Like Father Like Daughter

Again, he walked through the same street. He saw the old house and a fire blazed within him. She had to die.
The windows were dark- the house was a lifeless shell just like he knew it would be. The scars of tragedy had erased the home of its joy, its life. He cast his gaze upward, his eyes stopping when they spied the window behind which he knew she slept. He felt superhuman, immortal. All of his senses had sharpened. His hearing was especially acute. In his haunted mind, he could hear her breathing.
The magnificent oak tree, its bare limbs reaching, clawing at the sky, gave the suburban lot an air of maturity he hadn’t expected. How ironic, for him to see this champion of the trials of Time now, at a time when lives were soon to be taken as its prisoners.
Entrance was easy, the faulty lock on the back door had never been replaced. He pondered mankind's naivete and eagerness to trust. No one ever expects to be the target of evil. He certainly hadn't.
The house was different than he had expected. In his dreams, the house was as he remembered, but the inaccuracy did not impede his determination. Rearranging a few pieces of furniture wouldn't erase the evil that had become part of the house, as obvious as the walls or floor.
He ascended the stairs, his footsteps stifled though he knew he would not wake her. When he reached the top stair, the previously calm wind howled—a futile attempt of warning.
He could see her bedroom door. He neared it, long faded memories resurfacing. He paused at the doorway, observing the delicate woodwork and its weathered scars of long ago. He placed his hand on the doorknob; the metal was cold in his hand. Slowly, he opened the door. The starlight illuminated her soft features, still gifted with the smoothness and vitality of youth, though an air of wariness, of sorrow beyond her years permeated the area surrounding her.
She knew he was there. Before her eyes opened, her soft lips mouthed a name significant only to him. She lifted her eyelids, revealing the deep blue eyes identical to his own. He had expected her to be terrified or shocked, but the look in her eyes did not betray fear, but recognition.
He flipped open his knife. The moonlight glinted off the cold steel. She didn’t scream, didn't fight back. It was as if she had expected him to come, as if she had known of his mission. He raised the knife. He felt a sudden burst of power as he forced his weapon into her heart. For a moment, flesh and steel were one. She looked down at her wound and her eyes brimmed with tears. He watched as she took her last breath. Her last sight on earth was of her father, his hands covered in her blood, blood the same as his.
A barrage of emotions flooded him: relief, power, accomplishment, pride, but never guilt. But with the stimulation of the kill did not come the freedom for which he had hoped. With a sense of responsibility, he became aware that he must kill again.


He awoke with a jolt, heart pounding and gasping for breath. The scratchy, faded blue linens lay haphazardly in a knotted ball on the floor. Cold sweat dripped from his body and the crisp air sent chills down his spine and created tiny goosebumps on his damp skin. He groped blindly for the lamp on the bedside table, knocking over the alarm clock in the process. It crashed to the floor and he winced. He found the light switch. The light flickered before turning on, casting a blaring, yellow glow to the tiny room.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, he reached for the alarm clock, hoping the cheap thing wasn’t broken.
"Hi Daddy," a child's voice spoke.
A chill went down his spine. She was there. His little girl. He forgot the clock and sat up. One eye squinted open, just enough so that he could see her. She was standing at the foot of the bed, looking at him. He opened both eyes, blinking rapidly as the aching feeling subsided. She smiled at him. He smiled back. She was proud of him, proud that he had completed his mission as he had promised. He longed to reach out and touch the face of this child, to hold her in his arms and feel her, to fill the void that tore at his heart and at his soul. But he knew that this would be impossible. This child was a casualty of his war against Evil. She came to him now, as she had done before, as an angel to be the voice of God and to dictate to him God’s wishes. Sarah stood there before him, not with wings or a halo, but as a little girl, perfect and angelic without wings. She wore the blue flowered dress her grandmother had made for her when she learned that his wife was finally pregnant. She so wanted to be a grandmother. She never got the chance.
Embarrassment overcame him. He was embarrassed of his unshaven face and dirty clothes, and embarrassed of the cigarette burned surfaces of the room and the air of infidelity and godlessness that hung heavy like stink in the air. It suffocated him. His little girl shouldn’t be exposed to such filth. He would have given her anything. He had killed for her and would do so again.
“Thank you for making the bad girl go away, Daddy,” she said, smiling slightly. She stood in a child-like pose with her hands clasped behind her back. Her pale hair framed her face. Sarah had the bright blue eyes and blond hair that he had once been gifted with. She was the perfect image of innocence. His innocence had left him long ago.
“I only carried out the Lord's will, baby."
“The evil isn't gone, Daddy.” Her smile was replaced by a look of raw pain and fear. “The other lady, Daddy. She killed me. She’s evil and she has to pay, doesn’t she?”
“She MUST pay. Evil ain’t just in her. Her soul’s done been stoled by the Devil. I'll send her back to Hell.”
“She’s still hurting me, Daddy!” Sarah wailed, “She's hurting my soul!” The pale face of Sarah’s specter transformed from that of an innocent young girl to that of an old woman, face wrinkled and skin peeling away from the bones underneath. Sarah's eyes, now red with evil focused on her father. She stared through him, into his soul, and he felt as if the Devil himself was peering into him. As abruptly as she had transformed, Sarah returned, as innocent and pious as before. “See, Daddy. I don’t know if I can fight her anymore. You have to make her stop, Daddy,” she looked into his eyes, the same blue eyes she had, and smiled.


