Devil's Child

         Dark glittering eyes peered out of the black and white ink that made up the last memory she would ever have of her son. The accident had happened almost five years ago but the burden still laid on the lonely mother. It was all her fault. She was the one that had let him go on the trip. She signed his life, his soul, away with a few quick strokes of a pen. A tear rolled down her cheek and splashed onto the glass frame that held the photograph of her son. She couldn't bear to look at it any longer and threw it face down on the coffee table.
         Allison was never the same after the death of her son. Others noticed it and soon began to avoid her. She would enter violet fits of frustration. She was once sweet, very beautiful and a woman that could hold an intelligent conversation about anything. But all that had changed in the past years. She spent long lengths of time in her house just staring at the one single photograph of her son. It was in that black and white mass that she found the most comfort.
         The woman stood up and walked down the hallway into her bathroom. It was plain and boring, filled with nothing more than the necessary cleaning products. Allison had taken down any decoration in her house. Nobody ever questioned it. She herself didn't even know why she had done it. It happened in one of her fits. She just started tearing down anything that hung to the walls or any trinket that might rest on a shelf. She threw it all out, all except the photograph of her son.
         In the bathroom she wiped the tears away from her eyes. She looked at her face in the mirror. Reflected back at her was her own aged face, but something she wasn't expecting also dwelled in the reflection. In a shadowy corner of the bathroom sat a young boy. The very color that once filled the boy was reaped from his body. He was gray, black-and-white. His arm was raised finger extended eyes peering into those of his mother from through the mirror. Allison clenched her fist and punched the mirrored vision of her son with a scream of terror. Droplets of blood began to pour from her fist. She took a deep breath and exited the bathroom.
         Allison made her way back down the hall and into her living room. Her journey had been useless as tears once again stained her eyes. The wounded hand was wrapped in her shirt until she could find something better to stop the bleeding. She paused an looked down at the coffee table. The photograph of her son now stood upright and facing her. When she walked by she once again flipped it over so she didn't have to look at it. She quickly hobbled into the kitchen to clean her wound. No mirrors in here. Her mind couldn't play tricks on her.
         The woman slowly washed her hand as more blood poured from the wound. When it was properly cleaned she wrapped it in gauze that she found in her first aid kit. No more mirrors in the house, she thought to herself before grabbing a hammer and a trash bag. The woman made her way through the house locating every mirror that she could find. She had hoped it wouldn't come to this but it seemed that everything would haunt her until it was all gone. She thoroughly smashed every mirror with the hammer and deposited the remains in the bag. She dropped the bag of glass near her front door so as to get rid of it later.
         For the third time that night the woman made her way into the living room to find her son's picture upright and facing toward her. The room was cold. She sat down on her couch and picked up the photograph. Her son stared back at her, a twinkle in his eye and an evil grin on his face. He was haunting her. He wanted her to suffer. She brushed her fingers across the young boy's face.
         The boy had spent all the time he was alive making his mother's life living hell. This never stopped her from loving him more than anything in the world. It started off with just pranks. She went to bed finding rocks in her pillows and sheets or snakes waiting to kiss her goodnight. But the pranks got more violent, more sinister, more evil. They once had a dog, a beautiful loving golden retriever. Allison came home one evening with the dog nowhere to be found. When she questioned her son about it, he just laughed. She found the dog two days later, dead, a knife from the kitchen placed forcefully in its back, underneath her bed. That was the last straw. She was convinced her boy needed mental help and signed the permission slip from a local church that was to send the boy off into the wilderness for a few weeks for some spiritual enlightenment. He protested claiming the church was full of lies. Reluctantly, the boy boarded the bus and never came home.
         The police and investigators were never able to explain what had happened on the bus, what had made it crash, and how such a little crash could yield such a violent outcome. It was just driven off the road and into a tree. The vehicle suffered substantial damage but nothing compared to what was found inside. Twenty or so violently mutilated bodies. Bodies that were barely identifiable. The police called it an accident. Allison called it murder. She believed herself to be the culprit although she knew that she sat silently at home when the crash had happened. It was her fault her son had died. He haunted her and made sure that she knew it.
         She returned the photograph to the table once more. She felt the haunting presence in the house and longed to be rid of it. Five years she had not even been able to open the door to her son's room. It remained shut at all times. Nobody was permitted to enter it. She thought it best if she let go and decided to clean it out. It was a task she long avoided. She loved her son and removing his possessions from the house would finally mean admitting he was gone. She would feel much better once the room was open for use again.
         Danny had been interested in many strange things. Vampires, ghost stories, death, blood, voodoo, and magic were all among of his macabre fascinations. Allison had learned to deal with it as she found she couldn't stop him from doing anything. She tried to get him to go to church and see God. He always just laughed at her.
         The hallway creaked as she came to her son's bedroom door. The air was freezing and thicker than ice. She touched the door handle but released it immediately. After a few deep breaths she grabbed hold of the knob and swung the door open. She gasped with fight as she saw what lie inside. A circle of blood had been made on the floor. Inside it were symbols unrecognizable by Allison. Candles littered the room that were lit. They couldn't have remained illuminated for the five years that nobody had entered the room. Allison stumbled backwards as she peered up at the most terrifying thing that decorated the room. Hanging from the ceiling, covered in fresh blood, over the circle was the body of her dead son. The very body she had once identified as his at the morgue.

***

         Two years had passed and nobody had seen the woman that once occupied the small white house in the middle of the suburb. An ambulance pulled up the house and two men got out. They walked up to the door and gave it a knock. When nobody answered they tried the door and found it unlocked. They stepped into an old living room covered with dust. The walls were stripped of everything. Entire shelves were empty, holding nothing but dust. A trash bag full of mirror shards rested next to the door. As the two men stepped inside the house, the door slammed shut behind them. Illuminated from lit candles on the table sat two black and white photographs. A young teen in one of them, with a twinkle in his eye and an evil grin on his face. An aged woman in the other, eyes stocked full of fear as though she had just seen a ghost.