Edgar Allan Poe defines the short story as a literary work capable of being read “in one sitting”. Though Daisy Johnson’s Sisters is a novella, I’m including it in this anthology as I read it on a single stormy evening, fittingly in the North of England. The brevity of this tale adds to its intensity and underscores its gothic horror themes of things being hidden, unknown, not quite as they seem. After closing the book, the story quickly found its way into my dreams. I remember the nightmarish quality of that night. Torrential rain against the skylight in Huddersfield. Memories of the novel flickering in and out of my broken sleep.
I could see the opening scene, the young sisters with their fairy tale names (July and September), sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the back seat of a car “sharing air”. Their single mother driving them up the bone of the country. Oxford to Yorkshire. Escaping an unspoken incident that happened in their school to make a “new start” in the North. Sister July spotting an arrow of light from the sunroof pooling between them, thinking how she and September are so close, it wouldn’t have surprised her if, “slit open, we shared organs… a single heartbeat”. I could see the isolated Settle House in Yorkshire, alive and kaleidoscopic. Shadowy shapes inside resembling bodies, ants shifting behind broken glass, corridors repeating, activity happening “just out of view”. I could see the sisters’ liminal days spent under the blue light of the TV or sharing bathwater or playing make-believe games like September Says – straddling the line between violence, mimicry, love. I remembered the mother always elsewhere, existing like “furniture” in a distant dark room. I remembered the outside blurring in and, with it, a haunting seeping between. July getting caught in the space between the house’s inner and outer walls. September’s disembodied sound, unable to be found. I remembered the change in the air. Time losing its “line”. I remembered the truth of the incident from school coming into view. I could see the sister’s caught breath. The girl-shaped hole. The family’s centre removed.
First published by Jonathan Cape, 2020
A Personal Anthology 