The Night Sister Read online

  “Maybe I don’t want to be normal,” he said.

  She scowled at him. “Yes, you do.”

  And now here he was, normal, and the thing of it was, Amy had been right: being with Margot, having a house, a steady job, a baby on the way, all of that felt right and made him happy, like he had his own solid place in the world at last.

  Sometimes the fierceness of his love for Margot caught him off guard, left him breathless. There had been a lot of moments like that lately, when he’d just look at her, imagine the baby, his baby, growing inside her, and think about how soon they’d get to meet their baby, and they’d all be a family. And his job was to protect them, keep them safe.

  When he decided to join the London police, shortly after they got married, Margot hated the idea.

  “Jesus Christ, Jason. What if you get yourself shot? I’d rather not be a widow in my twenties.”

  “In London?” He laughed. “Nothing bad ever happens here. I don’t think there’s ever even been a murder.”

  He thought of this now, as he sipped his coffee. The crime scene was vivid in his mind: Amy laid out on the floor, all torn up, with a rifle at her side. They’d found a kitchen knife in Mark’s hand. The theory was that they had fought, and he stabbed her to try to defend himself before she shot him in the chest. Then, they figured, she’d shot herself.

  But something wasn’t right.

  Just last night, Tony Bell, the chief of police, told him that Amy’s injuries were not from that knife.

  “So it was another weapon?” Jason asked.

  Tony shook his head. “Medical examiner says they’ve never seen anything like it. It looks more like claw marks. And the other two victims—the husband and the boy—had them as well, in addition to the gunshot wounds.”

  The clank of a plate startled him. Piper turned now, presenting him with a pile of French toast and fruit salad—the raspberries bleeding onto the cantaloupe, the green grapes like pale eyes staring up at him.

  “Oh, no thanks,” Jason said, gulping down the last of his coffee and standing. “Looks delicious, but I’ve gotta run.”

  He went into the bedroom. “I have to go into work early,” he announced.

  “Not again,” Margot said, giving him a sympathetic smile from her spot on the bed as he leaned down to kiss her goodbye. “You look exhausted. You’re working too hard,” she said.

  Suddenly he was desperate to tell her everything: That he wasn’t going into work early. That he was driving to the Foxcroft Health and Rehab to see Amy’s mother because, a week ago, Amy had called him and asked him to come out to the motel. That Amy had told him something crazy her mother had said, something he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since last night, when Tony said it looked like Amy was not stabbed but clawed.

  But here came Piper, breakfast tray in hand; and there was his sweet, fragile wife, who would be crushed if she knew he’d gone to see Amy and kept it from her.

  Why? she would ask. Why would you go see her and not tell me?

  It was a question he’d asked himself over and over. A question he was afraid to let himself answer. The secrets he kept made him feel rotten, poisonous; they were a dark, growing thing, a cancer deep inside.

  “Hey, didn’t you go out with Amy back in high school?” McLellan had asked him the other morning, as the medical examiner’s team carried Amy’s body out of the motel in a bag.

  Jason’s whole body went rigid. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

  “Are you sure? I remember you two being an item. You even took her out to Belmont Bridge once, I swear.”

  Jason felt his face heating up. He remembered parking the car (his mom’s old Impala) at Belmont Bridge, where all the kids went to park, get a little stoned, have a few beers, and fool around. He remembered the radio playing low—probably a mixtape Amy had brought: Smashing Pumpkins, Throwing Muses, Nirvana, all those bands Jason pretended to like but didn’t. He didn’t care, though, because Amy’s hand was on his thigh, her fingers moving up, spider-crawling the way they did, moving back and forth, teasing, pretending they might not go where he most wanted them to go.

  Jason swallowed hard as he looked at the black body bag being loaded into the van. “We might have gone on a date or two. To the movies or something. But it wasn’t anything big. I barely remember.”

