Alexis Renee Andrews entered this world during the worst storm her small hometown had seen in decades. It was midnight when her first muffled cry reached her parents’ ears. Katherine and Thomas Andrews were thrilled to welcome their third child into the world, despite the storm raging just outside the windows of their three bedroom ranch style home. The joy of the moment was put on hold when Katherine realized her premature daughter wasn’t wailing like a healthy newborn is supposed to. When she called her husband over and took her first look at the baby, she was shocked to see that her child was a ‘caul bearer’. Having been raised in an unconventional culture, Katherine knew children born with this thin veil of skin were said to have been blessed with the gift of second sight or the ability to see what will come to pass. Thomas wasn’t sure what to make of this revelation, he’d never really bought into his wife’s farfetched beliefs, but he loved her and adored the children they shared so he would adore this second girl to join their family. Katherine took the caul birth as a sign that her youngest child was blessed and therefore should be treated as more special than the two older children. Of course she would try her best not to show her favoritism blatantly in front of Trinity and Jasper, but it wouldn’t take long for them to pick up on it.
When the storm finally passed, Thomas talked Katherine into letting him take her and the baby to the hospital to be checked out properly. When they arrived one of the first questions asked was the date and approximate time of birth. Since the girl has been born at midnight dividing Tuesday and Wednesday, Katherine consulted the old nursery rhyme she’d memorized as a child. Given the choice between Tuesday’s child who is full of grace in one version, solemn and sad in another, and Wednesday’s child, who is either full of woe or merry and glad; Katherine was faced with a decision that troubled her deeply. Thomas couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal, no matter what day they listed as her birthday; they could recite the positive version of the rhyme that corresponds to that day. Technically Alexis was born seconds before midnight on Tuesday, her first cry came in the opening seconds of Wednesday so Thomas pushed for them to see her as a Tuesday’s child, he even went so far as to suggest Grace for her name. Katherine gave in to her husband’s choice of date but would not consider his choice of name. They settled on Alexis Renee and her birth information was listed as 11:59 Tuesday night.
Five days later, the first wound appeared on the newborn. Some time during the night Alexis had been scratched. It was never clear whether the scratch came from her own nails, as is common with infants, or if it had come from some outside force. The older children, Trinity and Jasper, were delighted to welcome their baby sister into their lives; both were excited to have a younger sister. Trinity was four and Jasper was six when little Lexi was born, both were too young to remember clearly the events that happened in the weeks following this event. Every few days, Katherine would wake to find her infant daughter bearing some new scratch or bruise; these strange injuries were worrying the already overprotective mother. Instead of taking the baby to the doctor immediately, for fear that child services would be called in to investigate the matter, Katherine began watching over the infant night and day. She went days without sleep, unable to even look away from Lexi for more than a heartbeat. Thomas and the other children were worried that she would die from the worry and paranoia. At some point the sleep deprivation began to affect her mind, it made her see things that weren’t really there, she heard conversations between people who didn’t exist. Then just as Thomas had convinced his wife to let him take the next shift of watching over the baby, Katherine glanced back to the lace covered bassinette one final time and what she saw almost stopped her heart. She swore, even years after the event that standing on either side of Lexi’s bassinette were two entities, one glowing with a holy radiance and the other dressed in black carrying the stench of brimstone. She claimed to have heard them arguing over the soul of her newborn daughter. Thomas tried to restrain his wife once she began to flip out, he couldn’t see what she claimed was there, he couldn’t hear anything but her hysterical cries, and he feared that letting her go would lead her to harm herself or the sleeping child across the room. Eventually Thomas was able to get Katherine into the other room, but not until she passed out in his arms. Whether it was from the days on end without adequate food or sleep or if it was the stress of witnessing what she supposedly saw, Thomas wasn’t going to question the reason, only celebrate the fact that she was finally in bed getting the rest she so desperately needed.
