The Night Sister

As Jason entered the bedroom, he realized this was Amy’s old room. He remembered standing in the shadows of the driveway as a boy, looking up at her dormer window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

Now Jason did a quick sweep of the room’s contents: a fluffy pink throw rug in the middle of the wide, white-painted floorboards; a dresser with a small collection of glass and plastic jungle animals displayed on top; a disheveled bed with a twisted polka-dotted pink-and-purple comforter, its pillows and stuffed animals spilling onto the floor.

McLellan was standing in the center of the room, his gun clenched in both hands. He nodded down at the floor. A trail of small, bloody prints led to an open window.

“Out there,” he whispered, his face red and sweaty. He sounded boyish, frightened. “On the roof.”

Jason nodded and walked slowly across the room with his gun in front of him, hands trembling.

He put his back against the wall on the left side of the open window, and listened. He heard a low moaning. A whimper. From out on the roof.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Backup would be here soon. He could wait. But what if someone was out there, hurt?

“London Police Department!” Jason shouted. “We know you’re out there. I need you to come inside and keep your hands where I can see them.”

There was scrabbling, a scuttling noise, but no one appeared.

“I’m going out,” he mouthed without sound. McLellan nodded and stayed where he was, his gun locked on the open window.

Holding his gun, Jason ducked through the opening and stepped out onto the roof. Immediately he dropped into a crouch and swiveled right, then left, scanning the rooftop.

A pair of eyes glinted in the dark. A flash of blond hair.

He felt the gun slip from his grasp, heard it hit the roof and slide off with a clatter. Amy? It couldn’t be, but there she was, looking just like she had when he first met her, all skinny legs and wild hair.

Suddenly he was twelve years old again: a gangly, awkward boy staring at a girl who held all the secrets he’d ever dreamed about.

“Hawke?” McLellan called from inside. “What’s going on out there?”

Jason blinked and looked at the little girl again, his eyes adjusting to the dark. Like Amy, but not Amy. Amy’s daughter. She was squatting down next to the crooked chimney with crumbling mortar, one hand resting on it for balance. Her blond hair was in tangles; her lips were trembling, eyes wild with fear. She had on pale pajamas that shimmered in the moonlight.

“Remember me? I’m Jason,” he said, holding out his hand. “And I’m going to get you out of here.”





Piper


Piper was frowning at the giant sinkhole that had appeared in her tiny backyard.

She had put a lot of work into this yard, pulling up the sickly grass and relandscaping with drought-tolerant plants: sedum, purple sage, sheep fescue, deer grass, desert mallow. A crushed stone path led to a small patio shaded by an avocado tree, where she sometimes sat with a good book and a glass of sauvignon blanc.

Now it was all falling into the earth. The neighbors were there, gawking and expressing alarm (how big could the sinkhole get? would it swallow the neighborhood?). Her sister, Margot, was there, too, so hugely pregnant she waddled around off balance, like a drunk penguin.

Jason was not there, a fact that irked Piper but did not surprise her.

“Be careful,” Piper warned her sister as the avocado tree was swallowed up, and knew right away that she shouldn’t have spoken; thoughts and words have power, and if you allow your worst fears to form fully, you run the danger of bringing them to life.

As if on cue, Margot stumbled too close to the edge. Piper reached for her, but it was too late. The hole, which had been growing ever wider, threatening to swallow everything, took her sister deep down into the earth, so deep that they couldn’t even hear her scream.

In the distance, alarms rang. But they sounded funny. More like music.

Piper opened her eyes, found herself in her own bed.