Wilderwood Ch. 12

Chapter 12 (of 12) : The End of the Line

"Do you love me?"

It's an easy question to answer. Say yes or work out what to say to your friends when they ask why your girlfriend dumped you and why all her friends hate you now. It's not complicated, and it's even less so if you actually do love her. It's a big deal when you both say it for the first time, but Emma and I got over that hurdle really quickly, even if I tripped on my first at it.

Maybe we got over it too quickly. We talk about everything now -- well, almost everything -- but we never really talk about how this all happened, about how we got into this impossible relationship with each other that's made this summer so incredible. We fell into it and we haven't asked how and I guess we should have, because we've just been given an answer to the question we never asked.

How did this happen? It happened because there's a hereditary psychosis in the Wilderwoods that can cause an irresistible attraction to a sibling accompanied by irreversible personality changes to make the relationship work. Or it's a curse because we're all descended from an evil wizard and his demonically possessed sister. That was the other option.

It's the kind of explanation that will makes you question your relationship, especially when it's 3AM and you're both exhausted and strung out and are standing in the middle of nowhere at the edge of the reputedly haunted valley you've avoided entering your whole life. Thinking clearly would be a really good idea right now, but it's not an idea either of us are having.

Which isn't good, especially when Emma asks me her second question.

"Would you still love me if I wasn't your sister?"

Yeah, that's not such an easy one to answer. I guess it doesn't come up nearly as often.

* * * * *

So I stand there in the rain, looking at my sister. Strands of black hair hang over her amazing green eyes and her dark makeup is starting to run with the tears she's been holding back since she walked out of the upstairs library at Wilderwood Hall. The moonlight glints on the smooth leather of her biker jacket, made glossy by the rain. Of course I love her. How could I not?

"Yes," I say.

Only as soon as the word leaves my lips I know it was the wrong thing to say.

Emma response is somewhere between a laugh and a sob but comes out as a long, strangled groan as she lowers her head and reaches up to pull at the lapels of her jacket. "That's great," she says, "that's really great, because I only love you because you're my brother."

I stare at her.

"He was right," my sister continues in the same shaking, strangled voice, forcing every word out like they're clawing at her throat, trying to stay unsaid. "He was right. I only love you because you're my brother. I only need you because you're my brother. And I do need you, Jamie, more than anything in the world. Only..." her fingers clench in the soft black leather of her jacket, "you only love me because of this. What I am not who I am."

I don't say anything.

Emma pulls her jacket off with awkward, uncoordinated movements, fighting her way out of it. She stands there with it clenched in white knuckled hands, breathing hard, tears running down her cheeks freely now.

"I can't be what you want me to be," she says. "I won't."

With a sudden shove she pushes her biker jacket into my hands and turns away violently, walking away from me across the bridge, the sound of her boots clearly audible over the background drumming of the rain. In only moments she's lost from view in the darkness.

I feel the cool, smooth leather of her jacket against my fingers, but my hands don't work and it slides out of my grip and falls at my feet. I look down at it pooled there, staring at the glossy folds and the metal studs glinting in the moonlight, and I hardly know what it is I'm looking at.

Someone once told me (it was probably Trent, repeating something he'd seen in one of Trowley's videos) that we only use 10% of our brains, and the other 90% just sits there waiting for us to evolve to a higher state of being or something. Whatever. I don't know if it's true but right now I feel like I'm running on 1%.

Why'd she do that? I think, looking down at Emma's jacket. That's her favorite jacket. She loves that jacket. It was the one she was wearing the day she came home from college. The one she had on the first night when this all began.

"I thought you liked this jacket?" she'd said.

I look at the way the rain forms little pools in the folds of the bundled up jacket, listening to the sound each drop makes as it hits the leather. Even then, that first night, Emma was defining herself by what I liked...

I reach down without really thinking about it and pick my sister's biker jacket up. It's heavier than it looks, but then again there's enough metal studs on the shoulders that it's probably bullet proof, and it is wet. The rain's only getting heavier. It's getting darker as well, as the moon disappears behind thick black clouds.

