The Haunting of Sierra

Melissa

"Chicken!" Alissa yells at me.

"I'm not a chicken." I frown, looking down at my shoes. Cheap, uncomfortable pink flip flops. The kind that poor people buy. 

"Then why won't you go in, Melissa?" She asks. My twin sister Alissa is bossy. I don't want to go in. It's creepy inside there. Even mom said so. Alissa's voice drips with spite, the way it always does when she doesn't get her way. I feel my sister's cold hand reach out and push me slightly towards the door. My insides jump. 

"Girls!" Mom yells from the kitchen, "Dinner is ready!" I scamper into the kitchen. Alissa is behind me, but I can feel her glaring at me. My insides turn to ice. 

"Where's dad?" I ask, glancing around the kitchen. Mom sets a big dish of pasta down on the table. Spaghetti and tomato sauce, my least favorite meal.  

"Your father is upstairs, unpacking. Why don't you go get him?" Mom is searching for something in one of the boxes. I think about offering her help, but then I realize that Alissa should be helping too. 

Alissa is sitting down at the table. She is a mirror image of me, with her long, black hair, pale skin and blue eyes. We are carbon copies of each other. 

I make my way upstairs and listen to the wood creak beneath my feet. It sounds like screams. 
"Dad?" I call, walking down the hallway. I hate the sound of the wood creaking under my feet. I hate the way this new house smells. It might be our new home, but I will never allow myself to think of this strange place as anything more than a pit stop. 

"In here, sweetheart!" Dad calls from the master bedroom. I go in slowly, like I don't belong here. Dad is hanging up some of his clothes in the closet.

"Dinner is ready." I say simply, rocking back and forth on my heels. Alissa and I got our looks from dad. Same blue eyes, same black hair, same pale skin. 

"Let's go chow, Millie!" Dad is happier than I've ever seen him. His smile reaches his eyes, forming papery wrinkles. We moved out of our old house in Clarksdorp, Johannesburg, South Africa, because dad got a better job here in Sierra, a small town three hours away from Johannesburg.

Dad is a senior manager over at one of the big car manufacturing companies. Dad's promotion is good, because now we can afford to go to a nicer school and to have comfortable shoes. Rather minuscule improvements, but improvements nonetheless.  

"What have you little ladies been up to today?" Dad asks as we gather around the table for dinner. He scoops the spaghetti into his plate gratefully, clearly hungry after a long day of moving. 

Alissa and I haven't done much other than unpack since we moved in three days ago. Not that we did much back in Johannesburg. 

"They're only twelve, Charles. They don't have much to get up to." Mom says, spooning pasta onto her plate.

Alissa wants to go into the singular bedroom on the first floor. We're not allowed in there, because mom said so. She said it was creepy and that we shouldn't go in there until she's cleaned it out. That didn't stop Alissa from hounding me to go in there since we've been here. I miss my best friend, Ayanda, from back home. Well, I guess Sierra is home now. I miss Ayanda from Johannesburg. At least I have Alissa.

Mom and dad send us to our shared bedroom at 9:30pm. We didn't want to go to bed, we wanted to watch TV. Our shared bedroom is nice. It's spacious, plenty of room for both of our single beds and plenty of room for our dressers. Our room back in Johannesburg was tiny.

Alissa is still energized by the time I slide into bed. She is talking my ear off about what she read in the paper. We weren't supposed to read that article. Mom said it would fill our heads with nonsense. We read it anyway. We figured that our heads couldn't get more filled with nonsense at this point.