  McLellan lit up a cigarette, his face bathed in the flashing blue lights from the police cruisers in the driveway. He said no more, deciding to let it go. As far as Jason knew, he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else working the case. And Jason decided it was best to keep to himself his little trip out to the motel to see Amy the week before, too. If he told them, there would be questions, and even if it was clear he’d done nothing wrong, it still wouldn’t look good: Officer Jason Hawke, married man with a pregnant wife at home, sneaking off to see an ex-girlfriend. London was a small town, and people had long memories. Even though Amy had settled down, plenty of folks remembered her teenage Bad Girl years. Word would get around. Margot would find out. He didn’t want any of that to happen.

  Now, as he drove toward the nursing home, he went over that last visit with Amy for the hundredth time, trying to recall each detail.

  She’d walked him into the kitchen, poured some coffee.

  “You look good,” she told him, and his face reddened. “Fit. Healthy. How’s Margot?”

  “Great,” he said.

  “And when’s the baby due?”

  “About three weeks.”

  Amy turned her coffee mug around, finger looped through the handle. Surely she didn’t call him all the way out here to ask about Margot and the baby? Maybe he should follow her lead, ask about Mark and the kids. But he couldn’t bring himself to.

  “So you said you needed to talk?” he said.

  “Yeah. Sorry. I don’t really know how to start. I just didn’t know who else to turn to. I feel like I need…I don’t know…a sane, rational person’s perspective. Someone who can be objective, no matter what.”

  Jason laughed. “So you called me?”

  Amy smiled. “You’ve always been the most rational human being I know. You take everything in. Weigh evidence carefully. You don’t let emotions get in the way of your thinking.”

  He shook his head. She was so wrong. That he was sitting here in her kitchen was proof. He knew he should leave—make some excuse and go. But he couldn’t. The fact was, some small part of him had been waiting his whole life for this moment: for Amy to call him up, to say she needed him. Pathetic.

  “You heard we had to put my mother in Foxcroft?” she asked.

  “No. I’m sorry to hear it. What happened?”

  He had never actually met Rose Slater, but he’d seen her plenty around town since she’d been back and Margot had filled him in a bit. When they were all growing up, Rose hadn’t been around much; Amy never talked about her, but word was she had a drinking problem, maybe had been in a mental hospital. Then, after years of being God-knew-where, she’d made a reappearance just after Amy’s daughter was born and had moved back into the house; she helped Amy and Mark with Lou, and in time with baby Levi. Margot said that Amy was thrilled to have her mom back in her life and that she was turning out to be a wonderful grandmother. There were murmurs about where Rose Slater had been all those years, how she could have gone and left her daughter to grow up alone with old Charlotte in that creepy motel. But soon, according to Margot, all the gossip turned positive: Isn’t Rose looking well? She must have been in some fancy rehab out west. Maybe she got religion. Did you hear she’s running the elementary-school bake sale? And she’s a troop leader for the Girl Scouts now! Just goes to show, anybody can turn it around.

  “Did she fall or something?” Jason asked. “My grandmother broke her hip and had to spend some time in the nursing home, but once she was well, she went back to her own place, and—”

  “My mother didn’t break her hip,” Amy said abruptly. She stood up, went to the counter, and grabbed a pack of cigarettes. Once
she had shaken one out, she held the pack out to him.

  “Sure,” he said, though he’d hardly smoked since high school—just the occasional pack when he was feeling stressed or working too many hours.

  She sat back down, handed him a cigarette, lit it for him, and put the ashtray on the table between them.

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  “She suddenly went crazy,” Amy said. “Some kind of dementia, the doctors think.”

  Jason drew smoke into his lungs, and let it out slowly. “But I thought things were good. I heard she was doing real well.”

  “She was! She was doing amazing. It was like…like I finally had a mom, you know? Like other people. But then, a couple of months ago, she started saying really weird stuff. Talking absolutely crazy.”

  “Like what?” Jason asked.

  “Oh, like, she said that there are monsters.” She laughed, but didn’t seem amused. “Actual monsters, with teeth and claws and shit, and that we might have one here at the motel. She said if we didn’t do something soon, something terrible would happen.”

