Thom Campbell stood at the kitchen window with a cup of coffee in his hand, watching his twelve-year-old daughter, Megan, slip into the shed in the backyard.
From the backward glance she gave over her shoulder, it almost looked like she was trying to get away with something.
Or, maybe, she’d just heard a noise.
Christ, who knew anymore?
He sure didn’t.
For the last two years, the girl had been a complete mystery to him. Some days he was so fed up he was ready to give up. Let her live in the house until she was eighteen, then they’d toss her ass out and forget about her. Other days, when he hated himself for thinking some of the mean things he thought about his oldest child, he just wanted to crawl into a bottle and pickle himself.
It had gotten that bad.
But most days he was able to tough it out. Yeah, she was a mess, but she was his mess, and he would love her, and he would deal with her shit because he loved her. No matter what, he loved her.
Still, loving the girl was hard.
It was a Saturday morning in early April and he was doing the taxes. Thom worked as a paramedic for the Austin Fire Department, twenty-four hours on, forty-eight hours off. He’d worked the day before, and after what his Fitbit claimed was a meager three hours and forty-two minutes of sleep, he’d dragged himself to the dining room table, fired up the computer and started plugging away at the old Turbo Tax, grumbling at paying taxes for a government that he felt was increasingly full of shit.
He’d been at it for an hour.
Sometime during that hour Megan had come downstairs, surprisingly dressed in something other than her pajamas, and asked him what he’d done with her phone.
“It’s your phone,” he’d said. He and his wife Sarah were always walking on eggshells around Megan, bracing themselves for the next screaming fit, but some days his patience was too thin for that and he’d let the passive-aggressive part of his personality take over. “Why would I know where your phone is?”
“I’m just asking. You don’t have to be so mean.”
“Baby, I’m not being mean. It’s your phone. That means it’s your responsibility. I don’t know what you did with it.”
“You hid it, didn’t you?”
“What? No.”
“You did! Why are you so mean to me?”
“Mean? How am I mean? Baby, I’m just sitting here trying to do the taxes.”
“Great. Nice. You don’t care.”
“About your phone? No, I don’t care. It’s your phone. It’s wherever you left it last. Now come on, I’m trying to do the taxes.”
“You don’t care!”
“Please, baby. I’m really—”
“Stop!”
“Stop what?”
“Stop it! Just stop it. You don’t care.”
Just like that. Zero to fucking freak-out in no time flat.
“You don’t care!” Megan said. She clapped her hands over her ears and ran to the living room couch where she crawled up into a ball and screamed, over and over again, “You don’t care! You don’t care!”
If he tried to say something, he’d be met with shrieking. “Stop it! Stop!”
It was like that almost every day now.
The freak-outs.
Sarah was no better at it than he was. She and Megan would spend hours yelling at each other, Sarah pleading with her to make sense. He couldn’t even count the times he’d watched Sarah, sitting on the floor, leaning against Megan’s door, begging her to say something. Just talk to me, baby.
Sarah tried. She really did.
When Thom would get into it with Megan, Sarah would intervene. She’d scream at Thom, actually bark herself hoarse. “What are you doing? You can’t yell at her like that.”
“She’s fucking insane, Sarah. What do you want me to do?”
“She’s just twelve, Thom. Can’t you see that? She’s our little girl.”
But the long and short of it was that Megan was out of control.
He and Sarah were both at the end of their rope, and they knew it. Neither one of them had any idea how to move forward. He felt helpless and angry and hopeless and bitter beyond belief. The whole family was hurting. They were in real danger of tearing themselves apart, and there was no relief in sight.
They’d been to therapy. They’d been to shrinks. They’d had her tested again and again. The first doctor, the only one they’d even thought might be credible, told them it was Oppositional Defiance Disorder coupled with severe depression.
She wouldn’t prescribe medication though, and she didn’t take their insurance.
So they found someone closer and in network.
No help there. ADHD this time. New medication, but all it did was make Megan so constipated she’d taken to spending hours in the bathroom behind a locked door, crying her eyes out.
