Seed

by Ania Ahlborn

  “Oh God,” she cried into the dirty cotton of his work shirt. “This cannot be happening. This isn’t our family.”

  Inside his head, that little voice agreed with her sentiment.

  “This was never your family,” it whispered. “It’s always been mine.”

  Jack took the rest of the day off. He put Aimee to bed, made a cup of coffee, and tossed the outdated phone directory onto the kitchen table. It was his mission to find the shoddiest psychiatrist in all of Louisiana while waiting for the girls to come home from school. If Aimee wanted to believe that Charlie was schizophrenic, he’d arrange it.

  He called number after number, explaining that the doctor he was seeing—a random name out of the book—seemed a bit odd, perhaps even questionable. Most receptionists didn’t bite and kindly offered to schedule an appointment, but there were a few who took the bait. After a few hours, it was Dr. J. H. Markin who fit the bill.

  “I’m surprised he’s still practicing,” the girl on the end of the line explained. “It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone out of business.”

  Perfect, he thought. He wanted a shrink who’d give any diagnosis if only to keep his patient coming back—an honest-to-goodness snake oil salesman.

  Jack placed a call to the office of Dr. Markin and scheduled an appointment. Taking Charlie to a half-assed doctor would buy some time—although he still wasn’t exactly sure what he’d do with it when he had it. But it wasn’t for him to understand. He had mechanically flipped through page after page, dialing number after number, as if under someone else’s power. These weren’t his decisions, and the longer it all went on, the less he seemed to care.

  When the girls came home, Jack sat them down in front of bowls of mac and cheese, and after Abigail disappeared into her room to do her homework, Jack looked at Charlie from across the kitchen table and smirked.

  “So you’re still here,” he said.

  Charlie blinked at him, her little hand wrapped around the handle of the spoon jutting out of her mouth.

  “I guess I should have known better,” he murmured. “I always thought it was strange that I managed to outrun you. Now I know I was wrong to think I had.”

  Charlie’s eyes darkened, but she continued to eat. Her gaze never left her father’s face, fixed on him as intently as a dog ready to attack.

  “So what do you want?” Jack asked. “What did you want? Or was I just the kid who sat in the wrong cemetery at the wrong time?”

  A corner of Charlie’s mouth curled upward. Her eyes glinted with acknowledgement. Jack wasn’t the only one who remembered that graveyard tucked away among the trees. That twinkle assured him of that.

  “I’d say ‘take me instead’, but if that was an option you would have done it by now.”

  Charlie giggled. She stared at Jack from across the table, her eyes wide and blank. Without warning, her chair jerked backward, the legs screaming across the kitchen floor. It tipped rearward, then to the side, balancing on one leg. Jack sucked in a sudden breath, but he didn’t move. Despite the chair’s unnatural angle, Charlie was glued in place, still giggling, her eyes as big as twin moons.

  Jack regained his hold on reality. His mind unfroze, his throat reopened. Now he grasped at words he hoped would stop all of this. “You can do what you want with me, but leave my family out of this,” he said.

  Charlie’s jagged smile turned into an exaggerated frown. That chair slammed on to its four legs and shot forward with such force that, had it not stopped at just the right time, her ribs would have been crushed against the edge of the table. But it did stop, and that dark expression turned inhuman as she whispered across the table.

  “I’ll do what I want with you,” she hissed. “And I’ll take your family for good measure.”

  Just as abruptly as it had come, that expression faded from her face. She went back to eating her mac and cheese, seemingly oblivious to what had just occurred.

  Dr. Copeland made Jack look at stacks of ink blot cards and asked him what he saw. In one, Jack saw a unicorn. In another, there was a bird. And as the cards became more intricate and complex, the more wickedness Jack seemed to see. The bird turned into a bat, the unicorn into a devil. As the cards continued to be laid out, Jack decided that if this was going to end, he would have to be the one to end it. Jack leaned away from Copeland’s desk, took a deep breath, and outed himself in a desperate attempt at redemption.

