The Four Sisters - Chapter 5

I’ve written about my father, my eldest sister, second sister and touched upon my own story. Now, it is time to speak about my youngest sister and mother.

In telling my youngest sisters story, I must also touch upon my mother’s. It isn’t that their stories run together, not really. For the most part, it is because their stories would be very difficult to tell entirely separately. You see, the manifestation of their darkness caused more than just a change in each of them personally, it changed the way they interacted with each other. It changed their relationship to such a degree that I can not tell one story without having to tell a bit of the other.

I said before that my second sister was closest to my father. Well, my oldest and youngest sisters were closest to my mother. When my oldest sister disappeared, my mother showed little reaction, this lead us to believe that they were not close. It wasn’t until later that we found out we were wrong in our assumptions. We’d always known our mother to have a temper and to be quick to anger in certain situations. Situations involving us, for example. Don’t misunderstand, my mother was a fantastic mother. She loved us and strove to show her love and care for us. But…after my oldest sister began to change, it caused my mother to become very angry. And, after my father disappeared, her anger grew. But, after my oldest sister disappeared…she began to hate.

It was at this time that she began to truly hate my father. I didn’t understand that for a long time. In my youth, I could never imagine a world where my mother hated my father. They seemed to fit together to well…. I never believed that she and my father would or even could ever be apart, let alone that she would come to despise him.

They were…perfect together. Completing each other like two halves of an apple that had been sliced down the middle. They…fit. However, one must know, when an apple is cut in half and one half is tossed away, the other will not sustain it’s life. It will wither and it will slowly die. I think, if it could speak and you were to ask that remaining half of the apple, it too would say that it hated it’s other half. It would make sense for it to hate the one that had cut it and tossed it’s counterpart aside, but I think that the remaining half would disregard the blade that cut it and would instead blame the half that did not return. Blame it and hate it.

As I was caught up in my own darkness, my mother and youngest sister both began to rot away, just like that apple. They loved each other, yes. But they slowly began to resent one another. At least, that was true for my sister.

My mother began to depend on my youngest sister, needing her to provide the stability that her love once brought, but my sister…began to pull away. She began to distance herself from my mother, when my mother needed her more than ever.

I first noticed it when she was sitting outside. It was a lovely day, the sky above was a beautiful shade of blue. Clouds were present, though they seemed to be there only to allow a temporary and welcome reprieve from the sun’s shining rays. My second sister was away, though I do not know where.

I remember, I stood before my sister, having a temporary moment of peace from my own darkness, though I was unaware of it. I stared up into the sky, watching the clouds and trying to find shapes within them as I had when I was young. I couldn’t, and I remember being disappointed in myself for it. I wondered if it was part of growing up and becoming an adult. Losing the imagination that I once possessed. Because of this, I wondered if perhaps my youngest sister would be able to see any images in the clouds. I was hopeful that perhaps with her youthful help, I would be able to once again see those animals and people floating loftily in the sky.

I came to stand before her, expecting to find her head upturned toward the sky as mine had been. It wasn’t. Instead, she was staring out, straight in front of herself. Staring directly as me.

But….she wasn’t staring at me, not really. More like…she was staring through me. The hair in my arms and on the back of my neck stood up as a chill ran down my spine at the empty look in her eyes. Like she wasn’t….there. Her gaze left me with the feeling as if I wasn’t staring at my sister at all, but at some perverse version of my sister. I dared not to think it then, but…if felt as if I were staring at an upright corpse.

A nervous laugh escaped my lips, though it felt and sounded strange, unnatural. I called out to her, asking her to look at me, speak to me, anything.

She did not answer. Her round and innocent brown eyes just stared forward, unblinking.

My false smile slowly fell as I reached out to her, grasping her arm. I gently shook her, attempting to rouse her from this strange stupor.

It did not work.

