My sister and I were always close. There was only a year difference in age, her being the eldest one. We liked similar things, had similar interests, and protected one another. We went through things together, like getting over a first boyfriend or realizing how bad period cramps actually are. I was grateful for this, to have someone that understood me so deeply. Of course there were fights too. A lot of “you stole my shirt” and “is that my lip gloss?” But what sisterly relationship doesn’t have a bit of bickering scattered in the mix.
But then… the bickering got worse.
I don’t mean to complain, especially on the internet to strangers I’ll likely never know. But lately, my sister has been… extra hostile. It started simple enough. I’d bump into her in the narrow hallway that separated our two bedrooms. She’d groan like normal, but there was a sharpness to the “fake” insults she would sling at me. “Jesus, take up enough space?” There was an underlying venom in her tone. I was used to our average bickering, but this put a crater in my chest. “Sorry, sheesh.” I brushed her off and kept moving.
The day after, I asked her if I could borrow something from her closet. “You’re so fucking annoying, Alice.” She didn’t say it with a tone nor did she yell at me. She said it like it was simply a fact. Her words were flat and she didn’t even spare a glance at me. “What the hell?” I retorted, but she just ignored me.
I started trying to avoid her after that. I figured, maybe she was going through something that she wasn’t ready to talk about yet. It happens, right? Whatever it was, I didn’t want to be in the middle of it. More and more, my sister started shutting everyone out. She would go to school, come home, lock herself in her room and… that was it. We barely saw her around the house. Later in the night I would hear her door unlatch and the sound of her feet scurrying down the hallway. Probably to the kitchen, since she never came down for dinner.
When mom would ask what was wrong, she would shrug her off and call her annoying. Always buried in her cell phone, always with an attitude. I started taking notice of her appearance. Now my sister is pretty, I won’t deny it. I was always jealous of how perfectly her hair laid in comparison to my cow-licked part. Her teeth were straight and shiny, and she was a swimmer so it was rare for her to be out of shape. But she started to look… sickly? Her face was always pale, with big black bags under her eyes. Her lips were cracked and dry, even her fingernails started to look brittle. She was chewing on them and ripping the skin along the side of her nail bed. She always looked nervous and her eyes would dart around the room like she was constantly looking for a threat.
Months went by, I started my sophomore year and she was a junior. She wouldn’t acknowledge me in the hall, and even her friends started to avoid her. They said she was gloomy and weird. A drastic change in comparison to the previous summer. She was vibrant, full of life, and usually lit up any room she walked into.
But now she was miserable to be around. She would hurl insults at us, and berate us every chance she got. She would walk by me and pinch me hard enough to bruise the skin. When I’d yell at her for it, I was simply met with a wide grin and a shrill laugh. She made me nervous, like I had to be on guard any time she was around.
This wasn’t Gemma. Something was wrong. As her sister, I needed to do something. So, one day, I decided to go into her room and do some snooping.
Now hear me out, I know snooping is wrong. I would never normally invade someone’s privacy like that. But I knew just asking her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So snooping it was. I started by combing through her closet. I figured if she were to walk in on me, I could just say I was looking for something to wear. I brushed my fingers gently over the hanging clothes. Vibrant colors of pinks, purples, and yellows swirled together as I shoved them to either side. Her clothes would tell me nothing. Especially since she didn’t wear vibrant stuff anymore.
Her closet was pretty empty, just shoes and hanging clothes. A few random pieces of paper but nothing of value. I emptied out some of her spare handbags to find empty tubes of lip gloss and tissues. Useless, I thought.
I moved on to her vanity. I searched each drawer carefully. Vials of lip gloss, palettes of blush and eyeshadow, but nothing to indicate something was wrong. I shut one in frustration and sighed. This is stupid, I thought. She’s a moody teenager. I turned towards the bedroom door when something under her bed caught my eye.
A little piece of paper jutting out from underneath. I moved to the bedside and dropped to my knees. The paper had nothing but numbers scribbled across it, but behind it lay a small… journal? Diary? I picked it up and felt it over. It was damaged, the binding was loose and the cover was worn down. The edges of the paper inside looked… burnt? I stared at the small book for a minute. For some reason I felt a lump of nausea climbing up my throat. This small, seemingly harmless journal felt like a rock in my palm. Sweat broke out down the back of my neck.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I murmured to myself. With a sigh I pulled the front cover back. My hands shook as I skimmed the pages. I swallowed hard. I guess I had every reason to be nervous.
On almost every single page, there was one message.
He is coming.
What the fuck does that mean? I blinked hard as I shifted through the pages. The handwriting on each page got worse and worse. It looked less like an average teenager’s handwriting and more like scribbles from a toddler as the pages went on. The writing started to look desperate the further into it I got.
He is coming
He is COMIIing!!!
HEe IS COMINg!!!
HE IS COMING!!!!!!!!!!!
