Cousin B

By R. Saint Claire

"First-rate YA Gothic Thriller!"

A chilling teen thriller about the hidden horrors of bullying!

My father kept a terrible secret from us: another child he had hidden away for seventeen years. Now, "Cousin B" has moved into our home and is taking over my life.

The death of Mignonette's father throws her life into turmoil when she learns that he had a secret affair with the family’s long-time housekeeper resulting in a secret sister who is now coming to live with her. But “Cousin B,” raised in a world of poverty and foster homes, has trouble adjusting to Mignonette’s private school, country club, and tight-knit friends. As B’s bad manners and promiscuity rattle Mignonette’s social set, the group turns against her with an intense bullying campaign that culminates in an unspeakable act of revenge.

Cousin B, a novella from the author of horror and suspense, slowly creeps under your skin in a disturbing tale about the perils of group dynamics and of facing the truth about oneself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. Saint Claire
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005956028

R. Saint Claire

R. Saint Claire writes adult and YA fiction and screenplays (horror mostly) as well as poetry and music when the mood strikes. Honors include a Watty award for her horror novel, Code Red, a Webby Honoree for her original web series Gemini Rising, and multiple screenwriting awards. You’ll find Regina and her alter-ego Batilda hanging out on her YouTube channel Regina’s Haunted Library.

Book preview

cousin B

cousin B

R. Saint Claire

For my sisters.

Contents

The Storm

Basha

The Summer of B.

The Party

Roland

The Club

Jasper and B.

The Trail

Shopping With Alex

Labor Day

Back to School

Revelations

An Attack

The Study

The Will

The Dance

Rebellion

Confession

The Jagged Path

About the Author

Also by R. Saint Claire

Copyright 2018 R. Saint Claire

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781983382383

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

The Storm

The fight happened during the night of a terrible storm; it shook the entire house on its foundation, and for a stone Gothic revival mansion that is quite a feat. I’m sure the zaps of white lightning and subsequent tremors got me out of my warm bed and padding barefoot across my mom’s prized Aubusson carpeting to the balcony overlooking the foyer, or maybe it was the screaming. Either way, I found myself in a front row seat for the battle of the century.

More like an arena death match. My mom shouted out accusations like a dragon spitting fire while my dad, fist hovering like Thor’s hammer, bowed over her. I spotted old Doris by the door, ineffectively waving her hands like she was swatting at flies in the kitchen, her primary domain. She was crying too; her face blotchy and hideously ugly; the blubbering sound she made was just awful. In my sixteen years on earth, I’d never heard her cry; and it ripped into me like a jagged knife.

Doris was always the one who listened to my complaints, not the other way around, even when I taunted and abused her, which was often, especially that time when I was twelve and my period started. No, the only face Doris Gabrowski had ever shown me was one of pure love. Of course, this made me think her very stupid, and I told her so a few times. More times than I’m comfortable admitting now.

While my parents slung words of hatred at each other (drifting ever lower below the proverbial belt), Doris hovered helplessly near the front door in that drab raincoat covering her old maid’s uniform. On either side of her stocky legs and swollen feet, two powder blue Samsonite suitcases—the type hip kids filch from the Salvi—stood sentinel. Those suitcases arrived with her when she moved into Ashfair and had remained in her small closet all those years until that stormy night. They contained everything she owned, with room inside to spare.

Leaving without even saying goodbye, old Doris? I thought, almost saying it aloud. But I wasn’t ready to give up my hiding place, not yet. As ludicrous (and entertaining on some level) as this fight was, the thought of losing Doris stuck in my throat like I had dry-swallowed a handful of pills.

It was weird that I found myself crying over this because the three of them looked like actors in a bad play, or more accurately like an SNL skit. Not to be taken seriously.

My mom, Jacqueline—don’t you dare call her Jackie—is a slim and stunning forty-year-old former model (for real). Think Melania Trump with a South Jersey accent (although she claims to be a liberal, she’d love the comparison). My dad, tall and thin—at least I got his slimness if not his height—with crystal blue eyes I wish I had inherited is pretty old, sixty-five at least, although at this time he was still putting in a forty-hour week at his law practice.

