The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  Sinead heard Brigid turn on the shower in her bathroom. Brigid had only started showering before bed a few months earlier, to imitate her older sister. This infuriated Sinead generally; tonight it felt like a slap in the face. Sinead snatched up the casserole dish and took the withering lasagna up to Brigid’s messy pink room. She carved it up with a butter knife and hid the uneven squares under Brigid’s pillow, beneath her covers, in her shoes, under her dresser—anywhere it would either squish or rot. This was a cruel thing to do after Sinead had spent all day comforting and being comforted by her sister. But the comforting also served to remind Sinead that it was just the two of them now, and that she could no longer enjoy the position of invisible middle child. She had embraced this identity with gusto—her favorite book was The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo—but now she was the oldest. In the books she’d read, the oldest was bossy and bullying, or foolish and frivolous. In their family, the oldest was either sick, or played pranks.

  As Sinead stashed the lasagna in the tradition of her dead brother, she began to feel as if she were being watched. She whirled around, sure that she would find Brigid in her pink bathrobe, her hair piled on her head in a towel, like women in old movies and their mother. But the shower was still roaring, and Sinead found herself staring at her reflection in the mirror.

  Except it wasn’t her reflection. The face was Ian’s.

  Then it wasn’t. Sinead took several gulping breaths. One of her aunts had sent her books about grieving, so she’d known that she might end up hallucinating. She must be hallucinating.

  This did not stop her, however, from snatching up the dirty pan, running into her room, and locking the door behind her. She threw the pan beneath her bed, jumped under the covers, and turned off the light. Then she switched it on again and covered her mirror with a sheet. But that really made her room look haunted, so she took the sheet down and stared at her reflection, willing her brother’s face to appear. The reflection remained her own, which made her feel stupid. Stupid was a familiar, oddly comforting feeling.

  Brigid sat on her floor in the dark, drawing a picture. She used her tiny reading light, which was designed for airplanes, though Brigid had gotten far more use from it during long waits in the dim, fluorescent hospital. She almost missed sitting in the boring corridors, compared to funerals and evil sisters. Bits of lasagna were still mushed into her hair, and Brigid was drawing a picture of her sister’s head on fire. Sinead’s curly hair stuck out in all directions, like she’d been hit by lightning. Brigid added her parents to the picture as little stick figures, off in the distance. They didn’t do anything about the flames.

  Brigid felt bewildered and hurt by the lasagna bombing. She did, however, recognize that a prank war had begun, and she had to respond in kind or risk humiliation. Unfortunately, she had the younger sibling’s handicap of not having seen as much television or read as many books as her older siblings, so she was reduced to deflecting the same prank back at them. For a time, Brigid had experimented with turning the other cheek, but this had only resulted in more spiders in her bed, more covert arm-twists, and more stuffed animals fed to the neighbor’s dog. Clearly, Sinead was attempting to take over Ian’s turf, and the only effective response was swift, brutal retaliation.

  Brigid completed three more meditative, vengeful pictures of her sister before quiet settled over the house. When she was sure everyone was asleep, she slid open her door and crept down to the kitchen. The clean, shiny counters reflected the blue light thrown off by the oven clock. Brigid was old enough to understand that her house was full of “nice” things, though “nice” to her meant “alienating and not to be touched.” When Brigid opened the fridge, a chill crept along the back of her neck, like someone was blowing on it. But the kitchen was empty and silent and blue.

  The white light of the fridge was warm and calming, so Brigid left the door ajar after pulling out Sinead’s special orange-mango juice. No one knew why Sinead liked this juice so much—their mother blamed their father, other mothers, television ads—but everyone else in the house thought it was nasty, and only Sinead ever touched it. Brigid left the juice on the counter, then got up on a stool to retrieve salt and hot sauce from an upper cabinet. She shook in as much hot sauce as she could, then poured in some salt. After shaking the mixture together, she examined its color and consistency in the fridge light. Satisfied, Brigid placed the bottle back on the top shelf exactly how she’d found it, with its label facing the milk. She took a moment to admire her handiwork and shut the door with a schuck.

