The yellow house stands in the middle of the flatland, peacefully dauntless. I pace slowly towards it, scared the ground will swallow me whole if I get too close. If it was up to me, this is the last place I'd ever come to. Yet, when I got the call from the hospital, I knew this was exactly where I needed to be.
The door is busted, forever stuck in the position it was left. Not closed, not opened, just enough for you to squeeze in if that’s what you really wish for. The paint on the wall is peeling off, the furniture is snuggled in a blanket of dusk and cobwebs, but it looks just like I remember it.
Peter is standing in front of the window, staring at the dead tree outside. I walk towards him, and he doesn’t need to look back to know it’s me.
“I knew you’d come.” He points towards the window “Remember that tree?”
“Peter, what are you doing here?”
He looks back, his expression blank. He tilts his head to the side like he's trying to understand what I'm saying. Then, he gives me a soft smile, before turning back to the window.
“It’s dead now...”
“The oak?” I take a step forward, standing next to my brother.
Mavis runs towards me, a smile spread across her face. Behind her, the yellow house, surrounded by the weeds no one cared to mow. Her hair is braided on both sides and she’s about six years old, if I remember correctly.
I'm sitting on top of the tree, on one of the branches. My hair is growing too much, it almost covers my eyes. I think I'm eight.
“Peter! What are you doing?” Mavis yells as she’s about to reach me. “I like it here.”
My sister jumps, in an attempt to cling to a branch and join me. She’s not tall enough yet, so I give her I smile before climbing down. She grins, she still likes hanging out with me.
I sit on the ground, hiding under the shade. I grab a stick and draw a tic tac toe on the dirt. She joins happily, too young to be aware of our situation. I don’t have the same luck., I don’t think I ever did.
My attention is on the house, the screams coming from it. Mom and Dad have been fighting day and night ever since we moved here. They try to pretend it's not happening, that everything is fine, but I'm too old for that. I think Dad is sick.
“It’s your turn!”
The sun is still shining for now, but it will be setting in a few minutes. The main living room window has a great view of the terrain, and I can almost picture Mom standing where we are, looking at us under the oak tree.
“They live for hundreds of years.” I look at my brother, his eyes are glazed on the spot, barely noticing my presence “It died because of us.”
I place a hand on his shoulder, he remains unmovable. He’s here but at the same time, he’s not. His mind seems to be far away, and I know exactly where.
The kitchen is run down, like most of the house. No matter how clean it is, it always looks dirty, old. The plan was to fix it and make it look like new, but we never got the chance.
Mavis and I walked into the kitchen that day; I think I was ten. It was a sunny afternoon, and we came inside because she got hungry. Dad was in the kitchen already, facing the opposite direction.
"What happened?" I asked, unaware of the turn my life was about to take.
Dad turns around, slowly. There are blood spatters on his face and his shirt, but he doesn't seem to mind. His holding a knife in one of his hands and it drops into the floor. There's a pool forming around his feet, but that wasn't even the worst part.
Mom was there too, lying on the floor in front of him. I could tell all that blood belonged to her.
"Mavis, go to your room, is that alright?" She nods before strolling down the hallway. I hear the door close and only then do I speak.
“Dad, what happened?”
Dad had never been a violent man, but in that moment, as I stood there in the kitchen, I felt mortified. I didn’t know what happened or what could happen for all that mattered, but I was the only thing standing between him and my sister.
"Everything's fine." He smiles at me, and I feel like I'm inside a dream "Don't worry about it, champ."
As I move closer to them, I can get a better picture of my mother. Her throat was slashed and, even if she somehow managed to survive that, she had lost a very significant amount of blood by the time I found her. But I was only a kid myself, I didn’t know what any of that meant.
“What happened to mom?” He gives me another reassuring smile, refusing to look back and acknowledge the scene behind him.
“She’s just resting, she’ll be fine.”
“Did you do that?” I ask, despite the obvious.
Dad walks towards me, not in a threatening way, but like a father would. He puts his hand on my cheek and smiles. I smile back as he caresses my face.
“I love you so much.”
