The Night Sister

by Jennifer McMahon

  “But I’m here,” Lou said, sitting beside Margot on the bed, putting her hand on Margot’s thigh. The claws poked through Margot’s cotton pajama bottoms, drew blood that came in little pinpricks, blossoming once they hit the fabric. “I’ll help you.”

  Piper

  Neither Margot nor Jason was answering their cell phones. The house number rang and rang, too, after her conversation with Margot had been cut off.

  Piper thought of calling 911 and saying there was an emergency. But they would ask what emergency, and what would she tell them? That she had left a ten-year-old child who was actually a monster playing cards with her sister? Then she’d be the one the cops would come after, ready to lock her up and give her a heavy dose of antipsychotic medication.

  Was she crazy for being frightened, she asked herself as she rolled through a stop sign, for actually believing the possibility that Rose’s stories were real?

  A mare can’t help what it is. Can’t help the things it does.

  “Damn it,” she said, hitting the speed-dial number for Margot’s cell phone. “Pick up the damn phone!”

  Voice mail again.

  She threw her phone down on the passenger seat in frustration. The rain had picked up. It drummed heavily on the roof, blurring the windshield even with the wipers at full speed and the defrost fan blowing. She was on Main Street now, heading away from downtown. Up ahead, she saw the wrecked Tower Motel sign, faded and leaning. And beyond it, looming like a monster of stone and cement, the tower.

  And at the bottom, Clarence’s oubliette.

  The twenty-ninth room.

  Built to keep Charlotte’s children safe.

  But it hadn’t, had it?

  She continued on, speeding in spite of the weather, hydroplaning a little when she turned corners. At last, her sister’s house came into view. It wasn’t in smoldering ruins, nor was it surrounded by police and the SWAT team.

  But it should be.

  Piper shook the thought off. Nonsense. She’s just a girl. They’re probably still playing Crazy Eights. Margot’s laughing at all the rules Lou keeps making up as she goes along.

  The kings mean you have to take a card from another player. And the aces turn you into a monster.

  Piper put the car in park, cut the ignition, and ran toward the house.

  “Margot? Lou?” she called before the front door was even halfway open. She was pumped up on adrenaline, hand trembling as it gripped the knob. “I’m back. I was running late, so I didn’t stop for pizza. I can go pick one up, though. Or we can get it delivered.” She kept talking, waiting for a response as she moved down the hallway, into the kitchen. “Hello?”

  A box of crackers and jar of grape jelly had been left on the table. Smears of purple covered its surface, like dark, coagulated blood.

  She headed for Margot’s room. “You guys still playing cards?” she asked, straining to keep her voice light and chipper.

  Please. Please let them be.

  But no.

  The room was empty. The covers were on the floor. The fitted sheet covering the bed had a large wet spot, like someone had spilled something. The cards were all over the floor, along with a cracked plate still sticky with jelly.

  She heard Jason’s stern warnings: “She’s not to leave the bed. We’ve got to keep her calm. If her blood pressure shoots up again, it would put both her and the baby in danger.”

  “Margot!” Piper shouted, voice shrill with panic.

  She tore out of the room and down the hall, throwing open the doors to the bathroom, guest room, and laundry room—all empty. She flipped the basement lights on and trotted down the stairs, to find only the furnace, water heater, chest freezer, and an old Ping-Pong table.

  Where the hell were they?

  Then she heard it: a piercing cry from outdoors, somewhere in the backyard.

  Margot, screaming.

  Jason

  “Looks like an animal attack,” one of the state boys said. “Those have to be claw marks, right? No knife did that.”

  “But what kind of animal could do something like that?” Tony asked, his flashlight aimed down at the body.

  They’d gone to Crystal’s trailer to try to locate Lou, and had found Crystal while searching the grounds. Her body was sprawled between the Dumpster and a cinder-block wall out back, behind the row of trailers. She was wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and slippers. A bag of trash was spilled everywhere. She’d been taking out the garbage when the attack occurred; you didn’t need a fancy criminal-justice degree to see that.

