The Night Sister

by Jennifer McMahon

  The car was a Nash Rambler. Rose could tell, even from in here. Rambler. Rambling. Rambling Rose, like in the song Perry Como sang: “She’s a beauty growing wild.” Mama and Daddy had the record. Sometimes Daddy sang it to her, his own little Rambling Rose.

  The man came into the office, shuffling a little, blinking at the shock of bright lights. His white shirt was wrinkled; his eyes were bloodshot from driving too long.

  “Good evening. My wife and I need a room for the night,” he said.

  “You’re in luck,” Mama said. “We have one room left. Four dollars a night.”

  “Perfect,” the man said. Rose slid him the registration card, then slipped out from behind the desk.

  “I’ll go flip the sign, Mama,” she said.

  “Good girl,” Mama said. “Then head on up to bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, giving Mama and the man a little curtsy as she left, because she knew she had to be especially good, especially polite, in front of guests. No matter what was happening, they had to play the perfect family, Rose had to be a perfect child.

  “Turn on the charm, girls,” Daddy always said. “Make them want to come back and see us again.”

  “Cute kid,” the man said, as he leaned against the desk to fill out the form.

  “Yes,” Mama said. “She’s a good girl.”

  Good girl. Good girl. Good girl.

  Rose skipped down the driveway (she was right—the man did drive a Rambler) and to the sign, where she stepped forward, into the light, and flipped it so that the No showed. She stood for a minute, bathed in light, as if onstage with the Tower Motel backdrop behind her. She did a little dance, a few ballet moves Oma had taught her—slide, step, slide, pirouette, curtsy. She thought of Sylvie saying that she was going to leave one day and run off to Hollywood to be a star. Not me, Rose thought as she danced. I’m going to stay right here forever.

  Mr. Alfred Hitchcock

  Paramount Pictures

  Hollywood, California

  August 11, 1955

  Dear Mr. Hitchcock,

  Sometimes a butterfly is not just a butterfly.

  This is what Oma taught me.

  You know the worst thing I learned from her?

  You can be a monster and not even know you are one.

  They look like us.

  They think they are us.

  But really, they’ve got a monster hiding inside.

  If that’s not a good idea for a movie, I don’t know what is.

  Sincerely Yours,

  Miss Sylvia A. Slater

  The Tower Motel

  328 Route 6

  London, Vermont

  Rose

  Rose was having the dream again. A dark, formless beast had overtaken her, pinned her, crushed her from all sides until she got smaller and smaller—the size of a doll, then as tiny as a teardrop. She did her best to fight it, but in the end she was powerless.

  Wake up, she told herself. Time to wake up now.

  She opened her eyes. The broken-winged butterfly was in an old canning jar on Sylvie’s bedside table. It banged silently against the glass, a shadow in front of the curtained window. Rose watched it struggle in the dim light of early dawn, her heart pounding, her lungs unable to draw a breath.

  She was sure she was awake, and yet her body was completely paralyzed. The air was heavy with a rank, wild-animal smell.

  Rose listened hard. She was sure she could hear something breathing nearby—a rasping, grunting, guttural sound—but there was nothing there.

  Or was there? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement, a shift in the darkness. And there was the feeling she had, this deep sense that something else was in the room, something evil that meant to do her harm.

  Her eyes darted around, but found only the familiar landscape of the small bedroom she shared with Sylvie. And yet, it was also terribly unfamiliar, off-kilter, bathed in a greenish glow, as if the moonlight itself was somehow the wrong color. Rose opened her mouth to scream, to call for help, but she couldn’t make a sound.

  Am I dead? she wondered.

  Concentrating with all her might, Rose tried to sit up—just to wiggle her pinkie—but the only thing she could move was her eyes.

  She looked past the butterfly in the jar to Sylvie’s twin bed. She willed her sister to wake up, open her eyes, and save her, but she realized now that Sylvie’s bed was empty. The covers were thrown back, the pillow indented where Sylvie’s head should be.