And I know he does, never once have I doubted it. I look at the body behind him, and I can see the multiple stabs that Dad’s position was covering before. Any hope I had of a potential accident was gone at that moment.
"There's something wrong with this family," he moves to the side and points to the body "This is the only way to fix it."
Back then, I didn't understand what that meant. Dad smiled at me and brushed it off. “Just promise me you’ll take care of your sister.” He says and I nod, of course I would.
I look around the kitchen, looking for something, anything, to fix the situation I have in front of me. There’s a phone placed on top of the kitchen counter. Police wouldn’t make it in time, but it was the only thing I could do.
"I’m just going to call a friend.”
I start walking towards the phone, but Dad grabs me. I'm not allowed to call anyone, not yet. He places his hands on my shoulders, the knife still between his fingers, and pulls me closer.
“This family is cursed, Petey.” He starts “When it’s time, you need to fix it.”
He lifts the knife, but I wasn't scared. Somehow, I knew it wasn't my time. It was his. He takes a few steps back, standing right in front of Mom. I try to reach for his hand, for the knife, but he is faster than me, and with one immediate swing, he slashes his own throat.
I cover my mouth, in shock, trying not to alert Mavis, as my dad's body falls to the ground, lying next to my mom's. I stand there for a while, just looking at them, taking it all in before I finally make the call.
“Peter... let’s get you back home, okay?”
He turns to me, fast, unpredictable. I shudder a little at how sudden it was. “This is my home.”
Peter has been living at the psychiatric hospital for a few months now. I was too young to recall details, and I also didn’t stay for long, I was placed in foster care shortly after. He made sure I never saw the bodies.
However, he did. He was diagnosed with PTSD and later, schizophrenia. He was quite good at managing his symptoms, a mixture of an early diagnosis and the right medication.
But about a year ago, something changed. He started coming to the house, late at night, saying it was calling him. It became a regular occurrence, no matter the number of precautions taken. If he couldn’t open the door, he’d jump through the window. If the car wasn’t available, he’d just walk, for hours. It was putting him in danger, and I couldn’t give him the help he needed. This was the only option.
“Dad was right, you know?” He looks at me, his expression blank. I’m unable to read him or what he’s trying to do.
“Dad was sick.” He laughs, in a way I have never heard before.
Peter turns to me. He tilts his head to the side and stares for what feels like an eternity. Then, he lets out a loud sigh, before pulling a small knife out of his pocket.
“There’s something wrong with us, I have to fix it.”
“Peter, let me call Doctor George, and we can talk about this with him, okay?” He shakes his head.
“No.” He takes a step closer “I need to do it now.”
Peter takes a swing and buries the knife in my stomach. I look down, and all I can see is his tight grip on the handle. We stand still for a while; I think he’s also afraid to remove the blade. Unfortunately, there’s no going back now.
“I’m sorry.” He pulls the knife out, a squelching sound follows his movement.
There’s a pool of blood starting to form around me and I feel like I’m about to pass out. I lean on the wall for support, my back against the window. Peter walks around the room, slowly and quietly.
“Let me call someone,” I murmur, “it’s okay.”
“There’s no point.”
I didn’t know when it would be, but I knew my time would come too.
“You have to be strong, Peter. You’re about to be the man of the family.” He told me as we drove home from my football practice.
“What about you?”
“I have something to do, soon.” He pulled into the driveway and stopped the car, but we both stayed inside.
Ever since Dad got sick, we barely talked. Everything he said sounded like nonsense, but not this time. We were finally having a normal father-son conversation and I wanted to soak up everything he had to tell me.
“What is it?”
He opened the door, to leave I thought. I ruined it with my stupid questions, and I would never get the same chance again. But he turned to me and said, “Let me show you something.”
I followed him to the shed, a small wood cubicle behind the house. It was locked with a key only Dad had access to, so none of us had ever been there before. I felt special like I was finally turning into a man.
The place was dusty but surprisingly well-lit. The space was tight and filled with card boxes, so I had to squeeze my way in. Dad opened one of the boxes and pulled out a photo album.
“This is my great-grandfather, Joe.” he pointed to one of the men, standing next to a pink house.
