The Two Sisters

"There is a House in New Orleans, they call The Rising Sun. It's been the ruin of many poor girls, and me? God, I'm one..."

- Bob Dylan's Cover, House of the Rising Sun

Part 1

They had never been in the cellar and so, the younger woman locked it shut without even going in to check if the lights were off, which they always were. The other girl was slightly older, with slightly longer hair and was upstairs whilst the cellar was being locked. She held herself against the wall as if trying to ward off some unknown evil spirit which, by the accounts of the outside world, was never really there. They had just come back from their father’s funeral and were getting ready for bed when they heard a muttering from outside their bedroom window. Down below on the pavement, two girls of around eight years’ old in age looked up at the house and questioned whether the women who lived there were witches. It was clear: no they weren’t.

They had inherited a lot of money from their father and decided that instead of putting it in a bank, they would get the money in notes and scatter it in random places around the house by the hundreds. In drawers, in cupboards, wardrobes and pockets of coats that were now, never going to be worn for their subject had passed. They both breathed heavily, got into their beds in rooms that were adjacent to each other and neither of them went to sleep. They would both lie silently, staring at the ceiling for two entirely different reasons, watching the world erupt from the safety of the walls they had never moved out from. From the house they were born in, they would want for nothing.

Shirley hit her GPS so hard that it broke and switched off. She swore under her breath as a police car rammed up behind her in the dark of midnight and she pulled over to the side of the road, her dark-blue car looking almost black in the lack of moonlight. “Sorry, officer…” She exhaled. “I’m just lost as all…” She winced at the torch being shone in her face and rolled down the window to reduce the glare. The officer told her to find somewhere to spend the night because there was a fight breaking out on the other side of the road. Shirley turned around and saw people throwing empty beer bottles at each other and one man dragging another down a street. It was outside a hotel and thus, she drove off, knowing she wasn’t going to stay there. Driving up and down the town, she found nowhere that had any room and so, she made her way to a large, seemingly empty house and knocked on the door. Her breath was slow, steady and turned white in front of her face in the cold. Nobody answered and so, she got back in her car, started the engine and…nothing. Her tyre had been punctured in the seconds that she was away and in the distance, she saw some little girls running away down the road. “What in God’s name…” she muttered under her breath. She rapped on the door of the house once more and this time, a woman answered. “Please, I need somewhere to stay…There’s-…” but the other woman cut her off.

“It’s fine, get your things and come on in…”

Shirley followed the woman up to a guest room and put down her things. She unpacked her papers and patient records. “You’re a doctor?” the woman asked and Shirley nodded.

“I could do something about your dry skin if you want, it’s flaking…” But the woman shook her head back at Shirley, almost sadly. There was nothing she wanted.

Shirley went to brush her teeth, thinking the woman had left, with her older sister sleeping in another room. However, the woman came back in and picked up the patient records of a schizophrenic who had scratched themselves raw, complete with bloodied pictures. She skimmed through it and put it back down before Shirley came back into the room. Disappearing down the halls, the woman turned back to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Terrified of Shirley and her profession especially, she went back to her room and locked her door.

Since the older sister was in the middle of her younger and Shirley, she looked through a minuscule hole in the wall to see if Shirley was really asleep. Shirley was sitting on her bed, reading papers by a lamp. Hearing a door open and close is unusual enough at 2am, but to see a shadow outside her door some seconds later meant she was sure she was being watched by someone, though she didn’t know who. Shirley would not sleep at all that night, and neither would the figure standing outside her door. She walked across the room and set down the papers in a top drawer so that the sisters could not accidentally find them. Upon the drawers there was a picture of a man holding two girls on his lap - their father. He had grey hair and was thin with what the doctor knew was cancer. Realising that he had probably passed away, she put the girls’ strange behaviour down to grief and tried to get to sleep though the shadow was still outside her door. She just couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t possible. She sat up and penned the grief-states of the girls in her diary and goes to phone her supervisor, taking the phone into the bathroom. “I could do a study on this…” Shirley states. “It would be great for our new-…”

“Just make them believe you need to stay the rest of the week…” And her supervisor put the phone down, giving her complete permission. She breathed and walked back into the room where the figure by the door had long gone. By this time, the sun was rising and there was really no point in getting any sleep at all.

