by William Cook
I think I might know how.
Samantha is hiding somewhere in the attic. As soon as my parents leave me with my big sister, I’m going upstairs to look for her.
Mum and Dad went out today to see someone and I stayed home with Marcy. She spent the afternoon chatting on the phone with her boyfriend and I went up into the attic. I looked everywhere, hunting with the torch until the batteries died, but found nothing.
No Samantha.
Maybe Mum had thrown her out?
I spent the rest of the afternoon in my bedroom feeling like crap. I had to go to the bathroom and OMG I got my period! At first I thought I’d cut myself with a finger-nail, but no, it has begun. I have finally become a woman, like Marcy. I told her and she just shrugged and told me to ‘plug it up.’ I had already ‘plugged it up’ with a tampon from the box that Mum had put in my top drawer for ‘when it happens.’ Putting the tampon in hurt more than my period. Part of me felt like shouting it out loud, but another part of me was sad. I was nearly a teenager now, time to act grown-up and boring like all the rest of them.
I looked in Henry’s room. The cot and pictures and things were just as they were before he died. It had been nearly a month ago that he had died and now it all seemed like a bad dream. I felt empty inside, as if all my tears had been cried and I had nothing left inside me. I closed the door quietly and lay down on my bed, rubbing my tummy gently to try and ease the dull ache of my period. So much had happened lately. So much I didn’t like or want to happen. I felt very tired and gladly closed my eyes and curled up. Just a quick sleep before Mum and Dad got home. I wished that I wouldn’t think or dream about Henry, as I drifted into a deep sleep.
I didn’t, instead I dreamed that Samantha had returned.
I really feel like I’m losing it. My skin has become dry and I have bad dandruff. The doctor says I’ve got ‘psoriasis of the scalp’ and mild depression. He booked me in with a lady who he says I can talk to about Henry’s death.
I don’t want to talk to anyone about Henry’s death!
Mum has started to get drunk every night after work now and cries herself to sleep. Dad has been working long hours at the office and I hardly see him anymore. Marcy is talking about leaving home and moving in with her boyfriend. My family is started to crumble around me and the dreams are getting worse. A lot worse. Last night when I finally fell asleep, Sam came to visit me again. She slapped me awake, straddling my neck with her clammy rubber legs, her small porcelain hands striking the bridge of my nose, the stench of her breath emanated from her small mouth.
‘Wake up bitch!’ she whispered. Her smile twisted into a weird grimace, flecks of dark blood peppered her bone-white face.
I tried to brush her away, but my arms refused to move. I lay there paralyzed as she stood on my chest, looking down at me with those shiny black eyes twinkling in the shadows. She pulled her little leg back and kicked me under my chin with her sharp porcelain shoes. Kick, kick, kick, kick. . . my teeth rattled in my mouth as I felt blood trickle down my throat.
‘Get up, Cynthia. Marcy wants to talk with you.’
She smiled and it was terrible. Her tiny teeth looked razor-sharp and her mouth bubbled with blood. She skipped down the length of my body and leaped onto the floor. Her little china feet making clicking noises on the floorboards like a tap-dancer.
‘Hurry up bitch, you won’t want to miss this.’
As soon as she leaped from the bed I could move my body once again. I rose from the bed in a daze. Somehow aware that this was a dream and not reality as I seemed to glide across the floor as I followed her. Sam skipped gleefully down the hall. Humming the tune ‘Fur Elise’ by Beethoven as she went. I recognized the song immediately – it was one of my favorite piano recitals from when Mrs. Tartwell used to give me piano lessons. Sam stopped outside Marcy’s bedroom and leaned on the bottom of the open door. It swung open to reveal my sister, completely naked, her head thrown back in ecstasy as she rode her boyfriend Connor who lay beneath her. I stood there transfixed. The only other time I’d seen someone having sex was when I walked in on Mum and Dad when I was ten years old, but at least then they had been covered with a sheet.
My sister and her boyfriend kept groaning and writhing against each other as I stood there. At that moment, I realized how much I disliked my sister. Sam giggled uncontrollably before darting between my legs and skipping back down the hallway to my room. I turned and glided after her. As I entered my bedroom the darkness swelled and enveloped me and my dream ended.
