Meanwhile, from their bedroom window--
Abby watched her husband’s toil.
She was not alone. A string of black birds perched on the barn roof also observed Oliver. Silent. Curious. Jostling about. An undulating spectral black shadow against the dark night sky.
20.
THE COLORS OF AUTUMN slowly faded as the daylight grew ever shorter and the nights ever longer and colder. The seemingly indefatigable fog, undeterred by the endless wind, an endless wind imitating a spoon stirring a cup of tea heavy with cream, moving about the brume, turning the tea milky, but not able to dissolve the cream, in the end, was finally scattered by the return of the rain, though neither willingly nor immediately. Initially, magically, the rain seemed to fall as if from the fog itself as if the small isle were somehow caught inside a large dark storm cloud.
Then one morning it was just gone.
The fog washed away in the nighttime.
Over the following weeks, and then months, as old man winter tightened his grip on the small isle, the rain turned freezing and, inexorably, to spells of terrible sleet, then eventually snow.
It would be a cold winter.
The coldest winter in decades.
The snow deciding to hang around.
A cold white frozen blanket.
Huddled in a winter parka behind the wheel of the Q5, Oliver observed on his commute to school down the winding A4 road, left quite treacherous in the early morning hours with patches of invisible black ice, the Manx Loaghtan sheep with their distinctive sets of curved horns staring out bleary-eyed at his slowly passing gray blur from inside their gray weather-boarded and stone barns, congregated miserably in herds, flocks, and mobs, trying to stay warm, lazily chewing their hay and crimped corn as their icy green pastures disappeared deeper and deeper beneath the cold white stuff.
Meanwhile, the tall beech trees at the fairy bridge along the A4 now stood like bony fingers against the dark gray sky, their golden-yellow leaves having fallen. Turned to mulch at their feet.
A mulch that smelled of decay. Rot.
Before also vanishing beneath the snow.
All the while, the gray foamy sea crashed against that high cliff of black slate below the small stone cottage, generating loud booming echoes, its foamy gray sea spray leaping high into that dark gray sky. Booming. Again and again. An endless melancholy tide.
Almost if the dark water were intentionally crashing itself into the serrated black rocks, attempting desperately, if rather futilely, to destroy itself again and again until it finally knew no more.
As if it could be extinguished.
Or at least rendered insentient.
Unconscious. Unfeeling.
Blinded and dumb.
21.
THE RESTLESSNESS AND SHAKING and, indeed, fits of hysteria had not completely abandoned Abby after she’d returned to the bitter little orange pills, merely crawling back into the shadows, preying on her from the darkness, tooth and nail, less sharp and obvious, perhaps, but still there. Merely blunted until she might stumble or blindly wander back into that darkness where such terrible ghastly things waited for her with bated breath or until such darkness might be allowed to fall over her once again.
For there was no escaping them.
These ghastly things in the darkness.
Waiting for her tooth and nail.
And like a rising black tide, the cold darkness once again slowly fell over her following the flushing of the bitter little orange pills. A rising black tide as if born of a black sea stretching toward infinity. And like monsters born of a dark bottomless deep, these terrible ghastly things, tooth and nail, again surrounded her, whispering and snickering into her ear, clawing and scratching and nipping.
Yet, she almost welcomed them.
Almost welcomed them back.
As if she knew not how to be without them. For they seemed to be a part of her. Like the thing growing inside of her now.
And them somehow a part of it.
And it somehow a part of them.
Discomposing feelings to be sure.
Such paradoxical inventions of the mind.
Perhaps it was simply the pregnancy.
Batty hormones and such.
But perhaps it was something more.
She felt deeply connected to the thing, this life, growing inside of her now even as she also feared it. She considered this fear, batty hormones aside, to be knitted to her previous failed pregnancy and the horrible pain it had caused her, especially given the subsequent diagnosis she’d never bear her own children. At least this was how she reconciled it -- this fear. Then again, it was also in how she felt a deep connection to this small stone cottage secluded between this dark woodline and this dark jagged cliff and this dark gray sea where she had conceived this thing growing inside of her now.
This thing that should not be.
Oliver suggested they find an OB-GYN on the mainland, but Abby dismissed the suggestion out of hand given the impracticality of the suggestion itself. Abby also dismissed the idea of finding an OB-GYN over in the capital of Douglas with its lovely promenade, string of hotels and restaurants, and horse-drawn trams.
She would have the thing here.
It would be born of this place.
This place where it had been conceived.
As if it could be born nowhere else.
As if this place were somehow sacred.
Somehow sacred to it. This thing.
This thing growing inside of her now.
For that was exactly how she felt. That it, this thing, could not be born of any other place. That if she abandoned this quite muddy patch of earth, if she abandoned this small stone cottage beside this dark woodline and this dark jagged cliff and this dark gray sea, that this thing that should not be growing inside of her now might decide to abandon her. That it, this thing, could not exist outside this place. She felt this very deeply even as she also understood the insanity of such thinking. Still, she was helpless to this dark intuition.
