The Night Sister

Idiot, she thought to herself.

Amy unpacked the trunk. A handful of books were tucked into the bottom corner: Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a book called Beauty, Glamour and Personality that seemed to be a hair-and-makeup guide, some dress patterns, and then, all the way at the bottom, a stained and worn hardcover: Mastering the Art and Science of Hypnotism. Amy lifted it out and opened the cover.

“Check out the inscription.”

To Sylvie, the world’s greatest chicken hypnotist, with love from Uncle Fenton, Christmas 1954



“Who’s Fenton?” Piper asked.

“I guess he was my mom’s uncle or something? He lived in that old trailer out back for a while.”

Piper had never paid much attention to the trailer. It sat in the overgrown field just behind Amy’s house, blending in with all the other junk back there: a decaying pickup truck without tires, a half-built motorcycle, a rusted oil tank, a tractor missing the seat, and a bunch of television sets with the picture tubes busted to shit.

“Fenton’s a weird name,” Margot observed.

“I think it was a family name or something,” Amy said. “I don’t know much about him. There are a couple of pictures of him with my mom and Sylvie and my grandparents. He worked at the motel, like the fix-it guy. My grandfather was the idea man, but Fenton put all the ideas into place. Grandma told me once that after Fenton left, everything started to fall apart. I bet if I ask Grandma about him she’ll tell me more.”

“You ever been inside the trailer?” Piper asked.

Amy shook her head. “It’s got a huge old rusted padlock on the door. The ceiling’s caved in. It’s been deserted forever. But it might be worth checking out, if we can find a way in.” She flipped through the hypnosis book. “Check this out! Sylvie underlined parts, wrote notes in the margins.”

She held out the book, and Piper saw that at the bottom of page 75, Sylvie had written in neat cursive: “9/23/55: Attempted post-hypnotic suggestion with Rose. Success! Will continue to experiment.”

“What’s post-hypnotic suggestion?” Margot asked.

“It’s where you tell someone to do something when they’re hypnotized, then they do it some time later, after they’re not hypnotized anymore,” Piper said. “I don’t think they have any idea about it.”

“That seems kind of mean,” Margot said.

Amy closed up the trunk but held on to the book. “It might be mean,” Amy said, “but it’s also really cool, having that kind of control over someone. I mean, who knows what you might be able to get them to do.”

“Remind me never to let you hypnotize me,” Piper joked.

Amy smiled. “Oh, come on, you know you’re dying to let me try,” she said, looking right into Piper’s eyes. “Who knows what I might get you to say or do? You’d be under my complete control.”

“No way,” Piper said, looking away, her face burning as she wondered what it might feel like, to give yourself over to another person so completely, whether you meant to or not.





Jason


Jason had been sitting by the window in Room 4, watching the house and tower, for hours now. He’d seen Piper and Margot leave the main house and head for home, walking around the pool and to the path in the woods. But Amy never came outside. He’d waited and waited, and now it was too late. He had to go. His watch said 6:05. His mom would kill him if he wasn’t home for supper. And he had to pee. Tempting as it was, he couldn’t use the toilet in Room 4—no way to flush it.

He opened the door, looked right and left, listened. Heard only the wind in the trees. A truck going by on the road.

He planned to run behind the building and circle around to the path through the woods. If he really booked, he’d be home in five minutes. But once his feet hit the driveway, that wasn’t the way he went.

He sprinted back across the gravel to the tower, just to check.