The exorcism is intense.

There's a lot of recitations and Alissa struggles and screams.

Manifestation.

She fluctuates between Alissa and Sienna.

Her voice changes between that of her own and that of Sienna's.

She mumbles incoherently and rolls her eyes around.
She foams at the mouth.
I don't know how we got to this point.

Our life in Johannesburg was very different.
We rented a small two bedroom apartment in a semi decent neighborhood.
Charles worked as a manager at a car manufacturing company.
I was thrilled the day that he came home from work and told me that he was getting a promotion.
We desperately needed the money.
The thrill wore off once he told me that the job was in Sierra.

I grew up in Sierra.

It was a town I swore up and down that I would never return to.

Not after what happened.

I enjoyed growing up in Sierra. I truly did. I look back on those days with great fondness.
Winters were pleasant, summers were peaceful and often spent in the backyard of my family's house.
My sister and I would tan our skin in the warm sun and hope that it would lighten our dark hair.
Sometimes we'd take a dip in the pool.
We'd laugh and joke and play in the field beyond our backyard.
My parents were a little strict, but they were good to us.
My childhood was wonderful.

Everything turned sour the day my sister, Sienna Franklin, went missing.

Sienna had a major crush on the boy who lived next door.

François Peete.

I knew that she would sneak out of the house sometimes to go and meet him.
We had a very honest relationship and we would tell each other everything, despite our age gap.

I never told our parents about her midnight activities. They would probably chain us to our beds.

I was at a sleepover the night Sienna went missing.
Blissfully playing with my friends and eating junk food.
My life was never the same after that.
How could it be?
I was reminded everyday of her disappearance.

It was all over the news.
It was in every magazine.
It was in every newspaper.
It didn't matter which city you lived in, chances were you had heard of Sienna Franklin.

At first, everyone thought that she simply just ran away.
I knew that could never be true.
People don't just simply run away.
Running away takes time and planning, it isn't simple.
I would've known if Sienna wanted to run.
She would have told me.

It was only until a few weeks after her disappearance that François came clean and told everyone about how he saw a man drag my sister off into the woods.

A few months after that, the stories became outrageous.

Some people claimed to have seen her in Pick n Pay, staring blankly at the shelves, dressed in a dirty, white shirt.

Some people claimed to have seen her standing at the foot of their beds in the middle of the night. Glaring at them.

Some people claimed to have seen her walking down the street in the middle of the night. Aimlessly and tiredly.

I had seen Sienna too.
About three months after her disappearance.
I was taking a shower and when I looked outside the shiny, glass shower door after washing my face, I saw Sienna.

Except, she wasn't Sienna anymore.
She didn't have the same spark that she used to have when she was alive.
Her eyes weren't the beautiful hazel color that they used to be, they were all black now.
She looked almost evil.
She stared at me in her dirty, white shirt and smiled a sick, twisted smile.
"My watch was wrong." She whispered.
Then she disappeared.

I guess I'll never really know what she meant.

The sightings would go on for two years, until Sienna's disappearance was finally dubbed as The Haunting of Sierra.

Sienna didn't disappear alone.
A part of me disappeared with her.
I spent the rest of my teenage years being known as the sister of the girl who haunts the town.

I lost my friends and spent a long time in isolation.
Lost in my own thoughts.
Drowning in my own despair.

Mom and dad were always upset or angry.

Sometimes I thought that they looked at me and thought that it should've been me instead of Sienna.

My innocence disappeared with Sienna.

The second I turned eighteen, I changed my last name.
I left my parents and I moved to Johannesburg.
I would no longer be Melinda Franklin, I became Melinda Hall.
No one knew who Melinda Hall was, she could have been anyone.
When I met Charles, I simply told him that my parents were dead and that I was an only child.

When I arrived at my new home in Sierra after all of those years away, Sienna was waiting outside my front door for me. She never forgot me, and I never forgot her.