The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  “What do you mean he was a freak?”

  “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “Sweetie, I—”

  “He had wings, okay?”

  “Who had wings?”

  “The other one. The one that died. Do you think it was something I did?”

  Theresa cannot form a logical connection between her daughter’s revelation and her own son’s wings. Several things occur to her, but not even for a second does she consider that she might have shared a lover with her fifteen-year-old daughter. (That notion comes later, with disastrous results.) Instead, she thinks of the paper mill, or some kind of terrorist attack on their well, things like that.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Theresa says, “except have unprotected sex.” (Feeling like a hypocrite for saying it.) “And if every woman who did that was punished with a dead baby, there wouldn’t be anyone living at all.”

  “But it wasn’t just dead, Mom. It had wings.”

  Theresa glances at the house, where she’d left Matthew resting in his crib. “How do we know that wasn’t some kind of miracle? How do we know it was a sign of something bad happening, rather than something good?”

  Elli sighs. “It’s just a feeling I get. Remember ‘We are the stuff that dreams are made on’?”

  “What about it?” Theresa says, feeling tense at the topic hovering too close to the library, and Jeffrey.

  “I don’t know,” Elli says. “It’s just something I think of sometimes.”

  Theresa knows she’s been distracted lately, perhaps not as supportive of Elli as she would have liked. She glances at the house again, trying to decide if Matthew could be flying through the rooms, banging into walls and ceilings. She doesn’t know anything about raising a child with wings, except that it is hard enough to raise one without them.

  “Try to think of it as a good thing, okay?”

  Elli shrugs.

  “Will you at least try?”

  For three days, Elli tries to convince herself that her first baby was not a freak or a punishment for something she’d done, but a sign of something good. She almost convinces herself of it. But on the third day, while she has Timmy on the changing table, she watches in horror as dark wings sprout from his back.

  That’s when she knows. The stranger she had sex with was the devil. That explains everything. It even explains why she did it with him. She looks into Timmy’s beautiful blue eyes. For once, he isn’t crying. In fact, he is smiling.

  Evil, Elli thinks, can trick you. She works the saliva in her mouth and spits. Timmy’s face goes through a metamorphosis of expressions, as if trying to decide which one to employ—a slight smile, raised eyebrows, trembling lips—all while closely watching Elli. She begins to cry. He opens his mouth wide and joins her, the glop of phlegm dripping down his forehead. Elli wipes it with the blanket. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” she says, picking him up.

  That’s when Theresa walks into the room.

  Elli, still crying, looks over the small dark points of her baby’s wings at her mother, who puts her hand over her mouth and—turning on her heels—spins out of the room.

  Theresa wheels down the hall like a drunken woman, and opens the door to her own room. Matthew lays there, damp curls matted at his forehead, his pretty pink lips pursed near his tiny fist. Gently, she rubs his back and feels the delicate bones there.

  “Mom?” Elli stands in the doorway. “You said it could be good.” Then she sobs and runs out of the room.

  Matthew wakes with a wail. Theresa soothes him the best she can as she walks to the rocking chair. Sitting there, Theresa can see all the way out to the three figures working in the field. Matthew sucks at her breast while she stares at the blue sky and gently rocks, asking herself, “What does it mean? What does it mean? What does any of it mean?”

  Of all the lying and confused families that summer, perhaps the Ratchers—with their strange convergence of mother, daughter, son, brother, grandson, grandmother, sister, husband, father, and grandfather, all embodied in one small family—were the most confused, with the biggest web of secrets.

  Pete Ratcher came home from his Saturday dart game at Skelley’s Bar one hot night, with the news that Maddy Melvern, a year ahead of Elli in school, had given birth and also wasn’t divulging the father’s name. “What hot shot are these girls protecting?” he asked his wife, who tried to make all the right noises while she fed the little monster (that’s how Pete thought of him, though he tried not to) who seemed to be hungry all the time.

