Chapter 39
Violet
When Lisette heard that she was to sleep in my room with me, she argued, because of course she did. My God, could that child argue. It was like living with fourteen-year-old Dodie all over again, and once had been more than enough.
She wanted to sleep in our parents’ bedroom—the master bedroom—by herself. I told her she was sleeping with me. I’d put up with my parents’ bed if I had to, but Lisette would not sleep alone.
It didn’t matter that Dodie had explained the dangers of the house to her.
It didn’t matter that Lisette was a selfish child who had run away from home and was in a heap of white-hot trouble, that she’d cost us my paltry visitation rights, that she was putting herself in danger and making the rest of us deal with it.
She argued until I wanted to put her out in the rain or scream. Or both.
Vail finished his dinner—hard-boiled eggs, toast with butter, cheese, and apples, all things I’d cobbled together from the fridge—and pushed his chair back, picking up his empty plate.
“I wouldn’t sleep alone, myself, if I didn’t have to,” he said in a bored, flat voice.
“The thing in this house is nasty and it hits hard, especially at night. But you do what you want. I’m going to watch TV. ”
Lisette watched him, her face pale, as he washed his plate and left the room. I watched her try to imagine what kind of thing would make Vail admit he was afraid.
“Fine,” she said to me after a moment. “We’ll sleep in your room.”
—
Lisette watched TV with Vail for a while, and then she came up to my room and changed into her pajamas. Her arguing seemed to have exhausted itself, because she slid into the bed with me without a word, keeping a chilly foot of space between us.
I turned the lamp out. We lay on our backs in the darkness.
“I’m sorry I screwed everything up,” she said after a moment.
I could only be honest. “It was already screwed up.”
“I’ll talk to Dad. I’ll tell him that I—that I want to see you. That I came here to see you and Uncle Vail and Aunt Dodie. That you didn’t tell me to come.”
I had no answer to that. Maybe it would make a difference and maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I wouldn’t get a chance with Lisette until she was an adult, if she would even speak to me by then.
“Why did you do it?” I finally asked her.
“Dad wouldn’t have let me come,” she replied.
“He says I shouldn’t be around you, but he never explains why.
He would never have said yes to me coming here, so I didn’t ask.
And when you told me about your brother, I just thought…
I don’t know.” Her voice went thick as her throat closed.
“I don’t fit in anywhere. I don’t have many friends.
I don’t do sports or theater at school. I thought that I wanted to know where I come from. I thought it would help.”
She sounded so lost. When she was a child, I’d sometimes wondered if my ability to see things could be passed down to her. But she’d never shown any signs of it, and I wasn’t going to ask her now. I knew the answer.
Lisette wasn’t talking about not fitting in because she saw ghosts. She was talking about not fitting in, period. She had wanted to see her family, to find out if she fit in with us, because she was a teenager, not a so-called psychic.
“I know that feeling,” was all I could think to say. “I understand.”
“Aunt Dodie braided my hair,” she said. “She’s so pretty. Can I see her and Uncle Vail more when this is over? Can we visit them more often? Please?”
I did feel a bolt of fear then, cold and icy. Because I didn’t want to promise things to her that I couldn’t deliver. And Alice McMurtry had said that one of us wouldn’t leave this house.
“If it’s possible,” I hedged, “then I’ll make it happen. I’ll do everything I can.”
That seemed to mollify her, at least for the moment. She rolled over with her back to me, and with the resilience of the young, she fell asleep.
I didn’t sleep. I lay awake. This was my room, Sister’s room. Maybe Lisette would have been better off in our parents’ room after all. But Sister had appeared everywhere lately—downstairs when Vail hit her with a vase, then walking the upstairs hall in daylight. Screaming.
If I knew Sister—and I did—she hadn’t been screaming in fear. She was angry. The thought of my daughter here while Sister was angry made me sick. If Lisette had insisted on sleeping in my parents’ room, I would have gone with her. I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight.
When I was sure Lisette was sound asleep, I rolled over and put an arm around her. She slept on without stirring, so I moved closer and held her more tightly.
Sister would have to tear me to pieces if she wanted Lisette. And she was welcome to try.
—
“Mom?”
The voice was soft, but I woke up right away.
I didn’t know what time it was in the dark. Lisette had pushed up to one elbow, staring at something I couldn’t see.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered into the silence.
I strained, but I heard nothing. “No,” I whispered back.
Her body tensed against mine. “There it is again.”
I squeezed her, but she squirmed against me, trying to free herself from my grip. “Baby, no,” I said.
“It’s him!” She broke away from me easily. “It’s Ben, Mom! I found Ben!” She slipped from the bed and was gone.
