Wrath of the Sister

by Shannon Heuston

  Whatever the truth, it happened many years ago. It was over. Lucy Harden was dust in her grave. Sam needed to let her go, and I needed to help him, instead of obsessing over their relationship.

  I returned the album to the pile of junk where I’d found it. I was here to find something to read, not revisit the past. It was time to stop snooping.

  It was nine when I heard the Jeep pulling up outside the cabin. By that time, I’d showered and gotten dressed. At the sound of the motor, I ran outside to help carry the groceries into the kitchen, then began unpacking them. Guilt was making me eager to assist.

  “I see you got cold cuts, great,” I remarked.

  “Where did that come from?” Sam asked, staring at the book I’d left open on the counter. It was a paperback copy of Mary Higgins Clark’s Where Are the Children? Alice Martin’s taste in books ran to popular mysteries, of the sort sold in cardboard displays in pharmacies and supermarkets everywhere, not that I minded. They beat Harlequin romances.

  I blushed. “Hope you don’t mind, but I went into the crawlspace upstairs to look for something to read. I was bored. There was nothing to do.”

  “I don’t mind, but please, ask before you go poking around.” Sam slammed cupboards and the refrigerator door while putting the supplies away, suggesting that he did, in fact, mind. I had a feeling he would.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I felt guilty as I picked the book back up, like I should stop reading it to punish myself.

  “I said I didn’t mind,” Sam said. “Just ask next time. I know where things are kept, so you don’t need to go searching through everything.”

  Laurel shot me a dirty look. I decided it was best to drop the subject.

  She pounced on me a moment later, when Sam and John went back outside for firewood. “What’s the matter with you?” she hissed, digging her nails into my arm like we were still kids.

  “Ow!” I cried, pulling away. “What are you talking about?” Although I knew full well.

  “We leave for a couple of hours and you start going through their stuff? Sam and John are both very private people. You’d think you’d know that by now.”

  “I was just looking for something to read. I didn’t know it was such a big deal.”

  Laurel softened. “Sorry. I’m just a little keyed up. They’re both acting strange, and I don’t want a fight. It gives me the creeps, being out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Me too,” I admitted. “I can see how people find it peaceful, but it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Especially knowing that girl died in those woods,” Lucy added, dropping her voice. “She didn’t seem real until we came here.”

  I knew what she meant. Lucy was an idea, an abstract concept, a distant memory, not flesh and blood, an actual person. Being up here, in the place she lived, breathed life into her.

  “What are you ladies talking about?” John asked, as he stumbled through the front door with his arms filled with firewood.

  “Breakfast,” Laurel said. “Bacon and eggs?”

  “Sure,” John replied. “Then I think I’m gonna need some shut eye. Hardly got any sleep last night.” He winked at Laurel. Gross.

  “Second that,” Sam huffed, coming in the door behind him. He dropped his load of wood in front of the fireplace and turned to me. “Can I trust you not to turn this place upside down while we’re sleeping?” He smiled, but his eyes were hard. I recalled the angry words slashed into the last page of the album and wondered what other distasteful secrets were hiding in this cabin in the middle of nowhere.

  “Of course. Now that I have a book to read.”

  “You should have told me you needed something to read. I would have grabbed something while we were shopping,” Sam said. He just wouldn’t let it go.

  Laurel snorted. “From the Jeep?” She turned to me. “He didn’t even go inside. Why’d you even bother to come?”

  Sam shrugged. “I wanted to go in, but once we got there, I lost my nerve. I didn’t feel up to testing the local feeling today.”

  “Breakfast,” Laurel announced, attempting to change the subject.

  The musty odor permeating the cabin was buried beneath the welcome aroma of frying bacon. The smell of the food improved the general mood. We sat around the island in the kitchen on stools, engaging in relaxed, friendly banter.

  “We should dig out some board games for tonight,” John suggested to Sam.

