Seed
: Chapter 7

When Jack came home from work, he found Aimee on the couch with a glass of red held between her palms. She could have easily been unwinding from a rough day, but her posture deceived her. She’d spent all day mulling over the happenings of that morning. It had followed her to Mable’s like a ghost, haunting her every thought. Now Aimee had had enough; it was time to stop pretending and talk it out.

“I think there’s something wrong with Charlotte.” The words scared her. The moment they hit the air she felt liberated and terrified all at once.

Jack hadn’t set more than a few steps inside the house when he stopped dead. Dirty from welding, his clothes smelled faintly of iron—a man who had crawled out of the pits of Hell, the scent of brimstone following him home.

“Well?” She peered at her glass as she waited for him to say something.

“Well what?” Jack asked, not sure what she expected. He knew it would come to this; he just hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. Standing in his own living room, he was no longer Jack Winter. He was his own father, watching his mother begin to crack.

“You don’t see it?” Aimee asked. “I don’t believe that. I know you see it.”

Jack’s attention shifted. The house was too quiet.

“They’re at my mother’s,” she said. “You should have seen her this morning. It’s like she’d lost her mind. She refused to get out of bed, so I finally yanked her out and she started screaming about being tired and being touched and how stupid I am.”

Jack took a seat on the edge of his armchair.

“Being touched?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”

He didn’t reply. He kept his eyes fixed to the floor instead.

“She called me stupid, Jack. That’s not my daughter.”

Jack pressed his lips together in a tight line, not sure what to say. In the back of his mind he wanted to ask what the big deal was, wanted to suggest all the ways it could have been worse. She could have grabbed a knife and cut out Aimee’s heart; could have sat in the center of her room, playing in her mother’s blood.

“And it wasn’t just that,” Aimee continued.

Jack blinked out of his daze.

“It was the way she said it.” Aimee tugged at her lip, trying to replace the right words for the look that had slid across Charlie’s face. “There was this weird darkness to it, like she was making some unspoken promise.”

Because she was, Jack thought. She’s getting hungry.

“What about the being touched thing?” Jack asked.

Aimee shook her head and raised a hand as if to dismiss it altogether. “She said it was rats.”

Jack was familiar with the feeling of something crawling across the skin—like a spider or a beetle. He’d lost countless nights of sleep to it as a kid. Every time he dozed off, something would scramble across his arm or slither down his back. His eyes would dart open and he’d slingshot his head around, hoping to catch the shadow that was tormenting him. But try as he might, he never saw a damn thing: nothing but his room bathed in moonlight. He told himself he was crazy, that he was imagining things—but as soon as he’d start to fall asleep he’d feel it again. Whatever was doing it would wait until he was on the brink of sleep, then skitter gently across his skin and force him back to alertness once more.

“I’ll have to check the walls,” Jack murmured to himself. “Maybe there’s a hole in the girls’ room.”

“Jack.” Aimee shot him a look. “There are no rats.”

“How do you know? You were ready to jump on top of the dinner table last night.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, then sighed. “Please, please let’s not fight right now. I can’t take it.”

Jack chewed the inside of his cheek. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer.

“I want to take her to see a doctor,” Aimee confessed.

“A shrink.” It wasn’t a question.

“A psychologist. I think the accident might have done something to her—sent her into some sort of trauma—and now she’s acting out.”

Jack said nothing.

“First she got sick. Maybe the stress compromised her immune system. Then it was the thing at the ice cream place, which I thought was all Abigail…”

And she would have still thought it was Abigail had Jack not told her differently. He was starting to regret ever having said a thing about it. His repentance burned hot; one slip-up was forgivable, but a second wouldn’t be tolerated. That jagged-toothed shadow assured him of that.

“Now there’s this outburst. I feel like she’s veering out of control. What are we going to do if it keeps getting worse?”

We’re going to kill ourselves, he thought.

“Worse how?” Jack asked. “You think she’s going to take a gun to kindergarten?”

The gunshot echoed in his ears. Charlie stood over the body of a classmate, her smile a bright red, misted in blood.

“Are you telling me that you’d let it come to that? You’d rather avoid the problem than address it early? Is that what you’re saying?”

Pressing his fingers hard against his temples, his face hung toward the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make the entire conversation disappear. All he needed to do was convince her everything was fine. There was nothing wrong here. This was all completely normal.

“Jack,” Aimee snapped.

He looked up, met her eyes. “What?” he said with matching force. “You want to take her to a shrink? Fine, we’ll take her to a shrink. If you think it’ll fix the problem, great. Problem fixed. Halle-fuckin-lujah.”

