Seed (13 page)

“Because it’s time for school,” Charlie answered. “And it’s time for breakfast.”

Aimee turned away from her youngest, mouthing a silent
okay
, busying herself at the dresser. It was too weird; weird enough to make her skin crawl. When she heard bare feet hit the floor and scamper toward her, Aimee’s breath caught in her throat. She spun around and shoved her back against the chest of drawers, the dresser shuddering from the impact.

Charlie stood a foot from her mother, looking up at her with an ear-to-ear grin.

“Good morning, Mommy,” she repeated.

Aimee opened her mouth slowly.

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Everything is okay.” Her words were flat, but that wide smile remained. “It’s time for school,” Charlie said. “Better wake up. We don’t want to miss the bus. Breakfast is on the table. Go brush your teeth.”

Charlotte pivoted on the balls of her bare feet and bolted out of the room.

Aimee stood frozen against that dresser for several long seconds. Her breath hitching in her chest. Then she, too, excused herself. But instead of looking for where her daughter had gone, she rushed to the bedside table in the master bedroom and yanked the drawer out so fast it crashed to the floor. Searching through old receipts, random sticky notes, and a few hairstyle magazines she’d tucked away in case she ever felt like making a change, she eventually located her inhaler, uncapped it, and took a couple of puffs.

The prescription was expired by two years.

Aimee hadn’t had an asthma attack in over three.

“Mom?” Abby stuck her head into her parents’ bedroom and found her mother sitting limply at the corner of her bed. “Are you okay?”

Aimee swatted at the tears and forced a smile. “I’m fine, sweetie. Are you two done eating breakfast?”

Abigail nodded slowly, studying her mother. Abby had seen her mom upset before, mostly after she and dad would argue about New Orleans, but this wasn’t the same kind of grief. This was different.

“Okay,” Aimee said, clearing her throat and gathering her wits. “Let’s go.” She got up and motioned for Abby to get moving, trying to fall into their typical morning routine. “Where’s your backpack?”

Abby skittered down the hall to retrieve her things and Aimee forced herself out of the bedroom. She paused when she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes snagging on Charlie. She was sitting at the table, her wide eyes fixed on a corner of the room, seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Charlie,” Aimee said as steadily as she could. “Chop chop, let’s go.”

But Charlie didn’t move. Whatever lurked in that corner had her transfixed.

“Char?”

Nothing.

Aimee pulled a face. She began to approach with slow, reluctant steps.

Charlie didn’t respond.

“Honey, you’re really starting to worry Mommy.”

Regarding herself in the third person was one of Aimee’s safeguards against vulnerability; it made her feel removed, less in the line of fire of whatever decided to creep out of that corner and twist her once normal life beyond recognition.

Aimee closed the distance between them, placing a hand on Charlie’s shoulder—another move made with obvious hesitation, like putting a hand on to a hot stove. As soon as she made contact, Charlie sprung from her chair and dashed after her sister like a spooked cat. Aimee was left alone in the kitchen, trying to push thoughts of childhood psychosis out of her head. But nothing she told herself convinced her that what was going on with Charlie was normal.

When Aimee appeared at the girls’ door, Abby already had her backpack pulled over her shoulders. She stood at the opposite side of the room, keeping distance between her and her sibling. As soon as Abby saw Aimee appear, she pulled at the straps of her bag and fell into motion.

“I’ll wait outside,” she told her mother and brushed by her; staying in that room was the last thing she wanted to do. Aimee was left alone with Charlotte yet again. She crouched down to help the six-year-old tie her shoes so she could join Abby at the bus stop.

Charlie began to giggle—a sound that had once been as airy and iridescent as bubbles floating through the sky, now oddly heavy with unidentifiable emotion.

“What’s funny?” Aimee asked, looking up from her crouched position. That weird smile hung on Charlie’s once-innocent face.

Aimee looked away, masking her panic by directing it toward the floor. Just as she finished securing Charlie’s second shoe, she felt an exhale flutter a few strands of hair across her forehead. Charlie’s crooked smile was less than an inch from Aimee’s hairline. When Aimee lifted her head, coming nose to nose with her daughter, Charlie didn’t lean back to give either of them more room. She remained uncomfortably close, her eyes glinting with wicked mischief. A glint that Aimee had always known was there but had never seen this obviously before.

“Good morning,” Charlie sing-songed. “Better get up. Time for school.”

“That’s enough,” Aimee said, surprised by the forcefulness that had jumped into her tone. “No more games. Mommy’s tired of it.”

“I know,” Charlie said solemnly. “I’m sorry.” Her apology was tainted by a grating babyish tone, making her insincerity that much more apparent.

Aimee turned away for a second, long enough to grab Charlie’s backpack. When she turned back to the child, Charlotte was still grinning.

Suddenly, Aimee wanted nothing more than to grab that stupid little girl by her shoulders and shake her as hard as she could, shake her until that smile was wiped from her face. Instead, she extended a stiff arm outward and handed Charlie her bag.

“You’re going to miss the bus.”

Charlie shrugged and sauntered out of the bedroom. Aimee followed, not to make sure she made it to the bus stop, but to make sure she left at all.

But Charlie wasn’t one to make things easy. When she reached the front door, she turned to look back at her mother, that disconcerting smile still pulling her face tight.

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

Chapter Nine

W
hen Jack saw Arnold’s Oldsmobile ramble up to the boat shop he dropped what he was doing and met Aimee next to the car.

“We have to do something.” Aimee’s voice quaked. She pulled at her fingers as though trying to pluck them from her palms. “It’s getting worse,” she said. “There’s something wrong, Jack. I know there’s something wrong.”

He glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of Reagan standing in the workshop, his welding helmet tipped up so he could get a better look. Jack turned back to Aimee, put a hand on her shoulder, and led her to the back of the Olds.

“I think I know,” she said.

“Know what?” Jack asked. He was trying to play it cool, but even the slightest hint that Aimee suspected the truth made part of him—the familiar him—want to run. The other half was already plotting out where to bury her: in the forest on the opposite side of the house, thick with kudzu and moss. When his mother had tossed aside her psychological explanations and finally saw the situation for what it was, it had sealed their fate as a family. He knew, as soon as Aimee figured it out, it would be the end of them. The Winters would disintegrate. He would end them all.

Aimee began to pace. She had thrown on a pair of sweatpants and an oversized sweater before flying out the front door, unusually unshowered. Typically well put-together, she looked disheveled: like a woman on the brink of something dangerous.

“I think we need to take Charlie to a psychiatrist,” she said, lifting her hands to silence Jack before he had a chance to protest. “I know I already brought this up, and I know you thought it was a stupid idea, but, Jack…” She lowered her gaze to the ground, her fingers tangling themselves in the hem of her grey corded sweater. “I think she may be schizophrenic.”

Jack said nothing. The malevolent smile that flashed across his face was so quick he didn’t realize it ever crossed his expression at all.

“She’s scaring me,” Aimee said. “This morning I had an asthma attack.”

Jack remembered the sound of his own mother hyperventilating to the heavy screech of a bookcase being pushed across a cheap wood-paneled floor.

“Okay,” he said.

But Aimee didn’t hear him.

“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…”

The darkness
. Soon, she’d see the same thing in his eyes too.

“Aimee, I said okay.”

Aimee stopped pacing. She blinked at her husband. Motionless for a moment, she threw herself at him like a girl overjoyed—but it wasn’t joy, it was fear. As soon as his arms wrapped around her, her shoulders heaved in a sob.

“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.”