And it had been that way through eight different shrinks. A different opinion every time but no answers. The latest jackass wanted her tested for freaking autism, for God’s sake.
Thom put his coffee cup down on the table. A little harder than he’d meant to.
He wanted to punch something.
He wanted to grab the back of a chair and twist until it broke apart in his hands.
Instead, he took a couple of deep breaths and refocused on the shed in the backyard. Megan had left the door open, just a little. What in the hell was she doing out there?
The shed was one of his projects, something he’d been meaning to work on since they bought the house three years earlier. The thing was starting to look a little ratty, but it was still in okay shape. They kept the Halloween and Christmas decorations out there in large plastic tubs. He had plans, though, to turn it into a woodworking shop. He had plans to fix the back patio awning too, and he thought the shed would be the perfect place to put a band saw and a hobbyhorse.
Then Megan came out of the shed and closed the door behind her.
Her tears were gone.
She wasn’t screaming, for once.
She was actually smiling.
She crossed the yard and came in through the backdoor. She saw him standing there in his jeans and t-shirt and gave a little wave. “Hey, Dad,” she said. She didn’t stop to talk, though. “Love you,” she said and walked up the stairs to her room.
All Thom could do was watch her go.
* * *
She’d looked so pleased with herself.
These days, he’d come to distrust anything she did or said that wasn’t done while screaming, and so he waited for her to close her bedroom door and then went out to the shed to take a look.
Nothing too terribly out of place.
She’d taken the Halloween decorations and pushed them into neat stacks on the right side of the shed. On the left she’d arranged the Christmas decorations. Her bedroom always looked like a trailer park after a tornado, but the rest of the things in Megan’s life always had to have a home. Everything had to be in its place, so it didn’t surprise him that she’d come out here and put some order to the mess.
It didn’t even surprise him that she’d taken some pains to wipe down and clean up the workbench he’d made.
She’d actually done a really good job.
She couldn’t pick up laundry to save her life, but if it was something she set her mind to, she made damn sure it got done.
And done well.
Laser focus, Sarah called it.
Like the workbench.
Spotless.
So too were the insides of the cabinets above the bench. He closed the cabinet door and frowned.
What was she up to?
* * *
As the distance between he and Megan had grown over the last two years, Thom had become more and more attached to their Jack Russell terrier, Bartleby. He never thought he’d like a little dog this much, but Bartleby stayed by his side constantly. He couldn’t turn around without nearly tripping over the thing. He couldn’t nap on the couch without the dog climbing up beside him to snuggle, whining whenever he stopped with the belly rubs.
He’d fallen in love with Bartleby.
In the back of his mind he knew what he was doing.
It had been like this with Megan, back when she was little. She’d snuggle with him, laugh with him, fill the house with giggles.
But as her attitude had turned poisonous, he had transferred some of that affection for Megan to the dog. It was pathetic and wrong and horrible on all kinds of levels, and he knew that.
He couldn’t help it, though.
* * *
That Monday, while Megan was at school and their youngest, Jacob, was inside watching cartoons—he was four—Thom took Bartleby out back to throw a tennis ball around. One wild throw ended up with the ball under the shed. Bartleby tried to get it, but too many treats had made him fat and he couldn’t get all the way under. Thom pushed the dog out of the way and glanced beneath the shed.
“What the hell is that?” he said aloud.
It looked like…bed sheets.
Megan’s bed sheets.
He pulled them out. They were cream colored, with princesses all over them.
Definitely Megan’s.
And they were wet.
He sniffed the sheets. It was pee.
What the hell? She’d wet her bed. She’d done that a lot when she was little, but she was twelve now.
And why in the hell would she bury them under the shed?
* * *
That afternoon after Sarah got home from work, the two of them confronted Megan with his discovery.
They sort of pussyfooted around the accusation, but once it was out, he could feel Sarah stiffen beside him.
They waited for the screaming.
To his surprise, she just shrugged. “Bartleby peed on my sheets,” she said.
“What?” Thom asked.
