PREFACE

Two small girls danced freely around my feet; their appearances contrasted each other’s to the extent where it almost hurt my eyes to watch them spin. The girl whose name I had come to recognize as a figment stared up at me with dull eyes, though her mouth was wide with laughter. She was pale, and gaunt, and her brown, stringy hair hung limp around her shoulders. And my sister – my six-year-old sister – danced in circles, her golden hair arcing out behind her head.

And then I blinked, and they moved. The little girl stood in the middle of the room, her small arms crossed over an even smaller torso. She stared pointedly at the wall behind me, her eyes flicking back and forth as though she wanted me to look, too. When I turned to glance over my shoulder, my whole body tensed and froze, and a scream bubbled up inside of my throat.

My sister stared out into the room with dull eyes, lifeless, and she was curled in on herself, stuffed into a hole formed between the paneling of the wall and the wooden structures supporting the house. The first girl laughed wickedly, three short barks of a high, squealing laughter, and my sister begun to move, pooling out of the hole as her bones disappeared from her body.

I tried moving back away from the unstructured form of my sister, but she appeared before me so quickly that I was stunned. She smiled warmly, and for a moment, I forgot why I was worried. She reached out a hand, and I took it gladly, stroking the back of her small hand with my thumb.

The first girl doubled over herself with laughter, a strange sound that didn’t belong to a child’s body. I stared at her with a question on my lips, but an alarming smell filled the room. When I looked back at Emily, she was looking at my hand with a hungry expression on her face. When I followed her gaze, I shrieked in terror; from the spot where her hand held mine, a green rot was making its way up my arm. My skin flaked off, nearly dripping from the bone. I snatched my hand from her grip and turned to the first girl, and I could feel my face contorting into a wild expression.

“What have you done?” I screamed, pointing with my whole hand to where Emily stood, staring blankly at me. “What have you done to my sister?”

The girl looked at me, oddly calm, and shook her head. She opened her mouth to speak, but all the filled the room was a strange sound, like wind winding its way over a stormy sea. She stopped trying to talk, and her face looked serene, as though she were trying to calm me. And, as strange as it seemed, I felt peaceful.

I watched with no internal warning as she moved towards me, both of her hands reaching for me. One gripped my rotting hand, and one held onto my waist, as though she were trying to dance with me. My sister came from behind me, mirroring her, as though they were dancing with each other and I was simply an obstacle in the way.

They moved slowly, their nostrils flaring and their eyes rolling back in their heads as though the smell of my flesh was like a sweet perfume to them.

And I watched, a scream caught in my throat, as my sister danced her soul away.