Shirley had never really unpacked any of her things and said goodbye to the girls the next morning, thanking them for giving her room. They waved goodbye and the younger sister showed her out. Shirley stopped in her tracks, “what…what happened?” Shirley’s car now had its tyres slashed and young girls were running off down the street again. She went back to the girl and asked if she could stay a little longer just enough to get a new car. The younger sister nodded and led her back to the guest room, suggesting that she unpack to make herself comfortable. When she has unpacked, the girls hear a loud scream. The younger one goes the unlock the cellar and the older one runs up the stairs to deal with what Shirley has found. A dead bird. The younger one appears some time later and refuses to go anywhere near the bird. The older sister picks it up and puts it int the bin just outside the house in the garden bin.

She opens the bin with Shirley following out of confusion and curiosity, scared by what she has just seen whilst a cat crosses the road next to them. It would have been fine if the strangeness had ended here and the cat had not gotten brutally hit by an on-coming van. But, both women hung their heads as the guts of the cat made it halfway across the road before the skin did. The sister puts the bird in the bin and runs towards the cat, ready to help her. But the limbs of the sister stiffen and to Shirley, it seems that she cannot move. She gets on her knees and falls unconscious, the other sister bringing her in, carrying her arms whilst Shirley carries her legs, placing her on the table and force-feeding her anti-anxiety medication. She then brewed tea for both herself and Shirley and laying down, Shirley fell asleep until what seemed like the next morning. But she knew she couldn’t be sure in a place where the passage of time would change according to the emotions of the people who were locked inside by what she knew was their own will.

Waking up, Shirley realises that none of her things have been touched or moved and she goes immediately to the kitchen in which the older sister is making sandwiches. She asks the sister why she won’t go into the cellar and the two sisters look at each other, the younger opting to show her why.

The cellar was packed with brown cardboard boxes, by the hundreds it seemed and the younger sister pushed some of them into corners in order to make a pathway through the room which seemed to go on forever. “Our father was in a hunting club…” She said as Shirley looked at the picture of the father holding a hunting gun with a group of friends. The sister put the picture back in the box.

“That’s the gun?” Shirley picked it up out of the box and looked at it. The younger sister nodded. “I guess this stuff reminds your sister of her father too much, doesn’t it?” The younger sister shook her head.

“Not in the slightest.” She started. “We were never allowed down here as children. We never really knew why and I guess, maybe we will never know now. She isn’t comfortable with it at all…” the two of them then go to exit the cellar and eat sandwiches with the older sister. They discuss the parental situation a little bit more with the tension in the room rising around the cellar and its contents. “We prefer not to talk too much about it…” The younger sister stated.

That evening, Shirley phoned her supervisor. “I’m sick and I have no idea how… I guess I’m just under the weather but the girls are fine and we’ve all been eating the same thing…” She was clearly getting angrier and angrier. “I just don’t understand…”

“I’ve got better things to do.” Her supervisor responded. “You got yourself into this, you can back out at any time. But I’m not your father, I don’t care if you’re feeling down…” He hung up. It never occurred to him that Shirley wasn’t feeling down, she was feeling queasy, and sick and grey. She was feeling bloated and her skin was drying up, she was dehydrating. It was horrid.

The girls brought in some chamomile tea and biscuits with cough sweets for her throat. “Hopefully you can get some rest and feel better soon…” the younger sister stated before the two of them left. Shirley notes in her diary the lack of social contact and that these girls never seem to go anywhere. “They order what they need online and they do not socialise with anyone. I’m not sure if anyone knows that they actually exist…”

She would go to bed thinking about this. She would go to bed, but she would not go to sleep.

Part 2

The girls were talking in the living room when Shirley decided to get out of her bed and take a walk, hopefully warming herself up a bit. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t lie down and she was freezing though the heating was on. She entered one of the rooms, it was another bedroom and old fashioned. It seemed to Shirley that this bedroom hadn’t been lived in for years, kept in pristine condition. She found photographs of both the mother and the father atop chests of drawers which, when opened, contained an unlawful amount of medication for every ailment imaginable. From depression and anxiety all the way to the common cold and even some that are only prescribed for terminal illnesses. She shuts the draw and turns around to see the older sister standing there, smiling kindly. “Our parents were very sick people…” She said. “They denied their conditions for years…” She points over to the drawers. “Never even took their medication.” She forced laughter slightly. Shirley looked sorrowful at the girl, she was clearly not happy about Shirley being there.

