“Please,” she said, her eyes so big and close and the stench was so bad but he couldn’t look away from her to glance at it, at that horrible terrible thing he would never have thought of her. “Please, Marvin, you absolutely can’t tell anybody. Not a soul. If mum or dad found out about this…”

Marvin gulped, but it was a bad decision, because the movement pushed down another noseful of air, filled with the putrid stench of dead animal. Marvin remembered smelling that same odour just the other month, when their neighbour's dog had gotten ran over and crawled under the front porch. They didn’t find it for almost a week, and when they did, the only way they knew it was poor Lula was because that was the only dog that had gone missing as of recent.

He turned away from his sister. “Okay,” he said, weakly. “I’ll try.”

That was ten years ago, and his sister had only been eight and he had only been ten, and still, whenever he looked at her room, he could always remember that pile of carcasses. Dead squirrels and mice. Bigger; cats. He thought he might have seen a dog buried there, but it was in many pieces and he couldn’t tell what was supposed to be its forelegs or hindlegs. All he saw was the lightless eyes and the tongue lolling out, the gullet squirming with maggots as though it were foaming at the mouth.

It was worse now. She hid them better, but the smell never went away.

She didn’t bring friends into her room, and not into their backyard either. If anyone suggested they play palaeontologists, they might find more than they wanted to. But she hid them well. Oh, did she. But he always found them. A bone here, a dried ear there. When they got a dog, she tried feeding him whatever was left over, but it was a small dog, and eventually, it just wouldn’t eat anymore of her half-rotten meats.

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Not long after, Pooch went missing. Marvin had cried and cried but he never said he missed him. Because if he did, his sister might get ideas.

He didn’t want to think about it.

And apart from this, simply put, he couldn’t keep a secret. Maybe it was directly because of his sister, but whenever asked, he spoke honestly. Whatever he told himself, whatever he thought, he had one very good reason for this. If everyone he knew and loved believed him to be a terrible liar, they would never suspect him of keeping the secret he did.

But their childhoods had ended long ago. She was a woman now, and he was a man. They didn’t talk much, and when they did, they didn’t talk like siblings would often do. No banter passed between them, no sly gazes or taunting thoughts. They spoke like strangers, pretending that they didn’t know each other as deeply as they did.

Once, he visited her apartment. It was nice. Everything had a floral scent, and he couldn’t smell anything but disinfectant and bleach. She let him sleep over, too, which he did. All night, he looked through her cupboards, checking beneath the lid of the toilet, knocking on the walls, rummaging through her wardrobe. And through it all, he found nothing. Not a bit of meat, not a slip of fat, not a drop of blood. Had he been more optimistic, had he been who he pretended to be, he would have believed her to have evaded her old habits.

But he knew that very morning that the case was not so. Her eyes were as dead as they had always been, and all she did was smile—smile because she was so, so, proud that not even he could find it.

He saw it on her face and it made him nauseous.

He couldn’t keep the cornflakes down. He didn’t even try to. As he leaned against the rim of the toilet, chest rising and falling, bile slowly creeping back down his throat, sludge bobbing inside the sick-filled bowl, his fingers brushed against something small and metallic that clinked against the bathroom tiles. He brought it to his eyes. It was a small gold ring, etched with the line “June and Mary.”

Out of fear, out of horror, as if the ring had been fresh out of the fire, he threw it away from him, turning his eyes away, scrambling to his feet, slipping twice before being able to turn fully to the bathroom door. There stood his sister, her silhouette framed by a silver lining of light, the rest of her form cast in darkness. A stray glint of shine was slit across her eyes. The little ring slowly rolled to a stop before the toes of her heels.

She leaned down and plucked it from the floor, turning it over in her talon-like fingers.

“You can keep a secret, can’t you?”