  “A bear?” one of the men suggested.

  “Uh-uh, a black bear wouldn’t attack a person like that,” Jason said.

  “So—what? A catamount, maybe?” Tony said.

  “Maybe,” Jason said. “But we haven’t had a big-cat sighting in years. They just aren’t around anymore.”

  “Maybe one is,” Tony said, pointing the beam of his flashlight out into the woods behind the trailer park. “I want this whole area searched. Whatever we’re looking for, man or beast, may have left something behind. A paw print, maybe. Let’s get on it.”

  Officer Malcolm Deavers came out of the trailer holding a piece of paper. “I think I know where the girl is,” he said.

  “Where?” Tony asked.

  “She’s at Jason and Margot’s.”

  “What?” demanded Jason, snatching the note from Deavers and blinking down at his sister-in-law’s handwriting in disbelief. He turned to hurry back into his cruiser and head for home, muttering, “Goddamn it, Piper!”

  Piper

  “Margot!” Piper called, looking out the open back door into the rain. She flipped on the floodlights that lit up the backyard and stepped out onto the patio. In front of her was the in-ground pool, its cover off; Jason had begun to scrub it down in preparation for the summer. The blue-painted cement reminded her of being twelve, of Amy and her chasing Margot around the pool in circles.

  She saw no sign of her sister or Lou.

  Piper started out across her sister’s neatly landscaped yard—perennial beds, vegetable garden, perfect green lawn. Beyond the lawn, the woods.

  “Margot?” Piper called again.

  “Piper!” It was Margot’s voice—somewhere in the dark woods. Then a guttural groan.

  Piper broke into a run.

  As soon as she left the ring of light cast by the outdoor floodlights, it became impossibly dark. She blinked, willing her eyes to adjust, but could make out only the vague outline of trees close by. And darkness. Pure darkness. The rain pelted down on the canopy of leaves above, a percussive din that seemed to drown out all other sound.

  She heard a low moan up ahead and to the left.

  “I’m coming!” Piper called. She was doing an awkward stumble-run now, a zombie shuffle, with her hands outstretched in front of her. Her own breath was loud in her ears.

  At last, she saw a form in a clearing ahead, a pale shape there on the ground. Margot in her flannel pajamas. She was curled on the forest floor in a fetal position, arms cradling her pregnant belly.

  “Margot!” Piper cried, moving through the trees faster now. She dropped into a crouch beside her sister. It was brighter in here, the cloud-filtered moonlight illuminating everything with a bluish glow. “Jesus, are you okay? What are you doing out here?”

  Margot was breathing hard and fast. But it wasn’t just Margot that Piper heard. Something else was breathing, too. Soft, snorting breaths coming from somewhere not far behind them. Twigs snapped. Something was moving among the trees, just out of sight.

  Margot was shaking her head, huffing and puffing. “Something’s wrong with Lou. She…she changed. Into an animal or something.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but I’m in labor, and the phones…I just wanted to get away from her. I thought maybe I could cut through the woods to the road….”

  Even in the dim light, Piper could make out enough of Margot’s face to see that she was terrified.

&nbs
p; “Let’s get you to the hospital,” Piper said in the most confident voice she could muster. She slipped an arm under her sister’s shoulder. “Can you stand?”

  Margot shook her head again, hopeless.

  “I’m too dizzy. When I sit up, everything gets blurry. You need to go. Find Jason.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Piper said firmly, just as a terrible snarl tore through the darkness behind her.

  It was close—close enough that she could smell it now, its dank, musty animal scent. Slowly, Piper turned, keeping herself protectively in front of Margot as she braced herself for the sight of a horrible nightmare creature. She was almost relieved to see it was an animal she recognized, not something out of a horror movie. About ten feet away from her, a black panther crouched low, watching Piper. Its coat was black and sleek from the rain, and its pale eyes glinted in the moonlight.

  “Hello, Lou,” Piper said, hardly believing this animal was the little girl she’d left just hours ago, but somehow knowing it to be true.

