The Night Sister

This suited her fine. For the first time she could remember, she’d wake up feeling rested.

Rose was pulled back to the present as Piper pushed open the heavy curtain and looked outside. It was dusk, and the clouds were thick and threatening, making the sky darker still. “I went down to the room below the tower,” Piper said. Rose squinted at her, tried to picture the woman before her now as the little girl she’d once been: the girl who’d roller-skated with her Amy, flying around in cut-off shorts, with the little radio they carried cranked up as loud as it could go. Piper had never met Rose, but Rose had seen Piper plenty. She’d watched her that summer. Spied from the trees, from the tower. A few times, she’d been nearly caught—by that silly boy who was always hiding in Room 4, and then by Amy, who would awaken in the night and catch her mother watching her from the shadows.

How many nights had she spent like that, hiding in the shadows of her daughter’s room, waiting, watching, seeing if she might change—if Amy was a mare, too?

“Shh,” Rose would tell Amy. “Go back to sleep. You’re dreaming.”

“I was there today. The twenty-ninth room,” Piper said now, leaning in, and speaking more loudly than she needed to. “Someone’s been down there recently. Someone’s been using it.”

Rose nodded.

“Tell me, please,” Piper said. “Is she back? Sylvie? Did she have something to do with what happened to Amy and her family?”

Rose looked at Piper, but was listening to the noises in the hall outside. Through the din of voices and bells, she heard the unmistakable clacking of the med cart’s wheels rolling down the hall, but there were still a good four or five rooms before hers.

“Listen carefully,” she said. “I am going to tell you the truth, but we haven’t got much time. You mustn’t interrupt.”

“Okay,” Piper said, leaning even closer.

“It wasn’t Sylvie being kept down in that basement. Sylvie is dead. Has been for over fifty years.”

“Dead? Are you sure?” Piper gave her an am-I-dealing-with-a-poor-senile-old-woman-after-all look.

“Of course I’m sure, silly girl,” Rose hissed. “I’m the one who killed her.”





1961





Mr. Alfred Hitchcock Universal Studios Hollywood, California October 2, 1961

Dear Mr. Hitchcock, I think there is something wrong with me. At least, I hope there is. I sincerely hope that I am delusional.

Because, Mr. Hitchcock, I believe my sister Rose wants me dead. I think there is something wrong with her, terribly wrong. She has always been jealous of me, but these days, it seems so much more than that. There’s an icy hatred in her eyes.

I wake up in the night sometimes and find her bed empty.

Worse still is when I wake up and find her standing over me, staring down.

Once, I woke up and she had her hands around my throat.

Though I know I will sound insane, I must tell you the worst of all: One time I swear I saw a creature crawl into her bed in the middle of the night. I thought at first it was a dog, or a small bear, but it wore human clothes: Rose’s dress. As I stared at it in the moonlight, it burrowed under the covers, and I closed my eyes in horror. When I dared to look a moment later, there was my sister, her head on the pillow, appearing peacefully asleep.

In the morning, there was dark, coarse fur on Rose’s pillowcase. And her sheets had the rank stink of a wild animal.

What is my sister?

And what is she capable of?

Yours truly,

Miss Sylvia A. Slater The Tower Motel





328 Route 6


London, Vermont





Rose


Even though Sylvie had disappeared, they made Rose go to school, pretend that everything was normal.