The Night Sister

“Good girl,” Mama called after her.

Rose hurried to Fenton’s trailer, tossing her uneaten apple into the field. The door was unlocked. She held her breath and let herself in. It was exactly the way it had been yesterday, when they sat drinking cocoa. Their cups were still in the sink, unwashed, the dregs of her cocoa at the bottom of one. She went into his tiny bedroom. The single bed was neatly made. On the table beside it was a teetering pile of paperback books. She rifled hastily through his closet. It felt strange to be in here, snooping like this, but it was necessary. Surely, if he’d bought a bus ticket out west, he’d have packed a bag, but it didn’t look like anything was missing. Shirts hung on wire hangers. His big black motorcycle boots were on the floor—there was no way he’d go anywhere without those. She found his keys on the hook next to the front door, the lucky rabbit’s foot Sylvie had given him dangling from them.

This was all wrong.

Rose’s stomach was clenched tight; her head began to ache. The skin on the back of her neck prickled.

Stay calm. Look for clues.

She left the trailer, walked through the field, by the pool, and down the driveway to the sign. Both sides were lit up. It had been fixed.

She went back up the hill and stopped in front of the tower, peering in through the open doorway.

Don’t go in, a little voice told her. The hair on her arms stood up. But she took a deep breath and walked inside. It was just the tower, after all. And it was daylight. What could possibly be hiding in there now?

You know.

You know what could be there, hiding. Waiting.

But Sylvie was at work, counting out change from the cash register at Woolworth’s, smiling at the customers, and telling them to have a nice day. Rose was safe.

Except she didn’t feel safe.

It was freezing inside the tower; the stones trapped the cold, and the walls never let sunlight inside. The air smelled damp and rotten.

Get out, the little voice told her. Run while you still can.

Her feet crunched on something; she was stepping on glass, grinding it to powder beneath the heavy soles of her dull leather oxfords. She bent down to look more closely: a broken lightbulb. She saw the tube of threaded metal from the bottom, the string of filament, and a thousand tiny pieces of shattered glass. Amid the fragments of glass were a few dark splotches of something. She reached down and touched it. Blood. Dried, but still slightly sticky. Rose’s stomach turned, and her whole body felt unsteady.

The drops moved in a rough line to the center of the room, where a dinner-plate-sized puddle of blood had formed. It was dark, thick, and congealed, and it seemed to Rose that there was an awful lot of it. She could smell the sharp, ironlike tang of it, feel it on the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, willing herself not to be sick.

This was not a simple cut from a broken lightbulb.

Something horrible had happened here.

You know what this is.

You know what did this.

Rose felt a sharp, jabbing pain in her left temple as she tried to think, to decide what to do next.

Run! the voice in her head screamed. She should tell her mother. Tell her everything. That Sylvie was a mare, that she’d done something terrible, as Rose had always known she would. Together, they would have to find a way to stop Sylvie, to keep her from hurting anyone else. There was so much blood. Her mother would have to believe her.

Rose ran back to the house and burst into the kitchen, where her mother was chopping onions.

“Mama! You’ve got to come quick! The tower…”

Mama turned, impatient. “What are you on about, Rose?”

“Please, let’s go—” Rose began, but Daddy walked into the kitchen, and the words died in her throat.