We are never leaving this house

"We need to go back." Talia insisted over the phone, and I sighed deeply, knowing that my sister would not be persuaded.

"We need to move on. Tal, it's better if we all stay away." I shoved the phone between my cheek and shoulder, rummaging through my closet. Carefully, I managed to fling a shirt in the direction of the suitcase. It gently slapped its way into the gaping, empty suitcase.

My phone slipped off my shoulder when Talia yelled. "I can't believe we're arguing over this!"

Swearing, I fumbled for it, hitting the speaker in time to tune in to my sister's rant.

"-generational trauma! We need to go back, and put an end to all this. It's like our whole lives are all about-"

"Okay! Okay!" I declared, throwing my hands up in surrender. "I'm packing." I could almost sense Talia's smug smile through the phone. "I'll meet you there tomorrow."

After a short, early domestic flight and cab ride, I was hiding out in a bar, taking as long as humanly possible to drink a club soda.

I didn't dare take a sip of alcohol. It had never been my thing, but giving in to any temptation would lead down that rabbit hole again. That shitty, self-loathing spiral of detox, suffering, and guilt.

The girl next to me said something in a slightly different tone, which brought me back to reality.

"-it's like so crazy." The girl-woman, really-declared, her words tripping over each other. "So tell me, you a local?"

I tilted my head at her, avoiding the lemon as I took a sip. "Not really." We'd been playing this game for an hour, long enough for me to know she was straight.

The woman giggled, one pretty hand running through her hair. "Something bring you back?" An hour of this bullshit was long enough to impress me.

I smiled at her. Her words were slurred and heavy, but her eyes too sharp for that drink in her hand to be anything but juice. "Murrder brought me back." I said over another slow sip, and the woman's eyes narrowed with interest.

"Does this actually work? Do people start telling reporters their deepest secrets if you talk at them enough?" I ignored her half-hearted protests, sliding off the bar stool. The woman had happily covered my drink, and I made a quick getaway.

I'd avoided the godawful reunion long enough. There was one reporter now, probably a local news station's intern, trying to make a name for herself.

But the second mainstream press realized that all the surviving Blackwell children had returned home, there would be a feeding frenzy at the house.

For the first time in years, there were other cars outside our house. I spied a neighbour peeking out from behind a curtain.

Just for a second, I stared at the house. It was the centrepiece of my nightmares, and it looked almost the same. The last time I was here, I was a dying teenager, being dragged away by emergency services and a social worker.

Now I was all grown up, and like me, the house had some lines too. The porch creaked, and stairs complained as I dragged my suitcase into it.

"No, we're not doing interviews. Assholes!" A voice yelled from inside before I could knock.

Sighing deeply, I tilted my head back. "Talia it's me."

The door opened and my sister launched herself onto me, in an exuberant version of a hug.

I tolerated it, then moved past her into the house. A chill set into my skin, as I stared at the furniture, the architecture. All of it...the same.

"I'll be right back," Talia promised, bounding up the stairs. I wondered if she'd run back to her old room.

The murder house of Greenview hadn't changed even a little. Yeah, it was a depressing shell of its former, all-American glory. But looking at it, you'd never know that it had taken three days to dig up all the girls' bodies from the backyard.

I pressed my fingers into the bridge of my nose, fighting off a headache. I could hear a neighbour's car rattling away somewhere.

"You look tired."

I turned at the voice, almost jumping out of my skin at the sound of it.

Kendra was leaning against the entry to the kitchen, eyes narrowed critically as she scanned me. She looked just like mom now, raising a hand to brush that identical chestnut hair out of her inherited blue eyes.

"Early flight," I replied, voice weak. Growing up, neighbours had always commented on how different the five Blackwell children looked from one another. How none of them looked quite like their parents. George used to have curls, I had dark eyes and an aquiline nose. Vincent had blond hair, like Mr Blackwell, but he had green eyes that neither Mr nor Mrs Blackwell had. Talia's skin was darker than either of her supposed parents.

But Kendra. There was something fragile about her like she was sharp glass, or maybe our relationship was. We'd all left separately, me in the back of an ambulance, Talia in a policeman's car, and Kendra ran away during the trial.

"Talia said you came back a couple of years ago?" I asked finally, needing to say something. Why not the question I'd harboured for years now?

"Someone needed to take care of mom." Kendra wiped her hands on a cloth, staring at me in a way that was hostile and unnerving.

