u/gh0stinnab0x

Once again I sat behind the wheel of my dodge grand caravan, a winding serpent of brake lights as far as the eye could see ahead of me. 

The route home from the office during peak traffic was miserable, but at least at home I had happiness waiting for me. The joy of a home-cooked meal, light conversation with my wife and my little boy jabbering away as he hucked his army men around, recreating imaginary battles in his head he had fought with his friends from day care.

I was not wealthy, but I was rich.

I looked at the clock again, watching the minutes past five push ever onward. There were other ways to get home, sure, but every road that seemed to move quickly with the flow of traffic only worked out to be the same time it would have taken me to sit on Lakehead.

Lakehead was a road much traveled by that wound its way directly from my office parking garage, through the downtown core and eventually leading off into a small section of subdivisions where I lived. The drive from my apartment was about seven minutes, forty three seconds, or twelve minutes ten seconds if I decided to stop at the coffee shop for a bagel and java.

If I followed Lakehead home the same way I found myself to work, it always, always was thirty four minutes on the dot.

I tried leaving ten minutes early from my shift to make up the time later, staying ten minutes late to wait for the rush of oncoming traffic to cease its congestion, I even started praying to God in his infinite wisdom to will it to me the ‘grace of good traffic’ by the time my shift was over. I couldn’t complain though, He gave me everything else a man could ask for, so the thirty four minutes I considered a test of patience and fortitude when I eventually got used to it.

There were attempts to kill time while driving, filling the gap with audio books or podcasts of people who would read to me educational wish-fullfilment. I found a couple that were interesting, but not enough to keep me focused away from the annoyance of brake lights in my windshield. 

There was a time when anger would fuel me, and whatever centimeter of a short fuse I had lit that day would come out in traffic. The embarrassing honking, shouting, and cursing I would spit filled up the van with a cloud of malice that often would have passers by look toward the deranged fellow who should have maybe decided to take the long way home. Stubborn as I was, I packed my foolishness away through grit teeth and the knowledge that at the end of the long journey home, there was also always a pot of gold at the end of this monochromatic rainbow.

Eventually a submissive silence would fill the car on these long drives, always muffled by the music or podcasts I’d listen to, while I avoided the hungry eyes of the homeless. I felt awful for ignoring the tapping at my window when I’d hit a stoppage in traffic, instead opting to politely wave ‘no thanks’ at them from behind the pane of glass. 

This was the safest option, as I unfortunately bore witness to a grisly attack on one such driver who wanted nothing to do from the squee-gee pan handler. Local news outlets would report the man would be in stable condition. I, however, had a front-row seat to the macabre affair as the squee-gee guy, who had enough of being told ‘no’ that particular day.

“Stable” was definitely not the word I would use.

The squee-gee guy propelled himself into the car and bit chunks of what I assumed to be the driver’s cheek and lips away from his face. The carnage was too much to look away from, I couldn’t help but watch as the sanguine effigy of blood slowly made its way down the line of cars before ultimately deciding to flee from the scene of the crime.

Never would my window be down again, never would I look out at the beggars, paupers and addicts.

One overcast day in November though, the tense commute was nothing compared to what would happen to me.

I remember the specifics, but am foggy on the journey. It started with a strange occurrence with my son in the middle of the morning.

It was late at night, but early enough to continue to benefit from sleep when my son Joshua woke at two in the morning. Josh was three, but gifted in a sense that he already had mastery of the English language as much as a three year old could have. My wife Florence rolled over and elbowed me in the ribs after I pretended not to hear Josh’s anguished cries. From what I could tell, they were overly dramatic and after ten minutes he would soon settle.

“Harry, it's been twenty minutes.”

“Alright.” 

She didn’t need to say anymore, nor did I. I got up and quickly dressed with whatever clothes were at the foot of our bed. I could hear Josh repeat himself in whimpers from behind his closed door. He repeatedly said the word ‘no’ through high pitched gasping breaths, and extended wails.

“Hey buddy.” I tried to be as comforting as possible while opening his door. Josh, who was still yet to graduate to a toddler bed practically scrambled over the crib and leapt into my arms. I hugged him close as he dried his wet face on my t-shirt. “Hey, what’s the matter bubba?” I asked him a few times before through his dry heaving he answered muffled into my chest, simply pointing at his bedroom window.

“Face. Daddy. Face window.” He wouldn’t look toward his curtains, though they were drawn, but I did my best to calm him. Based on how he was reacting, I decided it would be best if he slept in our bed for the duration of the night.

“Hey my little man, daddy and I are here, you’re gonna be okay.” Flo mouthed the words ‘What the fuck?’. I responded with a shrug and pointed to our curtains, then made my move to regain any sleep before I needed to get to work.

“Daddy, close window.” Josh said as I walked back to my side of the bed. I sighed and did as he asked, shutting my window tight and drawing the blackout curtain.

“Be right back buddy, you snuggle in with mom. I’m just gonna go deal with your window too, okay?”

“‘Kay.” I stepped into his room as my wife sang to our frightened boy, wondering what it was that he saw. I know our neighbors next to us had a deck that was about window height, but they were far enough away that any ‘faces’ would be attached to the rest of their bodies. Josh knew this when we waved at them from his room the day they moved in.

I brought my hand up to his closed curtain, as my fingers crept closer to the middle parting I felt my heart beat rapidly in my chest. I paused, taking a moment to catch my breath. I reached forward again with the same results. 

“Fuck this.” I muttered, grasping the middle of the curtain and pulling it hard to the right expecting to see a morbid expression awaiting me on the other side of the window. There was next to nothing there, well, almost nothing. The soft tiki lights around our neighbors deck gave off enough illumination that I could make out the residue on the exterior of Josh’s window. It was as if someone had their hands cupped to peek inside my son's room.

We live on the second floor.

I shuddered at the thought and immediately went outside, grabbing the metal shovel I used for gardening.

I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but I was always primed and ready to dispense street justice for the sake of my child and wife. Any pervert stupid enough to hang around the scene of the crime would be hit by and buried with the same implement.

“Harry?” A voice caused me to jump out of my crocs, brandishing the shovel like a baseball bat. 

It was Nicolas, the next door neighbor’s kid. He was eighteen and stupid, though he grew on me cause he didn’t smoke his pot around my kid and he was always very polite to my wife. 

“Kind of early to be gardening, isn’t it?”

“The only herb out here that you’re interested in is the one rolled in your papers there, huh Nick? No, my kid woke up crying because he said there was a face.” 

I gestured up at the window, noticing some strange markings on the ground directly below it. 

“He must have seen you on the back porch.” I clarified, fixing my gaze upon the divots in the ground, resembling the peculiar spacing of a ladder. I didn’t own a ladder, and this fact disturbed me.

“I’ve been out front at the end of the driveway, haven’t been back there at all.”

I could feel a knot tighten in my stomach. I had to ask.

“Did uh, you see anything?” Nicolas took a drag on his joint as his brain clicked into first gear.

“Yeah, there was some movement like some dog or something run out from the back of your house.” He pointed his finger and traced a path from the corner of the home to the suspicious divots, to down my driveway. “It looked gangly and fucked up, like one of its legs was broken. The thing bolted past me and ran up the road.” Nicolas pointed up the road to the section of woods the city had decided to keep when the community cried out against having one of our last forested areas be leveled to put in more ‘affordable housing’.

“One of the legs was broken?” I’m sure I would have heard some howling, or yipping if the thing was running away in pain.

“Yeah, it was fuckin’ weird Harry. The strangest part of it was the thing didn’t make any noise, just kinda chuffed like it was laughing? The busted up leg was making a weird clicking noise.”

I was too tired to conjure the frightening image to my mind as I stared at a gap in the woods that was roughly dog-sized. I thanked Nicolas for his information, declined a toke of his joint and went back to bed.

The following day was normal as it could be, I waved goodbye to my wife and son as I entered my car, and then went to work. 

Work was, well, work. The excitement of a 9-5 shift in this economy slowly became dull and pedantic as time wore on. I would perform to the best of my ability just enough to not get canned, but would largely flub my way through meaningless meetings of trite conversation only to suffer a half hour commute of a five minute road.

The difference in this day was when I noticed it following me.

‘It’ was as apt a description I could give the thing as I’m quite sure that the thing following me wasn’t technically human.

During my usual Sisyphean task of driving home in gridlock, I first saw ‘It’ when I slowed to a rolling stop at the first set of lights. 

The city I lived in was a commuter town, meaning that all the main roads and highways would become increasingly locked down as five pm rolled around. Lakehead was no different. Though we were on a strip that was connected to our small city lake with water on the left most side and buildings and remnants of forested areas on the right, we still had a decent amount of foot traffic that could remain busy up until late January when our snow would cover any walkable areas. This November was a scorcher, so lots of people would still be out and about, attempting to enjoy the boardwalk and beginnings of night life.

The city where I live in also has a supremely high volume of crackheads and people addicted to fentanyl, much like the aforementioned face-biting squee-gee man. It isn’t an uncommon sight to see a poor unfortunate bent at a ninety degree angle suffering in their own state of jubilation.

One such crackhead had not broken eye contact with me when I spotted them in my rear view mirror.

‘It’ appeared like a middle aged man suffering from drug addiction. Bent forward, mulling to himself before we made eye contact, he seemed like any other wino or addict I would have seen on my route to or from work. Suddenly as I watched, his chin slowly lifted up until a pallid face, with a deep history of drug use looked back at me. What was different about this one, was the sharpness of the eyes, and the mottled unkempt beard that had dried something on it.

A glint of green made contact with me and held my gaze, even after I would look away to slowly move forward when traffic permitted. Each time I looked back, though I was a considerable distance away from the entity, it seemed to move with me.

Still the same shape, the same hunched pose, with the chin tilted up with the eyes fixated on me, looking at me directly from the rearview. I suffered this for another block before absolutely losing my cool, stepping out of my van. I circled the front of my van in the dead stop traffic and shouted at the thing.

“What the fuck are you looking at huh?” Pointing and gesticulating to the man that was seemingly no longer there.

A chill ran up my spine, I heard passers by call out insults or jokes, while the car behind me honked. I quietly got back into my van and continued.

The thing was right back where it was, standing there in the same pose, staring at me.

But this time it was smiling. The anomaly licked its lips and brushed residue out of the beard that was well-worn to its face as I pushed my rear view mirror away from its gaze.

The temptation of driving on the sidewalk flickered in my breast as I made myself harder to view.

I got to the last set of lights, and finally fixed my rear view mirror. I didn’t see anything, until I made the left hand turn to the open road which would take me less than a minute to get home.

The same face was watching me, this time it was standing upright, the head of the figure would slowly follow and track my car as the street wound its way back to my neck of the woods.

I didn’t immediately get out of the car when I got home. I looked all around the vehicle from the inside, triple checking all the mirrors. 

Nothing.

Getting out of the car I circled the vehicle and looked up the street where it would turn to the next avenue, then I followed the street back down and stared at the hole in the woods, large enough for a dog, or maybe whatever ‘It’ was to enter and leave.

Still nothing.

I stared at that opening for a long while until Florence snapped me out of my sentry patrol.

“Harold!”

“Yeah, what?”

“You’ve been standing there for half an hour now. Dinner is cold.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“What the hell are you looking at?”

“Nothing, just… we need to make sure we lock all the doors and windows tonight.”

“Why the windows?”

“I think I was followed home by something.”

“Okay, just come in and eat. Tell me about it after we put Josh down, okay?”

“Okay.” I looked one more time back at the woods. As the sun was setting, I could see the foliage rustling. Visions of the interloper danced within my periphery as beads of sweat fell from my brow.

