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Title: The Egg
The Egg and its characters, settings, and plot are mine. Please do not take, alter, distribute, or archive without my permission.
The mud of the slope was slick under my heels as I slid carefully toward the bottom, praying I wouldn’t lose my control. I really didn’t need to be filthy on top of everything else that day. I’d already had to abandon my daughter, Alicia, to the sweet but impaired neighbor lady so that I could come to the site on my one day off this month. We’d been having a hell of a time excavating the god-forsaken rock and the clay in this area so we could build and I’d been unable to escape on any of my normal weekends to take Alicia someplace fun.
I felt terrible for ignoring her like that, but the idiots on this crew could hardly have done it without my constant supervision. Even leaving Kilgore here to monitor them was a nerve wracking event; sure, he was on site with me almost every day, but that didn’t mean I thought I could trust him to oversee the entire operation while flying solo. Obviously I’d made the wrong choice in leaving my idiot friend, as there I was, stumbling over the rocks and through the mud to where I could see the crew had gathered. Kilgore was nowhere in sight, which only served to irritate me further.
“Robert! Mr. Kingsley!” someone called from within the group. “Over here!”
“Yes, I see that,” I grumbled quietly to myself as I approached. “There’s nowhere else I could possibly be going…” I smiled with scathing politeness as I reached the fringe of the murmuring crew. “What do you have for me, boys?”
The crowd peeled away from a muddy red wheelbarrow full of rocks. They were made of the same granite and clay we’d been digging through for the past month, slick with the rain from the past two days. Strangely, they were piled together like a nest, with a deep bowl in the center. Cradled within the rocky crib was a single, dark blue sphere of rock. It was wet but clean and looked much newer than the rest of the stones in the barrow. My eyes narrowed.
“What am I looking at?”
The crowd shifted around me and the murmur fluttered up for a second before someone said: “Can’t you see it, Sir? The blue stone?”
“It… looks like lapis or something.” I turned angrily to one of the crew, eyes narrowing. “Is this it? Is this the “emergency”? You brought me out here, on my day off, to look at a hunk of stone? Just throw it in with the rest or pawn it to a collector or something, maybe they can find a use for it. I don’t care. Christ, do I have to do everything myself?”
They all fidgeted nervously before one man, a short and sort of stocky fellow with a scar down his cheek, stepped forward to speak. “Sir… we don’t think it’s a rock.”
I gave him a very dull, very bored look and I can’t really say I was surprised to hear him say that. “What else do you think it could possibly be,” I asked, deciding the humor them if only for a good story later. Not a rock…
“We think it’s an egg,” the only girl of the group squeaked.
Turning to face her as my brows furrowed dangerously, I allowed a moment for those words to filter through the air in case anyone else had any brighter ideas. “An egg.” I said. “You think this,” I pointed to the stone, “is an egg? Get back to work.”
“It is an egg, sir!” someone behind me protested and I didn’t whirl fast enough to catch which genius said it.
“This is not an egg,” I snarled. “You buy eggs at a supermarket and get them out of bird nests. They are slightly oval and usually white, in case you don’t know.” To prove my point, I leaned over and snatched up the rock, intending to give them the what-for about mistaking rocks for eggs.
But I never got the chance.
The stone was warm and soft beneath my hands and although it looked very much like a rock it obviously wasn’t. I had once walked down a beach with my daughter, in southern Florida nearly two years ago, and we’d found a nest of turtle eggs that had been uprooted by some hungry creature. Many of the eggs had been broken open and eaten but there were a few leathery-shelled spheres left intact. Alicia had lifted one of them in her tiny fingers and placed it in my hands, asking if we could please keep it daddy. The object in my hand, although much, much larger than the little sea-turtle egg, felt almost identical in make and weight ratio.
It was an egg; or at least it could have been.
“Who found this?” I ordered, making sure not to leave any room for lies.
“Ben did, sir, when he came to fetch his equipment,” someone said, although I didn’t catch who. My attention was focused completely on the little five inch sphere in my hands. “Ben Yamino.”