  Ian stood on the other side of it. Brigid stumbled away from him, and put her back against the counter. He had hair again, the straight, tufty blond stuff he’d grown in after the first time he’d gotten better, not the curls from the pictures before Brigid was born. He wore shorts and a polo shirt, like he was on his way to the country club. But his face was pallid and green, and his eyes were ringed by the deep, scary circles that had appeared right before he died. Brigid didn’t feel fear, or even shock. All she could think was, I thought I’d never see you again.

  Brigid became aware of a soft hissing sound. Her elbow had knocked over the salt, and it was pouring onto the floor. When she looked back up, Ian was gone.

  Brigid forced herself to go to the closet, find a dustpan and broom, and sweep up every last grain of salt. Seeing her ghost brother was terrifying, but having her father find salt all over the floor was equally scary, if not more so. Once the floor was clean, her terror surged back and she sprinted up the stairs.

  As she rounded the bend, she nearly crashed into her mother. For a flicker of a moment, Brigid was sure she’d been caught, but then her mother looked over Brigid’s shoulder and said, “Ian, you better go wash the fishes.”

  Brigid realized her mother was back on Ambien. She had foolishly hoped her mother would sleep better once she stopped spending every waking hour at the hospital, but apparently not. She pressed herself to the wall and let her mother sleepwalk down the stairs.

  Despite the fact that she was furious with Sinead, Brigid jimmied open her door—Sinead kept it locked, though they had figured out how to break into each other’s rooms years ago—and jumped into her bed. Sinead woke with a groan and Brigid hissed, “Shhhhhh!”

  “Euh?” Sinead said.

  “I saw Ian,” Brigid said.

  Sinead stiffened, then put her arms around her little sister. She noticed her hair smelled like tomato sauce. “I saw him too,” Sinead said.

  “What are we going to do?” Brigid whispered.

  Sinead thought about the brave older sisters she’d read about in books and said, “We’re going to help him.”

  Sinead didn’t actually believe in her own bravery, but her borrowed stock phrase seemed to calm Brigid. It calmed Sinead a little bit, too. When Ian was alive, there had been very little either of his sisters could do for him. When he was well, they had tortured him, or tortured each other; as a result, when he was sick, every earnest gesture had felt forced. They had loved their brother, but they hadn’t liked him much. Now here he was, turning to them, of all people. Of course they would do right by him. Of course they would help.

  Sinead woke early and cleaned up Brigid’s room while Brigid caught up on sleep in Sinead’s bed. She shook lasagna out of Brigid’s shoes and scraped off everything that remained under Brigid’s covers. Then she stripped the bed and took the whole mess downstairs. She put the sheets in the washing machine, pushed the rotting lasagna down the garbage disposal, and scrubbed the pan until her fingers hurt. Finally, when the evidence of her crime had been thoroughly erased, she let herself have breakfast. She poured herself some Rice Krispies, sliced up a banana, and sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop.

  Technically, it was a school day, but Sinead and Brigid were taking a “leave” of a few weeks. This was supposed to help them recover from the trauma of Ian’s death, though Sinead suspected it was actually so the other students wouldn’t have to deal with their uncomfortable g
rief. Sinead had felt miserable and adrift in the days following Ian’s death, but now that she had a purpose, those feelings disappeared. She felt happy, even privileged, to be sitting at home in the morning eating cereal and a banana and googling “ghost brother,” though this only brought up television-show recaps and one site about “Haunted Gettysburg.”

  Brigid found her sister poring over her computer in the kitchen, a half-eaten banana by her side. Brigid had been deemed too young for a laptop, which filled her with uncharacteristic fury. She casually opened the fridge and found that the mango juice hadn’t been touched. Brigid appreciated that Sinead had cleaned up her room, but she felt uneasy letting her sister off entirely. She let the mango juice be.

  “A ghost comes back because of unfinished business,” Sinead said, without looking up from the screen.

