The day I met Jenny was the best day of my life. She was hitchhiking outside of Bakersfield and it was raining. I’d finally given up on my dreams down in Los Angeles, and I was on my way back to my hometown. The other reason was that I was going home to take care of my mother who had fallen ill. I figured it was a better thing to do with my time and my soul than trying to be someone or something that I would never be in that awful city.
Everyone I had known for the fifteen years before weren’t very real people. They were facades of something they used to be before that city ruined them.
Maybe that’s why I connected with her so quickly. I hadn’t had a real conversation with anyone for a long time unless you count the times I went back home for the holidays. Jenny was real. Everything about her was perfect. I think about her everyday.
She was just outside the north end of town. I pulled over on 99 and told her to get in. I was being a good samaritan, but when she climbed in my truck, I was stunned at how beautiful she was. It was her eyes. She was everything in a woman that I hadn’t seen in a while. Not a trace of makeup, full figured, brown hair with a streak of silver down the left side, and her eyes were green.
“Where are you wanting to go?”
“Where are you going?”
“Fresno.”
“That’s exactly where I want to go.” I laughed. I’d never heard anyone say that. We drove on, just talking. She was a little apprehensive with me at first. She told me later that she figured her options were dying on the side of the road or taking a ride from a chubby bespectacled guy who may or may not be a serial killer. I found myself constantly asking her questions because I just wanted her to keep talking. I fell in love with that voice five minutes after she got in my truck. I fell in love with all of her by the time we reached Fresno about two and a half hours later.
She didn’t have a place to stay, so I jumped on the chance to stay in her orbit.
“You know, my old room is built over the garage at my mom’s house. You’re more than welcome to stay.” She hesitated and I stammered a bit. “Because…you know…it’s a little late and…hotels are expensive and the only cheap ones are right off of the highway, and you don’t want to stay in those…and my mom makes great coffee cake…” I couldn’t think of anything else to say and I just stared at her like a moron. An utter moron.
I was convinced I blew it. She told me later that she knew I was the one for her at that moment. She agreed to stay.
My mother and she got on very well. She was the perfect fit. She ended up staying in my old room for a few more nights, before I finally just told her she could stay for as long as she wanted.
It was two months before I asked her to marry me. It was fast, but we both knew. She had also told me that she was pregnant the night after I picked her up. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with her. I wanted to be the man she deserved, and even then I wanted to be the father her child deserved. For almost eight months, I was truly happy. We were both happy. I told her that every dream I had followed my whole life eventually led me to her. I’ve never been great with words, but I honestly still believe that.
I started my father’s house painting business back up. He had died three years before I came back home, and four months after I had come home, my mother followed him. Jenny and I had gone to the courthouse and got married shortly before she passed. My mother died at home. She died holding Jenny’s hand while I stood over her. She was happy.
Jenny was six months pregnant when the pains began; when everything started to change. She started talking to me about her past; a sad past that she would be embarrassed about me sharing, so I won’t. She deserved better than her childhood is all I will say.
The father of her baby was a man she knew very little about. Although she was with him for only a few months, she couldn’t honestly say what it was about him that she found pleasing in any way. She honestly didn’t remember much about him. She said it was like she fell under the worst kind of spell the second he spoke to her. She wanted to leave every day, but something kept her there. She began to believe that he belonged to some kind of cult and when she confronted him about it, he threatened to hurt her.
He scared her so bad, she left that night and spent a month running before she realized that she was pregnant. That was shortly before I had picked her up. She told me that I was everything she had never met in another human being. That for the first time in her life, she had actually felt safe that night in my truck.
Her sixth month of pregnancy was rough, but it was nothing compared to the seventh month. The doctors could find nothing wrong with her or the baby, but she knew better. I would wake up to her silently weeping in bed from the pain. I could do nothing to help her. She just always wanted me to hold her hand.
We had a neighbor who was retired and she would sit with Jenny while I was working during the day, but during the eighth month, it got to the point where I wouldn’t leave her side. I begged her doctor, I even screamed at him to do something, but he kept insisting that there was nothing physically wrong with her or the baby. I asked him if we could take the baby early. She was talking in her sleep and she was saying things that my Jenny would never say. I couldn’t get her to eat anymore and she hadn’t slept in a week. Finally the doctor relented and scheduled her for a C-section the next day.
That night I put her to bed. She told me that the pains were gone. She smiled at me and asked me to lay down with her. She put her head on my chest and I stroked her hair until I heard her breathing. She purred in her sleep. I drifted off with her smell and her sounds in my head and the feel of her next to me.
I woke up some time later to a slight jerk from Jenny, and then another. She wasn’t purring. I stroked her hair and then I heard the baby screaming. I couldn’t see Jenny’s face, but I looked down and saw the baby moving under a bloody sheet. I rolled Jenny off of my chest and then I saw her eyes staring up. Her blue face was staring at nothing. She was gone.
The days that followed are still a blur to me to this day. The baby was a healthy girl. I named her Jen. I never contacted any of Jenny’s family because she never wanted anything more from them in this life, and I was sure she would want them to have nothing to do with her daughter. Our daughter.
I made sure that Jen was the center of my life. I built everything around her. I talked about her mother all the time, but I was damned if I was going to let her see me break down in front of her. She was going to have the life her mother deserved, and I was going to do everything to make sure that happened.
Our lives were great; they could never be perfect without Jenny, but they were great. She was a happy child. Really smart and very kind. She always seemed to know more about things than she led on. She was like her mom in that way. There were a handful of times though that I had the feeling that she had a little bit of a meanstreak. But what kid doesn’t?
