Sophie
Photo by Jacob Amson on Unsplash
Content warning: Horror, gore, grief, loss of life
Two weeks after Ben Wright’s wife and daughter died, he returned to the cemetery.
He drove his safety-conscious Corolla, the last payment made only two months earlier, up the hill. The verges were lined with manicured grass, turning brown and soon to be buried under snow. He had the windows down, and the late October wind fought desperately against the car’s heating system.
Ben didn’t feel the cold — he was drunk.
The next day, Ben wouldn’t remember clicking off his headlights before turning into Rose Hill Memorial Gardens. He parked, alone in the lot at two in the morning, and popped the trunk, the click echoing across the dark pavement. Ben retrieved the bouquet of flowers inside. He wouldn’t remember that either.
Anyone seeing the shambling form of Ben Wright stumbling across the wet leaves may have imagined zombies, or barrowmen, or serial killers with broken minds, had there been any mourners there at that late hour. But no one was around to witness his foot go into a gopher hole, sending him sprawling. He rolled instinctively, stood up, and continued — didn't even stop to dust the dirt and leaves off his shoulder.
He wandered through the gardens, stopping occasionally to read a grave marker, his final destination two headstones, side by side, unmarked by weather and time. The headstones were a formality — the coffins buried beneath them were empty, save for a yellow sundress in one and a stuffed toy dog in the smaller.
Ben bent to one knee, his jeans soaking through on the damp ground. A leaf was stuck to the headstone on the right and he angrily plucked it away. A low, awful sound emanated from his throat. Ben wasn’t aware of it. His arm felt suddenly numb and he dropped the flowers. He stared at the headstones. Tears streamed silently down his face.
“Daddyshere,” he slurred, the words mushy in his mouth, like the applesauce he used to feed his daughter in her stained highchair.
The breeze strengthened, howling gusts of biting cold buffeting his bare face and hands, shaking off the last stubborn leaves from the neat rows of trees planted throughout the graveyard.
Ben heard a rustle in the fallen leaves behind him. His reflexes dulled by drink, he spun slowly — a toy dancer in a music box. His vision blurred, flickered in and out, his consciousness darkening. He could barely make out a small shape in the bushes.
As he fell into blackness, one word came through: “...Daddy?”
Ben would remember none of this. By the next morning, the only remainder of the night before was raw, sharp emotion — the pain of his grief and loss a spearhead in his ribs.
#
Following the death of Ben Wright’s wife and daughter, his brother, Paul, came to stay with him.
The tragedy had torn through the entire family. That little girl was the best thing that had ever happened to them. She was always smiling, even through her tears when she scraped a knee or hit her head on the playground. At the double memorial, Ben and Paul’s mother had broken out in hysterical, haunting wails as their sister sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. She’d been drunk. Hell, most of them had been drunk.
Pain like that had to be dulled with something.
The moment he had received the call, Paul told his supervisor he would be out for bereavement, and set up camp at Ben’s house. It felt empty and too quiet. He slept on the couch.
He’d been there for three days — cooking meals, taking out trash, doing dishes, and washing the backed-up laundry — before his brother finally began speaking, in little leaks, like a faucet left dripping.
They were sitting on the couch, pretending to watch the evening news, beers warming in their hands.
“She was leaving,” said Ben.
“What?”
“We fought. It was one of those fights where nothing’s really the matter, you just both need a break and don’t know it. You know?”
Paul said he did, even though he was a bachelor. He didn’t know squat about relationships.
An hour later, the Wheel of Fortune spinning for the umpteenth time, Ben said, “It’s my fault.”
Paul’s response was a reflex: “No, it’s not.”
Ben stared at the puzzle slowly filling in on the screen.
“She said she was going to Judith’s. To get away from me. She was so mad. I was, too.”
Paul didn’t know what to say.
Another hour passed. The washer beeped. “I better rotate the laundry,” Paul said.
“I almost stopped her. I knew she’d stay if I begged. But I was just so mad at her.” Ben drank the last sip of his beer.
“It’s not your fault,” Paul repeated. “If you want to blame somebody, blame the truck driver that pulled out in front of her.”
Ben didn’t look away from the TV. “She wouldn’t have been out there, out there with her in the back seat, if I had swallowed my pride.”