“Where is Mr. Yamino now?”
There was more nervous fidgeting amongst the group before a small Asian man in a bright yellow construction hat stepped forward and offered a very displeasing answer. “Sir, he say this egg is cursed and he leave right away. He say he no coming back here ever again. He say we no touch egg, or else we will be cursed as well. I think maybe he is crazy, but we call you just in case he is right.”
Reluctantly I pulled my gaze from the sphere and looked to the group that had gathered, giving them all a hard stare. “I assure you there is nothing cursed about this rock. I’m going to get rid of it and I swear to god the first person I hear mention this rubbish again is going to be fired for disrupting the peace. Now get back to work.” I grabbed the closest person by the sleeve as the rest of the group moved swiftly back to their jobs.
“Sir?” he asked, a little confused.
“Where’s Jim? Jim Kilgore, I need to talk to him.”
The man shifted nervously and extracted his arm from my grasp. “Well he’s either in the trailer or on the grounds.” A thoughtful look crossed his face as he began to follow his co-workers away from me and he turned to walk backward to continue talking. “You could always call his work phone; the number is by the door on the wall inside the office.”
For a moment I remained rooted to where I stood. I had a choice to make right then. I could have tossed the stone back into the wheelbarrow, but I didn’t want to leave room for anyone else to have a problem with it. That left taking it with me; but should I take it to throw away someplace else or bring it home for Alicia as a pretty trinket? Did I believe what Mr. Ben Yamino had said about it being cursed, or did I trust my own long-held judgment that there was no such thing as ghosts and curses?
Growling in irritation at the fact that I was even considering such nonsense, I tucked the stone – Alicia would love to add it to her rock collection – beneath one arm and marched myself over to the planning trailer. It was a squat building that was the color of fresh mud although I’d never been sure if that was because it was covered in so much of it or if that had been the original color. Usually it got placed along the edge of where-ever we were building and served a dual purpose; main office and break room. The few people inside hastily gathered the remains of their lunch and scrambled out the door when I entered.
Only one man remained when the door closed. He was thin and well dressed in a suit that didn’t suit his job. A hard hat sat idly on the corner of the desk and I doubted he’d worn it even once all day. He peered dully at me over the top of a clipboard, his feet up on the cluttered desk in front of him and papers stacked all around him. He was the second site supervisor, just under me, but he didn’t appear at all interested to see me, or curious as to why I was there on the one day of the month I shouldn’t have been.
“So nice of you to visit. I thought you were going to the beach with your daughter today?”
“Shove it.” Somehow I kept the nasty expression from reaching my face, although I couldn’t keep the spite from my eyes. He should have been the one dealing with this problem, not me. “You know damn well that’s where I was going,” I snapped irritably. “You couldn’t have dealt with this?” I set the warm rock none-too-gently on the desk and for a split second my stomach turned at the thought that I might have damaged what could be inside of it.
He eyed the sphere with a lazy gaze for a moment before placing his clipboard on the surface beside it. Giving me a quick “what’s this about” look, he hefted the stone in one hand; I could see its light weight surprise him. “What is it?”
“No one told you?” I asked, taking a tired seat in one of the recently vacated chairs. The anger drained from my system as quickly as it had flushed into it. I was being stupid.
“No one tells me anything, Robert,” he said quite seriously. “Is this why you’re here? A rock? Even if it’s a pretty one, that’s hardly a reason to miss a play date with Alicia. Especially since you’ve had so few.”
Groaning, I leaned back and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. The darkness and pressure felt good in light of the mounting headache creeping into my temples. “I know. But I got this frantic phone call saying I had to come down here right away, that they’d found something that needed my urgent attention and no matter what I threatened on who, they wouldn’t say a word more. Then I get here, and it’s a rock. A fucking blue rock.”
He tossed it gently between his hands, scrutinizing it as he did so. “What was so urgent about it?” he inquired in a polite, yet amused manner.