  “When we were growing up, with television basically nonexistent, we played a lot of games. My favorite was Monopoly. We still have it with all the pieces intact,” Sam explained.

  “We should play teams, that’s always a lot funner,” Laurel said. I cringed. My sister wasn’t stupid. Her airhead routine was an act. But it wasn’t cute anymore, now that she was pushing fifty. It was pathetic.

  “Boys against girls, that’s funner,” Sam said, winking at me.

  Laurel tossed her head. “I prefer Brothers against Sisters.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “You’re on.”

  Things were back to normal. Maybe the tension before was caused by exhaustion. I seemed to be the only one who slept well, strangely enough. That reminded me. They appeared to be discussing something when I came down the stairs. I remembered how startled they all looked to discover me standing there. Probably nothing. I was just overthinking things. Again.

  Sam took your cell phone Agnes insisted in my head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Once breakfast was finished, everyone scattered to a different corner of the house. Sam went upstairs after first showing me how to operate the television remote. “In case you get bored again,” he said, his meaning clear.

  After I showed proficiency, he kissed me on the forehead. “See you in a few,” he whispered. “Maybe we’ll go out to dinner or something. Stay out of trouble.”

  The last was delivered casually, but it sounded like a threat. Or a challenge.

  If this was a horror movie, I’d keep poking around the crawlspace, despite being told not to, just to be stubborn. But it was real life, and I was spooked. I didn’t like it here. I wanted to go home. I wasn’t having fun, and Sam was acting strange.

  I wished I had my car, then I wouldn’t be stranded here at John’s mercy. Although my little front wheel drive Toyota Corolla wouldn’t have made it up the driveway. Why didn’t they pave it when they were renovating? Maybe it was too expensive.

  The fireplace was going, the television was on, and I had a cup of tea in my hand. I should have felt happy. Instead, I was restless. Even more so when it began to snow around ten thirty, Christmas snow, big heavy flakes. The kind that stuck. So much for Sam’s assertion that there would be no storms this weekend, although perhaps they didn’t regard heavy snowfall as a storm up here. Those boys not only didn’t listen to the weather forecast before the trip, they hadn’t bothered listening to it since, either.

  Around eleven, we lost satellite reception, and the rerun of Law and Order: SVU I was watching blurred, then vanished.

  So much for our plans. So much for anything. It was looking like we’d be lucky to escape this hellhole on Sunday. We were trapped. We had plenty of food and a generator, so we’d be comfortable, but the thought of being stuck here for any length of time was alarming. We shouldn’t be, not with John’s Jeep, but what if the battery went or something?

  Didn’t John or Sam mention there was no cell service up here? And no television reception meant the internet was out, too. There was no escape. I felt a sense of foreboding.

  I took a deep breath to quell my rising panic. I was being ridiculous. We weren’t that far from civilization, it just seemed like it. It wasn’t like we’d get stranded out here and end up eating each other like the Donner party. If something happened to the Jeep, the guys would have a cold and unpleasant hike ahead of them, but nothing worse than that. We weren’t going to die.

  I should have stayed home this weekend. Answering phones at work was better than this.

  The wind wa
s kicking up outside, howling around the cabin, making the walls shake. Being alone in a winter storm while the wind raged outside was the worst thing in the world. It happened to me a few times last winter, after Agnes died. My imagination went into overdrive, conjuring up wicked men attempting to gain entry to the house to rape and murder me. Everything was fine, but that taught me something about myself. I didn’t like being alone.

  What I needed was a distraction. Too bad the cable was out, and with it, the internet, rendering the desktop computer useless. Just as well. I had a feeling Sam would get angry if I attempted to use it without asking permission first. Which was bogus, because Sam used my laptop without asking whenever he stayed over my house. But I had nothing to hide. Did he?

  Of course not, he told me everything, always had. Sam was an open book. He just didn’t like people snooping in his stuff. Plenty of people were like that.

  My eyes fell on the VCR on the shelf below the television.

