The Night Sister

Jason was hiding out in Room 4, watching and waiting to catch Amy alone. He had a second pack of cigarettes, taken from his brother’s stash. He knew it was risky—surely Brian would notice that the carton was down by two. But his older brother was busy with his summer job at Joe’s Pizza, and whenever he wasn’t working the oven, he was out with his girlfriend, spending what little money he made. Jason counted on Brian’s being too distracted to count his smokes.

Jason was bored. Tired of waiting. He peeled the cellophane off the pack, opened it up, and took one out. Holding it between his index and middle finger, he stuck the filter between his lips. He’d never smoked before, never even thought about it, but Amy smoked. Or at least she said she did.

He went to the nightstand to get the ancient pack of Tower Motel matches and chipped glass ashtray, stopping to admire himself in the mirror. In his brother’s black Pink Floyd T-shirt, with a cigarette between his lips, he looked like a boy Amy might talk to. He messed up his hair a little, trying to give himself a disheveled, rock-star kind of look.

He carried the ashtray and matches over and sat back down by the window so he could keep watch for Amy. He struck one match. The head crumbled. Match two sputtered a bit, then died. Three, four, and five fell apart. He pulled a match from the back row and struck it, watched with surprise as it snapped to life. Just as he brought the lit match up to the end of the cigarette and began puffing, he caught movement out the window, through a crack in the blinds.

Someone was in the tower. Coughing, eyes watering, he stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, keeping his gaze on the old stone building.

A shadowy form moved up toward the open doorway, then shuffled back and was lost in the darkness. He’d seen a pale face, a long blue shirt—or a dress, maybe.

He jumped up, threw open the door of Room 4, and sprinted across the driveway toward the tower. He stopped when he got to the doorway and looked around. Empty.

He stepped inside, smelled dust and cement.

Then he heard it: a sound from up above, a scuttling sound, like a giant crab moving sideways across the floor, claws scraping wood.

“Amy?” he called in a croaking whisper. “That you?”

With his heart feeling like it was creeping up into his throat, he went to the ladder and climbed. When his head got to the top, there was nothing. Only an empty room. And a hole in the wooden floor. Not surprising—the boards all looked half rotten. And hadn’t Amy said something about Piper’s falling through?

“Amy?” he called again, voice hopeful but small, lost in the dark gloom of the room. Filtered sunlight came through the narrow slit windows. In real castles, he knew, windows like this were used to shoot arrows through in battle.

Very carefully, he pulled himself up and walked to the next ladder, testing each footstep, his eyes glued to the place where the floorboards had collapsed.

At the second ladder, he climbed again, rising to the top floor. There was nothing there, either. Only the wide-open sky up above, clouds so low they cast shadows over the tower and motel. A blue jay scolded him from a nearby tree.

He tried to tell himself that he’d been seeing things. That he’d imagined the figure in the doorway.

But, try as he might to convince himself, he knew it wasn’t true. There had been someone there, and now they were gone. Impossible, but true. People, real flesh-and-blood people, couldn’t just disappear.

So maybe it was a ghost, a little voice told him.

But Jason had never believed in ghosts. And he wasn’t about to start now.





Piper


Piper, Amy, and Margot arrived at the tower just in time to catch Jason scuttling out.

“What are you doing here?” Amy barked.

Jason’s hair was all messed up, and he was wearing a T-shirt that was about ten sizes too big. He looked like a scarecrow. More than that, he looked just plain scared—eyes wide and frantic, face pale and sweaty.

“Nothing, I was—”

“You were trespassing! That’s what you were doing. There are laws against that, you know.”

“There was…someone,” Jason said lamely.

“Where?” Amy demanded.

“In the tower. I saw someone go into the tower. Someone wearing blue.”

Amy pushed past him and shouted, “Anybody here?”

Her voice echoed, sounded far off. Of course there was no reply.