The Night Sister (23 page)

“Oh my God, I'm so happy to see you!” Amy threw her arms around Piper, buried her face against Piper's neck. Piper could feel her hot breath, and then (did Piper imagine it?) Amy gave her the tiniest little nibble, her teeth grazing the tender skin just to the left of her windpipe.

“She's left us another note,” Amy said now, voice rising like bubbles in a cold glass of ginger ale, going up, up, up, then bursting, tickling someone's nose.

“In the typewriter?” Margot asked, coming through the front door behind Piper.

“Yeah, just like the last.”

“Mmm,” Margot said, playing the skeptic, looking quite grown up with her doubtful eyes and wrinkled nose. Last night, at home, Margot had said she was pretty sure that Amy had written the first note herself.

“But why would she do that?” Piper asked. Sometimes she thought Margot acted like a little old lady, serious and thinking too hard about stuff, which sucked the fun out of everything.

Margot thought for a second. “Because Amy always likes things to be more exciting than they really are.”

Piper had thrown a pillow at her, furious because she knew that, on some level, Margot had it right. Wasn't that probably why Amy had kissed her? Just to make things more exciting? Because Amy hated anything dull and boring.

“I was even thinking that maybe she put the suitcase there herself, set the whole thing up, so we'd have this fun mystery, this game to play,” Margot said.

“Right,” Piper said. “And planned how I'd fall through the floor right where I did, too, I guess?”

Margot shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe.”

“Well, I think that's total crap,” Piper had said.

But did she? Did she really? Wasn't there a chance Amy had written the note from supposedly dead Sylvie herself?

Right now, still feeling the chills that came from having Amy's mouth on her neck, Piper felt sure that she would believe anything Amy told her.

“Show me the letter!” she asked Amy now.

Amy's face brightened. She turned and darted down the hall. Piper followed. Her right leg was killing her, but she managed not to limp. The redness and puffiness seemed to be spreading; her skin felt like it was on fire. She knew she should tell her mom, would
have
to tell her mom if it didn't get better soon, but she didn't want to get in trouble, or, worse, to be banned from the motel. She'd have to make up a lie—maybe that she'd hurt herself playing in the woods.

“Hello, girls!” Amy's grandma called from her usual spot in the kitchen.

“Hello, Grandma Charlotte,” Piper said.

“Sylvie, what are you girls up to?”

“
Amy,
Gram. My name is Amy. Sylvie's gone.”

She's not gone, though,
thought Piper.
She's up in Amy's room, tapping out notes on the typewriter—that's where she is.

An odd thought occurred to her then: that Sylvie had never really left. She'd been in hiding this whole time, sneaking around the house, tower, and motel. Living in abandoned rooms, hiding in closets, stealing food from the kitchen at night, making friends with the mice in the walls, visiting Amy late at night, when no one else could see. It wasn't a ghost Amy had seen, but an actual person living the life of a phantom.

“Come on,” Amy urged, taking Piper by the hand and leading her up the steps; Margot followed right behind, taking two steps at a time. Amy's hand felt cool. Or maybe it was Piper's hand that was hot. She didn't feel like herself; her head seemed to be floating up above her body like a balloon.

Amy had hung an old
Please Do Not Disturb
sign from one of the motel rooms on the door to her room.

“Check this out,” she said, standing over by the typewriter. There was an old sheet of Tower Motel stationery tucked into it:

Find the 29th Room.

Remember, no room is built without a plan. Find the plans, you find the room.

Then you'll understand.

“Whatever happened to Sylvie, the key is the twenty-ninth room! Like she talked about in that letter to Alfred Hitchcock.”

“But we've searched the whole motel!” Piper said, exasperated. “We've been in every room. There's nowhere else to look.”

Amy thumped her fingers down on the typed note. “Find the plans, you find the room. You know, my grandfather designed this whole motel. He must've drawn up plans for it, right?”

Maybe Margot was right. Maybe Amy was setting all this up somehow, leaving little clues like bread crumbs. It was all some crazy game to make the last few days of summer vacation a little less boring.

“So let's go find them! My grandfather's old office is full of papers and junk. Let's go check it out!”