  Theresa tried to talk to Elli about it. “You know, Maddy Melvern had a baby too,” she said. Elli rolled her eyes, the baby latching on her breast again as her mother stood there, again bothering her with ridiculous information (What did she care about Maddy Melvern?), when all she wanted was to be free, instead of trapped here with this baby and horrible dreams about that other one rising from the cornfield and flying over the house; trying to find her, to punish her for burying him out there, no better than one of the cats—though, really, it wasn’t her fault. It was her dad who did it.

  Meanwhile, Pete Ratcher spent more and more nights at Skelley’s, because what was he supposed to stay home for? To watch his wife and daughter endlessly feed and rock the crying babies, which neither would let him hold? Like they didn’t trust him or something? Christ, what was that about?

  The regulars at Skelley’s grew used to Pete Ratcher’s complaints. The bartenders could wipe the counter, serve drinks, watch TV, and say, “Women these days,” at just the right moment in Pete’s lament; that’s how predictable it was. The regulars were so tired of it they were careful not to sit next to him. That’s how, on the night Raj came into Skelley’s, blinking against the smoke, he happened to sit right next to Pete, who finally found a sympathetic listener.

  Raj nodded and said, “I know, I know. He’s my son, too. I want to be a part of his life. I want to change diapers and take him for walks. I don’t understand why she won’t let me do those things.”

  Tamara knew Raj was drinking. Frankly, she was shocked: it was not something she’d imagined he’d fall into. But only a week into this new bad habit of his, he ran into their bedroom to tell her he’d just seen the baby flying. She was able to convince him that he was so drunk he’d been hallucinating. “No, no. I don’t drink that much,” he said.

  Tamara went into the nursery, and sure enough, Ravi was floating above the crib, hovering like a giant hummingbird. She had just plucked him to her chest when Raj returned to the room.

  “And you get angry at me for not letting you hold him more? Look at you. How can I trust that he’d be safe with a father who drinks so much he thinks he sees flying babies?”

  “I don’t drink that much,” Raj said. “And all this was happening before I was drinking.”

  “The baby was flying before you started drinking? Do you really expect me to believe this nonsense?”

  “No, no. I mean us. We were already fighting about you not letting me near him.”

  Tamara, who, just a year ago, would never have believed she could hurt her husband, and, only five minutes ago, would have sworn that she’d never hurt her baby for any reason, now pinched Ravi’s arm, hard, so that he broke into a loud cry. She turned to attend to his tears as Raj watched, helpless and confused. It was like watching a movie or television: his wife and son in a separate world, with no need of him at all.

  The next night, when he came home from Skelley’s, his pajamas and a pillow and blankets were on the couch, and the baby was sleeping with Tamara. Raj remembered hearing once about a woman who rolled onto her baby in her sleep and suffocated the newborn. He considered waking Tamara to warn her, but instead, took off his shoes. He didn’t bother changing into his pajamas before he lay down on the couch, vowing that tomorrow he wouldn’t go to Skelley’s. Tomorrow he would meditate and fast. Maybe he would even return to his yoga practice. How had he lost both himself and his marriage so swiftly?

  Tamara heard him come home. She hea
rd his breathing when he stood in the bedroom door and watched her. She was only pretending to be asleep. She heard him walk away, heard his shoes drop to the floor. Maybe she should tell him, she thought—but was this how he responded to stress? How would he respond to having a baby with wings? No, Tamara decided, she couldn’t risk it. She was sure it was the right decision, but nonetheless fell asleep with tears in her eyes.

  The tears were still in her eyes when she was awoken by the baby’s crying. She brought him to her breast, which silenced him immediately. She fell asleep, but woke up throughout the night to feel the baby suckling. In the morning, she decided it had been her imagination—it was impossible that Ravi had been feeding all night long.

  Elli could feel the way her mother was watching her. It was obvious that she did not think Timmy’s wings were a sign of something good. Elli’s dad (oblivious) tried to talk to her. He even bought up the subject of the beams. “Don’t go in the barn anymore,” he said. “Not until I do something about them.”