Later, Paul lugged a basket of fresh laundry into Ben’s bedroom. He glanced at the door and listened. Hearing no sound of Ben moving from the couch, he opened the closet and reached to the top shelf. The Smith & Wesson Model 12 was exactly where he expected to find it. When he took the trash out before bed, Paul stopped by his car and tucked the gun under the driver’s seat.
#
After a week of Paul sleeping on his couch, Ben told his brother he thought he would be okay on his own.
“I appreciate you being here. I’m alright now. I know it was rough at the beginning, but the shock’s passed. Thanks for taking care of things around here,” Ben said, and pulled him in for what passed for a hug between men — a quick, simultaneous smack on the back.
“Call me anytime, bud. I’m here,” Paul said.
“Sure. Yeah. I’ll keep you posted.”
Paul didn’t hear from Ben for a week.
#
Ben woke slowly, like rising out of deep water. His head was heavy and spinning. How much did I drink?
“Daddy!”
Sophie appeared in the open bedroom doorway. She was wearing her Paw Patrol pajamas.
Oh thank God! It was only a nightmare! But it felt so real?! “Yes, Honey-bun?”
“I’m hungry,” Sophie whined.
Ben rubbed his face with his hand. It was dirty. He didn’t notice. “Sorry, Daddy didn’t mean to sleep in.”
“Can we make pancakes?” she asked, bouncing on her toes.
Ben smiled, feeling like a rich man. “Alright, but don’t tell Mommy. She says I put in too much sugar.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stuck his feet into his slippers. “She must be at work already.”
“Mommy’s gone,” confirmed Sophie.
Ben passed her in the doorway, ruffling her thin, blonde hair and smiling down at her. “If that’s the case, I think I’ll add chocolate chips this time.”
#
Paul paced his tiny living room. “Damn it, Ben, answer the fucking phone!”
Is he angry with me? He might have noticed his gun was gone. But Paul couldn’t regret getting that out of the house. Grief could warp people’s minds and he didn’t want to lose a brother, too.
Paul knew Ben needed space to grieve, but he had hoped to hear something from him at least once a day — a text, a call, any proof of life. This total silence was distressing.
He typed out a text and hit send: Just checking in. You okay?
The message was delivered and opened, but no response came.
“Damn it, Ben,” Paul spat again, and continued to pace.
#
“Do you want a drink, Honey-bun?” Ben called from the kitchen while he stirred the batter.
“Yes please, Daddy!” Sophie called back from where she sat in front of the TV, watching cartoons and bouncing her heels against the couch.
“What do you want?”
“Hmm. Apple juice!”
Ben paused, raising an eyebrow. He looked at her over the breakfast bar, confused. “I thought you hated apple juice.”
Sophie’s feet went still and her back stiffened. It was a few moments before she resumed her carefree swinging.
“I like it again,” she said lightly.
Ben almost responded, You’ve never liked it¸ but stopped himself. The whims of children were unpredictable, their tastes constantly changing.
“Okay, Hon. Just don’t spill any on the couch or Mommy will have my hide.”
#
Paul called his mother. He hadn’t stopped pacing all morning.
“You’re sure he’s reading your texts?” she asked.
“I mean, yeah, I can see that he’s read them.”
“I think you should go check on him.”
“I guess so,” Paul said. “I’m sure he’s fine, I just don’t get why he can’t send back a simple I’m okay, you know? He must know we’d be worried.”
“Get over there and let me know how it goes.”
“Okay, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you too, Paulie.”
#
“Honey-bun?”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Have you seen Daddy’s phone anywhere?”
Ben lifted the couch cushions while Sophie, at the kitchen table, ate her pancakes with surprising dexterity.
“No, Daddy.” Sophie stuck a huge forkful of pancake in her small mouth.
“Damn,” Ben swore. Quietly, so she didn’t hear him. “Could’ve sworn I just had it.”
The little girl at the table swung her feet and watched her daddy search the living room while she chewed and swallowed bite after bite of syrupy goodness. In the waistband of her pajama pants, a hard, black rectangle vibrated against her skin.
