The Night Sister (15 page)

Piper, Amy, and Margot arrived at the tower just in time to catch Jason scuttling out.

“What are
you
doing here?” Amy barked.

Jason's hair was all messed up, and he was wearing a T-shirt that was about ten sizes too big. He looked like a scarecrow. More than that, he looked just plain scared—eyes wide and frantic, face pale and sweaty.

“Nothing, I was—”

“You were trespassing! That's what you were doing. There are laws against that, you know.”

“There was…someone,” Jason said lamely.

“Where?” Amy demanded.

“In the tower. I saw someone go into the tower. Someone wearing blue.”

Amy pushed past him and shouted, “Anybody here?”

Her voice echoed, sounded far off. Of course there was no reply.

“No one here now, Jay Jay.”

“Well, there was. I saw someone,” he said, but his voice faltered a little.

Piper thought he was probably lying—trying to come up with a good excuse to be in here. Probably he'd just been lurking around, spying, trying to catch Amy and Piper kissing again. Her face burned.

Margot, on the other hand, believed him. She peered at the ground around the tower. “Maybe they left a clue—footprints or something?”

Amy rolled her eyes and jabbed a finger at Jason. “Didn't I warn you about hanging around in here?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Soooo?” Amy drawled, hands on her hips, eyebrows raised.

“So what?” Jason asked.

“So get out of here. Go home. Now!”

He took off like a frightened rabbit, zigzagging his way up the driveway and past the pool, into the field behind it.

Margot bit her lip. “Don't you think that was kinda mean?”

“Mean?” Amy said, eyes dramatically wide as her voice got louder, angrier. “You have to be freaking kidding me!”

Margot shrugged. She was never afraid of Amy's moods, and because of this, she never knew when to back down, when just to let things be.

“I think he's lonely. I feel bad for him. Don't you, Piper?” She looked at her big sister, her eyes saying,
Back me up here.

Piper was silent. She honestly didn't give a crap how lonely Jason Hawke was.

“Look,” Amy said, clearly straining to be patient, “we've got something big happening here. Something secret. All of this—finding the suitcase, the letter, the search for the twenty-ninth room—we can't tell anyone about it, not until we know more. And we can't have some stupid kid nosing around, spying on us. He could wreck everything!”

You're the one who kissed him,
Piper thought, but when Margot protested that she didn't see how Jason would wreck things, Piper turned on her sister.

“Don't be an idiot, Margot. What if he'd found the suitcase? What if he told people about it?” she asked.

Margot shook her head, her face set with its most stubborn look. “He wouldn't. He doesn't care about any of that.”

“Oh, so now you're an expert on what Jason Hawke
cares
about?” Piper said, her voice dripping with disgust.

Margot looked down at her worn flip-flops. Each had a ragged plastic flower fastened to the strap between her toes. She said nothing.

“Come on,” Amy said, tugging on Piper's arm, “let's go check out that suitcase again.”

Piper followed Amy into the tower; Margot came behind them, dragging her feet, looking over her shoulder toward the hillside where Jason had disappeared.

Mr. Alfred Hitchcock

Universal Studios

Hollywood, California

September 12, 1961

Dear Mr. Hitchcock,

Sometimes I worry that I might be going mad. Do you ever feel that way? I believe you have. That maybe it's part of having a creative soul.

Oh, the things I dream about and long for—impossible, maddening things.

The world looks at me and sees a happy girl. A girl bubbling with hope and optimism. So sweet. So innocent. Oh, the things they don't know! Could never guess at!

It's all an act; I am the greatest actress of all!

In this house of long faces and quiet arguments, I am the only bright spot. And I shine. Oh, how I shine and glimmer. Sometimes I catch them all looking at me with dazed half-smiles. A beautiful creature. That's what they see. Someone who can do no wrong. Only Rose suspects the truth. And so I do all I can to avoid her, to never look my sister in the eye.

It's not that difficult, really. She makes it easy. She's become such an odd girl. Always in trouble for one thing or another, no friends of her own, preferring the company of that sad old cow to any human.

Mama says Rose is jealous of me, but I don't think that's the case. I think she genuinely loathes me. But, then again, maybe I'm not so special—Rose seems to loathe everything and everyone. No one blames me for avoiding her.

