“Mum?” Eret tiptoed into the dark bedroom, his wet hair sticking to his forehead. He saw his mother in her bed, the covers bunched up around her. She didn’t look like she’d moved since he’d given her breakfast. He struggled getting up onto the bed with her, being so short for his age. He peered over her side once he was up, his tiny, pudgy hand shaking her shoulder. “Mum, try to eat your oatmeal. I put cinnamon in it, just like you like it.”
She didn’t answer.
He left to get ready for school. Sissy would’ve been there to help him, but she hadn’t gotten home the night before. Her and mama had been in a fight the day before. Something about a boy. It used to happen a lot. They’d fight, Sissy would go to a friend’s to sleep over, and be back in the next day or two. Eret had left her bedroom window unlocked like it used to be before, since he had to lock the doors downstairs. She’d gotten the ladder to climb up to it a few times before their mum’s fateful doctor’s appointment. Lately, she often stayed home and tended to their mum while their other mother worked to pay the hospital bills. Sissy had said something about going to a friend’s house for a while. Maybe he’d see her at school.
He didn’t, actually. The teachers asked him if she was sick. He told them she’d been with her friends. They denied it after they got called to the office with him. The principal said something about calling his parents and he told him the different numbers for his mothers. The principal made a funny face at him, but Eret didn’t care.
When Eret got home, he started thinking something was wrong. Sissy had never been away so long before. He grabbed the phone and kept dialing her cell, but it went straight to voicemail each time. He stopped to check in on his mum and switch out the cold oatmeal with another meal before heading back out. He remembered where her friends’ house was—the one she’d been going to. Some tall kid that liked to look at Sissy and hug her a lot lived there. Sissy told him his parents left him and his sister alone a lot because of work, and they were lonely.
Half an hour later, he walked down a few blocks and was in front of the house. It wasn’t that much different from their own, just a little overgrown in the yard and water-stained. Eret knocked on the door, and waited for someone to open it. It cracked open slightly, and his nose crinkled at the chemical scents that poured over him.
He saw a shadowy figure through the crack, and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Eret Nielsen—”
The door slammed shut.
He knocked again. The door didn’t open. He heard some loud noises inside, like someone was throwing things or bumping into them.
“Excuse me!” he called out, thinking to go over to one of the front windows. He pressed his face to the glass, hands pressed on either side of his face. “Excuse me, I’m here to find my—”
Something moved in the corner of his eye. When he looked over, he saw his sister. She was looking inside, too; her hands were against the glass like his. She was still wearing the clothes—a pink hoodie and ratty jeans—he’d last seen her in. She turned away sharply, as if she heard a noise, and disappeared around the corner of the house. She didn’t even acknowledge his presence.
“Sissy, wait!” He bolted after her. There was a fence barring his way for a moment, but Eret climbed over it. He dropped on the other side and started running again down the stone path that snaked further into the backyard. When he cleared the next corner, he skidded to a halt. There was an empty pool. It was a big one, just like he and his sister had always wanted their mothers to put in their backyard. He stepped over to it, and felt around the edges. There was something crusted in the cracks of the concrete—something red.
A noise drew his attention. He looked up and saw his sister was splashing her male friend and another girl in the pool before him, their clothes discarded on the edge. He fell onto his backside and scrambled from the edge. He looked up and saw the night sky instead of a late noon sun. It didn’t make sense. He was afraid he was going crazy like he saw in movies.
His sister got out and moved away from the edge, preparing to run. She’d always liked doing cannonballs and flips. He called out to her, but she didn’t respond. She took off, grinning, and jumped off the pool’s edge, trying to flip in the air like the swimmers they watched on T.V. But she was off, he could see.
“Sissy!” Eret shouted, just as her head collided with the concrete rim. Red billowed in the water around her as she crashed into the water. The girl and boy who watched with him were screaming her name too. They were also screaming about how they’d get in trouble, swimming when their parents told them not to, when it was dark, when they were told not to run.
Eret shut his eyes against the sight and pressed his hands to his ears. But something compelled him to look again. When he did, he saw only a drained pool and the boy and girl in front of him.
“Hey! You’re not supposed to be back here!” the girl shrieked at him.
“My Sissy was here!” he replied.
“Bullshit.” The other boy grabbed him and started pulling him along towards the fence. “I don’t know who you are or who your sister is.”
“You’re lying. You were at her birthday party at the ice skating rink.” Eret dug his feet in, but the girl came up behind him and grabbed his ankles, helping her brother tote Eret out. “Besides, I know she was here last night.”
“Shut up, you fucking brat!” The girl’s voice trembled. He remembered how Sissy did that whenever she knew she was in trouble.
“I just saw her in your pool.” Eret knew what he saw was real. He just knew it. They threw him over the fence with the promise that if they caught him back there again, they’d beat the shit out of him. He wanted to fight against them, but turned and ran. He needed his mummies, now more than ever.
His mum was right where he left her that morning, eyes closed and thinning hair twisted into clumps. He told her about what he saw and what the big kids had said to him. He made sure to fib on a couple of details; some part of his young mind realized that having visions would be hard for grown-ups to consider.
There, a sign of life: her brow creased, and her eyes focused on him, as if seeing him for the first time in ages. “What are you talking about?”
“Sissy’s hurt! They said they don’t know but they do and they did something!” he repeated, clutching her hands.
His mother slowly sat up in bed, limbs flailing a couple of times. “Phone.” She muttered, swinging her skinny legs over the edge of the bed. He grabbed it from the nightstand on the other side of the bed and handed it to her, then waited as she dialed 911 and her wife’s cellphone.
After that, his mother had got dressed and she drove them both to Sissy’s friends’ house. The teenagers were in the front yard, loading a rolled-up carpet into an outdated car. When they saw his mother get out of the car, they dropped it and ran. While his mother chased after them as best she could in her poor health, Eret was left to witness the carpet unrolling behind them, revealing his sister’s corpse.
The next several hours blurred together for them both. When his mother returned and screamed at the sight of her dead daughter, neighbors were drawn outside and called 911 again. A few cars showed up with an ambulance in tow, and Eret sat silently in the car while cops talked at him and prodded him with questions. His eyes never left the bag they stuffed his Sissy into, not until they closed her in the ambulance and took her away. Then he looked at his hands, knowing his life would be changing more than he could imagine.
