Sacrificing Virgins

by John Everson

  “Wake up,” I begged again, and stared at her tiny frame, so still and frail there on the bed. She wore her finest dress, a yellow chiffon summery thing that my wife Annabel had picked. “It brings out her eyes,” she’d said.

  If only I could see those eyes now. It seemed like forever since they’d gazed up at me, so wide and blue, and turned my scolds to dust. She had one of those faces, one of those looks, that melted any offense. She was going to bring a lot of men to their knees someday, I knew.

  “Jack, come to bed,” a voice spoke behind me.

  I turned and Anna was there in the doorframe, her eyes red and swollen, her fist stifling a yawn.

  “She sighed,” I explained.

  “She didn’t.” Anna’s voice sounded brittle as spun glass.

  “She did, I heard her. She’ll wake soon, I know it.”

  Anna cried, a low stifled moan, and I went to her. This was a pain we shared, a fear we couldn’t live with. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer, though I felt the same empty pit in my soul. I pulled her close, cushioning her head to my shoulder.

  “Believe, Anna,” I whispered through the tangled web of her raven hair, so like her daughter’s.

  She pushed away.

  “Believe?” she hissed, shoving again at my shoulders. I retreated toward the bed but she kept coming.

  “Believe in what?” she yelled. “Our daughter is not going to wake up again, why can’t you understand that?”

  She stomped to the bed and grabbed Camille’s dress with both hands. The sound of ripping fabric filled the room and Anna turned to me with the shredded lemon chiffon still gripped in her hands.

  “Look at her,” she cried, pointing at my eight-year-old daughter’s undeveloped chest. The porcelain-white skin was hideously broken by accusing blushes of purple and midnight blue. Black, oozing stitches held my daughter’s chest together from the ruin that the fender of an ’87 Ford had made of it. My daughter would never grow up to wow the boys with her bosom. She would never have one.

  “Cammy is dead, Jack,” Anna wailed. “When are you going to accept it? When are you going to take her back to the cemetery, where she belongs?”

  Her voice had risen to a dangerous boiling-tea pitch.

  “I can’t stand to see her anymore,” she cried, laying her face on the ugly dark crosshatching of Camille’s chest. “I can’t stand to see you like this anymore.”

  “Anna,” I began. She shrugged off my hand and rushed from the room.

  I turned back to Camille, and tried to draw the shreds of her dress back to a seemly covering.

  “Wake up, baby,” I said for the thousandth time. I thought I saw her eyelids crease, just slightly and I leaned forward, anxious.

  Her eyes opened.

  Maybe it was the press of Anna’s touch, or her tears or the violence of her actions. Maybe the voodoo sachet I’d hocked my second car to obtain had just taken its time. But for the first time in days, my baby’s beautiful crystal-blue eyes stared up out of that tiny angel face and into mine. Only they seemed dulled, lacking that ocean-deep warmth I remembered.

  “Cammy?” I said, bending to hug her.

  She clubbed me in the side of the head with her fist.

  “Huh?” I gulped and fell to the floor, more out of surprise than hurt.

  Camille sat up in her bed, and looked down at me on the floor. Her expression remained blank.

  “Honey?” I said, rubbing my ear. I could feel the heat of swelling as a flood of blood rushed through my earlobe. It felt like a bee sting.

  Camille lifted a foot over the edge of the mattress, and then stood, walking slowly, stiffly past me to her dresser. She stood there staring at the mirror and didn’t move. I thought she was looking at her face, but then as I eased off the floor, I saw that her finger was tracing the long jagged paths stitched into her chest. Her skin shone with the glossy smear of something liquid, something leaking, where her finger had passed.

  “It will all be okay now,” I said. She leaned in toward the mirror, and then turned. A split second later I realized that it might not all be okay.

  I barely saw her arm in the air before her pet rock caught me right between the eyes with the force of a major league fastball.

  When my vision cleared, she was gone. My head was aching, but my heart felt worse. Something had gone horribly wrong. My beautiful daughter, the little flower who meant more to me than life, would never have hurt a fly, let alone her daddy. But her first two actions upon waking from a sleep deeper than death were to try to hurt me.

  Bad.

  I gingerly probed the thick bump on my forehead.

  Was my daughter dangerous?

  Was my daughter alive?

  A ragged blade of ice serrated my brain when I turned my head, but gritting my teeth, I grabbed hold of the mattress and pushed myself to my feet. Gingerly, ignoring the pain, I padded out of the room. I had to find Camille. Before she hurt herself.

  Or someone else.

  I pushed open the door to our bedroom, and saw the pale moon of Anna’s cheek setting into the pillow. One hand grasped at my untenanted pillow, and her chest moved slowly, rhythmically. She was already asleep.

  I pulled the door shut and took the stairs down to the front room, praying Cammy was still in the house.

  And afraid to find her if she was.

  The great room was all shadows and floating fear, and I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other to cross it. I had to get to the light switch, but what if my newly resurrected daughter came at me when I couldn’t see her?