“I don’t know. I went to shower, and when I came back there was dog pee on my bed.”
“But he was in his crate when I went downstairs,” Thom said.
“I don’t know. Maybe Jacob let him out.”
“And then put him back in?”
“I guess.”
Thom and Sarah both heard the pitch of Megan’s voice change.
They’d been trained, after two years of this, to know when to back off.
“It’s okay, baby,” Sarah said. “Do you want me to wash your sheets for you?”
“No way. They’ve got dog pee on them. Just throw them away.”
“Sheets are expensive,” Thom said. “That’s money we don’t need to be throwing away.”
“It’s not my problem,” Megan said. She made a move to push her way past them. Thom, for a moment, thought of holding her back, but they’d been down that road before. Megan was too big now to control physically without a fight. The last time he’d tried it had gotten so ugly a neighbor had called the cops. The cops had taken one look at Megan’s ranting and raving and they’d responded by simply giving Thom a pat on the back and wishing him luck.
But the point was made: he could no longer physically control his daughter without putting himself in serious legal trouble.
And he had no intention of doing that.
So he let her pass.
She went into the bathroom and he heard the toilet lid come up and he knew they wouldn’t see her for at least an hour.
“Well, at least she didn’t scream at us,” Sarah said.
“Sarah,” he said, “she was lying to us. You saw that, right?”
“But isn’t what she said possible? Bartleby has peed on the carpet before.”
“But not in her bed. He’s scared to death of her.”
“He’s not scared to death of our daughter.”
“Are you kidding? He won’t go near her, even with me in the room.”
“That’s not her fault.”
“But peeing in the bed is. Please tell me you see that? Our daughter just lied to us.”
* * *
A month later, with summer coming on, Thom was spending a lot more of his time in the backyard. He’d taken the little cash they had left over each month and planted a garden on the back patio. It was a pretty good one, too. Lots of herbs, tomatoes, zucchini – stuff they could eat.
The patio was looking good.
One Saturday morning he rose from another night of restless sleep and went down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
Sarah was at the store, buying their weekly groceries.
Jacob was, as always, on the couch watching cartoons.
He couldn’t find Megan, though.
He walked around the house, calling her name, assuming she probably had those damn headphones on again—she couldn’t hear a train wreck with those things on—until he got to the kitchen.
Nobody had bothered to feed Bartleby, so he did.
That done, he put his coffee cup on the counter and turned his attention to the patio garden.
But he was immediately drawn to the shed.
There was smoke coming out of the roof.
He was a paramedic by training but a firefighter by nature, so he grabbed the fire extinguisher they kept in the pantry and ran for the backyard.
He threw open the door and saw Megan inside. She had a pile of Jacob’s G.I. Joe dolls laid out on one of Sarah’s cookie sheets, and they were burning.
She was smiling, happy as a lark, the lighter still in her hand.
“What in the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“Stop it!” Megan said.
“No, what in the hell are you doing?”
“Stop it! Stop!”
Megan clapped her hands over her ears and ran from the shed.
“No, goddammit,” he yelled after her. “What are you doing?”
“Leave me alone!” Megan yelled, and ran inside.
Through the windows at the back of the house, Thom could see her work her way up the stairs and then to her bedroom, where she promptly slammed the door.
Done for the rest of the day.
The firefighter in him turned his attention back to the fire she’d started. Seven different dolls, burning pretty good.
He doused them with the extinguisher and left the heap of burnt plastic sitting on his workbench.
And when Sarah got home, they had words.
* * *
Thom hadn’t trusted Megan for a while, maybe a year.
The kid lied all the time.
Lied about stuff there was no reason to lie about, like wetting her bed and stuffing the blankets under the shed.
It made no sense.
But the bit with burning Jacob’s G.I. Joe dolls was the last straw.
“We are not leaving her alone with Jacob,” he told Sarah. “There’s no way. In fact, I don’t think we should leave her by herself at all.”
Sarah, her arms wrapped around her ribcage and her eyes full of tears, could only manage a nod.