The first crash of thunder that shakes me out of this stupor. It's incredibly loud, rolling over the forest like a shockwave, and accompanied by a flash of lightning that throws sudden, startling shadows from the trees over the road.

It's weird but now that I'm thinking coherently again it's not about any of what Emma just said to me. Oh, that's there in the back of my mind, dragging up every moment of self doubt I've had every time I've asked myself what she sees in me, but all I'm thinking at the moment is that my sister -- in the most heightened emotional state I've ever seen her if not in the middle of an actual breakdown -- is walking along a bridge that spans the Wilderwood, the most unsettling place either of us have ever known. In the middle of the night. In a thunderstorm.

I start running along the bridge after Emma, calling her name even though it's drowned out by the booms of the thunder echoing between the sides of the valley below us so that the rumble in the air barely fades between one crash and the next. For one awful minute as I run images come into my head of my sister falling into the darkness below and the only reason I can't say it's the worst moment of my life is that I feel like I've had several of those tonight already.

She's there, about halfway along the bridge, standing looking out at the valley below. The trees down there are old, so very old, and twisted into strange shapes, and each flash of lightning throws them into eye achingly sharp contrast against the night sky. The trees become nightmarish shadows and their upper branches claw upward like the fingers of dead things that won't die. Emma stands there, staring out, her hands clutching the guard rail that runs along the side of the bridge.

I slow to a stop, a few feet away from her. "Sis, you okay?"

It's the most pointless question I'll ever ask in my life. Of course she isn't okay, but I have to say something, and she answers me. Kind of.

* * * * *

One thing I remember from when I used to skim through those romance novels my sister read is that the male characters would spend a lot of time standing around not saying anything. Brooding. I guess that's what I'm doing now, only I don't think any of them ever did it because they didn't have the slightest idea what to actually say. I don't, but even if I did I wouldn't interrupt as Emma starts talking. Putting into words all the things we've left unsaid all summer.

"I've been thinking about us for a long time, Jamie," she says softly, and despite the wind and the rain and the thunder and lightning I hear every word as clear as if there was no other sound at all. "When I was dating Greg Jackson in high school it didn't feel real to me. It felt like I was playing a part. Following someone else's script and being what other people wanted me to be. One of the Wilderwoods.

"So when I went upstate I wanted to get away from this place, from that feeling of having to live up to everyone's expectations of who I was. I didn't cheat on Greg, but I wasn't in love with him either and when he cheated on me honestly all I felt was relief. It gave me an excuse, didn't it? To change.

"God, Jamie, the first time I looked at myself in the mirror in Lauren's gear I felt like I was seeing who I really was. The leather felt so good on me, so smooth and tight, shiny and sexual. I knew you'd love it and I even said it out loud. Lauren heard me say it, and I told her I was joking. I told myself the same thing for a really long time. Even later when I fantasised about that it wasn't you that was fucking me. It was my brother, but it wasn't you.

"None of this is Lauren's fault. She likes to act like she's a bad influence but this was always in me. All of it. I just didn't know it. I didn't seek her out. We became roommates by accident really, because it's not like we were friends in high school, and it's not like she encouraged me either. She hated every boyfriend I had. I mean all of them. If she'd come back to Wilderwood at the same time as I did she'd have hated Luce too.

"She wasn't wrong. I went to some dark places and I found out things about myself I didn't think were in me. Kinks I didn't know I had. Maybe I didn't, right? I mean I really was a different person, and I really did go looking for bad relationships. Destructive, just like he said."

I don't have to ask who 'he' is.

"Every time it went wrong I wanted my brother. Then I told myself it was wrong and I went out and found someone to stop me thinking about that. To stop me thinking about anything. It was easy to do. I really was an eager, willing slave, and I was ready to sink into the fetish scene and lose myself in it because I didn't know who I was anymore.

"Lauren knew the scene way better than i did and she knew I was fresh meat. Easy pickings for a certain kind of Dom. She pulled me out of it, her and some of the people she knew. Only when I got home my nerve failed me totally. I couldn't tell you about any of this. I couldn't tell anyone. So I went looking for the wrong guy again, because I always did and Lauren wasn't here to talk me out of it.