  Elli thought her dad was nuts. What did she care about the stupid barn beams when she had this baby with wings to take care of, and another one hunting her? She stared at her dad with his stick-out ears and the creases around his upraised eyebrows. He suddenly seemed like some kind of strange, mutant child himself. Elli shook her head and turned her attention to Timmy, without saying a word.

  Theresa, sitting on the couch facing the TV and holding Matthew, observed all this: the way her husband tried to speak to Elli; the way she looked at him, appalled; then turned away as though she could not bear to speak to him. Theresa observed all this and she knew.

  “I’m going out,” Pete said. Neither Elli nor Theresa responded. When did I become the enemy? Pete wondered. Sometimes women were like this in the first months after giving birth. He’d heard about that. Pete remembered Raj saying, “Sometimes I feel so angry, but then I remember that I love her.” Pete stood in the living room and tried to remember how much he loved them. It was actually sort of hard to do. It was hard to feel it.

  June in Voorhisville. The leaves of oaks and elms and the famous chestnut tree on Main Street grow until the Voorhisville sun filters through a green canopy. Everything, from faces, to flowers, to food, appears tinged with a shade usually associated with alien masks or Halloween witches.

  The mothers of Voorhisville are too busy to notice. There are diapers to change, endless feedings, tiny clothes to wash, and constant surveillance.

  Cathy Vecker would like nothing better than to hire a nanny or let her mother and grandmother feed the baby, but she can’t risk it.

  “He’s growing so fast,” her mother says. “Are you sure he’s normal?”

  Cathy resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Look at Sylvia Lansmorth’s baby,” she says. “He was born around the same time as Raven. They’re both the same size.”

  “Well, they say Americans are getting bigger. Are you sure the doctor doesn’t want you to put him on a diet?”

  As the tiny bumps on Raven’s back sprout and flutter, the wings pushing against her hands like they have a will of their own, Cathy runs out the front door, ignoring her mother. “You have to stop,” she whispers, though she doesn’t expect him to understand. With a thrust as powerful as a man’s hands, Raven’s wings push against her, tearing through the train-patterned fabric of his little sleeper.

  The next thing Cathy knows, she is standing in Sylvia Lansmorth’s garden and Sylvia, dressed in something purple and flowing, is glaring at her. “You’re standing on my roses,” Sylvia says.

  “Have you seen my baby?” Cathy looks around, desperately, as though she expects to find Raven perched on a rose petal. Well, who knows? Who knows what will happen next?

  “Your baby?” Sylvia asks. “How old is he?”

  “Don’t you know me?”

  Sylvia shakes her head.

  “I’ve known you my whole life,” Cathy says.

  Sylvia assumes she is talking to a mentally ill person. It’s the only explanation. “Is there someone I can call?”

  “We have to call the police.” Cathy can’t believe how calm she sounds. “I have to tell them everything.”

  Sylvia doesn’t like the sound of that. “I’ll call,” she says. “You wait here.”

  Cathy takes a deep breath and almost passes out from the sweet rose scent. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Is this about your baby?”

  “I tried to do the right thing. I did.”

  “Wait here,” Sylvia says, glancing back at the house.

  “I didn’t mean to lose him.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “He flew right out of my hands.”

  “He flew?”

  “You think I’m crazy.”

  Sylvia shakes her head.

  “Of course you do. That’s what I would think. Nobody’s going to believe me. Unless they see the wings, and if that happens they’ll call him a freak. The worst part is”—Cathy begins to cry—“I don’t know where he is.”

  Sylvia puts her arm around Cathy’s shoulder. “I believe you,” she says. “Did you touch them?” She takes Cathy’s hands in her own. “Look, you’re all cut up. How did this happen?”

  Cathy sniffs loudly. “The wings ripped right through his clothes and cut me when I was trying to hold on to him.”

  “Well, when this happens with my baby,” Sylvia says, “I usually find him in his crib, sound asleep.”

