Chapter Text
Cynthia Brandon is 9 years old when Mary Alice finally makes her the yellow dress she's been asking for weeks.
Mom offered to do it herself many times, saying that Mary Alice was already too busy with her last year of school, and her chores, and Remember your sister is not a slave to your whims, young lady, but Cynthia always declined. She wanted a dress made by Mary Alice, or none at all. Mary was the only one who could do it right, she could take the image of the dress that she had in her mind and make it a reality. Her sister is like a magician, or an enchanted princess with special powers. Cynthia doesn't want a normal dress, she wants a magical dress.
"Tomorrow Mrs. O'Brien is canceling classes," said Mary Alice without looking up from her book, reading under the tree, the soft summer breeze ruffling her long black hair. "Her grandson is being born tomorrow, so she won't be able to go to work. I will have time to make your dress then, Cynthia."
"Really, Mary?"
"Of course," said Mary Alice smiling, and turning to look at her, she placed a playful kiss on her forehead. "Now go help mom cook, it's your turn."
"Ugh," Cynthia sighed, but she turned and went anyway. Dad always got cranky if he had to wait for dinner when he got home.
The next day, Mrs. O'Brien cancels classes because her daughter is giving birth and she needs to be in the hospital. Mary Alice just laughs when she sees her huge grin of excitement, her barely contained excitement as she jumps in her place, and she takes her favorite yellow cloth and scissors and they spend the entire afternoon in the sewing room.
"You'll love it," says Mary Alice with a wink. And Cynthia knows that she is right. Mary Alice is always right.
Cynthia Brandon is 95 years old when she realizes that she is senile.
She knows this because the person who has knocked on her door is not her daughter coming to check if she is okay (Mar really worries too much, she is perfectly fine, or so she had thought until then. But now she knows , she knows that she is senile). Rather, it is the ghost of her dead sister.
Mary's ghost does not resemble her childhood memories of her. Her hair is too short, and spiky, the kind of hairstyle that would have given their mother a heart attack, who used to spend many minutes combing Mary's long black hair until it was silky and shiny, falling down her back to her waist. The ghost's skin was as white as a statue, when Mary's skin had been the color of a peach. And her sister's eyes had been blue and bright, but the ghost's were yellow.
But it was Mary. She was senile, probably hallucinating, and Mary was in front of her.
The ghost said nothing, watching the old woman with expectant eyes, waiting for her reaction. And Cynthia recognized fear in those eyes, so strange for her. In her delirium, Cynthia thought that perhaps God gives golden eyes to the purest souls, those who become angels.
“Mary.”
Something changed in the ghost's face, as if something had clicked in her mind. "Cynthia, I-"
And it was at the moment when she heard that voice buried in the depths of her memories again when the old woman began to cry, as if she were nine years old again, her weak arms clinging desperately to the ghost of marble. She's relieved to be alone, so neither her daughter nor any of her grandchildren can see her lose her mind. But she's fine. She doesn't mind being senile if she gets to see Mary Alice again.
Her older sister trembles in her arms, as hard as a statue, and then her strong fingers sink into her white hair, and Cynthia hears a voice whispering I'm here.
Two months before she died, Mom bought a car and taught Mary Alice to drive. For many years, that was her happiest memory.
Mary Alice's excitement is contagious, but she's not surprised, as always. Apparently, she had known for months that Mom was going to buy a car and she had been keeping the secret. Cynthia is in the back seat trying not to pout, feeling betrayed because Mary didn't share the secret with her, and because she's still too young to learn to drive.
Mom smiles and promises that if she's patient, she will teach her to drive when she's older too. It's imperative that every modern woman knows how to drive a car, Mom says casually, resting her pretty face in her elegant hand and telling Mary Alice to turn to the right. Mary is doing it perfectly, as if she had actually learned to drive months ago and she had just been patiently waiting until then.
"Mary, now we can go to the park more often, right?"
"Do you want to go to the park, Cynthia?"
"Yay!"
"Then we'll go to the park."
Mom rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. Sometimes Cynthia would like to bottle that smile, like a butterfly with wings of wonderful colors inside a jar. Mom always smiles more when dad isn't around.
The ghost wasn't going anywhere, instead she had trapped her in her cold, hard arms, and for the first time Cynthia considered the possibility of she being dreaming. Although normally when she dreamed of her sister, they were both young and innocent again, instead of an old woman and a ghost. So maybe it was just a very strong hallucination, and Mar had been right and she needed a night caretaker because she was obviously senile.
