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Trashed and Scattered

Chapter Fifty-Two: What's Done in the Dark

Wiley awoke in the morning to find the rain had gone. His body jolted alert as he sprang from his bed and bounded to his window. He threw the curtains aside, pushing the glass open into itself. As his eyes narrowed across the mighty oak, everything looked somehow unchanged. Lexi’s door was still closed, her room undisturbed. His fingers graced his lips, wondering to himself if he’d dreamed up the whole night.
But then he heard the unmistakable cry of a banshee bellowing out from the walls that had until recently held Lexi captive. Wiley instinctively pulled himself back behind the pane, letting it slam shut. Normally he’d tear away from the window, refusing to watch the horror that would inevitably rain down on Lexi. But this time he knew she was safe, he knew she was gone. He watched as the demon tore through the bedroom; she wailed and screamed and for a minute Wiley thought she might be dying.
“Jim!” his mother’s soft voice carried through his open doorway. “Are you up?”
Wiley let himself study the monster next door for exactly four more seconds before turning over into himself and trotting away downstairs. He was quiet through breakfast and he was quiet as his mother bid him a good day.
The quiet walk to school was like torture. Every step that echoed against the empty space beside him took a piece of his soul in its void. He glanced over at the abyss to his right and he sighed.
He kept to himself throughout the day, catching himself staring at her empty desk. He scribbled her name onto a piece of paper, over and over until the letters looked more like hieroglyphics.
“Hey, man,” Matt’s voice broke Wiley from his daze. “You coming or what?”
“Coming where?” Wiley asked lazily, glancing up ever so slowly from his pencil.
Matt eyed his friend strangely, “Home...? Did you not just hear the bell?”
“No,” Wiley grunted, letting his blue eyes move around the room to see all of his peers filing out from the classroom.
He silently gathered up his things, bounding away to head back to his isolation. Matt followed on his heels and caught him just as he was rounding the front gate.
“Jimmy!” Matt breathed, moving his legs quickly to keep up with his friends stride. “Are you okay?”
Wiley nodded, “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine, man,” Matt pressed gently. “What’s going on? Where’s Peyton today?”
The simple drop of her name had Wiley’s eyes misting over. It had been twelve hours and he was already aged from the aching.
“She’s...gone,” Wiley explained weakly, refusing to acknowledge the hazel eyes begging for elaboration.
“Gone where?” Matt asked.
“Don’t know, dude,” Wiley shrugged. “She left in the middle of the night...”
Matt felt like someone had punched him in the chest, “She’ll...she’ll come back, right?”
Wiley wasn’t sure how to answer that. He hoped she would; he had her drawing pencils. She’d need those if she was ever going to become the next Dali—who was her favourite painter. They’d seen his paintings in a library book once. Lexi had been on the search for research material for her paper about arctic foxes. Somehow, in true Lexi fashion, she’d stumbled onto the great painters instead.
“Look at this,” she’d demanded of her best friend, slamming the open book down in front of him.
This earned her a chorus of ‘shhhs’. She winced, apologizing with her clenched jaw and open palms. Wiley turned in his chair and Lexi collapsed into the seat next to him. Her eyes were wild with admiration as she flipped slowly through the pages.
“One day I’ll learn to paint,” she told him in hushed tones, darting her eyes around to seek out trouble for her noise.
Wiley smiled, “You’d be good at it, I bet.”
She smiled back, “Maybe.”
Another page turn and her face was beaming.
“When I learn to paint,” she said excitedly, struggling to keep her enthusiasm down to a whisper. “I’ll do this for you. This would look so cool on your wall.”
Wiley’s eyes widened, “We should probably go find you some paint, Lex. That’s so cool!”
