* I changed some names--the town name Luther has changed to Surette. The family name Tolliver has changed to LeBlanc. Sorry for this confusion.

Surette wasn't any sort of special, not really. It'd sat on the banks of the Atchafalaya for over two hundred years, established by Acadians deported from their homes somewhere in the mid-eighteenth century. The history of the region's early years, largely lost to posterity, indicated only that a few distinct families had inhabited the area, keeping together in their tight-knit community while remaining isolated from the surrounding settlements. Learning to farm, to fish, to endure the sub-tropical climate and fauna, these families and their less-defined fellows overcame external strife and prejudice to build what would later become the town of Surette. Local legend held that the three prominent families argued over which of their names should eponymously contribute to the founding of their home, and though Surette had eventually won whatever contest had determined the result, the family itself died out after several generations, there being a distinct lack of procreation and a plague of early demise amongst its members. Among some of the older, well-established folk, rumors of a curse upon the Surette lineage still lingered colloquially, tossed about in light banter whenever something went wrong, mentioned as "the Surette grisgris," though the connection with the founding family had been long forgotten by most residents, and the expression become no more than that.

Any furor over whether or not the Surette descendants had been cursed had simmered and dimmed over generations, and even the progeny of the two other founding families, the LeBlancs and the St. Jameses, had for the most part lost memory of or declined to partake in the lore surrounding the town. But history is often too lush to be resigned to textbooks, and even if remembrance fades, the most potent of its pieces discover a way to reassemble.

So it was that the LeBlanc sisters found themselves back in Surette the summer of nineteen-eighty-four.

Maryellen LeBlanc had heard of the shooting from a neighbor, a particularly nosy, obnoxious neighbor who'd taken an obvious glee in delivering the news before the police. How the story had travelled so far so quickly, Maryellen didn't know, and the news of her brother's crime had taken precedence over the aggravation she'd felt toward its source.

She and her husband had moved to Shreveport for his job, been there some while, and though they'd visited her brother David a couple of times over the years, seen his kids and met his wife, they'd been all but estranged for some time. When her niece and nephew had gone missing, Maryellen hadn't heard about it for nearly two weeks after the fact, and when she'd tried to get in contact with David, she'd never succeeded. Everything else had happened so quickly after that, with his wife and now him—well, Maryellen had thought it about time she just head down south herself, see what it was all about and help take care of things. Her husband, tied up with work, had decided to join her a few days later.

Entering the family house for the first time in over ten years gave Maryellen the sensation of being swallowed. The gloom and silence of the cavernous building reminded her of how eager she'd been to get away from it, to get out of Surette.

The moment she lowered her suitcases to the carpeted floor, a prim, rotund woman emerged from the depths beneath the central stairs. Maryellen jumped internally though quickly recognized her older sister, Jane. "Why didn't you call and tell me you were here?" she blurted after calming her nerves.

Though Jane had moved even farther away than Maryellen—all the way to Missouri—she'd maintained the southern affect her younger sister had been eager to dispel. Jane wore a teal day dress with a pleated skirt, kitten-heeled shoes, and thick pearls at her ears and neck. Her blonde hair was sprayed and styled up and over in thick waves, and the shade of blue-green above her eyes matched her apparel perfectly. Maryellen had never been one for foundation and face-paint (as she referred to her sister's makeup application), but somehow, seeing Jane all done up had a soothing effect on her.

"I got here three days ago, right after his doctor called me," Jane noted, extending her arms in a hug. "Tom is in town for a supplies run."

Maryellen allowed her sister to embrace her, though she wasn't keen on physical contact. Jane had always been warmer than she, but if there were any appropriate occasion for familial warmth, it was now. "What about Billy? Where's your son?"

"He's with Tom's parents. Didn't think it'd be right to involve him with all—" Jane waggled her fingers as if casting a spell, then clasped them at her waist, "—this."

A brief raised eyebrow indicated Maryellen's understanding. No teenaged boy needed to be wrapped up in his uncle's nightmarish mess. She pressed her lips together. "Have you seen him, yet?"

"David?"

Maryellen nodded once.

Jane sighed. "Yes. He's entirely incapacitated. Even if he does come out of this alive, he won't ever be himself, again."