#
Arriving at Ben’s house, Paul’s stomach roiled. He was imagining worst-case scenarios — Ben bought another gun and did not tell me. Ben swallowed the entire bottle of Ibuprofen in the bathroom cabinet. Ben ran off, in the middle of a breakdown, and abandoned everyone.
But his car was still there, so that last one could probably be ruled out. There was an empty space next to it where Ben’s wife’s car would never be parked again. It was totalled in the accident — crushed to the size of a port-o-potty by the semi-truck.
Paul threw open his car door and stepped onto the asphalt. As he started towards the house, he caught a flicker of movement behind the curtains. Relief flooded through him, immediately replaced by irritation.
He’s alive! He could answer a text!
Paul stomped up the walk and rang the doorbell.
#
Sophie sat in the bath, buried deep in pink bubbles. Her bath toys floated around her. The tiny child’s sharp gaze was unflinchingly glued to the bathroom door, watching her daddy through the few inches he had left it open.
Ben moved around Sophie’s bedroom, collecting clean clothes to warm in the dryer. He pulled a pink T-shirt with flowers off a small hanger in her closet and turned to lay it on her bed.
“What the hell?” Ben murmured.
Her pink Rainbow High comforter was bunched at the end of the small bed, revealing the matching sheets, covered in dirt and wet leaves. Ben stared at the bed for a long time, uncomprehending. Did Sophie go outside before she woke me?
He stripped the bed and brought the comforter and sheets to the laundry room. He put Sophie’s clothes for the day into the dryer, then stuffed the bed dressings into the washer and turned it on.
When he returned to the bathroom, Sophie was playing with her boat.
“Hey, Honey?”
“Yes, Daddy?”
He sat on the closed toilet.
“Did you play outside this morning, before you woke me?” he asked gently, not wanting to put her on the defensive.
Sophie splashed the bathwater with her boat, laughing. “No, Daddy.”
“How’d you get all that dirt and leaves in your bed then?”
Sophie let the boat go still on the water. When she looked at him, Ben was startled by the calculation in her eyes. Gone was the open, curious, innocent expression of his four-year-old. She didn’t smile. Just held his eyes with a much-too-intelligent gaze.
Ben, unnerved, pulled away, backing toward the bathroom door.
“Sophie?” His voice shook.
The doorbell rang.
#
Paul texted his mother: At his place now. I’ll let you know.
He tried calling Ben’s phone one more time, but there was no answer. Paul rang the doorbell again, his heart picking up speed.
I’m gonna give him a thrashing for freaking me out like this.
#
Ben jumped at the sound of the doorbell. He didn’t know what to do about his suddenly terrifying four-year-old, so he tried to act normal.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to Sophie.
He hurried to the laundry room. As he retrieved the warm clothes and towel from the dryer, he had a creepy feeling he was being watched.
The hell is going on?
He went towards the bathroom, where his little girl waited for him, but he was afraid. He didn’t want to look in her eyes again and see that uncanny intelligence.
He and his wife had always known Sophie was a bright child, but what he’d seen in her face was a wisdom far beyond her years. When she’d caught his gaze, it was like she saw straight through him, as if his body was a sheet, and she’d shone a light behind it, casting the shadow of all his private thoughts against the wall.
I know about the pack of cigarettes taped under the kitchen counter, her eyes had told him. I know about the adult videos you watch when mom takes me out and leaves you alone. I know about the emotional affair you had three years ago with that coworker.
Ben’s legs were weak as he forced himself to walk into the room, warm fabric crumpled in his arms.
Sophie was playing in the bathtub with her toys, just like any normal child. What was I freaking out about? That’s my little girl right there! He smiled at her, and she smiled back, her short baby teeth poking out of pink gums. He’d completely forgotten about the dirt and leaves in her bed.
“Alright, Honey-bun, time to get out.”
He expected her to protest, but she rose from the water, using her hands to brush off the bubbles stuck to her skin. He lifted her out of the tub and held up her warm, pink towel. She stepped into it with no fuss and he wrapped it around her small, damp body.
“Can you get dry and dressed by yourself, Honey-bun? Someone’s at the door.”
As if to enforce his point, the doorbell rang a second time.
Sophie began drying herself. “Yes, Daddy.”