They never did get the paint and Wiley never did get his painting.
“Jimmy?” Matt coaxed. “Is she coming back?”
Wiley sighed, “I really don’t know.”
“Shoot, man,” Matt frowned, nudging his friend lightly with his elbow. “Should I come over? We can play video games for a while to get your mind off it.”
There was no power on this earth strong enough to get Wiley’s mind off Lexi. She was all he’d known for the last eight years, which to an eleven year old, felt a lot like eternity. He thought he’d have forever with her. Forever always seems to get cut short.
Nevertheless, Wiley was grateful to have a friend like Matt.
“Sure,” he smirked. “Thanks, dude.”
Matt swung an arm around his skinny friend’s shoulders, “I’m really sorry about Peyton, Jim. That blows.”
Wiley promptly changed the subject, every time Peyton’s name would ring out in his ears, a migraine took steps to manifest. It was too much to acknowledge as real yet. So he refused to acknowledge it at all until someone told him otherwise. He had to believe that she would come back.
They talked about the same thing they always talked about: music. Matt rambled on and on as they neared the walkway leading up to Wiley’s front door. His tangent was cut short.
“James?!”
Matt’s eyes met the figure far quicker than Wiley’s. Though, Matt didn’t know the sounds of a demon. He had no way to place the creature’s roar before curiosity got the better of him. But Wiley knew it—and there was only one person on God’s green earth that ever called him James.
“James!” the horrible woman cried again, chasing him down with determination.
He took a deep breath, “Hi, Mrs. Winchester.”
Matt was shocked to see Peyton’s mother in the flesh. He’d heard her mentioned in an odd tale or two but Peyton’s father was the only parent Matt ever saw come around on Peyton’s behalf. Peyton hardly looked anything like her mother, save for the insanely piercing green eyes. Her mother’s, though, were ringed in dark black bags. Her skin was wrinkled into deep creases, her lips cracked.
“Where’s Peyton?” she demanded.
Wiley pled the fifth—not that he actually knew where she was.
“Don’t give me that shit,” she seethed. “Where’s Peyton?”
Wiley furrowed his brows, “I don’t know.”
“Liar!” she wailed, clutching her fists into his shirt as she pulled him nearer.
Matt panicked, having never seen such horror. He bolted into the house to find Barb or Joe—anyone to get in the middle of whatever was happening outside. But Wiley was unfazed. He didn’t fear this particular beast.
“Where is my daughter?” the demon snarled in his face.
He looked her dead in the eye, unflinching, “She’s not your daughter. And I would never tell you.”
The demon was unsatisfied with this response, clenching and grinding its teeth as it growled.
“Allison!” Barb barked from the open doorway. “Let go of my son.”
To Wiley’s surprise, the demon relented. It pulled its long talons back into its skin, slithering the scales into camouflaged humanity.
“Have you seen Peyton?” she asked the matriarch of the Sullivan household, lacing a fake pleading into her otherwise steady voice. “She’s been missing all morning.”
“No,” Barb answered slowly, stepping out from the house to lace an arm around Jimmy’s chest.
She pulled him back with her, making small steps into the foyer where Matt lingered nervously.
“If you do,” the beast grunted. “Or your son does...Let me know.”
Barb nodded, promptly slamming the front door shut. She immediately, and quite frantically, began to pat him down. She checked for bruises and marks, satisfied when he came up unscathed.
“Mom, I’m fine,” he half-laughed.
“Matt, can you give us a second?” Barb asked over her shoulder. “There are cookies on the counter. Help yourself.”
Matt grinned widely, disappearing without contest. Barb squatted down to meet her son’s icy gaze, not that it was a far fall.
“Jim, you need to tell me what’s going on,” she pleaded. “Where is Peyton? Is she alright?”
Wiley nodded, “She’s with her dad. They...left.”
“How do you know?”
“She came to say goodbye,” Wiley frowned deeply.