The alarm bells stopped ringing when I felt the breeze that had shifted the plant life hit my face. I needed to relax. I resolved on choosing another road home for the following day.

During dinner I asked Josh about his day, and what he had learned at daycare. I would get joyful screams and happy noises through each tiny mouthful of meatloaf. When dinner was said and done and it was time for Josh to go to bed, he hesitated.

“Face?” Was all he asked.

“Hey buddy, no face. I talked to Nick next door and he said there was a dog making noises. Come with me.” My son held my hand as I guided him back to his room, he protested for a minute when he could see the curtains were wide open, but after some gentle nudging he followed me in.

“No. No sleep here.”

“Bubba, check this out. Your windows are locked from the inside, nothing out there can get in, I promise.” I looked through the window, down toward the ground.

Nothing. 

I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Why? Why was I so freaked out?

“No. No sleep.”

“Okay, alright. How about this, just for tonight you can sleep with mommy, and daddy will sleep in your room. Deal?” My son panicked and tugged on the sleeve of my shirt.

“No! Daddy sleeps with family!” His little face contorted as tears welled up in his eyes. “Daddy!”

“Everything okay?” Florence poked her head in. 

“Yes mommy,” I hugged my son tight and brought him to our bedroom. “Josh is going to sleep one more time tonight with mommy, and daddy is going to sleep in Josh’s room to scare away anything bad, so it doesn’t happen again.”

“That sounds great!” My wife made the situation sound like it was normal, reasonable, and not at all crazy. “How about we get your teeth brushed and you can read your favorite all time story to mommy?” My son eventually relented.

He was a momma’s boy, and I loved him for that.

“Hey bud, can you go pick out your book and get ready for mommy, I need to talk to her for a minute, okay?” Josh nodded, and padded away to search through his greatest hits of favorite three year old stories. I explained the situation to Florence, and the odd encounter with the homeless man with green eyes. She listened to everything I had to say.

“So you think he may be peeping into Josh’s window?”

“I don’t know if it’s that same guy, but I want to sleep in this room tonight by myself and if anything else comes up, I want to handle it. I saw ladder divots from the night before, I don’t want to rule anything out.”

“So if it’s the same guy?”

“Then I’ll shout at you to wake up and call the cops, while I go try to catch him.”

“Honey I don’t know.”

“I just want this to be over, I’ll just chase him away and hopefully the cops catch him or he thinks twice about coming back.” I wondered for how long this thing was staring at me in traffic.

Why me?

Why my little boy?

“Alright, I’ll see you in the morning, just don’t do anything hasty. Love you.”

“Love you too.” I could hear Josh clumsily read over every third word to his mother. I took a last look out of the window. I watched as some storm clouds rolled in on the horizon. A deep pit rose in my stomach as I closed the curtains for the night.

It must have been around 2 to 3 in the morning when the tapping began. During small gusts of wind howling I could just faintly hear it.

Roused awake from the light sleeping I was getting, the sound of tapping on my son’s window startled me awake. It was so odd and not uniform from the gusts of billowing wind. It was done in such a fashion that it could be mistaken for the house creaking, but once listening to it it was undeniably something on the other side of the window.

I’ve got you now you son of a bitch. I slowly rose to my feet and approached the curtain. As my hand reached forward I heard the faintest whisper from beyond the pane.

"Open."

That was it, all that was said. Just the word open, every so often, in the same muffled falsetto whisper. It didn’t sound like a normal person saying the word, it sounded like something trying to say the word that was slowly learning how to talk.

"Op-en. O-pen. OhhhpEN."

Always differently enunciated, always in the whisper. It clung to the harried winds like thick honey. A forbidden temptation was coaxing me to open up the curtains and look.

I did as it wanted and threw the curtains open.

In the dead of night, through the sanguine darkness, I locked eyes with the devil.

The green eyes of the homeless man that plagued me that same afternoon were present, but they were socket-ed in the creeping growth of time around the fetid remains of a sort of lupine creature. A horribly mangled top half pressed its half man paws to the glass, pushing on it tenderly, though if it wanted to overpower and break through I believe it could. The visage of death and all things not right with the world was extended up from the ground, way further than any normal legs should stand.

I could see luminous spools of soapy bubbling drool colored yellow by the decay in the maw of the entity. Breath from the flared nostrils extended to the window and covered it in a viscous substance that could only be called slime. The thing panted as the sinewy muscles in the thin frame pressed harder on the glass. A terrible engorgement at the waist of the creature set off all parental alarms and fury within my body. As the glass material groaned against the weight of the devil, the horror licked up the mucus slime and barked once more.

"OPEN."

“FLORENCE CALL THE COPS RIGHT NOW!” I bellowed as loudly as I could. The entity, amused with my command, cackled something awful as it suddenly dropped from the second story window. 

A horrible cavalcade of snapping bones and popping muscles assailed my ears as the chuffing of the creature rose and fell with the wind from the outside. One last time the deranged mutt looked up at me, green eyes glowing in the night. Three of the four legs worked on it and it began to slowly trot away in the direction of the woods.

I was going to get this bastard. The same shovel I had once used for gardening now gleamed like an Arthurian sword of legend.

The thing guffawed as it increased speed. My bare feet slapped on the pavement as I tore after it. I wasn’t dressed for a sprint, but with the spade in my hand gleaming in the moonlight I wasn’t going to rest until this thing was six feet under. 

It dove into the opening of the woods gracefully as I crashed through behind it.

Heart hammering in my chest, I swung at whatever pantomimed movement nearby. The branches and foliage stood no chance against my uncoordinated rage. As foolish as I must have looked, the terrible chuffing started again.

Looking all around me, like a cornered animal I raised my weapon, ready to strike. 

Within the inky blackness of the woods, the only light source available to me was a detriment as it was from the houses just outside the woods. 

I prayed for more than a sliver of light, but as early as it was, no such guidance would break the perimeter of the woods.

Sensing that I was near my end, the devil began to taunt me. It spoke again in the broken way, as if it was learning words just like my three year old.

‘Y-ou a-are fuh-ood.’

I didn’t have any witty retort to deliver so I just told the thing; ‘YOU FUCK OFF AND GO BACK TO HELL!’ 

A sudden pressure from my side exploded into me as the creature shoved me into the nearest tree. Not relenting my grip from the shovel I retaliated and swung it as hard as I could, completely missing the enemy.

A tearing noise echoed out as I felt a searing pain rake across my chest. Still holding onto the shovel, tighter than ever, the thing assailed me again, kicking me down a gulch where I tumbled until I slammed into a large rock. Still holding onto the shovel, I used it to prop myself up. 

Fairly certain that something was poking into my back and legs, I could feel fire across the soles of my feet and ankles. Standing was a no-go, and I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up.

The green eyed bastard stood above me, poised to strike.

‘Y-ur fah-mi-ly is fuh-ood.’ It leapt as soon as it finished its sentence. I could see the green eyed monster outstretch kitchen knives for hands with an unrelenting maw of doom closing in on me.

That son of a bitch threatened my family, and I wasn’t about to let him win.

Praying to God, screaming in blind fury, I used whatever strength my adrenaline would offer and swung the shovel from my core. Rotating my hips and broken body, a resounding thwack echoed through the forest as I connected right with the jaw of the monster.

Surprised, it tumbled to a heap before me crying out in agony, not expecting me to ever make contact with it.

Wasting no time, using whatever depleting strength I had left I clumsily mounted the abomination and stabbed the blunt end of the shovel multiple times across its skull and neck. I was out of sorts, shouting obscenities and half formed words to the predator who was now my prey. 

Every great memory of my wife and child flashed before my eyes. Tears streamed down my face as I continued my malevolence into the beast that would never bother me, or any other family again.

When it was done, a blinding light flashed down into the gulch.

‘Freeze! Drop your weapon!’ The shovel clattered to the ground as I strained to get my hands up. ‘What the hell happened down here?’

The cops who I told Florence to call showed up later than I would have wanted, but were aghast at the thing lying dead on the forest floor. Multiple phone calls were made as I sobbed relief, knowing that the thing coming after me and my family was finally dead.

Alongside detectives, ambulances and other emergency responders, some men in suits wanted to have a chat with me. In my delirium they asked me a lot of questions I had no answers for. I gave as best a description as I could to what the thing was, what had happened and where I thought I first encountered it.

‘Thank you sir, we’ll be in touch.’ They didn’t hand me any card, or contact number, but they spoke briefly with the on scene police officers, and left with a body bag of the expired malicious creature. 

A story was spun from the news that I had enacted some vigilante justice among a convenient dangerous criminal who had escaped not too long ago. Much to my surprise, the local news linked it to the guy who had once bit the face of the other driver so long ago. The men in suits returned and offered my family a sizable estate a few miles north away from any curious onlookers or media presence.

We accepted.

Now we live somewhere that’s a smaller town, with not a huge crowd of people. Everybody knows everybody and it’s pleasant. I found work at a local sporting goods store, which came with a firearms safety course. 

I took it.

Things have been slow now, and not much happens to me or my family. Josh has a room with no windows in the house, my wife and I opted for the same. The only window we have is one singular bay one, overlooking the front yard and driveway entrance.

Whenever I feel like I’m being watched, or if I think for a second I’m being followed by one of them again, I wait until it gets dark and sit quietly with my face towards the big bay window.

Once or twice, I heard that same chuffing laughter that I experienced some time ago. 

I find that it stops much quicker now when I chamber a slug into my shotgun and rack it.

They know to leave us alone now, I think.

Once again I sat behind the wheel of my dodge grand caravan, a winding serpent of brake lights as far as the eye could see ahead of me. 

The route home from the office during peak traffic was miserable, but at least at home I had happiness waiting for me. The joy of a home-cooked meal, light conversation with my wife and my little boy jabbering away as he hucked his army men around, recreating imaginary battles in his head he had fought with his friends from day care.

I was not wealthy, but I was rich.

I looked at the clock again, watching the minutes past five push ever onward. There were other ways to get home, sure, but every road that seemed to move quickly with the flow of traffic only worked out to be the same time it would have taken me to sit on Lakehead.

Lakehead was a road much traveled by that wound its way directly from my office parking garage, through the downtown core and eventually leading off into a small section of subdivisions where I lived. The drive from my apartment was about seven minutes, forty three seconds, or twelve minutes ten seconds if I decided to stop at the coffee shop for a bagel and java.

If I followed Lakehead home the same way I found myself to work, it always, always was thirty four minutes on the dot.

I tried leaving ten minutes early from my shift to make up the time later, staying ten minutes late to wait for the rush of oncoming traffic to cease its congestion, I even started praying to God in his infinite wisdom to will it to me the ‘grace of good traffic’ by the time my shift was over. I couldn’t complain though, He gave me everything else a man could ask for, so the thirty four minutes I considered a test of patience and fortitude when I eventually got used to it.

There were attempts to kill time while driving, filling the gap with audio books or podcasts of people who would read to me educational wish-fullfilment. I found a couple that were interesting, but not enough to keep me focused away from the annoyance of brake lights in my windshield. 

There was a time when anger would fuel me, and whatever centimeter of a short fuse I had lit that day would come out in traffic. The embarrassing honking, shouting, and cursing I would spit filled up the van with a cloud of malice that often would have passers by look toward the deranged fellow who should have maybe decided to take the long way home. Stubborn as I was, I packed my foolishness away through grit teeth and the knowledge that at the end of the long journey home, there was also always a pot of gold at the end of this monochromatic rainbow.