When I woke up this morning I checked Marcy’s room and she was sleeping soundly in her single bed. No Connor. No signs of the wild time I’d dreamed about. No sign of Sam. I brushed my teeth after breakfast and looked in the mirror. The bridge of my nose had a series of small scratches across it and the underside of my chin was bruised and cut.
My alarm clock/radio tells me that I am writing this at 4:AM in the morning. I woke up in the corner of my room, curled into a ball and shaking with terror. The dream was the worst I’ve had yet.
Sam killed Marcy!
I’m afraid to look in her bedroom because the dream was so real. I could see everything, it was almost as if I were a ghost and could see through walls. The dream started in the attic: the lid of an old brown leather suitcase lifted and a small pair of white porcelain hands pushed it up and Sam climbed out. She stood still for a minute and then brushed her lace dress out and straightened her hair, before shifting a box sideways from the wall and entering a cavity space behind it. I could see her hop and jump down the inside of the walls, using the joists and timber supports like a ladder to climb down to the lower floor. She pushed aside a flap in the wall-paper and exited from under the sink in the laundry. She tip-toed silently into the kitchen and climbed up onto the trash-can beside the kitchen sink, managing to hoist herself up onto the bench-top.
I watched her carefully select a small sharp kitchen knife from the block on the bench. She dropped the dish-cloth onto the floor and then deftly dropped the knife down onto the cloth, making only a dull plopping noise as it hit its target. After quickly climbing down from the bench, using the drawer handles as a ladder, she picked up the knife, rested the back of the blade on her shoulder and carried it up the stairs. I watched her slip inside Marcy’s bedroom, the bedroom door slightly moving as she squeezed between the doorframe and the slightly ajar door.
Inside the room, I watched her first throw the knife up on the soft bed-covers and then pull herself up, using the corner folds of the material to reach the top. Marcy lay on her back, softly snoring. Sam pulled the bed-covers back slowly, revealing the top half of my sister's body, clad only in a thin cotton top. Marcy snuffled and turned her head to the side and resumed snoring quietly. Sam inched past her shoulder, the knife perched on her shoulder as it had been when she climbed the stairs, and stepped up onto the pillow and then pulled herself up with one hand onto the top of the head-board, much like I imagined a pirate would when boarding a ship. She carefully inched along the headboard, holding the knife handle with two hands, the blade swaying above her head. The moonlight shone through a crack in the blinds, dancing on the sharp blade as she lifted it higher above her nylon curls. She stood directly over my sister, the sharp blade now pointed down, slightly bending her knees. . . and then she jumped.
‘NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO…’
The blade sunk in deep, right up to the hilt. A queer hissing noise came from my sister as her head reared up and she gasped, the air escaping from her open mouth. Black blood welled up around the handle and spilled across my sister’s heaving chest, both her hands fluttered around the knife handle like dying birds, trying unsuccessfully to pull the blade from her blood-soaked chest. Sam had climbed back up on the headboard and sat there clapping her little porcelain hands together with glee, as she watched my sister’s final death throes. Marcy let out a final gasp that was more of an audible shudder and then slumped into the bed, her head twisted weirdly to one side. Her eyes open and gl
azed, her mouth open. A tiny trickle of dark blood ran from the corner of her mouth onto the pillow. Sam dismounted from the head board and hopped from the pillow onto the bedside table where Marcy’s journal lay.
Sam flipped open the pages, picked up the pen that lay next to the diary and scribbled a few lines. She closed the journal and dropped the pen next to it and leaped down onto the floor, her hard little shoes clicking as she hit the floorboards. She adjusted her lace dress and brushed her nylon locks from her cherub face and then silently walked out of the bedroom, lifting a corner flap of the wallpaper halfway down the hall, before disappearing into the wall cavity behind it and into the dark bones of the sleeping house.
As soon as she disappeared, I woke up. My whole body was trembling and my mind felt like it was going to explode as I sat in the corner of my room, curled into a ball, in the dark shadows.
I checked Marcy. She isn’t dead, thank God for that. I am so tired and my brain hurts. Mum and Dad are fighting again. They haven’t even noticed that it’s a school day and I’m still lying in bed. Mum takes sleeping pills before bed - I’m thinking about stealing some from her so I can get some sleep. I feel so tired, all I can think about is that awful dream last night and what happened to Henry.
