The first time I saw it was at the Children’s Hospital in downtown San Antonio. My wife and I were there with our 3-year-old. He had developed a rare neurological disorder. It wasn’t our first time at the hospital, and it wouldn’t be our last, but that day was different.
Early that morning we woke up to Johnathan crying as we usually did. It wasn’t so terrible a noise. I wish I could still hear it. The doctors said the disorder was beginning to cause him chronic pain. It made sleep difficult and left him lethargic throughout the day. Walking was becoming more difficult for him. I’ve always thought that part of his condition was especially cruel since he just learned how.
Maria and I went to a specialty coffee shop near the hospital to split a latte and get Johnathan something sweet. Raindrops streaked across the large windowpanes obscuring the view of the place that brought so much pain to our little family.
The foreboding towers of the hospital loomed beyond the shapes going from left to right outside on the sidewalk. Their exact features were lost in the frosted lower portion of the glass that we sat next to. It was Fiesta in San Antonio. The celebration commemorated the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto. The streets were full of people. Full of happiness. That hospital campus could have flooded with happiness for us on just one visit had the doctors said what we needed them to say.
But those words never came.
“Matt, we need them.”
“Not both of them.” We were discussing selling my car.
“How are you going to get to work?”
“There’s a bus stop right next to the house.”
“A forty-minute walk away! You already spend enough time away from us.”
Johnathan looked up from his iPad. We swore we’d never be those parents, but it just made things easier. He wasn’t quite used to our arguing yet. That would come later.
“what do you want me to do? A TA stipend isn’t enough to afford these treatments and a Master’s in History isn’t going to get me a better job. We could barely afford the damn walker and last month’s prescriptions.” My voice was softer, but the tone was harsher.
“Your time with us is more important than money.”
She was right, but I needed my PhD to get us the life we deserved– the life Johnathan deserved. I hated the way I spoke to her sometimes. The financial issues and Johnathan’s health issues were oppressive. I was trying so hard too be a good father the I forgot to be a good husband at times.
One of the figures passing by stopped in the window.
“Baby, I’m doing everything I can to get us through this. I have to take more shifts at the bar. That’s not negotiable, but you’re right about the bus. I won’t sell the car.”
Silhouettes of hands appeared on either side of the dark shape in the window. The hands were blurry through the frosted glass. Johnathan looked towards the figure.
“What the hell?” Maria asked with a laugh.
The hands slammed on the glass and her smile dissapeared.
“Probably homeless.” Downtown was full of forgotten people that wandered through the crowds of college kids and tourists. “We need to get going. Come on buddy.”
I grabbed Johnathan’s jacket and put it on him. His wincing let me know that he was achier today. My little man was starting to become much too strong for a boy his age. He began to suffer in silence. The pain robbed him of his childhood and his personality became more somber from day to day. He lost his happiness right in front of us.
Disease took my baby long before what I would see in the hospital did.
~~~
It’s extremely difficult to watch your child feel pain. Part of it is natural. Kids are going to feel pain. Teeth start to break through their little gums and tables seemingly appear right in front of them whether you’re watching or not. Knees get scraped and heads get bumped.
When Johnathan would get a cold or or start to teethe it could be nice as odd as that is to say. When they turn one they run all over, get in to things they shouldn’t, and put everything in their mouths. It’s exhausting. But when he didn’t feel good and would just lay his head on my chest and we’d watch Pokemon or Paw Patrol or whatever it was so special. It hurt to watch him hurt, but it was just so, so special to have him be so close to me.
But there is something horrible watching them go through something so unnatural. And those feelings of enjoyment I got from him cuddling up with me while in pain, however small and momentary, make me so god damn sick to my stomach now. Did I do this to him? Did the small relishing in his discomfort and suffering manifest this current hell?
Would I go to Hell?
Of course, I told myself it couldn’t be my fault.
None of that could be real.
There’s no such thing as manifestation.
As Karma.
As Hell.
I didn’t believe in the supernatural.
~~~
“There is nothing we can do Mr. Russell.”
Johnathan played with a toy truck on the other side of a pane of glass separating him from the heartbreak his parents were experiencing.
“At best, we are giving him three months.”
His mother put her hand on her mouth. Her unmannicured, bitten fingernails clawed at her cheek then were hit by a stream of tears. She couldn’t hold back the dam that should have broken a long time before.