Aimee blinked at his hostility.

“Do you have any other ideas?” she finally asked, determined to keep her composure.

Again, Jack was silent.

“What, you suddenly don’t believe in psychology?”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her head,” Jack murmured.

“Then what is wrong with her?” Aimee asked. “She’s possessed by the Devil?”

It would have been so easy to tell her everything; the discovery of that hidden cemetery at the end of the lot; the set of eyes that stared at him from beyond the trees; the cat strung up for his mother to replace; his own visits to Copeland’s office. He could have told her everything, and instead of being horrified at him she would have been horrified at history repeating itself, at their youngest daughter being the victim of a genetic deformity—a curse. But Aimee didn’t believe in things like that. She was the girl who rolled her eyes whenever a new movie about demonic possession was released, insisting it was all a bunch of crap because religion was just a figment of everyone’s imagination—something someone made to get people to conform.

To a point, Jack agreed. But he also knew that if demons could exist, it meant there was real evil in the world, and if you believed in the Devil, somewhere in the deepest fibers of your being you had to believe in God. He knew the Devil was real; he’d seen it with his own two eyes. But he’d never seen God. He’d never felt God. He’d never been helped by God. For all he knew, wickedness was strong enough to exist in a world without good.

“Jack.” Aimee was tired. She rubbed at her eyes, drained, but still insistent. “If it isn’t her head, what is it?”

“I don’t know.” He heard the words, felt them vibrate in his throat, but the voice didn’t belong to him. That was when he knew he would never tell Aimee about his past, and he would never tell her that she was right about Charlie. He would never tell her because he’d never be allowed.

Jack had been amazed when Abby was born. It was inconceivable to think that some part of him had created something so perfect—a tiny, flawless human being, born into the world with wide eyes and staggering innocence. But it hadn’t taken him long to veer off the course of fascination straight toward a sense of foreboding.

For the first year of Abigail’s life, Jack watched her every gurgle and burp with the intensity of an artist studying his muse, and this study of his baby daughter wasn’t an open affair. Jack came to this disturbing realization of secrecy when, bent over Abby’s crib, searching for signs of malevolence in those big eyes, Aimee stepped into the nursery only to send him reeling back. After almost being caught searching Abby’s face for wickedness, he made his study a private pastime.

By the time Abby turned two, his secret observations started to bore him. Abigail was a happy, silly, giggly little girl who—if there was anything wrong with her whatsoever—was overly good-natured. It was ironic, then, that after spending so much time worrying about Abigail, he hadn’t spent a single minute thinking about whether his second daughter would be ‘normal’ as well.

But that was how the Devil worked, making his appearance when you least expected it.

Sitting outside the Riley house in Arnold’s Oldsmobile, Jack chewed on the pad of his thumb while the engine ran. His stomach was tied in knots and his heart felt like it was somersaulting inside his chest. He’d even stopped to check his own pulse, suddenly worried about dropping dead. The idea of reliving the disintegration of his parents’ marriage through Aimee, reliving his disturbed childhood through the girls, was enough to push the most ridiculous ideas into his head. He considered packing a bag and driving until he hit water, considered forgetting who he was and settling down in the town that ran his gas tank dry; start a new life and forget the old. But he’d already done that once before, and all it afforded him was a history of secrets nobody but a gullible priest would believe.

Aimee, much like his mother, would eventually lose her mind. Abigail would be scapegoated and scarred by the things she’d see and hear. And then there was Charlie—the six-year-old who loved to sing Cheap Trick’s Cherry Pie into a hairbrush, the little girl who loved classic rock and wanted to dress up as Ace Frehley for Halloween. Somehow he had managed to get away from the evil that had tried to consume him as a kid, only to have it take his own child away.

He shuddered.

Eventually replaceing his way up Pat and Arnold’s front steps, he was greeted by Charlie vaulting herself into his arms as soon as he rang the bell. Jack hid his face in Charlie’s hair and squeezed her tight while Pat looked on with silent alarm.

“Daddy,” Charlie squeaked out after a moment. “You’re squishing my guts.” Wriggling out of his grasp, she ran to the Olds, where Abby was already waiting in the back seat.

Patricia stared at Jack for a long while. She had always sensed something ‘off’ with him, and now she felt it more than ever. The hand that held her screen door pulled back. The screen whined on old springs and slapped closed, shuddering against the door jamb.

“Arnold wants his car back,” Pat told him.