  “Dr. Copeland?” Jack began. “I haven’t told you all there is to tell, sir.”

  Despite his backwoods upbringing, Gilda and Stephen had raised a polite boy. Something about manners made the Winters feel more sophisticated; more like they belonged on planet Earth.

  Copeland leaned back in his creaky chair and nodded at him in silent encouragement. He folded his arms across his globe-like stomach.

  “There’s something living in my room,” Jack told him. “It’s what made me kill that cat.”

  Copeland’s expression was pensive. He reached for his pad and pen. To Jack’s dismay, the doctor didn’t seem the least bit impressed with this revelation—a revelation that, in his eyes, should have answered all of the doctor’s questions. Rather than watch Copeland’s eyebrows shoot up in intrigue, the doc peered at his notepad with a vague look of concern before scribbling something down.

  “What is this something?” Copeland asked. “Is it a person? An animal?”

  “It’s a shadow,” Jack said. “It sits in the corner of my room, you know, like one of those stone monsters on top of big city scrapers.”

  “A gargoyle,” Copeland said. “And how often do you see it?”

  “Every night.”

  Copeland tapped his pen against his notepad.

  “Sometimes it crawls up on the ceiling,” Jack murmured toward his hands. It was an afterthought. Jack knew that if the shadow figure hadn’t impressed Copeland by then, its movements would hardly interest him; but Copeland seemed to straighten in his chair, and a moment later he posed a question that caught Jack off-guard.

  “Jack, does your family live close to a road?”

  They did. They lived right on a road, but it was just about as rural as a road could get. Their closest neighbor was a good half mile away, and neither Stephen nor Gilda had ever been all that neighborly. Stephen always said that the more neighbors you knew, the more people would come around asking you to do things you had no desire to do, like moving furniture or painting kitchens or lending sugar that they’d swear they were ‘just borrowing’ like they were actually going to return it someday. They lived along a road, but they may as well have lived a million miles from it.

  “Yes sir,” Jack said.

  “And this shadow, you say you only see it at night?”

  He gave the doctor a slight nod. It felt as though he was on one of those court shows, the lawyer asking a million questions to trick the person into saying something they didn’t mean to say. Jack glared at his hands. He didn’t like being corralled.

  “Does the shadow stay in the same corner night after night?” Copeland asked, but Jack had shut down. He had decided to tell Copeland the truth, but instead of being taken seriously he was being interrogated. Doctor Copeland already had a tidy explanation for everything.

  “Jack, have you ever seen headlights travel across the inside of your room at night?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  “Do you think that maybe what you’re seeing are those headlights dancing across your walls?”

  Jack frowned. He looked up at Doctor Copeland with a surprising glint of anger in his eyes, a spark that assured the doc the kid thought he was telling the godawful truth.

  “It isn’t headlights,” he said. “Nobody drives up and down that road hardly ever.”

  “Well, you and your family drive on it every day,” Copeland reminded him. “Don’t you think there may be other families that live along that road like you do?”

  Jack looked back to his hands. He had put himself out there, he had told the truth—and all i
t had done was make him look stupid.

  “I’m not crazy,” he whispered, sure that the doctor could hear. He waited for Copeland’s obligatory reply, but the doctor didn’t say anything. Jack’s adolescent denial was left to hang heavy in the air until their session was over.

  The next morning, three of the four Winters found themselves sitting in Dr. Markin’s waiting room. Aimee had screwed her face up in distaste the moment they had stepped inside. The place was like a bad 70s movie, complete with shag carpeting and outdated wood paneling nailed to the walls. It smelled stale, and Jack was sure that twenty-five years ago this was probably some sad insurance office where a guy in a cheap suit puffed away on Marlboro after Marlboro.

  “Where did you find this place?” Aimee murmured out the side of her mouth. Before Jack could blame it on the phone directory, Dr. Markin surfaced from behind a door and Aimee forced a smile.

