As A Mother Hushes Her Spawn

She walked to her car with her eyes cast down, something she was doing by force as to not look up at her daughter’s bedroom window. “Keep looking down, keep looking down,” she chanted monotonously in her head.

The house was a three-story Victorian manor that leaned and slumped to the right. Once, fine deep emerald painted shutters framed fresh glass. She knew because she had seen a picture in the parlor. Now, all those antique shutters save three had disappeared and one was hanging on its last leg, begging to be snatched quick like a child feigning for the tooth fairy’s gift.

In front of the house was a small pond in a perfect circle. The drive way curved around it, but no matter how many times she circled this pond, no matter what time of day or how the sun’s rays hit, could she see more than a finger nails length deep. The water lay stagnant and thick black with a pulsating green circumference.

The manor was now used as a boarding house for those who couldn’t afford an Airbnb closer to the town’s center. An old woman about 80 with rotted black teeth had led her to the stairwell in a wheel chair and pointed up to the direction of the room without speaking then noisily wheeled into the bowels of the house.

Yesterday, when she arrived, there were seven other beat down Buicks parked so she had to veer further, adjacent to the pond. All seven cars were gone now and her lone tan sedan looked out of place. She rounded the hood of the car and stopped dead in her tracks as her breath caught in her chest.

The view of her daughter’s upstairs bedroom window was reflected before her in the murky pond. There, standing before the window, was a tall black shadow. It was unmoving with no distinct features yet seemed to glare at her. She forced her eyes shut, took a deep breath and got into the car.

She drove through dark winding roads littered with dead fallen leaves until she arrived at the town’s Main Street containing one traffic light with a few old buildings along a forgotten train track. She parked outside the General Store and watched the fog roll in. A winter blanket was coming to cover this sleepy town. She could feel it and shivered. This place was far from the sunny city she had recently fled.

The cashier was the first person who spoke to her in weeks. “Rat problem?” he asked.

“Something like that,” she replied, the words coming out her throat in croaks. Sweat dripped from her brow as she bagged her goods and swiftly left.

Night had come early as she pulled back into the Victorian drive. She headed straight to the kitchen not daring look at pond or window. The place was deserted so she unscrewed the cap of her new whiskey and took a few long draws. She mechanically opened a tomato soup can, poured it into a weathered bowl, placed it in the microwave and watched it spin madly around without blinking. She added a few ingredients before blowing on the hot red liquid to cool it like only mothers do.

She carefully held the bowl of soup and turned to leave the kitchen before placing it back down. She reached for the now half empty whiskey and took a few more pulls. The bowl of soup, back in her hands, trembled as she slowly climbed one set of stairs then another to the third-floor rented room on the left.

She took a deep breath, then slowly turned the knob and opened the door. Her daughter lay still on the bed, the blanket up to her neck. The tall black shadow stood in the corner. She focused on her child’s pale face, keeping the shadowed figure on the outer recesses of her eyes and mind. As she walked to her child, the shadow grew in the corner, it’s waist at the window as its top half loomed over her on the ceiling. She could feel its eyes on her. The whiskey helped.

She calmly walked to her child’s bed side, put the soup on the adjacent table and sat on the bed. She placed the back of her hand on her child’s cheek then brow and pulled away, the light touch burning her skin. She shook the pain out of her hand then used it to spoon feed the soupy concoction into her daughter’s dry open lips.

She had successfully placed three spoonfuls into her daughter’s mouth before her eyes weakly opened. The young girl started to cry. “No, Mama. Please, Mama. Please. No.”

The mother hushed her spawn and this angered the child. The child tried to fight, but was too weak. The shadow in the corner kept growing and growing, filling the room with black. She felt the pressure on all sides and imagined the black demon’s open mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth looming above her head, but she didn’t dare look up or down or side to side. She looked only at her hand as it mechanically swatted the child’s hand away, pooled sticky red soup into a yellowing silver spoon and placed its contents in her daughter’s mouth which she held ajar with her other hand.