Eventually a submissive silence would fill the car on these long drives, always muffled by the music or podcasts I’d listen to, while I avoided the hungry eyes of the homeless. I felt awful for ignoring the tapping at my window when I’d hit a stoppage in traffic, instead opting to politely wave ‘no thanks’ at them from behind the pane of glass. 

This was the safest option, as I unfortunately bore witness to a grisly attack on one such driver who wanted nothing to do from the squee-gee pan handler. Local news outlets would report the man would be in stable condition. I, however, had a front-row seat to the macabre affair as the squee-gee guy, who had enough of being told ‘no’ that particular day.

“Stable” was definitely not the word I would use.

The squee-gee guy propelled himself into the car and bit chunks of what I assumed to be the driver’s cheek and lips away from his face. The carnage was too much to look away from, I couldn’t help but watch as the sanguine effigy of blood slowly made its way down the line of cars before ultimately deciding to flee from the scene of the crime.

Never would my window be down again, never would I look out at the beggars, paupers and addicts.

One overcast day in November though, the tense commute was nothing compared to what would happen to me.

I remember the specifics, but am foggy on the journey. It started with a strange occurrence with my son in the middle of the morning.

It was late at night, but early enough to continue to benefit from sleep when my son Joshua woke at two in the morning. Josh was three, but gifted in a sense that he already had mastery of the English language as much as a three year old could have. My wife Florence rolled over and elbowed me in the ribs after I pretended not to hear Josh’s anguished cries. From what I could tell, they were overly dramatic and after ten minutes he would soon settle.

“Harry, it's been twenty minutes.”

“Alright.” 

She didn’t need to say anymore, nor did I. I got up and quickly dressed with whatever clothes were at the foot of our bed. I could hear Josh repeat himself in whimpers from behind his closed door. He repeatedly said the word ‘no’ through high pitched gasping breaths, and extended wails.

“Hey buddy.” I tried to be as comforting as possible while opening his door. Josh, who was still yet to graduate to a toddler bed practically scrambled over the crib and leapt into my arms. I hugged him close as he dried his wet face on my t-shirt. “Hey, what’s the matter bubba?” I asked him a few times before through his dry heaving he answered muffled into my chest, simply pointing at his bedroom window.

“Face. Daddy. Face window.” He wouldn’t look toward his curtains, though they were drawn, but I did my best to calm him. Based on how he was reacting, I decided it would be best if he slept in our bed for the duration of the night.

“Hey my little man, daddy and I are here, you’re gonna be okay.” Flo mouthed the words ‘What the fuck?’. I responded with a shrug and pointed to our curtains, then made my move to regain any sleep before I needed to get to work.

“Daddy, close window.” Josh said as I walked back to my side of the bed. I sighed and did as he asked, shutting my window tight and drawing the blackout curtain.

“Be right back buddy, you snuggle in with mom. I’m just gonna go deal with your window too, okay?”

“‘Kay.” I stepped into his room as my wife sang to our frightened boy, wondering what it was that he saw. I know our neighbors next to us had a deck that was about window height, but they were far enough away that any ‘faces’ would be attached to the rest of their bodies. Josh knew this when we waved at them from his room the day they moved in.

I brought my hand up to his closed curtain, as my fingers crept closer to the middle parting I felt my heart beat rapidly in my chest. I paused, taking a moment to catch my breath. I reached forward again with the same results. 

“Fuck this.” I muttered, grasping the middle of the curtain and pulling it hard to the right expecting to see a morbid expression awaiting me on the other side of the window. There was next to nothing there, well, almost nothing. The soft tiki lights around our neighbors deck gave off enough illumination that I could make out the residue on the exterior of Josh’s window. It was as if someone had their hands cupped to peek inside my son's room.

We live on the second floor.

I shuddered at the thought and immediately went outside, grabbing the metal shovel I used for gardening.

I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but I was always primed and ready to dispense street justice for the sake of my child and wife. Any pervert stupid enough to hang around the scene of the crime would be hit by and buried with the same implement.

“Harry?” A voice caused me to jump out of my crocs, brandishing the shovel like a baseball bat. 

It was Nicolas, the next door neighbor’s kid. He was eighteen and stupid, though he grew on me cause he didn’t smoke his pot around my kid and he was always very polite to my wife. 

“Kind of early to be gardening, isn’t it?”

“The only herb out here that you’re interested in is the one rolled in your papers there, huh Nick? No, my kid woke up crying because he said there was a face.” 

I gestured up at the window, noticing some strange markings on the ground directly below it. 

“He must have seen you on the back porch.” I clarified, fixing my gaze upon the divots in the ground, resembling the peculiar spacing of a ladder. I didn’t own a ladder, and this fact disturbed me.

“I’ve been out front at the end of the driveway, haven’t been back there at all.”

I could feel a knot tighten in my stomach. I had to ask.

“Did uh, you see anything?” Nicolas took a drag on his joint as his brain clicked into first gear.

“Yeah, there was some movement like some dog or something run out from the back of your house.” He pointed his finger and traced a path from the corner of the home to the suspicious divots, to down my driveway. “It looked gangly and fucked up, like one of its legs was broken. The thing bolted past me and ran up the road.” Nicolas pointed up the road to the section of woods the city had decided to keep when the community cried out against having one of our last forested areas be leveled to put in more ‘affordable housing’.

“One of the legs was broken?” I’m sure I would have heard some howling, or yipping if the thing was running away in pain.

“Yeah, it was fuckin’ weird Harry. The strangest part of it was the thing didn’t make any noise, just kinda chuffed like it was laughing? The busted up leg was making a weird clicking noise.”

I was too tired to conjure the frightening image to my mind as I stared at a gap in the woods that was roughly dog-sized. I thanked Nicolas for his information, declined a toke of his joint and went back to bed.

The following day was normal as it could be, I waved goodbye to my wife and son as I entered my car, and then went to work. 

Work was, well, work. The excitement of a 9-5 shift in this economy slowly became dull and pedantic as time wore on. I would perform to the best of my ability just enough to not get canned, but would largely flub my way through meaningless meetings of trite conversation only to suffer a half hour commute of a five minute road.

The difference in this day was when I noticed it following me.

‘It’ was as apt a description I could give the thing as I’m quite sure that the thing following me wasn’t technically human.

During my usual Sisyphean task of driving home in gridlock, I first saw ‘It’ when I slowed to a rolling stop at the first set of lights. 

The city I lived in was a commuter town, meaning that all the main roads and highways would become increasingly locked down as five pm rolled around. Lakehead was no different. Though we were on a strip that was connected to our small city lake with water on the left most side and buildings and remnants of forested areas on the right, we still had a decent amount of foot traffic that could remain busy up until late January when our snow would cover any walkable areas. This November was a scorcher, so lots of people would still be out and about, attempting to enjoy the boardwalk and beginnings of night life.

The city where I live in also has a supremely high volume of crackheads and people addicted to fentanyl, much like the aforementioned face-biting squee-gee man. It isn’t an uncommon sight to see a poor unfortunate bent at a ninety degree angle suffering in their own state of jubilation.

One such crackhead had not broken eye contact with me when I spotted them in my rear view mirror.

‘It’ appeared like a middle aged man suffering from drug addiction. Bent forward, mulling to himself before we made eye contact, he seemed like any other wino or addict I would have seen on my route to or from work. Suddenly as I watched, his chin slowly lifted up until a pallid face, with a deep history of drug use looked back at me. What was different about this one, was the sharpness of the eyes, and the mottled unkempt beard that had dried something on it.

A glint of green made contact with me and held my gaze, even after I would look away to slowly move forward when traffic permitted. Each time I looked back, though I was a considerable distance away from the entity, it seemed to move with me.

Still the same shape, the same hunched pose, with the chin tilted up with the eyes fixated on me, looking at me directly from the rearview. I suffered this for another block before absolutely losing my cool, stepping out of my van. I circled the front of my van in the dead stop traffic and shouted at the thing.

“What the fuck are you looking at huh?” Pointing and gesticulating to the man that was seemingly no longer there.

A chill ran up my spine, I heard passers by call out insults or jokes, while the car behind me honked. I quietly got back into my van and continued.

The thing was right back where it was, standing there in the same pose, staring at me.

But this time it was smiling. The anomaly licked its lips and brushed residue out of the beard that was well-worn to its face as I pushed my rear view mirror away from its gaze.

The temptation of driving on the sidewalk flickered in my breast as I made myself harder to view.

I got to the last set of lights, and finally fixed my rear view mirror. I didn’t see anything, until I made the left hand turn to the open road which would take me less than a minute to get home.

The same face was watching me, this time it was standing upright, the head of the figure would slowly follow and track my car as the street wound its way back to my neck of the woods.

I didn’t immediately get out of the car when I got home. I looked all around the vehicle from the inside, triple checking all the mirrors. 

Nothing.

Getting out of the car I circled the vehicle and looked up the street where it would turn to the next avenue, then I followed the street back down and stared at the hole in the woods, large enough for a dog, or maybe whatever ‘It’ was to enter and leave.

Still nothing.

I stared at that opening for a long while until Florence snapped me out of my sentry patrol.

“Harold!”

“Yeah, what?”

“You’ve been standing there for half an hour now. Dinner is cold.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“What the hell are you looking at?”

“Nothing, just… we need to make sure we lock all the doors and windows tonight.”

“Why the windows?”

“I think I was followed home by something.”

“Okay, just come in and eat. Tell me about it after we put Josh down, okay?”

“Okay.” I looked one more time back at the woods. As the sun was setting, I could see the foliage rustling. Visions of the interloper danced within my periphery as beads of sweat fell from my brow.

The alarm bells stopped ringing when I felt the breeze that had shifted the plant life hit my face. I needed to relax. I resolved on choosing another road home for the following day.

During dinner I asked Josh about his day, and what he had learned at daycare. I would get joyful screams and happy noises through each tiny mouthful of meatloaf. When dinner was said and done and it was time for Josh to go to bed, he hesitated.

“Face?” Was all he asked.

“Hey buddy, no face. I talked to Nick next door and he said there was a dog making noises. Come with me.” My son held my hand as I guided him back to his room, he protested for a minute when he could see the curtains were wide open, but after some gentle nudging he followed me in.

“No. No sleep here.”

“Bubba, check this out. Your windows are locked from the inside, nothing out there can get in, I promise.” I looked through the window, down toward the ground.

Nothing. 

I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Why? Why was I so freaked out?

“No. No sleep.”

“Okay, alright. How about this, just for tonight you can sleep with mommy, and daddy will sleep in your room. Deal?” My son panicked and tugged on the sleeve of my shirt.

“No! Daddy sleeps with family!” His little face contorted as tears welled up in his eyes. “Daddy!”

“Everything okay?” Florence poked her head in. 

“Yes mommy,” I hugged my son tight and brought him to our bedroom. “Josh is going to sleep one more time tonight with mommy, and daddy is going to sleep in Josh’s room to scare away anything bad, so it doesn’t happen again.”

“That sounds great!” My wife made the situation sound like it was normal, reasonable, and not at all crazy. “How about we get your teeth brushed and you can read your favorite all time story to mommy?” My son eventually relented.

He was a momma’s boy, and I loved him for that.

“Hey bud, can you go pick out your book and get ready for mommy, I need to talk to her for a minute, okay?” Josh nodded, and padded away to search through his greatest hits of favorite three year old stories. I explained the situation to Florence, and the odd encounter with the homeless man with green eyes. She listened to everything I had to say.

“So you think he may be peeping into Josh’s window?”