  They were escorted into Markin’s office—an office that lacked nothing but a velvet Elvis. Markin surveyed their little family like a hawk deciding which mouse to eat first.

  “Well, first things first, I’m Doctor Markin,” he said to Charlie, “and I’m here to help you figure out what’s going on in that little head of yours.”

  Jack grimaced. Not only was the office tacky, the guy was also a pandering prick. But in a way it was perfect—the experience would leave a bad taste in Aimee’s mouth.

  “I’m Aimee,” Aimee said. “This is my husband Jack, and our daughter Charlie.”

  Doc Markin nodded once, committing the names to memory, then motioned toward Charlie the way someone would motion to a used car. “So,” he said, “what seems to be the problem?”

  Jack’s stomach turned and he couldn’t help but smirk. He’d set up this bum appointment to turn Aimee off, but it seemed like his move was about to set him off instead.

  “Charlie’s been acting out a bit lately,” Aimee explained in her most tender tone, pushing Charlotte’s hair out of her eyes as she spoke. “We were all involved in an accident—”

  “What kind of accident?” Markin cut in.

  “A car accident… it was a little over a week ago. The car rolled. We were all fine, but ever since then, Charlie hasn’t been herself.”

  “Probably just stress,” he said. Aimee tensed visibly. The last time a doctor had told her there was nothing wrong with Charlotte, she’d gone off.

  “Well, that’s what we thought at first too,” she countered. “But it seems to be getting worse.”

  Markin honed in on Charlie with his beady eyes. Jack marveled at how much the guy looked like an evil villain with his sharp features and thin lips: the total opposite of Copeland, with his doughy face and puckered smile. Now he understood what the girl meant when she said it was a wonder Markin still practiced. Who in their right mind would spill their guts to a spindly little snake like this?

  “You want to tell me what’s been going on, princess?” Markin asked Charlie. No dice: Charlie was smarter than that. She immediately pulled into herself and turned away from him, hiding her face in Jack’s side. Markin let out a little laugh and walked around his desk, plopping into his chair. Aimee spun her wedding ring around her finger and watched Charlie. Her face and mind were conflicted: half wanting a diagnosis and half wanting to get the hell out of there.

  “Doctor Markin,” Jack said after a moment—Aimee nearly jumped at the volume of Jack’s calm, confident voice. “I think we just need to be straight with you so you can give us your professional opinion.”

  “Certainly,” Markin said, squaring his shoulders and folding his arms across his desk.

  “We’re concerned that Charlie may be suffering from some sort of psychological condition, something that may have been triggered by our car accident.”

  Markin nodded. “That’s understandable,” he said. “Given the fact that the child has been displaying behavior that doesn’t match her personality.”

  Jack nearly rolled his eyes at Markin’s fancy footwork. His father had been the one to say it, and Jack was starting to believe it: head doctors are charlatans. You pay them to use fancy words and tell you what you already know.

  “Aimee is worried that it may be schizophrenia.”

  Aimee blinked at his directness, nearly shot him a glare at the suddenness of his confession. Markin, on the other hand, was intrigued, but not overly concerned.

  “Mrs. Winter,” he began, “you do understand that childhood-onset schizophrenia is extremely rare, correct?”

  “I know it’s rare,” Aimee said, “but just because it’s rare doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

  “Well that’s certainly true, but has Charlie exhibited signs that she’s been hearing voices?”

  Jack looked at Aimee.

  “Or have there been hallucinations? Imaginary friends she can’t stop talking about that seem to be real to her rather than just in her head?”

  Aimee furrowed her eyebrows in distress. There had been none of those things—at least, not that Charlie had confessed to.

  “No,” she said softly, the defeat in her voice sounding a lot like shame. “No, I suppose not.”

  “The first thing we look for,” Markin explained, his attention now on Jack, “is the inability to separate fantasy from reality. That’s our big red flag. Now, that’s not to say that Charlie doesn’t have a problem.”

