Estimated reading time — 12 minutes

Sometimes your bones break and your little sister disappears, and always your father acts like nothing is wrong. Occasionally, he’ll sit you down and tell you that you have to move on. Your sister isn’t coming back. That she’s probably dead. I didn’t think so. I couldn’t think so. We spoke often about the forest and its darkness. Even from a distance, it ate you alive with its rotten molars. We’d wail, and throw ourselves into her mother’s arms. At home, we were brave. You can’t be eaten under a blanket. Pointing out the window, she would smile at me and relay to me a story her mother had told her about a woman from way back when who got stood up at her wedding. Very Miss Havisham, I said. The woman apparently lived in an ancient house crushed between the trees way at the back of the forest. Like a crisp packet you hide under your mattress so your mum and my dad don’t know we’re eating junk, I giggled. Her husband was supposedly dared into the marriage and ditched last minute to elope with a much younger woman. Men have always been like that, I said. She was driven mad at her loneliness, further fed by the shadows she’d see watching her from around corners. I asked what happened after that. After the hallucinations. The insanity. Marged told me the woman’s body died, but not her soul. It’s always like that with ghosts: they always have a sadness about them. She’s still there today or so my sister’s mother says. If ghosts are truly real, maybe that’s why I felt like Marged was never gone.

Since Marged disappeared, I found myself watching the forest more often. It was like I was stalking it. Even when I’m not looking, I’m thinking: I know the look of every inch of bark, every stem of every leaf, I hear the squirrels, I know the foxes. I figured maybe it was a sign. When the police first came to our house, I suggested they look in the forest. They signed my cast and left. I stared at their signatures. A promise. Dad looked so disappointed. He told me that they wouldn’t find her. She was gone. I thought for a minute maybe he had something to do with it. I spent that night stomping the garden looking for soft spots. There were none. I itched my arm and headed back inside. My dad didn’t feel like a killer but he was a coward. He’d given up far too quickly. It was like she was never here. Just like when my mother died. Losing Marged herself wasn’t as hard as losing her presence. That first week I would wake up and wonder if she ever happened at all.

At school, I was an attraction. The girl with the dead sister and the freak of a father who’d wander around with eye bags heavy as dumbbells wearing the most unnatural smile. I’d push through conspiratorial whispers just to get to class and while there, I’d stare out the window at my suspect. The forest stared right back, indifferent. The only person who ever approached me directly with their questions was Rachel Montpellier. Rachel was nosy. Her dark hair hung around her face like a slightly less creepy Samara. You could scarcely see her eyes beneath her long, dark lashes.

“Do they have any leads?” She asked, arms folded against my desk. Her watch ticked in wait.

“Not yet” I kept my lips shut about the forest. It wasn’t hers.

“I think they’ll find her. I wouldn’t worry, Casey”

I can’t say what I felt was worry given how assured I was that my sister was alive, but to be told not to feel that way angered me. I wrote in my diary of this stupid rich girl who thought she could dictate how I felt about my situation. She’s not even that rich and that’s not what she was doing, but it’s the Langdon way to blame.

Despite my suspicions, it took me two months to venture into the forest. I am afraid of the dark. You never know what’s there. You never know who is there. It took me until my body burned with this incessant itch that my nails could no longer scratch. I’d have no skin.

Desperation crawled through every vein in my body. I just had to know. I had to see. This was my little sister. Her hand used to be too small to wrap around mine. I walked to the mouth of the forest and the wind hit me like hot breath.

Being in the forest is the first time Marged being dead occurs to me. She could be dead. I could never see her again. She was definitely dead. She’s fourteen and weak. She’s got no survival instinct. Whenever I would turn the corner suddenly to frighten her, she’d jump and freeze in place. Killing her would be easy. Like killing a spider with broken legs. Cruel. The victim would be slow. It would be easy. Could you even take pleasure in that? My legs carry me onwards anyway, venturing on a meaningless journey. If I found her body, I’d never be me again. That might be a good thing.