“I'm delusional,” said Cynthia into the ghost's cold neck. "You are not here."
"I'm with you."
“Just a product of my mind. I'm talking alone."
“That doesn't matter now, Cynthia,” the ghost whispered somewhere in her white hair, and her voice was very soft, and it's true. It doesn't matter. Not after eighty-five years. Not when she doesn't want to stop hallucinating or wake up, she just wants to stay there for countless hours, in the hard, cold embrace of her older sister's ghost.
Mom used to say that Mary Alice was born kissed by an angel. Cynthia was convinced that it was not true. Mary Alice was an angel.
Her sister shines every time she sees her smile, as if her soul were so bright that it escapes with every smile. When she was younger she was sure that Mary Alice must really have been an angel who had taken on a human body, and Cynthia felt like the luckiest girl in the world. The guardian angels of the other girls at school were invisible, but Cynthia's was her older sister.
Perhaps that was why she had never noticed that Mary's gift of knowing things before they happened was not normal. Many years in the future, when her resolve was wavering and her mind insisted on rewriting her memories, Cynthia often wondered how she hadn't noticed the way people looked at Mary, avoided her, and treated her with hostility after Billy Clarkson's death. He didn't listen to her when she told him not to drive that rainy night.
Her sister is an angel, but people are even more afraid of angels than demons.
Cynthia isn't afraid yet, because she's too young, too innocent, and she still believes there's nothing Mom and Mary can't fix. Her life will soon teach her that she was wrong.
It starts when Mary changes without explanation overnight. She no longer has time to play or talk to her. She starts looking at Mom with frantic eyes, haunting eyes, full of pain. Cynthia doesn't like that look in her eyes. But Mary refuses to tell her what's going on.
She likes the darkness in Dad's eyes every time he looks at Mary even less. Daddy has the devil in his eyes every time he looks at Mary.
Two hours have passed when the ghost picks her up in her arms and carries her to bed.
Realistically, Cynthia knows that this is not really happening. She's probably trudged slowly to her bed, and she's laid back after long minutes. In recent years, doing the smallest of things requires an enormous amount of effort and sometimes she can't control her frustration. She feels trapped inside her own body. She tries not to take it personally, time is unavoidable and it forgives no one, and she is ninety-five years old. She should be thankful that God has given her so much time.
But when she looks to the right and sees her sister still lying next to her ( the hallucination isn't over, thank God ), Cynthia feels like she's ten years old again. "You're still here."
"I won't go," the ghost replies softly. "Unless you want me to go."
"No. No, Mary, don't go, please don't go."
"Shh," the ghost whispered, and took her frail, bony hand in her own, strong and smooth as stone. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying here with you."
It's not easy to explain what it's like to lose a mother like Lillian Brandon. In Cynthia's childish mind, it's as if all the music is gone forever, the sun had died, and something inside her soul had turned black. If Mary was an angel, Mom had always been an elegant and wise queen, straight out of a fairy tale. Mom, teaching her to sew and telling her that she should always help Mary in whatever she needed. Mom, telling her not to run or dirty her clothes and reminding her in a very serious voice that she should always be careful with boys, because their nature was unpredictable and sometimes even wild. Mom, winking at her and smiling like if she knew a secret joke. Mom, sitting under a tree next to Mary Alice as the two of them had a very serious conversation about the nature of love, life, and God. Mom, shrugging when Mary shyly admits that she's not sure she ever wants to get married, brushing it off as if there were worse things than being single. Mom, who was supposed to teach her how to drive some day. Mom, who never smiled when dad was around.
Mom, murdered, dead and buried.
Maybe it's because she's too young to understand death, or maybe she's just in shock, but Cynthia Brandon doesn't have a single memory of her mother's funeral after her death. It wasn't real. It never happened. Mom never died. She just went out to buy fabric for a new hat one night and still hadn't come back. But she was going to come back, complaining about the traffic and with the materials for the hat and maybe some candy for her or that book that Mary needed for school. Mom wasn't gone forever, she just wasn't there now.
Mary Alice doesn't get out of bed for two days.
Cynthia stays by her side, wrapping her little arms around her and putting her face into her neck. She's probably still in shock, but Mom- Mom told her that she had to help Mary Alice. She was never supposed be a burden to her, never to abuse the fact that Mary couldn't say no to her.
So Cynthia Brandon doesn't cry when she loses her mother.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Cynthia is smarter than believing in a dream, however. She knows that the moment she closes her eyes, Mary Alice will be gone again.