Why do I feel so bad?
Sometimes I just want to die
It happened. Marcy is dead. She died just the way it happened in my dream, except no-one believes me of course. Mum found her with the knife sticking out of her chest this morning. The ambulance arrived first, then the police, and then the ambulance officers took her away on a stretcher, her body wrapped up in a gray plastic bag. After they took her away, I stayed in my room and pulled the bed-covers over my head. The police looked through Marcy’s room. I could hear them pulling drawers out and talking to each other in the bedroom next door. They put yellow and black tape on Marcy’s door and said no-one must enter until they finished ‘examining the scene.’ I feel like I’m going crazy – I have no tears, just a deep sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My mind feels broken. I don’t know what to do anymore, I’m so tired.
A day later there was a knock on the door, I came downstairs and saw the detective talking with mum and dad in the living room. He had Marcy’s diary laid out on the coffee table and was pointing to it as he asked my parents questions. I came into the room and sat next to mum. No-one even looked at me – it was as if I were invisible. I looked at the open pages and read what was scrawled on the page in messy child-like hand-writing:
I want to die. I am going to kill myself. Good bye.
I started to cry then. Long horrible sobbing cries – ‘wailing,’ my dad called it – until a doctor arrived at the front door. I had been crying for over an hour and I was exhausted. The doctor pricked my arm with a small syringe and I finally slept. My mother held me in her arms as my eyes closed, rocking back and forth and whispering in my ear: ‘Oh my baby. Oh my baby…’ over and over again.
I woke up this morning feeling really good. No dreams. No nightmares. No Sam. But then I remembered Marcy and I cried again until my tears ran dry. I vomited in the toilet, barely making it to the bowl as my legs felt like bits of wood. I was still very dozy from whatever the doctor had given me. I wiped my chin and looked in the mirror, I looked terrible. Big black rings circled my eyes and I looked a lot older than twelve. I was going to be thirteen in a couple of weeks, but I looked more like a miserable twenty-year old! I knew it was Sam who made me like this, just like I knew it was her who had killed Henry and Marcy. Mum is taking me to a doctor to ‘have a talk’ this afternoon.
Apparently, dad and her are both worried about me. Seems they don’t want to lose their last child. Funny how it has taken the deaths of my brother and sister, for them to finally pay attention to me. Guess I have Sam to thank for that.
I rip the police-tape off Marcy’s door and help myself to her make-up kit. In a few minutes, with the help of some concealer, my face looks pretty much back to normal. The dark rings around my eyes, now disguised by the make-up. I get dressed and grab something to eat from the fridge downstairs, before mum takes me into town to the doctor’s. He asks me lots of questions and then gives mum a prescription for me and a ‘referral form’ for a lady doctor who will help me ‘deal with the deaths of my siblings.’ She can’t help me. As long as Sam is alive, I will never be safe.
I think about mum and dad and everything they’ve been through lately and I begin to worry about them.
What if Sam decides to hurt them?
I don’t think I could take it if something happened to my parents. Marcy and Henry were bad enough but I didn’t really love them. Marcy was always mean to me and wouldn’t share anything, or even talk to me. Henry just cried a lot and took up all of mum’s time. When he came along, my parents seemed to forget about me. I knew what I had to do. I had to find Sam.
I didn’t go to school again today. Instead, I waited at the bus-stop until mum and dad had gone to work and then went home. I had something to do that couldn’t wait any longer. I have begun to see things, not normal things but what I can only describe as visions. I took the tablets last night that the doctor gave me, but they didn’t work. Instead, I had a nightmare that was worse than any I have had before.
I woke at 4am – sweating, trembling, hunched in the corner of my room once again. This time, I dreamed that Sam had killed mum and dad. In the dream I had followed her soundlessly around the house, watching her like I did in the other nightmares. This time she had a small scalpel like the ones that surgeons use on the TV shows. She climbed on my parent’s bed and first slit dad’s throat, and then mum’s. They said nothing, just lay there with blood pumping from their necks, gurgling. Samantha turned and looked at me and then started to giggle insanely. Her small blue eyes blazed in the dark shadows as she licked the scalpel blade clean, blood smeared across her china-white face. And that’s when I woke up – after calming down, I knew that I had to find Sam as soon as possible. I knew I had to destroy her, before she destroyed the rest of my family.