"I didn't plan on this happening, Jamie. At least I don't think I did. I felt so guilty when it did, like I'd taken advantage of you. I've tried to explain it in other ways. I really have. We were always so close so why wouldn't we fall in love? You were my best friend for so long. If i could be more than that to you then why not? I wasn't playing, Jamie. I wanted to be yours.

"He was right. I'm really not who I used to be, but who I am now, that's what she wants. She wants you. Still. Because you're my brother."

Emma looks over at me finally, tears shining in her green eyes. With sudden, awkward movements she reaches up to the back of her neck and unbuckles her black leather collar and with a convulsive movement flicks it over the edge of the railing to let it fall down into the Wilderwood far below.

She takes a deep breath. "I can't let myself be her any more, Jamie. I can't be your fantasy. Only if you tell me to be her I don't know if I could say no, because I wouldn't want to. It doesn't feel like it's my choice. It's hers." She lets her head hang low, clutching again at the railing. "He was right."

Slave. That was the word that pushed her over the edge. Emma has shown me her submissive side at times, in play -- and I wonder how much of that was play -- but it's obvious from what she's just told me that she delved a lot deeper into that upstate than I knew. It was her way of dealing with what she was feeling, and like any Wilderwood she went all in. Recklessness is in our blood.

The words her ex said to her that night in Hog Wild come back to me now. I own you.

I hold my sister's black leather jacket out to her. "Put it on," is all I say.

Emma looks over to me immediately. "Why?"

Because I'm telling you to. It's literally all I'd have to say and she'd do it. My sister is so lost at the moment and our dynamic has shifted so much it really would take that little to assert my control and push our relationship all the way over into something we've only played with. Right now she really would do anything I say. Be anything I say.

"Because we're out here in the middle of a storm," I say instead, "and you're my sister and I don't want you to catch pneumonia." I hold her jacket up to her in both hands. "Please?"

Emma looks at me a moment longer, then blinks and reaches out and takes her jacket from me, pulling it back on and tugging it tight around her in a gesture that reminds me of the way our mom pulled her fur around her outside the hotel on Friday night.

"It's not really a storm," she mumbles.

She's right. At some point during her story the worst of the storm has faded away, as quickly as it came. That's how it always goes at this time of the year. It's still raining, but only lightly, and the wind has died down, and without all the atmospherics even the valley below doesn't look so sinister.

Our great-uncle gave us his version of our relationship earlier, and now my sister has given me hers, so now it's my turn. It's another game -- each of us trying to define what we are with our words. Only Uncle Nathan told his story with cold certainty because he's never wrong about anything and he's spent fifty years as the lord of the manor, imposing his will on everyone around him. He's made Emma believe it, even if I'm now certain it was sheer luck that my sister could take his crazy theory and apply it to her own life, like someone reading their horoscope and convincing themselves that it really was all about them because just enough of the details could be made to match up.

Emma told her story straight from somewhere deep inside her, because she's been thinking about this for a long time too. Me? I don't have a lifetime of experience to draw on, or even past relationships to refer to. I won't even know when I start speaking what the end of my next sentence will be.

I just know I have to get her out of this mindset she's in right now. We can sort the rest of it out later. Right now my sister's in a really bad place, questioning herself even more than she did at college, and I need to get her out of it. Not because I love her but because she's my sister and she does need me, only not in the way she thinks she does.

How I'll do that I have no idea.

"I don't know," I say, which makes for a lousy opener, that's for sure. "I fell for you the moment I saw you the day you came home from college. I mean instantly. I thought I was losing my mind..." Fuck, that's a really bad choice of words right now, "...but you were so..."

Different? Sexy? Perfect? I'm walking through a minefield here and every word that comes to my tongue feels like it's only reinforcing a point I'm trying really hard not to make. The last thing I want to do is reinforce the idea that she's made herself into my dream girl, which is tricky since she absolutely has, even if I'm now convinced she didn't actually intend to.