Especially without the pills.
Those bitter little orange pills.
And as the rising black tide of cold darkness once again folded over her, she forgave herself and just let go this time, allowing herself to drown. For there was a peace to be found in drowning.
Or so she wanted to believe.
Or so she needed to believe.
And in it discovered a distant memory.
From her childhood very long ago.
A winter when she’d suffered a terrible virus, drifting for days in and out of a state of dreamlike delirium. It had not been an altogether unpleasant experience even as it had most terribly frightened her. It was as if she’d been swept away by such a black tide, roiled in the dark, drowned, only to awaken to a half-life. A life outside of herself. Just drifting along in that strong dark current. No longer feeling pain. No longer feeling much of anything at all, quite frankly.
Not until the delirium had ended.
And the pain had come back. In waves.
She felt pleasantly numb now.
With this thing growing inside of her.
This thing that should not be.
And trembling, she embraced it.
Tooth and nail. Black tide and all.
The surface world now fading.
And her allowing it to fade this time.
Not scrambling back to the surface.
Gasping desperately for fresh air.
As she might’ve done before.
As a silly child overcome by panic.
Allowing herself to sink this time.
To be sunk down by this black tide.
A black tide turned undercurrent.
Sunk into a dark bottomless water.
With its monsters of the deep.
Becoming a part of them.
As they became a part of her.
And the thing growing inside of her.
This thing growing inside of her now.
22.
OLIVER V
ERY CLOSELY watched Abby, his wife, over those early months of her pregnancy. Their pregnancy, he reminded himself, as winter deepened on the isle, making at times cozy the small stone cottage by the cold gray sea.
The cottage itself sleepy and quiet.
Almost as if it were hibernating.
Abby, his wife, moved through these winter days in a perpetual fugue, and he soon recognized in himself a similar willingness to simply float along. Not unlike a feather in a dark wind.
Fluttering. Rising. Dipping. Drifting.
Never quite touching the ground.
Not yet, anyway. Not just yet.
Yes, Oliver very closely watched Abby, his wife, as he floated along, understanding this small stone cottage by this cold gray sea could not be sleepy or quiet forever. Very closely watched how bloodshot her eyes became and how pallid her skin despite sleeping more and more. Often from early morning when he left for school until he finally returned home after the fall of the evening darkness. Her slumber uneasy. Harrowed by unending nightmares.
Her belly beginning to round.
Slowly. Ever so slightly.
23.
ON A COLD DECEMBER Monday just after Christmas and just before the turn of the new year, Abby lay back on that wooden examination table in that one and only examination room offset from the cramped little lobby in the Peel Medical Centre in the tight whitewashed corner of the downtown historic district of Peel next to the sleepy weekend inn with its dark shuttered windows and peek-a-boo views of the shipyard. Given it was nearly half past three in the afternoon (and given, moreover, school was still out on holiday break), the medical centre’s receptionist, the mother of school-age children, had already left for the day.
Assuming the woman even existed.
A computer hidden by a dust cover.
A glass jar of licorice-flavored hard candy.
A wooden cuckoo clock six minutes slow.
A pot of decaying yellow winter jasmine.
All of it in the shadows of a greeting desk.
Behind the centre’s own dark shuttered windows.
And dark glass door entrance. Blinds drawn.
Abby had donned a reusable cloth gown.
Perhaps the only reusable cloth gown.
Her own clothing back on hangars.
In that one and only examination room.
Offset from the cramped little lobby.
Oliver stood in the corner of the room, hands locked together before him to keep him from wringing them over and over again as he held his breath, already beginning to feel dangerously lightheaded as Dr. Marwick applied a slippery gel to Abby’s belly.
To that slight rise of belly.
The slippery gel clearly cold.
Her skin prickling with gooseflesh.
Oliver thought to hold her hand, but he found he couldn’t unlock his fingers. Not without the risk of revealing himself, revealing his wretched shakes. His anguish to see the very first images as Dr. Marwick glided the transducer over that slight rise of belly, the gliding instrument shaped like a hard plastic snake-head, sending down high-frequency sound waves and receiving back echoes as the high-frequency sound waves bounced off internal bodily tissues and organs and, even more importantly, the developing fetus.
They had not discussed names.
Oliver and Abby over these early months.
They had not even discussed gender.
Frankly, they barely spoke of it at all.
This thing growing inside of her now.
This impossible miracle of a thing.
Like Oliver, Abby didn’t appear to be breathing, her pale face turning a deepening shade of pink, the rest of her looking as stiff as that wooden examination table beneath her. Of course, she couldn’t be comfortable with a full bladder. The good doctor’s strict orders. Apparently the hard plastic snake-head’s deeply penetrating sound waves traveled more intelligently through liquid than air.