"Why?" Feeling defensive, I crossed my arms. Fiddled with a sleeve. Why would anyone take care of a woman that routinely disposed of bodies? That beat her kids into silence? That terrorised and gaslit us?

Kendra tilted her head to the side. "It made me feel better to take care of our mother."

Before I could say something to that horrific pronouncement, Talia returned, bringing her usual energy to this gloomy room. "Is there anything to eat? I feel light-headed."

Kendra waved her over, and reluctantly I followed, sinking into a seat physically far from Kendra.

"Is dad our dad too?" My voice was quiet, and I hated that.

Kendra glanced up from her plate, and I saw dad in her chin. In her widow's peak. "She was old and suffering. She had nobody once they released her."

"What's happening?" Talia asked, looking between us.

"She should have been suffering." My hands clenched around the cutlery, and I couldn't determine whether it was sadness or anger making my eyes burn, my throat close, or my face heat. "They both deserve to suffer. Did you forget what they did to George and Vincent?"

"We don't need to talk about this," Kendra said calmly, slowly taking another bite. "And don't worry, she did suffer."

I felt it again, that coldness. The sickness seeping out of those cursed floorboards and into the air. Was it this house? This damaged, ill, creaky husk?

Or was it them, Dad, Mom, and Kendra?

Looking at the food made me nauseous. I forced myself to speak. "They chopped up-"

"We don't need to talk about this." Kendra interrupted, and I have no idea why I came back.

We talk about it. We can't not talk about it. It shows up in Talia's designs, in her clothes. In the dark patterns and strange, twisted loneliness in every one of the outfits she creates.

I've never met a person who can't read the sickness in my face. That disturbing nightmare eats away at my brain. It's why I don't talk to most people. They can see it like I'm a hollow creature, broken by the memories of this awful place.

I know Kendra's husband saw it too. That's why he left her. He was a cop, who dealt with damaged and terrible people all day. It must have gotten tiring to come home to that too.

"We should talk," Talia says softly, and I stare at her, unable to make my gaze kinder. "Mom's dead, and this is our chance. To move on."

Kendra chewed on her lip. An old habit, from when she got in trouble as a kid. "You think we'll change? That what happened will go away if we just say it?"

"It's better than siding with murderers and ra-" I cut myself off, unable to say that word. Unable to actually say what these freaks were doing while they locked us in our rooms so we could "do our homework".

"Wasn't mom nice sometimes?" Kendra asked slowly and Talia and I stared at her.

Talia's mouth opened and closed. She couldn't form the words for how wrong that was. Mom making chicken soup when you were sick, did nothing to change the truth of the shovel she used to hide bodies.

It did nothing to change the truth of the dismembered flesh and trinkets she buried there.

"I can't believe we are arguing over this," I said finally, my hands shaking. The chair made a screech that makes everyone flinch when I got up.

Our parents would have killed us for the noise. Maybe they would have killed us eventually.

I needed to get as far away from Kendra as possible. Far away from mom's face.

My old room is more or less the same as that night, I note, sinking into the dusty, tired bed.

My last night in the house was the night our neighbours finally called the cops. My parents knew it was over, so they set fire to part of the house, and my father slit George's throat first.

George died in his room, slumped over his desk, with blood pooling out of his neck.

Loyal Vincent died of burns and smoke inhalation, trying desperately to set out the fire.

His shouts had woken me up...

My eyes closed tightly, but the memories won't stop. My dad entered the room then, while I was waking up from the noise.

He stabbed me. I know that part. I know that the cops were on their way by then. That I only had to fight and struggle for a few minutes before police officers burst into the room and shot my father dead.

They arrested my mother and ripped her hands off Talia's neck. Looking carefully, there are slight indentations on Talia's neck. Where my mother's nails dug in.

I shuddered and got up. No, no, no.

Accidentally, I brushed the wall, then moved away from it. Once, I had a girlfriend that believed objects stored the feelings of the person that held them.

This house held the terror of so many kids. I wondered how much of it was terrified, and how much of it lusted for blood.

Talia and Kendra were quietly arguing in the kitchen. That quietness was an automatic reflex too, a remnant of a time when our father screamed over the smallest noise.

"Why bring all of it up? What difference does it make?" Kendra asked, dragging her hands down her face. No engagement ring, but there was a faint tan line where it would be.

"Did you get engaged again?" I asked, interrupting whatever depressing talk they were having.

Kendra rubbed her fingers, looking perturbed. "Yeah, but nobody wants to be with you when you..." She trailed off, eyes unspeakably sad.

