To be completely honest, I am not quite sure how I felt upon learning that my mother and father were having another child. I know that I should have been overjoyed for them, glad to learn that I was getting a younger sibling – and yet, I could not help but feel a slight bit of natural revulsion at the fact. Their ages were certainly a factor in this, with I myself having come into the world 23 years ago, when my mother was 28. But moreover, it was difficult not to feel a slight – and I am ashamed to even admit this – jealousy towards this young child. I had always been an only child, with my parents' first child before me having died before I was even born. Even though my older sister had only been two years of age when she perished in a car accident, I always felt as if I had been measured in comparison to her and found wanting. No matter what I did, no matter how much I tried to distinguish myself in the eyes of my parents, their every praise of me always seemed to be tinged with sadness at the fact that they would never be able to see their oldest daughter go through the same things that I did. Though they surely meant nothing ill by it, it nonetheless made me feel secondary, as if none of my achievements were ever sufficient to set me apart from this theoretical wonder child that my sister had become in their minds.
And so it was that I felt a slight bit of dread and jealousy upon being told that my mother was expecting a child within three months. I did not see my parents often anymore, so it also came as quite the surprise. But at least outwardly, I made sure to display nothing but joy at the news, to ensure that my parents would at least get to feel happy about the news, even if I was somewhat less overjoyed. After hearing about it, I went down to visit my parents in Elizabethtown, where I stayed at their house for a couple of nights. It was obviously very strange to see a pregnant woman my mother's age, although she seemed alive with a radiant glow that I did not wish to take from her. And yet, after she went to bed, my father decided to speak with me. He had always been a very strict man, unlikely to show any emotion. And yet, I could tell from his furrowed brow and his haggard facial expression that something was troubling him.
He began to tell me about the strange events surrounding this pregnancy. Of how dogs and cats seemed to shun my mother during the pregnancy, and how young children with less knowledge of social customs would hide in terror from her as she passed. But, he told me, that's not the strangest thing. Sometimes, when he was asleep, he would hear and see things, in his dreams. Voices, speaking in strange languages. Bizarre landscapes. It only happened when he was close to my mother. When she was out of the house for some reason, he would sleep soundly. And after much coaxing, she had admitted that her dreams had become odd too, even moreso than his own – although she refused to go into detail about what exactly she meant by that. Something is wrong with that child, son. Of course, I would never say that to your mother, but mark my words – the Devil has some sort of grip on that kid. I left the following morning, and did not return before the birth.
The child was born during a day marked by an unusually strong heat wave for that time of year. A girl, by all accounts healthy and normal. She was given the name Dorothy. Unfortunately, despite my sister being born healthy, my mother was not quite as lucky. She suffered from complications during the birth which nearly killed her, and was confined to a wheelchair as a result. My father, despite his misgivings, willingly took on the care of both, doing his best to bring joy to both the love of his life and his newborn daughter. For about a year after Dorothy's birth, things seemed to be improving at home. Both my mother and father wrote to me about the growth and happiness of my younger sister, and the worries that my father had seemed to be laid to rest. The trouble began with a letter that I received from my aunt in late June, roughly 9 months after my sister's birthday.
According to the letter, my aunt had visited the little family, and she told me that something wasn't quite right about it. According to her letter, the blissful family life that I'd heard about from my parents wasn't quite the truth of the matter. She told me that when they visited, both my parents looked exhausted and almost jaundiced. My mother wouldn't let anyone hold the child, and they only got to see Dorothy from afar, as, according to my parents "She needed rest and quiet", something which remained the case for their entire visit. Somewhat more troubling was the state of the house itself. My mother had always had a fondness for rose bushes, and grew them in her garden, but something had seemed off about the plants. Parts of them were completely dead, blackened as if they had been burned, but upon closer inspection, they seemed to be rotting away. Other parts had swelled up, resulting in flowers that looked almost cancerous in nature, covered in growths along the stem, and with leaves whose shapes and colours were all utterly wrong. The grass too seemed to share in this unnatural growth, with individual blades growing in ways that seemed altogether unnatural for grass, splitting into two or even three blades halfway up their length, while more of those cancerous tumours seemed to be appearing on the leaves. She mentioned that her husband had picked up some of the soil out of curiosity, and it had crumbled between his fingers, into a fine dust. Inside the house, there had been some sort of mould growing on the walls, and when she had mentioned it to my father, he had simply mumbled about how "He was taking care of it, but it kept growing back" and refused to continue in pursuing the subject.