I got to a clearing. Encircled by trees, I licked my finger and stuck it forward. The breeze was coming just about from my right. Maybe it was a beast, I thought. There could be a beast looming over me. I had gotten to a point where anything was easier than believing my sister could have been taken by a person. With each blink, my mind would flash concept art of a new creature that could be perched somewhere I couldn’t see, watching me, breathing on me. Waiting to kill me. If I were killed, would I also never be found? My eyes closed. The house was ahead of me. Miss Havisham.

My eyes opened. No one I could see. I had never been so assured I wasn’t alone, even in rooms of people. Even at family dinners. The bustle of cutlery, Marged’s mother praying.
“Miss Havisham?” I murmured, looking around. I stumbled like I’d been pushed. My throat dried and my heart was yelling, compelling me to repeat myself. “Miss Havisham?” A croak. Like a frog.

Nobody replied to me.
I spun around to check behind me. Empty again, like Marged’s room.

“Miss Havisham, have you seen my sister?” I was followed by a blur. I wobbled and steadied myself on a branch. The trees watched from a distance. A pat on the back. A plea for help. A need to ask for help. An urge I couldn’t fight.

“Marged?”

Nobody would tell me anything.

“Marged, please just tell me if you’re there!” I called. “I need you Marged!”

I hadn’t cried in years. My mother died and my father acted like she didn’t. You can’t die if you’re not real. I’m pretty sure she was. I think she happened to me. But that was a thought, not a truth. You can’t cry for possibilities.

“Miss Havisham, please tell me where my sister is!”

Casey Langdon was doomed for failure from the offset. She mentored her sister to the grave and here she was pleading with a myth for answers. Take responsibility, Casey. Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.

“Miss Havisham, what’s your name?” I asked. “Can you tell me if my sister is dead?”

There’s nothing like responsibility in my bubble. I run from everything; it’s the Langdon way. I was never taught to turn and face fault. My emotions are as much a mystery to me as the sea bed is to scientists. I know less of myself than I do the shopkeeper. Who is Casey Langdon and what led her to be such a failure? What led her to let her sister die and what led her to blame herself?

I yelled at the abyss for hours. When I got home, my father was sitting up for me. The clock on the wall had run out of battery. I set my torch down and took a seat next to him. We were unused to each other’s company. He wasn’t accustomed to worrying about me, but after losing two wives and a daughter I was all he had. His attention wasn’t worth the blood.
“Where were you?” He asked, his hands embracing one another. More love was shared between those palms than existed in his first marriage.

“I was searching” I chose honesty. “I felt like I could find her”

“You didn’t” Dad sounded ashamed of me.

“No”

“You don’t go out that late, Case”

“Okay”

At school the next day, Rachel approached me with a card and a sorry looking face. It’s like she knew about my loss at the clearing. I took the card and wiped her face of pity. The card wasn’t going anywhere except the bin but I assured her I’d put it straight on my bedside table. She cared so much she was detached; why would I want a ‘sorry your sister is probably dead’ card? She lent me her headband and talked to me about exams which weren’t until May. Somehow it was April. February felt like yesterday. February 24th.

“I’m happy to help with math. I know you struggle with math” Rachel sketched on my cast a smiley face.

“I struggle with everything”

“You look prettier when you smile, Casey”

“No, I don’t”

Rachel always shares her notes with me since her handwriting is far superior and her mind is more capable than mine. I copied them absentmindedly. Surds, algebra, pythagoras; people torture themselves in the pursuit of knowledge. Had we never sinned – if we’d stuck to Eden – would my sister be dead? God, I prayed, have her with You. Let her not be dead in Your eyes even if she can’t be seen in mine. I’m on the edge. Miss Havisham didn’t answer my questions and I told Rachel as much.

“You spoke to a ghost?”

“She never replied”

“They don’t tend to”

“If one of us had to die, don’t you think it should have been me?”

Rachel sighed. Chewing her lip, she leant back and stared out through the window at the forest. She nodded as if she was having a conversation then turned back to me.

