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Soul Sisters

A Horror Short Story

By Shelby SalernoPublished 6 years ago 9 min read
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Dylan Thomas House

I found a photograph of a woman I don’t know. I discovered her stuck to the back of my wobbly, creamed colored closet door, stapled to a patch of washed out wood. The image was crooked, tilted just so that the well-dressed, promptly poised woman within the photo appeared to be gazing curiously at me with sepia eyes. I gazed back, more dumbfounded than worried. Though, being alone temporarily in a two story, two and a half bedroom home in the nowhere depths of Detroit, I should have been rather concerned. My thoughts were elsewhere however, mostly wherever the attic hatchway lied that I had been intent on finding, not the picture.

Mr. Shaw, the perfectly groomed, overly eager middle-aged man who sold me the place, boasted to me about the killer, well in his words, “luxuriously spacious,” attic space that topped off the abandoned home—abandoned due to this part of Detroit’s lack of income, lack of family establishments, lack of, well, most everything these days save forgotten deaths and homeless people. But hey, that was why I planned on driving the hour every weekend to the Detroit Zoo so my little sister, PT, didn’t have to deal with this insufferable prison when she and Aunt Traci got here. When you have nowhere else to go, you go where you can. And you make the best of it, right? Right.

Using my bitten nails to pry out the staple, careful not to damage the photo, I extracted the starch paper from the sheet of wall with a quick pluck. In one hand I ended up with the photograph, worn and rough to the touch. In the other hand, I held the staple between two fingers; it was rusted and bent and dangerous looking. I peered at it curiously, wondering, for half a second, if staples even existed during the time the woman appeared to exist in. If not, how did the photo get there then?

I flipped the photo over to check if the back had anything to show, any bit of clue as to where the random image came from or whom it belonged to. I wasn’t surprised when the stark off-white of the other side was contrasted with a few black scribbles, as people tend to write a reminder of the photo’s meaning for future generations.

Looking closer, however, my eyes widened as I read the inscription: “For Piper Trisha-Mae McLachlan, December 31, 1912”. The words were written in a tiny cursive, neatly lodged in the top left corner as if it were a receiver’s address confused with where the sender’s should be on a letter.

For a moment confusion twisted my face, and a phantom sensation of apprehension fizzled in my stomach. I turned the photo over again and scrutinized the young woman within, silently asking for answers. She stood in the middle of what appeared to be the bustling center of pre-21st century Detroit, Michigan. I only knew that because in the bottom right corner there stood a strangely familiar home. I had spent years running up and down that home’s concrete driveway chasing the Pomeranian Aunt Traci had owned while living there. There was no mistaking the strikingly bright paint job that stood out like a firefly in mid Detroit; though, today the home was about a hundred years old. In the photo, it appeared to be brand new.

A mysterious photo with my little sister’s name, and the house my aunt hasn’t lived in for nine years? Not possible.

Looking further at the photo, as if to confirm my diagnosis of where this photo took place, I recognized the ghosts of buildings that I knew laid across the street from Aunt Traci’s home. The wanna-be skyscrapers stood to the left of the woman, half finished, laced with corset like frames, half black, half white, that extended further down the street than the photo could reach. To her right sat what appeared to be the rest of the humble, family-built homes, similar to that of Aunt Traci’s, with long, clean porches and tall, pleasing, archways that supported the porch roofs. The young woman stood directly in between the two, in the center of the rather busy street. Though surrounded by handfuls of standard, black Ford Model T’s, the woman appeared undeterred by the threatening bustle. In fact, as if to prove her point to the on-looker, or perhaps the cameraman, she seemed to be making perfect eye contact with the camera lens. Her strikingly light eyes bearing into my soul, it felt like. I tore my eyes away just enough to study the small slice of printer paper she appeared to be holding in both hands, right before her stomach.

“Welcome,” the poster read.

Looking back and forward between the photo’s sides, I noticed with a slight chill that the writing appeared to be the same.

Weird, I thought. That doesn’t make sense.

What was my little sister’s name doing on the back of a hundred year old picture? And who was the woman welcoming?

Perhaps Mom and Dad had decided to mimic a long since deceased grandmother’s name, one I never had the chance to know, but the entire name? That was dedication I knew neither of them had all the 12 years we lived together.

“Hallie!” A tiny voice chirped behind me. Startled, my skin felt as if it leapt an inch off of me, letting all the cold inside. I whipped around, ignoring the shiver that sought to commence, to find large, blue eyes gazing up at me lovingly, unabashed by my nervousness.

She rushed me into a hug, which I returned without hesitation. I shook my head and combed through her soft, chocolate hair.

“Hey, sis,” I said, feeling like a fool for thinking for a second that the photograph had been intended for my 10-year-old sibling.

PT lifted her head from my chest and asked, a bit too loudly might I add, “Want to color?!”

“Uhh,” I began, feigning the excitement of an overly happy puppy, “chya!”