Again, it was night. The scrawny, dying trees hunched and bent like the souls of the damned. Small, rusted trailers were crowded in the littered lots. The ground was dotted with crushed beer cans and cigarette butts. A chain rustled and he heard a dog barking. Others answered in the distance. He saw one, a large mutt, chained to a tree, it peeled back its lips and snarled at him, pulling at the chain. The chain had scraped the bark from the trunk’s base, and the skin on the dog’s neck was similarly mutilated. The dog looked as if it hadn’t eaten in months, its bones jutting out obscenely from the mangled flesh of the creature. The dog fought against its shackles, lurching and barking like mad. It was only inches away. He could feel its warm, moist breath on his hand. He stopped and stared at the dog, just beyond its leaps. It continued to fight against the chain and shout, the barks echoing in the valley. In the nearest trailer, someone screamed for the dog to shut up. He stared into its eyes and it lurched a final time. The tree looked as if it were going to break in half and it probably would have, but the dog’s neck preceded it. With one final snap, the dog was quiet.
He continued down the dirt path. He could sense her. Even in this place, so filled with evil and sin, hers was so much greater than the others that it stood out independently, a raging bonfire trying to hide itself in a sea of slowly burning matches. He could also feel Sarah, her pureness and innocence a sharp contrast to the evil in this place. She gave him the courage to go on.
He approached the door of the rusted trailer. Its paint was faded and the metal was dented and curled out at the corners. He picked up a rock and smashed it against the door handle. It snapped and dangled loosely from the frame. He opened the door. The smell of urine and death attacked his senses and his eyes began to burn. He entered the structure. It was devoid of furniture and appliances. A buzzing lamp outside the trailer shone dimly through the dingy windows. A dead cat sat in the corner, its carcass covered with maggots feeding off of the remaining flesh. Others animals and their waste were scattered about. Cockroaches skittered across the floor; chipmunks nibbled on unknown substances. She sat in the middle of the floor, her back to him, on a stack of filthy newspaper. Her hair was gray with either age or dirt and it hung knotted about her head. She didn’t move. He circled around her, opening his switch-blade. She stared forward, unblinking. He looked into her face, the face of the woman who he had once loved. The cracked, wrinkled face was the same as the demon he had seen take hold of his daughter. She was the evil that must be expelled. He raised the knife. Suddenly, she twitched and freed herself from her catatonia. She looked into his eyes; her large brown eyes were filled with a sorrow that was utterly human.
“Why did you kill our daughter?” she asked, her voice even and devoid of fear despite the presence of the knife.
“She was evil.”
She didn't contest his claim. Their daughter had been evil, she knew. Her eyes filled with the tears of regret. One escaped down her cheek.
“You’re the Devil’s maiden. You used witchery to seduce me. You made me break the vows of my marriage. She was a bastard!” He began to fill with rage and gripped the knife tighter.
“Why kill me?”
“Sarah’s soul was good and pure. You killed her.”
“Your wife’s child was stillborn. She was old. It was no one's fault.”
“It was witchcraft! I ain’t gonna be fooled by you, you Devil!”
Sarah appeared behind the woman. She looked different somehow. “Kill her, Daddy. Make her stop hurting me,” she pleaded, but her voice was not the voice of a child, but a harmony of tortured souls. He was taken aback. “Kill her! Kill her!” the apparition screamed a bloodcurdling cry, its forces shattering the windows of the trailer. A piece of the exploding glass from the window behind him caught him in the back and he cried out in pain. He looked to the girl and her face again transformed into that of an old woman and she cackled, the souls of the damned echoing in her shrill cry. Before his eyes, her skin began to decay and her clothes disintegrated. She stood there a rotting carcass. He looked into her eyes, and found the same blue eyes of the little girl he had lost. As he thrust the knife into his heart, he realized that the evil that existed in his children came from him.




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