  With each step, I paused to listen, but my heart’s insistent pounding drowned out any ambient noise. The house seemed silent. I found the wall near the front door and slid my hand along the frame, looking for the switch plate. I could feel the draught of cold seeping in from outside through the seam in the doorframe, but it wasn’t as cold as the ice in my belly. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I pushed my hand fast up the wall, at last connecting with the switch.

  The light on the end table near our couch blazed on, blinding me for a moment. I turned and pressed my back to the door, ready for whatever might come at me.

  But nothing did.

  The room was empty, still. The morning newspaper still lay open on the center cushion of the couch, and the TV remote hung halfway off the coffee table, where I’d left it hours before.

  Then I saw her.

  Camille stood, unmoving, in the arch leading to the kitchen. Her eyes stared straight at me, yet she seemed unaware of anything. There was no recognition in her gaze. No life in her smile. She seemed like a living doll.

  There was, however, a long silver carving knife in her hand. It was the knife I used to carve Thanksgiving turkeys, and it looked ludicrously large in her grip, its point just barely above the carpet as she held the shaft in her tiny hand. I knew exactly who and what it was meant for.

  “Cammy,” I said, trying without success to level the tremor in my voice. I had to be calm. She was just a child. My child. “Baby, what’s the matter? Everything’s okay now, you’re with Mommy and Daddy again. I brought you back because I loved you.”

  She began to walk toward me then, placing one delicately sculpted foot in front of the other, her ghastly white toes glowing in contrast to the taupe of the carpet. She said nothing.

  “Cammy,” I tried again, trying to think of what would entice her. “Let Daddy…get you a nice bowl of ice cream. Does your tummy hurt?”

  Her feet sped up and she was across the room, raising her arm with the clear intent to pin me with her blade to the door.

  “Baby, stop,” I begged, but she didn’t.

  As the knife flashed into motion, I acted, sliding down the door and throwing my body to the right. The knife clacked against the wood behind me. When I hit the floor in front of the end table, I rolled
away, coming up in a crouch, ready to move again. She was already upon me, raising the knife for the kill.

  “Cammy, no,” I cried, and instead of rolling away from her, I launched myself into her, tackling her at the knees at the same time as I brought my palm up to grasp her thin forearm. She fell backwards with the unexpected slam of my weight, and the floor reverberated with the smack of her skull on the carpet. She didn’t move.

  I almost let go of her arm to cradle her head, parental concern overriding self-preservation, but Cammy didn’t miss a trick. Her stillness had been a feint. The knife began to slice towards my throat as I hesitated, and I pushed away from her just in time. Something warm was suddenly dripping down my chest, but I didn’t pause to look. She was already on her feet again, free, and coming towards me.

  “Stop,” I cried, putting the coffee table between us, and desperately looking for something I could use to hold her back, without hurting her.

  She held no similar concern. Face blank of any emotion, my little baby walked around the coffee table, knife raised high, ready to slice without remorse into her daddy.

  I grabbed one of the couch cushions and thrust it out at her just as she struck.

  “No,” I yelled, and pushed the cushion—and Cammy—backwards until her feet tangled and she fell again. This time, her back slapped on the decorative oaken strip of the couch front and I heard something crack.

  Then she was lying still again on the floor, eyes open, and still empty. This time, she stayed down.

  The hall light flicked on and Anna appeared on the steps, one fist shoved into her teeth, stifling a yawn.

  “What’s going on down here?” she demanded, hand and yawn serving muffle her words.

  I looked down at our baby lying on the floor, the knife lying just inches from her hand.

  “It’s Cammy,” I said, still fighting for breath. “She’s alive again.”

  Anna said nothing, but continued down the stairs until she was standing just a couple feet away. Her cheeks glistened in the dull orange light.

  “She’s dead, Jack.”

  “No, honey,” I argued. “After you left, she woke up, and she punched me and then she ran away, so I came down here to find her and…”

  “Stop!” Anna screamed. “Our daughter is fucking dead, Jack. She’s dead, dead, dead. I don’t know what you’re doing down here with her body; I don’t want to know. I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand you. Put her back upstairs. And tomorrow, you’re taking her back to the cemetery. And I don’t want to hear any more about your voodoo black magic bullshit. This is too much.”

  My wife ran up the stairs then, leaving me standing there, staring at the unmoving form that once was my baby, on the carpet.

  “Cammy,” I whispered, kneeling down next to her. But she didn’t answer. The hair stood up on the back of my neck as cautiously, I touched her cheek, and felt the side of her neck. She was cold to my fingers. There was no pulse. After a moment, I traced the soft skin of her eyelids, and then pushed them closed. Slipping my hands beneath her neck and knees, I lifted my baby from the floor, and carried her back to her room.

  She didn’t move as we walked up the stairs, and didn’t blink as I laid her once again upon her bed. There was nothing to show that, just minutes before, she’d been trying to stab my life from me.

  I closed the bedroom door behind me, but didn’t turn out the light. As I crawled into a bed gently shaking with the slowing sobs of my wife, I was trembling. I lay there for hours, listening to the subtle shifts and creaks as the house settled. I was waiting. I was anticipating the tiny footsteps in the hallway, ready for the slow creak of our bedroom door as it opened, revealing the form of my killer baby with the empty eyes and silver sharp blade.

