Seed

by Ania Ahlborn

  Charlie was right: Jack was worried. There was the accident and the mangled car—it was enough to worry anyone, especially since it had been their only mode of transportation. But the twisted frame of that Saturn was the least of Jack’s concerns. What was really eating at him was that pair of eyes. They had scared him as a child and they scared him even more now.

  The first time Jack had seen those eyes had been along the outskirts of his parents’ Georgia property. The house was a run-down double-wide trailer and its paint was peeling from decades of humid Southern heat. The siding was rusted over and popping its bolts, hanging from the bottom of the trailer like a silver-lined candy wrapper.

  The property didn’t match the house. It was a great stretch of land; a good two acres narrower than it was long. Those two acres of grassland stretched back for what seemed like an eternity, ending at a wall of trees.

  Beyond those trees and a few hundred paces north, an old cemetery sat surrounded by a rusted iron fence. There were too many headstones for it to have belonged to a single family, yet not enough to have belonged to the small town of Rosewood, Georgia. The day Jack discovered that cemetery, he ran from it in search of his parents, but something kept him from revealing his discovery.

  Gilda and Stephen Winter weren’t prize-winning parents. That run-down double-wide was an accurate representation of the way their household was run: sparingly and with little attention. They had been blessed with those two acres after one of Gilda’s family members had bit the big one, but the shitty trailer was all Gilda and Stephen’s. They’d bought it off an old guy with one foot in the coffin a few months after Gilda got pregnant, and even then that trailer was waiting for the perfect moment to fall apart.

  They hauled that already dilapidated trailer halfway across Georgia and parked it on that inherited land; that was all it took for the Winters to officially become homeowners. A few months later they were homeowners with a kid.

  Growing up, Jack didn’t have much guidance. He ran around in bare feet throughout most of the year, took a bath every few days—Gilda would throw him in the tub when she was no longer able to take the stink—and only brushed his teeth because the TV told him to. He grew up wild; a modern-day Huck Finn. He’d run along the length of that property to the tree line, duck beneath a tangle of branches, and spend afternoons among the dead.

  Despite his youth, Jack knew that spending time alone in a cemetery was weird, but something kept drawing him back. At first it was only once or twice a month, but as time went on he visited with more frequency. Eventually, he was there every single day for hours on end.

  It was there, among the moss-covered headstones and rusted wrought-iron fencing, that he first saw those eyes. Just as the sun dipped beneath the tree line and Jack picked himself up to leave for the night, he saw a pair of glossy black eyes staring at him from behind the trees. Like two onyx-colored marbles, they could have easily belonged to a wolf or raccoon. But there was something off about them. They were soulless, empty, as if pulled from the pit of something twisted and unclean.

  They were the same eyes he’d seen the moment before the Saturn lifted off the road and was thrown through the sky. They were the eyes that had haunted Jack in his youth. Jack knew those eyes, and it terrified him that they had found him again.

  Chapter Two

  Patricia eventually forced herself to accept Jack as her son-in-law, but this accident was too much. Putting her daughter and grandchildren in danger! If Jack Winter thought Patricia Riley was going to turn a blind eye to his blatant recklessness, he had another thing coming.

  “Charlotte is running a fever.”

  Pat made the announcement the moment she stepped into the cramped little house. That house was another thorn in Patricia’s side. She’d raised her daughter in a proper Southern home, and here she was, living in a two-bedroom lean-to stuffed floor to ceiling with what could only be described as ‘the bizarre’. Aimee was a fan of antiques, collecting everything from tarnished mirrors to oversized furniture; Jack was partial to strange artifacts—ancient books and weird family portraits. It made for a peculiar collection of home décor.

  Patricia diverted her gaze from the taxidermied fawn curled atop Jack’s crumbling piano to Nubs, the Winters’ shaggy black and white Border Collie. She wrinkled her nose in distaste as the dog approached her, taking a cautionary step backward in case the flea bag decided to jump all over her new skirt. But Charlotte distracted him when she slunk into the house, dragging a bright yellow Spongebob Squarepants backpack behind her. Nubs’ interest in Patricia was instantly withdrawn, and he trotted behind Charlie like the loyal dog he was.