Piper could almost hear the vague echoes of footsteps as she stood in the front hall now: her own, Amy's, Margot's, as they trotted down the stairs and ran into the office to search for evidence of the twenty-ninth room. She followed the ghost steps down the hallway and peered into the office, which looked nearly the same as she remembered: peeling wallpaper, teetering stacks of papers, boxes and books everywhere.

The air in the old house smelled musty, used up. She longed to open a window, but knew it wasn't her place. Besides, she wouldn't be here long. She was getting Lou a bag of clothes, and then she was getting the hell out.

Off to her left, she heard a slight shuffling sound coming from the kitchen. Mice? Or old Grandma Charlotte pushing back her chair?

When Death comes knocking on your door,

you'll think you've seen his face before.

Piper jumped as her phone rang, chirping “Like a Prayer” too loud in this quiet place. She fumbled through her bag, trying to answer it as quickly as she could.

“Hey,” she said, voice library-quiet.

“Did you find anything?” Margot asked.

“Not yet. I just got here, for God's sake,” Piper said.

“Sorry. Where are you right now?”

“The front hall.” Glancing furtively around, she saw no sign of movement.

But was there another noise from the kitchen? The shuffle of feet?

If you hold up a mirror, you shall see

that he is you and you are he.

“Piper?”

“Yeah?”

“I've changed my mind. I have a really bad feeling about this. I think you should get out of there.”

“I'm glad you feel that way, 'cause that's exactly my plan. I'm just gonna run upstairs and grab a few things for Lou; then I'm gone.”

“Call me when you're done.”

“Will do.”

“And—Piper?—hurry.”

As if she needed encouragement.

Piper hung up and hustled up the stairs. She was stopped short by the bloodstains. They were everywhere—the carpet was saturated in places, covered in thick smears, smudges, and grotesque footprints of dark coagulated blood. There were even some reddish-brown splatters on the faded wallpaper.

Down the hall to the left was the master bedroom. That was where Amy's husband had been found, the first to be shot. In the middle of the hall was the bathroom, then the second bedroom, which used to be Grandma Charlotte's. Piper gave the door a tentative push, and it opened to reveal posters of football players, a huge spaceport built from Legos on the dresser.

Levi's room. Eight years old, and the second to die. The bed frame was bare, the mattress taken away.

Piper backed up, head swimming, stomach queasy.

She moved along the edge of the wall, doing her best to avoid the stains on the floor (was this all Amy's blood?) as she lurched down the hall on rubbery legs.

Just do what you need to do and get out, she told herself, heading for what must be Lou's room, down at the end of the hall.

The room that had once been Amy's.

She remembered the little motel sign that had hung from the doorknob back then:
Please Do Not Disturb.

She put her hand on the knob now, the knob that Amy had touched countless times, that had once been warm from the heat of her hand.

Now it was as cold as ice.

Go away,
it seemed to say.
You don't belong.

She held her breath and pushed the door open.

The sight of the room hit her square in the chest. There were bloodstains on this floor, too, though not nearly as much as in the hall. Its floor had been covered in the same ugly carpet that was in the hall back when Amy lived there, but at some point they'd torn it up and painted the wide pine boards white to make the room feel bigger and brighter. Lou had Amy's old twin bed, with its battered oak headboard. Were those even the remnants of Amy's Scratch 'N Sniff stickers and glow-in-the-dark stars? Piper looked at the dresser and nightstand, all in the same place, as if bolted down. And were those faint traces of purple paint at the edges of the wall that had been covered over with rose-petal pink?

The room was neat. No clothes strewn on the floor, no toys and books and candy wrappers scattered everywhere. There was a shaggy bright-pink rug by the bed, and a glass of water on the nightstand. The mattress was bare except for a pile of stuffed animals mounded in its center.

And there, on the desk, an old typewriter.

Could it be?

Piper stepped forward to it and ran her fingers over the machine: a Royal Quiet De Luxe.

Beside it sat a stack of plain white paper.

Without even thinking, Piper reached for a piece, rolled it into the machine, and put her fingers over the keys. It amazed her, how effortless it was, how satisfying to give each key a hard tap and hear the gentle thwap of the letter striking the ribbon and paper. The typewriter had been kept cleaned and oiled, and the ribbon was fresh. Her fingers found the sturdy round keys: punch, punch, punch, bang, bang, bang.

