Hello? Are you there? I miss you. It’s been forever, Sissy. Can I call you Sissy? I know I shouldn’t be calling. I know you don’t want to hear from me. I remember what you screamed at me before you left town the last time: “Don’t ever talk to me again!” Gosh, that hurts to hear from your one and only sister. How could I possibly never speak to you again? I don’t have any other sisters. I don’t have any other anything. And I miss you. Sissy, I miss us.
Do you remember how we used to play one fish, two fish every day after getting off the bus? I picked it up from that kid Ronnie who lived down the block, the one who got sent to juvie and never came back. You pick a spot outside your house, not too far away, walk ten steps forward, say “one fish, two fish, live fish, dead fish,” walk ten steps back, say “count to ten and make a death wish,” and then, right when you feel a tickle on the back of your neck, you start your countdown and run, run, run as fast as you can to your front door!
Mom hated that game. She thought we were going to break our necks running home on that busted sidewalk. But you loved it, and you wouldn’t stop playing it even after I got bored with it, even after the neighbors thought there had to be something wrong with you. “Isn’t she too old for that?” they’d say, and Mom would blush. Funny, isn’t it, how habits worm their way in? The way they itch at the bottom of your feet, the way they rewire you?
Do you still play one fish, two fish on your way back to your apartment building? Do you clench your toes in your little kitten heels when you run? Do you avoid the sewer grates? You should. You don’t know how easy it is for somebody to fall through those.
Mom said you played it because you had nothing else to get worked up about, because you didn’t have your own friends. She’d always tell me, “Go play with your sister!” and I knew exactly what you liked to play. You liked stories about shapes that crowd out the light. Sounds that make your skin curdle. I did give you a choice when you were little—what kind of story do you want to hear, what kind of game do you want to play? And every time, your eyes would get really big and you’d say: “Something scary!” So eventually, I stopped asking.
You got harder to scare as you got older. I used to just jab you under the blanket during scary movies and you’d shriek—that was back when Mom would tell you when you could and couldn’t look, not that you’d ever resist looking—but by the time you got to middle school, you needed more. You even started thinking you were tough shit, just because you’d trick me every now and then with some stupid jump scare video. Those weren’t even real scares, Sissy—you know that, right? It’s just an electric shock, a teeny reminder that your lizard brain is working.
But I suppose you’ve gotten very brave by now, Sissy—living in your own apartment in a big city and everything. What do you do when you see a shadow at the far end of the laundry room? Or when you hear scratching noises when you’re alone in your office? What about when a cold hand falls on your shoulder while you’re waiting for the train? Do you hear Mom’s voice, whispering, “Don’t look”? Do you look? What about when you hear a faceless woman crying in your kitchen, in the dark? What do you do then?
Now I know you remember that video. The Crying Woman: True Ghost Video. Guy sets up a security camera in his house because the neighborhood’s had a bunch of break-ins, records this woman standing in his kitchen, crying blood. People who’ve only seen screenshots say it’s fake, of course—say it’s just somebody in makeup, say her glowing eyes are just special effects—but if you watch from start to finish, you know it’s not. You hear her crying over your shoulder, even if you have headphones on. You look into those eyes and the next thing you know you’ve got the video playing on loop and it’s been hours, you and this ghost looking into each other’s soul while your battery drains. That’s how she gets you, the Crying Woman.
You had nightmares for a week after that one. Couldn’t sleep with the lights off for months. Probably the only time Mom ever scolded me: “Why would you show her that stuff?!”
I know it seems mean. But I really was trying to help you—I’m your big sister, after all. Imagine if you went off to college thinking that the worst thing that could happen to you was Linda Blair’s face popping up in a car commercial. You’d be dead meat, Sissy.
So I had to show you something really fucking scary. Something that would burn so deep your nerves would have to rewire around it. So deep you’d never be able to forget it.
I’m still not sorry about showing you that video.
But I am sorry that it made you cry.
Hey, Sissy. It’s me again. Still waiting to hear from you. I know you must be so busy-busy-busy with your fancy job in your fancy city. Don’t have time for your big sister anymore. What’s your official title now? Junior communications assistant? Are you required to return phone calls, junior communications assistant?