  “She was complaining about feeling sick earlier,” Aimee said from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a gingham-checked dishtowel. “I figured she was just making it up.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Guess not.”

  “You should get her to bed,” Pat advised, approaching the kitchen counter to inspect her daughter’s in-process cooking.

  Patricia Riley fancied herself a gourmet chef. As far as Jack was concerned, she fancied herself an expert at absolutely everything; especially the art of rearing other people’s children.

  “Give her some Tylenol and run a cool bath if her fever doesn’t break by tonight.”

  “Will do,” Aimee said.

  “And I’d consider keeping Abigail on the couch for the night if I were you,” Pat continued. “Or you’ll have two sick kids instead of one.”

  Aimee peeked into the girls’ room. Charlie was crawling onto her bed with great effort, pulling herself onto the mattress like a slug.

  “Thanks for driving her,” Aimee said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about a car.”

  “Well, I have my bridge club every other day,” Pat said. “You know that. I can drive her every now and again, but I’m no chauffeur. A family can’t survive without a car.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Aimee said. “We’re only a few weeks off of a down payment. We’ll just settle on a cheaper model, get it sooner.”

  “A new car?” Patricia raised an eyebrow. “You could probably buy two used ones for the same amount of money.”

  “Jack has his heart set on a new one. He’s been talking about it for months.”

  “What for?” Pat asked with a smirk. “So he can flip it down a few more roads?”

  Aimee frowned.

  “It was an accident,” she said. She had been hard on Jack herself and the guilt was creeping in. “We were planning on a new car and we’re going to get a new car. There’s no reason for us to change our plans.”

  “Suit yourself,” Pat said with a shrug, as though Aimee’s choices had absolutely no bearing on her own situation. “But you’ll be wishing you listened to me,” she warned. “I’d have expected that by your age you’d have learned that your mother is always right.”

  Aimee bit her tongue as she chopped a stalk of celery.

  “Either way, I’ll check with Daddy to see if he’ll let you borrow the Oldsmobile for a few days. That is, if it’s okay with Jack.”

  That sarcasm bore beneath Aimee’s skin, but she couldn’t say a damn thing about it. They’d need a car. Borrowing her father’s Oldsmobile was the prefect solution, at least for a while.

  “If it’s okay with Daddy,” Aimee said. “We’d appreciate it.”

  “I hope so,” Pat said. “Because you know how much your father loves that car.”

  Aimee nodded.

  “Thanks, Momma,” she said. “And thanks again for taking Charlie today.”

  Pat forced a curt smile and pivoted on the balls of her feet, moving toward the front door.

  “Don’t forget the Tylenol,” she warned. “If you don’t remedy the problem now, you’ll be sorry later.”

  As soon as Pat stepped out of the house, Aimee rolled her eyes with a snort.

  Jack’s job was far from ideal. He spent his days patching up flat-bottomed swamp boats and resoldering metal joints to keep his customers afloa
t. These customers, who came to the shop because they got hammered with the shop owner every other night, ranged from crawfish fishermen to bonafide ‘gator hunters. Jack spent half his day listening to stories about the Big One that got away, about the monster that nearly chomped a finger or two. By the time he came home, the familiar itch of a headache was tickling his brain, and the tension that had settled over the house didn’t do much in the way of letting him unwind.

  Abby sat on the couch, watching television while doing her homework—something she hardly ever got away with. When Jack peeked his head into the girls’ room he found Aimee perched at the foot of Charlie’s bed, looking pensive.

  “One-oh-three,” she said as soon as she saw him in the doorway. “She came home with a fever and she’s up to one hundred and three. I think we need to go to the hospital.”

  “Did you give her a bath?” Jack asked, approaching his shivering daughter. Charlie was bundled beneath a pile of blankets, her teeth chattering in her sleep.

  “Every time I try to move her she starts to cry. If I even touch her she freaks out.”

  Jack took a seat next to Charlie, pressing his palm to her forehead. Aimee was right; if they couldn’t get her fever down they’d have to go to the ER—something they sure as hell couldn’t afford.

