July 12, Tuesday
Sybill had been charged with breaking and entering. Mary--- Sophia doubted that was her real name---communicated this the afternoon after she had collected Sophia from the police station. Sophia was lying on the couch, but at this announcement she sat up. Her body went numb, and she stared up at Mary in wordless horror.
“Oh, don’t look like that,” Mary said, waving her hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “It happened a few hours ago and from what I hear, the evidence is pretty flimsy. The cops just want an excuse to hold her while they try to implicate her for the murder. But we’ll get her out before that happens. It isn’t as bad as it sounds, honey. Trust me.”
She seemed confident, and for a moment the knot in Sophia’s stomach loosened. “When does she go to trial?” she asked.
“Oh, it won’t get that far. Her preliminary arraignment is in a few days and after that she’s still got her hearing.”
“I want to see her.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve been clearer. What I meant was, no fucking way.”
Sophia glared at her. “I’m just supposed to sit here on my ass and take your word for it that everything will work out?”
“Yup.”
Sophia thought about pushing the matter further, but something told her she wouldn’t get very far, and every minute they spent bickering could be spent planning Sybill’s release instead. She resigned herself with a heavy sigh.
“Atta girl,” Mary said with a pearly smile. "Now. Just look at this place! It’s a mess. Get off that couch and help me tidy up, honey. I won’t have Sybill’s baby sister sleeping in filth.”
Sophia reluctantly stood up with another sigh. While they tidied up the apartment together (it looked as if it hadn’t been lived in for ages), Mary gave Sophia little bits of information about their school days. She told stories Sybill had never even mentioned. For instance, apparently one time in freshman year, the two of them had almost been expelled for setting fire to their chemistry teacher’s toupee.
“We didn’t mean for it to catch that quickly,” Mary recalled, grinning. “Sybill just wanted to see if it would burn. He came over to help her with a beaker and she did it as he bent over. It was hilarious.”
“Did he get hurt?” Sophia asked in horrified fascination.
“His bald spot got a little singed,” Mary said, laughing.
She left around seven in the evening, telling Sophia once again to not leave the apartment for anything except to eat.
“There’s a spare key on the coffee table. Don’t forget to lock up if you do go out. And make sure you shut the lights off before you go to bed. Oh, and the faucets here are leaky, so make sure you screw them extra tight when you turn the water on and off.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Good girl,” Mary said coolly. She shut the door behind her without a backward glance and Sophia heard the key turn in the lock. She sighed and looked around. The possibility of being left alone for days on end with long stretches of anxiety-fueled time to contend with was not ideal.
That is, until such time ended up being the very means by which she came to discover her new ability.
***
July 13, Wednesday
Mary stopped by to drop off toilet paper early the next morning. (“I know you don’t eat food, but you do take dumps like the rest of us, right?”) She left a pack of rolls on the kitchen counter. As Sophia unwrapped the package so she could start placing rolls under the bathroom sink, her thoughts wandered yet again to Sybill.
What if her sister was actually convicted? How soon would it be before the cops came for her, too? Would Sybill take a deal and incriminate Sophia? No, of course not. Sophia was ashamed for even thinking about it. But she couldn’t hide in this apartment forever, and even if she did somehow manage to pull that off, she didn’t want to. She hated the thought of being alone. Sybill knew how to look after them. If she was gone, how would---
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Sophia’s thoughts were interrupted by a flash of color near her elbow. She looked up and screamed; the toilet paper rolls fell from her hands and bounced across the floor.
Sybill was standing next to her.
As soon as Sophia locked eyes with the vision, it flickered and then vanished. Sophia stared at the spot where it had been, her heart pounding in her ears, hardly daring to breath as she waited to see if her sister would come back. But she didn’t. Sophia sucked in a deep, steadying breath.
Well, she thought. That was interesting.
Stepping over the toilet paper, Sophia lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table. She folded her hands in her lap, took another deep breath, and closed her eyes. She concentrated on Sybill again. She filled her mind with images of her sister, of the way she looked and spoke and moved. She tried to hold these images and access her power at the same time. It was hard to reach out to a mind that wasn’t dying, but she tried anyways. After what felt like a very long time, she caught hold of a signal. It was so faint she didn’t know if it was really there. Bracing herself, Sophia opened her eyes and looked around.
Sybill was there---or at least, something that looked very much like her.
Sophia jumped up and eagerly approached, but as soon as she ceased to concentrate on holding the signal, the Sybill-illusion began to flicker. Sophia stopped dead in her tracks and scrambled to grasp the connection again. The image solidified.