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  “No, it’s true. But if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it. Listen to me, honey: before you get all panicky, what you need to do is go home.”

  “Go home?”

  “Yes. Go home and see if he’s in his room.”

  “My mom and grandmother are there.”

  “Well, then you better hurry. You don’t want them to find him floating over his crib or something, do you?”

  Cathy has a stitch in her side by the time she gets home. She runs to the nursery, rushing into the room so loudly that the baby wakes. Cathy picks him up and holds him close. “Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you,” she says, over and over again; thinking, There’s another one, there’s another baby with wings, you aren’t alone in the world, and neither am I.

  She takes off his tattered sleeper, shredded as if by some beast, and tosses it into the trash. The she places a gauze pad on his small back and binds it there with first aid tape.

  The mothers of Voorhisville were using gauze and tape, plastic wrap (which caused sweating and a rash), thick layers of clothing, and bubble wrap. What to do about a child with wings? How to cope with the unpredictable thrust of them, the sear of pain, the strange disappearing babies? The flying! How to cope with that? Several mothers (and they are not proud of this) took to devising elaborate rope restraints. It is rumored that at least one mother suffered tragic results from this decision, reported as a crib death, but she is not here with us, so that remains speculation.

  Many of the mothers describe the isolation of this time as having its own weight. “I felt tied down,” Elli Ratcher says. “Knowing that my mom had the same problem didn’t really help. I mean she was my mom, okay? What did she know about my life?”

  Many of the mothers, when they hear Elli say this, walk towards her, intending to administer a motherly hug or at least pat her on the back, but something in Elli’s expression causes them to stop, as though she is radioactive.

  Theresa felt alone in the world. All that June she knew what Pete did, and tried to convince herself she did not. But it was the only explanation. She knew, and she had to do something about it.

  Finally, one hot afternoon, she left Matthew with Elli, who said, “Well, okay, but you better hurry back. It’s hard enough watching Timmy every second,” and walked out to the cornfield, where Pete was working with the boys.

  “Is something wrong?” he said. “Is Elli—”

  “I know,” Theresa said, loudly, angrily, as though she had
only just figured it out.

  “You know what?” Pete asked, looking at the boys, a quizzical women-are-going-to-confuse-you look on his face.

  “I know what you did.”

  “Did to who?”

  “To Elli.”

  Pete shook his head. “I don’t know what . . . ” His voice trailed off as he considered the baby lost in the cornfield. “Do you mean the other one? Is that what you’re talking about? It was a freak, Theresa. It had wings, for God’s sake.”

  Theresa dove at Pete with her fists. He ducked and weaved, and finally grabbed her wrists.

  “How could you? How could you do such a thing? How could you fuck your own daughter?”

  Pete dropped her wrists, stepped back as if struck. He gaped at Theresa, turned to the boys, who gaped at him, then stepped towards his wife. “I never—”

  “I want you out! Don’t you dare come near us again. I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

  Pete stood there, speechless.

  “I don’t care if you understand me or not,” Theresa said. “You come anywhere near us, and I’ll kill you. I don’t fucking care if you understand, you monster.”

  Pete watched Theresa walk away from him, the awkward sway of her hips as she walked over the uneven ground. He turned to the boys, thinking to offer them an explanation of the mental illness some women suffer after childbirth, but neither one looked at him. He stood there until Theresa slammed the door behind her, then followed in her path, stepping slowly through the field, leaving the boys believing they were about to witness a murder.

  Pete was a little worried about that as well. But there was no way around it. He had the keys to the Chevy in his pocket, and the Chevy was in the driveway. She didn’t expect him to walk, did she?

  How had this happened? Had Elli accused him of such a thing? Why? Standing by the car, he considered his options. He could go inside and try to straighten this out, or he could leave. The problem was the gun, which they kept in the basement and had only used for shooting squirrels when they infested the attic after all those traps had proven ineffective. It was an old gun. He didn’t think Theresa knew how to use it, but maybe she did.