He set the clothes on the lid of the toilet and left the bathroom, again leaving the door slightly open.
Sophie dropped the towel to the floor. She kept her eyes on the door as she reached back with both hands and felt along her spine.
Her fingers found the jagged line, the almost invisible depression where the skin joined, and she slipped inside, her arms bending at impossible angles. They seemed to grow longer out of the sockets where they met her narrow shoulders.
Sophie pulled the vibrating cell phone out of her body. A man who looked like a longer, thinner version of her daddy smiled at her from the screen. The text above him read ‘Paul’.
She felt a shock of irritation. Her eyes blackened for a split second, then returned to their normal baby blue.
She returned the phone to the wet crevice in her back. The tissue squelched around it, sucking the device into her body, and the skin closed, the seam undetectable to anyone who didn’t know it was there.
Sophie heard her daddy arrive at the front door and dressed as fast as she could.
#
Ben checked his face in the entryway mirror and wiped a bit of leftover chocolate from his lip, smoothed down some stray hairs, and deemed himself presentable.
Taking a deep breath, he threw the deadbolt and opened the front door.
“Oh, hey Paul.”
#
Paul’s brother looked fine. Freshly shaved, dressed in clean clothes, and rested. Not at all like a man whose entire family died two weeks ago.
Paul gaped at Ben, unable to speak. What is happening?
“What’s up, bro?” said Ben, when he didn’t respond.
“Are— Is everything alright, Ben?”
Ben raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? Why wouldn’t it be? Are you alright?”
“I— it’s just— You weren’t answering your phone. You freaked me out. Mom, too.”
Ben stretched and scratched his chest. “Ah, yeah, I can’t find my phone. Haven’t seen it all day. Might’ve lost it while I was out last night. Drank way too much.”
“You haven’t answered my calls or texts for almost a week, Ben.” Paul studied his brother, his eyes narrowing. Something is wrong.
Ben furrowed his eyebrows. “Really? I don’t remember getting anything from you since we went to LaRocca’s.”
That was two and a half weeks ago! When they’d gotten together for dinner at LaRocca’s, they’d had a good time together. Ben’s wife and daughter were killed on the highway four days later.
Paul’s heart was pounding. Can Ben hear it? “What are you talking about, Ben? Is this some fucking joke or something?”
“Is what a joke? No, I haven’t gotten anything from you since we went to dinner. Are you sure your phone is working?” Ben seemed genuinely confused.
What. Is. Happening?
“Uncle Paul?” A small, high voice rang from inside the house.
Paul felt like he had been punched in the gut. His stomach clenched and when he tried to breathe, he couldn’t get any air. The skin on his scalp was hot and prickling — like molten wax dripping from his crown, down around his ears.
“What the fuck?” Paul’s throat was so tight he could barely force the words out.
Ben ignored him. “Hey Honey-bun! Wanna say ‘hi’ to Uncle Paul?”
“Yeah!”
Sophie appeared from behind Ben and slipped her little hand into her father’s.
That’s not possible. She’s dead! She’s been dead for two weeks. I saw the car — an unidentifiable ball of twisted metal! It’s not possible! Paul’s throat closed, as if filled with wool, and he thought he would choke.
“Hi, Uncle Paul,” Sophie chirped.
Paul’s desire for a wife and children had dampened the moment he held Sophie for the first time. He was content watching her grow into a small person — teaching her new words, helping her work through challenges, and showing her his favorite childhood TV shows. He-Man and Thundercats were particular favorites when he’d streamed them for her last Christmas. Her death had devastated him.
How is this possible?!
The entryway mirror behind Ben caught Paul’s eye and he glanced at it, instantly recoiling — beside the reflections of his face and his brother’s back was a creature, horribly brown and rotten. Clumps of knotted black hair clung to the skull, worms wriggling through them; scraps of skin dangled off the ochre bones; and wet leaves clung to scraps of clothing hanging from the shoulders, no longer serving any purpose.
When he looked back, horrified, the child in front of him looked like his niece. No hint of rot or decay clung to her. She hung onto his brother, her tiny hand enveloped by his huge one. She was wearing the same pink T-shirt he’d cleaned vomit off of, after she ate too much candy last Halloween. Paul peered closer at the little girl’s face. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth widened into a sly grin.
