Fair-Haired Child

Fair Haired Child is the ninth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. It originally aired in North America on January 6, 2006. A 15-year-old outcast named Tara is kidnapped by a strange couple and locked in a basement with their son who has a dark secret.

Plot

Tara (Lindsay Pulsipher), though a pretty and talented teenage girl, is not liked at her school and has no friends. Upon returning home one day, she is kidnapped and drugged. She awakens and attempts to escape but the kidnapper (William Samples) throws her into the basement, where Tara finds a young boy (Jesse Haddock) hanging from a noose, close to death. She saves him, and the two form a bond. The boy, Johnny, is sweet and kind but cannot talk; he has to communicate by writing in dust. With Johnny's assistance, Tara uncovers cryptic warnings on the walls, such as "Beware the Fair-Haired Child!" The two discover a room with numerous backpacks and a bloody bathtub, showing that they are not the first victims. Johnny begins to breathe hard as a great gust of wind shakes everything. Tara attempts to comfort him by talking to him about a picture drawn in her book.

Johnny undergoes a transformation from a normal boy into the hideous demon dubbed the "Fair-Haired Child" (Walter Phelan). Frightened, Tara hides from the creature until it reverts into the boy. He reveals his shameful secret: the couple are his parents. Twelve years ago, Johnny died by drowning on his 15th birthday. Desperate over the loss of their son, Johnny's parent's made a deal with a demon, and performed a ritual that involves them providing a sacrifice of one child per year until the quota of twelve is reached. Tara is the last before Johnny can become human again.

Johnny begins to cry and pound the wall, writing that he does not want to hurt her, and to forgive him. She embraces him as he begins to change. In a horrifyingly graphic scene, the demon re-emerges and performs his final kill by disemboweling Tara. Soon afterward, Johnny's parents descend into the basement to find Tara's corpse covered old newspaper, with the words "I forgive you, Johnny," written on it in her blood. The couple then happily performs the final stage of the ritual, transforming him into the beautiful blond boy he was before his death.

Johnny later looks over Tara's drawing, while his parents play instruments. Speaking for the first time, he tells his parents about his jealousy of their talent. Smiling, he informs his mother that his talent is bargaining. It is then that the a strong wind travels through the house as his mother hysterically screams, asking Johnny what he did. He replied that it took them twelve kids to resurrect him. He narrowed it down to two, and they didn't have to be children. Johnny smiles sadistically as Tara appears as a female version of the demon, and gruesomely kills his parents.

The alive-and-well Tara is shown waking up, curiously observing a bandage on her arm, indicating Johnny injected her with something to make her temporarily forget what had happened. The two introduce themselves again as he takes her for a stroll. The camera pans to the graves of Johnny's parents in the garden.

External links

• Fair-Haired Child at the Internet Movie Database
• Review for Fair-Haired Child at Dread Central
• Review for Fair-Haired Child at Slant Magazine