“They think it’s an egg,” I said, unable to contain the huff of laughter that followed. “They think it’s a cursed egg.”
“How quaint,” he chuckled, passing the stone back to me when I held my hand out for it. “Well, take it home to Alicia. I’m sure she will find it pretty enough to keep as a bauble. Maybe you can take it someplace and get it polished, so it shines. It’s pretty rough now.”
“Yeah, I’d thought about it.” I sat up and clambered to my feet. “I came to say that I’m taking tomorrow off too. It’s a pain, but I had to cancel on Alicia and leave her stranded with a neighbor and you know how much she hates that. If there’s another problem, tell everyone I’m working at the downtown office and they can leave a message.”
“And if we really do need you?”
I shrugged. “I trust you to handle it or wait until Monday.” When his disapproving look didn’t falter, I sighed. “Come on, cut me some slack Jim. I can’t keep missing daddy-daughter dates or the court will take away my privilege to have them at all. I think you can handle it.”
The drive back to my apartment was curiously silent and tense. I thought about turning on the radio but my skin was crawling with the sensation of being watched. It was silly and I knew it, but my hands stayed fastened to the steering wheel as if letting go would cost me my life. Every bump in the road, every too-fast stop sent my gaze flying to the little sphere sitting docilely on the passenger seat. There was nothing spectacular about it, nothing that should have frayed my nerves so well but whatever was affecting me lasted up until I had pressed the doorbell on Mrs. Haney’s doorframe.
“Daddy!” Alicia squealed as she flung open the door. Less than a second later found her leaping up into my arms with her hands raised, completely trusting that I was going to catch her. As she was barely seven it was an easy feat and I swung her around once before setting her gently back on the ground.
“Hey sweetie, are you ready to go home?” I asked as I pulled my wallet from my back pocket. Mrs. Haney was coming around the corner, her old face wrinkling into a smile when she realized who I was. Thank you I signed to her with my hands before pressing a $20 into her hands. Mrs. Haney was old and mostly deaf but she was sharp when it came to keeping kids in line.
“You’re welcome dear,” she croaked benignly. “She’s such a pleasure to have, always helps me clean.”
The sound of the car door opening behind me caught my attention and I gave the old lady a polite if hasty wave goodbye as I began to move. Already Alicia had managed to pull open the passenger seat’s door and clamber onto the seat. As I approached she froze, body tensing visibly, and I didn’t have to ask to know she’d found the stone. I trailed to a stop at the edge of the door when she turned around, stone filling both her small hands.
“What’s this?”
I smiled, leaning against the open door. “It’s a rock daddy’s friends at work found for you,” I said, using my most patient ‘little kid’ voice. “Isn’t it pretty?”
She ignored the question entirely. “Can I keep him?”
Laughing, I shooed her all the way into a sitting position and buckled her in to the seat so she didn’t have to put it down. “Sure, sweetie. You can put it with your others.” I closed the door on her response and the rest of the drive was spent in near silence. The only noise was Alicia’s soft humming of a song I’d never heard.
As soon as we got home I shucked off my work coat and tossed it haphazardly onto the back of my armchair. Alicia darted to her room the second her feet were through the door, stone in hands. “I’m making spaghetti for dinner!” I called after her retreating form and I received a slammed door for an answer. Kids these days… I was not looking forward to her teenage years.
It was as I was pouring the pot of noodles into a strainer that I heard the shrieks emanating from the bathroom. I dropped it all as if I’d been burned and bolted as fast as I could to see what had happened, fearing that she had hurt herself while I wasn’t watching. Banging my shoulder hard against the doorframe as I stopped, I began to shout to ask what was wrong when the apartment went deathly silent. Even my own words strangled at the back of my throat before I could speak. My eyes widened as I stared at the mess before me.
There was blood everywhere.