Amy, Amy, Amy,
she typed, thinking that perhaps the old Royal might act as a sort of Ouija Board and Amy could type out a message to her, as they'd once believed Sylvie had done.

Are you there, Amy?

Nothing. This was pure foolishness. She wasn't a twelve-year-old girl anymore.

Still, she typed one more line:

I'm sorry

And she
was
sorry. Sorry for what had happened to Amy and her family. Sorry that she hadn't made more of an effort. Amy had pushed her away at the end of that summer, and Piper hadn't put up a fight; she'd just let her go and tried to pretend it didn't matter at all. She was sorry that she had moved away and done her best to forget Amy and the tower and everything that had happened that long-ago summer; to put it all in a box at the back of her mind, like packing away outgrown childhood toys. Yet somehow the very act of trying to forget had made all the memories stronger, had turned Amy into an archetype that she compared everyone else with. And, somehow, no one ever measured up.

Wasn't it true that, after Amy cut her out of her life that summer, Piper had always kept herself at a distance from people, never let herself believe any friend or lover would stick around? Sitting at the desk in Amy's old bedroom, Piper understood suddenly that somewhere tucked deep inside her was a broken twelve-year-old girl reeling and pissed off because her best friend had dumped her. Piper took in a ragged breath. If she let herself think of all the ways this had held her back over the years, of all the relationships she'd ended because she was sure it was only a matter of time until she was abandoned, she didn't know if she'd be able to bear it.

Yanking the paper out of the typewriter, she crumpled it up and shoved it into her purse, which she left on the desk as she went to work. She found a flowered duffel bag in Lou's closet and quickly loaded it with underwear, socks, T-shirts, shorts, and jeans. Everything was pink and purple and covered with hearts, peace signs, glittering sequins, or a mix of all three. She threw in a pair of sparkly silver sneakers and some leopard-print flip-flops.

Behind her, she heard something out in the hall. Scrabbling, quick steps.

“Hello?” she called. Had the police come back, realizing there was one more thing they forgot to take with them? Or maybe they'd seen her car and wondered who was trespassing on the crime scene? Piper went out to the hallway and stood at the top of the stairs.

“Anyone there?” she called.

From somewhere, a soft, Amy-like giggle. Surely Piper had imagined it. Still: time to go.

She hurried back to the bedroom, went to Lou's bed, and selected a floppy pink rabbit and a dingy rag doll with yellow yarn for hair that looked like it had been loved nearly to death.

Good enough.

She hefted the bag, grabbed her purse, and hurried out of the room and down the hall. When she paused at the top of the stairs, she was sure she heard something behind her, coming from Lou's room. Short, trotting footsteps. The sound of nails (or was it claws?) on the painted pine-board floor.

Piper raced down the stairs and headed toward the front door, but then forced herself to stop in the entryway and turn back. She was waiting for a dark, terrifying shape to fill the stairway. She listened. There was nothing. Just the sound of her own frantic breath. She'd imagined it. Of course.

Her phone rang—Margot again. Piper dug around in her bag, and the crumpled piece of typing paper fell out by accident. She watched it fall to the floor as she answered.

“Piper?” Margot said anxiously. “Where are you?”

“On my way out. Just at the front door now. I got together a bag for Lou. I'll make a quick stop at the drugstore for the baby stuff and then come right back. Half an hour, forty-five minutes tops.”

“Okay,” Margot said, clearly relieved.

“You want me to pick up anything special for lunch?” Piper asked.

“Lunch? Even eating for two, I couldn't possibly have room for lunch after that huge breakfast you made.”

Piper smiled. “I'll fix us a salad or something. See you soon.”

She hung up, put the phone back in her bag, and reached down for the crumpled paper, not wanting to leave her weird litter behind for anyone to wonder at, especially not a cop returning to check on one last thing at the crime scene.

She opened the paper, trying to imagine what they might think if they found it, this bizarre message typed to a dead woman.

But that's not what was on the sheet. The words she'd typed were gone.

She let out a strangled cry.

(And was there another, distant, mocking cry that echoed hers from somewhere upstairs?)

Over and over, one line after another filled the page, from top to bottom:

29 rooms

29 rooms

29 rooms

29 rooms

29 rooms