A/n- I've never really written horror, like actually a story with a plot. I actually like .

Summary: not everything is as it seems...

My Sister’s Sleeping

They always told us her house was haunted; perhaps it was a way for our parents to excuse why we never went and saw her. She was my mother’s mother after all.

So it came as a great surprise when the car pulled away, mother’s face pressed longingly against the window, that they drove off without us, grandma’s arm around Leslie’s little shoulders. Her eyes were wide, my sister’s, and they stared straight ahead as our Baba turned her round and began walking up to the stoop. Uncomfortable was not severe enough a word to describe what tension was held between my sister’s shoulders, for it was visible the shudder of dislike as grandmother’s hand reached around to stoke Leslie’s cheek.

Standing there, with our bags around my ankles, I felt the strange twinge of jealousy, for my younger sister had always been the prized child. Resignedly, I hitched the trunk loops round my hands and pulled them up the steps.

Baba’s house, as it had always been, seen on the very few occasion we had entered it, was dark; full of brooding shadows lingering where the beams of the ceiling and the walls met and ran lengthwise up the house’s spine. The stairs, leading up to the two loft bedrooms and adjacent bath creaked and bowed under the slightness of my weight and I wondered how in the world our Baba could possibly climb them.

Another sigh escaped my tinted lips; oranged from the soda I had sipped during lunch, when I realized there was only one bed. The trunks landed heavily at the baseboard.

“Abby? Abby dear will you come down?”

“Yes, Baba.”

That night, as the dinner of lukewarm meatloaf and powdered milk was served, I had the distinct feeling of eyes watching me. I looked up to see Baba staring at Leslie, for my sister was sitting quite close to my side.

I set the fork I held down and cleared my throat.

For a girl just ten, I have always been told I am wiser beyond my years, displaying the kind of courtesy and ladylike mannerisms that may take some lifetimes to learn. Not me. No I was a sharp and polite little girl.

“Baba?”

Her eyes did not stray from my sister. “Yes dear?”

The cat, a pure white and ugly thing, gargled some pitiful mewl from somewhere in the next room.

“Mother and Father said they would be back in three days, isn’t that lovely?”

“Oh, yes dear.”

I had the impression that she was not listening to a single word I said, so I continued. “They couldn’t get a baby sitter, you know. I said I could stay home and take care of Leslie and me I all by myself but they didn’t like that idea.”

“Oh, yes dear,” She said again.

I sucked in my bottom lip between my teeth, chewing on the little bit of flesh there. This was going to be very problematic.

I put a hand on my sister’s arm. “Les?” My sister looked at me as if pulled from the gaze of a hypnotizing cobra. Her blonde hair stuck up at the sides; she looked disheveled. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed?”

The light of the oversized candles, the preferred way our Baba had of illuminating her house despite the availability of electricity, flickered upon the fine china plates.

“Mmkay.”

As Leslie scurried away I was met with the menacing glare of my grandmother. I tried to ignore it, but she was undeterred. So I got up, gathered my food things and dumped them into the sink, ignoring the woman. I too climbed the rickety steps to the bedroom, leaving Baba alone with the cat and the table full of no one.

When I awoke it must have been midnight or perhaps after. I was staring at the covered window, trying to see the moon behind the heavy cloth that was hanging there. I tried not to think of the bugs and arachnids nestled in the gaudy folds, ready to jump across the room into the bed I was now sleeping.

This place was suppose to be haunted, but I had a hard time believing it, for I had never been one to delve into the superstitions and mindless trickery one’s own consciousness can play on one’s self. I again reaffirmed the rationalized thought that this lie had been to stay my sister and I away from our Baba; and now that I thought about it, it had been for good reason too.

Her house smelled of lye soap and cat and now that horrid meatloaf. I mean, yes, it was strange that she watched Les too intently, but I presumed that was because of her stunning looks. It was not as if a natural blonde cropped up in our family very often, if at all.

I rolled over and found the space next to mine unoccupied.

Thinking that Les had gotten up to use the bathroom, I rolled over to the indented spot so as to warm the side and to soak the residual body heat from the sheeting. I stayed there until I could do so no longer, for the silvery shadows of the moon had shifted before I had realized how long I had lain without moving.

Why was my sister not back yet?

Carefully I lowered myself onto the hardwood floor, my feet cold against the poorly insulated ground.

Cautiously I moved, one foot in front of the other until I reached the slightly open door to the washroom. The crack was not enough to see inside. I pulled the handle towards me.

“Leslie?” I whispered, unsure if she was even there, for the space was so dark. I heard not a sound, but a dull, rhythmic thumping that could have been water dripping in the pipes or from a loosened tap. “Leslie?” I tried a second time.

By then I could see inside and saw the hunched figure of my sister in front of the toilet, crumpled onto her knees. The wet, thumping sound coming from her.

“What are you doing? Get back to bed!”

I moved a tad closer, my reflection in the porcelain tile walls a looming and ugly shape.

My sister did not answer, but I saw her move in time to the thudding beat, a cracking glass and liquid sound issuing too this time.

In a choking breath I rushed towards her, pulling her away from where she lay and back into my lap. The pounding noise ceased immediately as in horror I gazed upon the red and sticky stain of blood upon the tile where my sister’s head had been pounding. Leslie whimpered and I quickly switched on the room’s lamp.

Blood was matted in her golden hair and chips of bone and skull mingled like confetti within the locks. I felt bile rise and sting my throat as I tried not to imagine how tediously and continuously she would have had to bash her skull for it to crack and splinter such.

“We have to get you to a hospital, Les!”

“Abby! Abby! No, no, no,” She wailed, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, mingling with the blood and painting her face with red watercolor.

“What’s wrong, Leslie?!” I cried, trying to wriggle out from under the weight she was now pinning me with.

“They’re in here!”

“Who? In where?!” I was frantic now.

“In here.” She gasped, her hands flying up to claw at the wound she had created. Bits of skin and blood came off under her fingernails. I held her hands down, desperate.

“Baba!” I cried at the top of my lungs. “Baba! Baba!”

Holding my sister, rocking her back and forth, I was beginning to reconsider the dismissive notion that all was well in this house.

“Get them out!” Leslie murmured. “Get them out!”

At that instant I had the very vivid feeling of someone standing behind me, someone standing in the frame of the doorway.

“Baba, please! Help!”

I turned a fraction so that I would be able to see our grandmother in the reflection of the mirror.

I screamed.

fin