Twisted Sister

"Do you realize you have cried three times since you’ve been here?" Mel’s slender fingers fidgeted with her teacup as she stared at the strange woman at her dining table. Her guest was a small, dark haired woman, late-thirties with a compelling energy and an unsettling gaze. Mel’s husband had remarked she looked like a brunette Jodie Foster.  She was the founder and owner of a successful Italian sports car business. She and her husband Pritchard owned a large, two-story house on the West side of town.  Anyone who met her knew she had a penchant for the stranger side of life.  Mel, by contrast, was a small, greying Catholic woman with an air of Southern charm married to an artist of meager renown who had been a homemaker all her life.  She  knew Kieran because she rented a space to her for an antique shop, a side business she started, as Mel so rightly put it, "to get away from Pritchard."  But there was more to her

interest in this odd creature.  She had become an obsession. In many ways, she admired her strength and business acumen.  She, like many others, also envied and resented her because of her pretty, childlike face, trim figure and obvious intelligence.

"Yes," Kieran replied warily. "Something’s coming and I need to get home to prepare for it."  She gazed out the window as the sunlit afternoon was swallowed in dark, ominous clouds.  "You have heard the phrase ’something wicked this way comes’, well, that sums it up nicely."

"What do you mean?  How do you know that?" Mel fired questions at her as the slender woman with the penetrating gaze pushed her chair from the table.

"It’s a family thing...you know." She sighed heavily and headed toward the door. "Thank you for the tea and for listening."

"You mean your sister?  She seemed so sweet. Are you alright?"

"No, but I will be, I’m sure."  She hugged her hostess and then climbed into the shiny, black Alfa Romeo convertible as she flipped open her cell.

"Pritchard," she spoke tensely and quickly, "are you home yet?  Ok, great, let’s get dinner out of the way as soon as we can.  We don’t have much time.  What? I’ll explain when I get there.  See you soon."

She drove like a mad woman to get to her house on the west side of town.  This was her baby sister, well half-sister, one of three and a brother she had spent most of her childhood caring for.  She thought back to times in midwestern cities across the country, dark, frightening times when she grabbed the children and hid them away from the drunken violence of their father beating her mother into submission.  This was an evil man, powered by more than crapulence.  She knew at an early age there was something more to it than that. He was a demon in her eyes, a tall, dark specter of a man who had replaced her father at an early age.  He was mean and selfish.  Many were the times she plotted to herself how to rid the family of him.  Her mother was a petite, intuitive woman of modest upbringing with whom she shared a sense of magic, knowing things before they happened, knowing the infinite possibilities a thought could create.  It was beyond Kieran why she rejected her own father, a war hero she refused to allow to speak to their daughter, to choose this nemesis for a mate.  At age eight, being strong and independent, traits encouraged by her mother, she had put her foot down.  She spoke softly to her mother but with a strength of conviction knowing that the family’s survival depended on her decision.  Silvie was delirious from violence, not thinking straight; in fact, desperately harboring the idea that ending all their lives would be the only way out of this Hell.

"Mother, listen to me," she stroked her mother’s small hands, "we have to get out of here. We pack everything up and head home to Missouri.  Your job is to find the transportation. Work your magic and someone will come for us.  Now let’s get everything packed and we leave in the middle of the night before he comes home from the bars. Okay? We have to do this, it is the only way."

She vividly remembered working late into the evening loading the semi that was parked in front of the brick, two-story home on a quiet street in Indianapolis.  Two days before Will had called her mother out the blue, an old high school classmate she hadn’t seen or heard from in decades.  

"Sylvie, this is Will Burns.  I know this sounds crazy but I was driving the rig up to Indiana and something told me to call you.  He chuckled, "Like why? I was thinking. I got your number from your mother in East Prairie.  What’s up?"

Her foot pressed the accelerator harder as she thought of how she had tried to connect to this strange family.  Her sister was ten years younger, overly attached to her big sister from birth.  Kieren had predicted her birthdate and willfully told her mother this would be the last of these children by that horrible man. "Any more kids and I leave.  I mean it.  This is madness."