These intelligent traveling sound waves eventually produced a grainy black and white image on an antiquated display screen in the corner. The clunky ultrasound machine appeared to be at least decades old. Not quite as medieval as the macabre museum of antique medical devices featured on that dark wall of shelving in the good doctor’s small office at the end of the short and narrow hall, and not quite as antediluvian as the good doctor’s own revolving wardrobe of dark tweed suits, but not quite of the modern world, either, with its series of hollow beeps and clicks and grainy image.
But then, there it was. This thing.
This thing growing inside of her now.
This impossible miracle of a thing.
Forming inside that grainy image.
A small ghostly apparition.
As if appearing out of ether.
A small ghostly bean of a thing.
But with a well-defined cranium.
And dark pronounced eyes.
A knobby stub of a nose, too.
Thin little gray appendages besides.
And a small little beating heart.
Abby gasped softly, tears filling her eyes. As if she’d expected her womb to be dry and hollow. A dry and hollow husk. For all of this to have been a horrible and cruel misunderstanding.
But then, there it was on the screen.
This thing growing inside of her now.
Unmistakable and undeniable.
Dr. Marwick glided the transducer in tiny circles, causing that small ghostly bean to expand and recede, rotate and turn.
As if it were somersaulting.
This thing growing inside of her now.
This impossible miracle of a thing.
This thing that really shouldn’t be.
Studying the ghostly image closely, magnifying glasses perched on the tip of his nose, Dr. Marwick eventually said in his polite and yet condescending clipped speech that suddenly sounded more like songbirds: “Just fine. Everything looks just as it should be.”
Oliver finally exhaled.
But he wanted to scream.
Wanted to jump up and down.
Wanted to hug the good doctor.
Wanted to hug his wife.
Even as that dullness remained in her eyes. That dark caution. That detachment. That dysphoria born of her awful nightmares.
Despite her relieved surface tears.
Despite the good doctor’s assurances.
That everything looked just as it should be.
Despite that small ghostly apparition.
As if appearing out of ether.
A blackness that would not leave her.
A blackness that had caused her terrible stomach pains the further they’d driven away from that small stone cottage.
Even for the short drive into Peel.
Almost as if it, this thing growing inside of her now, this dark miracle of a thing, causing that slight rise of her belly where she’d feared a dry and hollow husk, that this small ghostly bean of a thing with its small little beating miracle of a heart might just somehow be intrinsically bound to that small stone cottage beside that cold gray sea.
If no longer simply their past.
Their previous failure as parents.
To nature’s terrible cruelty.
Bound. Not unlike a horrible knot.
Pulling ever-tighter and tighter and tighter.
A most horrible suffocating knot.
And with that ill-fated thought--
He thought of the dark cellar.
And of that strange stone column.
And again he wished to scream.
If not to jump up and down.
If not to necessarily hug anyone.
Only to unwring his tortured mind.
To unwring it of such lunacy.
Even as he suspected he could not.
The blackness inside him as well.
As if infecting his very blood.
Turning it dark and muddy.
Instead, he took Abby’s hand, finding it quite very cold, as Dr. Marwick asked: “Do you wish
to know the sex of the child?”
And her whispering: “Yes.”
24.
CAUGHT IN THE MIDST of a rather playful snow flurry that nevertheless managed to reduce visibility to only a few meters, or so, as they left the medical centre, Oliver carefully negotiated the Audi along the historic district’s narrow snow-blown streets down to the town’s local pharmacy on the waterfront as the mischievous weather twirled and pirouetted in ice-crystal shimmering whirligigs like a dancing chorus of spinning dervishes.
He parked outside the pharmacy.
There was no one on the street.
Just the snow swirling about them.
Begging them to come out and play.
Rather more playful than ever.
“You stay in here where it’s comfy,” he told Abby, leaving the engine running, the heater pushing out a steady stream of warm air as he pulled his parka hood over his head, the impish swirling snow still managing to sting his exposed cheeks before he was finally able to push through the pharmacy door, ringing a door bell.
A small tinkling noise.
Meanwhile, back in the Q5, as she waited for Oliver to collect her vitamin prescription, prenatal stuff, Abby turned the heat vents more directly on her, slowly warming her left hand in the current of warm air before then sliding it beneath her coat and shirt.
Resting it on her belly.
Searching for a flutter.
That was what she called it.
Her perception of movement.
As it was still quite very early yet.
But there. There it was again.
That soft little quickening.
That almost imperceptible flutter.
As if it knew her hand was there.
The thing growing inside of her now.
Knew her hand was resting on it.
Wanting it to move, perhaps.
Wanting it to communicate with her.
Especially now that she’d seen it.
Seen it on a grainy little display.
And truly knew it was there now.
Not only a figment of imagination.
But really and truly there.
Inside of her. Fluttering.
She hadn’t yet told Oliver.
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