"Well, that's probably for the best. He doesn't have much to live for, anymore."

Rather than react to her sister's bluntness, Jane offered to help with her luggage. "How long are you intending to stay?"

"I guess as long as I'm needed," replied Maryellen, unable to hide the edge in her words. "If I'd known you'd be here, I probably wouldn't have come at all."

"That's why I didn't tell you."

They'd begun up the stairs, Jane carrying the less cumbersome of the two bags. Maryellen, huffing with the weight of her suitcase, snorted. "I suppose I'll tell Andrew not to come after all. The house would be a bit full."

"This huge thing?" Jane, reaching the landing first, turned to her younger sister. She took in the auburn bob and slender form, the jeans and tee and tennis shoes—Maryellen had always been lighter than she, Jane ruminated, in form as well as in manners. "Now don't be ridiculous. There's enough space to house a small army. And Tom is picking up extra groceries, even now. I told him to get a case of merlot, just for you. We don't drink, you know."

Maryellen lowered her suitcase, narrowed her eyes and forced a smile. "Yes. I know."

"Well," Jane continued with an inflating breath, "you and I will have the unfortunate task of going through all of David's things, and his family's." Her voice lowered a touch. "I've looked through some of the rooms, already, and Melly—they didn't change anything. The children's rooms, they're . . . well, it's sad, that's all."

Maryellen cringed at her childhood nickname but held back her thoughts on Jane's use of it. "I'm sure they hoped the kids would come back."

The sisters held one another's gaze for a weighty moment before exchanging terse words about rooms and bathrooms, and then each went her own way.

Settling in wasn't as easy as Maryellen had thought it'd be. Never one for superstition and the supernatural, she'd assumed taking up residence in her childhood home would be similar to staying in a hotel, and yet the memories of her years growing up in the place crept across her skin like spiders. She'd left Surette even earlier than Jane had, gone off to college in Georgia and never turned back, hardly blinked when her own parents had moved out into an assisted living community and her brother David had married and brought his new wife to live in the LeBlanc home. Distance had done something to Maryellen, and it'd likely done something to Jane as well, for in all their time spent away, they seemed to have forgotten the call of the house, the draw of its walls and halls, and as the first few days crept by and the sisters moved through the motions of meeting with family lawyers and discussing legal and financial matters, they sensed but couldn't manage to define the notion that a great set of shadowed hands was closing in around them.

When Maryellen descended into the cellar in order to take stock of what was in that narrow, cramped space, she was sure of (though wouldn't admit she felt) the presence of children, or of something like children, hovering in the shrouded places. And when Jane entered her brother's concealed office space in attempt to discover necessary documents, the air became so heavy and so damp that she barely managed to get out of the room before suffocating; neither she nor her husband, Tom, quite knew what to make of the water she coughed up for nearly an hour afterward. Indeed, both women suffered night terrors, Maryellen alone in her former niece's room, thrashing about and waking with grinding teeth, and Jane mumbling incoherent words and swears which frightened the man who lay next to her, trying to sleep. Neither sister told the other of her experiences, though, believing them to be the product of an overactive mind and overwrought nerves. They'd never been close growing up; they weren't close now. Their disunion engendered distrust, and their distrust discouraged communication.

Less than a week had passed when Maryellen was awakened at night to an unfamiliar sound. She lifted herself up in bed, sat still in the fat beam of moonlight cascading through the diaphanous curtains of little Jenny LeBlanc's window, tried to ascertain what exactly had made the noise that had woken her. That afternoon, she'd gone into town for the first time since arriving—had suffered the pitying glances and misplaced sympathy of those whose families she'd once known—and had gone to the library. Surette's local library housed a plethora of old articles and books concerning the history of the town, and Maryellen had desired to locate information on the house itself. Now, as she pushed back her straight, coppery hair, mopped the beading sweat from her cold forehead, she thought of what she'd discovered but had, as of yet, not told her sister or even her own husband.

A cry, from beyond the house—there it was, again. Yes, Maryellen was sure of it. There was an animal of some sort, likely out in the bayou, wailing, or howling . . . almost like a . . . like a wolf . . .

But there were no wolves, here.

