Apparition, page 35
The old woman’s eyes focused on something beyond the spirits. She could see the three people embracing on the steps of the building. The lady there held the two children tightly. She spoke, and this time the old woman heard her words.
“You’re mine,” said the lady. And as she said it, her eyes locked with those of the old woman. The lady smiled at the old woman, who suddenly remembered words she had once spoken – important words, crucial words which she had somehow forgotten.
“It picks a family,” she had said. “It picks the children. Your children.” And later, she had said, “The Lamia can be patient, when it has to. It can wait – perhaps forever – for what it wants.”
The old woman shivered. The lady was still looking at her. She smiled when the tremor wracked the old woman’s body, as though she were drinking in the sudden terror that was causing the old woman’s heart to skip and pound.
The children were not aware of any of this. They did not see the battered ghosts, for that was not their gift. They did not feel the panic the old woman felt, only the lady’s arms around their shoulders.
The lady pulled the children even closer. She leaned in so close she could feel their heartbeats. So strong. So delicious.
A roach crawled out from under the lady’s pantsleg. The children did not see this, either.
The lady kissed their necks. Then bared her teeth.
“Once mine, always mine,” she whispered.
And the children began to scream.
***
Author’s Note
***
I would like to tell you a story. Unlike many of the stories I write, this one is true. The story does relate to the book and I will get to the connection as fast as I can. Bear with me for a bit.
A short time after I married my wife (or she married me, depending on how you look at it), she got pregnant. We were very excited. After a few months, we began preparing for the birth of our first baby. We especially loved going to the doctor visits that involved ultrasounds. There’s the heart! There’s a leg! You can see toes!
Then we went to an ultrasound that was a bit different. The technician slimed my wife’s belly with the goop they put on pregnant women, then put the ultrasound wand (it’s really called a transducer, but I like “wand” better) against her tummy. I remember that the lights in the office were dim – for some reason that’s one of my strongest memories of the visit. And I remember that my wife and I were already smiling when the exam started, looking forward to the moment the technician started telling us look at this or look at that or isn’t that amazing.
But none of that happened.
Instead, the technician suddenly put the wand down and said, “Excuse me,” and hurried out of the room. Because the medical system is what it is, we had to wait almost three hours before a doctor could be persuaded to climb down off his high horse and actually talk to us. This did not go over well with either of us and only my wife’s amazing people skills kept security from escorting me out of the hospital several times.
By the time the doctor finally talked to us, we already knew it was bad. I won’t recite all the details. Suffice it to say, we were going to lose the baby.
I had the chance to hold the little girl’s body, to walk with her in my hands for a short time. We named her Grace. At the time, we thought we would never get over the experience. And we were right: the loss softened, but I still miss her terribly sometimes.
We got pregnant again. A healthy baby boy was born. And it was only then that I realized how terrified I was of losing another child. Anyone who has had a baby (or at least, anyone in my economic circle who doesn’t have the money for nine or ten full-time nannies and an onsite physician) will tell you that the first six months of a newborn are pretty much a sleep-deprived, poop-saturated blur. The sleep issue was especially hard because the kid never slept.
And on the rare occasion when he did sleep, I woke him up. Because when he slept longer than an hour or so I would feel compelled to go in his room and try to see if he was breathing. We kept the room dark and my night-vision is not great, which meant I usually couldn’t tell if he was moving. So I typically poked the kid until he woke up crying.
Phew, he’s alive!
Dammit, he’s awake!
I did this with the next child (a daughter), and at the time of this writing I once again find myself in the blur of new-babyhood with another little girl. I don’t poke her. But I can’t sleep next to her as my wife can because the instant I drift off I jerk back awake, certain I’ve rolled over and crushed her.
I am terrified of losing another child.
And here’s where I can tie things up for you (at least a little). Most of my books deal with things that scare me. And loss is a big one. So when I started writing Apparition, I decided it would be a story about something worse than losing a child: what if you were forced to kill one? I did research and found out about the Lamia and the Ala and several other interesting monsters which didn’t make the cut as potential bad guys.