  There was a DVD player too, but it was the VCR that caught my eye. I hadn’t seen one in years. I’d forgotten they existed, although videotapes were a staple of my childhood. My parents used to rent them from our local pharmacy. I remember watching The Neverending Story and crying my eyes out when Artex perished in the Swamp of Sadness. Atreyu was probably my first real crush.

  There was a stack of tapes and DVD’s in the bookcase next to the television. Just like the bookcase in Sam’s apartment, it contained no books. I dropped to my knees to sort through them, looking for a movie to watch. , Sam and John’s tastes appeared to run to the Dumb and Dumber variety. I unearthed a copy of Wedding Crashers, considered it, then tossed it aside.

  I hesitated before reaching for the next stack. I wasn’t violating Sam’s privacy by looking through the movies, was I? After all, they were on display right next to the TV, an invitation to peruse the selection. Finding a movie to watch didn’t count as snooping, did it? I didn’t want to end up in a fight with Sam while Laurel and John watched with interest.

  The next tape that came to hand was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, a family favorite. We had a tradition of watching it every Thanksgiving evening after dinner. With a pang, I realized yesterday marked the first time in many years the tradition hadn’t been honored. Well, the day after Thanksgiving counted, right?

  I fumbled with the VCR to get it working, reaching into the depths of childhood memory to recall you had to tune the television to channel three. I settled back on the couch as the familiar strains of the Christmas Vacation theme music filled the room, comforting me. I smiled as the Clark family headed off into the wilderness to cut down their own tree. I bet people drove up here to do that.

  To my distress, the scene blurred, then faded into snow. I sighed. The movie had been taped on one of the blank videocassettes that was a staple in pharmacies everywhere back in the day. No doubt someone recorded over it. I drummed my fingers on the wooden arm of the couch, awaiting an episode of an eighties program like St. Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues. It would have to be some boring adult show to justify taping over a movie.

  It would be interesting to watch the commercials, though. A blast from the past.

  As if on cue, the snow vanished. The film quality of the scene unfolding in front of me was poor, blurry, unheard of in the digital age. It didn’t help that the only illumination came from candlelight.

  It was a home video. I recognized the subject. Lucy was wearing only bikini briefs. Her long dark hair was unbound, flowing down her back, and those huge Doe eyes were dark and enticing. Her breasts were full and perky, her nipples pink buttons.

  Sam stepped into the frame, a much younger Sam, his smooth tan back unmarred by the tattoos I traced with a finger when we were in bed together. He was impossibly young, heartbreakingly slender, his shorts baggy on his bottom and his t-shirt hanging off him. His blue eyes were wide and innocent. I watched as he stared at his lover, gasping, his admiration clear, making me burn with jealousy.

  “You’re so beautiful,” his much younger voice marveled.

  I knew I should turn it off, but I was transfixed.

  Sam approached Lucy slowly. She gazed up at him, achingly lovely, vulnerable in her nudity. He lowered his head and took one of her breasts in his mouth, sucking. Lucy cried out. Sam slid his hand up and massaged her other breast, kneading it. He raised his eyes to hers and they gazed at each other for one breathless moment, practically radiating heat. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. Her arms went around his neck and she stood on tiptoes, pressing her full length against him.

  I was tingling with arousal. I wanted to slip a hand into my panties, but I didn’t dare. The only thing worse than being caught watching Sam making love to his fiancée on camera was being caught masturbating to it.

  Sam fell to his knees in front of Lucy, as if about to pray, but instead he reached up and pulled her panties down. She sported a healthy brown bush at the triangle of her smooth thighs. Sam pressed his face into her crotch, inhaling her scent. Lucy moaned. Sam parted her thighs with both hands and buried his face between them, flicking his tongue and sucking, to the rhythm of Lucy’s cries.