  It was a very long time before I fell asleep.

  The sunlight hurt my eyes when I opened them. I blinked out a tear and reached out for Anna, but she wasn’t there. The sheets were rumpled with the absence of her weight. The clock gleamed 8:14 in electric blue LED.

  I pulled on my sweatpants and shambled into the hallway, hearing the sounds of breakfast echoing from the kitchen.

  “Anna,” I called, and my wife answered with more cheer than I’d heard from her in a week.

  “Down here, hon,” she said.

  The air was alert with the smell of burning butter, and pancakes. I winced. Cammy’s favorite food.

  And when I stepped into the kitchen, I saw why.

  Cammy was seated at the table, in her usual place. Anna looked up from the griddle and smiled. She finished flipping a cake and then met me at the doorway, kissing my cheek with a flutter.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you, honey,” she said. “I don’t know how, I don’t wanna know how, but she’s back. Oh Jack, it’s a miracle!”

  I looked over to the table, and saw the same blank stare from my daughter that had haunted me the night before.

  Or was it blank?

  Was there just a hint of knowing there? A thinly veiled glint of malevolence?

  “Anna, we have to talk,” I said, reaching for her arm to pull her out of the kitchen.

  But she slipped away with a giggle.

  “Sit,” she said. “Breakfast is served.”

  Reluctantly, I took my place at the table, and Anna came right behind me, a plate of steaming pancakes in her hand. She stabbed three with a fork and slid them to Camille’s plate, and then did the same for her own before handing the rest of the platter to me.

  “How are you feeling this morning, sweetheart?” I ventured.

  Cammy didn’t answer. Instead, she picked up the butter knife and held it poised, just over the top of her golden-brown cakes.

  “No, baby, let me,” Anna said, and pried the knife from her hand to cut the cakes up with deft precision.

  As she did so, Camille slowly raised her head and met my eye. Her lips parted, just slightly, and it seemed that she gave the faintest hint of a grin. Then it was gone.

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  When Anna went to work on her own plate, our daughter sat still, unmoving.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” I ventured.

  Anna reached out to stroke Camille’s hair.

  “She’s still in shock, I think,” she said. “She probably just isn’t hungry.”

  “Not very talkative, either,” I said.

  Anna set her fork down with slow deliberation. When she looked at me, I could see the tears threatening in her eyes.

  “Leave her alone,” she hissed. “What did you expect from her? This is going to take time.”

  Then Anna forced a smile and ruffled Camille’s hair again. “Try to eat something, sweetheart.”

  Camille didn’t look at her plate. Her eyes remained pinned on mine. But slowly, her right hand lifted a fork, and stabbed a square of pancake sopping with maple syrup. She raised it to her mouth, pushed it between her lips, and swallowed. She repeated the act a second, and a third time, pushing the pancakes past her lips and gulping them down.

  I never saw her chew.

  After breakfast, I pulled Anna aside at the sink. Camille remained at the table, staring unmoving at the wall behind where I’d been sitting.

  “Something didn’t go right,” I whispered in her ear. “Maybe it took too long to raise her, I don’t know.”

  Anna grabbed the front of my jacket. “She was dead, Jack, what did you expect?”

  “Just be careful today,” I said. “When she woke up last night, she gave me this.” I pointed to the bruise already well-formed on my forehead. “And then, before you came downstairs, she came after me with a knife.”

  Anna shot me a disgusted glance and shook her head sadly.

  “I don’t blame her. Go to work, Jack.”

  Not knowing quite what else to do, I did.

  Over the next few days, Anna continued
to work with Camille, coaxing her to eat, to dress, to talk. But while the child remained pliable, she also remained wooden. She only seemed to move when pushed to do so, and the light I remembered so well in her beautiful blue eyes remained dull.

  She stared straight ahead at all times, unblinking.

  I found myself avoiding her, sitting in the kitchen when she was on the couch, and vice versa.

  “Go play with her,” Anna insisted one night as I read the paper at the kitchen table. “You did this. You’re the one who wanted her back. And you’ve done nothing but avoid her ever since she woke up.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. So I nodded, and went to sit in the front room. I put my arm around the bony shoulders of my dead daughter, and stared for a while at the TV with her. It might have helped if the set had been turned on.

  We sat silent that way, her and I, for a long time, as Anna clattered about in the kitchen, cleaning up the remnants of dinner. She sounded abnormally loud, every drawer slamming hard, and every dish clattering on the counter. Then came a crash, glass breaking in the sink, and I heard Anna swear. The catch in her voice sounded dangerously close to hysteria.

  “Are you okay?” I called out. “What broke?”

  “Just a glass,” she answered.

  That’s when I realized that Camille had turned her head. She was staring at me.

  Just staring at the hairs on my neck, with the dogged, unwavering attention of a mounted deer head.

  It was creepy. Goose bumps broke out on my arm, and I realized again how cool and clammy her neck felt against my skin. Cold as riverbed stone.

  I pulled back my arm and stood up.

  “I’m going to see how your mom’s doing,” I announced, and left her frozen grin behind.

  “How are you?” I asked Anna later on, as she settled into bed beside me.