There it was again. The tiny raised fist. The giggle. The single newborn digit pointing at the wall behind me.
The bare, empty wall.
When the doctor told my girlfriend Katie that our baby was ‘precocious,’ I had to look the word up in the dictionary, but there’s no doubt about it: Jon was advanced for his age. He was imitating our hand gestures and speaking gibberish months before the nurses, the parenting books, or even the internet said that he should be able to.
We took it as a good sign. As a young couple who never intended to be parents, we needed all the good signs we could get.
Jon’s every cry, movement, or rash sent us diving into a bottomless pit of questions that all boiled down to basically the same thing: is our baby normal? Is he going to be okay?
Compared to the struggle some new parents face, waving at the wall should have been nothing. A non-issue. And it would have been–
If it weren’t for the strange events that always happened just before or after Jon waved.
‘Mishaps,’ Katie called them.
But I preferred ‘Impossibilities.’
How else should I describe a lamp that flings itself across a room, only to shatter against the wall?
A Christmas tree that spontaneously catches fire?
A showerhead that suddenly bursts apart, nearly decapitating our ten-month-old baby?
I was afraid that by the time I was able to prove that the bizarre events surrounding our son were more than just coincidences, it would be too late for Jon.
The stranger things got, the harder it became to share what I was going through with Katie.
I feared what she would think of my sanity if I told her that the letters in my alphabet soup had arranged themselves into the words ‘DEATH CHILD’ or if I explained how sometimes, when I was driving out in the country with Jon and fiddled with the radio, I would hear a distant voice inside the static screaming “kill the baby kill the baby kill the baby” over and over. The first time it happened I was so horrified that I didn’t notice when Jon waved at something in the trees.
If I’d been a millisecond slower stomping on the brake, the stag that had charged madly out of the trees would’ve killed us both.
During the rare moments in bed together that Jon’s erratic sleep schedule allowed us, I’d lay awake listening to Katie’s deep, peaceful snores and wonder if she, too, had experienced inexplicable things that she was afraid to share with me.
One thing was clear: it couldn’t last. The secrets and constant tension filled our home like a toxic cloud, threatening to destroy our relationship and even jeopardize our ability to care for Jon.
My girlfriend knew that I was trying: talking to psychiatrists, pediatricians, and even priests…
What Katie didn’t know, however, was that I was also considering the services of a psychic.
Oddly enough, it was the priest who put me in touch with her.
“You must understand,” Father Keene explained, “that we churchmen are like any other specialized profession. Just as a plumber specializes in pipes or a carpenter in woodwork, we specialize in bringing souls closer to God.” He hesitated then, rubbing the stubble on his jaw like he was having second thoughts about what he was about to tell me. “However, there are…other professionals. With other specializations.” I heard the dry swallow in his throat while he scribbled a phone number on the back of a business card and handed it to me.
Elsie Knott.
Medium. Channeller. Exorcist.
Walk-Ins Only.
The only psychics I’d ever heard of were late-night TV figures with jangly fake jewelry who promised their gullible supporters everything from lottery winnings to a cure for erectile dysfunction.
I knew Katie wouldn’t approve, but I was at the end of my rope. In fact, on our drive back from my meeting with the priest, Jon had started pointing and gibbering excitedly at something outside the car, something only he could see. I gripped the wheel with white knuckles and felt a familiar sense of doom tighten my chest until I could barely breathe. What was about to happen?
I only heard a pop when our right front tire burst, sending us careening into the next lane. Only quick thinking by a semi-truck driver saved us both from a gruesome death.
It had to stop.
As soon as I attached the spare, I plugged the address of the psychic’s home office into my GPS.
Forty minutes later, we were still driving through pine trees.
Elsie Knott’s “home office” turned out to be a trailer in a forest clearing at the end of a gravel road. Christmas lights and charms swung cheerfully from its redwood deck, and an enormous garden grew around the remnants of a rusted-out VW bug. A dead ring of what I assumed was salted earth circled the property.
Jon giggled and waved at something the moment we got out of the car.
My blood ran cold–
But it was only a few white chickens who’d come clucking over to greet us.
I listened to the drone of the cicadas and wondered what the hell I was doing here.
“You gonna stand out there starin’ all day, or come up an’ say hello?” Elsie leaned on the screen door with a tiny fist on her hip. Her short stature, fiery-red pixie cut, and floral-print dress gave her the look of an angry red-headed Tinkerbell. Face to face with the exorcist, it was clear that she was still a teenager. Elsie Knott was barely as tall as my shoulder, and sticky crimson stains covered her apron. “I got strawberry jam cookin’ so we gotta be snappy about this.”
Inside Elsie’s trailer, all the lamps had tassels. Portraits of Jesus, Elvis, and Johnny Cash lined the walls. A cat-clock ticked away the time above a dusty T.V. showing reruns of Magnum, P.I., and the only deliverance from the sweltering summer heat came from a fly-taped box fan wheezing away beneath the polyester curtains.