That was their life for the next two weeks.
It was Hell.
Megan wouldn’t talk to them. Wouldn’t even scream at them. But every time she passed them in the hall or caught their eye from across the room, she glared at them, at Thom especially, like she hated him.
Hell, she totally did. She thought he was a pile of what Bartleby had left on the lawn.
That Saturday he got up a little after eight, went to the kitchen and poured himself some coffee. Sarah liked to do her weekly shopping early in the morning, to beat the crowds, and she’d taken Jacob with her. Megan was somewhere. He had no idea where.
And, of course, nobody had bothered to feed Bartleby, so he scooped out some food for him.
“Bartleby,” he said. “Come here, boy.”
Nothing.
Ordinarily, the dog came running just at the sound of the food getting scooped out.
“Bartleby!”
He checked the backyard, to see if maybe Megan had let him out to poop, but rather than see the dog, he saw Megan slip into the shed.
What the hell?
He opened the back door and called out to the girl. “Megan, have you seen Bartleby?”
No answer.
“Goddammit,” he muttered. He didn’t want to face the screaming, not another day of it. Then he kicked himself for being scared to talk to his own daughter. It shouldn’t be this way.
He went to the shed and pulled the door open.
Megan was standing at his workbench, her back to him.
She was dressed in old jeans and a dark t-shirt, and even as his mind was processing the strangeness of Megan dressed in something other than pajamas before noon, before breakfast even, he saw the blood on the workbench.
“Megan…?”
He took a step to one side and saw Bartleby’s headless body on the bench.
“Oh Jesus,” he said. “Oh, oh, oh.”
His stomach lurched and he felt the bile rise up in his throat. Rage didn’t even enter his mind. All he felt was shock. His legs were like water.
“What did you do?” he asked. “Bartleby…?”
Megan was standing next to the bench, her face utterly expressionless. No emotion. Stone cold.
And then, in an awful moment of clarity, he understood.
He understood his daughter.
He understood what she was. And what she could become.
He’d thrown words like psychopath around, but he’d never really believed them. Not really.
But it was worse than that, wasn’t it?
The high intelligence but poor performance in school. The excessive antisocial behavior. No guilt, no remorse. All the lies.
And now the bed wetting. The arson. And animal mutilation.
What did the cops call it? The MacDonald Triad.
He was raising the Devil.
“Baby, what did you do?”
Her expression never changed. Not even a flicker of humanity. Not even when she lashed out with the knife and caught him across the throat.
He gasped without sound.
A second later she was all over him, plunging the knife into him again and again.
The last thing he saw was his blood spattered on his daughter’s face.
* * *
Megan went to the garage and got the gas can.
It was heavy, and she had to lug it back to the shed with it balanced on her hip. She screwed off the cap and pulled out the nozzle thingy and poured the gas all over everything, the benches and the Christmas decorations and the dead dog and right on her Daddy’s face.
She was careful, though, to save just enough to splash the walls of the shed, inside and out, and then lit the whole thing ablaze.
It went up so fast.
Fire always made her happy.
Joe McKinney has his feet in several different worlds. In his day job, he has worked as a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police Department, a DWI Enforcement officer, a disaster mitigation specialist, a homicide detective, the director of the City of San Antonio’s 911 Call Center, and a patrol supervisor. He played college baseball for Trinity University, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in American History, and went on to earn a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He was the manager of a Barnes & Noble for a while, where he indulged a lifelong obsession with books.
McKinney published his first novel, Dead City, in 2006, a book that has since been recognized as a seminal work in the horror genre, and one of the cornerstones of zombie literature. Since then, he has gone on to win two Bram Stoker Awards® and expanded his oeuvre to cover everything from true crime and writings on police procedure to science fiction to cooking and Texas history. The author of more than twenty books, he is a frequent guest at horror and mystery conventions.
McKinney and his wife Tina have two lovely daughters and make their home in a little town just outside of San Antonio, where he indulges his passion for cooking and makes what some consider to be the finest batch of chili in Texas.