The Night Sister (12 page)

Mr. Alfred Hitchcock

Paramount Studios

Hollywood, California

September 30, 1955

Dear Mr. Hitchcock,

Tonight, my uncle Fenton brought me and my sister Rose to Barre, and we stood in the crowd along Main Street and watched you and Miss MacLaine go into the Paramount Theater.

It was the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my whole entire life. I stood next to the platform. You and Miss MacLaine were close enough to touch.

My daddy always says that there are moments in our lives, moments that change everything.

I never understood what he meant until tonight.

When I saw you and Miss MacLaine earlier, I knew, I just knew, that one day, whatever it takes, I would come to Hollywood and be in the movies.

The idea hit me so suddenly and so hard that I actually couldn't breathe for a minute. There I was, standing along Main Street, with my uncle and little sister behind me, and I couldn't get any air. I saw everything in a whole new way. Like I'd been living this upside-down life, and suddenly things were right-side-up and the whole world in front of me made sense.

Rose was talking to me, but she sounded far off, like a bug. Little and buzzing and insignificant. Even Fenton, marvelous as he is, seemed to fade away.

I tried to talk to you, to shout up and say that I was the girl who'd been writing you the letters, but there were so many people, and it was noisy. I was sure I would be crushed. You looked at me, though. I'm sure of it. And for that one second I wondered if you knew I was the girl who'd written you from the little motel in Vermont.

Fenton has promised to take me to see
The Trouble with Harry
if Mama and Daddy will allow it. I've seen quite a lot of movies, but none of yours. Not yet. But from now on, I'll find a way to see them all, even if I have to sneak into the theater through the back door (something Fenton told me some of the boys do when they don't have money to go to a show).

I wanted you to know all this. And I wanted to thank you. Because, even though we didn't really meet, seeing you, just standing outside the Paramount tonight, has given my life new direction.

I hope that one day, when I am in Hollywood, I can meet you to thank you in person.

Sincerely yours,

Miss Sylvia A. Slater

The Tower Motel

328 Route 6

London, Vermont

“You awake, Sylvie?” Rose asked.

They were both in their twin beds. The radio, a new Zenith Daddy had given Rose last Christmas, played on the bureau between them, Bill Haley and the Comets rocking around the clock. Sylvie loved to fall asleep listening to the radio. She said sometimes the music followed her right into her dreams.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“What do you think it means—Daddy and that lady?”

Sylvie was a quiet a minute; the radio announcer came on, telling the weather. Frost warning. Chance of showers tomorrow.

“I'm not sure,” Sylvie said at last. “But I know one thing—he didn't mean for us to see them together.”

“But who is she?”

“I've never seen her before,” Sylvie said.

“I feel like I have,” Rose said, thinking. There was something familiar about her—the red hair, the coat she was wearing. Had she been a motel guest? A friend of Mama's from town? “We should ask Daddy about her.”

“No!” Sylvie said, exasperated. “We should pretend it never happened. Pretend we didn't see anything. Most of all, we shouldn't say a word about it to Mama.”

“But…”

“No ‘but's. Do I have to hypnotize you to make you forget? Because I will.”

Rose cringed, ducked beneath her covers. “No. I won't say anything. I'll forget all about it.”

The thing is, Rose thought as she lay there in the dark, listening to Frank Sinatra now, the more you concentrated on trying to forget something, the more you couldn't get it out of your head.

“Fairy tales can come true,” Frank promised, his voice soft and velvety, like the inside of a fancy jewelry box.

“Try not to worry,” Sylvie said, her voice gentle again. “Really. It'll all be okay.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Rose.

Rose fell asleep and dreamed she was walking in a cornfield. At first, Oma was with her, holding her hand. Then she was alone again. She kept walking, going down row after row, trying to find her way out. Sylvie was there, too. Rose could hear her, but couldn't see her.

“Sylvie?” she called.

She heard a rustling up ahead and moved forward, through the leaves of corn that scratched at her skin and cut into her face. The corn seemed alive, angry, and Rose didn't want to be there anymore.

A crow was perched on an ear near the top of a stalk of corn just ahead of her, its black reptilian toes clinging, claws digging into the green husk. Rose froze. There was something familiar about the crow. It looked right at her, and she was sure she knew it somehow.

Then the crow cocked its head and winked one glistening, black eye.

“You're getting very sleepy,” the crow said, only it was Sylvie's voice inside the crow's caw. “You couldn't open your eyes now even if you tried.”

I can speak the language of crows,
Rose thought, excited.

“Poor Rose,” the Sylvie crow cawed. “Always looking for ways to be special. But you're just an ordinary girl. A plain, ordinary girl. No talents at all.”

When Rose opened her eyes, she instantly remembered where she had seen the red-haired woman, the one who had kissed Daddy's cheek. She'd been here once, at the house. Rose remembered coming home from school one day in the spring when Sylvie had to stay late for band practice. The woman was coming out of the house with Daddy.

“This is your mama's friend Vivienne,” Daddy told her, and Rose got the sense that he was mad at her for being there—that they were in a hurry and Rose was holding them up.

“Pleased to meet you,” Rose said, and the woman smiled and took Rose's hand. She wore a lovely hat with bits of lace worked in, and a green sweater set that matched it perfectly. Her cheeks were powdered, and her eyes were rimmed with smudged, coal-black liner. She was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Mama.

“I hear you're quite a talented girl,” Vivienne said.

“No, ma'am,” Rose answered. “You're thinking of my sister, Sylvie. I don't have any talents.”

“We've all got talents, dear,” the woman said, smiling. “Some are more hidden than others. The trick, you see, is finding them.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Rose said.

Daddy seemed flustered. He whispered something to Vivienne, then took her arm and guided her down the steps.

