The Night Sister

Wake up, she told herself. Time to wake up now.

She opened her eyes. The broken-winged butterfly was in an old canning jar on Sylvie’s bedside table. It banged silently against the glass, a shadow in front of the curtained window. Rose watched it struggle in the dim light of early dawn, her heart pounding, her lungs unable to draw a breath.

She was sure she was awake, and yet her body was completely paralyzed. The air was heavy with a rank, wild-animal smell.

Rose listened hard. She was sure she could hear something breathing nearby—a rasping, grunting, guttural sound—but there was nothing there.

Or was there? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement, a shift in the darkness. And there was the feeling she had, this deep sense that something else was in the room, something evil that meant to do her harm.

Her eyes darted around, but found only the familiar landscape of the small bedroom she shared with Sylvie. And yet, it was also terribly unfamiliar, off-kilter, bathed in a greenish glow, as if the moonlight itself was somehow the wrong color. Rose opened her mouth to scream, to call for help, but she couldn’t make a sound.

Am I dead? she wondered.

Concentrating with all her might, Rose tried to sit up—just to wiggle her pinkie—but the only thing she could move was her eyes.

She looked past the butterfly in the jar to Sylvie’s twin bed. She willed her sister to wake up, open her eyes, and save her, but she realized now that Sylvie’s bed was empty. The covers were thrown back, the pillow indented where Sylvie’s head should be.

A horrible thought came over Rose: A mare had come. And it had gotten Sylvie first.

There it was again—the rotten, wheezing stink of rancid meat breath and damp fur, so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat. She heard a low, quiet sound, almost like a growl; felt it vibrate through her whole body. She still couldn’t see anything—it was hiding in the shadows, under her own bed, maybe even. She was sure that, whatever this was, it had rows of sharp teeth—and if she was able to look in those teeth, she would find shreds of her sister’s white nightgown.

Please, Rose thought. Please, go away. Spare me. Please. And then she thought of part of the little prayer Mama had both girls say each night before bed: “Angels watch me with the night, and wake me with the morning light.”

And just like that, she could move again. She gasped, and air rushed into her lungs. The foul animal smell dissipated. She sprang from her bed without daring to look underneath, scampered down the hall to her parents’ room, and flung open the paneled wooden door.

“What on earth?” asked Mama, squinting into the moonlight spilling from the hallway.

“Something was in my room,” Rose said, panting. The windows were shut, the shades drawn. The air in her parents’ room was dusty and still, and smelled of Daddy’s cigarettes and Mama’s Jean Naté. Daddy’s work shirt was hung up on the back of a chair, its arms limp at its sides; in the dark, this made the chair look strangely human, as if it would start walking across the wooden floorboards on its four legs.

“Another bat?” asked Mama, sitting up in bed, her pale nightgown glowing. Beside her, Daddy stirred, sat up, and groaned—they’d had a bat in their room in the early spring, and he’d had to chase it out with the broom. He reached for the clock. It was a little before 5:00 a.m.

“No. Not a bat. I…I don’t know what it was,” Rose admitted.

A monster. A monster who followed me from my dreams. One of Oma’s mares.

“I could hear it, smell it, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t get up, couldn’t move at all. I think…” Did she dare say it? “I think maybe whatever it was got Sylvie.”

Her father made a dismissive chuffing sound.

“Shhh,” Mama soothed. “You’re all right now.”