I’m sorry, Sissy. I shouldn’t tease you. I know how hard it is to plant the seeds of a life, and I know the last thing you want is to end up rootless and lost out there, because then you’ll have to come crawling home to me. So take as much time as you need to weave yourself into that fancy life. Catch those rush-hour trains, drink that overpriced wine, smile at every man in a suit who smiles at you. And don’t forget to glue your mask on before you leave your apartment.
Just remember to scrape it off before going to bed. That fake laugh, those lying eyes—they eat away the skin underneath if you leave them on too long. Then again, maybe you want your face to stick like that forever, because then you’ll get to forget that you were ever my sister or Mom’s daughter, that you ever came from our shitty little town.
I bet you’d like that.
And I bet your mask is really pretty, besides. Classy, right? Like French perfume? You probably got it at a nice department store, the kind we didn’t have growing up, the kind with couches in the restroom. Bet it comes with that confidence you were always wanting more of. Bet it’s covered in stories about joyrides with friends you never had, pranks you never pulled, teams you never joined. Maybe even that winged eyeliner you used to watch me put on, huh? Now you can be the pretty one. Now you can be cool. Pretend that all you’ve ever seen is happiness, and that you have no idea how easy it is for entire families to go up in flames, for little girls to fill with dirt. Pretend that, on the inside, you’re not a boiling sea of blood.
Even though you are. Just like the Crying Woman. You know, a funny thing I just remembered: I don’t know who first showed me that video. Isn’t that weird? It’s almost like I’ve always known about it and was just waiting to share it with you. I know that can’t be right. The mind plays tricks, Sissy, when it’s only got itself to talk to.
I worry about you, you know. I worry that you’ll get yourself into trouble out on your own. Those city people in their boutique designer masks—just because they’re rich, just because they went to college, just because they’re funny or pay for drinks or whatever, Sissy, doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful. If anything, you ought to be more careful. There’s good magic and there’s bad magic, and it’s very hard to tell which is which. Bad magic tends to look good. Good magic tends to feel bad. Like medicine. I’ll tell you how I know, if you call me back.
Maybe I’d feel better if I knew more about where you’re living. Are whole buildings haunted in your city, or is it just certain floors? Does fear cut less deeply when there’s always someone else around, or does it make every tremble worse? It’s got to suck to know there’s no such thing as safety, even in the company of others. Especially in the company of others.
Are there intersections in your neighborhood like the one at Harold and J? Where you walk from corner to corner until you find the one spot where the temperature drops by five degrees and your hair stands on end, because that’s where a man whose name no one remembers once got beaten to death? I suppose in big cities like yours, people get beaten to death everywhere. I suppose the whole city is one giant cold spot, one massive mausoleum.
But I understand that the lights stay on all night over there. That would be nice, I think. You’re going to laugh at this, Sissy, but I’ve gotten scared of the dark. I don’t like it when the lights go out, don’t like it when the traffic dies. Maybe it’s because Mom told us to always be home before midnight, and here you’re nowhere to be found. I call and you don’t answer. I reach out to give you a little jab—to grab your little toes—and all I touch is air.
Do you remember, Sissy, the time that you lost at one fish, two fish? You were thirteen. You tripped over your shoelace, and you didn’t make it to the house in time.
You shoved your key in the lock, and it didn’t turn. Just like the game promised would happen. Sometimes game is a word we use to soften the impact of a painful and predictable pattern. Sometimes “games” aren’t fun at all. You were so scared, not only because you knew what would happen if you lost at one fish, two fish—you’d see a ghost—but this happened after you watched the Crying Woman video, so you knew. You knew that some fears are earned.
And you were right to be scared, because you did see a ghost when you turned around, didn’t you? Oh, it didn’t look like a ghost. Not like the ghosts we saw in movies, not see-through or floating or a ball of light. Not like the ghosts in ghost videos, either your kind or mine. This ghost had skin and flesh and a voice that cracked, didn’t he? If you’d let him get close enough, you’d have found out that he had breath, too. But that ghost, Sissy, was well and truly dead.
Do you still remember the ghost? It was your music teacher. My music teacher, too. Coolest teacher in the whole school, cool like somebody’s big brother, cool like a minor TV star. He always used to pay extra attention to your smart, pretty friends, and you’d think to yourself, what’s wrong with me, am I less smart, less pretty? You didn’t have music that semester, so you were surprised that he recognized you, maybe even flattered that he remembered your name. You’ve always worried that you’re forgettable. But the truth is, Sissy, there are some people who you’d want to be forgotten by, and he was one of them.