“I don’t know if it’s that same guy, but I want to sleep in this room tonight by myself and if anything else comes up, I want to handle it. I saw ladder divots from the night before, I don’t want to rule anything out.”

“So if it’s the same guy?”

“Then I’ll shout at you to wake up and call the cops, while I go try to catch him.”

“Honey I don’t know.”

“I just want this to be over, I’ll just chase him away and hopefully the cops catch him or he thinks twice about coming back.” I wondered for how long this thing was staring at me in traffic.

Why me?

Why my little boy?

“Alright, I’ll see you in the morning, just don’t do anything hasty. Love you.”

“Love you too.” I could hear Josh clumsily read over every third word to his mother. I took a last look out of the window. I watched as some storm clouds rolled in on the horizon. A deep pit rose in my stomach as I closed the curtains for the night.

It must have been around 2 to 3 in the morning when the tapping began. During small gusts of wind howling I could just faintly hear it.

Roused awake from the light sleeping I was getting, the sound of tapping on my son’s window startled me awake. It was so odd and not uniform from the gusts of billowing wind. It was done in such a fashion that it could be mistaken for the house creaking, but once listening to it it was undeniably something on the other side of the window.

I’ve got you now you son of a bitch. I slowly rose to my feet and approached the curtain. As my hand reached forward I heard the faintest whisper from beyond the pane.

"Open."

That was it, all that was said. Just the word open, every so often, in the same muffled falsetto whisper. It didn’t sound like a normal person saying the word, it sounded like something trying to say the word that was slowly learning how to talk.

"Op-en. O-pen. OhhhpEN."

Always differently enunciated, always in the whisper. It clung to the harried winds like thick honey. A forbidden temptation was coaxing me to open up the curtains and look.

I did as it wanted and threw the curtains open.

In the dead of night, through the sanguine darkness, I locked eyes with the devil.

The green eyes of the homeless man that plagued me that same afternoon were present, but they were socket-ed in the creeping growth of time around the fetid remains of a sort of lupine creature. A horribly mangled top half pressed its half man paws to the glass, pushing on it tenderly, though if it wanted to overpower and break through I believe it could. The visage of death and all things not right with the world was extended up from the ground, way further than any normal legs should stand.

I could see luminous spools of soapy bubbling drool colored yellow by the decay in the maw of the entity. Breath from the flared nostrils extended to the window and covered it in a viscous substance that could only be called slime. The thing panted as the sinewy muscles in the thin frame pressed harder on the glass. A terrible engorgement at the waist of the creature set off all parental alarms and fury within my body. As the glass material groaned against the weight of the devil, the horror licked up the mucus slime and barked once more.

"OPEN."

“FLORENCE CALL THE COPS RIGHT NOW!” I bellowed as loudly as I could. The entity, amused with my command, cackled something awful as it suddenly dropped from the second story window. 

A horrible cavalcade of snapping bones and popping muscles assailed my ears as the chuffing of the creature rose and fell with the wind from the outside. One last time the deranged mutt looked up at me, green eyes glowing in the night. Three of the four legs worked on it and it began to slowly trot away in the direction of the woods.

I was going to get this bastard. The same shovel I had once used for gardening now gleamed like an Arthurian sword of legend.

The thing guffawed as it increased speed. My bare feet slapped on the pavement as I tore after it. I wasn’t dressed for a sprint, but with the spade in my hand gleaming in the moonlight I wasn’t going to rest until this thing was six feet under. 

It dove into the opening of the woods gracefully as I crashed through behind it.

Heart hammering in my chest, I swung at whatever pantomimed movement nearby. The branches and foliage stood no chance against my uncoordinated rage. As foolish as I must have looked, the terrible chuffing started again.

Looking all around me, like a cornered animal I raised my weapon, ready to strike. 

Within the inky blackness of the woods, the only light source available to me was a detriment as it was from the houses just outside the woods. 

I prayed for more than a sliver of light, but as early as it was, no such guidance would break the perimeter of the woods.

Sensing that I was near my end, the devil began to taunt me. It spoke again in the broken way, as if it was learning words just like my three year old.

‘Y-ou a-are fuh-ood.’

I didn’t have any witty retort to deliver so I just told the thing; ‘YOU FUCK OFF AND GO BACK TO HELL!’ 

A sudden pressure from my side exploded into me as the creature shoved me into the nearest tree. Not relenting my grip from the shovel I retaliated and swung it as hard as I could, completely missing the enemy.

A tearing noise echoed out as I felt a searing pain rake across my chest. Still holding onto the shovel, tighter than ever, the thing assailed me again, kicking me down a gulch where I tumbled until I slammed into a large rock. Still holding onto the shovel, I used it to prop myself up. 

Fairly certain that something was poking into my back and legs, I could feel fire across the soles of my feet and ankles. Standing was a no-go, and I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up.

The green eyed bastard stood above me, poised to strike.

‘Y-ur fah-mi-ly is fuh-ood.’ It leapt as soon as it finished its sentence. I could see the green eyed monster outstretch kitchen knives for hands with an unrelenting maw of doom closing in on me.

That son of a bitch threatened my family, and I wasn’t about to let him win.

Praying to God, screaming in blind fury, I used whatever strength my adrenaline would offer and swung the shovel from my core. Rotating my hips and broken body, a resounding thwack echoed through the forest as I connected right with the jaw of the monster.

Surprised, it tumbled to a heap before me crying out in agony, not expecting me to ever make contact with it.

Wasting no time, using whatever depleting strength I had left I clumsily mounted the abomination and stabbed the blunt end of the shovel multiple times across its skull and neck. I was out of sorts, shouting obscenities and half formed words to the predator who was now my prey. 

Every great memory of my wife and child flashed before my eyes. Tears streamed down my face as I continued my malevolence into the beast that would never bother me, or any other family again.

When it was done, a blinding light flashed down into the gulch.

‘Freeze! Drop your weapon!’ The shovel clattered to the ground as I strained to get my hands up. ‘What the hell happened down here?’

The cops who I told Florence to call showed up later than I would have wanted, but were aghast at the thing lying dead on the forest floor. Multiple phone calls were made as I sobbed relief, knowing that the thing coming after me and my family was finally dead.

Alongside detectives, ambulances and other emergency responders, some men in suits wanted to have a chat with me. In my delirium they asked me a lot of questions I had no answers for. I gave as best a description as I could to what the thing was, what had happened and where I thought I first encountered it.

‘Thank you sir, we’ll be in touch.’ They didn’t hand me any card, or contact number, but they spoke briefly with the on scene police officers, and left with a body bag of the expired malicious creature. 

A story was spun from the news that I had enacted some vigilante justice among a convenient dangerous criminal who had escaped not too long ago. Much to my surprise, the local news linked it to the guy who had once bit the face of the other driver so long ago. The men in suits returned and offered my family a sizable estate a few miles north away from any curious onlookers or media presence.

We accepted.

Now we live somewhere that’s a smaller town, with not a huge crowd of people. Everybody knows everybody and it’s pleasant. I found work at a local sporting goods store, which came with a firearms safety course. 

I took it.

Things have been slow now, and not much happens to me or my family. Josh has a room with no windows in the house, my wife and I opted for the same. The only window we have is one singular bay one, overlooking the front yard and driveway entrance.

Whenever I feel like I’m being watched, or if I think for a second I’m being followed by one of them again, I wait until it gets dark and sit quietly with my face towards the big bay window.

Once or twice, I heard that same chuffing laughter that I experienced some time ago. 

I find that it stops much quicker now when I chamber a slug into my shotgun and rack it.

They know to leave us alone now, I think.

I slowly paced back and forth through the upper apartment of the entire home we were renting from an unsavory landlord. Despite his searching for answers to his life's problems at the bottom of a bottle, he cobbled together a two story home which gave safe harbor to my quaint family.

My daughter, Rose, was finally fast asleep, gripping my loose white tee shirt. I sighed quietly with relief, as this was not the first night we had trouble putting her down for extended sleep.

Rose had just hit the milestone of seven months old, by now she was able to sleep mostly through the night, providing much needed sleep for myself and her mother by not requiring feeding every two hours. For the first few days as a seven month old, she was as precious as could be, wistfully snoring away the moonlit hours with no crying or fussing, allowing some hard earned rest to her parents.

While I could function for five hours minimum, my wife struggled more with the lack of sleep. I did right by my wife, offering endless support. It was the least I could do after she pushed our eight pound seven ounce miracle free from her 'guttyworks'.

It was an interesting time being a parent, I couldn't help but smile as I sat on our sectional couch in the living room, finally allowing my eyes to close for the night, my daughter safely deposited into her crib. No sooner did I relax, did a cacophonous wailing echo throughout our apartment.

Bolting upright, I quickly strode into my daughters room, opening the door gently as I possibly could to minimize any distress the poor child was dealing with. Despite the incessant wailing, Rose calmly slept. Her mouth did not move, nor did she have any expression of pain across her cherub face. She looked warm, comfortable, and altogether unbothered by the situation. I rested my hand upon her crib that I built myself staring at her muffled movements in the darkness of her room.

As my sleepy parent brain adjusted, I could still hear the crying, though it was coming from another part of the upstairs floor. I crept around slowly, as my wife was still fast asleep in bed, only to find our black cat, Felony, wide awake and sitting at the sliding glass door to our back deck. Her tail twitched, and brushed the cold linoleum as her ears perked up at the increasingly distressing wailing.

It sounded just like Rose on her worst day, if she absolutely wasn't having it. Walking up to Felony, I scratched her backside. She calmly turned her emerald eyes toward my beleaguered face and let out a quiet meow, as if whispering to me to not disturb whatever was making that terrible racket.

Sitting on the cold linoleum floor, staring out at the night sky offered me some perspective. Though the crying was worse from this part of the house, it appeared as though it was coming from below our deck. I checked my smart watch. The ruddy cheeks and baggy eyes of mine formed a strange reflection overlapping with Mickey Mouse's whimsical eternal smile from the sixties. The digital clock read 4:08AM.

I opened the glass door to the back porch and stepped outside, with Felony in tow.

"Call Clyde." I whispered into my smart watch. The silent vibrato buzzed in the quiet dawn of the not-yet-morning.

"Mikey." The voice responded, awake, as I thought he would be.

"Hey, I just put Rose down, do you think you can-"

"I'm so sorry, son. I gotta get better at this." His quick apology assured my suspicions. Clyde, my wife's father, had been living below us for the better part of a decade, helping our small family grow while also subsidizing the cost of rent to the two story thing our landlord called a house. 

The old-timer was good for money, and loved Rose, as she was the first legitimate grand-child he was ever able to hold in his arms. Clyde had a proclivity for all kinds of action and horror movies, habitually watching them at a volume wholly reserved for AC/DC concerts. Aside from that one quirk, he was a stellar father-in-law, and did right by us.

"Thanks man, I'll get you a coffee tomorrow."

"Appreciate it, kiddo. Welcome to raising children."

"How am I doing so far?" I asked, knowing he'd be straight with me.

"Better than most. I'll let you get some sleep." With that, he disconnected the call. I sighed and went back into the house. The caterwauling had stopped, and Felony was uninterested in the sliding glass door. Her attention was now fixated on the rustling of the shrubs I couldn’t be bothered to maintain on a regular basis.

A terrible smell emanated from them, likely a skunk, though I had never smelled one so foul. I gave Felony some treats, partly as a reward for helping me solve the mystery of the wailing baby and partly to lure her back in from the impending skunk attack. I then shut the door, got comfortable on our sectional couch, and fell fast asleep.

Four hours later with coffee in hand, I knocked on the lower door to our house. Clyde groggily opened the door and scratched the two caterpillars on his face he called eyebrows.

