The Night Sister

Piper thought of that hideous skeleton face as she stepped into the tower: its jaws yawning open beneath the two empty eye sockets that had looked up at them and seemed to say, You’ve found me at last.

Those eyes had stayed with her all these years, had followed her everywhere she’d gone. They were a part of her, something she would never forget.

After they saw that skeleton, with its awful death-grin, nothing had ever been the same again. It was the last afternoon the girls would ever spend with Amy, the last time they’d ever go to the tower or even the motel. Everything changed when they climbed down that ladder into the twenty-ninth room.

And here she was again.

What might she find this time? Another body? Not likely, she thought grimly. The police had found all the bodies up in the house.

She thought of the blood-soaked carpet in the upstairs hall. What if whatever had gone up to the house had started here, at the tower?

What if it was here still?

She stood as still as she possibly could, listening, the tire iron heavy in her hands. Slowly, she moved forward, testing the floor with each step for places that were rotted through. She knew that if she stayed right on top of the joists she’d be okay. Like a tightrope walker, she followed the line of nails that marked a sturdy joist underneath (at least, she hoped it was sturdy).

The ladder leading to the second floor was gone now. She looked up at the inaccessible opening in the ceiling. Daylight from the upstairs windows was streaming down through it, and Piper suddenly remembered the feel of Amy’s lips on hers…and the pain that followed her long-ago fall through the floorboards.

She still bore a scar, a jagged white line that ran along her left shin. The wound had become terribly infected, turning her whole lower leg a hot, red, swollen mess. In the end, when she’d finally shown her mother, she’d been rushed to the ER, where she was admitted and put on IV antibiotics. By the time she was out of the hospital, school had begun, and her mother had forbidden her two daughters to go to the motel ever again—it was “a death trap.”

If only she knew how accurate her description had been.

Hadn’t Grandma Charlotte used the exact same words to warn them away from the tower? If only they’d listened.

Of course, it turned out to be easy to avoid the motel: Amy didn’t want anything to do with Margot and Piper. While Piper was in the hospital, Margot said she had sneaked in a few phone calls to Amy, but Grandma Charlotte made vague excuses, claimed Amy couldn’t come to the phone but she’d be happy to take a message.

Now here Piper was again, back in the tower, one word loud and clear in her head: Run.

Chickenshit.

“Am not.”

There on the floor, where the base of the ladder once stood, was the wide board bearing the familiar cleats that marked the entrance to the secret dungeon below. She took in a breath, got down on her knees, and began to pry up the board with her fingers. It moved easily, and was still attached to the adjacent floorboard—although the whole unit felt lighter than she remembered. She easily lifted the boards up and out of the way, revealing the trapdoor, its rusted hinges, and the heavy bolt that was meant to keep all of its secrets locked up tight.

She put her hand on the deadbolt, hesitating. The metal was cold, covered in a thin crust of orange-brown rust.

Before she could think any more about it, she slid it open. Keeping her right hand on the heavy tire iron, she eased open the trapdoor with her left.

The smell of damp cement came wafting up—no stink of rot or ruin, only the smell of a wet basement. And there, just below the opening, was a folding metal stepladder. That wasn’t there in 1989. Someone had been in the basement since.

“Okay,” she said out loud, finding comfort in hearing her own voice. “What now?”