I miss someone. I wish I knew who. I feel abandoned, which is silly. But I can’t shake this feeling that I’m never going to see this person again. Nothing I do helps. Who do I miss?? I tried to get Cathy to come down again last night, but she just stared at me with this weird, empty expression, and then after a while she started screaming and tearing at her hair. I hurried to leave because I didn’t want Nori to hear and I knew she’d stop if I left. But she started calling, “Pammy! Pammy come back!” and I lost it. I ran from there as fast as I could and locked myself in my room. Anything to get away. After a while, Nori knocked. She’s looking worse. We curled up together in the huge closet and fell asleep. When I woke up it was morning, and it was more sleep than I’d had in ages. Need to find some food.
The other me steps out of the kitchen. She is following the sound that has plagued me for so long.
Creak.
Creak.
Creak.
Endless. Unendurable. Futile.
I follow her as she, frowning, searches.
“Nori? Auntie Cath?”
Her voice is so young! So innocent. Is this really me?
Eventually she finds the stairs leading to the attic. Cath, she knows, has not come down for at least two weeks; she has been leaving trays at the door. But maybe it’s longer than two weeks now. It must be, since she went up there the day Gowan left.
Gowan…
The other me climbs the stairs slowly. “Cathy?”
I don’t want to follow, but I do anyway. I need to remember this piece.
At the top of the stairs, she knocks on the door. She calls Cath’s name once more, tentatively, and then she walks in. She is probably worried about invading privacy, or seeing a weak moment, but that is gone the moment the door swings open, banging the wall on the other side.
I fall to my knees at the same moment the other me does. Our eyes are level with Cath’s feet.
Creak
Her face
Creak
is a vicious
Creak
purple.
Creak
The rope
Creak
is cruelly
Creak
tight.
Creak
Her neck
Creak
is definitely
Creak
broken.
“C-C-Cathy…”
The other me screams, scrambles forward, tries to hoist Cath up. She jumps onto the window seat, where Cath placed a chair to jump from, and scrabbles to free the rope. All she does is make it tighter and break the skin at Cath’s neck. There are
c r a c k s
as she tugs.
She falls off the chair, landing heavily on her hip. She is sobbing. On the wall, words: I CAN’T DO IT. And then: THE CREEPER MAN IS COMING.
A little bell tinkles behind us, and then we hear Nori’s hurried footsteps. She is coming up the stairs—she must have heard the scream, the crash. Other me struggles to her feet, wipes her face furiously on her dress, and backs away, shaking her head in horror. She stares for one more moment, then closes the door on the scene and hurries to meet Nori farther down the stairs.
Behind her, the creeeeeeeaking continues, and eventually slows to a stop.
I’m somewhere else. It’s dark, yes, but so much more. Movement, wind, rain on my skin, fresh air all around, sounds. I see a shape moving quickly through the woods and I back away instinctively, falling over a log in the process. I land hard just as the figure pauses near me, hands on her knees, panting.
Cathy. The same age, or close, to when I saw her sewing that horrible doll.
She straightens, peering through her hair and the rain. “Anne!” she yells. “ANNE!”
That name again. When she runs off into Python, I follow. We run for a long time, but I don’t seem to get tired. Cathy, though—she falls several times, covering herself in mud and cuts, and by the time we see the shape by a half-fallen tree—an alder tree—she has already been crying for a while.
Cathy pauses, and so do I, but I think I know what’s coming, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. History really does repeat itself. Cathy moves over very slowly, her body taut like a stretched-out elastic band. She reaches the shape, and even I can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.
There is a torso. Of that I am sure. It has been shredded in parts, but I can make out the small rib cage, the almost-formation of small breasts. There is an arm, at least one, and I see two legs. I can’t see the head, but there is a tangle of hair.
It is, without a doubt, the body of a small child. A girl in a black dress.
Oh. No. Not black. It’s white. The black is…
Cathy stumbles, crashes in a staggering way to her knees, and then she throws up on the corpse before turning roughly away, trying to contain the vomit with her hands. It spews between her fingers and she gags, coughs, and cries.
When she turns back, her mouth is contorted and ugly. “Anne…”
I look at the legs, the arms, the hair, and the torso. Anne. The third sister.