“Hey, Hal! You guys all right without me for a few? I need to get some groceries.” Aunt Traci’s voice bellowed up the stairs as we made a run for the withered cardboard box titled: Crafts and Good Things.

“Ya, sure!” PT and I replied back, too preoccupied with shoving our heads into said box to glance up. I listened to the front door close with a dull thud, and then plopped down onto my butt on the coarsely carpeted floor. Suddenly, with a large assortment of coloring books sprawled across the floor, our new, unpacked home seemed brighter, more manageable.

“What’s that?” PT asked, pointing casually to the photo of the woman that lay beside my crisscross applesauce legs.

I brushed the thing beneath my leg and replied, “Ah, just some picture I found in the closet.”

“Can I look at it?”

“Well,” I hesitated, feeling the photo grazing my skin as if it were on fire. I resisted the urge to throw the thing across the room.

“I want to draw the lady,” PT insisted. “I like her dress. It's pretty.”

I pursed my lips in worry, but dragged the photo out from under me anyways. "She likes the dress," I told myself. You’re being dumb for worrying about a picture!

PT grasped the woman between both hands and stared at it with the concentration she only had when a Disney movie was playing. Then, appeased by her studies, she placed the picture ever so carefully above the blank cover page of her book. And then she began to draw, her tummy to the ground, and her feet in the air, wiggling back and forward contentedly.

I forced myself to relax by making Winnie the Pooh blue and purple instead of his usual yellow and red.

We remained like this for a while, PT and I: PT humming to herself while interpreting the woman in the photograph, and I scribbling on Pooh Bear, not caring much for the lines.

After a while though, PT looked up and said, “Hallie?”

“Hm?” I replied.

“Could you go outside and get my backpack. I left it in front of the door when I ran in to see you. I think LolaBear is cold. I left her in the front pouch.”

“Why don’t you go-" I paused. Oh, wait, we are no longer in Ann Arbor Toto. Hoisting myself up, I continued, “Ya, sure thing. Be right back.”

I sauntered down the stairs and onto the first floor, the front door just ahead. Usually I would tell the little booger to get her own bag, but having just moved to a new place, a place with a higher crime rate than basically anywhere, asking big sis to go was understandable. PT may be a child, but she was an intuitive and observant one.

Swinging the door wide open, I found the backpack with ease, and LolaBear, PT’s favorite stuffed animal, staring blankly through the door I had come from. The pack sat by itself on the bottommost stair of the porch, waiting patiently. A 2D version of Minnie Mouse grinned up at me, seeking a ride into the house. I snatched the pink pack and slung it over one shoulder.

“I didn’t know I had another older sister,” PT’s little voice chimed from behind me.

“What?” I asked, turning around to face her. She stood in the doorway with both hands gripping the door steadily so when as she swung back and forward she didn’t fall.

“PT, you know I’m your only sister,” I continued with a forced chuckle. “Really, your only sibling at all.”

“Nooooo. She’s my only sister by blood. You’re my only soul sister. So I have two.”

“Piper this isn’t funny, okay?”

Piper’s face twisted in disgust, a face I only saw when she thought about olives or the mean girl at school. “This isn’t a joke, Hallie. Don’t be so mean.”

“I’m not being-”

“She says I need to close the door now. Our time is up together. It’s her turn to color with me.”

“Whoa,” I choked. “Piper, Piper, no! Come here right now!”

“She says you’re being selfish,” Piper replied coolly. “And that you need to go back to kindergarten to learn how to share.”

“Who are you talk-?” I began. But my gaze flickered to the black and white photograph that Piper had stuffed loosley in her pants pocket. The woman in the photo was talking to her? Wait, no, that isn’t possible, that-

“My sister needs me,” Piper explained happily, a knowing smile brightening her already innocently light face. “See ya later, Hallie. Glad to have met you.”

My stomach dropped. “Wait, what?”

I reached desperately for the front door, throwing my entire body towards it as the heavy wood began to shut tauntingly slow. But as the tips of my fingers scathed the aged structure, Piper giggled and smacked the door in to my face, causing me to bound backwards and stumble down the steps with a shout. As I slammed onto my ass, I realized that the everyday city sounds were gone like I had triggered their departure. Only silence remained. I gaped at the front door in horror as I heard Piper switch the door locks on with an echoing thud. And then, all I could hear was my stricken and labored breathing, and the quiet hum of my little sister’s favorite song: "Take Me Home, Country Roads."

I called the police, but when they barged down the door there was no sign of a little 10-year-old girl, or a photo of a woman from the early 1900’s.

It wasn’t until a month and a half later, in Chico, California, that I found, stapled to the back of my closet doors, a picture of Piper, my Piper, holding hands with the young woman and smiling.

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About the Creator

Shelby Salerno

I am currently getting my creative writing masters in the UK but was born and bred on the west coast of the United States. I write in all possible formats and cover a range of topics, but mostly I write to help myself/others cope with life

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