It’s a funny thing about being a girl, isn’t it? You want to be noticed, until all you want is to disappear. You need to be left alone, until that means you fall all the way through the cracks. You know nobody knows who the Crying Woman really was? The guy who posted the video never posted again. I guess she’s just another woman who got into the wrong car, trusted the wrong man, took the wrong job. It happens all the time.
He looked different outside of the classroom. Less like the god of his own kingdom, more like any man you might pass in a grocery store without another glance. And he actually was carrying a plastic bag, the little black kind that you get from liquor stores. He asked if you needed “some help” and nodded at the keys in your hand.
Now the correct answer here, Sissy, would have been a calm, stern “No.” Maybe if you had kept listening to me instead of tuning me out, you’d have known that. I’m sure I told you. I taught you every trick you needed to survive—how to turn yourself into an eel and slip out of reach; how to turn yourself into a porcupine and become untouchable. But in this moment of truth, you fumbled. Your tongue twisted and died in your mouth, your hands froze, your feet sank into the asphalt. If they’ve already got their eyes on you, dummy, it’s too late to play dead.
And who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t pulled into the driveway that very minute. Maybe you’d have become a ghost yourself. I didn’t tell you this back then, but there was a part of me—some twitchy muscle in my right thigh, I think—that wanted to hit the gas instead of the brakes and feel his weakness give way to my power. Sometimes I still wish I had. I think it would have felt good.
Did you hear what ended up happening to him? Mr. Music Man? He hung himself, Sissy, in his jail cell. I guess the birth of such a pathetic ghost doesn’t make the national news.
Don’t cry for that weasel, Sissy, just because he didn’t get his day in court. Like I always told you, everything in this world has a price—some dues get collected in the here and now, some get collected later. I told you that before anyone else wanted to tell you, because even the young can make very expensive choices. And we were never rich.
So I know that you’ll understand when I make you this promise: you will regret not answering my calls. Someday, and maybe when you least expect it, you will regret not replying.
What goes through your mind when you see I’m calling? Even if you’ve deleted my number, even if it comes up Caller Unknown, I can’t believe that you don’t know it’s me. Do you roll your eyes in irritation? Or do you shudder? Do you tremble? Do you think of the way you left me and feel just the smallest needle prick of guilt?
I know you got jealous about the fact that Mom always left me in charge. You’d slump over whenever she waved you off on her way out the door, telling you to just do whatever I told you to. I remember once you even tried to say that I scared you. Do you remember that? “But Mom, she scares me!” God, you were such a baby. No wonder she ignored you.
Because of course she had a reason for putting me in charge. I was older and I had my head on straight and I knew things, Sissy, that you didn’t. That hasn’t changed, by the way. I ran the house while she was gone because I knew where we kept the lightbulbs. I knew how to write a check. I knew which neighbors to run to for which emergencies and I could do it by myself.
And maybe you were too young to notice, back then, but Mom didn’t exactly have the energy to deal with your whining. She was working overtime at the hospital when you started high school. Do you spend a lot of time on your feet, in your fancy office job? Do you work much overtime, junior communications assistant?
Mom was already at work on the night you abandoned me. Her shift started at seven p.m. and I walked in around eight. There was a party. Over by the college. I don’t remember how I got home, but I remember it was dark in the house and I thought that you were out but then I heard you thumping around upstairs and I thought, thank God, thank God, thank God I’m not alone.
But when you came down the stairs, you didn’t stop. You saw me crying in the kitchen and you ran off and slammed the door. So hard the pictures rattled. Even though I’d been gone for over twenty-four hours by then, and for all you knew I was a missing person. Even though I said your name. What went through your mind, Sissy? Couldn’t you tell that I needed you?
I guess you were in a hurry. You had a slumber party with some other loser girls, I know that—your first time having your own friends, and I bet you couldn’t wait to scare them with one of my stories. The Girl with No Hands. The Unlucky Babysitter. The Ex-Best Friend. Then again you were never one to look before you jumped. For all your schoolgirl brains, you never had any common sense. You’d run into traffic just to get your backpack. Yet another reason why Mom always left me in charge. The truth is, Sissy, we thought you’d be the one to get yourself killed.
