The Things That Grow in the Dark

Time slips past quiet in Louisiana, the days folding into one another until whole years vanish like mist over the bayou. Before I knew it, eight years had gone, and I was sixteen. I was old enough to look grown, young enough to still feel the heaviness of childhood, raising my eight‑year‑old sister as though she were my own. Calling it “looking after her” was polite. Truth was, I had become Liora’s unpaid servant, her caretaker, her shadow, her shield, and at times the excuse she used to hide her darker nature.

No matter how many nannies or tutors Mr. Louis hired, none lasted long. They arrived with polished shoes and hopeful smiles, believing they had stepped into respectable work, only to leave with trembling hands and haunted eyes. The wickedness Mémé Solange warned me about began showing itself when Liora turned five. To visitors and to her daddy, she was the sweetest little thing. A light‑skinned, soft curls, giggles, dolls, and sugar‑coated innocence little girl.

But sweetness was only her mask. Underneath lived something else entirely.

When the house settled at night and the cicadas sang their mournful songs, Liora became violent, vindictive, and full of a cruelty I still struggle to name. Her sight was different from mine. She could not see spirits or shadows or death trailing behind a person. But she felt emotions; felt them so deeply she learned to twist them, bend them, and use them like tools. She took pleasure in it. And she took pleasure in watching others break.

Three years ago, Mr. Louis brought home a new woman he’d been seeing. A young, soft‑spoken thing, and already swollen with a child ready to come any day. He strutted her into the parlor like a prize hog, talking about how she’d be Liora’s new mama. I stayed in the back, quiet and unnoticed, but I saw what lingered behind her: pale, flickering faces hovering like flies around a dying body. One spirit, a small child, looked straight at me before turning back to the woman.

Right then, I knew she wouldn’t survive the night.

Later, when the scream tore through the house that was sharp, panicked, and full of horror. I ran to the window and saw the woman laid out on the ground like a broken doll, limbs twisted, blood dripping from her mouth, eyes wide open and staring at the sky as though begging heaven for answers.

A soft noise behind me made me turn.

Liora stood in my doorway.

Her curls hung loose, her silk nightdress glowing faintly in the early morning light, and she held the porcelain doll Mr. Louis paid a fortune for. She looked innocent, sweet, fragile, and untouched by ugliness.

But I knew better.

I reached out and touched her arm.

The moment my fingers brushed her skin, a vision slammed into me so hard I nearly stumbled. I saw the woman stepping out onto the balcony for air, her hand resting on her swollen belly. I saw Liora, small, barefoot, and silent as a shadow slipping into the room behind her. She crept forward with the patience of a hunter, her little hands curling around the railing as she watched the woman lean over.

Then, with a quick, deliberate motion, Liora pushed her.

I saw the woman’s body fall, twisting in the air before hitting the ground with a sickening crack. I saw Liora standing above her, peering over the bannister with a smirk that was small, satisfied, cruel as the woman lay broken and dying below.

The vision snapped away, leaving me breathless.

“You murdered that woman,” I whispered, letting go of her arm.

Liora did not look sorry. Not one bit. If anything, she seemed pleased that I knew.

“Is that wrong, sissy?” she asked, her voice soft but her eyes sharp. “She would’ve had that man’s baby, and then what? He would’ve given that whore and her bastard everything while leavin’ us out in the cold to play beggar.”

She walked over to my bed and sat down with her doll, looking for all the world like a pretty little thing with a cold, murderous heart. In moments like that, I could see Mama in her. The same hunger, the same selfishness, the same willingness to do harm if it meant getting what she wanted.

“It is a sin, Liora,” I said quietly.

“So?” she answered, rising to stand in front of me. “This house, that man, everything and everyone in this place is steeped in sin, sissy. This place is cursed, and we who live in it are too.”

Before I could respond, she wrapped her arms around me, pressing her face into my stomach.

“The only good thing in this place is you,” she whispered.

And in that moment, I let the vision go. There was no changing what had happened, and even if I told Mr. Louis, he would never believe me. No one would take the word of a dark‑skinned Negro girl over that of a child with Liora’s complexion and charm.

“Mr. Louis gon’ be upset,” I muttered. “That baby was gon’ be a boy.”

Liora walked to the window, bare feet silent on the floorboards, and looked down at the crowd gathering around the dead woman.

“He can be upset,” she said, her voice suddenly cold. “But he’ll move on to the next one. Maybe this time he’ll learn his lesson thinkin’ his whores can be called my mama. I don’t need no mama. I got Nadira.”

Something in her tone made warning bells ring in my head, but I let it go. Liora played her cruel tricks on everyone else, but with me she acted like a normal child. My child. The one I’d raised since I was eight.

After that night, Mr. Louis never brought another woman into the house. But that didn’t mean he had luck. Any woman who ended up pregnant by him suffered terribly. Some died in childbirth. Some lost the baby. Some vanished. Folks whispered, but nobody dared speak on the curses living in that house.

Eventually, he gave up on the idea of a son.

Which meant Liora, his only child, was set to inherit everything: his businesses, his land, his dirty money, his sins.

And deep in my bones, I knew that was exactly what she wanted.