The Changeling

Spring may be upon us, but this short story is definitely better suited for the cool autumn tones of October and -specifically- Halloween. It’s a creepy, unsettling tale appropriately named The Changeling. I am one to scare easily and if you are too, then reader beware!

Chris Adrian’s story starts with the narrator and his father standing in their kitchen. It’s sort of a bleak scene: they are tired, the narrator just got divorced, the father’s wife died, and the son is ill. They look at their refracted images in the toaster’s metal finish and try fruitlessly to muster the strength to make fresh waffles. There’s a tired, defeated aura and for at least a little while the story seems to be headed in a predictable direction. This changes of course when the narrator and his father make their way upstairs to feed the thing which now occupies the son’s body.

The scene is this: a child (Carl) lays strapped to his bed, speaking in dozens of voices simultaneously, demanding blood sacrifice as justice. His father- the narrator- imagines that he can hear Carl’s voice among the many, present but distant. The thing looks like his child, lives in his child’s room, eats the food a child might, but is something completely other. It speaks in a very draconian way, as if it is something much, much older than we can imagine. The thing challenges the father, asking if he loves his son, claiming that the father has abandoned him, claiming that the father must pay in blood.

The only way that the father can see Carl is by hurting or mutilating himself in some way. He is covered in bruises, cuts, and burns- taxes to the changeling which occupies his son and demands blood. When he hurts himself Carl comes back to him, but only temporarily. The blood tax is only enough to satiate him for a little while. According to the narrator, Carl went to sleep one night a normal, nine year old child and woke up the next as a changeling. A changeling, for those not familiar, is a child believed to be stolen and replaced with a physically identical but fundamentally different entity.

Carl insists that he is thousands of entities. He- or rather it- says that it is incredibly old and extremely vengeful. It has been around since before man and it sees all of man’s sin. Throughout the story multiple hints are dropped indicating what the possessing entity might be: when unrestrained the changeling climbs to roofs and treetops and any great height it can find; the changeling is terrified of airplanes; the changeling is composed of 2998 entities; the weight of an airplane could not hurt it, nor could the weight of two; and the ultimate evidence- Carl was traumatized by the events of 9/11 at a very young age. It becomes apparent towards the end of the story that the entity occupying Carl is something angry, hurt, and deeply sorrowful somehow forged by the fire and death and destitution of September 11. The father’s guilt and desperation to have his son back leads him to make the ultimate sacrifice (one which I won’t reveal) and the story ends with an uncertainty as to whether the entity has been satiated by the blood the father has sacrificed.

The Changeling is about many things. On the surface it is a scary story about the unknown. It is about about supernatural beings and vengeful spirits. It is about death and sacrifice and possession. By the same token, it is also about loss, grief, denial, trauma, and self-harm. Whether this was Adrian’s intention or simply a product of his story, it is a spooky read which I genuinely enjoyed and would recommend highly to all.

 

The Changeling

file:///Users/sophie/Downloads/changeling.pdf

 

S.S.