  Peeling the blankets away from her coiled-up body, Jack stuck an arm under the girl and hefted her up into his arms. Charlie whined, squirmed, tried to get away, but Jack didn’t give in. He held her tight and walked to the bathroom, Aimee at his heels. Taking a seat on the toilet lid, he ran the bath while Aimee stripped off Charlie’s sweat-soaked clothes.

  A worried Abigail appeared in the doorway with Nubs at her heels.

  “Is she gonna be okay?” she asked.

  When Aimee failed to answer, Jack looked at his eldest and offered her a reassuring smile.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, sweetheart. Charlie just needs to cool down.”

  As if on cue, Jack lowered Charlie into the tub. As soon as the cold water bit her skin, the shock of cold made her buck and thrash. She exhaled a high-pitched scream, clawing at the sides of the tub, desperately trying to escape. Abby slapped her hands over her ears. Nubs let out a frightened yelp and cowered in the hall. Jack held Charlie down while Aimee clasped her hands over her mouth. She looked away, unable to watch her baby thrash and writhe like a frightened animal.

  “Let her go,” she finally demanded. “Let her out, you’re scaring her.”

  But Jack didn’t give. Each passing second rendered Charlie calmer. She eventually breathed out the most pitiful wail he’d had ever heard and gave up, going limp in the bath with a sob.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Aimee whispered after Charlie had drifted back into a fitful sleep, a damp towel pressed to her forehead.

  “Nothing’s wrong with her,” Jack assured. “She’s got the flu or something. She’ll be fine.”

  Aimee nodded, trying to be optimistic, and left the room to heat up Jack’s dinner. Only after she left him alone did he look to his daughter with genuine concern. There was something off about the way she had fought him, something that made him uncomfortable. Had it been Aimee who had held Charlie down, he was sure Charlie would have leapt from that tub and rushed past her like a feral, wild-eyed child. It had been too much fight for a six-year-old.

  “I gave her Tylenol but it isn’t doing a damn thing,” Aimee complained, watching Jack eat his meatloaf and mashed potatoes. “If I hadn’t sent her to school this morning she wouldn’t have gotten so sick. She told me she felt bad.”

  Jack gave Aimee a look.

  “What?”

  “She’s a kid. She’d have gotten sick whether she was here or at school, or anywhere else.”

  “Well I’d rather it have been here,” Aimee said. “At least that way I could have had my eye on her.”

  “You’ll have your eye on her tomorrow. And most likely a day or two after that.”

  “It was probably one of those kids at the pizza place,” Aimee mused. “It’s just like backroad Louisiana hicks to take their sick kid to a place crammed with other kids. I swear to God…”

  Jack grinned. It was one thing he loved about her; Aimee was sweet and put together on the outside, but once you cracked that outer shell she was a pillar of brimstone. Raised a strict Catholic, it seemed that the constant Sunday sermons had infused hellfire into Aimee’s blood.

  “What?” Aimee gave Jack’s smile a suspicious look. “I swear, sometimes I wonder why we even bother living here.”

  “Where else would we live?” he asked. “New York? You want to move to California and get ourselves a condo out on the beach somewhere? Think we’d fit in?”

  “What do you mean ‘fit in’?” Aimee looked genuinely offended. “Is there something wrong with us?”

  “Sure,” Jack said. “We’re Southerners.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means we were born here, we live here, and we die here.”

  Aimee smirked with a shake of her head.

  “I don’t mind the South,” she said. “It’s the dirty South I can’t stand.”

  It was the dirty South that made Jack who he was; Aimee just didn’t know it. She knew hardly anything about his childhood except that he’d grown up in Georgia and made his way to Louisiana after he left home. But she didn’t know when he’d left home—had no idea that he was only a few weeks beyond his fourteenth birthday when he flew the coop, never to see his parents again.

  Exhaling a breath, Aimee slumped in her seat and sighed.

  “I forgot to tell you, Daddy’s going to let us borrow the Olds until we get another car.”

  Jack grimaced. He hated borrowing anything from the Rileys. Aimee’s parents emanated an air of being ‘above’ them; the last thing he needed was old Arnold’s pristinely waxed Oldsmobile parked in the driveway.