More of the same as I scanned the pages. I was almost to the end when I heard a thump in the hallway. My heart fell out of my ass as I scrambled to shove the tiny book back under her bed. I flew to the closet and yanked the door open, shifting through her clothes. When her bedroom door swung open, for some reason, I felt uneasy.
“What are you doing in my room?” She snapped.
“Hey, Gemma. I was looking for something to wear.. I was going to a friend’s tonight.” I lied as calmly as I could. I could feel her moving behind me. I was scared she was going to get closer. This is ridiculous, I thought. She’s your sister. Still, I felt like a helpless gazelle being taunted by a lion.
I turned to look at her and was met with a gaze I have never witnessed before.
Her face was twisted into a snarled grimace. Anger seethed from every pore on her face. Her mouth fell open as she stared at me. “I-I’m sorry, Gem. You never used to care..” I suddenly felt very trapped and claustrophobic. Her bedroom door was closed and she stood between me and my one way out. Her head fell to the side as she blinked at me. “You’re useless.” She murmured faintly. “What?” I blinked at her. That was cruel, even for how Gemma was now. “You’re useless.” She shrugged as her head lay to the side in observance of me. It was like she was surveying how I was going to react. Her mouth started to fall open into a wide grin. “You’re useless and one day, Alice, I’m going to rip your tongue from your mouth.” She made a horrible gurgling noise from the back of her throat, followed by her usual shrill laugh. I stared at her in shock. Tears poured over my cheek as I shoved past her to the door. I had nothing to say, I just wanted to get away from her.
After that, we didn’t talk. If she walked into a room, I walked out of it. I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I knew it had to have something to do with that weird little book. Her moods got worse, and it was making everyone in the house miserable. She started screaming at our parents, throwing glass plates on the ground. She would slam doors so hard the hinges would break. My dad had to replace her bedroom door twice. She would corner me or my mom, getting in our faces and taunting us. My mom tried taking her to therapy, but Gemma refused to go. She would sit in the car and scream until my mom let her out at the house.
And then one night.. Everything changed.
It was late, well past 11 pm. I was laying in my bed reading a manga I’d bought recently when I heard the familiar creak of her door opening. This was a usual routine for her now. She didn’t eat dinner with us, she would wait until we all went to bed and sneak down to the kitchen. I heard her soft footsteps walking up to my bedroom door when they suddenly stopped. I knew she was standing outside my door. My heart thumped in my chest. I stood up from my bed and hovered at the edge. I wanted to walk to my door, to open it, to just.. see her standing there. Hopefully apologetic and asking for forgiveness.
The thought made me laugh. And tear up, if I’m honest.
But instead I slowly approached my door. My heart was beating a mile a minute. There was no reason for me to be so nervous. She was just my sister. Her behavior had been weird, cruel even, but she hadn’t done anything too crazy for me to be fearful of her like this. My palms started to sweat and I felt a lump in my throat. I stood in front of the door and placed my hand on it gently. I stared at the doorknob, and I don’t know what possessed me to do it but… I locked it.
“Alice?”
Her voice startled me. I jolted in position. My mouth was dry and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. “Alice?” She tried again. It was her voice, definitely. But something about it seemed so unlike her. It felt almost… sinister. “Alice.” This time it came as a statement rather than checking to see if I was actually there. “Are you gonna let me in?” I felt her tap against the door. I still couldn’t bring myself to say anything. My hand hovered above the doorknob, but I wasn’t trying to let her in. I was prepared to grab it if she tried to open it.
Suddenly, she began knocking on my door. Relentlessly. It started as a few light taps, then turned into banging. She was banging on my door. The whole thing vibrated and shook as she smacked and pounded on the other side. “Alice!” She screeched. The doorknob started shaking violently. I grabbed hold of it with as much strength as I could. Tears brimmed my eyes and my heart felt like it was going to seize up. ”ALICE!!!” She was screaming now and my bedroom door was hanging on by a thread. The lock had already busted, and it was just me versus her holding it. I could hear my parents start to shuffle around, and I heard my mom’s voice down the hall. “Gemma? What’s going on?” She sounded half asleep and dazed.
Everything got sickeningly quiet. I took several quick breaths and tried to steady my body weight against the door. “Gemma?” My moms voice traveled down the hallway. I took a breath and pried my door open, just a crack, to try and see what was going on. I was met with an image that is seared into my brain.
Gemma was staring at me. But not just staring. Her mouth was hanging open in a twisted grin. It was an elongated smile, her lips were cracking and bleeding from how wide she had stretched her lips. Her eyes were like saucers. The white spaces of her eyes were filled with black that bore into me. She was making this awful… clicking sound? Like it was coming from the back of her throat. Every time she clicked her head would twitch and bob. Her face was nearly pressed against my door. Very slowly, she reached a hand up to touch her jawline. Her fingers were bloody, and I quickly realized it was because she had ripped her nails off. When I say ripped them off… I mean it looked like she had just peeled them from her nail bed. Quicker than I could react, she shot a hand out into the crack of the door. She snatched a fistful of my hair and with a sharp tug, she ripped a chunk from my scalp. I screamed as my hands flew to my head. She giggled like an excited little kid at how horrified I was. I slammed the door in her face. “Gemma what the fuck!” I smacked my door and let out a sob. What was happening to my sister?