“This was my gramma’s place,” Elsie explained. “Keepin’ it this way makes me feel closer to her. She was the longest-lived one of us I ever heard of. Made it to ninety-nine! They got’er while she was gatherin’ mushroom in the woods out back. Crucifix slipped offa her neck.”
Elsie swept a pile of magazines off of the glass coffee table, grabbed Jon out of my surprised hands, and began to flip him around like a slab of bacon.
She looked in his eyes, ears, nose, and throat. Off came his onesie and his diaper.
“Kid’s got rash. Hang on.” Elsie came back from the kitchen with a cloth and a jar of something that smelled like spoiled cider. “Apple Cider Vinegar an’ Aloe Vera. Twice a day.” She buttoned my giggling son back up in his onesie and handed him back to me.
“That’s it?” I gaped. “What about–”
“The way he sees stuff that ain’t there?” Elsie plopped herself into the huge recliner across from me and crossed her bare feet. “Pfft, ain’t nothin’ you can do ‘bout that. Kid’s one of us. Just try to protect him, like my gramma did for me. You don’t seem as smart as gramma, though. Kid prolly won’t make it past five…but hey, you can try, right?”
“Protect him? From what?”
“Look, the roof needs fixin’ an’ I got jam on the stove. You want any more of my time, you’re gonna hafta pay for it.” She brought a bright-red nail to her lips. “A twenty oughta do it.”
Elsie stuffed the crumpled bill that I handed her into her apron and I followed her to the kitchen, where she carried on with her canning while she talked:
“For jus’ about all of human history, we’ve had mediums, channelers, shamans…people affected by things that nobody else can see. Nowadays there ain’t hardly any of us. Now why do you think that is?”
“Well, modern science–” I began.
“Pffft! It’s ‘cuz they kill us all! That’s why!” Elsie’s fists went back to her hips. “Look, there are things out there that don’t wanna be seen, or even heard of. They recognize us for what we are, an’ kill us off ASAP…just like they’re tryin’ to do to your son. They’re smart, though. Don’t wanna draw too much attention. That’s why they always try to make it look like an accident…unless they get really desperate.”
Jon started whimpering. He was getting hungry…and I needed to get back.
“Uhm…” I began, “Thank you for your time, Ms–”
“Don’t you wanna know how to protect your kid?” Elsie demanded. She stormed over to an immense bookshelf that I hadn’t noticed and pulled out a yellowed scrap of paper. “Look, you follow these steps and it’ll stop. When it does, though,” she jammed a tiny finger into my chest, “you’ll owe me eighty bucks!”
“What if I don’t pay?” I joked.
“Oh, I dunno.” Elsie gave me a wry smile. “Maybe I’ll put a curse on ya.”
“All I’m asking is that we try,” I pleaded with Katie later that night. The circle of salt I’d poured around the house had aroused her suspicions; now she’d caught me nailing an iron horseshoe above the door to Jon’s room.
I still had eleven steps to go.
Katie snatched the paper from my hand.
“I can’t believe you paid for this garbage! You do realize we had to put that tire on credit, right? We need formula and diapers, not this mumbo-jumbo!” Katie must’ve seen the crestfallen look in my eyes; her voice softened. “But…I guess…none of this stuff is exactly harmful to babies. You know what? Go for it.”
Seven days later, I owed Elsie Knott eighty bucks.
“Do we really have to keep all this up?” Katie waved the list at me over breakfast, her mouth full of pancakes. “On top of everything else we have to do?”
“Well it’s working, isn’t it?” I replied. “Jon hasn’t waved or pointed or babbled at an empty room in almost two weeks now. There hasn’t been a single freak accident.”
“It’s just so much to remember,” Katie groaned, “and it’s so weird.”
My girlfriend wasn’t wrong. As a non-Christian, I wasn’t exactly comfortable with both of us wearing crosses all the time. The house smelled like garlic, and it had been really hard to find a silver-bladed pocket knife.
The homemade pancakes I’d cooked up to celebrate our miraculously disaster-free week made breakfast take longer than usual, and Katie was running late for work.
Maybe that’s why she forgot her necklace on the dresser.
It was a simple thing, just two pieces of iron held together in a cross shape by a bit of silver wire.
But it was one the more important things on Elsie Knott’s list.
A sense of foreboding seemed to follow me as I drove Jon back out to Elsie Knott’s trailer to pay my dues and learn more about how to protect my son.
“Worked, didn’t it?” Elsie was on her hands and knees, weeding her garden in a gigantic straw sunhat that made her look even scrawnier than she was. “Told ya.” Once again, she stuffed my cash into the pocket of her apron.
“What’s next?”
“There’s somethin’ I didn’t tell ya last time. Half ‘cuz its not that important ‘til the kid starts goin’ out in public more often, and half ‘cuz I didn’t wanna freak ya out too much.” Elsie wiped her hands off on her apron and took a deep breath. “These Things, the ones that come after people like Jon and gramma and me…they can get inside people who aren’t protected. They can use’em to hurt your kid. I got another list for ya, here!” she handed me a paper from her apron pocket. “You see anybody showin’ any’a those signs ‘round lil’ Jon here, you kick’em to the curb an’ run, got it?” Elsie tickled Jon a little, wriggled her nose to make him laugh, and handed him back to me with a meaningful stare. “I hope I’ll been seein’ y’all a lot more as time goes on. That’d mean you’re both still alive.”
There was something sad about Elsie’s goodbye wave as we drove out over the protective ring of salt.
Katie was leaning against the mailbox when we got home. I wondered if she’d locked herself out of the house.
“There’s my precious baby boy!” She smiled and ran toward the passenger-side window with her arms outstretched. I put the car in park and stepped out as she tugged on the car door handle with increasing frustration.
“Uhhh, honey?” I ventured. “It’s locked.”
My girlfriend snapped her head toward me, her face twisted into an expression of indescribable hatred.
“Un-lock it, then!” she snarled. “I want to hold my precious baby.” There was that word again. Precious. Katie hardly ever used it. I hadn’t read all of the instructions on Elsie’s most recent scrap of paper, but I remembered seeing something about sudden changes in personality being a warning sign. I looked around. Our quiet suburban street was desolate beneath the blazing afternoon sun. There was just me, Katie, and Jon–who was locked in a hot car. “Open the door, honey.” Katie insisted.
I moved slowly back around to the driver’s side. I tried to keep eye contact with Katie while I fumbled with my key, trying to slip it into the lock without arousing too much suspicion–but Katie’s eyes narrowed like a hungry crocodile’s. Strange eye color, movement, or shape–something else from Elsie’s list.
“Open the door, honey.” Katie insisted again.
“Okay.” I agreed–then slipped inside the car and turned on the ignition.
My girlfriend let out an unholy scream and jabbed the butcher knife she’d been hiding behind her back into our brand-new tire. She jumped onto the hood, still shrieking furiously, and went to work on the windshield. A bloody spiderweb crack appeared as Katie slammed her forehead into it again and again.
It wouldn’t hold much longer.
Jon’s crying was deafening in the suffocating space; I unhooked him from his carseat, clutched him to my chest, and covered him with my body as I ran toward the front door of the house.
Behind me, I heard the hiss of our kitchen knife being yanked out of our tire.
“ARGH!” Smoke rose from Katie’s skin as she ran into the ring of salt I’d created around our home. My girlfriend flicked her tongue at me like a snake and hissed. “The child is mine,” Katie snarled in a voice not her own. “You know it will happen, sooner or later…so why suffer? Give me the child.”
“Fuck you!” I panted.
“We can see to it that you lead a touched, blessed life” –the thing inside Katie was all smiles and conciliation now that it was trapped outside the circle– “or we can bring misery to your family for a thousand generations. You have no idea what we are capable of.” My girlfriend paced like a tiger behind bars, searching for a gap in the salt ring. “This child is more trouble than its worth. If you will but give me this troublesome thing, we can replace it with another one…a better one…and bring you fortune beyond your wildest dreams. If not…” The thing inside my girlfriend brought the butcher knife to its throat…to Katie’s throat. “Do you think the authorities will believe any of this when they find your girlfriend’s corpse on your lawn?”
“I…” I hesitated and glanced at Jon, still screaming his head off on the porch behind me. Elsie had already told me the odds weren’t good. Was I really prepared to live like this, every hour of every day, until my child was inevitably killed? I bent over Jon, hugged his tiny frail body to my chest, cradled him in my arms as he wailed. “Okay. Fine. You win. Just let my girlfriend go.”
The thing inside Katie flashed me a hideous grin as I passed Jon across the salt ring and into its waiting arms.
That smile vanished when it saw the necklace that I’d taken off and hidden beneath Jon’s blanket when I’d stooped down to pick him up. I looped it around Katie’s neck and yanked her toward me, across the ring of salt.
My girlfriend’s eyes rolled back in her head. She crumpled to the ground, convulsing, and I barely managed to catch Jon as he fell from her arms.
“W-what happened?” Katie stammered, clutching her forehead.
Jon had stopped crying. He was staring at the space where Katie had been standing. If I squinted my eyes, I could barely make out a horrible, distorted shadow clawing at the air in fury–but it was blurry and quick to fade.
By the time I’d helped Katie to her feet, it seemed to have vanished completely…
Until Jon giggled, pointed at the empty air…
and waved.