Whatever this thing is, it’s not Sophie! He turned to run. Gotta get away! Fuck fuck fuck!
The thing that looked like Sophie screeched — hair-raising, inhuman.
Paul had only taken one step when something impossibly heavy landed on his back and yanked him into the house.
#
Ben couldn’t comprehend what was going on — it happened so fast. He saw Sophie leap onto his brother’s shoulders in a twisted approximation of a piggy-back ride. Ben pulled back hard, banging his head on the wall behind him.
“Sophie!” His ears were ringing and he shook his head to clear the noise. She’s four years old! A baby! Still sucks her thumb and calls pajamas ‘jammies’! What is she doing?!
Paul lurched into the living room. Sophie clung to his shoulders, her arms lengthening and wrapping around his throat, compressing his windpipe. Ben could see him trying to scream. The only sound that came out was a whispered rasp. He looked directly at Ben, his eyes bulging and terrified.
Ben stood frozen, gaping — his brain malfunctioning. The front door hung open like a hungry mouth. Outside, it was afternoon and the weather was calm. A playful October breeze pushed back the stagnant, hot air inside the house and rays of sunlight trailed in, warming Ben’s skin. He didn’t notice.
Paul heaved, throwing himself against the cabinet in the living room, trying to dislodge Sophie from his back. The cabinet doors shattered, the crash echoing through the house. She did not let go, even though several large, jagged pieces of glass impaled her.
Where’s the blood? Ben thought distantly. He couldn’t move.
Sophie tightened her hold and Paul slowly stopped fighting, like a toy running out of batteries. He scrabbled at those unearthly, too-long arms, trying to pry them from his neck, his fingernails raking strips of bloodless skin. As he ran out of breath, he lost his grip, staggered; his feet tangled and he hit the carpet, face first, twitching.
Now there was blood. It stained the floor, draining from Paul’s body where it had been shredded by broken glass. Sophie clung to him like a tick on a dog.
Ben, released from whatever force had been holding him, closed the front door.
#
Paul’s phone, tucked in his jeans pocket where he couldn’t reach it, was vibrating. A text from his mother, probably. He knew she was worried and waiting to hear from him.
The Sophie-thing’s arms tightened around his throat. The feel of the rotting, putrid body beneath the illusion of her skin made him want to scream, but he could only open his mouth. No sound came out. He reached a bleeding hand out to his brother, his fingers scrabbling at the floor. Help me!
Ben stood at the front door, silent, his eyes blank, unresponsive.
Paul kept his eyes on his brother’s until his vision went black.
#
Ben felt like he was coming out of a fog. He could see Paul slumped on the carpet, his slack face digging into twinkling shards of glass, which spread across the living room floor like demented snowflakes.
“Sophie?” Ben’s voice strengthened. “What— what are you doing?”
Sophie looked up at him, her hair falling back from her cherubic face, blue eyes wide and innocent. A shard of glass four inches long jutted from her neck, another from her forehead. Sophie wrapped her tiny fingers around the shard in her neck and yanked it out. The skin was torn, but there was no blood.
Ben remembered when he was a kid and his cousin left her Barbie dolls out and his German Shepherd puppy, Huey, chewed on their soft heads — flesh-coloured plastic left all jagged-edged from his developing teeth. That’s what Sophie’s flesh looked like as she pulled shards of glass out of it with her bare hands.
Ben vomited chocolate pancakes onto the carpet and his vision blurred.
“You’re not Sophie!” he gasped.
The Sophie-thing ignored him. She climbed over Paul’s body, holding a shard tightly in her right hand, and squatted next to his head. When she lifted Paul’s head by the hair and plunged the shard into the soft meat of his throat, Ben thumped to the floor in a faint.
Sophie extracted Paul’s vibrating phone from his pocket. She pressed the button on the side and swiped up on the screen with too much dexterity for a four-year-old.
A text message from ‘Ma’ appeared: I’m coming over there unless you answer me right now.
Sophie scanned the message with a smile — the real Sophie wouldn’t have been able to read it — then slipped the phone into the slit in her back to join her daddy’s.