"Here." He swiped at his mug, but I pulled back letting him suffer for a moment. "I don't want to be a bother but the headphones we gave you last Christmas, how come you don't use those?" I then handed him his coffee, which he graciously accepted.

"They aren't loud enough." He took a swig of the morning brown and waggled an eyebrow. "I mean, well, they broke."

"How did they break?" The cost wasn't the issue, we could easily get him another pair, but it was upsetting that a man so good with older technology could scarcely keep a pair of analog headphones in good condition.

"Tried to turn them to max volume, with that little wheel do-hickey. It snapped and broke the volume control. I can't get any sound in them anymore. Sorry." He looked downcast. I suddenly felt as if I had kicked a small puppy. I relented.

"Well, alright man. Just, no more late night horror movies anymore. That wailing was terrible." I paused when he furrowed his brow in confusion. "What?"

"Mikey, I was watching Casablanca."

"Good one." I wasn't a fan of the classics, but there was no way in hell a crying baby was in Casablanca.

"No, seriously. Look." Clyde beckoned me into his neatly kept apartment. He had an expansive collection of physical movies and multiple combination DVD & Blu-Ray players. The prize of his collection was a vintage Sony SL8000 Beta-max player. It rarely saw use, but sat atop a pedestal closely among the VHS devices that absolutely dominated the market at the time.

On his coffee table, with his Marlboro pack of cigarettes and a drained glass of bourbon, still sitting next to a mostly full bottle, was the VHS copy of Casablanca. The tape that rested in the sleeve had been inserted into the fourth most available VCR closest to one of his old tube television sets that he utilized for the experience.

"Refresh my memory, do any babies cry in that movie?" Maybe I was wrong. Maybe when Humphrey Bogart said 'Here's looking at you, kid.' It could have been possible that his delivery, although perfect, would have upset a baby nearby.

"Mikey, you're a new parent. This is the first time you and Angela have ever done something like this. Look, go to work. I'm off today so I can take Angie and Rosie out for some dinner and you can catch up on some sleep when you get home." I nodded along to his prattling. I knew what I heard last night, I didn't think it was some fluke. Even Felony heard something.

I was unfamiliar with what kinds of noises a skunk could make, but it certainly wouldn’t be crying.

 I figured Clyde was right. I just wanted to be a good dad. This opportunity of fatherhood was something that had happened once before, but was ripped away from me.

"Yeah, okay. You're right. Thanks."

"We're family. You're a good dad. Even the best of dads need a break now and again." Clyde clapped me on the shoulder, and I left for work.

I couldn't focus a lot on my tasks that day. The mundane office job I had was better than most. Free coffee, a gym across the hall, lots of downtime between calls on the weekends. Something kept digging at me. Clyde called me a good dad, which was kind, but I'm sure he wouldn't if he knew some of the earlier choices I made in life.

I was sweet on his Angela. The anatomy of our love blossomed when I first met her at Church. Angie and I had been in love for a few years, and I took it slow. But before Angie, there was Veronica. She was the first woman I had married. It was a different love than Angie. Angie was safe, and she had a good work ethic. She wasn't about taking risks, nor was she unpleasant to be around. She had a beautiful smile and was traditional in all aspects of home-keeping. I had to fight her just to do chores around the house. But Veronica, she was something else entirely.

Veronica oozed freedom. She was an untamed mythical dragon forever soaring among the clouds, this woman could turn any mundane encounter into an adventure. She lived fast, and hard, and loved just as equally. When I had proposed to her all those years ago, I was sure she'd laugh in my face. But she surprised me.

"Okay lover-boy. Make me yours." She was the Mary-Jane to my Peter Parker.

Everything she did was crazy, and I was just happy to be along for the ride. She was full of beautiful life, and vim, until she got pregnant. Veronica changed completely.

Around her friends she was still this legend among legends, but she slowly turned insular. No longer did she feel like going out, or doing the fun things we did. She wasn't about drinking, or drugs or partying that way, but you can be damned sure she would be the first at the front of the concert venue, dancing like crazy to whatever songs were on the playlist.

At twenty weeks, when we found out it was going to be a girl. Veronica snapped. She practically shoved her denim skirt back down and pushed the ultrasound tech to the ground. I hastily apologized while I chased after my then pregnant wife. She got in the driver's seat of our mustang and glared daggers at me as I got in.

"I can't do girls Mikey. Nuh-uh, no way." She was upset, and now had been venting, driving erratically across the back roads that wove through the dense forests which would take us back home. Her eyes were tear stained, and she would constantly take her hand off the wheel to rub away the rogue tears with the heel of her palm. Though I hated it, she still smoked small puffs of cigarettes, but when she was livid the long drag of nicotine was the only master that could tame her foul temper. Veronica would only let go of the wheel once, to fetch a belmont from within her purse, annihilating the dart much like Dracula wished he could.

"Why not? I thought you'd be thrilled. You'd make the coolest mom I'd ever know." The compliment was lost on her. I held onto the whoa fuck handle in the passenger seat, regretting not pulling her out of the drivers seat before we began this cursed voyage.

"No way. My mom was a see you next tuesday, she treated me like shit, like I was nothing." Tears streamed down her face.

"That doesn't mean you'd treat our little girl like that. It's a blessing babe, how good will it feel to be an even better mother then your mom?" I never would get anything further from Veronica as it was destined a tree would fall in our path. As her one hand was free wiping away her tears, she overcompensated with the other, lurching the car over the cliff down into the forest below.

I don't remember much of what happened during the rolling of our car, but I remember being thrown quite a distance. Checking myself found wounds I found I could still stand, though my locomotion was poor. Feeling around the vital areas, I only found blood when touching the back of my head. When I broke from the delirium, what I saw would be etched into my memory forever.

Veronica was dead, her neck snapped and bent at an odd angle. Her eyes and mouth were permanently in a surprised expression, as the vertebrae of her spine stuck out from her neck, without breaking skin. There seemed to be an internal pooling of blood from the odd angle of her neck. The bulging nightmare gawped from broken branches at me, a euclidean tapestry of unending horror.

Though it was assuredly broken, looking like a pimple yet to pop, the swelling red liquid rose to the point that it just couldn't penetrate her skin. Something must have detached from the car, as her belly was split wide open. The morbid cesarean performed on her by what was likely car or tree shrapnel was horrific.

Her lower intestine had sagged somewhat, and the umbilical cord complete with what was still my developing daughter rested just below on the ground. Out from the majesty of her eviscerated womb, our unborn daughter who was still attached to the mother quivered in the cold.

I stood stock still, shocked at the carnage that lay before me. I could only stare at the underdeveloped infant that was my unnamed daughter as it struggled to survive. Overcome by the accident, and bleeding from my head, I didn't know what to do. The poor child, not yet made for this earth, expired, its little lungs unable to suck air or cry. The horrible noise it made as it took its last breaths on this plane of existence were mucus filled cries, not loud enough to be anything considered human, but they would haunt me to this day.

At the time, all I could do was weep. I took the discarded remains of our child and placed it further ahead in the woods, hastily burying it with leaves and twigs. Her glassy eyes looked at me from beyond the veil. 

I don't know if it was shame on that small face that glared at me, or it was upset at its circumstance. It was the best I could do at the time. I later lied to the paramedics who arrived on scene upon me calling for assistance and said I had been out for some time. I made a great effort to hide my tracks leading to our unnamed baby's grave. 

I didn't want to ever relive the memory of the alien creature of my wife's insides, warbling as it died. 

The guilt would still bubble over sometimes as I held Rose tight to my chest. I lamented the life un-lived from my first child, the one that would never be.

"Mikey, you okay?" Snapping out of my haze, far from the hellish forest, the buzzing lights of the call center centered me. I turned to see one of the other leaders on duty waving a hand in my face. "Getting enough sleep there, bud?"

"Yeah, sorry. Parenthood is tough. This is you in three weeks Michelle, though I figure since you're growing the child you'll probably be more tired." She smiled and rubbed her belly to my response.

"Yeah, I start my maternity leave tomorrow. I'm excited. Rick keeps asking how you've been doing and I tell him you look tired each and every day. He said he's gonna take some paternal leave to help me for the first little bit."

"I advocate for that. I would take more if I could, to be honest. Tell him to take two months, not one."

"I will, thanks. Hey, it's not super busy, I can cover for you if you wanna go home?" She didn't have to ask me twice, I clocked out from my desk and gave her a hug. She waved as I raced home to go to bed.

The drive home was four minutes and eight seconds. I was still groggy by the time I climbed the stairs and unlocked the door. Angie was still home, and Rose was in good spirits. I mumbled to her one word; 'sleep' and passed out on the couch. I could hear Rose babbling happily and in the ether of my dreams, eventually I heard the front door open and then close.

The smell of pizza woke me out of my coma. I found a note on the box:

Triple cheese, just as you like it. We're out for dinner. My dad said you needed a night off, and Rose needs to learn about restaurants. Plus I'm excited for the 'kids under three eat free' deal. We'll be home later.

Love, Angie

The first bite of the slightly cold, but still incredibly greasy pizza uplifted my spirits. I cried a single tear of joy that my creature comforts were still looked after by my wife. Angie was certainly a lover more true than the sun, gifted by Christ himself. My father once told me that marriage is split sixty-forty. The trick of the split is that both halves of the partnership were always trying to be the sixty in that split.

The bliss I felt did not last long as Felony suddenly darted towards the back of the apartment, and sat stock still at Rose's bedroom door.

I heard a muffled cry from her bedroom.

My heart leapt into my chest. I re-read the note Angie had left me. "Rose needs to learn about restaurants." Clearly Rose wasn't here. This certainly wasn't a restaurant.

What the fuck.

What was making that God-awful noise?

I sent Angie a text: Rose is with you, right? It was a stupid question, obviously, but I had to be sure. I didn't get a response right away so I slowly began the long walk to the back room. Every crease in the floorboards and creak from my weight caused me great unease.

What was happening?

What am I walking into?

Why is it upset?

What is it?

More questions raced through my mind as I slowly opened the door to the bedroom. I didn't turn on the light. The only ambient lighting that shone through the curtains was the setting sun. The crying continued, though it wasn't as loud as it was before. Felony suddenly stood up, her hackles raised as she made a low hiss, not wanting to step a single one of her paws into the room.

"It's okay girl, shh. I'll be okay." I didn't truly know if I would be. Felony stood her ground, but walked no further. The dread of stepping closer to whatever was making the noise made my heart hammer loudly in my chest. As I took a single step into the room, my phone vibrated. The crying continued, this time louder.

Slowly, I read the message, now horrified at what I might find.

Rose is here with me and my dad. Attached was a picture of my beautiful daughter with spaghetti sauce on her porcelain features. I looked into the crib which had a lumpy figure moving within the blanket. I tried to rationalize what it was that was wailing so maliciously. An odd humorless thought of a vengeful skunk permeated my brain.

Taking a breath, removing the blanket, I fell back screaming in sheer terror.

Veronica's baby, my other daughter, had found its way to me.

The umbilical cord clung to the child and its stout features. Its skin, her skin, was mottled and red. Though she would have been twenty weeks old at the time, whatever epidermis that would have been forming gave a sinewy appearance, was battered by an unkempt forest floor. Dried leaves and mud were spattered on the creature. It had two overlarge glassy eyes that had a yellowed appearance in the sclera. 

She lacked a nose, but instead had a pushed in slit and cleft palate where the nose should be. The impossible horror of her mouth had two sets of sharpened teeth on the top and bottom, and the mouth opened at a grimace that would be immaterial for a regular baby. The shape of the horror could almost be described as avian.