  There was the jackpot—the announcement that Jack had come for: Charlie probably wasn’t schizophrenic, but maybe she was. Business was business, and everyone was a little crazy.

  “I’d like to run a series of tests, check for things as pedestrian as attention deficit disorder-”

  “No,” Aimee said. “That’s quite alright.” She leaned down and put her purse in her lap, ready to leave. “But thank you for seeing us.” She stood, extending a hand to that sharp-featured man.

  “Any time,” Markin said with a tight smile. Jack swept the moody Charlie up in his arms, a perfect excuse to not extend his own hand in thanks. Just as they were about to make their exit, Markin stopped them with a final question.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Winter, I didn’t ask, but there would be a history of mental illness in the family, would there?”

  Jack and Aimee looked at one another, and Jack was the one to glance back to Markin.

  “No,” he said. “There isn’t.”

  Just another lie to add to the rest.

  Jack knew demons before he ever saw the eyes in the cemetery. He had woken to the sound of his mother screaming in her bedroom more than a few times, and when his own demon slithered out of the shadows and wrapped itself around him, he knew fully well there was something wrong with his mom.

  Gilda had her share of problems in life. She’d grown up on little more than bologna and cheese while her mother drank herself into a stupor and her daddy disappeared for days at a time. By the time Gilda entered high school, she had an impressive list of issues: depression, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts. She had tried to kill herself twice by the age of seventeen. Some said that getting pregnant was the only thing that saved her. Gilda surprised herself when, as soon as she knew she was with child, she put the bottle aside and focused on the fact that her life was about to change. And change it did.

  Once Jack was born, Gilda’s depression didn’t lift; it got worse instead. The older Jack got, the more resentful she became. Prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants and anxiety meds, she’d often forget to take her pills, and she’d slip into a bout of hysterics that echoed for what Jack imagined to be miles.

  Jack hadn’t been old enough to understand exactly what was wrong with his mom. All he knew was what his father told him, and all Stephen told him was that “Momma had a nightmare,” whenever she woke up screaming. When Jack reached an age where he could better understand the workings of the human mind, Gilda’s condition had been medicated away; that is, until Jack saw those soulless eyes.

  It wasn’t surprising that the sudden change in her son had made Gilda feel as though she’d passed on some
genetic dysfunction. Stephen couldn’t help but to agree with the assumption—that their child’s behavior was probably the same thing that threw Gilda into nightly fits. But after the tests were done and numerous doctors had been sought for second and third and fourth opinions, the general consensus was that there was nothing wrong with Jack Winter—at least not mentally, as far as they could see.

  For a while, Gilda insisted they were wrong, that they were all missing something that she could plainly see. It was obvious, after all, that there was certainly something wrong with her son. Normal children didn’t hang cats by lengths of fishing line from the branches of a family tree.

  And there were other signs as well. Jack stopped sleeping. It wasn’t that he slept for short periods of time, but he simply didn’t sleep. Whenever Gilda would stick her head into Jack’s room to check on her son, she’d catch him staring up at the ceiling, wide eyed and unblinking. Then there was his zoning out. Jack, who was typically a bright and alert child, kept staring into random corners of the room without so much as moving a muscle. Gilda and Stephen were able to hold full volume conversations around him, and yet Jack seemed unaware that anyone was next to him, let alone trying to get his attention.

  It was the fits of rage that did Gilda in. Out of nowhere, Jack would go on tirades that included broken dishes and slammed doors, sometimes so hard they threatened to pop off their hinges. She insisted it wasn’t a phase, that she knew better, that she could tell this was something far more serious than a growing pain. When she started frequenting church more often than not, Jack knew she was starting to suspect. But she never asked, and Jack never told. Stephen would never have believed it if either of them had brought it up anyway.

  Aimee was furious, and when she was furious she refused to talk. Silent as a deaf mute all the way back to the house, her hands were balled into fists on her lap, and while she let her rage boil without a word, Jack allowed his own shame to ferment in the pit of his stomach.