A nurse knelt beside Johnathan and pointed at his truck. She smiled at him warmly. Her fingernails were pretty. They must have just been done. The red shimmered brightly in the fluorescent light. I thought about how her life must have been. How she had the time and money to get her nails done and how, in my mind, that meant she probably never suffered and never would suffer loss. Of course that wasn’t true.
The doctor reached for Maria and hesitated. He dropped the hand on top of his clipboard he held in front of him grabbing the pen that rested on it. Both of his arms then fell to his side. He was defeated. Here was a man who must have suffered loss innumerably. At least by proxy.
“I am so sorry Mrs. Russell.”
He gave me a knowing look and touched my shoulder. Then he turned and walked away. How could they do a job like this? Is it different when the ones being lost aren’t theirs?
I watched the love of my life sob uncontrollably as she realized she would lose the love of hers. I don’t think I had fully realized it yet. I took a step towards the glass to look at the most important part of my life.
The nurse’s back was to us slightly obscuring Johnathan from view. I could see one of her hands on his right arm. She was gripping it violently. Her nails were digging into his skin. They were different now.
The bright red polish was now a sickeningly pale grey. The cuticles were black and her fingers were stained with something. I could see blood from where she gripped my son so tight. She started to shake him violently. Her black, greasy hair shook back and forth.
I slammed on the glass.
“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!”’
I saw Johnathan’s face, he was crying. He was in so much pain. It was the face I’d been seeing for months now.
“Get away from him!”
I banged on the glass repeatedly as I ran for the door. The handle was locked. I shook it with all the force I could muster with my right hand and beat on the glass with my left.
The woman’s head turned.
I said that I didn’t believe in the supernatural, but I do now. I have to because of what I saw next. I’d never known fear like that even with all I’d went through up until then. Not even the fear of losing my child latched upon my psyche like the entity in the hospital.
I believe in Hell because I saw a demon.
The doctor ran towards me.
“Mr. Russell, it’s okay! Calm down!”
I looked at him in shock. The face contorted by wickedness seared in my brain. The physical manifestation of evil, agony, torture, suffering–Hell itself–staring into my soul. It had my child in its grip.
I turned back and the surprised blonde woman with clean, freshly painted nails stood back from Johnathan’s bed. She looked scared and confused because the father of the boy she was trying to comfort was yelling at the top of his lungs at her and banging on the window.
There was nothing there. Just the nurse and my boy.
Johnathan looked at me not knowing what to think. The doctor tried to reassure me once more. Maria looked at me in disbelief–her face still wet with tears.
~~~
“I just panicked that’s all.”
“You looked terrified Matthew.”
“I am terrified.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It was nothing.” I tried to reassure myself
I also tried and failed to reassure Maria. The momentary, but violent, lapse at the hospital that afternoon added confusion and fear to an overflowing cocktail of emotions. The bar was flooding and we were drowning.
How do you say goodbye to someone you’ve just met? Like really say goodbye? Three years and a handful of months isn’t enough time. How does one say good bye when you’ve just begun to say hello? He only just learned to say hello not that long ago.
As I paced around the small nursery we decorated a few years before, I looked my Johnathan in his face and thought about how a benevolent god could do this to him. He was good about going to sleep on his own, but I wanted to rock him to sleep every chance I got for the time left. Between my blasphemous thoughts and fond memories of fatherhood, I asked myself what I saw. My mind was racing. Every time I convinced myself it was nothing, I spiraled back down a supernatural rabbit hole full of phantasms and devils.
It had to be.
My conspiratorial anxiety momentarily beat my rational inner voice. It was a demon. A demon was trying to take my son.
No.
My reasonable self fought back against my inner Alex Jones. You were stressed. You panicked. You need sleep.
I laid Johnathan down and looked at his sweet face. My world. Tiny stars and moons danced on his body as the night light’s shapes crossed his little race car bed on their revolutions around his room. They went round and round the tiny second bedroom of a 2 bed, 1 bath we couldn’t afford like it was a solar system, but even though the room barely fit a toddler bed, an Ikea dresser, and a toy chest, it might as well have been an entire galaxy, because that little room was my whole universe.
“Goodnight buddy.”
~~~
I woke to nails on glass.
“Babe do you hear that?”
Maria mumbled.
A horrifying shriek came from the monitor. There was movement on the screen. Johnathan’s room.