Barb sighed, her son’s pain radiating up through his eyes and into her own soul. Peyton and Jimmy had been inseparable since the Sullivans moved into their white house when Jimmy was just three. They’d caught frogs and chased stars and had somehow formed a bond impervious to pain. Barb loved the way her son fought endlessly to protect the Winchester girl. But it weighed on her too; it was too much responsibility for a boy his age.
“Jimmy,” Barb breathed. “I need you to tell me the truth. Do I need to worry about you?”
He tilted his head a little, “Huh?”
“Is Allison Winchester going to hurt you, Jim?” she tried more directly.
“Why would she?” Wiley countered flatly.
Beyond the obvious, Barb wasn’t sure what to say. Her son was obviously not giving up his post yet.
“Did she hurt Peyton?” Barb coaxed gently. “You can tell me, Jimmy. I promise it’s okay.”
He considered her offer. A large part of him longed to confess his sins. But Lexi had asked him to keep her secrets locked away; so until she abolished him of the responsibility, her keeper he would be.
“Mom,” he groaned.
“I want to protect you,” she said fondly.
He smiled, “No need. I’m okay, I swear.”
“Okay,” she sighed.
“I should go stop Matt from eating all the cookies...” Jimmy trailed off, taking a test step to judge his mother’s level of finish.
She nodded, exhaling loudly, “Okay...but, honey, if you ever want to talk...about Peyton or anything...I’m here, okay?”
“I know,” he assured her before running off for the kitchen.
The Peyton subject was effectively dropped for the next twenty-nine days. With each moon the rose and fell over Huntington Beach, Wiley grew less and less certain that his lifelong friend would return. He’d sit against his window, doing his best to will a ghost to manifest in the bedroom next door. But it stayed empty, it stayed quiet.
His life hit a slump in Lexi’s absence. Wiley didn’t want to do anything anymore—everything felt laborious and exhausting. He’d go to drum practice and he’d come home. Some days he wouldn’t even make it to school; it was quickly growing to be overrated anyway. He’d sit by his window and he’d long for the life he used to lead. He wondered where she was. He hoped she was alright.
It was a Thursday. Wiley walked slowly back from school, watching his feet as they moved from block to block of the perfectly laid sidewalk. He’d had a particularly dreary day and was hoping to hit his pillows for a much needed afternoon nap.
Out of routine, he slipped his hand into the mailbox as he passed. His fingers wound around a couple of envelopes, which he gripped tightly as he walked. One by one he’d pull them out to survey, curious if anything was for him. He didn’t typically receive mail, but he’d had the strangest feeling like his luck might just shift.
And there it was.
James Sullivan scrawled out in the world’s scariest writing. He knew that penmanship anywhere. With a desperate kick to start his heart, he tore into the house and up the stairs, letting his backpack tumble down each step behind him. His mother hated when he’d leave his bag laying around but he didn’t care. He had more pressing matters to tend to.
With a kick to his bedroom door, he flopped onto his bed and tore the envelope open. He pulled out a folded sheet of white paper, perfectly pressed and neat. His breathing grew heavy as he flipped it open and began to read.
Dear Wiley,
I’m sorry it took so long to write...My dad said I shouldn’t. We went really far away and we’re supposed to keep it a secret. I’m not allowed to tell you where I am.
But I will tell you that it’s pretty...it’s cold. Not like California. I think we’ll be here over Christmas...and probably over your birthday too. I hate that I’ll miss your birthday. Who else will make your chocolate cake? :(
We don’t have a phone yet but when we do I’ll call you and give you the number. I’m really missing your voice. And your stupid laugh. It’s so loud and I know I usually complain about it but now I’d really, really like to hear it. Life is kind of miserable without my best friend. That’s my new word: miserable. I told my dad I’m in misery...he didn’t laugh. I know you would.