Despite the obvious absurdity of these claims, I nonetheless felt compelled to investigate for myself, and at the very least go see my new baby sister, despite my own reservations on the matter. I was honestly somewhat surprised when my parents protested and told me that it was unnecessary, that it would be best to visit at a later date. This, of course, only fuelled my desire to pay them a visit, and about two months after my aunt's letter had been received, I once again stood in front of their house. The first thing I noticed was the garden – its growth was utterly out of control, much more so than a few months of neglect would result in. Upon closer inspection, the grass seemed completely wrong. Blades branched off along the main blade and even further on each other, resulting in a practically fractal mess of plant life. The rose bushes were even worse, having long since outgrown their neat former shapes into a writhing mass of roots and leaves, with the flowers themselves budding over and over, petals growing irregularly, seemingly maddeningly scrambling over each other to acquire more sunlight. Indeed, the entire garden seemed to be in a race upwards, reaching up towards the sky, and I could almost swear that the swaying of the plants was not at all in tune with the mild wind coming in, but instead a display of some desperate will on the part of the plants to grow even further.
The smell inside the house was quite unpleasant. It was incredibly musty, as if it had been left on its own for decades. My father welcomed me, though I noticed that he had acquired a very noticeable limp. I immediately saw the mould growing on the walls, covering spots on the wallpaper that seemed to have been bleached, which turned out to be the result of my father's attempts to remove the malignant growths. He directed me to the kitchen, where he started brewing up some tea, before asking how long I was staying for. I asked him about my mother, and he informed me that she was currently out. I was a bit confused about this, considering that she was in a wheelchair, but he informed me that she had recovered, and could move around without help now. I then asked him about my sister. For a few seconds, he stared straight ahead, and I could see a massive boil on his neck that had previously been concealed by his collar. Then he looked straight at me and smiled.
"Would you like to see her?"
I nodded. He finished his cup of tea, before taking me up the stairs. As we ascended, the mould seemed to be getting worse, nearly covering the walls in fungoid growths. Some parts seemed newer and less developed than others, clearly showing where my dad had tried to remove it. I brought it up, but my father merely told me that once I saw, I would understand. After a few seconds, we stood in front of the door to her room. I noticed that the mould here seemed almost slimy, with a glossy, black surface that seemed altogether different from the furry fungus I had seen in other old houses. I reached out to grab the handle, before something made me recoil in horror. I noticed something. The mould had veins. Veins running through it, pulsing gently all over the walls and the door. I turned towards my dad, whose face was frozen in a smile. I asked him what was behind that door. He remained silent for several seconds, before he began speaking, his voice suddenly cracking.
"Why, your sister. That's what you came here for, isn't it? To see her?"
I asked him what had happened, demanded answers. As he simply smiled at me, I started shaking him, my own father, screaming at him to tell me what had happened, what was happening. His face then changed, as if he was suddenly released from hypnosis.
"Your mother, she couldn't… She couldn't handle the loss of your sister. Of, of…"
He paused for a second. My parents had always refused to tell me my older sister's name. As a child, it had seemed normal, and as an adult, I knew better than to ask. But somehow, I felt like I knew what her name had been. I nodded, to show that I understood. He began breaking down into blubbering sobs.
"All we wanted was to bring her back, to start over. We found a way. Eventually."
Tears were streaming down his cheeks now, and he grabbed my shoulders, his grip tighter than I thought possible for a man his age.
"There are some things, some things that are worth every possible sacrifice. But it wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it."
He released his grip on me, and turned towards the door.
"I don't even remember, you know, I don't remember the conception. It used me, I was just a puppet for someone else, something greater. If only we'd known, if only we'd understood the bargain we made. Oh my God."
With those words, he opened the door fully. What I saw behind that door, I can only describe in rough approximations – the smell was pungent and sweet. I imagine the writhing mass in the corner which had long since lost any semblance of shape, melding together with the rest of the room, had once been my mother. The being at the centre of the room had grown outwards, seeming to cover every surface inside. It was a mucilaginous, crawling thing, seeming to possess little intelligence. And yet, the incomprehensible phrase it uttered seemed almost lyrical in nature, as if it was singing some sort of twisted psalm.
"Var'Munictan! Var'Munictan!"
I turned to my father, only to find that the door had been closed behind me. I heard a horrible sucking noise as the thing began to move towards me.