The Story of the Four Sisters

A disturbing legend circulates around two photographs from the beginning of the century recently found in a flea market.

A story that seemed forgotten by now, buried under the dusty blanket of time. Or rather, that was the best possible fate.

However, the two old black and white photographs have brought this sad story back to the surface, therefore, it is worth not lingering and narrating once again – hoping it will be the last – the story of the four long-haired sisters.

 

It all originated in the south of France at the beginning of the last century.

It is said that Count Charles of Carcassonne had a first daughter by his young wife who died in childbirth.

He then took the Duchess of Toulouse in a second marriage and he had another daughter, Nonotte, by her. She is almost the same age as his first daughter.

The Count was starting to get aggressive and impatient to have a son.

He tried a second time and his young wife gave birth to twins: Sonia and Vovette.

Obscured with anger, the Count began to curse his first daughter, the one who had – according to him – nullified the male descent, condemning him to have only female children.

He locked his first daughter in a small room at the end of a long corridor in the upper floors of the villa, away from her sisters, and forbade anyone in the house to say her name.

He himself wrote the name of the daughters in the photograph taken on their estate, omitting that of the eldest, who was forever unknown.

The doctor who examined his wife found that the last twin birth had impaired her ability to conceive again.

The Count began to drink assiduously and to have lovers that he also brought into the house.

But what shocked the county were the dire rumors of his habit of pouring out anger and frustration at his first daughter, late at night.

After drinking almost a bottle of brandy in his study and locking his wife in their room, he walked into the dark corridor like a swinging shadow.

Then he closed the door behind him and didn't go out until after a couple of hours. Nightly.

The whole house was enveloped in every corner by echoes of tears.

The maids did not have the courage to approach that room and the three sisters closed themselves in silence that not even their mother was able to remedy.

 

Whenever the wife begged her husband not to go to that room she was beaten and insulted, also guilty of not having been able to give him a son.

At this point, something happened that it is still difficult to distinguish whether simple fantasy or reality of the facts.

Tired of suffering the moans and cries of their half-sister, Nonotte, Sonia, and Vovette started going to the forbidden room when their father was out during the day.

The half-sister was in terrible shape, thin, bruised, and her beautiful long hair was now like tow.

Nobody knows what she told to the sisters about her but they all had an idea.

When at night, after having drained a bottle of cognac, Count Charles went shaky and with a blurred vision towards the room, prey to his animal instincts, and opened the door, what he saw shocked him.

The four sisters sat on the bed, cross-legged, hand in hand, their hair cut with scissors short to their ears and black mustaches drawn on their lips with their mother's makeup pencils.

To the Count it seemed a delirium of alcohol; he started yelling at them, to vanish from his sight, but the four sisters, hand by hand, said to him in a set and low voice:

“Here we are father, we are your four sons. Now you can stop beating mom and hurting our stepsister.”

The Count, after the first moment of anger, began to tremble and retreat towards the corridor, invoking the devil.

The four sisters, in masculine features, advanced towards him, always hand by hand.

“Didn't you want a son, father? Now you have four.”

The newspapers of the time report that the police found the Count's body on the floor of the lower floor, after a fall from the second floor.

His head smashed.

Her mother was also upset and she did not want to see her daughters again; she returned to live in Toulouse where she died of typhus.

The girls were locked up in a mental institution and her mother decided that their every image was destroyed.

Until a few days ago, from which this story begins, when for some mysterious reason these two old photographs came to light.

With their load of pain and madness.

 

May they rest in peace.

 

Italian version