I also started reading about filicide.
Before Apparition it hadn’t even dawned on me that anyone would ever kill his or her own child, let alone that it happened often enough for there to be scientific literature about it. My worst nightmare… how could anyone want to do that on purpose?
But the crass, “artistic” part of me saw very quickly how to wrap a story in enough truth to make it resonate a bit more. So I included real facts in the book: the facts in the journal entries at the beginning of each chapter. However, because I am not only an “artist” but someone who tries to be a decent human being, I felt increasingly bad about doing this. Like I was trivializing what I had discovered (to my dismay) was a real problem.
The only possible way to deal with this internal contradiction was to write an Author’s Note where I could preach at people for a bit. And yes, that’s what I’m about to do.
Filicide is a real thing. A strange and baffling thing – almost every study I’ve read that touches on it has some statement to the effect of “We can’t really figure out why this happens as often as it does in these modern times.”
I have to admit that I don’t understand it myself. I totally get the desire to chuck your kid out of a window sometimes – that’s called being a parent – but cannot conceive of getting to the point where I’d actually go and open that window up.
I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the way more and more people are running their families, either by choice or because of circumstances beyond their control. The central marriage unit has fallen out of favor in recent times. Whether you think that’s a good idea or not overall, it’s seems fairly reasonable to conclude that anytime people come together without the conviction of staying together forever (the whole ‘til death do us part thing), the chances of the parental figures having a good support group go way down.
We Facebook.
We Tweet.
We play online games with other people.
Millions of ways to “connect.”
And yet we as a society are more lonely and isolated than perhaps ever before.
I think that’s a big part of why people end up killing their children: they’re alone.
The wife has left or is leaving him, so Dad kills the children as revenge, or to keep them from going to the spouse, or just to “save” the children from the cruelty of divorce.
A mother is on her own and can’t handle it, but also can’t handle the idea of leaving children behind when she kills herself, so takes them with her.
Filicide is a mystifying tragedy that occurs all-too often. Fewer children die at the hands of a parent than, say, in traffic accidents or because of cancer, but the fact that thousands – even tens of thousands – of children die at the hands of parents every year makes me sick to my stomach.
If you have a child, ask for help when you need it. Worst case scenario, all fifty states have “safe haven” laws – meaning a desperate parent (usually single – again, people with support inside their own family and social unit are much less likely to be afflicted with real urges to kill their children) can drop off a baby or even a young child at certain designated areas, no questions asked. The locations vary, but often places like fire departments, police stations, and hospitals are designated safe havens.
To be clear: I’m not advocating child abandonment. Statistics show that children with both parents are far better off than those with only one. But any live child has a better chance to thrive than any dead child.
As for those of us who are not parents, or who don’t suffer from the desperate urge to be rid of a child… be aware. Make friends with new parents. Be available to help. Be close enough with mommies and daddies that you can see them fraying around the edges and be able to say, “Leave the kid with me while you go catch a movie,” and make it stick.
People struggle with so many things. We all have our trials, our difficulties. But where there is help, there is almost always hope. We must learn to reach out to one another, to help one another, to be lovingly nosy from time to time.
The world is, I believe, a place full of great things. Of great people. Of great acts of kindness and generosity. There are and always will be wicked people, failing some serious Divine intervention. But we have it in ourselves to save others – not from ghosts or demons or the occasional smiling serial killer, but from our own flaws.
Thanks for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed the book. I hope you don’t mind my preaching too much. I hope more of us can see the need in others’ eyes before they are pushed too far.
- Michaelbrent Collings
June 2012
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Haunted, The Loon, Billy: Messenger of Powers, Rising Fears, and the #1 Bestseller RUN. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @mbcollings.
If you enjoyed Apparition, please let others know and leave a review on Amazon.
Michaelbrent Collings, Apparition