#
Sophie — much too strong for a four-year-old — lifted her daddy onto the couch and placed a pillow beneath his head. She kissed his temple, then scuttled to the easy chair to wait. She ignored Paul’s lifeless body lying twisted a few feet away.
#
Ben rose again from blackness. His head pounded. His stomach ached. His mouth was dry and sour.
He groaned. Am I hungover? What’s that smell?
His eyes came into focus and he saw what sat in the easy chair opposite him — a rotting, stinking being, draped with necrotic skin, upright and still. It watched him with ‘eyes’ that were merely black holes of shadow in a fleshless skull.
He flinched and bolted upright on the couch with a yell.
He blinked, looked again. The monster was gone. It was just Sophie, in her pink T-shirt, bloodless flaps of skin hanging from her bones. His Sophie, who called pajamas ‘jammies’ and —
Ben saw two caskets, one normal-sized and one child-sized. He saw his mother and Paul and his sister and cousins and uncles standing around two freshly-dug graves. His sister’s voice, singing “... blue birds flyyyy…” rose over his mother’s, wailing —
He saw the car, crushed to the size of a phone booth. He heard a voice telling him they hadn’t suffered; it was instantaneous —
Ben’s body froze, his mind screaming: It wasn’t a dream.
He watched the Sophie-thing like a rabbit being stalked by a fox. It sat quietly, flayed skin hanging from its forehead and neck like raw chicken.
“What are you?” he croaked.
The Sophie-thing gazed at him with Sophie’s blue eyes.
“I heard your soul cry out,” it said. It spoke with Sophie’s voice, but devoid of emotion. “You were so sad. Your soul was screaming for your Sophie. I felt it there, in the graveyard. Her body wasn’t in the casket, of course. You knew that. She was nothing but a spray of blood.”
“Stop!” Ben’s head was spinning. Don’t let me pass out again!
“I can be your Sophie. I brought her back to you. This is her skin. Do you like it?” The jagged flaps of skin hanging from its neck bounced as it spoke.
“You don’t need your wife. I could feel that. Once you had Sophie, once you had me, she was unnecessary. All your love was for me.”
“Please stop! What do you want?” Ben was crying now, uncontrollably — gasping for air, snot pouring from his nose.
“For us to be together. I’ll be your Sophie. We don’t need anyone else. It’ll be just us. Uncle Paul didn’t understand. He was just going to get in the way.”
Ben looked at his brother, as if seeing him for the first time. Paul’s throat was ripped open. A dark puddle, almost black, spread out from it, ruining the plush, cream carpet his wife had installed five years before. I told her that color would stain.
Ben shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. No, no, no. This can’t be happening.
“It’s okay, Daddy. He didn’t want us to be together. I had to get rid of him. For us.”
As he watched, its eyes turned black as if filling with ink. Its next words emanated with a lower, toneless pitch.
“I am Sophie. My mommy died in a car crash but I survived. It’s you and me now, just us forever. I call pajamas ‘jammies’ and I suck my thumb and I wear Goodnites to bed, but only the ones with the Disney princesses on them. Go put Uncle Paul in the bathtub, Daddy.”
That last word pitched up again, and it was his little girl talking. Ben felt his panic receding. Wait—
On some level, he was alarmed, aware that he was being controlled, hypnotized. But as he fell further, all fear drained from him.
He blinked. His baby — his little girl, his Sophie — sat on the easy chair, swinging her legs and smiling. Her skin was pink, unblemished. Her eyes shone as blue as the October sky he could see outside the window.
“Okay, Honey-bun,” he said, standing and reaching to ruffle her wispy, blonde hair.
He bent down and grabbed his brother’s body by the ankles.
#
The doorbell rang.
Sophie dropped her doll and ran to the living room.
“I’ll get it!” she called to Ben, who was washing the breakfast dishes.
“Okay, Honey-bun,” he said, still smiling. He loved spending quality time with his daughter.
Sophie threw the deadbolt and whipped the door open, a hungry grin breaking across her angelic face.
“Hi, Grandma!”
###
Ava Christina, a lifelong Tri-Cities resident, is a writer of fantasy and horror stories, often blurring the lines between the two.
Instagram: @ac_bookaddict
Blog: www.penandsword.blog