The highway has come through, as promised, and ruined everything. It's just like what happened to the Bates Motel in your last picture,
Psycho,
only this is real life. My uncle Fenton took me to see that picture three times. It was your most brilliant (not to mention shocking!) yet. I liked it even better than
Vertigo,
which had been my absolute favorite film of yours. Fenton managed to talk the man at the theater into giving him the
Psycho
poster after the engagement was over, and I put it up on my wall, above my bed. Daddy made me take it down, though. He didn't want to have to see Janet Leigh in her underclothes every time he came into our bedroom. Fenton's got it up in his trailer now.

Sometimes I wonder if my letters might have inspired part of your story about the Bates Motel. Did they?

Just like the Bates Motel, no one comes to the Tower Motel anymore. The town of London, my family, the motel—they're all mere ghosts of what they used to be.

I hope you don't mind that I keep sending you letters. I understand you are very busy, and cannot write back, but I do wish I had some way of knowing that you were at least reading my girlish ramblings.

I need to know someone is listening.

Sincerely yours,

Miss Sylvia A. Slater

The Tower Motel

328 Route 6

London, Vermont

Rose sat in the living room, scowling at the balloons and streamers hanging above her head. Uncle Fenton had painted a banner that said
Happy 18th Birthday Sylvie
and hung it on the wall behind the couch. Fenton and Daddy had moved the coffee table, television, and chairs into the dining room, and Mama had set up snacks on the buffet table: meatballs and cocktail frankfurters on toothpicks, deviled eggs, a cheese ball encrusted with pecans. There were bottles of Coca-Cola in a bucket of ice.

Sylvie wore a sleeveless pale-green dress with a matching headband that she'd sewn herself from the same shimmering fabric. She had on the emerald earrings Mama had given her at Christmas, passed down from Oma. Mama had only two pieces of jewelry of her mother's: the emerald earrings and a pearl necklace sent over from England after Oma's death. Mama had never worn either of them—“not really my style,” she would always say with a wry smile, but Rose knew she was saving the jewelry, that it was too special to wear for cleaning motel rooms and mending other people's clothes. That the jewels were to be part of the girls' heritage. Once Sylvie got the earrings, Rose knew the pearls would be hers. Maybe when she turned sixteen, or perhaps even before.

Mama had let Sylvie borrow her red lipstick, and she looked all grown up, hardly recognizable as the young girl who'd once run the chicken circus. Sylvie had invited three of her friends: Marnie, Kate, and Dot. The other girls oohed and aahed over Sylvie's dress and how beautiful and sophisticated she looked. They took dainty bites of the snacks as they chatted about work (Sylvie and Dot both worked at Woolworth's) and a big football game the London Raiders were playing that weekend. Marnie, who was a year younger and still in high school, was going steady with the quarterback. Sylvie didn't have a boyfriend, didn't seem to have any interest in one. When Davy Palmer invited her to the dance last weekend at the Elks Club, she'd told him she had other plans, then just stayed home. Since graduating that summer, Sylvie had helped out at the motel (on the rare occasions when there were guests), worked part-time at Woolworth's, and done some typing for a friend of Daddy's who ran an insurance agency. Every Saturday, she'd go out to the movies with Fenton and Rose. Other than that, she hung around the house, reading magazines and listening to records.

Chubby Checker was on the stereo, and Sylvie begged her guests to do the twist. Daddy and Fenton stood together, smoking, and talking quietly. Mama hovered over the food, flitting back and forth with fresh plates from the kitchen.

Things between her and Daddy had been funny lately. Funny in a bad way that made Rose's stomach hurt when she thought too much about it. Rose could hear them fighting sometimes. About money, about the motel, about lots of things. Sometimes Daddy would stomp off and be gone all night. He'd show up the next morning in his rumpled clothes, and Mama would serve him breakfast, pour coffee into his cup, as if everything were perfectly normal.

Rose stood up and went to stand against the wall, a bottle of Coca-Cola growing warm in her hands. She'd turned fourteen back in May, and though she was younger, she was taller than her sister and outweighed her by a good thirty pounds. She'd chosen an old dress for the party, not one of her best, but one she liked well enough, because the red plaid made her think of Daddy's hunting jacket. And she felt like a hunter. Watching and waiting. Rose had been doing this for years now, desperate to catch her sister in the act. In the act of
what
—of transforming into some sort of beast or insect, as mares will do? Did Rose really believe that? Even now, at fourteen?

