“Don’t you know me, Sissy? Don’t you recognize me at all?”

I staggered backwards as she advanced towards me, her little hand, streaked with blood and dirt, held out before her, reaching out towards me.

No, I didn’t recognize her. The pink seersucker dress with the duck on the collar, I recognized. The rag doll

(Pie, she called it Pie)

held limply in her left hand, I recognized. The tiny, broken face? The white of her skull peeking out from just below her hairline? The empty, gore-filled eye socket? The tiny foot in its equally tiny patent leather Mary Jane that bent at an awkward angle as she dragged it along behind her?

That, I didn’t recognize. No. I didn’t recognize her at all.

“Sissy?” she whined as she advanced upon me. “Sissy, can’t you see me? Please tell me you recognize me.” A trickle of blood ran from her fingers and down the doll’s cloth arm, staining the sleeve of her doll’s pale purple smock that our mother had worked so hard to make.

I shook my head and continued backing up, my hands searching blindly behind my back for something to defend myself with. The back of my thigh hit the end table. The blue, antique vase that had stood erect on that table for some 20 years fell to the ground and shattered. I could feel the pieces digging into the soles of my shoes as I walked over them.

“Sissy…”

Sissy. Back before I had been Margot Greene, I had been Sissy. She had come up with this term of endearment when her two-year-old mouth hadn’t been able to form and pronounce the word “Margot” correctly. “Sissy” proved easier for her to handle.

And so it had stuck. I was Sissy to everyone. Our mother, my teachers, my friends. Just Sissy. She even continued called me Sissy well after she was able to say “Margot”.

Now, I’m just Margot. 37-year-old Margot Greene. Born and raised in Somerset, Massachusetts, now a denizen of Ripley, West Virginia where I’m the general manager at our local Walgreen’s, not the most glamorous job, but it pays the bills. I sure as hell am not the Margot Greene being held hostage in her late mother’s Victorian home in Somerset, Massachusetts by her sister that has been dead for almost 30 years.

But I am the same Margot Greene. And she was the same Adie, if not as well preserved as when I last saw her. But yes, it was Adie.

She stopped where she was and stood in the middle of the third floor hallway, the trail of dark blood that she had left in her wake staining the carpet runner a deeper shade of maroon. I watched in amazed horror as tears began to leak out of her remaining eye.

“Why don’t you recognize me, Sissy?” whimpered. She rubbed at her face with her fist, the doll’s hand still firmly grasped in her own. It was such a human gesture, I couldn’t help myself. I halted my retreat and stood my ground, just a few feet away from what was once my baby sister.

“I see you, Adie. Don’t cry… Sissy’s here…”

Adie slowly lowered her hand and looked up at me. Sniffing hard, she asked, “Really? ‘Sthat the truth?” disbelievingly.

I nodded. “Yes, it’s the truth.”

She smiled. Only three teeth remained in her mouth. Three that I could see, anyway. She hadn’t even lost her first milk tooth at the time of her death and now she had none. I wonder how much she got from the Tooth Fairy, I thought stupidly. It’s funny what thoughts pop into your head when you’re out of your mind.

I winced as she flung her little body against mine, her bloody face colliding with my hipbone and smearing blood across my t-shirt. She squeezed her arms around my waist and hugged me tightly. I forced my self to stroke her brown hair with my shaking hands. Clumps of it came out in my fingers. I tried my best to suppress the urge to gag but a guttural sound still made its way up my throat.

She raised her head, her chin resting on my stomach. “What’s wrong, Sissy?” Her one eye looked worried. “Do I scare you?” she whispered.

I caressed her cheek with the back of my hand. “No, sweetie. Never.” That was a lie: I was panic-stricken.

“Good!” Adie seemed convinced of my denial and smiled again, no teeth this time, thank heavens. If I had had to see her blackened gums one more time, I might’ve just thrown up on her. She squeezed me firmly once more. “And now that you’re here, we can finish playing!”

I looked down at her, confused, and grabbed her slender arms around her biceps, squishing the poofy sleeves of her dress down a bit with my hands. “Playing? Playing what, dear?”

She looked at me like I was just acting dumb. “No, silly! Chasey! We were playing chasey, but I fell, so we never got to finish our game. You’re still it.” She poked me in the chest with her little forefinger not attached to the hand she still held her doll in. I was disgusted to see that not much of her forefinger remained, just a white slip of bone.

That’s right. We had been playing chasey when she fell. But “fell” was putting her death mildly.