Jack searched for an appropriate response, but he wasn’t given much time. Before he could form a reply, Pat cut in.

“Get off my porch, Jack,” she said. “I’d quite appreciate it if you’d keep away.”

Aimee noticed Jack’s baffled expression as soon as he returned home with the girls.

“What?” she asked.

“Your mother just told me to get off her porch,” he said. “She doesn’t want to see me there again.”

“What?” she repeated. “Jack, what did you do?”

“That’s the part you’re going to love,” he said with a smirk. “I rang the doorbell.”

Aimee stared at him.

“She’s your mother,” he said.

Admittedly, he was glad Patricia disliked him as much as she did. He hoped her contempt would distract Aimee from the real issue at hand… and distraction was a precious commodity Jack couldn’t afford to waste.

Unfortunately, Charlie wasn’t going to make it easy. Sitting around the kitchen table, Jack, Aimee, and Abigail quietly ate their dinner while Charlotte sat in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked like a tiny Buddha with her legs crossed, silent in her unexplained fury. Both Jack and Aimee shot each other a glance when Charlie took her position of defiance, but neither asked her what was wrong, deciding instead to eat as much as they could before the inevitable meltdown took place.

Charlie had always been a picky eater. Ever since she was old enough to sit in a high chair, she’d take as much pleasure in hurling food across the kitchen as she did in eating it. The initial search for foods she liked pushed Aimee to the brink of tears nearly every night. Thankfully, her pickiness subsided around age four. That’s when she fell into her everything-like-daddy phase and, during one memorable evening, choked down wads of steamed spinach because Jack was happily enjoying his own serving. This newfound mimicry resulted in Jack becoming a guinea pig. Aimee subjected him to weird foods so that their youngest daughter would grow up big and strong. The experiment had resulted in Charlie liking most of the foods that ended up on her plate, and by the middle of her fifth year she was eating along with everyone else without much complaint.

At least until now.

Charlie finally broke her silence, which she’d impressively kept for nearly ten whole minutes. “I don’t want it.”

After what had happened that morning, Aimee was in no mood to argue. She gave in.

“Okay,” Aimee said. “What do you want?”

“Not this,” Charlie complained, making a face at her plate of pot roast. “This is gross. It looks like poo.”

Jack kept his head down, his eyes flitting between Aimee and Charlotte as the battle commenced.

“That’s enough,” Aimee said, but her tone gave her away. She wasn’t primed to fight; she was tired. Pushing her chair away from the table, Aimee wandered to the fridge and pulled open the freezer door. “Onion rings?” she asked. Onion rings were one of Charlie’s favorites. She’d stack them on her plate like the leaning tower of Pisa.

“No,” Charlie said flatly. “I hate those.”

Aimee rolled her eyes. She’d gone through this I-hate-the-food-I’ve-always-loved thing with Abigail. The last thing she needed was for it to hit Charlie amidst all the other drama.

“What about little pizza pockets?”

Charlie sat mute in her chair.

“Or chicken nuggets. I’ll make you some of those.”

“I don’t like chicken nuggets,” she said under her breath, but Aimee was done listening. She tossed the bag of nuggets onto the counter, then pulled one of Charlie’s plastic Sponge Bob plates out of the overhead cabinet. Charlie’s expression went dark.

“I said I don’t like those,” she said with more force, her eyes fixed on her father.

“Whatever, kid,” Aimee muttered as she tossed frozen chicken pieces onto the plate, crumbs of breading littering the counter.

Charlie narrowed her eyes at Jack. A strange smile played at the corners of her mouth. That’s when she opened her mouth, held it open as wide as she could—waiting for Jack to stop her—before letting out an ear-piercing scream.

Aimee veered around, her hand pressed to her heart. Abigail jumped in her seat and slapped her hands over her ears. Jack just stared at her, transfixed.

“Jack!” Aimee yelled.

The sound of his name was like a mental kick. He suddenly remembered where he was, who he was. As though he hadn’t seen her at all until now, Jack stared at his daughter before pushing away from the table, grabbing her by the biceps, and giving her a quick shake.

Charlie’s mouth snapped shut.

Abigail stared at them both from across the table. Her hands slowly slid away from her ears. She was just about to say something when her mother appeared on her right, retaking her seat and shoving a fitful bite of pot roast into her mouth.

The chicken nuggets were left on the counter, their freezer-burned bodies glistening in the dull kitchen light.