Yes.

She would never admit it to a living soul, because surely they would think she was mad. No one would believe that beautiful, perfect Sylvie, with her glowing smile and movie-star looks, the girl who had graduated at the top of her class, could be a monster. And, of course, monsters weren't real, were they? Only in the movies, and then they were blobs or giant insects or werewolves or aliens from outer space. Fenton took Rose and Sylvie to the movies every Saturday, and she'd seen them all. And yet she'd seen nothing that explained what her sister might be.

All she had to rely on was her memories of the stories Oma had told.

“A mare, once transformed, will still have some of its human traits and memories,” Oma explained. “They can recognize people they know, places they've been. But even if they wouldn't hurt a fly in human form, once they've changed, they become very dangerous indeed.”

Rose imagined her sister, waking up in the night in some other form—not a beautiful luna moth, but something far more dangerous, something that showed her true nature—a monstrous moth creature with compound orbs that sparkled with hints of Sylvie's own bright-blue eyes, great leathery wings, and a sharp proboscis meant for tearing into flesh and sipping blood.

Sylvie still disappeared from their room at least once a week—lately, more. But Rose was never able to catch her in the act. Rose was the only one who got caught, time after time, while Sylvie always managed to find her way back to bed. Rose knew that if she wanted to expose Sylvie she'd have to be trickier. She'd have to think like a hunter.

“Come on, Rose, dance with us,” Sylvie called out. She and her friends were still doing the twist to that Chubby Checker song, and even Mama and Daddy and Fenton had joined in. Mama danced stiffly, but Daddy smiled at her the whole time as they twisted, arms swinging, hips gyrating, feet pivoting on the hardwood floor.

“Yeah, you should see my little sis,” sang Chubby Checker, and then, as if on cue (wasn't everything Sylvie did carefully choreographed to look perfect somehow?), Sylvie danced over and took Rose's hand. Everyone was watching, waiting to see. Would the awkward, ugly sister who couldn't dance join the radiant one? Or would she shake her head, pout, and refuse to budge, like a grotesque plaid ladybug? That was what people expected.

I'll surprise them all,
Rose thought, smiling widely, setting her soda down, and moving out into the middle of the room with her sister. Rose didn't follow Sylvie's movements the way everyone else did (or tried to); instead, she invented her own, faster and more frantic, a version that involved flinging her hair back and forth and swinging her whole body. It felt good to move like this. Like she didn't give a damn. Like she was the girl who was full of surprises. Everything was a blur of light and color: the balloons Scotch-taped to the ceiling, the pink and white streamers, even the three girls who were tittering as they danced in a loose circle with Uncle Fenton. Her parents seemed to move in slow motion, their eyes on her for once; and Sylvie, who was fluttering in her green dress, looked less like a girl and more like the luna moth Rose had found once out in the tower.

“Rose, dear,” Mama said, stepping forward and placing her hand on Rose's arm, “I'm afraid you're going to hurt yourself.”

And the room erupted with laughter. Rose stopped dancing; when she pushed the hair away from her eyes, she saw that everyone was watching her and laughing.

Damn them all to hell and back again,
she thought.

“That was some dancing, sis,” Sylvie said, laughing, covering her mouth with her hand.

And damn you most of all,
Rose thought, backing away, to her corner and her warm bottle of soda.

Sylvie went over to choose another record—Elvis this time, “Stuck on You.” She asked Fenton if he'd dance with her, and the two of them moved into the center of the room, both glancing Rose's way. Sylvie said something to him, and he doubled over laughing; when he stood back up, his face and ears were bright red. He collapsed on the couch, still chuckling, watching Sylvie and her friends dance.

Rose went to the window and looked down the driveway at the motel sign. They hardly ever had guests nowadays. Not since the highway came through last year, ruining everything. The truck drivers took the interstate now, as did the families on vacation, the tourists coming in droves. They'd even lost many of their regulars: Bill Novak, who'd come from Maine with a truck full of lobsters and fish; Joseph the shoe salesman; the families who had come each summer, eager to see the circus and look at the tower again.