So I tell myself that you didn’t know it was me. That you still saw the Crying Woman’s eyes when you tried to sleep at night, and when you saw this tall dark shape crying in the kitchen, you thought the Crying Woman had come for you. I tell myself that all you saw in the kitchen was a tall dark shape without a face, just the whisper of a woman. I tell myself you didn’t recognize my voice because I never cried in front of you, because somebody in that leaky house had to be strong. This is what I tell myself—that you were only saving yourself.
But Sissy, I said your name!
What does that say about how much you cared for me? Before the drugs, I mean. Before I needed them. Before I met Peter and before he needed me. Before I became your fucked-up big sister, your train wreck back home—before all that, you already hated me.
I don’t think I ever said your name again.
Not when you got dropped off at the cemetery for Mom’s funeral and barely made eye contact with me. Not when you refused to give me a proper goodbye before getting on that bus to go to college, tapping your foot like you just couldn’t wait to get rid of me. I wasn’t going to fight for your acknowledgment. It was already too fucking late.
Because here’s the thing, Sissy. For all the times that I’ve looked out for you, that night in the kitchen was the one time in my life that I needed you to look out for me. You could have saved me, Sissy. But you didn’t. That’s what I remember, is that you didn’t.
I have another scary story to tell you. It’s a new one. I’m sure you’ve missed my stories. Maybe you can share it with your new city friends, if you really want to impress them.
Are you ready?
There is a world beneath every town and every city, and that’s the world of the dead. Down in the dirt, down in the dark, there are no city limits. There are no jurisdictions, no state lines, no national borders. Freedom of movement is the one benefit you get from being dead.
Down in the world of the dead, we can hear you stomping and limping and dragging in the open air. That’s how I know you still play one fish, two fish when you get off the bus outside your apartment building. I hear you pause at the bus stop. I hear you take ten steps forward, ten steps back. And I hear you run. Bad news, Sissy: you don’t run as fast as you used to. Maybe you’d do better without the kitten heels, but honestly, I think you’re out of practice. I think you’ve lost that drive to survive.
If you want to get that edge back, Sissy, here’s what you should do: get on your knees on an asphalt road at midnight, and put your ear to the storm drain. You’ll be able to hear the dead—shuffling, gurgling, asking for the people they knew in life. Guarantee you’ll go running back to your apartment building faster than you thought you could. Running, like Mom used to say, like a bat out of hell. And I’ll be running with you, in the world below.
Speaking of Mom, she still asks for you. Her jaw sticks out of the limestone and digs between my bones—she still thinks it’s my fault that you left town, that you were terrified of ending up like me. I think you were terrified of ending up like her, but I don’t tell her that. So she says your name. She asks me when you’re going to get here. And I keep telling her, “Soon.”
The dead, you see, they want. It’s the one thing that never goes away. There were things I wanted to do, too, Sissy, but I bet you never think about that. There were places I wanted to ruin, people I wanted to become. There were more stains I wanted to leave on the world than just the mark I know I left on you. And I would have done so much more with the gift of life, my lovely, than become someone’s junior communications assistant.
Most of the dead ask for people they love. Some of the dead ask for people they hate. Give it enough time, and you can’t tell the difference. Those details fade. It all blends together into this gnawing urge, this churning want. And before you know it, the want has become a need.
Most of the dead have been wanting for so long that they’ve forgotten why they want whoever or whatever it is they want. They probably wouldn’t know what to do if the object of their craving suddenly slid down into their arms, through a cave, or a subway, or a storm drain. Maybe all they’d do is hold it still, hold it close. Like a doll.
But not me. I’ve planned. I remember. And I know exactly what it is I’ll do when I finally get my hands on you.
I think this is where I’m supposed to pause and say, “The End,” to assure you that this was just a story, and that story is over, and you are—what’s the word?—safe. But there is no such thing as safety, or endings, and every story I tell you is true.
You’ll see, Sissy, when you get here. 
Nadia Bulkin is the author of the short story collection She Said Destroy (Word Horde, 2017). She has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award five times. She grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, with her Javanese father and American mother, before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has two political science degrees and lives in Washington, DC.
Illustration: Fien Jorissen