She stared at it hungrily, her eyes tracing the lines of her sister’s face. The vision didn’t look like flesh and blood, but it didn’t exactly look like a hologram either. In fact, if you saw it from a distance, you might mistake it for a real person. It was only up close that one could perceive the transparency of the figure, see how the light fell through instead of around it. Sophia was seized with awe. The cosmic energy she had assumed existed only in the field of consciousness had crystallized in reality, right before her eyes, in the middle of this smelly and ordinary kitchen. It seemed… blasphemous somehow. Like she was blowing her nose on altar linens.
Holding the connection was causing her to break out into a sweat. With a pained gasp she had to release it, and the Sybill-entity vanished. Sophia leaned against the kitchen table, breathing heavily. Her mind buzzed with questions. Could she control this projection, or was it something else, something independent of her will that she could only perceive because of her ability?
Only one way to find out.
She waited a few minutes for her heart rate to slow down, then she shut her eyes, relaxed, and summoned the Sybill-illusion again. It appeared after a few seconds this time. Sophia locked eyes with it and projected a thought towards its energy:
Speak.
The entity stared at her, lips unmoving. Sophia gritted her teeth. She felt sweat dripping down her neck. Several more seconds ticked by, and then she slumped forward onto the table, exhausted. The lookalike vanished.
As she took a moment to breathe, inhaling the smell of the old plastic table, she suddenly recalled the way Sybill had yelled at her a few days ago in their motel.
“Why did you do that?”
Had she inadvertently projected something that day? If that was the case, why hadn’t Sybill mentioned it? They could’ve figured it out together. Being able to cause hallucinations---or whatever she was doing---could’ve come in handy on the road. Sophia rose and went over to the sink to splash some cold water on her hot, sweaty face. She tried to ignore the stream of resentment bubbling inside of her, but despite her best efforts, it pushed an unpleasant thought to the surface of her mind.
How many other things had Sybill decided Sophia was better off not knowing?
Don’t be stupid, was her next immediate thought. Sybill wouldn’t hide anything from her. Not without a good reason, anyway.
In an attempt to distract herself, she switched on the T.V. There wasn’t much on but the news, although halfway through surfing, she saw a headline that made her pause: “Union Station Shooter Still at Large.” She stared at the scene playing out on the screen: A rain-soaked street roped off with yellow tape, flashing blue and red lights, a police officer at a press conference urging the public to come forward with any information. She was struck by his hair color. It was as red as strawberries. Like Mary’s.
Something stirred in the depths of her memory, the flavor of things forgotten. She had a gut feeling that whatever she wasn’t remembering had something to do with this case or Sybill or both, though she couldn’t even begin to articulate why she felt this way. She also couldn’t shake the suspicion that she had met Mary before. Or at least seen her somewhere.
When Mary came to check on her at lunchtime, Sophia casually asked if she could have a phone to access the Wi-Fi---for entertainment only, of course. Mary told her not to use a regular phone, but---if she promised to use it sparingly---she would buy a cheap pay-as-you-go device for her. She did so later that evening.
“We can throw it away once we leave here. Guess you’re pretty bored, huh?” she said, slapping the black phone into Sophia’s palm.
“Yeah, a bit,” Sophia said with convincing peevishness. “Thanks.”
“Anything else?”
“Any updates on Sybill today?”
“I’ll let you know,” Mary said, walking out and shutting the door behind her.
Sophia waited until her footsteps died in the hall before accessing the Wi-Fi. She typed “Sybill Montgomery” into the search engine. A few links down, she found a news article from the Pittsburgh Gazette dated November 6th, 2017.
“...two teenage girls went missing from their home the same day as their mother’s funeral...”
“...manhunt issued by local police…”
Sophia stared at the screen until she could no longer see it. Then she buried her face in her hands and tried to think. Whenever she tried to remember the day they ran away, her memory was full of holes. According to the news article, they had fled their home less than two weeks ago...and they had been wandering for about a week...what had happened at the funeral? Why didn’t Sybill let them go home? Was somebody chasing them? Now her sister was locked up, and if things didn’t go as Mary planned, Sophia would never get any answers.
She spent the night curled up on her mattress and staring wide-eyed at the wall. By the time dawn illuminated the curtains on the window, she had surrendered to the truth as it leered before her, a monster of heartache and clarity: Sybill was lying to her. All this time she had kept her stupid, submissive, and in the dark.
Why?