“What the devil?” Dot said.
Scratch. Scratch. Rose kept at it, which brought on another onslaught of, “Girls? Hello? Girls?” At last, she gave up on that too. The woman sighed, followed by a splash, loud enough that I knew she was standing up in the tub. I listened to her feet pad across the linoleum. Her hand found the knob, and I watched the rope tighten. The door did not budge. Dot banged on it, crying out more frantically. “Girls! Can anybody hear me?”
Rose walked to my mother’s bed and sat on top of Dot’s uniform. Leaning close, she whispered in my ear, “Do The Scream.”
I should have figured that’s what she wanted. I shook my head.
“Do it,” she insisted.
The Scream was a talent—if that’s the word for it—I had stumbled upon a few nannies before when Rose lured us into a game of indoor hide-and-seek. We were actually having fun until my sister decided to hide where neither of us could find her. After an hour of searching, we gave up and got ready for bed. When I climbed into mine and turned off the light, Rose reached out from where she had jammed herself between the wall and the mattress and grabbed my neck, which caused me to release the most bloodcurdling scream. From that night on, Rose begged me to do The Scream in all kinds of places: store parking lots, outside of church, the library. Since it felt good to have her appreciate me for a change, there were times when I gave her what she wanted. But that night with Dot locked in the bathroom, I kept shaking my head.
Still, Rose went right on whispering: “Do it. Do it. Do it.”
“If I do it, can I get my essay back and go to bed?”
“Girls? I don’t know what the bejesus you’re up to, but I don’t like it one bit.”
Rose ignored her, mulling the deal. Finally, she whispered, “Okay. Give her one good one, and I’ll take over from there.”
I knew exactly the kind of performance my sister expected, so I stood and went to the bathroom door. “Dot,” I said in my quietest voice. “It’s Sylvie. Can you hear me?”
“Yes. I mean, no. Not really. Can you speak louder?”
“Are you okay?”
“If you call freezing and dripping in the dark okay, then yeah, I guess I’m just dandy. Now what is going on? And talk louder for cripes’ sake. I can’t hear you.”
“Press your ear to the door,” Rose told her, joining me at my side.
Dot shifted around in the bathroom. “Okay. What is it?”
“I warned you about the spirits,” my sister said in a hushed voice. “Now do you believe me?’
“Not really. More likely your parents didn’t bother to pay the electric bill.”
Rose poked me with her flashlight. I took the deepest of breaths and out it came: a scream—The Scream—so sudden and shrill it would put the best horror movie actress to shame. In the silence that followed, I clutched my throat, since it always hurt afterward.
When she was done fumbling, Dot called out, “Sylvie, dear? Are you okay?”
From the tremble in her voice, I could tell she felt genuinely afraid now. I opened my mouth to let her know I was fine, but the thought of my essay being handed back to me as confetti made me close it again. Rose forked over the pages, and I stepped away from the door. Before leaving the room, I glanced back to see my sister making herself comfy on our mother’s bed. She pulled out the bible from the nightstand, flipped the thin pages and in a slow, methodical voice began reading a random passage from Revelations: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon . . . And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him . . .”
“Let me out of here!” Dot screamed. “Please! Let me out! Help!”
I should have helped her.
I should have shredded that essay myself and untied the rope.
Instead, as Dot kept pleading, as she kept pounding her fists against the door and Rose kept right on reading, I crossed the hall to my room. I climbed into bed, pulled a pillow over my head, and squeezed my eyes shut.