  Brigid tried and failed to think of what unfinished business their brother might have. In all the books she’d read, “unfinished business” meant things like buried treasure or unsolved murders, which she didn’t suppose Ian had any of. “We should search his room,” Brigid said.

  The sisters went up to Ian’s room, which no one had opened since he went back to the hospital for good. Sinead carried a thermometer and a compass, which the internet had told her were useful for detecting paranormal presences. The thermometer was to register sudden drops in temperature. It was less clear what the compass was supposed to do, but Sinead imagined it would spin wildly, like in movies about the North Pole.

  Ian’s room had always been neat and uncluttered, utterly unlike his sisters’. His dresser was lined with soccer trophies, and his sneakers stood in matched pairs beneath his bed. The clock still blinked midnight from a late-summer power outage. His bed was made. It looked like a display room.

  “Anything?” Brigid said, nodding toward Sinead’s tools. Sinead shook her head in what she imagined was a curt, professional manner. The thermometer did not reveal any strange differences in temperature, and the compass did not point anywhere but a woozy north.

  Sinead remembered reading somewhere, or maybe seeing in a movie, that you had to ask ghosts what they wanted. They went into Brigid’s room, where Sinead had first seen Ian’s ghost. Brigid’s bed lay bare, and a few of her stuffed animals were piled to the side of it, wounded with tomato-sauce stains. Sinead took this in and finally offered a mumbled “Sorry about that.” Brigid shrugged and said nothing, trying to hide the anger over the lasagna and guilt over the mango juice warring inside her.

  Not that Sinead was paying attention. She seemed satisfied by their stupid exchange and had turned her full attention to the mirror.

  Sinead stared for a long time. Her eyes glazed over, which blurred her features, but she never saw her brother’s face looking back. Occasionally Brigid would ask, “Anything?” and Sinead would blink her eyes, rub them, and say, “Nothing.”

  Sinead and Brigid went to the kitchen next, the site of Ian’s second appearance. Brigid opened and closed the refrigerator door a few times, making sure that didn’t summon him, but she was too terrified Sinead would ask why she was in the kitchen to keep up the investigation for very long. Sinead blithely assumed Brigid was sneaking snacks.

  For lunch they microwaved giant chunks of Mexican lasagna and leftover caterer chicken fingers. Their mother was home, but it didn’t even occur to them to ask her for lunch. During Ian’s last few months, their mother was usually busy taking care of him. When he died, they had briefly hoped she would recover her interest in their well-being, but instead her caring engines shut down completely. She spent whole days in her room; the girls had no idea what she did in there. If they put their ears to the door, they heard the television, but they had the eerie feeling it wasn’t being watched.

  When the leftovers were ready (re-ready?), Sinead opened up her laptop and logged on to Facebook. Sinead never used her account, since she was already sick of everyone at their school and couldn’t imagine spending her free time reading their stupid updates. But Ian had been obsessed with Facebook, forever adding friends and commenting on pictures and taking polls. None of his own status updates ever had to do with chemo, or the hospital, or his family, which were just annoying distractions from being normal and popular. His updates were bizarre hypothetical questions about Batman or the 300 or Boondock Saints. Any comments pertaining to “good thoughts!” or “HUGZ” were deleted, unless they were posted by someone really hot.

  “I’m going to send him a message,” Sinead announced.

  “On Facebook?” Brigid said.

  “Ian loved Facebook,” Sinead said. “Maybe he’d rather communicate that way.”

  Ian and Sinead were not Facebook friends, but he let anyone who went to their school see his profile. Even though his last update was weeks old, his page was full of activity. New wall posts filled in the top. Someone had posted a picture of Ian with his arms around two girls Sinead didn’t even recognize, sitting in a hot tub at someone’s pool party. He was grinning like he’d gotten away with something. Was he already sick by then? Or did he still think he was in remission? There were also messages on the page, “IANO WELL MISS U!!!” and “I KNOW UR A REAL ANGEL NOW!” The “angel” messages were a million times worse than “good thoughts!” or “HUGZ.” Sinead felt an overpowering urge to tell these kids exactly which species of idiot they were, but the most insightful commentary she could come up with in her blind fury was “FUCK U.” She moved to post it, but she felt Brigid staring at her. She looked at Brigid, who shook her head.

