The Wicked Sister

by Karen Dionne

  I flash back to another death, to another time when the police questioned my daughter. I shudder to think what they might ask my girls now. The girl was dead when they found her. She had to be.

  I see the toddler at the bottom of our swimming pool. I see Diana bent over the girl’s lifeless body. I think about her endless lies, her cruelty, her utter lack of feeling and remorse, and am finally ready to admit that the world would be a better place if my daughter had never been born.

  TWENTY-TWO

  NOW

  Rachel

  I can’t stop staring at that scarf. Its message is clear: I killed that girl. We killed her. Now I’m going to kill you.

  The irony isn’t lost on me. As long as I was in the hospital and had no memory of the day she died, I was allowed to live. Now that I’ve come home and my memories are beginning to return, my sister has to kill me. But I can’t die. I am the only one who knows that my sister is a murderer. If I die, this girl and my parents will never get justice.

  I grab my rifle from its hiding place and stick the extra ammo in my jacket pocket and slip through the missing boards in the back of the barn like a soldier heading into battle. I go in through the front door and cross the place where my parents died without a second’s hesitation and run through the great room for the kitchen. When Charlotte and Diana came home the first night that I was here, I heard the jingle of car keys tossed onto the counter. I don’t remember if the keys were there the next morning while I was fixing breakfast, and I don’t recall seeing them during the other times that I passed through the room, but I wasn’t looking for them then. I am now. Diana will expect me to run away. She will not expect me to drive. Especially since I never learned how.

  I quickly scan the counters, then run up the back stairs to look for them in Charlotte’s room. Her purse sits on her dresser. I dump the contents on her bed and find the keys and stick them in my jeans pocket along with all the cash in her wallet. It feels like a lot. The cash makes me feel a thousand times better. With plenty of cash and a getaway car, I have a chance.

  I tuck the rifle under my arm and run to my bedroom. All I need are my bear and Trevor’s business card, and I’m gone. The books I brought with me from the hospital are for children, and the clothes are all secondhand. I can easily get more. As I imagine the looks on Diana’s and Charlotte’s faces when they hear the car’s engine start and see myself watching in the rearview mirror as they run after me yelling at me to stop, I almost laugh. If they’re smart, they’ll cut the power to the security gate before I can get to it—Diana upgraded everything to solar after our parents died and one of her fans somehow managed to get in, she told me proudly during one of her visits, and the security system is now state of the art—but I’m counting on the element of surprise to give me the advantage. If worse comes to worst, I’ll ram my way through. As for the actual driving, I’m not worried. I know how to start a car and how to put it into gear from watching others. Plus, I’ll have four miles to practice.

  If I’m making my getaway sound too easy, it’s because I don’t want to think about all the things that could go wrong. Charlotte’s SUV is not the only vehicle at the lodge; there are two others in the carriage house that they can use. Even if they don’t catch up to me before I hit the highway, as soon as they can pick up a cell phone signal, they can report Charlotte’s SUV as stolen and sit back and wait for the police to nab me. With no driver’s license, no I.D., and driving a stolen car, it’s not hard to see how that’s going to go. Then again, at least I’ll be safe from my sister in a jail cell.

  Then I open the door to my bedroom and stop short.

  In the middle of the bed, propped up on either side of my stuffed bear toy as if they are waving a greeting, are two massive white bear paws.

  I scream. I shouldn’t. I can’t stop myself. My rifle clatters to the floor. I drop to my knees, tear at my hair, squeeze my eyes shut and curl into a ball and bite my hand to stop from screaming again, rock and moan. White Bear is dead—dead. The creature I loved more than any other. White Bear, my companion, my brother, my friend.

  I take a deep, steadying breath. Open my eyes and lift my head. White Bear’s paws are still propped in the middle of my bed, still reaching out to me as if in silent appeal: Help me. Do something. Get justice. Right the wrong.

  I want to clutch what’s left of him to my bosom and tell him how sorry I am for what happened, yet the thought of touching his severed paws repulses me. I hate the taxidermy in the great room. Heads without bodies, bodies without life. Bad enough that Diana killed White Bear but preserving only his paws and keeping them so that she might one day use them against me is positively obscene.

  Do something. Get justice. Right the wrong.

  I would if I could. But there is nothing that I can do; no way to make this right. White Bear is as dead as my parents. Diana knows I loved this bear more than any other. There was no reason to kill him except to hurt me. This is my fault. My love for White Bear killed him as surely as if I had shot him with my own rifle. Everything and everyone that I love ends up dead.

  I get to my feet. I have to assume that she heard me scream. I empty my duffel bag on the floor and dig through the mess for Trevor’s business card, then shove the card into my jeans pocket along with the car keys.

  The kitchen door slams. Voices, footsteps running up the stairs.

  I drop to the floor and grab my rifle and roll underneath the bed and clutch it to my chest. Hold my breath and lay as still as death. I shrink back against the wall as the footsteps come into the room. Diana and Charlotte are so close I could reach out and grab one of their ankles and yank their leg out from under them if I wanted to—but how is that going to help? I’m hardly going to shoot them, and they know it. I could wait and hope that they don’t find me, though there’s not a chance that they won’t look under the bed. Or I can come out on my own.