“If you want to die, then die. It’s doing nothing for Marged”

“You’re probably right”

A body was found later that month. I got an exemption from my exam since the coroner was convinced the body was of my sister and that, obviously, wouldn’t put me in the mood for physics. I felt a bit sorry for the girl though, because it wasn’t Marged. The body found was that of eighteen year old Bonnie Jones from the village over; we’d gone to the same tutoring club in Year 9. Bonnie was blonde, she had those blue eyes that practically pleaded to be murdered and a figure that went unfed. Her voice was uptight, her attire very Legally Blonde and her parents dishevelled enough they could’ve crawled out of a tip. Despite that, it was pretty awful to hear she was dead. Our last conversation, I told her to shut up. She was over explaining the basics to me. My father looked distraught finding out it wasn’t Marged and when I actually tried to have a conversation with him – for a change – he told me to shut up. I felt like Bonnie. Cold. They weren’t the same age, but maybe that didn’t matter. Murderers probably don’t ask your age. They were roughly the same height, I thought. Marged was a brunette though, with hazelnut eyes that sparkled. Nothing in Bonnie sparkled.

Whenever I had a thought – especially a weird one – I handed it to Rachel. Curled against her fluffy pink pillow, her hand braced against her mattress and she stared at an empty page in her diary. A pen rested all lackadaisical in her palm.

“Bonnie was, and not to be ‘thing’-” Said Rachel, in a way that always meant she was going to be ‘thing’. “-was odd. I didn’t like her. Proper rude”

“Did she deserve to die?” I played with a doll of hers, waving her soft palms at me. Like a friend. I smiled.

“Who does?” Rachel shrugged, staring still. “Imagine there’s a killer here who’s after our demographic”

“You sound hopeful”

“I always hope for something interesting, Casey”

“What if the killer kills you?” I watched her face. Unbothered. As if we weren’t talking about what we were talking about.

“What if I have an aneurysm? Not something I’m worried about” Rachel grumbled. “Nothing ever happens to me”

“You won’t be saying that forever”

“I’m saying it for now and I’m sick to death of it”

At home, my father sat me down and told me all about safety: strange men who stare across streets need to be run from, my mother may be dead but it’s supposedly more effective to shout ‘mum’ in a crisis rather than ‘help’ and that, should I ever find myself getting mugged I must hand everything over without complaint. I hope they enjoy my lip gloss. Rachel’s parents didn’t give her the talk. Maybe they know she just doesn’t care or maybe it’s them. Rachel told me if someone pulled a knife on her, she’d exclaim ‘finally!’.
The forest watched me through the summer. Each twig paid more attention to me than my father did. Rachel and I had hung out more the last few months with the disappearances picking up: Claudia Donovan, Sylvia Tyler, Violet Clyde. Eighteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Gradually, and by some miracle, Rachel began to look disturbed. On a Friday in August, the two of us gathered by the forest to talk about who would be next. It was a typical, conspiratorial discussion for us. Much like therapy, it served me with my ‘investigation’ and Rachel’s morbid curiosity. That day, I suggested that a girl named Ffion might be next because she always goes out alone to smoke behind her parent’s back – a prime time for homicide. Rachel was quiet for a change, then she pointed into the forest.

“You can’t find something you don’t believe in finding” There was nothing to her voice that day. No sign of her typical unchecked arrogance or her general disregard for human life. Empty. I thought there was nothing in her before but I didn’t know anything. I’ve always been an idiot.

“How do you mean?” I questioned, following her dim eyes toward the forest. Nothing. A commonality was right in front of me. Two shells. A reflection. Projection. I took a step back before I even registered the thought.

“No one thinks an idea can kill, only its practice. But the idea itself having the free will to enact its evil. Do you believe in that?”

“I told you the forest was evil before”

“Desperation told me that, not you” Rachel mused. “You don’t have a single original thought. It’s almost inspiring”

I wondered what she meant. A concept of a haunted forest, but the idea? I had every belief in the forest being haunted. That it was the cause of everything. It was evil. I knew that. What idea can kill, seperate from the practice? Rachel never made much sense to me, anyway.

“The forest is just a forest, isn’t it?” I was unsure.

“Just as a house is a house”

“But not every house is a home?” I asked.

“You’re thinking for the first time” I saw the blur of Rachel’s attention turning to me but I kept mine on the horizon. My nails dug into my palms.

“What makes the forest evil?” I queried, holding my breath.

“What stops a house being a home?”

“A father” I felt his indifference on my nape.

“What stops a light bulb turning on?”

“No electricity”

“What stops a tree from growing?”