I looked everywhere. I got up in the attic today with dad’s torch and searched through every box and every hiding place I could find. It was hot in the roof and dusty. I found the old leather suitcase I had seen in my dreams, hidden behind an old pile of folded carpet, and knew that it was Sam’s hiding place. I lifted the lid and found a neat little bed made up of a folded blanket, in one corner of the tatty old suitcase was a pile of neatly stacked bones (Possibly rats or mice skeletons), and in the other corner was an old plastic cup filled with trinkets. I emptied the contents of the cup into my palm and pulled out a necklace with a silver locket. Mum and dad had given it to me for my tenth birthday and it had disappeared from my room shortly after. I opened the clasp on the locket and touched the little photos of my mum and dad that sat inside the small frames. The remains of the contents of the cup were familiar also: mum’s lost engagement ring, dad’s father’s stop-watch, Marcy’s hair clip, Henry’s pewter baby-bracelet that Grandma had given him when he was born and thirteen baby teeth. . .
Under the makeshift bed in the suitcase I also found a scalpel, a lighter and a plastic bag with five locks of hair inside. I recognized Marcy’s immediately – long black hair. Henry’s was there too – soft brown curls. Mum’s – like Marcy’s, black but with slight grey streaks and dad’s coarse brown hair with grey flecks, was sitting on top of a lock of my own brown hair.
Something moved behind me in the shadows.
I turned quickly and shone the torch into the darkness. I caught a glimpse of a small figure darting behind one of the timber roof frames, a white-lace dress hem peeked out from behind the joist. I called to her to show herself.
‘Screw you bitch,’ her awful voice whispered from the shadows.
‘I’m gonna kill alllllllll of you!’
With that, she darted out and dove behind a pile of insulation foam before disappearing entirely. I ripped the foam up from the attic floor and walls in a frenzy, but found nothing. The o
nly evidence I could find of her presence was a network of holes in the floorboards which showed where she’d been. After lots of pulling and pushing, I managed to lift the old suitcase down the attic stairs and into my bedroom. I stood in my room looking at it with disgust. It represented Samantha and for that I hated it. I knew that things had to stop. Sam had to be stopped for good and I knew exactly how I was going to do it.
Tonight is the night. Tonight I will destroy that evil bitch, Sam!
She is so evil.
She has ruined my life and she will never stop until we are all dead! Mum and dad have gone to sleep and I have set the suitcase up in the middle of my room. A chopstick from the kitchen drawer, holds the suitcase lid open. It is balanced finely and has a thin length of dad’s fishing line, which I took from the garage, attached to the chopstick. The chopstick is balanced ever-so-carefully, so all I need to do is give it the slightest tug on the line and the lid will close. A trail of trinkets on the floor leads away from the suitcase to my slightly open door. I have a roll of silver tape and a hammer I took from dad’s garage and the lighter I took from Sam’s suitcase, lying next to me in the bed – hidden and waiting. Underneath my bed is the petrol container for the lawn-mower, half-full and there just in case I need it.
I am going to turn my light off and wait now.
I have the fishing line tied around my finger and I have had some of mum’s No-doze tablets that I found in the bathroom.
I am ready.
Now I wait.
I did it! I killed Sam. HA HA HA HA HAH HA HA HAH A HA HAH HA HAH HAH HA HAH HA. . . I can’t stop laughing. I lay there for hours and at 3:33AM she appeared. With one eye slightly open, I saw her standing in the doorway. She stood there for a while, just standing – staring, and then she came forward, bending down to pick up the first trinket off the floor. She looped Henry’s baby bracelet over her shoulder and then picked up the next trinket – mum’s engagement ring. Each step she took in the shadows, brought her closer to the suitcase. Her white-lace dress seemed to glow in the dark light of the morning. She picked up dad’s father’s stop-watch next, teetering slightly with the weight of it, but still managing to bend down and pick up Marcy’s hair clip as well. I could hear her quietly muttering under her breath:
