I love my daughter I really do, but my god is she a little brat. Not your run of the mill little brat either… like this kid is six years old and has an unfathomable comprehension of how to get under your skin in the worst possible ways.
Sure, she scribbles on the walls like normal kids, but she knows to use sharpies. Sure, she throws temper tantrums that could make your ears bleed like normal kids, but she reserves her best ear splitting fits for when we’re at church, or out grocery shopping.
This kid is sadistic, I swear. Once, she started wailing in the parking lot of a target that she wanted her real mommy…. She pulled herself free of my hand and ran to some sweet concerned old woman and convinced her she was being kidnapped. That was a lot of fun being put in handcuffs trying to explain to the cops that she’s just “going through a phase.” A “phase” of being a little asshole.
But here’s the kicker …. It’s only with me. Around my husband she acts like this precious little angel. “Yes please Daddy, no thank you Daddy.” She even speaks in a sweeter tone. Apparently all her teachers love her. She’s a model for the other children they tell me.
I don’t know what on earth I ever did to this kid to make her hate me, but I swear she is trying to drive me crazy. She is even trying to tear me and my husband apart. She wants to get rid of me.
My husband John and I were happy. Not bullshit Instagram happy, but truly happy together. We almost never fought, aside from little arguments over finances and things like that. But for the past few years we’ve developed a deep resentment towards each other, and it’s all because of her. Claire, the little brat that I’m honestly ashamed to call my daughter. I know it sounds awful, believe me. I hate myself for how I feel towards her. I wanted that mother daughter bond more than anything, but it just isn’t there.
I have told John all of this. He brushes off my concerns and tells me she’s just a child. That I’m the adult. That letting this get to me is more childish than her bad behavior because that’s just what kids do. I’m starting to hate him for it. Why does he believe her over me? It’s not normal childish bad behavior. There’s something wrong with her!
At my wits end, I decide to take her to a therapist. Without John knowing of course. He’ll find out eventually and I will have to deal with the screaming match, but so be it. A friend of mine had a similar problem with her son. She said he was so misbehaved she actually feared him. That he once set his bedroom curtains on fire and had she not been able to extinguish it soon enough, he may have burned the whole house down. She said this therapist was a miracle worker. That ever since his first session it’s like he is an entirely different kid.
That’s what I need. An entirely different kid. So, kicking and screaming I dragged Claire into the car and off to see this “miracle worker.”
The office was strange…. I actually passed the driveway at first and had to turn back around. It was hardly noticeable at all. A dirt driveway through thick trees on either side. At the end of the driveway was a house, not the office I expected. Not entirely out of the norm for a therapist to see patients from a home office though.
I dragged Claire by the hand up to the front door and rang the bell. The door opened automatically and I found myself if a wide open foyer. As big as the house was, I had never seen such a minimalist interior design in my life. There was almost no furniture, the walls were all painted bright white, no photos on the walls, no photos anywhere actually. I saw no end tables, just a big empty room.
“Hello” said a voice so soothing it almost felt forced. To me it sounded more unsettling than soothing…. It sounded fake.
“My name is Jane, and you must be Claire,” she said in that same sickeningly “soothing” voice. She walked us into what I assume was the living room. Just two couches facing each other. The whole vibe of this place just felt… off. Like it was a rushed set for a bad movie with a low budget.
“Mrs. Tyler I presume?” She directed her question to me.
“Yes, ummm I’ve never done this before, I brought her in today because she has been displaying some very concerning behavioral -“
She cut me off there. “No need to explain, I do this everyday Mrs. Tyler. Now I am going to have to ask you to leave and I will call you to retrieve your daughter when our session has ended.” She said firmly.
“Whoa wait….. I’m not going to leave my kid with some stranger. No offense.” I said.
“Well I’m glad to hear she has such a caring mother. But trust me Mrs. Tyler, children are like animals, they act much differently when they feel they are being watched. If she knows you’re here, the session will be pointless.” She told me this as she guided me out the door.
“Kind of a weird thing to say,” I thought. “Wait, umm, just .. hold on.” I stammered as she shut the door in my face. I tried to open it, but realized there were no actual handles. I remembered how the door just opened when I pushed the doorbell. I tried it but nothing happened. I tried banging on the door, but all I did was hurt my hand. The doors were thick and heavy. I could tell she couldn’t hear me.
“Okay, okay, don’t panic. I’m sure everything is fine. She may be a bit eccentric but she was highly recommended.” I thought to myself, trying to calm my nerves.
“John is going to fucking kill me when that little brat tells him about this….. fuck” my thoughts kept racing as I got back in my car to wait.
I must have fallen asleep, I was awoken by the sound of knocking on my window. It was the therapist holding Claire’s hand.
Groggily I asked “how did it go, was she okay, did she behave? Should we schedule another session?”
“No need Mrs. Tyler. She was wonderful. She is a bright young lady. Children often misbehave just to test the waters. It’s how they learn what they can and can’t get away with, it prepares them for understanding boundaries as adults. She will be just fine.”
She said goodbye to Claire and gave her a smile that make me sick to my stomach. That was not a normal smile…. There was something unnatural about it. Like her voice. Like it was forced. Like it was just wrong somehow… and… too big for her face.
“Hey Claire…” I said nervously. “So how was your session? Did you like the therapist?”
“Yes mommy, she was lovely. Thank you for taking me to see her. I apologize for my previous behavior, I will be a good girl now. I love you mommy”
“What the fuck!?” I accidentally said out loud.
“Mommy, you said a naughty word! We’re not supposed to say naughty words! But I forgive you mommy, I love you mommy.” She spoke in a different tone than I’d ever heard. Even sweeter than the one she used with her father. Not to mention, she was no longer speaking like a 6 year old, she sounded much older.
“Ummm baby, can you tell mommy what you did in that therapy session? What did you guys talk about?” I asked.
“Ohhh just about school and you and daddy, and then she let me play with this really pretty box. It was a puzzle box, she told me only really smart and special children can get it open, and guess what, I did it!” She exclaimed proudly.
I was at a loss for words. I drove the rest of the way home in silence.
When we got back to the house I started to prepare dinner, waiting for my husband to get home from work.
Claire sat at the table quietly, coloring in her princess coloring book. Not the way a 6 year old colors however, and definitely not the way my 6 year old colors. She used to just scribble angrily all over the pictures, all over the table, breaking her crayons and then screaming at the top of her lungs about it. But there she was, silently coloring perfectly in the lines, humming to herself a song I’d never heard.
Now if you have kids then you know, they don’t know a song you’ve never heard. In fact, they don’t know a song you haven’t heard played on repeat at least 800 times. But she just kept on humming this creepy little tune.
“What song is that sweetie?” I tried to ask sweetly but I could hear the fear in my own voice.
“The song inside my head,” she replied.
How… how is it even possible to be this terrified of a 6 year old child? But I was. I was terrified of her. This was not my Claire. And while I believed before I didn’t have the motherly bond with her I was supposed to, in that moment I realized I did. Because I knew it in my bones that this child, this thing sitting at my kitchen table was not my Claire. And as annoying of a little brat she may have been, I wanted her back and I would do anything I had to do to get her back.
I began screaming at her, I threw her crayons, I tore up her coloring book, I did everything I could think of to make her mad. Make her snap back into her old self. But she didn’t. That’s when I unleashed the most evil thing I could have possibly said to her… “John isn’t even your real Dad you little shit! Your real dad abandoned you before you were even born and I married John 2 years later!” As soon as I said it, I felt sick…. How could I say something so horrible to her. We promised we would never tell her the truth. John was a good father. He was happy to raise her as his own. I waited for the tears but they never came. She just stared at me, her little eyes appeared devoid of emotion, if anything she appeared moderately inquisitive.
“Did you not like my picture, mommy.” She asked with no emotion whatsoever.
“What are you??? What are you, you fucking freak!?” I was screaming my throat raw. When of course, John came home.
“What in God’s name!” He said. He picked up the girl and carried her upstairs, then came back down to yell at me.
“What has gotten into you?” He asked. “She’s just a child! I’m sorry May, but you need help. You need to see someone. If you won’t make yourself an appointment, I will.” He turned to go back upstairs.
“John… it’s not her. You don’t understand. It is not her.” I said, my voice breaking. “This is not Claire. That is not our child… you have to believe me John. Go up there, talk to her .. you’ll see .. it’s not fucking her!” I pleaded with him to believe me but the look of disgust in his eyes made it clear he did not.
I had never felt more alone or scared in my life. I walked to the bottom of the stairs, I could still hear her humming. I ran out of the house, jumped into the car and drove back to the house where I had taken her to see the therapist.
I rang the doorbell over and over, nothing. I picked up the biggest rock I could find and tried to smash through the windows but not even a crack appeared in the glass. I started to scream for the therapist but of course no one came. I ran around to the living room window. Looking inside I could see the two chairs that faced each other. And on the floor was a puzzle box. Just like the one Claire had described.
I went home in a daze. Tired, terrified, hardly able to think straight. I jumped on my laptop and began trying to search for anything at all that could explain what was happening. Was it something paranormal? Voodoo, witches, aliens? Did the therapist hypnotize her into acting like a completely different person? Did she drug her?
That’s when I found a forum for mothers. Mostly about breast feeding, how to deal with fussy babies, the terrible two’s etc. But there was one women on there, that they were threatening to ban from the forum. She was begging for help. She said her daughter had been replaced. She didn’t know how, or by what but that her daughter was no longer her daughter and if anyone could help her to please call her… and then she left a number.
I called immediately. A distraught women answered the phone. I explained my situation to her. This is what she told me… That whatever they are and wherever they came from was a horrible place, she called it another dimension. She said they wanted to come here. That they were taking us over one by one. That they could mimic us. They would take the form of someone here, and send the human they were mimicking to their dimension where they would remain trapped.
Now, normally I would have just assumed this lady was batshit crazy. I mean, I still kind of thought she was batshit crazy. But…. I mean what if she wasn’t? I felt pretty damn crazy myself.
“How do you know all this?” I asked her.
“I have been researching this phenomena for years. Ever since they took my little Abby. There are others like us, they usually get sent away, labeled with Capgras delusion, believing a loved one is some sort of imposter, but they’re not crazy… I’m not crazy!” She screamed into the phone… she certainly sounded crazy.
“How do I get her back?” I asked.
“You have to kill the mimic.” She said somberly.
“Whoa wait….. kill a 6 year old? You’re telling me to kill a fucking 6 year old?” I cried.
“It’s not a damned 6 year old! Whatever it is, it’s old. Much older than you or I…. Older than we have any idea, and they have been doing this for a long time,” she told me. “I’ve done my research, believe me, instances like this date back to the dawn of written language.”
“So, you killed your thing and got your real daughter back?” I asked hopefully.
She began to sob uncontrollably. “She found out that I knew, because I was too afraid to get near her. So one day when I wasn’t looking, she took a pairing knife and stabbed herself right in the stomach. She told the doctors it was me who stabbed her, they said she was covered in bruises, all in places that would be hidden by clothes.” She continued to cry.
“They put her in foster care, the took away my custody, I have searched and searched, but I can’t find her…. And until I do, my sweet baby is trapped in that awful place and there’s nothing I can do…. But you still can…. You can still kill it… KILL IT… KILL IT!!!” She continued screaming until I hung up the phone.
I couldn’t breath. I began hyperventilating until I collapsed. When I opened my eyes, she, it, was standing over me. “Mommy you fell asleep on the floor, that’s so silly!” She said in a sing song voice as she skipped away. Humming that song… that fucking song.
I tried to go on with my life. I tried to convince myself that the therapist was just really good at her job. I tried to convince myself that it was just a coincidence that she happened to take a long vacation right after treating my daughter. I tried. I really tried.
How could John not see it? I know she was always on her best behavior around him but I still didn’t understand how he couldn’t tell this was not our daughter. She spoke like a little old woman, she was so poised and well behaved she made the Queen of England look like a thug. How could be think this was normal? Unless……. He was one of them.
Maybe he had always been one of them. Maybe since we met. Maybe since he was just a child too. How would I know the difference if the only John I ever knew was already replaced?
That night I made my decision. I had to do it. I had to kill them. I had to save my little girl and the poor child who had been taken so many years ago, replaced by the man who calls himself John.
I snuck into her bedroom as quietly as I could and held the knife above her heart trying to gather the courage to do what had to be done. But even knowing what she was, even knowing my child was trapped somewhere awful… how could I bring myself to — suddenly her eyes snapped wide open and she began to scream bloody murder. John rushed in and found me, knife in my hand trying to hold her mouth shut. He wrestled me to the ground and called the police.
The doctors tell me I had a psychotic break. They have me pretty sedated most of the time, so forgive me if this isn’t the most coherent account you’ve ever read. Every day they try to convince me that nervous breakdowns can happen, even to people who never had underlying mental illness. That due to stress and lack of sleep from dealing with a misbehaved daughter my mind began to make connections out of every day coincidences until I became paranoid, seeing only through that lens of fear, making everything fit the delusion I had created.
Even Claire’s therapist came to see me.. she had a slight tan, apparently she was in Florida on vacation.
So, I am insane. I drove myself insane and I almost killed my own daughter. I hated myself. I would be locked up here for the rest of my life and I deserved to be.
At least that’s what I believed for a short while, until John and Claire came to visit…. They both told me they forgive me, that they hope I feel better soon, and that they still love me. Then they smiled, smiles too wide for their faces, and walked away humming that godforsaken song.
So here I sit. Writing this in my journal. I will find the right person to give this too. I will find someone like me who can get this information out there. The world needs to know. How many of them are out there mimicking your children? How many children are trapped and alone in that dark awful place?
If anyone ever sees this, I beg of you, please find her. Find the thing that calls itself Claire. And save my daughter.
You know what you have to do.