Seed

by Ania Ahlborn

“It wasn’t an animal,” she murmured. “It walked on two legs, like us.”

“I saw it, Daddy,” she told him, lowering her voice so her mom wouldn’t hear. “I saw it before the lights went out. I saw it just like you.”

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.

“He’s gone and lost his mind since the last time you were here. All his marbles fell out, rolled under the tables and counters, and he’s too old to bend down and find them.”

“That’s the problem with kids,” Phil muttered to himself. “They’re all strange.”

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.

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

“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.”

“It was Mr. Scratch. He’s the one who told me. He knows everything, and now he knows I told you and he’s not going to let me sleep ever again.”

“He’s here to play,” she told him. “He said you never finished the game.”

“I ain’t never seen anyone, not anyone outrun the devil.”