This undulating creature from my personal hell, climbed over the edge, and lowered itself to the floor. I scrambled back more, back toward the doorway, but hit the corner of the door frame, hurting myself in the process. With every movement it made, a feeble step, or it attempting to stand then falling on unformed legs with no joints to support it, an ungodly squelching noise came with it. It would hoist itself up on its two legs, and then fall forward clumsily on its talons. With every failed attempt to stand and walk, it shrieked in agony. As it inched ever closer to me, I could see a prehensile tongue flick out, much like a crawling lizard, wafting through the air, trying to determine where I was.

The terrible howl continued, Felony raising her own into the fray. The orchestra of madness reached its zenith, when courage finally found me.

I flicked on the bedroom light.

Gone was the murky dimness, the room now bathed in a comforting light.

The monstrosity, my unborn child, that terrible thing, was no longer there.

Any viscera it had left in both the bassinet, or the floor of Rose's room was gone. Felony and I both were confused, and still rattled from the experience.

"You saw that too girl?" The emerald green eyes of my cat gave me a knowing look.

My phone was vibrating. Six missed calls from Angie. What was perhaps only a minute was in actuality half an hour. I immediately called her back as I searched Rose's room for the malfeasance that lingered within it.

"Michael, are you okay?" She was stern, using her motherly voice. Angie only ever called me Michael when she was with Rose.

"A little rattled. I got some sleep but had a terrible nightmare."

"You don't sound so good, pizza was a bad call?"

"No hon, pizza is great. Listen-" I could hear movement in the living room. I lurched my body out and could see Felony playing with one of her toys. Her temperament was solid, so I felt safe for the moment. "I have to go for a bit of a drive, I gotta go up north about an hour to the other office for IT shenanigans, since I left early they wanted me to head over and check on some things with the new employees." It was a shitty lie, but I needed something.

"This late at night?" My wife saw through it immediately.

"Yeah, it's because I left early that they're making me do it. The other team leads that could be available don't have access to a car, I'm the only one that does." I fucking sucked at lying.

"Well, alright then. Hey, save some pizza for Rose. I wanna give her a small bite to see what she thinks."

"I only had a single slice before falling back asleep, there's plenty left."

"Okay, say bye to daddy Rosie!" Angie put the phone up to Rose on speaker. I could hear the beautiful babbling of my living daughter. I wept, as only a father could. I could see Rose for who she was now, and imagined who she would be in the future. I didn’t know if I would see it after tonight.

"Bye honey, daddy will be home late tonight! Be good for your mom!" We said our goodbyes, and I silently prayed for Rose.

I couldn't let this thing near her.

Something had to be done.

I cursed the weather, as it grew tumultuous on the drive toward the unborn child’s resting place. The rainfall began no sooner than I left my apartment. I said a possible final goodbye to Felony, and left a note for Angela. I admitted everything, told her about Veronica, of who she knew, but also the unborn daughter of whom I buried hastily, that she did not know about.

The image still vexed me, the unborn girl who was never meant to be. Though I didn't hear her cries as I drove, the thunder-crash and lightning gave all the pageantry of her misery. I couldn't be certain that my plan would work, though I had to try.

In my hasty preparation on my way to the end at the beginning, I searched the internet for curses. Any sort of malignant power, anything related to harm done to children. Aside from the biblical threat from Jesus Christ Himself warning me of the fate of gnashing teeth and great weeping I would receive for my transgressions I found a single hit.

Poroniec.

The word was Slavic in origin, and belonged to a subset of Scandinavian folklore that related to the mistreatment of unborn children. I didn't know what she was, but she certainly had been mistreated all those years ago. Of the few stories perpetuated from any folk stories, or video games that strung similar chords, the end result to break the curse was the same.

Make it right.

I would give her a proper burial, hopefully appeasing her.

Eventually, I reached the same hairpin turn which once held a fallen tree. Though it was a few years since our crash, I could still see the area of the forest the mustang had ruined. There was an overgrowth, but nothing I couldn't navigate. I had a flashlight clipped to my hi visibility overcoat, as well as reflective tape to help mark my passageway back to my car.

Before I could make my way down the precarious embankment toward my destination, a horrible screech of tires and crash of metal interrupted any thoughts I had. Though I believed I had pulled over far enough, the rain caused visibility to be poor, and as such a tractor trailer slammed into my car. The resulting aftershock launched me over the guard rail, and I tumbled headfirst into a thicket of darkness.

A familiar sensation overtook me as I fell. I could see the past as it had happened, I felt all the rolls of the mustang I was once in match this future that I had yet to experience. I could see Veronica, panicking in the car, holding onto her belly. Despite all things I had believed, it relieved me to see her in her last moments show love to the child we could have had. I felt my body strike something with a wet thud and I passed out.

I woke, an unknown amount of time later. The rain was still falling, though not as harshly. I sucked wind and checked my body for injuries. My ankle was twisted completely around, the pain was indescribable. Like one thousand tiny knives all cut it at once, from every angle. I checked my flashlight, relieved to see it still worked. Through the murky bramble of wet and autumn leaves, I was shocked to see the site of our crash.

I wasn't sure if I should thank God or curse Him.

I stood, weakly, looking for a branch to help support my weight, luckily there were thick enough sticks I could cobble together a makeshift crutch. Hobbling my way to where I had buried her, or at least where I thought I had buried her, I could see a disturbance in the ground.

It had been years, but I was prepared in the event wildlife had got to her. Digging up the hastily dug grave I once had created for her, I found small lumps of viscera which I assumed to be remnants of my little girl. I cried, thinking of Rose. What a fate that could have been hers. Would I bury her like this too? How could I have been so uncaring?

The task at hand, with pain and blood slowly ebbing from my wounded ankle, I resolved to make things right. I took whatever discarded rotted lumps of meat that were within the hole and wrapped them from a piece of my garment. I reburied them and used two sticks to mark the grave site. I prayed the Lord's Prayer, weeping through the verses.

My breathing had become ragged. I removed the flashlight from my coat and re-examined myself. I could feel a piercing pain in my abdomen, as the rain still fell, it was hard to see what was wrong, but I wasn't sure I would have much more time to do what needed to be done. I finished the grave, scrawling her name into the cross of sticks. My ruined fingernails and broken body finally sighed as I finished with her name.

Anna.

My work was completed. I leaned back, against the closest tree to the grave. Terror overcame me again as the same putrescent creature in Rose's bed crawled from just beyond the gloom in the forest. It was still frightfully deformed, and repulsive to look at. The rain pinging against its broken body made it shudder. For the first time since I laid eyes upon the creature, I felt pity. What sort of father could leave his daughter alone, in such a condition. I swallowed, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Anna. Come here, come sit with daddy..." 

If it could be called a 'smile' the multiple rows of teeth all at once twisted into a childlike grin. It didn't hurry toward me, but crawled with a hastened speed. The smell of it was unbearable, the rotted flesh of a carcass mixed with spoiled meat. I laughed mirthlessly knowing now for certain what had made the rustling in the shrub those few nights ago.

The prehensile tongue came out and licked one of the glassy yellow eyes, bulging from its horrible face. The crying began to waver. It was replaced with a strange cooing noise emerging from the mons-, no, from Anna. No longer was I plagued by its caterwauling. My heart felt at ease, and my body less heavy.

"I did you wrong Anna, but no more. I've marked where I left you, and I've named you. I will always love you, just as much as Rose. I did this for her, and for you." I wasn't sure if she could understand me, but the unsettling fetal anomaly looked and listened to what I had to say. If it could comprehend me, I hoped that my words reached it. I felt as though I was forgiven. The mottled burden, my unborn daughter Anna, closed its murky eyes and began to snore, near the wound in my abdomen.

"I'm sorry." Was the last thing I said, as I stroked her coarse skin atop her head. Soon, everything went dark, and I fell away into the embrace of nothingness.

They found me a day later, half starved with severe blood loss. This was due to the letter I left my wife. I don't recall many questions, though I was in no condition to answer any of them. I believe one of the responding EMT's asked me 'Who's Anna?'. I just laughed.

Couldn't he see?

I was later committed, as I felt I was thoroughly unwell. It was mostly my choice, which Angie and Clyde respected. I told them about what I had experienced.

They didn't believe me. Not many did.

They still visited me regularly, and Angie remarried after a few years. Rose grew into a fine young woman, and she still called me dad. I told her to be mindful of her mother, and listen to her step-father. Rose would tell me all about her school, her grades, and boys she liked. It was a sense of normalcy, though nothing could ever truly be normal again. Her sister was often upset that I never introduced her, but I told her time and time again Rose wasn't ready yet.

Clyde would visit from time to time. He looked at me as though I was a caged animal. Despite his wariness, Clyde listened to what I had to say and believed me when I told him about Anna.

He asked me what Anna looked like. 

I had attempted to draw her once, from my memory, foggy as it was. Every time I put pen to paper the image wouldn't look quite right. The doctors who had approved my drawings deemed me unfit for re-entry. I soon stopped trying to explain what I could see, or who was there if only to be left alone to my own devices.

But Anna was with me. Her many rows of teeth and mottled skin. Her beautiful glassy eyes and prehensile tongue, which would affectionately bathe me in kisses whenever I returned to my cot, in the room I was allowed. She was a good girl, I was glad that I had her. Her angelic wings would spread out and cover us while we napped together.

I loved her, and rocked her to sleep nightly, ensuring she never cried again.

My precious daughter. My little angel, Anna.

Rebirthed and Unburied

I slowly paced back and forth through the upper apartment of the entire home we were renting from an unsavory landlord. Despite his searching for answers to his life's problems at the bottom of a bottle, he cobbled together a two story home which gave safe harbor to my quaint family.

My daughter, Rose, was finally fast asleep, gripping my loose white tee shirt. I sighed quietly with relief, as this was not the first night we had trouble putting her down for extended sleep.

Rose had just hit the milestone of seven months old, by now she was able to sleep mostly through the night, providing much needed sleep for myself and her mother by not requiring feeding every two hours. For the first few days as a seven month old, she was as precious as could be, wistfully snoring away the moonlit hours with no crying or fussing, allowing some hard earned rest to her parents. While I could function for five hours minimum, my wife struggled more with the lack of sleep. I did right by my wife, offering endless support. It was the least I could do after she pushed our eight pound seven ounce miracle free from her 'guttyworks'.

It was an interesting time being a parent, I couldn't help but smile as I sat on our sectional couch in the living room, finally allowing my eyes to close for the night, my daughter safely deposited into her crib. No sooner did I relax, did a cacophonous wailing echo throughout our apartment.

Bolting upright, I quickly strode into my daughters room, opening the door gently as I possibly could to minimize any distress the poor child was dealing with. Despite the incessant wailing, Rose calmly slept. Her mouth did not move, nor did she have any expression of pain across her cherub face. She looked warm, comfortable, and altogether unbothered by the situation. I rested my hand upon her crib that I built myself staring at her muffled movements in the darkness of her room.

As my sleepy parent brain adjusted, I could still hear the crying, though it was coming from another part of the upstairs floor. I crept around slowly, as my wife was still fast asleep in bed, only to find our black cat, Felony, wide awake and sitting at the sliding glass door to our back deck. Her tail twitched, and brushed the cold linoleum as her ears perked up at the increasingly distressing wailing.

It sounded just like Rose on her worst day, if she absolutely wasn't having it. Walking up to Felony, I scratched her backside. She calmly turned her emerald eyes toward my beleaguered face and let out a quiet meow, as if whispering to me to not disturb whatever was making that terrible racket.