I heard my dad from the end of the hall. “Gemma.. Are you okay? Can we take you to the hospital?” He sounded so desperate to help her. Sadness welled up in my chest for my parents. How could they fix her?
Without warning, I heard her take off down the stairs. Her feet smacked the ground and I heard her jump off the last few steps. I flung my door open and ran to my mom. She threw her arms around me and cradled me. My dad stood there for a minute, like he was weighing his options. Gemma was downstairs throwing glass around in the kitchen. Every few minutes we could hear her shrill laughter followed by those sick clicking noises. “You two, in the bedroom. Now.” My dad ushered us into my parents’ room. My mom and I sat on their bed while my dad paced back and forth. He decided to call 911, to ask for a mental health check. My mom sobbed quietly on the bed beside me. We could hear the loud crashing of glass and things being knocked over downstairs. I couldn’t get that horrible gaunt look out of my head. That wasn’t Gemma, I wouldn’t accept it.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The shattering of glass, the shrill laughter and the awful clicking sounds. Our house became deadly quiet. My dad stared at the bedroom door, his hands balled into fists. My mom kept an arm around me. There was a thump at the door that jolted all of us.
“Mommy?” It was Gemma. She spoke so softly she almost sounded like her old self. I went to call out to her but my dad motioned for me to stay quiet. Small, faint sobs traveled from the other side of the door. I could feel my mom tense beside me. There was a scratching sound, like she was scraping her nails down the side of the door.
Except it couldn’t be her nails… she had ripped them all off. I seized up at the idea of her dragging a knife up and down the door.
Gemma began to laugh. She wasn’t just laughing, though. She was sobbing, and cackling, at the same time. It sounded like two different voices bubbling up from her throat. One would wail like it was in pain, and the other would laugh maniacally. I chose to believe the maniacal one was the voice dragging the knife across the bedroom door. She began knocking, or rather banging, on the door. “LET ME IN!” She shrieked, still heaving a mixture of laughter and sobs. The banging increased and I thought for sure the door would bust. My mom was pale and trembling beside me. My dad stared at the door, in disbelief or fear, I couldn’t tell.
“You can’t hide from me forever, Alice.” She spoke so quietly I thought I made it up. I glanced at my mom who put a finger over her mouth, a sign for me to stay quiet.
Suddenly, an echo of footsteps bounded up the stairs from the end of the hall. “Police!” We heard someone shout. I felt my mom shift beside me as my dad approached the door. “Put it down!” We assumed he was talking to Gemma. We heard her giggle maniacally, and what I’m still assuming was a knife dragging back down the door. But following the shrill laughter was a plea that reverberates in my mind. “Please.. help me.” She choked out a sob, but as soon as softness came it went. Her feet pounded against the hardwood floor of the hallway. “Stay put! I said don’t move!” But faster than I think anyone could react, we heard a sickening cackle followed by a heavy thud.
Silence.
My dad waited about 10 minutes before pulling the door open. Gemma was gone, but there was a trail of blood streaking down the hallway. It reeked and made my stomach turn in knots. I was panting, both from the smell and the fear. There was a man laying at the end of the hallway, an officer, and it was clear he had been stabbed. We followed my dad down the hall, carefully trying to avoid stepping in blood. The officer groaned and my mom heaved a sigh of relief that he was alive. Backup was called, and an ambulance. They said he was stabbed 11 times, and miraculously survived. I don’t think that was an accident, though. I think if Gemma wanted him dead, he would be dead. I think that softness… that small sign of weakness was actually Gemma trying to save him. From whatever she had become.
There was no sign of her, though police followed a trail of blood through our front yard and onto the street. Strangely enough, it ended there. There was blood on our front door and, I guess, when police arrived the door was already open. That warranted them to search inside, where they found busted glass and shattered windows. Blood was pooled in the kitchen, and handprints stained the wall from floor to ceiling like… like she had been crawling on it. Even the police were at a loss about what happened. They’re still looking for her but, I don’t think she wants to be found. Not by them anyway.
The next day we packed as much as we could to leave. I was stuffing things into my suitcase, snagging a few books from my shelf to bring along, when a familiar sense of dread washed over me. My hands began to sweat and my fingers trembled as I brushed over the tiny diary. My mouth felt like cotton as I skimmed through the pages. I hadn’t seen Gemma, but somehow, I knew she had put this diary in my room. I’m not sure when… but judging by the blood on the pages, it was sometime during the previous night. The pages all looked familiar, except the very last one. This is why I’m reaching out for help, advice… anything. Because I’m pretty sure she’s coming back for me. I’m scared… and I feel like no matter how far away we go, Gemma is going to know exactly where I am.
Hel. He’s. he lp here me…. Alice. Alice. Alice. ALICE. ALICE!!!!!!!