Adie had been hiding from me in the old oak tree in the field out behind our house. She was sitting on one of the tree’s uppermost branches. I could hear her laughing, but I pretended like I didn’t and continued the game.

“I wonder where Adie has gone!” I had exclaimed in mock wonder.

(giggling from up in the tree)

“Is she…” I ran over to the tree and put my hands on its bark. “Behind the tree?” I jumped to the other side of the trunk, grabbing empty air between my fingers.

(more giggling)

“No? Hmmm…” I tapped my finger on my chin as I paced around the base of the tree. “Now where could she be?” I ran back towards our house, purposefully making sure Adie could see me as I made a fool of myself looking for her under rocks and behind bushes.

I turned around, thinking that the game had gone on long enough and that it was my turn to show her what real hiding was. I even remember thinking about all the places I was wanted to hide

(the trunk in the attic, the cupboard, under my bed, our mother’s closet)

when I heard the crack. I looked up towards Adie’s hiding spot in the tree just in time to see the surprise on her face as she fell at least 20 feet, head first to the ground below.

She seemed to fall in slow-motion. Her arms flailing as if she were attempting to fly, her mouth, wide and screaming as the ground loomed closer and closer before her eyes. And then she hit with a thud, her body collapsing in on her neck like an accordion. She bounced once and then was still.

I ran to where she lay and fell to my knees next to her body. My hands shook as I held them over her face, her face that was turned towards me while the rest of her was facing the other direction. I withdrew my hands and held them over my mouth, on the verge of screaming, but not being able to at the same time. My eyes roamed over her, looking for signs of life, signs that had been so obvious just a moment before,

(giggling, giggling from up in the tree)

but were now gone, and quite apparently, not coming back.

Her face was nothing more than a bloody pulp. I brushed away the strands of hair that had stuck to the gore, snatching my hand back and hugging it against my chest when my fingers brushed against bone.

Tears slipped down my cheeks. I screamed as I cradled her broken head in my lap, not caring that her blood was soaking my dress to the point that I could actually feel it running down my legs.

I don’t remember how long I had to scream until our mother finally came. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Her reaction was the same as mine: falling to her knees beside her deceased daughter, hysterical screaming. The tears literally poured from her eyes.

I wiped the tears from my eyes with the heel of my hand but almost as soon as those were gone, more sprang up to take their place. “She fell…” I said hoarsely. Mother said nothing, just continued wailing.

(“My baby! Oh, my poor, sweet baby!”)

Mother lifted Adie’s head gently from my lap and put it in her own. “Go… Call an ambulance,” she gasped between sobs.

I stood and sprinted back up to our house, slamming open the gate that separated the field from our yard so forcefully a few of the wooden posts fell to the ground with a clatter…

The paramedics and the police came and went and Adie’s body had been removed from beneath the tree and put into its own little temperature-controlled drawer at the morgue. The doctor said she hadn’t suffered.

Her funeral was a few days later. The morticians had washed her face and straightened her neck. You could barely see the minute stitches that held her face together. And they dressed her in her favorite dress: pink seersucker with the little duck on the collar. Her doll was placed with her in her tiny coffin, her fingers laced together over the doll’s body.

But now, here she was, staring up at me, her one eye pleading. “Please, Sissy. I want to play chasey.”

I shook my head, her voice pulling me out of my reverie. “No, Adie… I’m too old to play.” She frowned. “Besides, you were too good at hiding. I’d never be able to find you,” I added, trying to lighten the mood, which seems like an idiotic thing to do considering the whole scene wasn’t very light to start with. I stroked her cheek again.

She shied away from my hand and released her grip around my waist. “Play,” she ordered coldly.

My eyebrows shot up. “I told you, I don’t want to,” I returned, putting my hands on my hips, feeling very much like a child myself.

Her lips curled back into a snarl. “I said PLAY!” she shrieked as pushed me backwards with both of her hands. I was too startled to think to try and catch myself. I hit the floor, the old, wooden floorboards groaning under the sudden impact.

She stood over me, her doll’s face level with my own. For the first time, and with some measure of amusement, I noticed that, like Adie, the doll also only had one eye. I could barely make out the outline of my reflection in its shiny button depths. I grunted as I stood up, rubbing my backside. “Adie, that wasn’t very nice,” I told her like the proper reprimanding older sister should.

She pouted and folded her arms across her chest, wiping even more blood across her dress front. “You’re not very nice, Sissy,” she said in her mater-of-fact little kid voice. “You won’t play with me!” She stomped her unbroken foot.

