Seed

by Ania Ahlborn

He paused only when he came to realize what stood between him and the trees, between him and those eyes: a single grave marker—one that had taken the bulk of Jack’s abuse. He’d gone so far as to etch his name onto the weatherworn stone, nothing more than a thoughtless act of childhood vandalism. Jack stood paralyzed in front of his own grave.

“We’re Southerners.” “And what’s that supposed to mean?” “It means we were born here, we live here, and we die here.”

Arnold wasn’t anal; his father-in-law just had a constipated disposition.

It was the moment he had feared, the moment when Aimee started to realize that something wasn’t normal. That something was terribly wrong. And the more he thought about it, the more that dread twisted his insides.

At what point do parents back away from something they love more than their own lives, put up their hands, and admit defeat?

After all that effort, he wasn’t sure why he’d snuck out in the first place—something had pulled him out of that bedroom, beckoning him into the stillness of the house.

He had seen that very figure perched at the foot of his bed when he was a kid—black skin, scaly like a lizard’s, small black horns poking out of its head. Its face, so eerily human, but yet so unearthly that it had certainly come from the very pits of hell itself. When it smiled, its crooked mouth curled all the way up to its eyes, displaying a maw full of long, jagged cannibal teeth. And those eyes—they were nothing but vacant hollows. The monster was real. The proof was etched into his skin, emblazoned across his back.

She knew there was only one way to get rid of the prickle that had burrowed into her heart: get up, stand over her sister again. Stand over her and wait until she stopped breathing.

Even he 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, firsthand, that 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 couldn’t help but 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?

“I’ve never seen any miracles,” Reagan said, “but I sure as hell have seen my share of darkness. Does God exist? I don’t know. But I kind of hope he does. Because if he doesn’t? We’re probably fucked.”

“Don’t be scared, Mommy,” she said. “At least you still have Abigail.”

“I look at her,” she said, “but it isn’t her. It’s like I’m looking at someone else, like her eyes are vacant...” It was the darkness. Soon, she’d see the same thing in his eyes too.

He had put himself out there, he had told the truth—and all it had done was make him look stupid. Copeland wasn’t going to help. Jack was never going to sleep again.

The shadow that was etched into his skin, burning at his back as if to remind him that no, Mr. Scratch had never left—that he was so permanent in Jack’s life that he’d tattooed himself into Jack’s flesh.

The little girl who, six years before, had redefined his entire life, now made his blood run cold. Everything about her, from her little-girl voice to the artificial innocence she wore across her face, made Jack hate her.

He was almost positive that his mother had been suffering from the same thing—it was why she’d gone crazy when Jack started acting out. He’d caught the disease from her, but who had infected her? The grandparents he had never met? Was that why he hadn’t met them? Was she hiding her past the way Jack had been hiding his?

The shadow shifted its weight with jerky, unnatural motions, like an old movie reel hitching on its sprockets.

The end is gonna find you no matter which direction ya drive.

The craziest of them all seem nice and normal and happy until some vital part of their brain fries like bad wiring.