I aways knew there was something off about Louisa.
One Saturday afternoon when I was ten years old, my parents walked up our long gated drive with a little girl between them. They held her hands and swung her, big smiles plastered on their faces, but she stared ahead, sullen. She looked about four or five and wore the sweetest pink dress and tights, with dirty rips in the knees. The first thing I noticed were her shoes, ugly, chunky, black things that looked about three sizes too big.
There was no introduction that day, or the next, or any day following that. In fact, she slipped right into our lives like she had always been there. Pictures of a tiny sleeping infant with jet black hair showed up next to mine on the mantle, the feet always cropped out or covered by some type of cloth.
When I was fifteen and Louisa had just turned nine, her and mom got into a horrible accident. A man leaving the Old Oak bar down on main street had one too many and decided he needed to get home, fast. Any gruesome details were kept from me but all I know is Louisa walked away without a single scratch and my mom was dead.
Four years later, when I was nineteen and about to leave for college, a similar thing happened to my dad. Louisa was in the car then too. Once again, without even a bruise from the seatbelt, she came home. He did not. My plans were put off, as we had no other immediate family that could take Louisa in. The house I grew up in, with its long, gated drive and now empty rooms was mine and hers. Her room had always been off limits, but that first night I figured I’d be the kind older sister and try to tuck her into bed. As I knocked, she pushed out of the door without letting me catch a glimpse and asked to sleep with me. She curled up next to me in my bed, her arms hooked around my waist. Her big, dark brown eyes blinked up at me and I swore I saw something moving behind them.
Time went on. Louisa, now seventeen and still wearing those ugly black shoes about three sizes too big, moves with surprising quiet around the creaking floorboards. She sneaks up behind me in the kitchen, in the living room, in my own bedroom. I’ll turn and see those dark brown eyes staring up at me out a body that seems much too small for a girl her age.
She refuses to get a license, which the school counselor blames on trauma from both of my parents’ deaths. She never wears any other shoes, or even takes them off. She wore them to homecoming when I forced her to go to at least once, to prom when I told her she had to go, and even in her pajamas watching a movie on the couch when I manage to convince her to sit with me. She keeps to herself. I knock on her door every morning to make sure she’s awake and make her lunch to take to school. Then I walk her to the end of the long drive to make sure she gets on the school bus- we had a rough time for a while where she would walk by herself down there, out of sight, wait for me to leave for work and then come home. After a few too many calls from the school, I decided this made it easier. When I get home from work, she’s been home for hours, locked in her room. Why does she hide away? Why was this girl, apparently my little sister, so different from me? People make comments about it all the time. I took after my parents- light eyes, light hair, tan skin, tall. Louisa on the other hand burns so easy I have to remind her to bring sunscreen to school in case their PE is outside. Her hair is so dark it looks blue sometimes and those dark eyes, those terrible eyes with the thing behind them that wiggles and crawls and blinks back at me. It disturbs me to look at her and not be able to find even a trace of our parents looking back at me. Maybe I blame her in some sick, twisted way.
When I first took custody of her, I had to go to court-ordered therapy, to ensure I was fit to be her guardian and to work through any resentment that may be bubbling beneath the surface. And boy was there resentment. All the times Louisa would break something and blame it on me, one pale, thin finger stretched out in my direction as my parents seethed. When my parents found the toy bunny they had gotten her in the backyard, the head ripped off and stuffed with mud, and they had believed that little finger over all my cries. I think even they were a little scared of her.
But today, I called in sick to work. I didn’t tell Louisa. I did everything as normal, knocked on her door, made her lunch, and walked her to the bus. I’ll wait a few minutes and then go up to her room.
UPDATE- Door was locked, I’m going to go look through the junk drawers to see if I can find the old master key my parents used to have.
UPDATE 2- Ok this is really weird but I think I found a birth certificate for Louisa. I thought I already had one for her, one that I had to turn into the court when I took guardianship of her. The name on it is right and everything, but for parents, its blank, and the date is wrong, it says she was born like ten years before her actual birthday. But anyways I found the key.
UPDATE 3- So I got in her room. It smells rancid in here. She has the same bedding she has since she was a kid, I remember because I helped her and my mom pick it out, all pink with little white hearts all over it. I never thought to wash it but it looks and smells like she never stopped peeing the bed. There are empty food wrappers everywhere. But the worst part is the drawings. All over the walls. Every inch is covered in horrifically graphic pictures of car wrecks. But they all look distorted like there’s something in front of the picture moving.
UPDATE 3- She has pictures of my parents and I too. But with exaggerated mouths and eyes to look almost like animals, blood dripping off the teeth. And another thing- at the bottom of every picture are these twisted feet with claw like nails, like they’re the viewer’s. I also have yet to see any other pairs of shoes. I’m going to keep looking and updating on what I find.
UPDATE 4- I went in her closet. I found what was causing the dead smell. I can’t- I don’t want to even think about it anymore.
UPDATE 5- I finally took a closer look at the floor, it’s covered in pentagrams, and candles, and salt.
UPDATE 6- Shit! She’s home. She’s early too, its only 11am, he shouldn’t be home for another four hours at least! I heard the front door open and she yelled my name. There’s someone coming up the stairs and it’s definitely not her. She’s usually silent but these are heavy steps and it almost sounds like scraping after each one. I locked myself in her room, I don’t know what to do.
UPDATE 7- I’ve been in her hell-hole of a room for hours. My phone is almost dead, and I realized immediately that I can’t make any calls for some reason. It’s dark outside now. And that same person has been pacing in front of the door the whole time. I’m going to try to figure a way out the window, but it’s like a twenty foot drop onto concrete. If I get out, I’ll make an update to this post. Wish me luck.