He did.
My dad’s calling me for supper...so I should probably stop here. I haven’t made any new friends and I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not yet, probably not ever. I’ll write again soon, I promise.
I wanted to say thank you though. You’re a good friend to me and...I know you had to keep a lot of secrets. I think I can keep them myself now.
I miss you so much it hurts. It really, really, really hurts.
Anyway...I have to go.
I love you so much,
- Peyton Alexis Winchester

PS, thanks for being my first kiss too. I can’t talk about it anymore than that because I’m still way too embarrassed. I think you might be my first love, Wiley. Weird, huh?
He blinked his eyes once. And then twice. And then the tears came.
She waited until she’d left to confess that truth to him? She couldn’t have mentioned that the feelings he’d been harbouring in secret for the past three years weren’t in total vain? It was too late now. She’d waited too long.
He’d waited too long.
He fumbled around for the envelope, determined to write her back and confess everything. That he loved her, that he’d always take care of her, that she was his best friend in the universe and that he didn’t care how, he would see her again. If it was the last thing he did, he’d find her green eyes in a crowd.
But there was no return address. He flipped the envelope hurriedly, in case she’d hidden it away some place foolish. But there was nothing.
For the first time in nearly a month, Wiley was sure Lexi wasn’t coming back. She would never again be he girl next door. He would be alone here with his memories.
“James Owen Sullivan!” his mother’s voice boomed up the stairs.
Wiley didn’t care. He didn’t care about the pounding steps headed for his bedroom. He couldn’t care—his heart was broken.
“How many times do I have to ask you not to leave your bag—“ his mother appeared in the doorway, stopping all life at the sight of her pained child.
His big blues looked up at her desperately. She wasted no time wrapping him up in her arms, holding onto him as he sobbed.
“Honey,” she cooed, rubbing at his arms as she held him back to get a better look at him. “What’s wrong?”
“L-Lexi,” he managed before venturing off on another fit.
Barb’s heart raced, “What’s wrong with Peyton?”
Wiley couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. He reached back for the letter, feeling across the comforter for the sharp edges. Fiddling a bit, he finally handed it to his mother.
Her hands drew absent circles along his back as she read through Peyton’s letter. Her heart sank as she realized everything her son had worshiped was gone. The love her son held for the Winchester girl was something Barb knew came around once in a lifetime. He knew more about unconditional love at eleven than she’d known by thirty.
“Oh, Jimmy,” she sighed, pulling her son closer to her chest.
“I really miss her, Mom,” he sobbed, digging his fingers into her back like it might somehow sooth the pain.
Barb nodded, “I know you do.”
“I don’t...I don’t think she’s coming back.”
She sighed, wishing desperately that she could shield him from the bullets of the cruel world. But, she knew, only time could take his pain from him. If she knew Jimmy, though, he’d never let Peyton go. She’d haunt him forever and he’d never truly heal.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she whispered.
He sniffled, “She’s my soulmate, Mom. I know she is. And now she’s gone.”
Barb took a deep breath, “Soulmates have a way of finding their way back to each other. Over and over and over again. If Peyton is yours, you’ll see her again. Don’t you worry about that.”
“What if she isn’t safe?” Wiley continued on, disregarding his mother’s understanding. His mind raced a mile a minute. “What if her mom finds her? Do you think Mrs. Winchester will look for her?”
Barb glanced down at her worried son, hesitating as long as she could. She needed to be ready for the truth that may spill out. It’s one thing to grow suspicions from your own stolen seeds, it’s another thing entirely to hear of the honest horror that had happened just outside your doorstep.
“Jimmy,” she spoke quietly but sternly. “I need you to tell me what was happening to Peyton.”
He swallowed hard, instincts telling him to lie.
“Honey, please,” she pressed. “You know I care about Peyton. I need to understand what’s going on.”
Wiley took a deep breath, filling up his heavy chest with as much air as he could fit. All in one breath, he let Lexi’s secrets out.

Notes

:( Poor little Wiley.

Pellivan........breaks my heart.

xx

Comments

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RamonaFoREVer RamonaFoREVer
6/18/19

@fyction
It is one of my favourite things. I melt every time!!

kiss my sas kiss my sas
6/11/19

@kiss my sas
I know! Isn’t it sweet?! Guh. Pellivan <3

fyction fyction
6/11/19

@fyction
BUT PELLIVAN IS TRUE LOVE!!!
I still get giddy when Peyton says 'I love you' to Jimmy... urgh! Such a long time coming!

kiss my sas kiss my sas
6/11/19

@kiss my sas
I mean.... Breyton could be revived... never say never ;)

fyction fyction
6/11/19