  After a couple of minutes, Sam stood up, shedding his shorts with a push of his hands. He wore no underwear and his penis sprang up, proud, appearing smaller on camera than it did in real life. Or perhaps it just wasn’t grown to full size yet. Now Lucy dropped to her knees in front of him, a fetching sight with her jiggling breasts, face upturned. She grabbed his penis and licked the head, then slid it into her mouth, keeping her eyes fastened on his. I heard my boyfriend gasp in a way that was distressingly familiar.

  My hands were balled into fists at my sides. I was both titillated and disgusted. But I couldn’t stop watching.

  I occasionally watched porn, and I found blowjobs boring. If you’d seen one, you’d seen them all, and despite Sam’s whispers of encouragement, Lucy wasn’t very good at it. I was better. But perhaps that wasn’t fair, because Lucy couldn’t have been much more than eighteen in this video. A teenager, what they now called barely legal. I didn’t know how to give a blowjob either back then.

  Sam yanked Lucy to her feet and pulled his t-shirt over his head, discarding it on the floor. He took her hand and led her towards the single unmade bed shoved against the wall, skinny buttocks flexing and shuddering in the flickering light. I recognized the room as the one upstairs, although this version had posters on the wall, textbooks piled on a scarred wooden desk under the window, and heaps of clothes in the corner, testifying that Sam was not always neat.

  Sam pushed Lucy down on the bed, tugging her legs over his shoulders. He entered her still standing. They both let out a sigh. Lucy’s eyes rolled back in her head. Sam began thrusting his penis in and out of her vagina in jerky motions, lacking his later finesse. Lucy let out an annoying squeal each time that made me want to slap her.

  There were tears pouring down my cheeks. How had I ever imagined I could compete with this luscious beauty? Lucy was every boy’s fantasy come to life. Still. She would never grow old or fat, those perky breasts would never sag, and Sam would never feel anything for her but the blush of new love, that period when you were crazy about one another and saw no flaws. Their love would never sour beneath a pile of disagreements and responsibilities, never grow old and stale with time. I was fighting a losing battle.

  No wonder Sam didn’t want me digging into his secrets. He had something to hide.

  I was competing with a ghost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Snow filled the screen again. I scrabbled around the couch hunting for the remote, so I could turn the video off. I didn’t want to watch another lovemaking session. One was enough, thank you very much. But before I could locate it, the picture returned. Sam’s bedroom again, but the walls had been stripped bare of posters. No more Poison or Motley Crue or even Kiss. This must have been taped after high school graduation, when a lot of teenagers decide they’re grown ups and purge their bedroom of its childh
ood trappings.

  This time, Lucy wore bright red lace panties. Whoever once thought yellow was her color was wrong. It was red, a bright contrast to that creamy complexion.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, swinging her legs. She appeared to be tipsy. Perhaps this was recorded during one of John’s famous blowout parties.

  I found the remote control. I pointed it at the television to turn it off when I heard a voice off camera. I lowered the remote, confused. What was going on here?

  “Tell me you want me,” a voice growled.

  I heard a high-pitched giggle. Sam. I recognized the voice, although I never heard him sound like that. My eyes widened. What was happening?

  Lucy offered the speaker a boozy smile in response, clearly under the influence of something. Alarm bells clanged in my brain.

  “Sam, your girlfriend is hot,” John said off camera. “Smoking.”

  “Lucy, shake your tits at John,” Sam ordered, sounding like every asshole college kid in the world.

  She shook them, and both boys hooted.

  “Shake them maracas!” John shouted.

  She stopped. There was an awkward pause. Then Sam spoke. “Lucy, do you think my brother’s hot?”

  Lucy tilted her head and pursed her lips, appearing to give the question some thought.

  “Sam, your girlfriend ain’t too bright,” John observed. Like he should talk.

  “She’s hot, though,” Sam said, as if that made up for the lack of brains.

  “Aww, Luce. You don’t think I’m hot?” John asked, a pleading note in his voice.

  Leave her alone. Leave her alone, you creep. My God, Sam, how could you have allowed this?