Katherine never forgot what she’d seen and heard that fateful night, and because of it she threw herself back in to the unconventional religion of her childhood. She began to call upon the angels numerous time throughout each day, asking them to watch over her family and herself. This new level of spirituality being added into their life was frustrating to Thomas, but he kept quiet and let his wife do whatever she needed to make herself feel better. Years went by, the children grew, Katherine and Thomas kept their marriage strong, and the family lived in relative happiness. Until the eve of Lexi’s sixth birthday that is. Plans had been made for a party the following day; all three children had invited friends over to celebrate the occasion with the family. Lexi herself was so excited that Katherine and Thomas had trouble putting her to bed that night, all she wanted to do was stay awake and think about what tomorrow would hold. Now Lexi was usually the type of kid who wouldn’t wake up for anything once she was fast asleep, but evidently the excitement that had made her want to stay awake also made her sleep lighter than normal that night. A few hours after all the children were fast asleep, Katherine and Thomas were in their room getting ready for bed. The couple was talking about the coming day and discussing their hopes that Lexi would enjoy the party when the sound of the girl’s piercing scream rang through the house. The adults ran to the girls’ shared room. When they arrived Thomas assumed that Lexi had a nightmare and he moved toward her bed thinking that he and his wife would calm her down and everything would be fine, but that was not the case. Katherine was frozen in the doorway, her eyes wide with fright and focused to the left of their daughter as she stared into the room. Lexi’s terrified gaze was shifting back and forth as if she was looking between two figures standing on either side of her bed. Thomas stopped at the foot of Trinity’s bed, where the older girl was huddled and whimpering. Only now did it occur to the father that his wife had not been delusional that night almost six years before, the way Lexi and Katherine were staring on top of Trinity’s reaction made him certain that all the females of his family were seeing the same thing.
Katherine recovered from the initial shock and rushed to Lexi’s bed. She bent to scoop her daughter into her arms but was pushed off balance by an unseen force, at least unseen as far as Thomas could tell. The man watched his wife land on the floor between the beds and then scramble onto her knees where she launched into fervent prayer. As the mother prayed for her daughter’s safety, Lexi began to scream in pain. Trinity cried harder and clutched at her father’s shirt. Before the man’s very eyes, Lexi’s skin began to split apart and his daughter’s blood ran in tiny streams over her skin. Whatever was in this room with them was hurting his baby girl. Thomas pulled Trinity away from his clothes, lifted her over the foot of the bed, and told her to run to Jasper’s room. Then he lunged toward where his wife and daughters had been staring, even though he couldn’t see the culprit, he had to try and stop whatever was hurting Lexi. Thomas never reached his intended destination. The entity he was headed for saw his lunge and counteracted before the man even knew what hit him. Katherine watched in horror as her husband flew across the room, slammed into the wall with a nauseating crack, and then crumpled to the floor. She watched the dark entity chuckle then lean down to brush his vile lips across the young girl’s forehead; all while the holy being stood as a silent and sorrowful witness. When the dark entity pulled away from Lexi, a thin cross had been carved into her skin where his kiss had met her flesh. The holy one looked like he would be sick while the dark one found great pleasure in the aftermath of his evil game.
Rather than celebrate Lexi’s birthday, the Andrews family spent the next week mourning the death of Thomas. He would forever be listed as the first victim of Lexi’s ‘gift’. For six years Katherine had loved her youngest girl more than her other two children because she thought the child had been blessed by the Almighty. She thought Lexi was sent here to be a holy voice in a world of darkness. Seeing with her own eyes the favor given to Lexi by the forces of evil broke Katherine. It turned her away from her daughter, from her sanity as well. Katherine kept the family together for another year but without Thomas’s money coming in, and with her escalating mental problems, the woman couldn’t afford to care for the two children she loved, much less the one she despised now.
Lexi was sent away first, to an orphanage more than one hundred miles away from the small town the family had called home. Katherine told the workers there nothing of the girl’s gift or occasional visitors; she feared they wouldn’t take her if they knew. Once the demon favored child was gone, Katherine was haunted by what she’d done. Doubts plagued her mind day and night. She constantly wondered if she’d interpreted the events of that night correctly, wondered if she could have somehow saved her daughter’s soul. These doubts were passed on to Trinity and Jasper just before Katherine attempted to take her own life. Child services took the children, placing them in a group home a few cities over, while Katherine was committed to an asylum for the duration of her life. There was no coming back from the darkness into which she had fallen.
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