  “Wow,” Jason said. “Was she drinking?”

  “I don’t think so. I never saw her anyway, never smelled it on her. She was really freaking me out. Scaring the kids. Sometimes they’d wake up in the middle of the night and she’d be there in their rooms, standing next to the bed, watching them sleep. Mark asked her what in God’s name she was doing, and she said she was protecting them. Standing guard. Keeping us all safe from the monsters.” Amy did dramatic air-quotes with this last word.

  “Sounds terrible. I’m so sorry,” Jason said.

  Amy nodded. “We took her to the doctor. They admitted her to the hospital, did all kinds of tests, but they didn’t find anything physical, nothing they could do, blah, blah, blah, so they discharged her. Mark didn’t want her to come back home—felt it wasn’t safe to have her around the kids. So we got her into the nursing home. They’re taking good care of her.”

  “Probably for the best,” Jason said.

  Amy pulled another cigarette from the pack and lit it with the tip of her first smoke, which was still burning. Her hands were shaking.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “The thing I haven’t told anyone, not even Mark.” She sighed mightily, clearly steeling herself for what she was about to say. “I’m starting to think maybe my mother isn’t crazy. That maybe…maybe…she was right.”

  Jason stubbed out his own cigarette. “Right about what, exactly?” He kept his voice low and level, the way he was trained to do when talking to the emotionally disturbed. But surely she couldn’t be serious? She wasn’t about to tell him that monsters were real?

  She reached across the table and took his hand. “There’s no one else I can tell all this to, Jay Jay,” she said quietly. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “Maybe I’m crazy, too, but I really don’t think—”

  “Mama?” a voice chirped from behind him.

  Amy jerked her hand away, wiped at her eyes. “Lou? What are you doing home?”

  Jason turned and saw a little girl in the doorway to the kitchen, shouldering a heavy-looking pink backpack. Jason guessed she was eight or nine. She was an exact replica of her mother in miniature, only brighter, more sparkling, dressed in pink and purple glittering clothes and sneakers.

  “We got out early ’cause of a teachers’ meeting. I brought home a letter about it last week, remember?” She sounded vaguely irritated, like maybe Amy forgot such things all the time.

  “I guess not,” Amy said, sighing. “Sorry, love.”

  Lou regarded Jason. “Who’s this?”

  Amy stood up. “This is my friend Jason. But you can call him Jay Jay. Jay Jay, this is my daughter, Lou.”

  “I didn’t know you had a friend who was a policeman,” Lou said.

  “And I didn’t know your mother had such a pretty little girl,” Jason said, smiling at Lou.

  Lou looked at Jason. “I’m not little. I’m ten. That’s double digits.”

  Jason nodded. “You’re right. Ten is big.”

  “Are you a friend of my dad’s, too?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I’ve gotta get back to the station. It was great to meet you, Lou. Thanks for the coffee, Amy. I can see myself out.”

  “Thanks for stopping by,” Amy called. “We’ll talk again soon. Give my love to Margot.”

  —

  “I know who you are,” Rose said, peering at him with dark eyes. “And I know why you’ve come.”

  Her silver hair was pulled back in a tight braid. Her skin was porcelain white and remarkably free of wrinkles—just the vaguest hint of crow’s-feet. She was sitting up in bed; across the room was a TV, tuned to a shopping channel. The room smelled like talcum powder and bleach, but underneath there was something else—musty and fetid.

  Jason couldn’t wait to get the hell out of the Foxcroft Health and Rehabilitation Center. He was thinking it was a mistake to have come at all. The nurse at the desk had told him that Rose had her good days and bad days, that she’d been confused and agitated. They’d caught her wandering the halls at night, not knowing where she was, so they’d put an alarm on her bed for her own safety. They’d also upped all her medications, in an attempt to keep her calm and comfortable.

  “Why have I come, then?” he asked, sounding too much like an annoyed little boy. He was wasting his time. The woman was demented—even the nurse said so. Years of hard-core drinking and whatever else she’d been into had pickled her brain, interrupted the firing of synapses.

