Mr. Murder

does not know whether she is Charlotte or Emily.

He goes to the desk in the older daughter’s side of the room and stares down at the clutter: magazines, schoolbooks, one yellow hair ribbon, a butterfly barrette, a few scattered sticks of Black Jack chewing gum, colored pencils, a tangled pair of pink kneesocks, an empty Coke can, coins, and a Game Boy.

He opens one of the textbooks, then another. Both of them have the same name penciled in front: Charlotte Stillwater.

The older and less disciplined girl is Charlotte. The younger girl who keeps her belongings neat is Emily.

Again, he looks at their faces in the photograph.

Charlotte is pretty, and her smile is sweet. However, if he is going to have trouble with either of his children, it will be with this one.

He will not tolerate disorder in his house. Everything must be perfect. Neat and clean and happy.

In lonely hotel rooms in strange cities, awake in the darkness, he has ached with need and has not understood what would satisfy his longing. Now he knows that being Martin Stillwater—father to these children, husband to this wife—is the destiny that will fill the terrible void and at last bring him contentment. He is grateful to whatever power has led him here, and he is determined to fulfill his responsibilities to his wife, his children, and society. He wants an ideal family like those he has seen in certain favorite movies, wants to be kind like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and wise like Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird and revered like both of them, and he will do whatever is necessary to ensure a loving, harmonious, and orderly home.

He has seen The Bad Seed, too, and he knows that some children can destroy a home and all hope of harmony because they are seething with the potential for evil. Charlotte’s slovenly habits and strange menagerie strongly indicate that she is capable of disobedience and possibly violence.

When snakes appear in movies, they are always symbols of evil, dangerous to the innocent; therefore, the snake in the terrarium is chilling proof of this child’s corruption and her need for guidance. She keeps other reptiles as well, a couple of rodents, and an ugly black beetle in a glass jar—all of which the movies have taught him to associate with the powers of darkness.

He studies the photograph again, marveling at how innocent Charlotte looks.

But remember the girl in The Bad Seed. She appeared to be an angel yet was thoroughly evil.

Being Martin Stillwater may not prove as easy as he had first thought. Charlotte might be a real handful.

Fortunately, he has seen Lean on Me in which Morgan Freeman is a high school principal bringing order to a school overwhelmed by anarchy, and he has seen The Principal starring Jim Belushi, so he knows that even bad kids really want discipline. They will respond properly if adults have the guts to insist upon rules of behavior.

If Charlotte is disobedient and stubborn, he will punish her until she learns to be a good little girl. He will not fail her. At first she will hate him for denying her privileges, for confining her to her room, for hurting her if that becomes necessary, but in time she will see that he has her best interests at heart, and she will learn to love him and understand how wise he is.

In fact he can visualize the triumphant moment when, after so much struggle, her rehabilitation is ensured. Her realization that she has been wrong and that he has been a good father will culminate in a touching scene. They will both cry. She will throw herself in his arms, remorseful and ashamed. He will hug her very tightly and tell her it’s all right, all right, don’t cry. She will say, “Oh, Daddy,” in a tremulous voice, and cling fiercely to him, and thereafter everything will be perfect between them.

He yearns for that sweet triumph. He can even hear the soaring and emotional music that will accompany it.

He turns away from Charlotte’s side of the room, goes to his younger daughter’s neat bed.

Emily. The pixie. She will never give him any trouble. She is the good daughter.

He will hold her on his lap and read to her from storybooks. He will take her to the zoo, and her little hand will be lost in his. He will buy her popcorn at the movies, and they will sit side by side in the darkness, laughing at the latest Disney animated feature.

Her big dark eyes will adore him.

Sweet Emily. Dear Emily.

Almost reverently, he pulls back the chenille bedspread. The blanket. The top sheet. He stares at the bottom sheet on which she slept last night, and the pillows on which her delicate head rested.

His heart swells with affection, tenderness.

He puts one hand against the sheet, slides it back and forth, back and forth, feeling the fabric on which her young body has so recently lain.

Every night he will tuck her into bed. She will press her small mouth to his cheek, such warm little kisses, and her breath will have the sweet peppermint aroma of toothpaste.

He bends down to smell the sheets.

“Emily,” he says softly.

Oh, how he longs to be her father and to look into those dark yet limpid eyes, those huge and adoring eyes.

With a sigh, he returns to Charlotte’s side of the room. He drops the silver-framed photograph of his family on her bed, and he studies the kept creatures housed on the bookless bookshelves.

Some of the wild things watch him.

He begins with the gerbil. When he unlatches the door and reaches into its cage, the timid creature cowers in a far corner, paralyzed with fear, sensing his intent. He seizes it, withdraws it from the cage. Although it tries to squirm free, he grips its body firmly in his right hand, its head in his left, and wrenches sharply, snapping its neck. A brittle, dry sound. Its cry is shrill but brief.

He throws the dead gerbil on the brightly colored bedspread.

This will be the beginning of Charlotte’s discipline.

She will hate him for it. But only for a while.

Eventually she will realize that these are unsuitable pets for a little girl. Symbols of evil. Reptiles, rodents, beetles. The sort of creatures witches use as their familiars, to communicate between them and Satan.

He has learned all about witches’ familiars from horror movies. If there was a cat in the house he would kill it as well, without hesitation, because sometimes they are cute and innocent, just cats and nothing more, but sometimes they are the very spawn of Hell. By inviting such creatures into your home, you risk inviting the devil himself.

One day Charlotte will understand. And be grateful.

Eventually she will love him.

They will all love him.

He will be a good husband and father.

Much smaller than the gerbil, the frightened mouse quivers in his fist, its tail hanging below his clenched fingers, only its head protruding above. It empties its bladder. He grimaces at the warm dampness and, in disgust, squeezes with all his strength, crushing the life out of the filthy little beast.

He tosses it onto the bed beside the dead gerbil.

The harmless garden snake in the glass terrarium makes no effort to slither away from him. He holds it by the tail and snaps it as if it is a whip, snaps it again, then lashes it hard against the wall, again, and a third time. When he dangles it before his face, it is entirely limp, and he sees that its skull is crushed.

He coils it next to the gerbil and the mouse.

The beetle and the turtle make satisfying crunching sounds when he stomps them under the heel of his shoe. He arranges their oozing remains on the bedspread.

Only the lizard escapes him. When he slides the lid partway off its terrarium and reaches in for it, the chameleon scampers up his arm, quicker than the eye, and leaps off his shoulder. He spins around, searching for it, and sees it on the nearby vanity, where it skitters between a hairbrush and a comb, onto a jewelry box. There it freezes and begins to change color to match its background, but when he tries to snatch it up, it darts away, off the dresser, onto the floor, across the room, under Emily’s bed, out of sight.

He decides to let it go.