Covering the floor, smeared on the walls, dripping from the bottom of the shower curtain, it coated every surface. Alicia was kneeling in the doorway in the way that only little kids can, head bent and shoulders slumped. Through the pounding of my own heart I could hear her breathing, sobbing. I dropped to the tile beside her, throat clamped shut too tightly to even ask if she was all right. She went limp in my hands when I touched her and I pulled her to my chest; she was the only thing in the room the red had not touched.
From the far side of the room there was a crackle like someone had stepped on a very large bug. I looked up, trying to remember to breathe evenly without panicking, to not induce hyperventilation upon my asthmatic body. Crouched just beside the toilet, amongst a pile of blue and grey eggshell-like shards of rock was a small, high-spined creature. It stared at me with hollow yellow eyes, the vibrant blue markings on its red skin standing out like lightning in a storm.
Slowly its lips peeled back from tiny, needle teeth, baring a grin that sent ice coursing through my veins. A cough roughed the back of its throat and its body flexed with the effort. Viscous red seeped around its teeth when it stilled and the blood on the floors and walls blackened and began to spread. Through it the demonic creature watched me, wavering on its feet as the corruption spread.
“What are you?” I breathed, pulling Alicia closer to me. She didn’t stir.
Sin, my mind whispered.
“Soured souls,” it hissed, the words truncating in another gurgle of liquid. “Corruption…” Choking, it took a step trembling step closer, off the eggshell pieces, and rot festered beneath its small, clawed paw. “Revenge…”
Eyes watering with the stench curling in the air and heart thrumming, I tried desperately to get to my feet but only slipped on the slicked tiles. I could feel the icy blood seeping in through my pants, touching my skin and burning. I couldn’t get up, couldn’t escape. Down the hall the rankling corrosion was spider-webbing across my walls and along my floors, infecting my apartment. Fear strummed along my nerves as I turned back to the demon, unable to draw in breath as I panicked. I had never been so terrified in my life; but then, I had never believed in ghosts and demons.
It stared at me for a moment longer, amber-gold eyes locked onto mine as if it were studying something within me through them. The mockery of a grin never left its bared teeth, not even when it sank to the ground as one exhausted, head lolling gently to one side as the strength left its body. Harsh breathing, my harsh breathing, was the only sound in the air when the light behind its eyes dimmed and blackened as well and it lay still on the bathroom floor.
I drew a shuddering breath and closed my eyes, praying to God that it had died. Please, I pleaded with a deity I’d never before recognized, please let it truly be dead. Let us be safe from it.
In my arms, Alicia stirred. “Daddy?” she murmured “Daddy what happened?”
My eyes opened at the words and once more my breath caught in my throat. The bathroom was exactly as it had been when I’d left it that morning. There was no blood, no rot; no sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened. The demon, and everything it had brought was gone.
“Nothing,” I whispered shakily as I set her softly on the floor, praise to God falling like water from my mind’s lips. “Nothing happened sweetie. Go to your room.” I have some calls to make, I added silently. I needed another adult here.
She wriggled out of my grasp and stood, giving me a slightly confused look. “Are you okay, Daddy?”
“I’m fine,” I told her, forcing my voice to steady. I could still feel the edges of my asthma upon my lungs, making it difficult to draw in enough breath. I clambered to my feet and shooed her toward her room, following her far enough to make sure that there was nothing strange there, either. “I am going to finish dinner, okay? How would you like to see Uncle Jim tonight?”
“Yaaaaay!” she cheered, jumping up and down and spinning as she did so. “Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim!” She stopped quite suddenly and gave me a wide eyed look. “Can I wear a dress?”
I chuckled, stomach still queasy with unease. “Yes, of course. You get dressed and I will make dinner and call Uncle Jim.”
If I had stayed another minute to watch her, I might have seen her climb atop her twin bed. If I had stayed I might have seen the way she pulled up the covers and shoved them into a corner; I might have seen the bowl she made from them and the pillow she placed over it as a lid.
If I had stayed, I might have heard her whisper ‘He said I could keep you’ as she placed the tiny coil of sleeping demon within the nest before she dressed for dinner.
But I didn’t.