“Nice meeting you,” Rose called after her.

“I'm sure we'll see each other again,” Vivienne said. “Maybe then you can tell me what talents you've discovered.”

Rose went inside, calling for her mother. But her mother wasn't home. There was a note on the table saying she'd gone to the market and would be back soon. “Help yourself to a slice of pie,” it said.

“I met your friend,” Rose said when Mama came through the door half an hour later, balancing two paper sacks of groceries from the A&P.

“Who?”

“Vivienne. When I came home, she was just leaving with Daddy.”

“Ah,” Mama said, eyes narrowing. “Vivienne.” Then she turned and starting putting the groceries away, shutting the cupboard doors a little too hard.

“Sylvie?” Rose called out in the darkness. “Are you awake?”

Her sister did not answer. The radio was still on, but the station had gone off the air, leaving nothing but static, humming like an insect in the middle of the room.

Rose crept past it to Sylvie's bed, planning to shake her sister awake.

“Wake up,” she said. “I remember! I remember where I know the lady from.”

But her sister's bed was empty; Rose's hands grasped only the covers, still warm.

“Sylvie?” she called again, though it was clear she was alone in the room.

Rose padded out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom. She pushed gently on the door, but when it swung open, she saw the bathroom was empty, the sink and toilet so bright white they almost glowed. Toothbrushes stood like little soldiers at attention in their holder. The sink faucet was dripping, each drop of water hitting the white porcelain bowl with an impossibly loud splash. Rose backed out of the bathroom and went down the stairs and into the kitchen, to see if maybe Sylvie was getting a drink of water or milk. She eased her way down the carpeted steps, her hand on the smooth wooden rail.

When she got to the kitchen, there was still no sign of Sylvie.

Rose stood on the cold tile; moonlight streamed through the curtained windows, making the white squares on the linoleum floor glow. Her cold bare feet looked like dark paws against the white floor. The dinner dishes were neatly stacked in the wire drainer, and Mama's rubber gloves hung limply over the faucet. Behind the lemony scent of Mama's cleaning products, she caught the spicy, tangy scent of the chili they'd had for supper. “Chili con carne,” Mama called it, which made it sound fancy, like something you'd order in a French restaurant, but really it was just ground chuck with canned tomatoes and beans.

Rose went to peer out the window that looked out on the driveway and the glowing
Tower Motel
sign.
Vacancy,
it promised. And there, down near the tower, a figure moved in the shadows, its blond hair gleaming in the moonlight as a white nightgown fluttered around its feet.

Sylvie.

And she was heading into the tower.

Rose hurried outside and carefully made her way across the driveway. The cold, damp gravel stabbed her bare feet, and the night air chilled her skin, giving her goose bumps beneath her flannel nightgown. She looked back at the house, checking the windows to see if a light had appeared in her parents' bedroom. But no one stirred. She could smell wood smoke, apples, rotting leaves—all the wonderful fall smells that she found so comforting during the day. At night, they smelled like something spoiled.

Rose reached the tower, which loomed like a giant in the moonlight. She was shivering now, her teeth chattering, and she could see her breath. She knew she should run back up to the house, crawl under her warm blankets, and forget the whole thing. But first she needed to see what on earth her sister was up to.

Maybe Sylvie was sleepwalking. She'd seen that in a movie once. You weren't supposed to wake up someone who was sleepwalking. Rose remembered hearing that somewhere. But how were you supposed to get them back to bed?

“Sylvie?” she called out as quietly as she could, peering through the doorway of the tower. It reminded her of a gaping mouth.

She listened. Silence.

“Sylvie?” she tried again. “What are you doing?” The inside of the tower was blacker than black. Anything could be inside. Anything at all. Teeth. A tongue. Ready to swallow her up. Crunch her bones. Turn her to vapor.

She stepped through the doorway, heart pounding. It was foolish to be afraid. She'd been in the tower hundreds, maybe thousands of times. She knew the shape of each stone, the grain of the boards on the floor. But she'd never been there alone late at night, in the dark. The walls felt closer. She could smell the damp stone. She felt completely engulfed by the darkness, as if she really had been taken into the mouth of a giant.

But she wasn't alone, was she? Sylvie was inside somewhere.

“I know you're in here!” she called out, a little louder now. “I saw you!”

Footsteps creaked above her.

“Sylvie? Come down!” she called. “It's freezing out here.”

And I'm scared. Scared of being eaten up.

She shuffled in the darkness, hands groping blindly before her, and found the ladder, which she began to climb, hands damp with sweat, mouth dry.

“Sylvie!”
she hissed.

A soft rustle sounded from somewhere up above, but when she poked her head up and got a good look at the second floor, she found it empty. Moonlight streamed through the two windows, illuminating the rough-hewn floorboards.

This was silly. It was after midnight. What was she doing in here, playing hide-and-seek with her big sister? If Mama or Daddy caught them, they'd be grounded for a month, maybe worse.

Reluctantly, she began to ascend the second ladder, up to the top floor. When she emerged onto the roof, her nightgown glowed and drifted in the wind. Around her, the walls of the tower were a perfect circle of stone and mortar.

But, impossibly, she found herself alone.

Or almost alone.

There, against the far side, on one of the stone battlements, a large moth flexed its wings.

Rose moved closer.

It was a luna moth—a good four inches across, wings of the palest green with long tails and delicate, feathery antennas.

Rose knew it was far too cold out for a luna moth to appear—they usually made their appearance in early summer. She blinked, sure she was seeing things, but the moth remained.

Rose reached for it, and it took off, launching itself from the edge of the wall, flying drunkenly away from the tower, a fluttering ghost of a thing: there, and then gone.

An impossible thought came to Rose as she watched the moth disappear into the cold, dark night:

That luna moth was Sylvie.