Sitting on the cold linoleum floor, staring out at the night sky offered me some perspective. Though the crying was worse from this part of the house, it appeared as though it was coming from below our deck. I checked my smart watch. The ruddy cheeks and baggy eyes of mine formed a strange reflection overlapping with Mickey Mouse's whimsical eternal smile from the sixties. The digital clock read 4:08AM.

I opened the glass door to the back porch and stepped outside, with Felony in tow.

"Call Clyde." I whispered into my smart watch. The silent vibrato buzzed in the quiet dawn of the not-yet-morning.

"Mikey." The voice responded, awake, as I thought he would be.

"Hey, I just put Rose down, do you think you can-"

"I'm so sorry, son. I gotta get better at this." His quick apology assured my suspicions. Clyde, my wife's father, had been living below us for the better part of a decade, helping our small family grow while also subsidizing the cost of rent to the two story thing our landlord called a house. 

The old-timer was good for money, and loved Rose, as she was the first legitimate grand-child he was ever able to hold in his arms. Clyde had a proclivity for all kinds of action and horror movies, habitually watching them at a volume wholly reserved for AC/DC concerts. Aside from that one quirk, he was a stellar father-in-law, and did right by us.

"Thanks man, I'll get you a coffee tomorrow."

"Appreciate it, kiddo. Welcome to raising children."

"How am I doing so far?" I asked, knowing he'd be straight with me.

"Better than most. I'll let you get some sleep." With that, he disconnected the call. I sighed and went back into the house. The caterwauling had stopped, and Felony was uninterested in the sliding glass door. Her attention was now fixated on the rustling of the shrubs I couldn’t be bothered to maintain on a regular basis.

A terrible smell emanated from them, likely a skunk, though I had never smelled one so foul. I gave Felony some treats, partly as a reward for helping me solve the mystery of the wailing baby and partly to lure her back in from the impending skunk attack. I then shut the door, got comfortable on our sectional couch, and fell fast asleep.

Four hours later with coffee in hand, I knocked on the lower door to our house. Clyde groggily opened the door and scratched the two caterpillars on his face he called eyebrows.

"Here." He swiped at his mug, but I pulled back letting him suffer for a moment. "I don't want to be a bother but the headphones we gave you last Christmas, how come you don't use those?" I then handed him his coffee, which he graciously accepted.

"They aren't loud enough." He took a swig of the morning brown and waggled an eyebrow. "I mean, well, they broke."

"How did they break?" The cost wasn't the issue, we could easily get him another pair, but it was upsetting that a man so good with older technology could scarcely keep a pair of analog headphones in good condition.

"Tried to turn them to max volume, with that little wheel do-hickey. It snapped and broke the volume control. I can't get any sound in them anymore. Sorry." He looked downcast. I suddenly felt as if I had kicked a small puppy. I relented.

"Well, alright man. Just, no more late night horror movies anymore. That wailing was terrible." I paused when he furrowed his brow in confusion. "What?"

"Mikey, I was watching Casablanca."

"Good one." I wasn't a fan of the classics, but there was no way in hell a crying baby was in Casablanca.

"No, seriously. Look." Clyde beckoned me into his neatly kept apartment. He had an expansive collection of physical movies and multiple combination DVD & Blu-Ray players. The prize of his collection was a vintage Sony SL8000 Beta-max player. It rarely saw use, but sat atop a pedestal closely among the VHS devices that absolutely dominated the market at the time.

On his coffee table, with his Marlboro pack of cigarettes and a drained glass of bourbon, still sitting next to a mostly full bottle, was the VHS copy of Casablanca. The tape that rested in the sleeve had been inserted into the fourth most available VCR closest to one of his old tube television sets that he utilized for the experience.

"Refresh my memory, do any babies cry in that movie?" Maybe I was wrong. Maybe when Humphrey Bogart said 'Here's looking at you, kid.' It could have been possible that his delivery, although perfect, would have upset a baby nearby.

"Mikey, you're a new parent. This is the first time you and Angela have ever done something like this. Look, go to work. I'm off today so I can take Angie and Rosie out for some dinner and you can catch up on some sleep when you get home." I nodded along to his prattling. I knew what I heard last night, I didn't think it was some fluke. Even Felony heard something.

I was unfamiliar with what kinds of noises a skunk could make, but it certainly wouldn’t be crying.

 I figured Clyde was right. I just wanted to be a good dad. This opportunity of fatherhood was something that had happened once before, but was ripped away from me.

"Yeah, okay. You're right. Thanks."

"We're family. You're a good dad. Even the best of dads need a break now and again." Clyde clapped me on the shoulder, and I left for work.

I couldn't focus a lot on my tasks that day. The mundane office job I had was better than most. Free coffee, a gym across the hall, lots of downtime between calls on the weekends. Something kept digging at me. Clyde called me a good dad, which was kind, but I'm sure he wouldn't if he knew some of the earlier choices I made in life.

I was sweet on his Angela. The anatomy of our love blossomed when I first met her at Church. Angie and I had been in love for a few years, and I took it slow. But before Angie, there was Veronica. She was the first woman I had married. It was a different love than Angie. Angie was safe, and she had a good work ethic. She wasn't about taking risks, nor was she unpleasant to be around. She had a beautiful smile and was traditional in all aspects of home-keeping. I had to fight her just to do chores around the house. But Veronica, she was something else entirely.

Veronica oozed freedom. She was an untamed mythical dragon forever soaring among the clouds, this woman could turn any mundane encounter into an adventure. She lived fast, and hard, and loved just as equally. When I had proposed to her all those years ago, I was sure she'd laugh in my face. But she surprised me.

"Okay lover-boy. Make me yours." She was the Mary-Jane to my Peter Parker.

Everything she did was crazy, and I was just happy to be along for the ride. She was full of beautiful life, and vim, until she got pregnant. Veronica changed completely.

Around her friends she was still this legend among legends, but she slowly turned insular. No longer did she feel like going out, or doing the fun things we did. She wasn't about drinking, or drugs or partying that way, but you can be damned sure she would be the first at the front of the concert venue, dancing like crazy to whatever songs were on the playlist.

At twenty weeks, when we found out it was going to be a girl. Veronica snapped. She practically shoved her denim skirt back down and pushed the ultrasound tech to the ground. I hastily apologized while I chased after my then pregnant wife. She got in the driver's seat of our mustang and glared daggers at me as I got in.

"I can't do girls Mikey. Nuh-uh, no way." She was upset, and now had been venting, driving erratically across the back roads that wove through the dense forests which would take us back home. Her eyes were tear stained, and she would constantly take her hand off the wheel to rub away the rogue tears with the heel of her palm. Though I hated it, she still smoked small puffs of cigarettes, but when she was livid the long drag of nicotine was the only master that could tame her foul temper. Veronica would only let go of the wheel once, to fetch a belmont from within her purse, annihilating the dart much like Dracula wished he could.

"Why not? I thought you'd be thrilled. You'd make the coolest mom I'd ever know." The compliment was lost on her. I held onto the whoa fuck handle in the passenger seat, regretting not pulling her out of the drivers seat before we began this cursed voyage.

"No way. My mom was a cunt, she treated me like shit, like I was nothing." Tears streamed down her face.

"That doesn't mean you'd treat our little girl like that. It's a blessing babe, how good will it feel to be an even better mother then your mom?" I never would get anything further from Veronica as it was destined a tree would fall in our path. As her one hand was free wiping away her tears, she overcompensated with the other, lurching the car over the cliff down into the forest below.

I don't remember much of what happened during the rolling of our car, but I remember being thrown quite a distance. Checking myself found wounds I found I could still stand, though my locomotion was poor. Feeling around the vital areas, I only found blood when touching the back of my head. When I broke from the delirium, what I saw would be etched into my memory forever.

Veronica was dead, her neck snapped and bent at an odd angle. Her eyes and mouth were permanently in a surprised expression, as the vertebrae of her spine stuck out from her neck, without breaking skin. There seemed to be an internal pooling of blood from the odd angle of her neck. The bulging nightmare gawped from broken branches at me, a euclidian tapestry of unending horror.

Though it was assuredly broken, looking like a pimple yet to pop, the swelling red liquid rose to the point that it just couldn't penetrate her skin. Something must have detached from the car, as her belly was split wide open. The morbid cesarean performed on her by what was likely car or tree shrapnel was horrific.

Her lower intestine had sagged somewhat, and the umbilical cord complete with what was still my developing daughter rested just below on the ground. Out from the majesty of her eviscerated womb, our unborn daughter who was still attached to the mother quivered in the cold.

I stood stock still, shocked at the carnage that lay before me. I could only stare at the underdeveloped infant that was my unnamed daughter as it struggled to survive. Overcome by the accident, and bleeding from my head, I didn't know what to do. The poor child, not yet made for this earth, expired, its little lungs unable to suck air or cry. The horrible noise it made as it took its last breaths on this plane of existence were mucus filled cries, not loud enough to be anything considered human, but they would haunt me to this day.

At the time, all I could do was weep. I took the discarded remains of our child and placed it further ahead in the woods, hastily burying it with leaves and twigs. Her glassy eyes looked at me from beyond the veil. 

I don't know if it was shame on that small face that glared at me, or it was upset at its circumstance. It was the best I could do at the time. I later lied to the paramedics who arrived on scene upon me calling for assistance and said I had been out for some time. I made a great effort to hide my tracks leading to our unnamed baby's grave. 

I didn't want to ever relive the memory of the alien creature of my wife's insides, warbling as it died. 

The guilt would still bubble over sometimes as I held Rose tight to my chest. I lamented the life un-lived from my first child, the one that would never be.

"Mikey, you okay?" Snapping out of my haze, far from the hellish forest, the buzzing lights of the call center centered me. I turned to see one of the other leaders on duty waving a hand in my face. "Getting enough sleep there, bud?"

"Yeah, sorry. Parenthood is tough. This is you in three weeks Michelle, though I figure since you're growing the child you'll probably be more tired." She smiled and rubbed her belly to my response.

"Yeah, I start my maternity leave tomorrow. I'm excited. Rick keeps asking how you've been doing and I tell him you look tired each and every day. He said he's gonna take some paternal leave to help me for the first little bit."

"I advocate for that. I would take more if I could, to be honest. Tell him to take two months, not one."

"I will, thanks. Hey, it's not super busy, I can cover for you if you wanna go home?" She didn't have to ask me twice, I clocked out from my desk and gave her a hug. She waved as I raced home to go to bed.

The drive home was four minutes and eight seconds. I was still groggy by the time I climbed the stairs and unlocked the door. Angie was still home, and Rose was in good spirits. I mumbled to her one word; 'sleep' and passed out on the couch. I could hear Rose babbling happily and in the ether of my dreams, eventually I heard the front door open and then close.

The smell of pizza woke me out of my coma. I found a note on the box:

Triple cheese, just as you like it. We're out for dinner. My dad said you needed a night off, and Rose needs to learn about restaurants. Plus I'm excited for the 'kids under three eat free' deal. We'll be home later.

Love, Angie

The first bite of the slightly cold, but still incredibly greasy pizza uplifted my spirits. I cried a single tear of joy that my creature comforts were still looked after by my wife. Angie was certainly a lover more true than the sun, gifted by Christ himself. My father once told me that marriage is split sixty-forty. The trick of the split is that both halves of the partnership were always trying to be the sixty in that split.

The bliss I felt did not last long as Felony suddenly darted towards the back of the apartment, and sat stock still at Rose's bedroom door.

