head through the doorframe.

“Mother, have you seen where Chapman ran off to. I really need to speak with him.”

“I think he already went off to that dump he calls a bike shop darling. You really should not be seen around there though sweetheart with the debutante ball coming up. What would Bradford think if he saw you?”

“He would think I was going to talk to my brother. We are all still family after all, aren’t we?”

“Darling don’t be so dramatic, I was just trying to make a point about keeping up appearances.”

“Mother this is Connecticut, not the Queen’s courtyard.”

Evelynn took that moment to excuse her from the room so she could go upstairs and get her jacket and scarf from her room. After changing into her red fall skirt and long sleeve black knit top; she slipped her feet into her buckled black boots and grabbed her crossover bag, shoving the paper from her back pocket in it alongside her notebook and pen. Then she quickly latched the window in her room to be sure no unwanted visitors entered while she was gone. Did they even come out in the daytime? Nonetheless, Evelynn knew she needed to go talk to her brother and try to get all the information she could without raising too much suspicion. If only she could get him to slip up on his own and she could make him believe that he was the only reason she knew anything at all.

Evelynn went outside and put her bag in the basket of her bike. In a town like Abornia bikes were the norm of transportation seeing as everything in the town was basically within walking distance. Evelynn headed out of the plantation through the completely unnecessary coded gates that sealed Edgewood Plantation off from the rest of the town. The gate closed behind her and she headed through the town square passing the penny candy shop and the old town jail that had not been used as anything but a museum since the early 1900’s. Evelynn loved her town but she had dreams of something bigger, maybe at least a town with more than one working stoplight.

Evelynn arrived at the barb wire fence that encompassed the junkyard her brother called an auto body shop for motorcycles and cars. This was definitely not the kind of business that you had to wipe your feet on the mat before walking in, but then again you might want to consider it before you walk back out into civilization. As Evelynn headed to ring the doorbell below the obviously falling sign hanging above her head she just hoped that this was not the way her short young life ended before she got all of her answers, impaled by her brother’s mediocre attempt at business. Evelynn rang the doorbell and backed away just one step. The door was answered by the grease stained dimpled face of Roddy, Chapman’s best friend and sad excuse for a business partner.

“Is Chapman here?” scoffed Evelynn trying to peak past Roddy into the sad excuse her brother had for office space.

“No, but your welcome to come in and wait for him to get back from the yard,” Roddy replied with a sly smile.

Evelynn pushed Roddy into the side of the doorway and slipped past him into the front room of the offices and placed herself on top of the desk to wait impatiently for her brother to return. Roddy peeked outside the front door and when he was sure no one would be arriving anytime soon he pulled the blinds and shut the door turning the deadbolt lock. Evelynn uncrossed her legs on the oak table and removed her cross bag over her shoulder and quivered as Roddy stepped into the space between her shaking knees. Roddy’s callused hand caressed the soft skin of Evelynn’s blushed face.

“Chapman could be here any minute Roddy…” whispered Evelynn

Just like that they heard the deadbolt unlock and the door swing open and Roddy headed to the bathroom.

“What the hell are you doing here Evelynn? I’m trying to run a business and I don’t need the guys babysitting my little sister.”

“I’m not your little sister anymore Chapman. I’m 18 years old now and trust me no one is babysitting anyone here,” scoffed Evelynn as she played with the paper weight on her brother’s mess of a desk.

“Then why are you even here? Did Dad send you? Is this another sad attempt to make me give up the business?”

“No, why do you always have to think everything is about dad? I need you to just help me with some things for my senior project.”

“What’s your senior project dweeb? Let me guess… how debutants are going to be the next hot shots on Wall Street? You are wasting my time.”

“No, you ignorant jerk, my project is on unsolved cases in Abornia.”

Chapman gritted his teeth pausing as though he needed to perfect his answer before something incriminating.

“Evelynn, you had no reason to come to me. Just go down to the precinct and you will see clearly what you already know. There are no unsolved cases in Abornia. Nothing happens here. It never has and it never will. Pick a new project!”

“Ok, what about the children of the night for my project?”

“No, you cannot write anything about them Evelynn! Stay away from any of that ok!”

“I thought you said they didn’t exist.”

Don’t you love a good slip up?

“They don’t Evelynn which is exactly why you can’t write about them. Now get out of here, the grownups have work to do.”

Evelynn scoffed at the junk she was surrounded by that her brother naively called a business. She knew it was only a matter of time before he yearned hard enough for his trust fund to go beg Daddy for a job. Nevertheless, Evelynn made her way out of the ramshackle office and back onto the pristine streets of Abornia. She knew there was only one place to go next.