  Sinead sighed and started a new message. She typed, “Ian, r u haunting the house?” She pressed send. Then she opened another one and added, “Why?”

  They ate their Mexican lasagna very slowly, watching Sinead’s Facebook inbox like it was extremely boring television. No new messages arrived.

  The girls were in Sinead’s room creating an altar out of Ian’s trophies when they heard their mother banging dishes in the kitchen. If it had been their father making angry sounds, they would have stayed put. But with their mother, it was better to get the confrontation over with.

  “You’re not on vacation,” their mother said as they came down the stairs. She wore glasses, a rumpled blue sweat suit, and, weirdly, makeup. She shoved their dirty dishes across the counter. “What if Daddy came home?”

  Brigid immediately pulled her stool in front of the sink and started scrubbing the lasagna pan. Sinead stared very hard at her mother, trying out her telekinetic powers. She had just hit puberty, right? Maybe Ian wasn’t Ian at all, but a poltergeist that had been unleashed by her hormones.

  Her mother stared back at her, looking both dazed and furious. The side of her neck quivered, and there were huge circles under her eyes. Her mouth tensed, like she was about to say something nasty. Instead, her thin face collapsed, like a building imploding, and she started to cry.

  Shame burned Sinead like poison. She snatched a dish from Brigid and rubbed it dry with a towel. Their mother went into the bathroom and both girls pretended not to hear her sob. When Ian was home, their mother never acted like this. It was only when he was at the hospital. Now, instead of Ian’s death breaking the spell, he would be at the hospital forever. Brigid kept washing dishes, which Sinead dried and put away. They took a long time doing this, to kill time until their mother finally emerged from the bathroom.

  That night, the sisters convened in Sinead’s room to watch clips from Real Ghosthunters, a YouTube show Sinead had found. They were huddled in the dark around the laptop, taking mental notes about plasma, when they heard the garage door open. They held their breath, praying for their father to just come upstairs. Instead, his footsteps stomped around the kitchen. The master bedroom door opened, and their mother rushed out. After a moment of loaded silence in the kitchen, their voices exploded. The girls made out single words: “pigsty,” “brats,” “son.” Their father pounded up the stairs, thundered past Sinead and Brigid, and slammed the bedroom door. Their mother’s footsteps came next. They were slow and quiet. They
heard her go into Brigid’s room; then there was a knock at Sinead’s door.

  Their mother’s arms were full of Brigid’s white sheets, which Sinead had put in the wash and then forgotten. She had only added detergent, not bleach, and the soggy sheets were still covered in smears of red tomato sauce and greasy faux-cheese blots.

  “What is this?” she said. Her voice was tight and quiet, the worst possible tone.

  Sisterly solidarity was running strong, but it was still vulnerable to attack. If neither of them said anything, both would be punished. Traditionally, this had been the route the siblings took, because Ian believed in, and enforced, a no-ratting policy. The one time Sinead ever bucked it, Ian told everyone at school she wet the bed. For a month, everyone called her “Pee-nead.” But the one time Brigid had told on Sinead, both Sinead and Ian conspired to punish her, first by locking her in the attic, then by tricking her into eating a bag of their father’s favorite cookies. When he found the bag in Brigid’s room, she lost snacking privileges for a month. As a result, Sinead had come to view the policy as a necessary evil, but Brigid hated it. If there was a moment for Brigid to change the status quo, this was it. It didn’t matter how nice Sinead had been to her today; she had spent every other day being mean, and if Brigid did nothing things would go back to the way they’d been.

  “Sinead put lasagna in my bed,” Brigid said.

  Sinead stiffened next to her sister, and Brigid shrank away. The instant the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them terribly. Their mother stared at Sinead with murder in her eyes, but the look she gave Brigid was not much kinder.