  A horrible thought came over Rose: A mare had come. And it had gotten Sylvie first.

  There it was again—the rotten, wheezing stink of rancid meat breath and damp fur, so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat. She heard a low, quiet sound, almost like a growl; felt it vibrate through her whole body. She still couldn’t see anything—it was hiding in the shadows, under her own bed, maybe even. She was sure that, whatever this was, it had rows of sharp teeth—and if she was able to look in those teeth, she would find shreds of her sister’s white nightgown.

  Please, Rose thought. Please, go away. Spare me. Please. And then she thought of part of the little prayer Mama had both girls say each night before bed: “Angels watch me with the night, and wake me with the morning light.”

  And just like that, she could move again. She gasped, and air rushed into her lungs. The foul animal smell dissipated. She sprang from her bed without daring to look underneath, scampered down the hall to her parents’ room, and flung open the paneled wooden door.

  “What on earth?” asked Mama, squinting into the moonlight spilling from the hallway.

  “Something was in my room,” Rose said, panting. The windows were shut, the shades drawn. The air in her parents’ room was dusty and still, and smelled of Daddy’s cigarettes and Mama’s Jean Naté. Daddy’s work shirt was hung up on the back of a chair, its arms limp at its sides; in the dark, this made the chair look strangely human, as if it would start walking across the wooden floorboards on its four legs.

  “Another bat?” asked Mama, sitting up in bed, her pale nightgown glowing. Beside her, Daddy stirred, sat up, and groaned—they’d had a bat in their room in the early spring, and he’d had to chase it out with the broom. He reached for the clock. It was a little before 5:00 a.m.

  “No. Not a bat. I…I don’t know what it was,” Rose admitted.

  A monster. A monster who followed me from my dreams. One of Oma’s mares.

  “I could hear it, smell it, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t get up, couldn’t move at all. I think…” Did she dare say it? “I think maybe whatever it was got Sylvie.”

  Her father made a dismissive chuffing sound.

  “Shhh,” Mama soothed. “You’re all right now.”

  “Go back to bed,” Daddy said, voice gruff and sleepy. “It’s too early for any of your stories, Rose.”

  Daddy always said Rose had quite an imagination, which was his kind way of saying that she liked to exaggerate, to make things up just to see if she could get away with it.

  “I can’t,” Rose said. “Didn’t you hear me? There was something there. Something in the room with me. And Sylvie is gone!”

  “There was nothing in your room,” Daddy said, turning over. “You had a bad dream, that’s all.”

  Rose shook her head. She wasn’t a scaredy-cat like Sylvie with her nightmares.

  “But it wasn’t a dream,” Rose insisted. “And I’m not making it up. It was real.”

  “I’m sure your sister’s in her bed,” said Mama, voice low and calm.

  “But she isn’t. I think a mare got her.”

  Mama turned on the bedside light with an irritated snap.

  “A mare? How many times must I tell you girls? Oma’s stories were just that: stories.” She jumped out of bed, pulled on her robe, and marched down the hall. She returned in less than a minute and reported, “Sylvie is right in her bed, where she should be.” She slipped off her robe and climbed back into her own bed. “And, I might add, wher
e we all should be. Off you go.”

  “But she wasn’t there a minute ago, I swear,” Rose said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Daddy said with a groan, sitting up. “I’m going to go put some coffee on.”

  He thumped out of the room in his striped pajamas, hair rumpled. Be careful, Rose wanted to call after him. It’s out there still.

  Rose crawled in beside her mother; Daddy’s spot was still warm. She snuggled up next to Mama, laid her head on Mama’s shoulder.

  “Ah, my poor girl.” Mama sighed. “You really are scared silly. I wish to God Mother hadn’t filled your head with all that nonsense.”

  Rose heard water running in the kitchen, and the sound of her father flipping on the old wooden Philco radio. Daddy hummed along to the tune. The door of the new Frigidaire opened, then closed.

  While Mama stroked her hair, Rose recalled a conversation she’d had with Oma.

  “Does Mama know about the mares? Does she believe?”

  Oma smiled. “Indeed she does. But she would never admit to it. For some people, Rose, it’s easier to pretend the things that frighten us most don’t exist at all.”

  —

  “It’s dead,” Sylvie said, plunking the glass jar with the butterfly on the coffee table, right in front of Rose.

  Rose was sitting on the couch, hugging a pillow tight against her chest. The monarch’s body lay on top of the bed of leaves, perfectly still. Rose gazed at it through the glass, which magnified the monarch’s wings, brilliantly orange and veined with black. They reminded her of the stained-glass windows at church. Rose imagined a church of the butterflies where they worshipped metamorphosis. Caterpillar, cocoon, pupae, butterfly.

  “You killed it. I hope you’re happy,” Sylvie said, hands on her hips as she glared down at Rose.

  Rose bit her lip and hugged the pillow tighter. She remembered how much she’d wanted the butterfly to come to her, to choose her. If Oma were here, she would understand. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Sylvie looked at her a minute. “Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. Maybe you meant to and didn’t even realize it.”

  “That makes no sense.” Rose picked up the jar and looked inside, willing the broken creature to move, to flutter its wings.

  “Neither does killing a butterfly.”

  Sylvie sat in their father’s wingback chair, not taking her eyes off Rose.

  “Where were you, anyway?” Rose asked accusingly, watching her sister through the glass jar.

  “Where was I when?” Sylvie snapped. Her face was distorted by the glass, all mixed up with the bright-orange colors of the butterfly. For once, she was not the beautiful one, but something strange and hideous—an orange-faced monster.

  “Earlier this morning, just before five,” Rose said, putting the jar back down on the coffee table; Sylvie looked normal again, her hair neatly combed, tangle-free. “I woke up and you weren’t in bed.”

  “Of course I was in bed, Rose.” For half a second, Sylvie looked worried, panicked almost, but then her expression changed into her best poor-crazy-little-sister look. “Where else would I be?”

  “But your bed was empty. Your pillow…”

  Sylvie held up a finger and waved it back and forth the way she’d learned in her hypnosis book. When she spoke, it was in her slow, wavering hypnotist voice. “Follow my finger with your eyes. That’s right, good. Now feel your eyelids getting heavy, heavier still; it’s a struggle to keep them open.”

  Rose played along, following her sister’s finger with her eyes.

  “Go ahead and close them, Rose. That’s right. Let yourself go deeper. Deeper still. The only thing you’re aware of is the sound of my voice. You’re going to listen to what I tell you. You’re going to understand that each word I speak is the absolute truth. Nod if you understand.”

  Rose nodded.

  “My bed was not empty,” Sylvie told her. “I was there the whole time.”

  Rose slumped her shoulders forward, tried to look relaxed and like she was at her sister’s mercy.

  “Now tell me what you saw this morning,” Sylvie commanded, her voice low and soothing.

  “Your bed was not empty,” Rose repeated, voice dull and robotic. “You were there the whole time.”

  “Very good,” Sylvie said. “And that’s the way you’ll remember it from this moment on. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Rose said.

  “Good girl. On the count of three, you will open your eyes. One, two, three.”

  Rose opened her eyes. Sylvie sat in the chair across from her, curling her hand into a tight fist and smiling. The butterfly lay in the jar on the coffee table between them, its orange color seeming impossibly bright for something dead.

  “Do you think Mama will put blueberries in the pancakes this morning?” Sylvie asked brightly, glancing toward the kitchen, as though nothing unusual had happened.

  Rose’s heart began to thump madly. She was surer than ever now that her sister had been out of bed last night; for some reason, Sylvie really didn’t want Rose to know it. This was the first time Rose could ever remember Sylvie keeping a secret from her, and Rose didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

  2013

  Piper

  Piper wheeled her carry-on through the terminal, passing rows of plastic seats, a crêpe restaurant, and a kiosk selling overpriced neck pillows and eye masks. Once she exited through the double doors out into the main corridor, she searched the small crowd for Margot. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Piper figured Margot would be impossible to miss. She recalled the image of her sister from last night’s dream: Margot teetering at the edge of a hole, off balance.

  Piper blinked away the vision. She saw a couple embracing, a mother welcoming a college-age son home, a man in a suit holding a sign that said Walker Party, a cop scanning the crowd. No Margot. Piper was reaching into her bag for her cell phone when she felt a hand on her arm.

  “Piper?”

  She turned. The cop had approached.

  “Jason!” she said, realizing that the police officer was none other than her brother-in-law. It was more than the anonymity of the uniform—he looked thinner and much older than he had when she’d last seen him, two Christmases ago.

  Sometimes it was nearly impossible to remember him as being the same boy who’d followed the girls around that long-ago summer, a gangly kid, all arms and legs, with shaggy hair and pockets full of bugs. The boy who once wrote Amy love poems in secret code. Now and then she caught a glimpse of him in a boyish smirk, a shrug that made him look twelve again.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said, and he gave her a stiff hug. He smelled like spicy aftershave and cigarette smoke. “But where’s Margot?”

  “Couldn’t make it,” Jason said, and looked away, his jaw tense. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get you home. We’ll talk in the car.”

  Jason took charge of the small suitcase, and Piper struggled to keep up as he led her through the airport to the parking garage.

  They climbed into an old Ford Ranger pickup and rode with the windows rolled up, no AC. The sun beat down through the windshield and the cab was stuffy and hot, but Jason seemed oblivious; he didn’t even break a sweat. In spite of the heat, and the apparent lack of shock absorbers or much of a suspension system, Piper was grateful he’d come in his own vehicle and hadn’t picked her up in a police cruiser. Did London even have police cruisers? She couldn’t recall.

  Piper didn’t get home much. Margot usually came to her in L.A., thrilled to get away from their hometown for a week or two, to do all the touristy things: the tar pits, the Chinese Theatre, the Santa Monica Pier. She loved to study the architecture—Piper was continually amazed by her sister’s love for all things Art Deco, which couldn’t be more different from the old mills, farmhouses, and granite sheds of Vermont that Margot had dedicated her life to saving and preserving.

  Jason r
arely came to California with Margot—too hard to get time off from the force, he said. Piper was always relieved when Jason didn’t join Margot. It wasn’t that she disliked him, but she never felt entirely comfortable around him, always felt she had to be on her best behavior, had to prove her place as the wise older sister. God knew that Jason had grown up with a different Piper, the big sister who did wild things, got Margot in trouble again and again, whether bringing her to her first keg party or introducing her to pot.

  The worst of it was, when the girls were in high school, Piper had thought Margot’s dating Jason was basically the stupidest idea she’d ever heard. Even told her, “You know, with him you’ll always be second best. The consolation prize. He’s been in love with Amy his whole life, and you’ll never be able to change that.”

  She cringed now at the thought of saying something so cruel (even if it was absolutely true) to her own sister. Piper had no idea what, if anything, Jason knew about her unwanted relationship advice—but Piper knew, and that was bad enough.

  Jason drove out of the airport parking garage and paid the attendant. His hands gripped the wheel tightly, his gold wedding band glinting in the sunlight coming through the windshield. He stayed silent.

  Piper began to worry.

  “Jason,” she said at last, “is Margot all right?”

  He kept his eyes on the road. “She fainted this morning. I brought her in to the doctor, and they said her blood pressure is too high—it could be dangerous for her and the baby. She’s got something called pre-eclampsia. He’s ordered bed rest until she delivers. And depending on how she’s doing, he might decide to induce her early.” He delivered the news in his cop voice—no sign of emotion: Just the facts, ma’am.

  “But she’s okay?” Piper asked, her own voice squeaky and panicked.

  “As long as she rests, listens to the doctor. We’re only two weeks away from the due date, so hopefully it won’t be much longer.”