  “They’re doing us a favor,” Aimee reminded him.

  “Sure,” Jack muttered. “I’m sure they are.”

  That evening Jack woke to a tug on his t-shirt sleeve. Charlie stood beside the bed, her hair plastered across a sweat-beaded forehead.

  “Daddy,” she whispered hoarsely. “I think there’s someone in my room.”

  The next morning, Abby dragged herself into the kitchen for breakfast. Aimee turned away from the stove, balancing a pancake on top of a spatula, and inspected the girl from across the room.

  “Please tell me you aren’t getting sick like your sister.”

  Abby shook her head no, then slouched in her chair like a ragdoll.

  “What’s wrong then?”

  “Tired,” Abby murmured.

  “Did Charlie keep you up?”

  Abby shook her head again.

  “I think it was an animal,” she said. “There was this scratching on the wall outside. All night.”

  Jack often wondered how Aimee would react to knowing just how much of the dirty South he had in him. The Rileys had been shocked when their daughter had announced she was engaged to a roughneck—a nobody that had come from nowhere, like a ghost that had gotten stuck in the bayou. But the thought that got to him most was how shocked, and perhaps disgusted, his own parents would have been to discover that Jack was marrying into gentility. It was hard to forget just how rough Gilda and Stephen had been when it came to ‘the riches’. Everywhere they went, whether it was the market or the movie theater, Gilda and Steve were scoping out the place, pinpointing the people who looked the most refined, tallying up the most expensive cars in poorly lit parking lots. Jack was too young to know for sure, but he had a suspicion his folks lived off more than government checks. Every now and again his dad would show up with a new leather jacket or a necklace for Gilda, but there was never a mention of how he found such treasures.

  The Rileys were the type to swear by genetics. He was sure that if Patricia and Arnold knew the truth about the family he had left behind, the fact that he had run for his life wouldn’t have made a
damn bit of difference.

  Reagan took a seat next to Jack at the warped picnic table that served as their lunch area a few yards from the boat shop. Jack had known Reagan since he’d found himself in Louisiana, and Reagan didn’t have a much better upbringing. He was gangly: tall, with long limbs that reminded Jack of a spider—if a spider lifted weights in its free time. He was the type of guy who liked to challenge authority by fitting his Charger with an exhaust that woke all of Live Oak when he took a late-night drive. He wore eyeliner and gauged his ears and bought intentionally offensive t-shirts off the internet, which he would then wear to the shop, betting Jack that today was the day he’d get punched in the mouth by a swamper.

  “This Saturday is booked,” Reagan said, drawing a cigarette from its pack. “Should be a good night.”

  Music was another reason the Rileys never took to Jack. Reagan and Jack were the backbone of Lamb. The band had been Reagan’s before Jack was ever part of the picture, but when Reagan discovered that Jack wrote all his own lyrics he threw Jack onto the helm and let him pilot the ship. Reagan’s act of selflessness for the good of the band paid off in strides. Lamb became a hit at a few local bars and clubs, and the boys eventually took to Bourbon where, miraculously, they gained a following that filled the Red Door to capacity every time they played their brooding, bluesy rock-n-roll.

  Jack stared down at his bologna and cheese sandwich. It sat there, boring and humorless on a square of wax paper.

  “Man, I don’t know,” Jack said. “This weekend is really bad timing.”

  “It’s already a done deal.”

  “Yeah, I know. And it’s going to get me into some serious shit.”

  “What’s the problem?” Reagan asked. “You guys having a fight?”

  He shoved the bologna sandwich back into the paper bag it came from. Having two daughters, Jack got sack lunches along with the girls. Aimee hated wasting money, which Jack supposed was partly his fault. When Aimee agreed to marry him, the Rileys decided it would be best for their daughter to get a taste of ‘real life’. Aimee had been expected to go to college and worked on a degree while waiting for an appropriate suitor, preferably a handsome young man working toward a PhD. Someone by the name of Ashley or Leslie or Rhett would have been preferable. As soon as Aimee was tossed from the nest and into Jack’s arms, they quickly realized just how little money they had.