  I leave the rifle behind so I can come back for it later and roll out from under the bed. As I stand up with my hands in surrender my sister’s look of triumph makes me ill. She also has a rifle—another Magnum, I can’t help but note. Not the rifle she used to kill our parents—that one is shut away in an evidence locker somewhere—but one exactly like it. Her weapon of choice.

  “Well, well, well,” she says. “Greetings, little sister. Imagine finding you here.”

  No curiosity, no surprise, no What are you doing here? How did you get here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? as I would have expected. Questions with an accusatory subtext: You should have told me you were coming; you should have asked me for a ride; you shouldn’t have come without checking with me first. Questions I was planning to turn back on her: Why did you abandon me in the hospital? Why did you stop coming to visit? Why didn’t you want me to come home? until we came to the only question that matters: Why didn’t you tell me I couldn’t have killed my mother? I want to hit her, scratch out her eyes, choke my sister as she did that girl and scream, How could you kill our parents? But I can’t. Not yet. Somehow, I have to get her to admit to what she’s done.

  I focus my frustration and rage on the travesty on my bed. “How could you? How could you kill White Bear?”

  “I killed him?” Her eyes narrow. She slaps her knee and laughs. “Oh, this is rich. You don’t remember.” She laughs again.

  I squint back at her, utterly confused by her reaction.

  “I didn’t hurt your precious bear,” she says. “You did. You shot him. You killed White Bear.”

  “I killed him? Why would I?”

  I’ve never killed anything in my life. Diana knows this. I would never shoot the bear that I loved.

  She sits down on the bed and pats the covers while Charlotte watches us from the doorway. I sit where she indicates. She picks up one of White Bear’s paws and holds it in the crook of her arm and strokes it as though it were a kitten.

  “Let me tell you a story, littl
e sister. One fine November day, two sisters were shooting targets at a gun range. The gun range was in a clearing in the middle of a vast forest. The sisters often came to this gun range to practice, though the older sister was far more skilled than the younger and had no need.”

  She stops and waits for my reaction. I give her nothing.

  “On this day, a white bear walked into the clearing. The younger sister believed that this was an enchanted bear, a prince who was bound to remain in that form until a princess’s kiss set him free. But the bear was large and fierce. When it saw the sisters, it stood on its hind legs and roared. So, the younger sister shot the white bear to save her sister.”

  “That’s absurd. You know I would never do such a thing.” If Diana is trying to trick me into confessing to something that I didn’t do, the least that she could do is pick a lie that has a prayer of holding up.

  “Do I? Think, Rachel. Remember.”

  I open my mouth to object, then close it. I suck in my breath, because suddenly, I do remember. I look at White Bear’s mutilated paws and am overcome with shame and horror.

  Diana and I were at the gun range when White Bear came wandering out from the forest as she described. I remember thinking that he should have been afraid of the noise of our shooting, but for some reason, he wasn’t. As he grazed calmly near the edge of the clearing, Diana dared me to shoot him. “It won’t hurt him. I promise,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I told her. “White Bear is my friend.”

  “Go on. I dare you. Shoot him in his rear end. It’ll be fun.”

  I shook my head.

  “Do it. What’s the point of learning to shoot if all you do is shoot at targets? Go on. Shoot him.”

  “I won’t.” I started to cry.

  “You’re such a baby.” Diana shook her head in disgust. “If you don’t shoot him, I will.” She raised her rifle.

  “No! Stop! Please! Don’t!” I grabbed her rifle barrel and pointed it at the ground. “Don’t hurt him!”

  She looked at me unmoved and shook her head. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen, little sister. Somebody is going to shoot White Bear today. Either you will shoot him in his rear, or I will shoot him in his head. It’s up to you.”

  I cried harder. My sister was bigger than me, older than me. Smarter. Meaner. I thought about all the times she hurt me, all the animals she killed and stuffed. That she would kill White Bear if I didn’t shoot him, I had no doubt.

  “I’m waiting . . .” She raised her rifle. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . .” She sighted down the scope.

  “Okay! Okay! I’ll do it!”

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . .”

  “I said I’d do it! Please. Please don’t kill him.”

  She stopped counting. Her eyes narrowed. She looked at me not unlike the way that she is looking at me now. Intense, focused, the madness that drives her visible behind her eyes. I knew then as I do now that Diana will do anything, anything, to get her way.

  I raised my rifle. I had absolutely no intention of shooting White Bear in the rear as she had decreed. I would shoot over his head. Close enough to frighten him away before my sister in turn could shoot him.

  I pulled the trigger. The bullet winged over White Bear’s head exactly as I intended. He stopped grazing and looked up at me with no more concern than if the bullet had been a wasp or a fly. Run! Go! I shouted inside my head when he resumed eating. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t run away.

  “You did that on purpose.” Diana’s voice dripped with scorn. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “No! Don’t! I’ll do it right this time, I promise.”

  “Words, words,” Diana said, shaking her head as if she didn’t believe that I would really do it.

  “I will,” I promised, and I meant it. I didn’t want to shoot White Bear. But I would to save his life.

