Father's Daughter

It was a month ago when I first heard the screams.

I should say ‘scream’ because that first night it was just the one, prolonged sound that pierced the night and ripped me from my dreams. I had not timed it, but it seemed to last an eternity to my tired brain. As it rang through the halls of Father’s house, I sat in my bed unmoving.

When the scream finally stopped, it was just as sudden and just as unnerving. I waited to see if the sound would repeat, but that first night it did not. Indeed, I don’t even remember going back to sleep. I simply awoke the next morning to the sound of birds outside my window like any normal morning.

At breakfast, I mentioned the event to Father. He smiled at me kindly, as he always did, and told me it was a bad dream. After all, he had been up well into the night working on his thesis and had heard no such disturbance. He kissed me on the forehead before excusing himself to his studies.

The staff, of course, had also heard nothing, but that was not a surprise. They all lived in the guest house. It would have been nearly dawn before the staff had come down the lane and started preparing breakfast and my morning bath.

So I went back to my normal routine. It was the same dull routine that had occupied my life since my mother passed away when I was almost 10. I finished breakfast, practiced the piano, attended lessons with my tutor, read quietly in the library through the afternoon, and ate dinner with Father in the evening. There were variations, of course. Sometimes Father would leave his studies in the morning to listen to me play.

Sometimes he would have me read to him in the evening. I had read to him from such classics as The Divine Comedy, or the writings of Plato, but I always remember reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Father always hung on my every word when reading about the doctor and his plan to create life. He told me once he didn’t want to miss anything.

It had been months since I had seen Father for little more than breakfast and dinner, however. The staff reassured me that he was hard at work on his thesis. They said it was likely he was on the verge of some profound revelation that would change the course of mankind forever.

I expected no less from Father. He was a brilliant man. One could look at him and see the intelligence in his eyes. He was cultured and appreciated the arts. The staff also talked about how Father had the wisdom to see the outside world as something dangerous with their cellphones and computers. These things, indeed most technology beyond basic lighting, were all banned from the grounds.

Father said it was his belief that such uncultured and senseless technology had been the cause of my mother’s death. So he refused to have it anywhere near us, for fear that we would suffer the same fate.

Seeing the more pure world in Father’s favorite books, even such fanciful science fiction as Frankenstein, made me appreciate his decision to seal the estate from the outside world. Here we would be safe, and no one had to die like my mother did.

The screams came again a week later.

Once again, they dragged me from some lovely dream, or perhaps a memory, of spending time with my mother. I had been laughing as she commented on how we looked just alike, she and I. It had been such a silly thing for a woman to say.

Sitting up in bed, I felt that pleasant dream slip away into a fog. I think that was what stood out to me the most that night. My dream memory was yanked away by the terrible scream in the dark and the dream suddenly felt as if it had never been mine at all. It was as if even my mother were a dream. I remember my heart felt cold at the thought.

I had just begun to steady my breathing and remember that Father had previously dismissed the scream as a bad dream when it came again. It was a heart-wrenching sound filled with panic and terror.

I could not have been dreaming, but what other explanation could there have been? The house would have held Father and myself, so no other woman would have been around. The staff had long before returned to the guest house. Yet here in the darkest hours of the night came a woman’s scream. It was a woman’s scream that was made more haunting because it was somehow familiar.

I sat on my bed, terrified of this confusing turn of events, and again awoke to the merry chirping of birds without any recollection of going to sleep. This mystery began to occupy much of my head space.

I decided to not disturb Father with my childish concerns. He had dismissed them so cleanly before and was a man of science and learning. Any explanations that came to me that morning were the stuff of fairy tales and supernatural speculation. I had wondered, could Father’s house be haunted?

Regardless of what the truth would be, I prepared myself to handle this with the sort of scientific precision I would have expected from Father. I checked the date, July the Tenth, and made a careful note of it and any other observations in the back of my notebook from lessons. For the first time, I questioned some of Father’s ban on technology, for now I had no means to research current weather patterns or astronomical phenomena that may also factor into my fanciful study. I did, however, confirm the moon phase as being full, and added it to my notes.