“Talk to me,” the ghost whispers against her white hair.
"What do you want me to say?"
“Tell me about your life,” said Mary, her voice soft but full of sadness. “Your daughter is going to come in the morning to see if you are okay.”
"I know, Mary worries too much."
The ghost tightens her embrace against her frail and aging body. It almost feels like she is really there, with her. "Tell me."
A few minutes pass before Cynthia speaks again. “I think I had a pretty good life, considering the circumstances. I can't complain."
Mom is not coming back.
When Cynthia finally realizes that she's gone, really gone, gone forever, she wants to cry. Somewhere in her brain she is aware that she should be crying, that it would be normal to cry inconsolably, but she is also very, very, very afraid. And that fear is a ball in her throat that won't let her open her mouth, frozen in a state of alarm. Something bad has happened. Something bad is going to happen.
Mary never smiles anymore and her eyes never, ever sparkle. She is not eating. She hardly talks.
Daddy's got the devil in his eyes every time he looks at Mary Alice.
And one afternoon, when she's back from school, Mary is no longer there.
The clothes in Cynthia's room are all messed up and some things are broken. But Mary's room is intact, as if she hadn't come home yet.
"Where is Mary?" asked Cynthia. "Dad, where is my sister?"
“Mary Alice is gone,” replied Edgar. “She took her things and left. She decided that she no longer wanted to live with us. Maybe that's for the best."
Cynthia blinks, once, twice, three times, and her body shakes as if she's been electrocuted. And that's when she finally starts to cry.
She cries because she knows it's a lie.
"I know you're not here," Cynthia whispered, almost afraid for the first time in the conversation. It was too dark to see the ghost's face. "But it really feels like you're here, next to me. I wish I wasn't dreaming."
The ghost looked away from her. "I've been watching you all week, but I wasn't sure how to get close to you… I didn't want to scare you."
"You don't scare me," she said, taking her hand. "I love you, forever."
The ghost made that face again as if she wanted to cry. "As I you, baby sister."
Anne is really pretty. But Mom was prettier.
However, it is their father's wedding, so she decides that she will be nice to her, and that everything will be fine if she is good enough, sweet enough and never causes troubles, so her father doesn't hate her like he already hates Mary Alice.
And it does not matter. Really, if dad wanted to remarry, that's fine. Cynthia is young, perhaps too young to understand fear, but she does understands instinct, and her instinct tells her that the more distracted dad is, the better. It doesn't matter. Mom wasn't his anyway. Mom belonged to her and Mary, and she and Mary will never, ever forget her. There was no problem with dad finding someone who ( get the devil out of his eyes ) would make him happy.
At the wedding, Cynthia tells Anne that her necklace is very pretty. But she then she sees it, in Anne's face, as she looks up to see Mary Alice standing next to her. The devil in her eyes.
Cynthia stops smiling, and Mary Alice's hand shakes as she finds hers.
The ghost has been asking her questions for an hour. It is then that Cynthia begins to suspect that perhaps she is dead, and instead of seeing her life flash before her eyes, she must slowly talk about it with the ghost of her older sister. So Cynthia tells her everything. She talks for hours and hours, until there is nothing left to say. Her daughter, her grandchildren, her different jobs, her friends, her travels. And Mary makes questions and questions and questions until Cynthia finds herself talking about her stupid plants and her stamp collection. She talks and talks and talks until she is empty.
“I'm sorry,” said Cynthia with her eyes closed, her head on her sister's shoulder. She was very tired, but she refused to sleep.
"Why are you sorry?" asked Mary, her hand cool against her cheek. “You weren't even ten years old. I am the one who should apologize. I was not here." The ghost makes a noise as if she wanted to cry, but she couldn't. “I promised Mom that I would always protect you and I left you alone. Alone with him."
“But it wasn't your fault,” Cynthia murmured. “It wasn't your fault, he sent you to that horrible place where they hurt you, where they killed you."
The ghost trembles in her arms.
“Dad said you ran away but I knew that was a lie,” said Cynthia, touching the ghost's short hair. "I knew you would never have left me behind."
Cynthia Brandon is twenty-two years old when she hires a private detective to search for her sister.
She has been saving for a long time, and secretly and carefully taking the money that her dad leaves loose around the house. He's been insisting that it's time for her to find a husband and get married, and Cynthia isn't exactly against the idea (her home just hasn't been a home for years), but she knows in her heart that she won't be able to move on until she finds Mary Alice.