  The panther snarled, bared its teeth.

  Piper took a half-step back, then stopped, determined to stand her ground and protect her sister.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” Piper raised her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “And I don’t think you want to hurt me and Margot, either, do you?”

  The panther watched her, seeming to listen, to consider what Piper was saying, as it held itself perfectly still. It could have been made of obsidian.

  “I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me. I helped your mother once, when we were girls. I didn’t understand what was happening then, but I do now.”

  Suddenly the panther’s head swiveled, eyes locking on the darkness behind Piper. Something was padding through the woods. Piper turned around to see a huge, shaggy black dog step out of the trees. It had a big blocky head with a shortened, graying muzzle, and small upright ears. Under other circumstances, in the dim light, Piper might have mistaken it for a small bear. Piper remembered Amy’s story of the ghost dog that visited her while she slept. Now she understood.

  “Rose,” Piper said.

  The dog approached, its head down, its hackles raised. Piper understood then that Rose was ready to defend herself. To defend her family. She held still and tried to remain calm, tried to remember that this was still Rose, that there was a piece of her inside—a rational being who only wanted what was best for her grandchild.

  “I think we both want the same thing…” Piper began, but she was interrupted by a small voice.

  “Grandma?” Piper turned back and saw that the panther had become a little girl once more. Lou was naked, on all fours on the forest floor. Her eyes had a strange glow, and her hands…didn’t look like hands at all, but dainty black paws. Piper blinked, and watched as they turned back to a child’s hands. Piper could now see the faint shadows of bruises around the girl’s pale wrists.

  Bruises from being shackled under the tower, her mother trying to keep her safe.

  When Death comes knocking at your door,

  you’ll think you’ve seen his face before.

  Lou, fully human now, rose to her feet.

  The dog let out a sharp bark and trotted over to Lou; it circled her once, then darted toward the thick line of trees, and back again. Rose was coaxing Lou to follow her into the woods.

  “Lou?” Piper said, looking into the little girl’s eyes, which were once again those of a human child—blue, like her mother’s. “You don’t have to do this. You can learn to control this. You can have a normal life.”

  Lou shook her head. “That’s what Mama said. But she locked me up like I was an animal at the zoo. Made me take pills that made me sleep all the time.”

  The dog came back to Lou’s side, nudged her hand.

  “We can figure it out,” Piper said. “I’m sure there’s a way we can fix this.”

  If you hold up a mirror, you shall see

  that he is you and you are he.

  “Maybe I don’t want to fix it.” Lou stroked the dog’s head as she spoke. “Maybe I like the way I am. I’m good at it. Better than anyone in my family ever has been.”

  She looked down at the dog, who gave a little woof of agreement, then nudged hard at Lou’s hip, still trying to lead her away.

  “I can change into whatever I want just by thinking about it,” Lou continued. “A bird, a bee, even a panther.”

  She said this last part with a smile that showed her teeth, still pointed.

  “But, Lou, can you always control it? Don’t you sometimes change without meaning to? Hurt people you don’t mean to?”

  The little girl stopped moving and blinked at her. “I—”

  “What happened that night? With your family?”

  “I didn’t…” Lou stammered, voice cracking. “I didn’t mean it. She locked me in that room. It was so cold. Dark. I couldn’t move. I was strapped down to a bed. I was calling for her and calling for her, begging for her to come let me out. Then, the next thing I knew, I was up in the house. My mama, she…” Lou’s voice faltered, and she began to cry. She may have been a monster, but she was also a little girl who had lost everything. A creature who had destroyed those she loved most.

  Piper looked at the dog. “Rose, you have to know this isn’t what’s best for Lou. It’s not what Amy would have wanted.”

  The dog gave a low, disapproving growl and wrinkled her lips, baring gleaming fangs.

  “Margot!”

  A man’s voice, coming from the direction of the house—Jason. Margot moaned.

  “She’s here!” Piper called back.

  “No!” Lou said angrily. “Don’t call him over here! He doesn’t understand, and he’s a policeman. If he finds out…”

  Piper turned back to Lou. The little girl’s face was frantic.