When my tutor asked me what I had been scribbling so furiously when I should have been studying, I told her it was just a thesis I was working on. She laughed, but commented that my father would be proud to see me being so intellectual, unlike most girls my age. She also commented, off hand, that I had the same look of concentration on my face that she had seen on my mother’s face years before when they attended college together. She said it made me look just like her.

It was this comment that pulled any real recollection of the previous night’s dream to mind. Could this be a coincidence? Against logic, I added this to my notes and put it all away with my lesson work soon after. That night in the library, I tried to find anything that might help my investigation, but found nothing satisfactory.

I bid the staff good night and went to bed as usual, but found sleep difficult. My mind was a whirlwind of impossible theories and fantastical ideas all with no direction. I tossed and turned for hours.

The screams came without warning out of the quiet night. This time, I was already awake, so I did not have the disorientation of waking. I sat up calmly, though I did notice my hand shaking with some unexplained tremor. I listened for the scream to repeat. It did.

It was so loud and so terrible to hear with a clear mind. Indeed, I could almost make out the pleading in the scream as much as the terror. It was as though the woman screaming were not only terrified, but calling for help where she thought there was none.

And again the voice seemed so familiar that it made me nauseous to hear.

I had to find the source of this scream. I demanded control of my nervous hand and brushed the covers aside.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in the morning. I was tucked in bed as though I had been there all night. No birds chirped outside, and a light rain pattered against the glass of my window. I had no idea what had happened. I had been too restless to have just fallen asleep, but I was certain I had not been dreaming.

Despite this confusion, my morning proceeded normally. I again chose to say nothing to Father. Besides the idea that I might sound hysterical to such a man of learning, Father looked particularly tired. I did not want to burden him.

When I went to lessons, I immediately turned to the back of my notebook to review what I knew. There was nothing. The page with my notes from the day before was missing. My tutor came in and greeted me kindly. I barely acknowledged her as I stared at the place where my work had been. Was I going mad?

Absently, I asked her the date. I would have to start my notes again.

“July 16th,” she said.

I froze.

I was absolutely certain that I had written July the tenth just yesterday. I had only just now asked the date out of a dazed reflex. I asked her to repeat it, but got the same answer. How had I lost five days?

I started to question the date subject further, finally looking up from my notebook, but lost the question before it formed. My tutor was wearing a cast on her arm. It had not been there the day before.

Seeing me staring, my tutor explained she had tripped and fallen a few days before, resulting in a minor fracture. Thankfully, it had happened while I was in bed ill, so I had not been disturbed by the chaos of getting Father’s approval to go seek proper medical attention in the city.

When I objected to being ill, she gave me the sort of look you give a small child that still believes in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I felt insulted immediately. My tutor brushed past this concern, telling me it was important we get back to my lessons before Father accused them both of wasting his time and money.

I complied, but my attention was barely on my lessons. What was happening? Where had my notes gone? What illness was she talking about? And where in the world had the last five days gone?

I made more notes. I was meticulous this time. Indeed, I likely wrote more in the back pages of my notebook than in the front. Twice my tutor had tried to encourage me to focus, but the third time she sighed and moved on as though she hadn’t noticed.

When I put away my books, I took my notebook with me and quietly stashed it under my mattress.

The screams came again two nights later. They were the loudest they had been. I was torn with indecision on how to proceed. The mind was made up for me when I again woke to the morning sun without ever going to sleep.

Once again, when I asked the date, I found that another three days had gone by. This was again casually brushed away with a comment about me being ill, but no further explanation was given.

Father was absent from dinner that evening.

Twice more the screams would wake me and both times, I lost days to some mysterious illness that the staff would not acknowledge. Indeed, at dinner when one of them thoughtfully told me they hoped I would feel better soon, Father had given them a stern and cold look.

I had only seen that look once before when a new member of the staff had tried to smuggle something called an Apple Watch onto the grounds. This was a look that meant Father was displeased. The new staff member was not seen again.

Tonight, when I laid down to sleep, I formulated my plan carefully. For the sake of my own sanity, I could not continue like this. The time for uncertainty was passed. It was time for action.