A figure draped in torn rags leaned over the race car like an old crone. The black matted hair glistened as it swayed back and forth over the little boy in Paw Patrol pajamas. The crusted claws from the hospital grasped them and began to pierce the fabric as the intruder gripped my son.
“NO!”
I bolted out of bed and fell to the ground after tripping on my slightly ajar laptop. I rushed to my feet and to the door, I attempted to rip it off its hinges and make it to my world. It was not going to take him from me.
I busted through the door to Johnathan’s room and he woke up, startled. “Daddy?”
Nothing.
The window was open. Scratches were all over the glass and the wood frame.
“It’s okay buddy.”
We lived in the interior of the complex in the corner so the rest of the building was visible to us across the courtyard. The grotesque and twisted body of what looked like a woman clung to the courtyard wall perpendicular from Johnathan’s window. Its claws gripped the stone facade and black liquid crept from under the points where the claws broke the material. Its legs snapped and groaned as it crawled backwards contorting up and over the building–its glaring gaze locked on us the entire time. I will never forget the smile it bore.
~~~
The intrusion into our lives had been violent and visceral. Like Johnathan’s diagnosis, the entity floored us. An already shaky foundation began to slip from under the crumbling structure of our lives. While the sickness was an erosion of the pillars of our lives, the decrepit demon was an uncontrolled demolition of our family.
Maria didn’t believe me about the hospital or the courtyard which made the persistent glimpses of the woman impossible to mention. This dug a deeper divide between us. Our marriage was crumbling. It was like the woman came into our lives to blow everything up and then slithered into darkness to watch our lives implode.
Do you ever get the feeling that something is watching you? Like a heavy pressure on your awareness? But when you look there’s nothing? That’s all that came after that night in Johnathan’s room for some time. She lurked just outside my awareness and stalked her prey–my son. There eventually came the small moments where I’d see her. A woman standing in line in the grocery store in front of us with the hair of a rotting corpse whose head would always be cocked in just a way so that I couldn’t see the face. A grey hand wrapped just around distant playground equipment. Hooves extending below a dress at church. Hair dangling out of an air conditioner vent. Eyes in the black of night. A stench. A pressure. A feeling. Fear.
I never quite saw her, but she was there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Eventually Maria would believe me. When she finally saw her the way I had. One day, she took Johnathan to the river. It could have been one of his last times as far as she knew.
It was a sweltering hot San Antonio day. The oppressive heat beats down on the Alamo City’s residents unlike many other places. It made things uncomfortable for Johnathan, so getting out of the house could be hard. He was mostly confined to his chair at that point. The heat made his chair get unbearably hot and the fabric made him sweat even more. Maria thought that nature could be good for him though, so she took him. I had to work.
They parked just off the road near the bridge and hiked down to the riverbank with Johnathan on Maria’s back. She had let him sit on the bank of the river in the shallow water. He couldn’t move well, but if he did he was a smart enough boy to know not to go much deeper. She told me she had only turned her back for a moment.
The part of the river they went to was mostly covered in shade. A dark, lonely section of the river free from tourists and college kids with cans of Lonestar in UT and Texas State coozies. Free from loud Texas Country and the screams and happiness of kids who lived full lives.
Despite the shade, Maria still wanted to put sunscreen on Johnathan for the little bit of time when he was in the sun. When she started walking back with it she lifted her head and he was gone. On the far side of the river the water splashed violently. The demon’s arms and black hair were submerged in the water which flew up all around it. Small hands reached up and small feet kicked violently.
Maria jumped in and grabbed as much water as she could to propel herself and kicked as hard as she could to get to the other side. She was never a great swimmer. The current in the middle of the wide part of the river was much stronger. She gave everything to get to our son. Maria began to take in water. Sputtering and gasping she called out for our son. The water got in her face and obscured her view of the scene. She realized in that moment while thinking every other possible thought imaginable while also worrying about her son like a mother’s brain does that this was the thing I had been talking about. She was watching her child die. She was watching the demon kill him
But the unexpected happened. Surely this evil that had been coming for our son wanted him for sinister reasons. Surely the intention was to take him. Take his life. Take his soul. But she watched the woman drag Johnathan out of the water on to the bank by his leg. He screamed of course and fought as hard as his weak body would allow, but in that moment it didn’t seem like the intention was to kill him.