“I’m sorry I was here. I know I wasn’t meant to…”

“It doesn’t matter…” She said. “I’m just glad you look like you’re feeling better.” They walked out of the room and Shirley, in her mind, would question whether these girls were drug addicts even though they did not display any of the usual signs. Shirley goes back to her room, locks the door and phones her supervisor.

“I think they’re drug addicts…” She states. “I’m going to leave tomorrow…” The girls listened from the outside, but could only make out parts and pieces, it was enough though to hear what Shirley had done to them. They were an experiment. They entered the room with a sombre look on both of their faces.

“I can’t believe you would do this to us…” The younger one stated, almost about to cry. “We thought you were a friend…” Shirley didn’t lie to them and told them the entire truth about her motives for the project she was doing on the sisters. She goes to brush her teeth, seemingly unaware at how upset the girls really are. When she arrives back, her research papers are all missing.

By the next day, Shirley had packed her things and was ready to leave, but upon noticing the cellar door was open, she went into it thinking one of the girls was in there. She shouted ‘goodbye’ and ‘I’m sorry’ into the darkness but there was no reply. This time, the cardboard boxes revealed a different path through the cellar and Shirley followed it, hoping to find one of the sisters grieving for her parents. On the outside of the cellar, the younger sister locked the cellar door as the older one stood upstairs, against the wall as if some evil spirit was being kept in, or kept out. Shirley had not realised the door had closed upon discovering a piece of fabric poking out of the box at the bottom of the furthest part of the cellar.

She pulled on the fabric. It was a body. It was the mother. Ridden with cancerous marks, she looked like she had been there for over five years. The skin cancer had destroyed her body entirely and the doctor, seeing it before, was not scared but confused. She stared down and analysed the extent of the damage, remembering that she saw one photo of the woman which looked in part, a similar age to what she was when she died. The hair was exactly the same and the nails were still intact. She had a theory in which she hoped she was wrong.

The sisters were keeping their parents sick by stealing the medication and putting it all into one drawer. “Jesus Christ, I hope that’s not it…” Shirley shook her head, thinking she was completely wrong and began to walk back up the cellar stairs to realise that the door was locked.

“I think she’s left…” The two girls sat on their bed, looking out of the window. “How come her car is still there?” The other one said. “It’s broken…” The reply came almost instantaneously.

“God I did a terrible thing and now, I’m trying to cover my tracks, what is this?” Shirley was in the cellar, thinking about what she had seen.

“Well, I never saw her leave…” One girl said from the bedroom and the other girl just shrugged, they both watched the car. The younger girl went outside to make sure nobody had repaired her tyres. She broke one of the windows of the car. “That’s for treating us like an experiment…”

Shirley heard a smash from far away and thought of her worst case scenario. “They’ve called someone to find me, haven’t they?” She sobbed to herself. “God, I’m a terrible person…” She wiped her tears violently from her eyes.

“I’m running out of medication…” One of the girls said. “Why?” was the reply from the other. ‘You used it all on her…” The girl said in a huff and a puff. “Well, you better hope she comes back, because she left her papers here…” The girl held up the research papers and the other a light, they set fire to them before putting it out and scattering the ashes under their beds in a ritual-like attempt to get rid of themselves. “What was that?” One of the girls said, hearing a loud banging sound.

Shirley was going to bang on the door in order to be let out, but didn’t think she deserved any recognition for what she had done. “Yes, it’ll be revolutionary but is it worth it? She sobbed again to herself. “God this is all my fault…”

She grabbed the hunting gun and shot herself in the head.

Epilogue

“Hey Officer!” A man was running towards an officer with a briefcase as a fight broke out outside a hotel, trying to avoid broken glass, he turned to the officer, trying to get his attention. “My research partner and employee, Shirley, was supposed to be back last week and well, I haven’t heard anything from her since well, since last week…and…and…” The officer calmed him down and said they would do what they could.

The two officers discussed. “That woman we stopped?” “Yeah, that was the description he gave.” “Jesus, what are the odds…”

They both drove around town trying to find her car. “I didn’t get the number plate…” He said. “But the car was like a black colour…”

They stopped outside the girls house where a dark blue car with slashed tyre and broken windows stood. “Didn’t you hear me? It was black…”

They both exhaled heavily and drove off.