Almost as though by some unspoken agreement, the screams tore me from sleep. I was focused and determined tonight. I immediately got out of bed. Even as the screams made my heart ache, I left the sanctuary of my bedroom and tried to follow the screams to their source.

Like the intellectual I had been raised to be, I refused to continue speculating on what might be at the other end of my investigation. I had done too much harm to my study by handling things this way already. I needed to find the answers.

The screams were like a macabre chorus leading me through the manor. At times, it seemed as if there were more than one scream at once, but they seemed also to all be the same woman; the same unidentified, but somehow familiar woman.

I couldn’t be certain of anything tonight, but when the screams led me to Father’s study, I was somehow certain I had come the right way. It was almost as though I had been down this path before and I was just repeating what I knew was the course. I had an uncanny sense of deja vu as I opened the door to Father’s study, a room I had been forbidden to enter my entire life.

Father was nowhere to be seen. As often as he commented that he was up late working, I half-expected him to be here and to chase me away back to bed like an unruly child.

As if by habit, I entered the room and closed the door behind me. The screams came again, louder but still muffled by distance. I scanned the room and saw a large portrait against one wall. It was me.

No, my hair had never been that long. It was my mother. Aside from the hairstyle, I felt I really could have been looking into a mirror. I approached it, and without any explanation for why, I reached out and touched the canvas.

It swung away from me like a parlor door, revealing a winding staircase, leading down into a darkness that suddenly filled me with unreal dread. I knew that crossing this threshold and entering this secret passage would have outcomes I could not undo.

I proceeded with false bravado, but still jumped and made a small squeak when I heard the portrait door close behind me.

There was no light on the stairs, so I stepped carefully with my hand on the wall for support. I finally came to the end and a door.

I opened it and a cool light spilled out.

In here were all manner of metal computer banks and flashing lights of every color. I had never seen so much of the modern world except in my dreams. I wandered the room, trying to make sense of the words on screens, or the labels on metal cabinet doors built into the walls, but it all seemed a jumble of codes I couldn’t read.

The screams had stopped, leaving the hum of the computers the only sound. For some reason, my heart was cold in my chest again.

That was when I found it.

At a desk in the back, next to a large metal door with no apparent handle, was my missing page of notes from July 10th. Father had taken it. I sat down in the chair as I picked up the page and turned it over in my hands, taking solace in finding something to confirm I had not imagined something so tangible.

As soon as my weight settled into the seat, part of the desk made a clicking noise and flipped up to reveal another screen.

There was writing on the screen, normal writing, along with the current date. It was Father’s notes.

“Five years now since my wife cheated on me with some young ingrate she met on Tinder. Five years since I confronted her about it and lost my temper. I still think I can fix this. I just have to get it right. The cloning process is still imperfect. I can keep her renewed, but not revived.

“Breakthroughs in the last month. It wasn’t my original plan, but I had a fraction of success for the first time and things are now out of control. My wife came back for two minutes, but screamed the entire time before suffering an aneurysm and leaving me again.

“I was careless while I tried to figure out what to do next. My daughter heard and found me in my study, blood on my hands. She demanded answers.

“She looked so much like her mother then. That’s when it occurred to me that she was the key. And I was right. It works with her. But it still doesn’t work with my wife.

“But there have been flaws. The daughter I am keeping in the house now keeps finding out and I can’t have that. I am so close. I can’t let her stop me. When I succeed at fixing my mistake, we can figure out how to be a family again. Until then, I will have to keep my daughters behind the door with their mother.”

I stopped reading.

“Daughters?”

I looked at the door with no handle. My heart almost stopped beating. I approached the door and did the only thing that made sense, I pushed. It opened.

The door swung open. Bright lights came on automatically, flooding the room beyond. My mother lay perfectly still on the surgical table in the center of the room. If she was breathing, I couldn’t tell. The screams started again. They came from the room. I saw now why they were so familiar.

They were all me.

Locked in little cages surrounding the room.

They were all me.

Movement behind me. I spun around and there was Father. He had that look on his face. He reached for me.

I did not wake up in the morning.