The Night Sister

It was now the first week of October; two weeks since Fenton had disappeared. Rose had been watching Sylvie and getting ready. She had strained to remember everything Oma had told her. The more she thought about it, the clearer it was that her grandmother had known about Sylvie, that she had been trying to prepare Rose.

“Is there a way to stop a mare, Oma?” Rose asked once when they were together in the woods.

Oma nodded. “Yes, but it is not easy. A mare is a dangerous creature, Rose, and very, very clever.” She reached out and brushed away the bangs that had been covering Rose’s eyes.

“But there’s a way?”

“If you bind a mare in iron, whether it is in human or animal form, it will be unable to transform.”

“Iron?” Rose asked. “You mean chains?”

“Chains, leg irons, a cage perhaps. There is a story I have heard about a bear kept by King Henry at the Tower of London.”

“The real Tower of London?” Rose asked.

Oma smiled. “Yes. The real Tower of London. The story goes that the bear was actually the king’s mare lover—only when he released her from her leg irons at night could she return to her human form.”

“Do you think it’s true?” Rose asked.

Oma considered a moment, and popped a horehound candy into her mouth before she answered. “I think it is a story. Like all stories, it has pieces which are true, and pieces which are fiction. Nothing is ever really what it seems. Remember that, Rose.”

Rose had found her father’s old canvas army backpack in the garage and filled it with the supplies she thought she might need: a length of iron chain, a rusted trap her daddy had used to trap foxes when he was a boy, her butterfly net, the biggest kitchen knife, and a silver Ray-O-Vac flashlight.

The bag was terrifically heavy, the contents rattling and jabbing into her back. She’d sneaked out of bed while Sylvie was still sleeping and gone to the workshop to find the packed bag just where she’d stashed it under the bench, behind a large can of gasoline. She’d put on her darkest clothes—a pair of navy dungarees, a black turtleneck—an outfit to help her blend into the night.

Now she stood in the open doorway and waited, watching the house. It didn’t matter if Sylvie didn’t come tonight. Rose would wait. She’d come back tomorrow night, the night after as well. She’d wait as long as she needed, hiding in the shadows, ready to do whatever it took.

It didn’t take long.

Just an hour or so after Rose got outside, Sylvie slipped out the front door, with her robe wrapped around her and pink slippers on her feet. She looked right, toward the workshop and Rose, then left, down the driveway, toward the motel and tower. She seemed to hesitate in the doorway, then finally pushed off and hurried down the driveway at a near run as her robe flapped behind. She was headed straight for the tower.

Come get me, she seemed to say. I dare you.

“It’s now or never,” Rose said, hearing the Elvis song in her head.

Tomorrow will be too late….

She moved slowly, carefully, sticking to the shadows, careful not to jostle the contents in the bag, because they would clang.

She didn’t have much of a plan. Just get to the tower. Find Sylvie. Wait for her to transform. Capture her.

Somehow, she’d chain the Sylvie monster. Get Mama. Make her believe.

Rose stood with her back against the tower, the backpack weighing achingly on her shoulders. She listened at the doorway.

“Sylvie?” she called.

“What is it you want from me?” her sister asked, a voice from the shadows.

“Want from you?” Rose shrugged the backpack off as carefully and quietly as she could. Her head began to ache, a slow and steady throb like a pulse in her forehead, spreading to her left eye.

“Why haven’t you told?” Sylvie asked.