There were three of them, all standing next to each other with a somewhat satisfied face. Joe was holding something in his hand, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It was dripping into the floor, making a small dark pool in between the man.
My dad took the photo out, handing it to me so I could have a better look. Still, I shrugged, unsure of what I was looking at. He pointed to the back, towards the house. It looked like a better version of our old house, carefully painted and with a garden around it, with some flowers and a few trees.
"Is that..." One of the trees is shaped differently and as I took a closer look, I realised someone was hanging from it.
“That’s the witch’s tongue.” He pointed towards Joe’s hand. He was holding a human tongue and I waited for my dad to tell me more.
Joe married a witch, he told me. When he found out, he took matters into his own hands, but it was too late. She put a curse on our family, and every baby shall doomed from birth.
“You’ll know when you have to act.”
His words would linger in my head for the rest of my life. Little did I know, he was right. When I woke up this morning, I knew what I had to do. Mavis would follow me anywhere, she's a good sister. After she got in the house, I would finally end it, once and for all.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”
He brings the knife to his neck, a smile planted on his face. I feel myself fainting, but I know it can’t end like this.
“Peter, please... Don’t do that, I can’t lose you too...”
He doesn’t lower the knife, but he stops his hand. He doesn’t say anything and simply stares me down, a blank look on his face. He has been off his meds for God knows how long.
“You’re all I have, please...”
He walks closer to me and kneels. A part of me is scared he’s going to stab me again, so I finally shut up. But he doesn’t. Instead, he puts his hand on my stomach.
“I’m coming with you.”
I put my hand on his and pressed hard. The pain is excruciating, but it helps stop the bleeding. It’s hard to think, even harder to speak.
“I want to stay here with you. Can we do that?”
I can't remember a time when Dad wasn't sick. I don't know if he was born like that or if it just happened before me, but in all my memories, that's who he has always been.
I wonder but it's the same for Peter. Is it better to have known and lost him or to never have known him at all?
“There’s no saving me,” he murmurs.
Men in our family have never made it past 50. There’s this sickness inside of them, and they can’t help themselves. I refused to believe in some silly curse and instead, hope with all I had that Peter would be different.
He was treated in time and has years of therapy to his advantage. Yet, where we are, in the same place everyone before him has been. His fate has perhaps been decided the day he was born and we’re just two pawns in destiny’s way.
“What about me?”
I never stopped visiting Peter, even after I was adopted. I'd go see him weekly and bring him outside things I thought he would enjoy, like cool rocks and comic books. I thought I was helping, but he probably spent all this time resenting me for having a life.
“Do you hate me?”
“Where will she go?” I asked the nurse the day Mavis left. I wasn’t always to go yet, I needed to be treated. But she was all good.
“Well... hopefully she will find another family.”
It took everything in me to not punch her. But I needed to be better, so I too could leave. “But I’m her family.”
“Of course,” she smiles. “I just mean a mom and a dad she can live with.”
I stayed in my room the rest of the day. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. She came to visit me the next week, and the week after. It became a routine, but it wasn't the same. I realised we would never again share a life.
“I could never hate you.”
My head feels heavier every second that goes by. I want to close my eyes, just for a little bit, but I need to be strong.
“I just want to be your sister. I’ll do better, let me try again.”
I don’t plead for my life. Instead, I plead for his. I wish I could go back and take his pain away. I was only a child but so was he. He was unfortunate enough to be born a few years before me, that was his only curse. Because if given the chance, I would have protected him from all of this.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, life just got in our way.”
I use what’s left of my strength to lift my upper body. I grab his face with my hands, a bloody handprint on his cheek. He doesn’t seem to mind.
“It’s not too late, we can plant a new tree.”
I know I'm too heavy and I think it's finally time to get some rest. Peter catches my head as I'm heading down, his hand pillows me on the floor. I hope I see him again when I close my eyes.
I dream about us, big and small, running around the park. Peter is faster, always has been, and that’s the way it should be. We sit under the trees and tell each other stories about our new lives, yearning to be the almost twins we once were. We run and we talk, we talk and we run. And I hope that in some other life, we're siblings again.