Jen was four when an old man came up to me in a parking lot outside of Home Depot. He was shaking. I asked him if he needed help. He stood there for a second before he finally spoke. It was quiet and cracked.
“I’ve tried to tell you for a while now. I thought I should come to you in person. I was the man who examined your wife after…after she passed. You deserve to know. The way she went. It wasn’t good.” I was shaking. I suddenly didn’t want to hear what the man had to say. “The baby…she…ripped herself out of her mother. I can’t believe that you…that she didn’t cry out…”
“I have to go.” I drove off with him standing still. He was crying. What do you say when something like that happens?
It turns out, I just went home and watched Kim Possible with my little girl. I was staring at her while she was just laughing at the tv. I stared at her all night. She noticed, but she didn’t say anything until I put her to bed.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah baby?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Can you read me the mouse cookie book?” I read her four stories that night. She was my baby. I was mad at myself that I was out of sorts with her, but I couldn’t stop seeing my wife’s face every time I closed my eyes. I dreamed about it all that night.
It was after her fifth birthday that she began drawing pictures that disturbed her teachers enough to have a conference with me. All of them showed her holding hands with a monster. It was a large beast with wings and yellow eyes. There were other people in the pictures, but they were all laying down and they had x’s drawn over their eyes. Some of them would be lying in pools of red crayon.
There were no behavioral problems at school, but she kept on with her doodles. Everyone thought it was best that she talk to a therapist. She told her therapist that the monster watched over her, and that he was going to take her home someday. She told the therapist that he waited outside of her window at night.
When we got home that day, I put her in front of the television and looked through her room. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Then I opened the window. There, down in the dirt, I saw a pair of large boot prints. My blood ran cold. I went to the kitchen and grabbed one of her drawings from the file her teacher had given me. I stood in front of the tv.
“Jen? Baby? You said this thing stands outside your window?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Honey, I’m your father. Answer me.”
“He wants me to open the window.”
“Why?”
“Because he wants me to come live with him. He says it’s time.” It was enough for me. I had called the police and they kept an eye on our house from the front and the back. I borrowed my neighbor’s car, so it looked like we were still home, and I took Jen away that night. I had hoped that whoever this was would show up and the cops would grab him. That didn’t mean I had to keep my little girl there as bait.
I rented a small house about an hour away at Bass Lake that night. I made sure I brought enough videos to keep her entertained, and I even made her two milkshakes to keep her happy. I tried to make it an unexpected adventure. She liked it when I said that.
“Daddy, can you read me the mouse cookie book?”
“I didn’t bring it, baby.”
“It’s ok. I did.” She pulled the book out of her backpack. I read it to her twice. She wanted me to get into bed with her and she put her head on my chest. After I finished reading, I stroked her hair until I heard her breathing. She purrs just like her mother.
At some point that night I woke up from a nightmare. Jen wasn’t purring anymore. I rolled her off of my chest and she was sound asleep. I tucked her in and walked out into the kitchen for a glass of water. I gulped down the whole thing and turned to go back to bed.
“You tried to take her from me.” There was a man standing in the shadows next to the front door. He was tall and his eyes were yellow. I dropped the glass and grabbed two knives out of the butcher block. As my eyes adjusted, I could see his face. Long and angular; a hard face. His hair was slicked back. He was wearing boots and a long coat that dropped past his knees.
“Get out.”
“I’ve let you have her long enough. Now it’s time for her to go with me.” My phone was back in the bedroom with Jen. I started to move myself in between him and the bedroom door.
“You stay away from us.” I tried to sound intimidating, but I knew this man wasn’t afraid of me. Somehow, I think he knew that I was afraid of him. His hands were down past his waist. He held nothing, but his fingers looked longer than the knives I was holding.
“Give me my daughter.”
“She’s my daughter!” I ran at the man. He reached out and grabbed me by the throat even though I had sunk one of the knives in his stomach. He threw me forward, through the front door and out into the mud of the driveway. I tried to scramble to my feet, but he was fast. He once again had me by the throat with those long fingers.
The man was smiling at me and those yellow eyes stared back at me. He heaved me up by the throat and I could feel my legs dangling underneath me. My vision was starting to go fuzzy. That’s when I heard my baby.
“Stop! Put him down!” Myself and the tall man looked toward the porch. My daughter was standing there in her pajamas cradling her mouse cookie book. She was crying. “Leave him alone and I’ll go with you.”
The tall man looked back at me. I’ve never felt so much hate and been so helpless. Jen started to walk towards us.
“If you hurt him, I will never go with you.”
“Honey…run…don’t…” The tall man squeezed harder and I felt my arms go limp. I was going to pass out. The tall man looked back down at Jen and then back to me. He dropped me back down into the mud and I gasped for air. I couldn’t move, but I watched him scoop my baby into his arms and walk away into the dark.
“I love you Daddy.”
I’ve recounted that story seven different times to seven different detectives. I always end the story right there. I passed out. A useless excuse for a man who couldn’t protect his child. I never tell them what happened after that. I suppose I could. They would just chalk it up to a hallucination just as I lost consciousness.
My daughter was in the thing’s arms. She was holding just as tightly to her favorite book as it was holding onto her. I swear I saw two wings come out of the back of its coat, and I watched it fly away into the night with the only thing I had left in this world.
That was ten years ago. I don’t want to think about what that thing has taught her or how it has raised her. I can only hope that there’s something of her mother and I in her that’s greater than her other half.