  “Of course you will. But just to make sure . . .”

  She laid her rifle on the ground and knelt down beside me and put her arms around me the same as Max did when he helped me aim my rifle and swung my rifle toward White Bear. My eyes blurred. My hands trembled. My whole body shook.

  Diana held me close. Then she slid her finger alongside mine and pulled the trigger.

  My bullet hit White Bear in his chest. He raised up on his hind legs and roared. Before I had time to process what had happened or to think of what might be coming next, my sister ejected the spent shell and loaded another. Together, we fired again.

  White Bear fell. He didn’t get up. Diana let go of me and stood up. I dropped my rifle and ran to White Bear and knelt beside him and threw my arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whispered into his fur.

  Run, he whispered back, which surprised me because I knew that he was dead. I looked up. Diana’s rifle was pointed at me.

  I shudder, drag a hand through my hair. It’s not difficult to imagine what happened next. I must have run into the forest as White Bear instructed. Somehow, I survived the following two weeks. Now I understand why, when I was found beside the highway, I could neither move nor speak. I conflated two traumatic events, the death of my parents and the death of White Bear and ended up with my vision. It’s no wonder that reenacting my vision in the gun room didn’t reveal any new details; I shot White Bear in the forest. Then after I killed him, my dearest friend used his dying breath to save me.

  “You’re right. I killed him.” It hurts so much to say the words.

  “Of course you did. Would you like to see the rest of him?”

  I most definitely do not. But whatever she’s planning—perhaps she intends to lure me away from the house to a place where the mess of killing me will be easier to clean up—she’s basing her strategy on the Rachel she used to know. The one who meekly did whatever she was told and accepted the abuse her sister showered on her without complaint. That little girl is no more. She expects me to say no. I have to say yes.

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Charlotte says. As if she is honestly concerned with my welfare.

  “Of course. Rachel needs to see what she’s done.” Diana tosses White Bear’s paw onto the bed as if it were so much refuse and gestures with her rifle toward the door. “After you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I think you know.”

  And I do. There’s only one place he could be. I lead the way down the back stairs and out the side door and across the yard to my sister’s taxidermy workshop. I hated this room when I was a child. I’ve never been inside. I don’t want to go in now.

  Diana reaches past me and opens the door.

  The first thing that hits me is the smell. There’s a chemical scent mixed with the faint odor of decaying meat that reminds me of the padded room. The next is the sheer quantity of body parts. Heads, feathers, skins, and paws crowd her worktable alongside paints, paintbrushes, clamps, tweezers, dental picks, scissors, and flensing knives. Q-tips. Cotton balls. Needles and thread. A jar of glass eyes.

  And in the middle of the room beneath a white sheet is what I presume is her crowning achievement, her pièce de résistance, my old friend.

  We crowd inside. Diana pulls aside the sheet with a flourish.

  “What do you think? Isn’t he a beauty?”

  “I think he’d look better if he had all four paws.”

  She laughs. “Easy enough to sew them back on. But they got your attention, didn’t they? Now say it. Say you killed him.”

  I hang my head. “I killed him,” I mumble. I quicken my breathing as if I’m on the verge of panic, make my hands tremble, pretend that I can barely stand as I edge surreptitiously toward the open door. Let her think that I am so revolted at seeing White Bear’s body that I can’t bear to be in the room. Let her think that I am helpless. That I’m about to suffer a psychotic break. She doesn’t know
I have Charlotte’s car keys.

  “Now tell him you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry.” It’s not difficult to make her believe I am sincere because I am—I’m sorry about White Bear, sorry about that girl at the roadside park, sorry about my parents. Sorry that I was Diana’s accomplice in their deaths.

  She laughs and nods at Charlotte and tips her head toward the door. Charlotte steps quickly in front of me.

  “Going somewhere?” Diana asks. She hands her rifle to Charlotte and grabs my right arm and twists it high between my shoulder blades. I yelp.

  “You were right,” Charlotte says, shaking her head in evident awe of Diana’s perceptive powers, seemingly as proud of my sister’s acumen as any parent. “She did exactly as you said she would.”

  “People are so predictable,” Diana says with a weary sigh.

  She twists my arm higher. I want to cry out again. It feels as though it’s going to snap.

  Just as I am certain that my arm is about to break, she turns me loose and throws me to the floor. The ammunition in my jacket pocket scatters. I grab her ankle with my good arm and pull her down with me. We grapple, roll. I do my best to get the better of her, but Diana is taller than me, and stronger. She also has two working arms. Our match ends in seconds with my sister sitting on my chest and her forearm pressed against my throat.

  I cough. Writhe and squirm. I think about the girl. I should quit struggling. Let the Universe call me to account. Dying on the floor of my sister’s taxidermy studio at White Bear’s feet is exactly what I deserve.

  “Hold her arms!” Diana commands.

  Charlotte props Diana’s rifle against the door frame and crouches near my head. She grabs my wrists and pulls my arms over my head exactly as I did to the girl. Diana reaches up and feels along the edge of the worktable and sits back on my chest holding a knife.

  Goodbye, I whisper silently to Trevor, to Scotty, to the ravens, to the spiders. To life.