  But didn’t he owe it to Amy to check?

  He kept replaying what Amy had said that afternoon: “I’m starting to think maybe my mother isn’t crazy. That maybe…maybe…she was right.”

  Rose sat up in her metal hospital bed, drew in a breath, and let it out slowly. “You’re here because you want to know what I know.”

  “Great,” Jason said, spreading his hands, palms upturned. “So enlighten me. What is it you know?” Jason asked.

  She looked him up and down. “I’d like to tell you, Jason. Really, I would. But I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it.”

  Jason took a step back toward the doorway. The wild, mischievous look in the woman’s eyes told him everything he needed to know. She was bonkers. Maybe Amy had been, too. Hereditary delusional thinking. Madness in the family.

  “Nice seeing you again, Mrs. Slater.” He tipped his hat in that way that older people seemed to like, and started to back out of the room.

  “Miss,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I never married. Amy’s father, he was nothing. A no one. Not worth the time of day, much less a lifetime commitment. ‘Slater’ is my maiden name. It’s Miss Slater.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I apologize.”

  “Do you know anything about my granddaughter, Jason? Where they’ve put her?”

  “She’s fine,” Jason said. “She’s safe.”

  “Safe!” Rose repeated incredulously.

  “I just stopped in to say hello,” Jason said. “Gotta get to work. You take care, now.”

  He turned his back to her, started to leave.

  “Jason,” she called when he got to the door and was about to make his escape back down the hallway, past the nurses’ station, out the front doors, and into the fresh air. God, he couldn’t wait to breathe that air. He half-thought of pretending he didn’t hear her. How easy it would be to just keep on walking, quickly, with purpose; he’d have to concentrate on not letting it turn into an I’m-getting-the-hell-out-of-here jog.

  “Yes?” He turned, caving. His mother had raised him to respect his elders, to be polite, always: the sadder the shape someone was in, the more compassion they deserved. Besides, this wasn’t just any senile old lady. This was Amy’s mother. She deserved more than a brush-off, crazy as a loon or not.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if I know what ‘29 Rooms’ means?”

  The photo with the message h
adn’t been released to the media. No one was supposed to know about it but the cops working the case.

  He looked intently into her eyes, black like pools of ink. “Do you?”

  She grinned. “Do you believe in monsters, Jason?”

  “No, ma’am,” he told her.

  “Neither did my daughter,” Rose said, cocking an eyebrow. “And look what happened to her.”

  1955

  Mr. Alfred Hitchcock

  Paramount Studios

  Hollywood, California

  September 9, 1955

  Dear Mr. Hitchcock,

  It’s me again: Sylvia Slater from London, Vermont. I hope you’ve been getting my letters.

  I don’t think I’ve told you yet, but I can hypnotize people. I actually started with hypnotizing chickens (they’re pretty easy) and now I practice on my sister Rose. She’s more difficult, but I think I’m making progress.

  My uncle Fenton gave me a book last Christmas, Mastering the Art and Science of Hypnotism, and I’ve studied it from cover to cover.

  To be good a good hypnotist, you must project self-confidence. You must have a strong will and a belief that you will succeed. Self-doubt will bring failure. I think this is true not just with hypnosis, but with anything you try, even acting or making movies. Don’t you agree?

  My book says that once you’ve mastered the art of hypnosis, you can make a good-hearted man do something truly evil, or make a cruel person perform an act of kindness.

  I have been testing this out with Rose, trying to make her a little more friendly with me, a little more agreeable in general. But the thing is, she has a stronger will than I thought. I will keep trying.

  Sincerely yours,

  Miss Sylvia A. Slater

  The Tower Motel

  328 Route 6

  London, Vermont

  Rose

  Rose was excited to be out after dark, past bedtime on a Friday night. She and Sylvie were walking down Main Street in Barre with Uncle Fenton, who was doing his best James Dean impression, catching the eye of every teenage girl they passed. He had bought them both chocolate malted milk shakes in waxy paper cups.