She continued to stare forward, at nothing. I whispered her name and she did not answer. I shook her harder and my voice grew louder, desperate. It took on a shrill edge as I began to wonder if I should go to look for my mother. Finally, as I felt panic begin to settle inside of my chest, my voice was able to wake my youngest sister, was able to reach her in whatever terrible place her soul had slipped to.

But…her reaction was not what I had expected.

She pulled from my grasp violently and turned her gaze to me. It was a familiar gaze. It made my stomach drop.

Her eyes were red, either from anger or for standing for so long without blinking, I did not know. But they frightened me. They frightened me because for the first time in my life I saw what true hatred looked like.

My breath caught in my throat as my sister began to scream. She screamed that I should never touch her and to leave her be from now on.

I am not proud of my reaction. I wish had handled myself better, felt something better. But…in that moment, I felt my anger flare. If I had not been affected by the darkness, perhaps I would have felt something else, maybe I would have acted in a different way. Maybe I wouldn’t be ashamed of myself now.

I hit her. She ran away.

For a long time, I told myself that I only acted the way I did because I was frightened. But, I knew I was lying. Because, as my hand pressed against her cheek, it was not fear that I felt. It was hatred. With a tiny bit of twisted satisfaction.

Afterwards, I was so angry I went to my mother, complaining about my sister. How dare she react in such a way when I was only trying to speak with her?

That was the same day that I also learned about my own darkness. It was the day that I finally understood how it had been manifesting inside of me.

As I stood there, complaining about my sisters lack of attention when I spoke with her and describing what had happened to my mother, she looked to me and said something that will forever haunt me. Something that caused, for perhaps the first time in a long time, a genuine reaction from me. Fear. Pure, unadulterated and untainted fear.

But, honey, you do the same thing.

My youngest sister’s darkness manifested in the same way that mine did. I learned that day that I would stare off into nothing, as if my very spirit had retreated from my body, for hours and even days at a time. I found out that I had never been fully present since my father’s disappearance. I found out that my memories were, in fact, laced with fantasy with little bits of reality peeking ut in between. I found out that when I slept, I would not wake for days at a time sometimes. That my dreams were not always dreams and my waking reality was not always reality.

Then, I found out what happened whenever my sisters or mother tried to wake me from these mental “excursions.” About the things I had said. The things I had done. Worst of all…after the initial start and flash of fear, I felt the apathy that finding out brought me. I felt nothing, but blame. I blamed myself at first, then everyone else.

But…I knew, then, that I was not the only one effecting my emotions. I did not know how I knew. I do not know if my family ever knew. I only knew that what I was feeling, what I was seeing, may not have been real. There was something else there, I felt it in my mind, inside of me, causing me to retreat into my own mind. To retreat from reality.

And my youngest siter helped me find this out because she was encountering the same phenomena.

I said before that this chapter was about my youngest sister and my mother. This is true, but it was also about me. Maybe, that is just another instance of my narcissism coming out. Maybe that’s why I feel the need to inject myself into every chapter.

My mother’s darkness was still undiscovered, for the most part. Sure, we noticed her inability to get up from bed sometimes. Noticed that her kindness was slipping away slowly….but…is happened…so…slow. I suppose, when something happens over a long course of time, it is hard to notice it happening at all. Maybe that is why we did not notice her changes right away. I look back and wonder if that truly is the reason, or if we perhaps took her for granted. If maybe we never expected her to fall into such a state as we had. I wonder is we still saw her as some sort of super woman, much like i had once seen my father as a super man. But, a mother, no matter how wise or old, is not a super woman. She is a mother. She is human. Imperfect, yet forgiven for her imperfections. At least, they are supposed to be. I think my sisters found it hard to forgive my mother for not being perfect. Found it hard to see her imperfections as anything other than a betrayal.

It was at this time, after my sister was pulling further and further away from my mother and her darkness caused her words to bite and gnaw at my mothers raw emotional state, that my mother’s hatred took on another victim. Instead of hating my father, my mother began to direct her hatred toward herself. She began to spend less time speaking and more sleeping. Less time conversing and more yelling. Less loving and more hating.