It wasn't that Daddy didn't try. He sent out more flyers, paid for advertisements in every newspaper and magazine he could find. He even tried to put a motel sign along the highway, at the London exit, but the highway department tore it down. No matter what he did, the cars buzzed by.

Rose was no idiot. She knew that they were going broke. That they'd long ago eaten through whatever meager savings they'd had. Mama had taken on seamstress work, and Sylvie was always looking for more hours at Woolworth's and the insurance agency.

Fenton now worked at a garage in town, repairing cars and driving the tow truck. And Daddy dreamed up new schemes, new ways to bring people back. But nothing he tried worked. No one came to see the chicken circus, the Tower of London, or Lucy the state cow. And Lucy wasn't doing well—she'd been losing weight, sleeping all the time. This morning, Rose couldn't even coax her to eat her breakfast.

Earlier today, Mama had been at work on the latest edition of
The
London Town Crier.
It would be a thin issue, and the big news was the closing of Libby's Market; people would now have to drive all the way into Barre to buy groceries. Mama tried to balance the bad news with one of her best recipes—this one for lemon-chiffon pie, which promised to be as light as a cloud.

The dancing was over now, and they all milled around the snacks.

“Presents,” ordered Daddy, thrusting a small, rectangular wrapped gift into Sylvie's hand. Sylvie removed the bow and tugged gently at the shiny blue paper. It was a pen-and-pencil set in its own velvet-lined case.

“For writing down all your fancy thoughts,” Daddy said.

“Oh, Daddy, it's perfect,” Sylvie exclaimed, throwing her arms around Daddy's neck and kissing his cheek.

“This one's from me,” Fenton said, pulling a large, flat package from behind the couch. Sylvie tore at the paper. It was a framed poster for
North by Northwest
—Cary Grant, an intense, determined look on his handsome face, running from the biplane bearing down on him from behind.

“Oh, Fenton,” Sylvie said. “Thank you!”

He smiled sheepishly. “My buddy at the Paramount saved it for me.”

“Mine next,” said Mama, and she came forward and handed Sylvie a much smaller box.

Rose had a sick feeling in her stomach as Sylvie opened the gift, all eyes fixed on her.

“Oh, Mother!” Sylvie gasped as she pulled out a string of pearls—Oma's pearls.

Rose felt a scream building inside her, but her throat was too tight to let it escape. Her face burned; her whole body surged with furious heat.

It couldn't be! Sylvie had the earrings. The pearls were Rose's. But now Sylvie had both.

“It isn't fair,” Rose choked out.

“What's that, Rosie?” Daddy asked.

“That necklace was meant to be mine,” she said. “Oma would have wanted me to have it. Sylvie didn't even like her.”

She loved me best.

The room was silent, everyone looking her way. Sylvie's three friends looked uncomfortable, Fenton chewed his lip, and Mama was staring at Rose as if she were a stray dog soiling her living room. Sylvie looked down at the pearls. And Rose was sure that, just for an instant, she could see through her sister's disguise: there, holding the pearls, stood a terrible insect with bulging round eyes, shimmering green wings, and mouth parts that clicked as they rubbed together.

“I hate you,” Rose spat at her sister. “I see what you are, even if no one else does!”

She stormed out of the room and back toward the kitchen, choking back sobs. There, in the center of the kitchen table, was the three-layer devil's-food cake with white icing that Mama had made.
Happy 18th Sylvie
was written across it in careful cursive.

Rose heaved out a sob. The music came back on in the living room. The Marcels singing “Blue Moon.”

…you saw me standing alone

Without a dream in my heart

It was no good and Rose knew it. No one was ever going to see Sylvie for what she really was. Not until Rose showed them. It was all up to her.

And she knew just what to do.

“There's only one way to catch a mare,” Oma had said. Now she was glad that she'd paid such careful attention as a little girl.

Rose raised her arm and drove her fist into the cake so hard that she heard the plate beneath it crack. Then she lifted her fingers to her mouth, coated with cake and icing. She licked off her hand as she moved to the kitchen door and outside, her teeth aching from the sweetness.