I rolled out of my side of the bed. I didn’t see Sister’s familiar form or feel cold. The furniture wasn’t moving and the curtains weren’t juddering. I registered all of this as my feet hit the floor. “Lisette!”
There was no answer.
I slapped the light switch, but nothing happened. The darkness was thick, the air heavy with silence. My siblings didn’t make a sound.
“Lisette!” I called again.
In the bedroom doorway, I held my arms in front of me. How was it so dark? We’d kept lights on every night since we came back. Who had turned them off? Had the power gone out?
I shouted this time. “Lisette! Vail! Dodie!”
No answer.
I shuffled into the hall, my bare feet sliding with caution on the hardwood floor. I braced a hand on the wall and took a few steps. Where would Lisette have gone? To one of the other rooms? Downstairs? I heard no footsteps, and it made me frantic.
I opened my mouth to shout again, and something brushed my legs.
I flinched, but then I recognized the touch and the sound of small footsteps. A child had run past me, his body brushing the fabric of my pajama bottoms. Ben.
Fear mixed with something else, overwhelming and warm, flooded me. “Ben?” I called. I bent, then lowered to my knees, the way I had always done for him, to be on his level. “Ben? Honey?”
His footsteps were just out of reach. I leaned forward, my arms out in the dark.
“Ben, come here,” I said. I heard the pleading note in my voice, and I didn’t care.
“You have to find me.”
His voice was so clear, so normal. Right there. Ben, a few feet away.
I wasn’t in this dark hallway anymore. I wasn’t chasing my daughter or chasing ghosts.
I was fifteen again, and the world wasn’t all right, but it was more all right than it would ever be again.
I hadn’t known how little time I had, that the next time, or the next, would be the last time I’d see my little brother.
Ben’s feet moved as he came closer. I could make out the shape of him, the familiar outline of his face just out of reach. I could see his eyes. He was looking at me, and his expression was sweet and sad.
“Annie is angry,” he said.
I flinched, because the mention of Sister could still do that to me, even now. “I know. It’s my fault.”
“She says I ruined everything,” Ben said. “She couldn’t get married because of me. What does that mean, Violet?”
“I don’t know, Ben,” I said softly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Not ever. Come here.” I moved forward on my knees, but he took a step back.
“I told her I was sorry,” he said.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I told him. “Come here. Please. Please.”
He didn’t move. I wanted to get closer, but I didn’t want to chase him away. He was as fragile as a wisp of smoke, barely here at all. In the shadows, I watched him frown, thinking. Then he smiled.
“Violet,” he said, “you’re my big sister.”
“Yeah, honey,” I replied. “I am.”
He turned and ran, and I didn’t have time to call after him, to get up and run, because in the dark I heard a familiar clicking sound and a low hiss that made terror beat its wings inside my skull.
Sister was here.
I felt her before she kicked me. I had shifted my weight when she caught me on the left side of my rib cage, sending me off-balance. I rolled and she kicked me again in the kidneys, making me bark with pain. My head smacked against the wall.
“Get out,” she hissed, an angry voice that scraped my brain. “Get out.”
I felt for something, anything to hit her with. I could see only a shadow in the dark, the familiar figure that had stood at the foot of my bed when I was a child. On the edge of my perception, I heard a shout.
Lisette, I thought.
I kicked at Sister as hard as I could. My foot hit something unrecognizable, cold and soaking wet. Water splattered to the floor.
I was screaming, the sound coming out of me by instinct, unfiltered. I kicked at Sister again and missed, then missed again. Hot tears ran down my face. Her foot swung at me and I rolled away, just out of reach.
As I scrambled to get my feet under me, an icy hand gripped the back of my neck. I went still. The sound died in my throat.
There was nothing but yawning darkness, frostbite cold, spiraling inside my mind.
I fought it. I made my voice work, even though my body wouldn’t move. “I hate you so much,” I whispered to the ghost who wouldn’t leave me alone.
Sister hissed in a breath. Her fingers dug in, merciless on my tendons, my nerves, the bones in my neck. She was going to break me. She had infinite strength. More water dropped to the floor.
“I hate you, too,” she said in my head, and one of us screamed. Maybe it was me.
A light came on. Its yellow glow on the floor surprised me, and then Sister’s grip vanished from my neck. I looked up.
My daughter stood in the glowing doorway of Ben’s bedroom, her eyes wild, her face pale.
She held a lamp in her hand. Her gaze fixed on Sister, the horrifying sight of her, and I knew she felt the cold and she heard the clicking, heard Sister’s icy breath.
No one but me had ever seen Sister in the flesh.
Lisette stared, and I watched her jaw set. Her arm drew back. Then she threw the lamp at Sister so hard it smashed against the wall.