“If it doesn’t have roots?”

Rachel aligned herself with me, her arm snaked around my shoulder and pulled me in. I didn’t look at her for fear of what I’d see.

“You’ve been looking at this wrong. You’ve been blaming the evil on the iris, not the optic disc. Nothing happened when you shouted at the trees because the trees are just the house. The home is the roots. The home is the earth. It’s embedded in the ground, Casey. It’s everywhere. It will not just be Marged. It will not just be you”

“The ground is the problem?”

“It’s sewn from cruelty. Every ounce of dirt born from blood. Miss Havisham lost her marital dreams on this soil, but so too did her family”

“What did the family do?”

“The Montpelliers swore that every tear would be a death” Rachel gripped my shoulder.
All of my veins itched as a colony of spiders navigated their way to my heart. My cage was ready to burst. In my head, everything looked colourless except the blood that dripped from my shoulder, from Rachel’s palm. Her gaze had something desperate about it. The air between us served as a confessional and whatever good in me compelled my entirety to listen.

“Your blood has made you feel evil, Casey” Her voice was laced in beauty, the alluring sort of sin that caused our fall. I saw why we lost it all.

“It’s not killed anyone” There was no venom in me. I wasn’t the Devil. “Not like yours”

“It killed your mother”

“That wasn’t me”

“But it felt like it was” Rachel’s forehead pressed against my temple, her breath playing my eardrums. “You saw him. You heard her. Everything he loathed in her is all you are and yet you’re comprised of him. Blood isn’t defining though, Casey. It’s just science. It’s why I love you”

“Love isn’t killing my sister”

“I didn’t mean to cry”

We were on stage with the shaded oak as our audience. The leaves blew in applause. The melodrama. The reveal. The insanity.

“What upset you?” I whispered, almost tenderly. My flesh burned with contradiction. All I wanted was my sister back, but all of a sudden I was looking at a spider with broken legs. She was in my palm. Twitching. Could you even take pleasure in that?

“Neither of us have much experience in being loved. I’ve loved though. I’ve loved you. When I cried in my attic that day, among the cobwebs, I wiped my face. I wiped it Casey, I promise. February 24th. When we got the knock at the door saying it was Marged who was gone, I-”

“-if all your tears do is kill, then where is my sister?” I shook.

“Casey, I seriously don’t know” She slipped down, her forehead shivering into my collar. “Maybe in the home”

The grass peaked from under my converse, long strands of earth’s hair muddied by the recent downpour. My tears felt like salt in the wound. Rachel clenched her fist and my shoulder felt ready to crack. The bones in my body grinded together but hurt wasn’t a concept I believed in anymore. My sister had been home the whole time.

My legs had never moved so fast. Rachel hadn’t killed Marged. I couldn’t believe that. There was hardly anything human to be seen in Rachel, but there was a resemblance in her that my father lacked. He’d given up for the same reason he had the first time. It was his fault. Again. I was blind. I saw the tree but not the roots. I loathed myself but not my origin; that same origin that stole everyone I ever dared to love. I saw the forest as evil for months on end but I wasn’t paying attention. I wouldn’t give him the chance to take Rachel; not like he had Marged, Bonnie, Claudia, Sylvia and Violet. Fourteen. Eighteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Rachel’s tears felt to her like blades, each sob incriminating but it was never her offense. Her blood had made her fear a myth. A delusion. A story that absorbed every fibre of her being, just as I had feared the forest. My hand tugged the handle of my front door.

Marged wasn’t in the garden. She was in the walls. Her heartbeat radiated from the floor. The house jolted or I did. She rested in her bed, she laid on the sofa, she was sprawled in the attic. She was buried at home and in my father’s eyes as he turned to look at me from the TV.

I still wonder if my expression was like his. I want to know if my face was anything like what those girls saw – what Marged saw – as he took them from the. A father can throw a fist and a girl can lose her sister. The collison echoes and a neighbour becomes convinced her tears take lives. A forest can stand in the dark and children believe in monsters.

All of the spiders with their broken legs can never mend, but they congregate in the dark. I hope I gave them rest. I hope, especially, for you Marged. Your big sister will always love you and her broken arm will send her to you soon.

Credit: Evie May

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