Fuck it. I let that sentence go unfinished and grab at a different thread.

"But I never stopped thinking of you as my sister," I start again, hoping that I can at least get to the end of this sentence without making things worse, "and I never have. I didn't talk about it because I figured if we ever did we'd realise what we were doing was wrong..."

Fuck, I am so terrible at this.

"...only it's never felt wrong to me."

Silence. Emma isn't even looking at me. Her head is down, her eyes closed. I don't know if she's even listening to me, but I know that I'm not getting anywhere with this angle. The fuck do I know about this? Emotionally, psychologically, I just don't have the experience, and when I try to run with romantic eloquence it's as stilted as when I try too hard to do the masterful act -- which is yet another note I don't dare try to hit right now. I'm so used to being able to lean on my big sister for all of this that I'm totally lost without her.

Okay. I can't be a psychologist because I don't know shit about that. I can't be a romantic because my total experience of that is two wild months of having sex with my sister. But there's one thing I can be, that I've got years of experience in with Emma.

I can be her Annoying Little Brother.

I lean against the railing and shrug with a casualness I'm absolutely not feeling. If I'm wrong about this as well...

"I dunno, Sis. This all sounds like bullshit to me."

Emma looks over at me. Huh?

"I mean you went to college and broke up with your boyfriend and then fucked a bunch of guys on the rebound. Isn't that what you do at college? I always figured it was all like frat parties and beer pong and shit like that. I guess it might be more of a guy thing but I've seen some really wild videos online of girls doing that stuff too so..."

Emma's look goes from 'huh?' to 'what the fuck are you talking about?'

"I guess you did meet some jerks but most guys are, right? I mean if Lauren thought they were she was probably right. She'd know better than me since she's the one with the sex dungeon in her basement. I always thought all we really needed down there was a pool table."

Now it's not a look, it's a stare.

"The thing is there's no way you could know what I was into a year ago. I mean maybe the gear, sure -- and it's a great look for you -- but the rest of it? Unless you've looked really deep into my browser history you couldn't have known any of that that." I scratch the back of my head and look worried. "I am kind of hoping you haven't looked because there's some weird shit in there that I'm probably not actually into." I shrug. "I mean you could probably change my mind..."

The stare turns into a glare.

"Oh my god," Emma says, straightening up, "you are such a jerk."

She says it in her big sister voice. It sounds so good. Right now I need her to see me as me, not as a fantasy.

"Yeah," I say, and reach up and rest my hands on Emma's shoulders, very gently. "Of course I am. I'm your little brother..." I take a breath before continuing, to let go of the casual tone I'd forced into my voice, and then I just let myself speak.

"That's how I know you're still you. Emma, you've always taken chances, taken risks. You've always been braver than me. You still are. I mean, you're the one with the motorcycle, right? And that's way more you than whatever you were doing in high school. Sis, you didn't change at college. You just changed back into who you were before. Who you always were. My best friend. My big sister."

Emma looks up at me and I desperately want to hug her or kiss her or better yet both. Then my sister will swoon like they do in the books and that'll be that. That's probably what the OG James Wilderwood would have done with his Emma. Only I'm not him and I really don't want to play back into that fantasy now, not when I've just pulled my sister out of it.

"Jamie..." she says softly, "I just don't know if that's enough."

"I don't either," I say, "but I do know we're both soaked to the skin and dead on our feet." I let go and take a step back, giving her space and hazarding a slight smile. "So can we please talk about this later when we're both, y'know, dry? And awake?"

Emma pushes her hands into the pockets of her jacket and nods.

"Yeah," she says, "I guess so."

It's a start.

There's no one there to see us leave. Nothing looking up from the Wilderwood below. No witches. No ghosts. No green eyed devils lurking in the dark.

At least that's what I tell myself.

* * * * *

It's not over, I know that. We've passed the immediate crisis point and left it behind us -- at least I hope we have -- but I still don't know where this ends, and I don't want to guess. It does occur to me that I might have talked my way out of the kind of relationship a lot of guys do fantasise about -- me included -- but that's not us. Only now I don't know if there still is an us.