I heard a muffled cry from her bedroom.

My heart leapt into my chest. I re-read the note Angie had left me. "Rose needs to learn about restaurants." Clearly Rose wasn't here. This certainly wasn't a restaurant.

What the fuck.

What was making that God-awful noise?

I sent Angie a text: Rose is with you, right? It was a stupid question, obviously, but I had to be sure. I didn't get a response right away so I slowly began the long walk to the back room. Every crease in the floorboards and creak from my weight caused me great unease.

What was happening?

What am I walking into?

Why is it upset?

What is it?

More questions raced through my mind as I slowly opened the door to the bedroom. I didn't turn on the light. The only ambient lighting that shone through the curtains was the setting sun. The crying continued, though it wasn't as loud as it was before. Felony suddenly stood up, her hackles raised as she made a low hiss, not wanting to step a single one of her paws into the room.

"It's okay girl, shh. I'll be okay." I didn't truly know if I would be. Felony stood her ground, but walked no further. The dread of stepping closer to whatever was making the noise made my heart hammer loudly in my chest. As I took a single step into the room, my phone vibrated. The crying continued, this time louder.

Slowly, I read the message, now horrified at what I might find.

Rose is here with me and my dad. Attached was a picture of my beautiful daughter with spaghetti sauce on her porcelain features. I looked into the crib which had a lumpy figure moving within the blanket. I tried to rationalize what it was that was wailing so maliciously. An odd humorless thought of a vengeful skunk permeated my brain.

Taking a breath, removing the blanket, I fell back screaming in sheer terror.

Veronica's baby, my other daughter, had found its way to me.

The umbilical cord clung to the child and its stout features. Its skin, her skin, was mottled and red. Though she would have been twenty weeks old at the time, whatever epidermis that would have been forming gave a sinewy appearance, was battered by an unkempt forest floor. Dried leaves and mud were spattered on the creature. It had two overlarge glassy eyes that had a yellowed appearance in the sclera. 

She lacked a nose, but instead had a pushed in slit and cleft palate where the nose should be. The impossible horror of her mouth had two sets of sharpened teeth on the top and bottom, and the mouth opened at a grimace that would be immaterial for a regular baby. The shape of the horror could almost be described as avian.

This undulating creature from my personal hell, climbed over the edge, and lowered itself to the floor. I scrambled back more, back toward the doorway, but hit the corner of the door frame, hurting myself in the process. With every movement it made, a feeble step, or it attempting to stand then falling on unformed legs with no joints to support it, an ungodly squelching noise came with it. It would hoist itself up on its two legs, and then fall forward clumsily on its talons. With every failed attempt to stand and walk, it shrieked in agony. As it inched ever closer to me, I could see a prehensile tongue flick out, much like a crawling lizard, wafting through the air, trying to determine where I was.

The terrible howl continued, Felony raising her own into the fray. The orchestra of madness reached its zenith, when courage finally found me.

I flicked on the bedroom light.

Gone was the murky dimness, the room now bathed in a comforting light.

The monstrosity, my unborn child, that terrible thing, was no longer there.

Any viscera it had left in both the bassinet, or the floor of Rose's room was gone. Felony and I both were confused, and still rattled from the experience.

"You saw that too girl?" The emerald green eyes of my cat gave me a knowing look.

My phone was vibrating. Six missed calls from Angie. What was perhaps only a minute was in actuality half an hour. I immediately called her back as I searched Rose's room for the malfeasance that lingered within it.

"Michael, are you okay?" She was stern, using her motherly voice. Angie only ever called me Michael when she was with Rose.

"A little rattled. I got some sleep but had a terrible nightmare."

"You don't sound so good, pizza was a bad call?"

"No hon, pizza is great. Listen-" I could hear movement in the living room. I lurched my body out and could see Felony playing with one of her toys. Her temperament was solid, so I felt safe for the moment. "I have to go for a bit of a drive, I gotta go up north about an hour to the other office for IT shenanigans, since I left early they wanted me to head over and check on some things with the new employees." It was a shitty lie, but I needed something.

"This late at night?" My wife saw through it immediately.

"Yeah, it's because I left early that they're making me do it. The other team leads that could be available don't have access to a car, I'm the only one that does." I fucking sucked at lying.

"Well, alright then. Hey, save some pizza for Rose. I wanna give her a small bite to see what she thinks."

"I only had a single slice before falling back asleep, there's plenty left."

"Okay, say bye to daddy Rosie!" Angie put the phone up to Rose on speaker. I could hear the beautiful babbling of my living daughter. I wept, as only a father could. I could see Rose for who she was now, and imagined who she would be in the future. I didn’t know if I would see it after tonight.

"Bye honey, daddy will be home late tonight! Be good for your mom!" We said our goodbyes, and I silently prayed for Rose.

I couldn't let this thing near her.

Something had to be done.

I cursed the weather, as it grew tumultuous on the drive toward the unborn child’s resting place. The rainfall began no sooner than I left my apartment. I said a possible final goodbye to Felony, and left a note for Angela. I admitted everything, told her about Veronica, of who she knew, but also the unborn daughter of whom I buried hastily, that she did not know about.

The image still vexed me, the unborn girl who was never meant to be. Though I didn't hear her cries as I drove, the thunder-crash and lightning gave all the pageantry of her misery. I couldn't be certain that my plan would work, though I had to try.

In my hasty preparation on my way to the end at the beginning, I searched the internet for curses. Any sort of malignant power, anything related to harm done to children. Aside from the biblical threat from Jesus Christ Himself warning me of the fate of gnashing teeth and great weeping I would receive for my transgressions I found a single hit.

Poroniec.

The word was Slavic in origin, and belonged to a subset of Scandinavian folklore that related to the mistreatment of unborn children. I didn't know what she was, but she certainly had been mistreated all those years ago. Of the few stories perpetuated from any folk stories, or video games that strung similar chords, the end result to break the curse was the same.

Make it right.

I would give her a proper burial, hopefully appeasing her.

Eventually, I reached the same hairpin turn which once held a fallen tree. Though it was a few years since our crash, I could still see the area of the forest the mustang had ruined. There was an overgrowth, but nothing I couldn't navigate. I had a flashlight clipped to my hi visibility overcoat, as well as reflective tape to help mark my passageway back to my car.

Before I could make my way down the precarious embankment toward my destination, a horrible screech of tires and crash of metal interrupted any thoughts I had. Though I believed I had pulled over far enough, the rain caused visibility to be poor, and as such a tractor trailer slammed into my car. The resulting aftershock launched me over the guard rail, and I tumbled headfirst into a thicket of darkness.

A familiar sensation overtook me as I fell. I could see the past as it had happened, I felt all the rolls of the mustang I was once in match this future that I had yet to experience. I could see Veronica, panicking in the car, holding onto her belly. Despite all things I had believed, it relieved me to see her in her last moments show love to the child we could have had. I felt my body strike something with a wet thud and I passed out.

I woke, an unknown amount of time later. The rain was still falling, though not as harshly. I sucked wind and checked my body for injuries. My ankle was twisted completely around, the pain was indescribable. Like one thousand tiny knives all cut it at once, from every angle. I checked my flashlight, relieved to see it still worked. Through the murky bramble of wet and autumn leaves, I was shocked to see the site of our crash.

I wasn't sure if I should thank God or curse Him.

I stood, weakly, looking for a branch to help support my weight, luckily there were thick enough sticks I could cobble together a makeshift crutch. Hobbling my way to where I had buried her, or at least where I thought I had buried her, I could see a disturbance in the ground.

It had been years, but I was prepared in the event wildlife had got to her. Digging up the hastily dug grave I once had created for her, I found small lumps of viscera which I assumed to be remnants of my little girl. I cried, thinking of Rose. What a fate that could have been hers. Would I bury her like this too? How could I have been so uncaring?

The task at hand, with pain and blood slowly ebbing from my wounded ankle, I resolved to make things right. I took whatever discarded rotted lumps of meat that were within the hole and wrapped them from a piece of my garment. I reburied them and used two sticks to mark the grave site. I prayed the Lord's Prayer, weeping through the verses. My breathing had become ragged. I removed the flashlight from my coat and re-examined myself. I could feel a piercing pain in my abdomen, as the rain still fell, it was hard to see what was wrong, but I wasn't sure I would have much more time to do what needed to be done. I finished the grave, scrawling her name into the cross of sticks. My ruined fingernails and broken body finally sighed as I finished with her name.

Anna.

My work was completed. I leaned back, against the closest tree to the grave. Terror overcame me again as the same putrescent creature in Rose's bed crawled from just beyond the gloom in the forest. It was still frightfully deformed, and repulsive to look at. The rain pinging against its broken body made it shudder. For the first time since I laid eyes upon the creature, I felt pity. What sort of father could leave his daughter alone, in such a condition. I swallowed, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Anna. Come here, come sit with daddy..." 

If it could be called a 'smile' the multiple rows of teeth all at once twisted into a childlike grin. It didn't hurry toward me, but crawled with a hastened speed. The smell of it was unbearable, the rotted flesh of a carcass mixed with spoiled meat. I laughed mirthlessly knowing now for certain what had made the rustling in the shrub those few nights ago.

The prehensile tongue came out and licked one of the glassy yellow eyes, bulging from its horrible face. The crying began to waver. It was replaced with a strange cooing noise emerging from the mons-, no, from Anna. No longer was I plagued by its caterwauling. My heart felt at ease, and my body less heavy.

"I did you wrong Anna, but no more. I've marked where I left you, and I've named you. I will always love you, just as much as Rose. I did this for her, and for you." I wasn't sure if she could understand me, but the unsettling fetal anomaly looked and listened to what I had to say. If it could comprehend me, I hoped that my words reached it. I felt as though I was forgiven. The mottled burden, my unborn daughter Anna, closed its murky eyes and began to snore, near the wound in my abdomen.

"I'm sorry." Was the last thing I said, as I stroked her coarse skin atop her head. Soon, everything went dark, and I fell away into the embrace of nothingness.

They found me a day later, half starved with severe blood loss. This was due to the letter I left my wife. I don't recall many questions, though I was in no condition to answer any of them. I believe one of the responding EMT's asked me 'Who's Anna?'. I just laughed.

Couldn't he see?

I was later committed, as I felt I was thoroughly unwell. It was mostly my choice, which Angie and Clyde respected. I told them about what I had experienced.

They didn't believe me. Not many did.

They still visited me regularly, and Angie remarried after a few years. Rose grew into a fine young woman, and she still called me dad. I told her to be mindful of her mother, and listen to her step-father. Rose would tell me all about her school, her grades, and boys she liked. It was a sense of normalcy, though nothing could ever truly be normal again. Her sister was often upset that I never introduced her, but I told her time and time again Rose wasn't ready yet.

Clyde would visit from time to time. He looked at me as though I was a caged animal. Despite his wariness, Clyde listened to what I had to say and believed me when I told him about Anna.

He asked me what Anna looked like. 

I had attempted to draw her once, from my memory, foggy as it was. Every time I put pen to paper the image wouldn't look quite right. The doctors who had approved my drawings deemed me unfit for re-entry. I soon stopped trying to explain what I could see, or who was there if only to be left alone to my own devices.

But Anna was with me. Her many rows of teeth and mottled skin. Her beautiful glassy eyes and prehensile tongue, which would affectionately bathe me in kisses whenever I returned to my cot, in the room I was allowed. She was a good girl, I was glad that I had her. Her angelic wings would spread out and cover us while we napped together.

I loved her, and rocked her to sleep nightly, ensuring she never cried again.

My precious daughter. My little angel, Anna.