The heavy air dragged the spirit of Christmas from their hearts as they sat in the big house trying to forget the previous night’s atrocities. Kieran sat quietly at the kitchen table as her mother reached out to her.

"What do you want for Christmas this year?  The usual books?"

Kieran tried to smile but her eyes were sad and serious. "I’ll tell you what I want for Christmas; I want to know that that man’s blood doesn’t run through my veins."

Her mother bit her lip and sighed.  "Well, Merry Christmas daughter.  It isn’t.  He isn’t your father and your name isn’t Ryan.  You have your father’s name.  I changed the C to a K but you are definitely your father’s child."

"That’s good. Thank you, Mother.  Well, I have to get ready for school." She ran upstairs.

"Not a question about her father, not a single curious thought about who or where he was.

What an odd little person she is." Sylvie stacked the dishes in the sink and felt relieved the truth was finally out in the open.

Tara had taken Kieran’s leaving home at eighteen hard.  She felt abandoned.  Kieran promised to come back for her one day.  That day was a few weeks before.  She had bought her sibling’s airline ticket to Fort Lauderdale, clothed her in a new wardrobe, decorated a room in the large, two-story house for her and found an Alfa convertible for her to drive.  A week later, after a dinner out with her husband, her sister and a strange woman who had appeared one day at her business door in tears, Kieran heard the two of them standing in the shadows in the driveway, talking about her.  Her keen sense of hearing was unimpeded by the distance from the upstairs porch.

"She is overpowering," the short, corpulent woman whispered to Tara. "You mustn’t let her overtake you.  You can’t be like her, no one can.  Just stand your ground, okay honey?"

Kieran knew what was going on. She was accustomed to this reaction to her by most people she met, an outward attraction and an inward repulsion. She never truly understood it but the strange life she had led was comfortable to her now.  When others asked her how she felt about her unusual position in life, she always replied, "I worry when things aren’t weird." Today would certainly not be a disappointment.

She barely cleared the opening garage door and slammed into the house.  "Have we got dinner on the table yet?"

The mesomorphic frame of her husband was childishly happy in his kitchen always serving this tiny creature he shared a life with.

"Almost, what’s up?" He dished her portion on a plate colored with castles from Britain and stared at her for a moment.

"We don’t have much time.  Tara is coming and she isn’t alone.  I don’t have time to explain but promise me this.  After dinner, go upstairs to our bedroom and lock the door. No matter what you hear, don’t come out!  Promise me!"

Pritchard was not totally surprised. He was accustomed to such instructions from this tiny woman he adored.  After all, when she turned him away after a short courtship, he returned to her with his love promise written in his own blood on a scrap of paper.  He was a typical man from rural New York, an only child who doted on this woman and in spite of his resentment of her strength, he had learned to listen when she issued a warning.  He couldn’t explain her ways or begin to understand them, but she was his "Honey Bear" and she was usually right.

The knock at the door rang through the hallway as daylight slipped away.  Kieran noticed the key she had given Tara was on the hall table.  She creaked the heavy door open and stared into the almost yellow glowing eyes of her sibling. She was right about what was to come.  "You better come in." The seemingly meek woman brushed past her and wandered into the family room.  Pritchard was hurrying up the stairs when she turned her gaze on him.

A strange voice bellowed across the darkened room, a voice unnatural and demonic in tone. "Sorry about your mother." Pritchard had recently lost his mother to pancreatic cancer.

"Thanks," he muttered nervously and looked at Kieran.  She motioned him on without a word and stood bracing herself against the wooden bar as her sibling sat on the hunt print sofa, perched like a vulture before the kill.

"What do you want?" she stared at the huddled figure whose penetrating gaze exuded evil.

"You know everything, you tell me, sister."  Her voice was chillingly low in tone instead of the usual sweet Southern drawl.  She glared at Kieran as the battle began.

"You think you are so smart with your knowledge and your books.  Well you aren’t as smart as you think. I know you."

"I know who you are!" A shudder of conflict washed over her as she realized she would have to look past the girlish figure and see what she was really up against.  This would be a test of her power and will and she stiffened with resolve.