“No, you’re right, I won’t.” I crossed my arms as well. “Do you want to know why I won’t play with you?” She just continued pouting and staring angrily at me. “I’ll tell you. I won’t play with you because I can’t play with you. You’re dead!” I was on the verge of hysterics now, an emotion that up until that point had escaped me. “And you’re not here, and I can’t see you, and I don’t RECOGNIZE YOU!”

I watched her face for a sign, any sign, that what I had said had struck a chord within her. My chest heaved and I slowly lowered my arms into a slightly more defensive position.

“I can make you play,” she said. “I have ways of making you play with me.” Her one eye glared at me with glacial indifference.

“I…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “I don’t want to play. Please…”

She began slowly progressing towards me once again, except this time, her face was awash with maleficent glow that had not been there previously. “I don’t care if you want to play, Sissy.” She spat the once familiar name out of her mouth as if it were on fire. “Now I’m going to give you ten seconds to hide.”

“But… Adie, I-”

“Ten!” She took a step towards me.

“Please, I don’t-”

“Nine!” She took another step forward, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“Stop! I told you I don’t want to play!”

“Eight!” Another step forward. “I suggest you start running, Sissy.”

I took her advice and began to run. First, backwards, keeping my eyes on her to make sure she wasn’t about to jump me from behind. But Adie seemed to be playing the game by the rules, and was now standing still, with a somewhat goofy grin on her mangled face. I turned and ran forward down the hall, the carpet runner bunching under my sneakers.

I tried the first door I came to,

(My room. This used to be my room.)

but it was locked. I distinctly remember leaving all the doors unlocked before I left the night before and clipping their skeleton key on my key ring, which was in my purse downstairs on the kitchen counter. I rattled the doorknob and looked back towards Adie.

“Seven!”

I ran to the next room, but that door was locked as well. “What are you doing?” I screamed at her. “Unlock the doors!”

She shook her head. “No can do, Sissy. Six!”

I spun in a circle. There was nowhere else to go. She blocked my only exit. I couldn’t hide. “You’re not playing right!” I yelled. “Let me hide!”

“Five!”

The balcony. It was a last ditch effort, but I ran for the French doors at the end of the hall anyway. If I was lucky, I could jump the railing and climb down the tree that loomed over the balcony. If I could get outside, I might get away.

“Four!”

My hand touched the doors’ levers reluctantly, expecting them to be locked. To my

(Relief?)

surprise, they weren’t. I flung them open, causing their wooden frames to hit the siding of the house and a few of the glass panels to crack.

“Three!” I could hear her call from behind me.

My momentum took me to the edge of the balcony. My hands gripped the rusted railing, white paint chipping off and sticking to my palms. There was the tree. It seemed farther away than I remembered. I looked down to the ground below and then back up to the tree. There was no way I could make the jump. I was stuck.

“Two!”

I turned, my hands remaining curled round the railing. She was still standing in the hallway, staring at me with her one, glassy eye.

“One.”

In the blink of an eye, she stood before me, making the trek down the hallway in half a second. “Ready or not, here I come!” she whispered gleefully as she pushed me over the railing. I watched her smiling face grow smaller as I fell to the ground.

The pain hit me all at once, spreading outward from my back to all my appendages. Get up! I thought. But I soon realized I couldn’t. All I could do was stare up at the tree branches as they shifted in the wind and wince as each breath became harder and harder to come by.

And then she was standing above me, a concerned look on what remained of her face. “Oh, Sissy!” she said to me. “How clumsy of you!”

I looked up at her in fear, unable to say anything or defend myself from the shovel she held in her hand. The doll that used to occupy that hand had been abandoned for the moment.

“But you didn’t hide. And that’s breaking the rules.” She raised the shovel with both hands and held it over her head.

“Why?” I managed to croak.

“Because, Sissy. It’s your fault I’m dead,” she said flatly.

Tears eked out of my eyes. “You fell!” I tried to scream, but the pain in my ribcage made that almost impossible.

Her concern was replaced with bitter elation. “True, but I wasn’t dead when I hit the ground.”

And with that, she brought the shovel down on my face.

A/n: “Adie” is short for “Adelphie”. I know this seems like a strange choice for a name, but “Adelphie” means “dearest sister”. Google it, I swear it’s true! And “Chasey” = “Tag” except in this version, you hide and then when the other person finds you, you have to run and the tag base.