The woman turned her body and placed her feet flat on the carpet. Rising, she went to the window and swiftly pulled aside the curtain. Only the twisting branches of the trees below were visible, dusted as they were by the pale glimmer of the moon. And yet, as she watched, Maryellen was sure she could make out blinking lights beyond the trees, deep within the heart of the forest, where the waters rose to the land in an uncertain meeting as to which encroached on which.

A movement caught the side of her eye, and Maryellen zipped about to see nothing at all strange but the door of the child's room, opening out onto the dark hallway. For a woman in her mid-thirties, she was frightfully girlish, she thought, her heart thumping irrationally. But it was then that she recalled closing that door quite purposefully, locking it, even, before she'd climbed into bed.

Chilled, suddenly, Maryellen nevertheless neglected to put on any layers, crept across the room in her shorts and t-shirt, and slipped out into the black beyond.

"Jane?"

Her query went unanswered.

Maryellen waited, looked across the landing toward the other end of the house. Her niece's and nephew's rooms (they'd used to be hers and Jane's) were on one side of the massive central staircase, while the master bedroom and a guest room were on the other. Neither of the women had been inclined to sleep where their impaired brother and dead sister-in-law had spent nights worrying over their missing children, and Jane and Tom had already taken the guest room by the time Maryellen had shown up. The twin staircases, flowing down either side of the banistered landing, descended into obscurity, and somewhere in the cavernous entryway below a grandfather clock ticked and tocked. Through the glass paneling in the front door and the picture windows alongside it filtered dim shafts of whatever moon was able to reach them beneath the eaves of the porch, but with the lack of light, Maryellen had the sensation that she stood above a deep pit, that one false move would send her tumbling down into it.

Her own ragged breaths became suddenly unbearable to her, but at the same time she drew the knuckles of her right hand up against her lips to still herself, the woman's attention turned to some bright little wisp that disappeared as quickly as she looked. It'd been across the landing, near her sister's room.

"Jane!" caught in Maryellen's throat, and her motivation returned. The woman stepped quickly and silently over the thick carpeting. She passed the stairs nearest her niece's room, passed the hallways leading toward the back of the house and its unfinished spaces (David had been slowly rehabbing the place, bit by bit), passed the interior office where her brother had sat contemplating shooting himself; she floated along the balcony, her fingertips brushing the railing without ever quite feeling it, and when she reached the guest room door, she stopped.

Tick tock, tick tock . . . the clock a floor below was right beneath her, now. Its pendulum's sway served to calm, to align the pounding within Maryellen's chest. And yet even before she took hold of the knob, even before she'd pushed open that door, the woman knew with certainty that she wasn't going to like whatever lay beyond it. Strangely, the atmosphere took on a weight, pressed down on Maryellen's shoulders so that she felt them heavy on her torso, and her torso heavy on her knees, and her knees heavy on her feet. Moving through that heaviness took an enormous effort, and yet Maryellen had to step into the room, had to step toward that pale sliver of white gauze that flickered like static beside her sister's bed.

"Jane?" Maryellen tried once more, the word tumbling out of her mouth like a pebble she'd been trying to dislodge for some time.

The patch of white gleamed brighter for a moment, so much so that Maryellen gasped when she became sure that it took on the form of a small human, but just as quickly, the thing vanished, and a quick flick of the light revealed a sight terrible to behold.

Two people lay on the bed, just as Maryellen had imagined. Their bodies, though inert, were intact, but where their faces, their heads should've been, instead were the mangled detritus of skull and meat and hair, hacked into their pillows, shimmering bright scarlet and cream in the artificial golden illumination.

Maryellen could not at first take in what it was she looked upon, bit at her tightened fists as reality set in. She did not scream; she did not sob in terror; she could only back away, slowly, while the very insides of her churned with disgust and confusion. Out through the door frame, out onto the landing, her bare feet caressed the carpet, grateful for the softness against her shivering skin. The sounds of children's laughter twinkled in the cavern below—that flash of snowy white darted about. Beyond the house, surely closer than it'd been before, some animal howled a terrible howl, and when the gleaming tremor stopped before Maryellen and she glimpsed its face, she could only succumb to the inevitable as the small hands at her back shoved her over the banister and onto the cold, hard floor below.