The Devil's Seed

It started with the eyes. He was so sweet as he played on the floor with his blocks and his wooden airplane and his toy guitar, babbling all the way. Ba ba ba ba ba. I watched him from the bay window as I sipped my morning tea. The sun spilled in in warm, thick billows and I relished the peace of that morning. It wasn’t a particularly rare morning or a morning that I had reason to think wouldn’t happen again but it will cling to me for the rest of my days, swimming in my blood and hiding behind my heart. 

I thought I was imagining things at first. Maybe I’m stressed, I thought, though I didn’t feel stressed in the slightest: my job had just reached the exact place I’d been hoping for, bills were paid, I was single and content without drama. Was it the light? 

He looked up at me, his chubby little hands gripping tightly the crumbs of the morning’s breakfast sandwich, and his eyes flashed. They flashed brightly with orange and red and infinity in a way that stole the heat from my center. I shrieked and my teacup jerked upward, spilling the tea over the front of my nightgown. I would have shrieked again at the scalding liquid but, to my surprise and relief, the transparent stain on my front was cold and I began to shake; I wasn’t sure if from the chill of the wetness or the fear of what I’d seen in my son’s eyes. 

He was smiling at me, though, with that gummy grin. His eyes had regained their normal blue and I felt my heart take a deep breath. I crawled on the floor over to him and touched his soft, warm cheek. He turned to gnaw on my thumb and I smiled. It was a smile of relief and a smile of hardwon affection as I’d learned to love him as he grew. 

I hadn’t always been happy with my situation. I’d recognized the symptoms of pregnancy late and been talked down from driving to, then entering, then following through at a clinic. Those months haunted me and the months following haunted me further as he began to kick and squirm and protest my lunch choice. “You’ll change your mind when you meet him,” they said. “It only seems scary now because you haven’t fallen in love with him yet,” I’d heard over and over again. “Give him a chance.” 

That mistake I had thought I’d made became a chubby, waddling, brown-haired baby who was the light of my life. I let him chew on my thumb a moment longer before I stood to go change my nightgown into clothes for the day. What I’d seen still unsettled me but I brushed it away with a shake of my head as a trick of my mind. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen something horrible, something unworldly, in my lifetime. 

As I pulled on a pair of jeans and a clean blouse, I heard his babbling again. I smiled as I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and listened as he rattled on. Deh deh deh deh deh. This time, though, his soft and sweet voice twisted into a growling, harsh sound I didn’t recognize by the end of his uttering. I ran out of my room to find him several feet from where I left him and up in the window sill across from where I’d sat. The glass window was wide open and the curtain was blowing in the breeze. I screamed and ran to him, arms out and fingers desperate to wrap around his little body. 

When I had him in my arms, I rolled him toward me and looked into his face. It was twisted in a familiar malformation and my arms began to shake as I looked at my baby with tears running down my face. His skin was ashen and his eyes flashed again and I knew where I’d seen it before. 

The worst night of my life was flush with eyes just like them, leering at me and smiling with horrible teeth as I clawed to get away and run. The grip on my arms and legs left wisps of ash and dust all over my skin as I kicked and slapped and pushed to release myself. The only reaction I received was the same raspy mumbling of a twisted figure. I set my son down gently despite my instinct to drop him. He began to crawl toward me and I slowly backed away but when he reached my leg and pushed himself up to look me in the eye, he was sweet again. His face was clear and he smiled at me with no teeth at all; only pink, soft gums. 

I picked him up once more, though my whole body shook and I felt weak simply standing. I had no idea what I was experiencing in my precious boy but I knew it wasn’t the first time. I knew what I was seeing was what I’d seen before in a vivid, waking nightmare from the year before. I began to cry. 

A teardrop fell from my cheek as I stared into his face, crying and begging to understand. His little fingers wrapped around a lock of my hair that dangled just in front of his face. He touched it gently and tugged only once. A coo escaped his lips and he smiled widely. He was trying to make me laugh through his own enthusiasm, as if to say, See, Mommy? I’m happy.

I pulled him close to me and pressed his little body to mine. He put both of his tiny hands around my neck and patted me as I continued to cry. Scores of psychiatrists and therapists had all said the same thing about my experience: 

Trauma caused hallucinations. 

Your brain was overloaded. 

Fear does crazy things. 

I had convinced myself they were right. I’d known that, in reality, those things don’t happen. Demons don’t come from Hell and men are simply men. It was my brain, my fear, my trauma, and my personal experience in my own head and I simply had to accept this one thing: it wasn’t real…

But now, I stared at my child in my one-bedroom apartment, alone and crying, and saw the same face I’d seen in the worst moment of all my twenty-six years. It was real. Hell was real because I was looking at the son of its depths. I was touching his dark hair that I’d given him as my own, small contribution. The blue eyes had been mine as well, but there was no trace of them now. Only brimstone looked back at me under dark lashes above that darling smile I fell in love with. I didn’t know what to do. 

So, I sat down on the floor with my child, the child I’d given life to and learned so fiercely to love, and I set him down, picked up one of his wooden blocks, and he smiled. I looked only once at his reaching little hands and imagined hook-like daggers sprouting from the tips of his pudgy fingers. I pictured his soft little back splitting open to reveal horrible, shredded wings lifting him into the air. They would lead him somewhere far away, somewhere where he could harm someone like the nightmare I’d faced harmed me…

But blessed me all the same. He reached with his soft fingers for the block and cooed with his tender voice and looked at me… and smiled again; no teeth, no fangs, no rotten stink of flesh; just milk and strained peaches and cereal. My tears began to roll again, just as heavily as they had before but I didn’t shake. I smiled at my baby, then I handed him the block.