The soup bowl was almost drained. “Just a little more, my sweet girl. This will make everything better. Please trust me, child. Please.”

The child became still. Her hazel almond eyes relaxed, unblinking. Tears escaped down the mother’s cheek as she leaned forward to her baby. Suddenly, the child’s head flung back, the sound of her neck snapped in the silent night. Her tiny body convulsed rapidly. Her head flung left then right. Her jaw opened wider than it should and thousands of flies belched out of her abdomen, filling the room.

The mother backed away slowly towards the door. The child twisted grotesquely as she levitated off her bed. Her arms came up and her legs down as she twisted into a cross. In the bed indent the child had left, maggots curled and crawled, forming a mass.

The mother opened the door, ran down two flights of stairs and out into the night. She flung herself to the ground in her hurry and cried out to any God in the looming fog who might forgive a poor sinner. “What have I done to deserve this?” she screamed and screamed and screamed.

The other boarders came outside to see what all the commotion was about. A man ran out to the woman on the ground who looked half mad with a tear streaked face, muddy hands and blank eyes. He instinctually took her in his arms like a baby to comfort her, moving her from her knees to a seated position facing the pond. Her eyes didn’t want to, but they looked and, in the reflection, they saw it: the tall black shadowed figure and this time she knew it was glaring at her because its eye shone a bright blood red.

As she watched the window’s reflection, she saw another figure appear beside the shadowed demon, her daughter, her small head hardly clearing the window pane. “My daughter, my girl!” she screamed and pointed. The man who held her looked up to the window confused. No one was there.

The mother twisted out of the man’s arms to look at the window. The figure and her daughter beckoned with stares. As she locked eyes with the glowing red eyes of the demon she became calm, controlled. At the same time, another boarder came running down the stairs. “Call an ambulance! Call the police! Her daughter! Her daughter! She’s not breathing!” said the flustered boarder.

In the commotion, some boarders ran to their phones, others ran upstairs and the man holding the mother tried to coax her onto a seat on the front porch. Her tears had stopped and her strength came back tenfold. She pushed the man to the ground then clubbed his skull with a rock four times. She pushed passed someone dialing 911 and floated up the stairs in a fury.

In her rented room, her daughter lay lifeless on the bed, vomit and bile staining her chin and night dress. Three boarders hovered around the child checking for life and stumbling on what to do next. The shadowed demon watched from the corner. The mother held the bloodied rock high above her head and lurched towards the child. The three boarders panicked and tried to fight her off.

The mother screamed, “This will make everything better! She is possessed, I tell you! Possessed!” All four adults struggled on the child’s behalf as she lay with lazy eyes looking at nothing. The three boarders managed to back the mother away from the child as she clawed at them with her sturdy stone. They shoved her hard and her body broke the old glass window and fell three stories to the ground. The boarders looked over at her twisted figure in horror, but their attention was moved when the child stirred.

The mother came to on the ground. She couldn’t remember how she got here, like this. Her body was broken and she couldn’t turn her head to look up at the window. The small pond was only a few feet ahead so she army crawled to its mirror. In its reflection, the demon still stood tall as the other boarders fussed over the recovering child. The water before the mother rippled. She looked towards the center of the pond for the source of the ripple and saw her daughter waist deep, her skin, the milk of the poppy, her eyes, grey and hollow.

“Mama. It’s me. Mama, please, come here,” beckoned the small child. A weak smile formed on the mothers’ lips as she crawled into the dark water, deeper and deeper she went.

The police and paramedics arrived shortly thereafter. They surmised the mother had been poisoning the poor child then drowned herself in a fit of psychotic rage. They were able to revive the child and moved her swiftly into an ambulance. As the ambulance drove away, the child looked out of the vehicle’s back window and saw the police fishing her mother’s body out of the pond. The child looked at the dark shadowed demon standing in the corner and winked.