Abigail slid onto the couch next to her dad while Aimee gave Charlotte her nightly bath. Abby had always been a quiet girl. When she was a baby, Aimee was convinced she had a hearing problem, sure that Abby didn’t cry enough, but numerous tests proved otherwise. She was simply a calm and thoughtful child, and she had yet to lose those traits. Sitting next to her father, Abby folded her hands in her lap and focused on the television—a Seinfeld rerun.

“Dad?” She pulled her socked feet onto the couch, catching her heels on the edge of the cushion, her toes hanging over the edge. “Can I ask you something?”

Jack shifted his weight, sitting sideways to get a good look at the little girl sitting beside him. Abby looked worried. Her youthful features had taken on a maturity Jack hadn’t seen before.

“Shoot.” Jack offered her a reassuring smile, but rather than smiling back, she wrapped her arms around her legs and looked down at her knees. Jack furrowed his eyebrows. “Everything okay?”

Abby sat motionless for a moment, then slowly shook her head.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked. Abby pressed her mouth to her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. When the television jumped to a brightly lit commercial, Jack caught the glimmer of tears in Abby’s eyes.

“Hey…” He closed the distance between them, placing an arm around her shoulders. As soon as he touched her, her bottom lip began to quiver. “Abby, what’s going on?” he asked quietly. Again, Abby shook her head.

“Charlie,” she whispered, and that was all she said.

Jack sighed, holding her close against his side. He knew it would eventually come to this—Abigail buckling under her younger sister’s dramatics. After the ice cream incident, it was just a matter of time.

“Charlie’s just confused right now,” Jack murmured.

“Confused about what?” She wiped at her eyes.

It was a good question—one that didn’t have an answer, because Charlie wasn’t confused at all. It had nothing to do with what Charlotte did and didn’t understand.“Oh, you know; just growing up in general,” he said.

“Was I confused?” Abby asked after a moment.

Jack inhaled a deep breath. It was one thing to mislead Aimee, but lying to a ten-year-old… Aimee had a lifetime of beliefs behind her; she had enough time to form opinions and decide what she did and didn’t believe in. Despite growing up with a strict religious background, she held her religious independence in front of her like a shield. The girls never had that opportunity. Abigail had set foot in a church a handful of times in her life, and Charlie had sat in a pew all of once. It seemed that those who spent lifetimes sitting in front of pulpits would be the first to believe in things like demons, but in Jack’s experience it was the opposite. The devout refused to acknowledge the possibility that their God would allow such wickedness to exist, let alone to get so close to those they loved. The non-believers were the ones who were more easily swayed. Because if you don’t hold your faith in God, what is there to keep the Devil at bay?

“No,” Jack finally said. “You weren’t confused. But Charlie is.”

Abby chewed on her bottom lip. She stiffened at the sound of bathwater draining out of the tub. Charlie and Aimee would be out of the bathroom soon. Turning to her father, she looked him in the eyes with a desperate expression.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked. “I saw you during dinner, right before she screamed.”

Jack frowned, ready to deny whatever Abby was getting at, but the idea of someone else knowing, someone else suspecting what Jack knew for certain, was as alluring as a penny sparkling in the dirt.

“Saw what?” he asked almost inaudibly, not wanting Aimee to overhear.

“The darkness,” Abby whispered. “The way she smiles.”

He hesitated, afraid to admit it, afraid that as soon as he said yes their lives would collapse.

“Dad?” Abby’s eyes shimmered. “I’m not crazy, right?”

Jack finally shook his head and pressed his lips to Abby’s forehead. “No,” he whispered. “You’re not crazy.”

“Can you maybe ask Mom if I can move into the basement?”

“The basement.” Jack leaned away to get a look at her. “You don’t want to have your room down there, kiddo.” The basement was damp and smelled like a freshly dug grave. Both girls had been afraid of it for as long as he could remember. But Abby was nodding her head vigorously.

“I do,” she insisted. “Please? I won’t be scared, I swear.” Her expression gave her away. She was terrified. Anything was better than sleeping in a room with someone who held darkness in their eyes.

Jack winced at the idea. Aimee would never go for it. But the anxiety in Abigail’s eyes was enough to break his heart. She was on the verge of panicked tears. Her fingers clutched the hem of his shirt, hanging on for dear life, hanging on to her teetering sanity.

“I’ll talk to your mom,” he finally told her. “You need to give me a little time, though.”

Abby nodded again and threw her arms around him.

“I knew you’d understand,” she whispered, then slid off the couch and disappeared down the hall.

Jack couldn’t help but to wonder, why had Abby been so sure that he would understand? Why not her mother instead? Had she seen the darkness in his eyes as well?