And Doris? God, where do I begin? Let’s just say, Kathy Bates would play her in the movie, but even that’s giving her way too much glamour. She had pretty red hair except that she styled it like a 60s beehive, which matched her luggage perfectly. In recent years her hair had started turning white, her one small beauty fading away.

From my high vantage point I saw that the fight had calmed for a moment; my dad let his fist fall to his side. He was breathing hard and I could tell he was getting tired. It became apparent that Mom was kicking Doris out of the house, firing her. How she planned to run the household without her was a mystery to me because Doris did everything.

During a pause in the screaming match, my dad had held my mom by the arms in a gesture of conciliation, but that only enflamed her further, and when she shook free of him she screamed in his face, How dare you bring that whore into this house?

That’s when my dad pushed her into the little upholstered bench that no one ever sits in and shouted back at her, That whore’s more woman than you’ll ever be!

This resulted in my mom really going crazy. First, she acted like she had hit her head against the marble wainscoting, which I could tell from my angle she had cleared by at least four inches. Then she kind of pretended to break down and cry, which was really fake because when my dad reached out to show her some mercy she lunged at him like a wildcat, digging at his neck with her French manicured nails. I could tell it really hurt him because of how red his face got, and when he twisted out of her grip, his bifocals flew off his face and skidded across the marble floor, stopping right at the rounded toes of Doris’ white nurse’s shoes. She bent down to pick them up and wiped them on the skirt of her maid’s dress. There was something about how the tears dripped from Doris’ bloated face onto the cold marble floor that sent me over the edge.

For God’s sake, stop fighting! I screamed from the balcony.

They all looked up at me in unison, my mother’s hands still gripping my father’s throat in an almost comical gesture. I would have laughed, except that I fell.

It sounds dramatic, but I almost slid through the railing’s iron bars. Luckily my nightgown caught on one of the twisty things because the next thing I knew I was on the carpet gasping for air like our shih tzu, Louie, sometimes does when he’s having one of his fits. Each time I tried to breathe I wheezed, each wheeze deeper, and more painful than the last.

I’ve had asthma attacks before, but this one was by far the worst.

As the lights around me dimmed, I heard Doris’ heavy tramp on the stairs and I felt her warm body—comforting in a way—move in close to mine.

I heard the click of Doris’ Swiss army knife opening, the one she always keeps in her pocket. The timbre of my mom’s voice reached a hysterical pitch as she screamed out that Doris was trying to murder me. I heard dad call mom an imbecile followed by a sharp slap that must have landed because mom was quiet after that.

Doris held me down with one strong forearm across my chest and her thick legs clamped on my lower half like a vise.

Then something truly awful happened. She deftly brought the knife down on my throat and pushed it in. Maybe the reason I passed out was because it hurt more than anything I had ever felt before.

I woke up in the hospital a few days later. My mom was by my side, looking thinner than usual with a red nose and a lap full of used tissues. My dad wasn’t there; neither was Doris. But my mom’s friend Ward was there, sitting in the other chair wearing his tan slacks and that stupid polo shirt with the country club crest on it that he always wears. He tried hard to appear concerned, but my first thought when I saw him was that he seemed terribly bored.

Weeks later I was allowed to go home, and once I was settled into my bed with a stack of textbooks and my teachers’ smiley faced assignment notes from all the schoolwork I had missed, my mom gave me the bad news: my dad was dead; he’d had a heart attack the day after my fit, but it wasn’t my fault she said.

Why did I suddenly feel like it was?

I had missed the funeral, but as soon as I was better I could visit his grave, she said.

I don’t know why, but I asked about Doris. My mom paused and told me that she was dead too.

Natural causes, she said, and before I could even comprehend any of this, she added that we were getting a visitor.

For how long? I asked, numb.

She thought for a moment as if adding figures in her head and said, A year. Maybe a bit more.

Who is it?

I could see in the afternoon light the dark circles seeping through the veneer of light concealer under her eyes.

Your dad’s other daughter. The one he had with Doris. Her name is Basha. But we are to tell everyone that she’s your cousin.

Basha

Now Basha Gabrowski