Maria watched our son being dragged through the mud, rocks, and sicks of the Guadalupe river bank and into the dense woods kicking and screaming crying out for his mommy. The disfigured woman turned as it delved into the Texas hill country. She told me that she’d never forget its smile.
The woman has been sighted for more than a hundred years unbeknownst to us at the time. She and her husband were farmers far outside of San Antonio near that quiet, shady bend of the river. They had two kids and a happy life in South Texas. They probably played in Elm Creek and swung off ropes into the river. Goats grazed and chickens ran around pecking at bugs. The dogs chased sticks from the Mexican White Oaks that shaded the serene property.
But one clear night, with all the stars of the universe seemingly visible in the Texas sky, a stranger came. He yelled as he banged on the door and hurled slurs at the family. He had a problem with the Mexican wife and their interracial children. He somehow had a problem with the marriage of two cultures in that borderland where he himself was the true outsider. His breath reeked of alcohol and his beliefs of ignorance and bigotry.
He brandished a knife and almost tripped on it as he made his way to one of the goats.
“I’ll gut him like I’ll gut your kids.” He slurred.
The wife covered the children’s eyes with each hand as he tore into their livestock. He slashed at the goat as it bleated in the cool night air. Blue bonnets blew in the wind before the bloody carcass collapsed on top of them. The man was covered in blood.
“YOU DON’T BELONG HERE. I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU.”
They tried to ignore him and eventually he stumbled off into the night. Early in the morning before the sun rose, the husband smelled smoke. He woke his wife and children. The fire had already engulfed much of the ground floor, but they were able to make it to the front door. It was blocked. Even if the backdoor hadn’t been blocked as well, it was rendered useless by the flames that guarded it.
As the family rushed back up to the top floor, the stairs gave way beneath them. The husband and daughter fell into the fire below. The woman reached for them, but could barely touch the finger tips of the husband who was now burning alive. She had to take her son and get out. She fought with all her might to get a window open as the screams of her family rang out amidst the roar of the fire. The window was stuck and so were they.
She held her son tightly as the house began to fall apart and the fire overtook them. She covered him as best she could, but the fire was unstoppable.
The woman awoke in the smoldering rubble of her once beautiful home. In her burnt, blistering limbs her son was cradled in death. The fire melted her feet into solid calcified masses that resembled hooves. Her hands were barely protected by her crossed arms. Patches of her hair burned away completely with just a few wisps left here and there. Her face was completely disfigured and her body mutilated, but the physical pain of her injuries were nothing compared to the emotional trauma.
Eventually, people from town came to the scene to find the charred remains of the family, but the woman was nowhere to be found. All that was left was a trail of ash, blood, and flesh that led to the river. Her body was never found.
I saw her again not too long ago. It was when I was in the top stack of the library on campus. I was researching her. I don’t forgive her and don’t in any way think she is good or seek to justify what she did to my son, but I empathize with her. Her story is tragic. She wasn’t always a monster.
But I now know that there are two kinds of monsters in this world. Actual monsters–the urban legends like the Donkey Lady (which is what kids have always called her)–and human monsters. Those monsters whose hatred and ignorance stoke tragedy. The flames of tragedy in which monsters are made whether they be humans or…something else.
I saw the Lady standing at the far end of the book shelves near biographies. All of those books paled in comparison to the story of her life and what came after. She stood hunched over. Disfigured in anguish. Holding the hand of my son, Johnathan.
He stood straight. He looked fuller in the face. He was healthy. He smiled and gave a little wave. I will never forget that smile.
Part of me dies each time I think of that moment. Not because I miss him, which is also true, but because he seemed happier. He seemed better off without me. Were we bad parents? I was a bad father. Unworthy of his love and the life he seen with us.
Was he in a better place with the Lady? The demon? The mother who just wanted her kids back. The mother who endured fire and racism to protect her children. This became all I could think of as I read and read to find out what had happened to my son.
I watched her walk back into the darkness of the dark stacks, letting go of my son’s hand. Then he turned and went with her. I will never forget the look on his face.
I was a bad father because I thought that he was better off without me when the reality was that he deserved to be with his family. He deserved to be with the mother who brought him into this world and loved him with every fiber of her being. Parents are meant to do everything for their children. To protect them from bigotry, from fire, from nature, from sickness, from death as best as they can.
I am a good father. The Lady protected her son up until the very last breath. I am going to do the same.
I am going to get him back.