  “It’s okay,” Piper told her, voice soothing. “I’ll take care of Jason. I can help you—I know I can,” she promised.

  The beam of Jason’s flashlight was bouncing through the trees, and they could hear footsteps crashing through leaves.

  “That’s what Mama said, too,” Lou said, her voice suddenly not that of a child, but flatter, deeper, more guttural. And then Lou dropped down into a crouch. It could have been a trick of the eye at first—a cloud passing over the moon that made Lou’s body go from pale to dark. But as Piper watched, the dark skin became fur glistening in the moonlight, black and shiny. Her body elongated, her hands grew into great paws. Supple muscles rippled under the creature’s glossy coat. And where, only seconds before, there had been a little girl on her haunches, a sleek black panther stood, eyes yellow, teeth bared, as it let out a loud, threatening snarl.

  Jason

  The cruiser’s tires squealed as Jason pulled into the driveway. All the house lights were on, and the front door was open. He bolted inside, calling for Margot and Piper. No answer. The kitchen was a mess, and the bedroom was worse. Signs of a struggle.

  “Shit,” he mumbled, heart hammering. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He thought of the doctor’s warnings, how Margot needed bed rest. If anything happened to Margot or the baby…

  “Margot!” he bellowed, charging through the house. The sliding doors leading to the patio were open, and all the lights out there were on, too. Suddenly he heard voices: Piper’s, he thought, and someone else’s—a child? They came from the dark woods behind the yard. Stepping outside in the rain, he ran the beam of his flashlight back and forth over the dense wall of trees.

  “Margot!” he called.

  “She’s here!” Piper’s voice called back from somewhere deep in the woods.

  He started running, illuminating the way with his flashlight. He crossed the yard and plunged into the woods. Tree branches scratched his face, grabbed at his arms, trying to hold him back. He tried to imagine what on earth Margot was doing out here. It must have to do with that girl, Lou. Did the killer come for Lou, chase Margot and the girl into the woods? Were they hurt? Was the killer still out there?
>
  More voices from up ahead. Then the snarling growl of a big cat.

  He drew his gun. “Margot!” he cried, hurling himself forward, no longer watching the ground, tripping, stumbling, terrified of what he might find. He reached a clearing, illuminating a nightmare scene with his flashlight. It was nothing like what he’d imagined.

  Margot was curled up on her side on the leafy forest floor, head tucked, eyes squeezed closed, panting.

  In front of Margot, no more than five feet away from her, a sleek black panther stood. It gave a screeching hiss when he shone his light on it. Beside the panther, an enormous black dog with its teeth bared.

  Jason knew immediately that this cat was the animal that killed Crystal Bellavance, the little girl behind the school, and, somehow, Amy and her family. He raised his gun, and took aim.

  “No!” Piper yelled, stepping directly in front of his gun, the barrel inches from her chest. “Put it away,” she said. “It’s just going to scare her more.”

  The panther had flattened its ears and lowered itself to the ground so it was lying down directly in front of Margot. Margot let out a small, fearful whimper. The dog moved a few steps forward, a deep, menacing growl rumbling in its throat.

  “Step aside, Piper,” he ordered. This was not the time for an animal-rights speech. How could Piper not understand the danger they were all in? When Piper refused to move, Jason sidestepped, then again trained his gun on the large black cat.

  “Jason, for God’s sake, listen!” Piper moved in front of the gun again, hands up, talking fast. “You aren’t going to believe this, but—”

  Suddenly Jason lost all interest in the panther, in Piper’s frantic speech. Margot’s body had started to twitch strangely. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her jaw clenched, and her back arched. She began to convulse, as if she were being electrocuted.

  “Margot!” Jason cried, lowering his gun as he ran to his wife. The panther sprang away, into the safety of the woods, the dog bounding behind it. Jason dropped to his knees and put the flashlight down, its beam illuminating Margot’s horrific face: eyes bulging, tongue protruding, everything contorted and all wrong.