The defamatory remarks poured out of this seeming sibling and then the guttural voice would change mid-sentence to the childlike tone "Sissy, help me!"

"I am afraid I can’t do that. I’m sorry."

The nasty demonic voice returned.  "You are sorry, a sorry excuse for a sister, a pitiful excuse for a human.  All your power means nothing, nothing at all.  If it weren’t for Pritchard you would be nothing."

Kieran felt her energy draining but she stood tall.  The shadowy figure was moving toward her.  She knew its intention was to hit her but she met it face to face.  Tara grabbed her wrist tightly and the voice changed again to the helpless child.  "I love you."

She pleaded with her gold eyes as tears streamed down but Kieran could feel the enmity in her grip and how hard Tara was trying not to hurt her.

"If only you were capable of that. I know who you are. You are not my little sister. Go and don’t come back."

The staggering figure before her lashed out in rage and began scrambling through the house, cursing and screaming.

Against her better judgement, Kieran left the ranting creature alone while she ran upstairs to grab her things and throw them in the suitcase. When she returned she found her in the living room throwing things and growling insults.

Kieran felt torn between empathy for her sister and wariness of what was manifesting before her eyes...changing from the innocent child she once knew into the raging demonic presence within. Then back to the helpless sister crying for help.  Years of studying and learning of dark spirit rushed in to convince her to stay strong against this legacy of evil.  She found her cell and rang her mother.

"Mother, I have to do this, I have to cast this out.  Do you hear this? she held the phone in the air. "I know she is my sister and your daughter but she isn’t!"

"Yes, I know what you are dealing with and I know what you have to do. I understand.

Call me when she’s gone."

She hung up the phone, running to the maniacal person changing personas from minute to minute; pleading as a child in a tremulous voice to raging with the guttural sounds of the demon she was fighting.  She shoved the suitcase at her and screamed over the din.

"Here, now go!"

The sister’s pleading voice returned with a surprised look.  "You are throwing me out?

I can’t believe you are throwing your little sister out!"

"I’m not really am I?"  she moved her opponent toward the garage door and in the darkness they looked at each other in a long, hard stare.

"I’m so tired of this," the girl whispered.  "I just want out."

"I understand and I wish I could help but it is your father’s legacy and I have no control of it.  Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes, I know."

After she drove away, Kieran ran to the room she had prepared for her and took any personal affects out and threw them away.  She was exhausted! She sat in the rocking chair in the darkness while what seemed like voices but were really thoughts, thoughts that were not her own crept into her consciousness.  It was so strange and frightening to experience something seemingly within beating down her beliefs....beliefs she held as her personal truth from a lifetime of experience and seeking.  They weren’t loud or overpowering, just an insidious persistence seemingly from within her head trying to rob her of her faith. "You know there is no God.  Don’t be a fool.  You know I’m right.  What proof do you have of spirit? What have you ever experienced?  Listen to me..."

The louder and stronger the thoughts came through, the harder she rocked.  She had never experienced a breach of faith, not a glimmer of doubt for a moment.  So this was evil, this was how it worked. She rocked and cried and rocked.

Morning light slipped through the curtains as she finally fell asleep.

"It’s over, I made it.." she descended into the den to find Pritchard preparing breakfast.

She reached for the coffee pot and turned her face to him.  "How are you?"

"More importantly, how are you?!  What was that?"

"Too tired to talk about it now.  Let’s get to the shop and away from this house for a while."

Mel slammed the door behind her and scuttled across the carpet to Kieran’s office.  

Kieran turned around, "Hi Mel, how are you this morning?"

"Oh my God, what happened to you?  You look like death.  Have you seen your face? I’ve never seen such sunken, dark eyes.  Are you alright?" she hugged the frail woman who wondered what could have caused such a change in her countenance.

"It’s over...for now anyway.  I’m just very tired." Call in a day or so when I have my strength back, okay?"

"Is she gone?"

"Yes, for now."  That would be the last time she ever saw her little sister who drove straight from Florida to Illinois to her waiting father.  It wouldn’t be the last of the battle between them but there would be guidance.  This Kieran knew without doubt.