Dad has spent years saying that she ran away, so convincingly that even Cynthia wants to believe him. But not. Mary Alice would not leave without her. It's not her childhood memories of her cheating on her. She remembers her. Her sister would never have left her. So she hired a private detective, and she never told her father about it.
And she feigned ignorance when her father began to complain about Anne's careless spending, who couldn't even remember what she had spent the money on.
She received no news for two months, and when she was sure that she had been scammed, the man contacted her again, telling her that they should talk about the results of his investigation. Nothing could have prepared her for the file she received when the man met her in her office. An asylum file.
Interned in 1919 by Edgar John Brandon. Her delusions include claiming that her father killed her mother. Witnesses claim that her delusions also include believing she can see the future.
Electroshock therapies are not working
Lobotomy is recommended
Death in 1920
Cynthia's hands are shaking and her body feels cold, even though there is moisture on her neck and on her forehead. Everything looks blurry, like if she were underwater. And remembering the manners her mother taught her, Cynthia forces herself to sit up, she pays the private detective a generous commission, and leaves as quickly as possible.
When her father asks her where she went so late, Cynthia replies that she went to buy fabric to make a yellow dress. There is no emotion in her voice. There is nothing that betrays her true feelings.
But her thoughts are full of mutilated angels, locked up in hell. An angel scorned, tortured, and killed. And there's noise in her mind, but ice in her heart, and hate in her soul.
In the end she was right, her older sister would never have left her.
The nightmares begin that night.
“I'm dying, aren't I?” asked Cynthia when the ghost has stopped shaking. “Tonight. Right now."
The ghost doesn't say anything for an eternal minute, but she doesn't stop stroking her hair. "Are you scared, little sister?"
“No,” the old woman replied in a calm voice. “Not with you here. I'm so sorry that I won't be able to go to heaven with you and Mom, Mary. But still I don't regret what I did. I would do it again, over and over again."
"What are you talking about?" asked the ghost, in a surprised voice. It was a very strange thing to be able to surprise Mary. She thought that she knew, that she had come to say goodbye to her because she knew.
"You haven't asked about dad," said Cynthia in a calm voice. "What do you think I did when I found out the truth? What else could I do?"
Mary Alice pulled away from her, looking at her with wide eyes in her ghostly face.
"Mary, it was me," the ghost murmured. "I killed dad."
There is a huge rose bush in the garden at the old Brandon house, in the same place where Mom used to sit under the lamplight reading books on summer nights. She would read aloud sometimes, so that she and Mary could amuse themselves with the adventures of Jane Eyre or some fantastic Jules Verne book. It was better than the radio, mom's voice was a memory that would never leave.
And under the rose bush, feeding the plant, the corpse of her father.
Cynthia wants to think that she was merciful in choosing a simple painless sleeping pill to take his life. But she knows that she really was not merciful, for if she had allowed herself she would have thrown him personally to hell where he belonged. No, it had been fear. Fear of what she was capable of doing to him. Afraid of losing all her soul, completely.
It was enough to know that the sleeping pill had only put him to sleep long enough to put him in the huge bag she had bought, and that probably when he woke up, his last moments had been pure panic before realizing he had been buried alive and suffocating. Cynthia used to have nightmares about her mother's corpse being trapped in her grave when she was a child. It was fair.
To Anne she dedicated a more merciful fate. When she bought the poison she wore a blonde wig and used the name of her stepmother. The rest was easy. Many lies, mixed with truths to make them come reality. Fake fights and fake letters. A psychotic drug in her tea. It was not difficult for the police to believe that Anne had lost her mind, and attacked her husband when he disappeared. And who would suspect Cynthia? A short and shy girl, looking too fragile to even defend herself. It was easy. Too easy. That was why she was afraid, especially of the satisfaction she felt when they sent Anne to the same asylum as Mary.
Cynthia didn't feel better, but that was alright. She always knew that she wouldn't feel better, because Mary would still be dead. Revenge is too pure a motivation to bring anything but emptiness.
She was her father's daughter, after all.
The ghost remained silent, but there was pain in her eyes. Agony. Blame. A silent scream unable to come out of her inhuman throat. "I didn't see this."
Cynthia began to feel sleepy, and to feel that her eyes were closing against her will, slowly letting herself be carried away by unconsciousness.
"I'm sorry," the ghost said in a cracked voice. "Sorry, I was too late. It was already too late when I regained my memory. I should have protected you. I wasn't here, no- Cynthia, wait, wait. Don't close your eyes. Not yet. Hold on a little. Don't go. Don't-"
But then she can only hear Mom's laugh.