Talia seized on the chance. "This is why we should talk about it. Finally, move on. Mom and dad are dead. It's over."

"I've been to therapy, Tals." I snapped at her without meaning to. "Do I look fixed to you?"

Talia scoffed, glaring at me. "That's because no therapist can replace family, imbecile. No one else went through what we did. It-"

"We're not a family," Kendra said, so quietly that I almost missed it.

I glanced at Talia, then back at Kendra. "What are you talking about?"

Kendra chuckled humourlessly, her fingers tracing that faint white line where her ring was. "Sometimes, pregnant girls stayed here. They'd run away from home, or couldn't get rid of their babies. Mom and dad agreed to keep them. Keep you."

My heartbeat thudded dully in my ears, but part of me was relieved and unsurprised. Thank god, I wasn't one of them. I wasn't really one of them.

"The plan was to kill you when you got older too. But that never happened, and they just kept bringing the other girls here." Kendra's voice was just like mom's now, empty and lifeless. She was like a ghost or clone, some repeating element of the past.

"Why do you know this?" Talia asked, and I snapped out of the daze I'd entered.

"I was thirteen when you guys first got here." Kendra reminded her, still toneless. "I knew everything."

A stunned silence took over the kitchen, and I felt my blood honestly chill. Kendra used to cry all the time. She cried when dad asked Vincent to help him in the garden. She used to cry when she saw mom cutting up chicken.

I remembered how she used to hold Talia, the youngest. As if she was afraid someone would tear the child from her arms.

"Kendra..." Talia whispered, sounding shaken. "You-you knew? You could have called someone-"

Kendra nodded, eyes curiously wide and empty. "Hmm."

"You weren't charged." I cleared my throat, making my voice stronger. "You were a full blown adult, but they never charged you."

"Yes." Kendra sighed, raising her hand to show us. "I married a cop. Nobody believed I had done it. I'm just so tired now." She stared out a window.

"This is insane." Talia declared, shaking her head. "Are you-were you ever going to tell anyone?"

"Why the hell would you take care of mom? After what they did?" I yelled, knocking a chair aside as I did.

All of us instinctively looked up in alarm at the sound, before remembering there were only ghosts in this house.

"We're so screwed up." Talia sobbed, backing into the fridge, her hands covering her face. "You could have stopped all of it."

Kendra only blinked at us slowly. "I did. I did stop it."

"You called the cops that night?" I asked, and Kendra nodded, eyes drifting up again.

"I was so tired of our goddamn secret. I was tired of the nightmares, the guilt. The girls I never saw again. They made me help them, care for them." Kendra sounded half dead already. "I had to lie to you when you asked if they left."

Something creaked up there and Talia flinched. It was impossible to explain to other people, to accurately convey the hatred our father had for noise. The reason we all jumped at the smallest sounds, lived in fear of talking, or laughing.

"It's over, but it will never be over." Kendra murmured. I understood where I'd seen that look now. Her pupils were wide, eyes vacant.

"You've been taking mom's pills." My words were accusatory, but I understood. I knew what it meant to want to disappear, make the world shut up and go away. "How long has she actually been dead?"

Talia made a sobbing sound, or maybe it was a disbelieving laugh.

Kendra smiled lightly, finally looking me right in the eyes. "She's been dead for years. I've been filling the prescription and lying to her doctors. She's out there."

Talia and I turned to follow Kendra's gaze. Out the window and into our sun-lit backyard.

"Oh, what the hell?" Talia sank onto the floor. "I feel sick."

"I needed you guys to come back." Kendra said. "I'm so tired. I'm so sick and tired."

"Wait, wait, wait." I said, then frowned. Why was I sitting down? When did I sit down?

I shook my head to get rid of that thought. "You said-earlier you said nobody believed you did it."

Kendra's eyes closed and she breathed out deeply.

"Kendra what did you do?" I asked, voice ragged. Talia clapped a hand over her mouth, looking sick.

"I helped them." Kendra said finally. "Every day and every weekend."

Talia vomited all over the floor.

I didn't need to ask with what. I didn't want to hear this.

"We are never going to escape." Kendra's eyes were filling with tears. "It's always going to be in us. Always. Vincent and George were the lucky ones."

"Kendra what did you do?" I asked quietly, the headache making my skull ache.

"We're never leaving this house." Kendra repeated. "Don't worry, apparently, this is painless."

I could still hear it, the car rattling around.

I don't remember seeing anything else, just collapsing into an infinite void.