by Robert Tine
“You know you can’t hurt them, Jillian. You know you love them, we both do.”
As Spencer spoke, his gaze dropped from Jillian’s face until he was looking at her belly.
Jillian grabbed herself tighter. “Leave them alone!” she ordered. Then, more calmly, quieter: “Leave them alone…”
Jillian rubbed the two points together. Suddenly the roar of running water mixed with the very faint sound of babies crying.
“I saved you once, Jillian,” he said. “Remember that? Please let me do it again.” He held out his hands. “Please come here.”
“That was Spencer,” she said. Her voice was filled with steel. “Spencer is dead.” Suddenly it was full of hate. “Spencer is dead and you killed him.”
Spencer was in agony. He knew that if he could get near her, he could overpower her, but the threatening tide of water was right at his feet. Once again he was forced to take a step back.
“Jillian, come here,” he said, throwing out his arms to her. The action pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and she saw the scratch marks that Nan had carved in his forearms.
Instantly Jillian knew the source. “Oh, my God,” she wailed. “You killed her.”
Spencer looked down at the scratches, then over at Jillian. There was a new and strange tone in his voice as he spoke to her this time. “Listen to them, Jillian.”
“Oh God,” Jillian cried out.
“Let them teach you what to see. Let them show you. They have already started.”
“No. No!” Jillian could not tolerate the thought that the children in her womb might be evil.
“Now, Jillian,” Spencer commanded. “Come here. Now!”
“Never,” Jillian whispered.
They were at a standoff. Husband and wife just stared at each other, neither willing to give an inch. The only sound was the rushing water.
Frustration and fury were beginning to build in Spencer. His jaw clenched tight like a trap, his fists opened and closed. he started to pant like an animal as he stared at her with the intensity of lasers. The stool upon which Jillian was sitting began to tremble, then to shake, and then it started to move. First an inch, then another. To her horror she realized that she was being drawn toward Spencer. He was dragging her to him by sheer force of will. Jillian’s eyes were wide with terror.
“Open up to them, Jillian. Let them in. Let us in. Can’t you feel us?”
She was being drawn closer and he reached out, but she was still beyond his grasp. She stared at him hard, her eyes burning with hate.
“Let them, Jillian, let them bring you here. We belong together, all of us.”
The tears coursed down her cheeks as she was drawn inexorably closer.
“That’s good,” said Spencer. “That’s good, Jillian.”
“Why did you come here?” Her voice was a heartbreaking wail of despair. “Why us?” Then she saw that the water had worked its way around Spencer, touching his heels.
“You will never get them,” she said.
Spencer smiled. “They are already mine.”
“What do you see?” asked Jillian.
Spencer looked puzzled. She pointed to the radio. “How do you get it to make sound? I turn it on and all I get is music.” Spencer was surrounded by water now and he lunged for her.
“All I get is music,” she said as she pulled her feet from the water and perched them on the wooden stool. Then she pushed the radio plug into the extension cord.
Spencer had time to say “Jillian, no!” before the electricity hit. The room seemed to come alive, humming with energy, the relentless sound of electric current. It was as if an electrical storm had erupted in the middle of the apartment.
Spencer was standing rigid, his body trembling. Bloody tears began to ooze from his eyes. He forced open his mouth and from it came not words, but that horrible sound, the screaming of insects. All over the apartment light bulbs began to explode, the sparks streaking around the space like lightning. Blood was dripping from each of Spencer’s ten rigid fingers. For a moment there was darkness all around except for an ethereal light that illuminated their two faces, as if they were in space. The only sound was the screech issuing from Spencer’s twisted and contorted mouth.
Then, with a flash of bright light, the room lit up again and Spencer dropped to his knees in the deadly water. Then he fell, bleeding and prostrate at Jillian’s feet. Abruptly, the screaming stopped.
And all was silent for what seemed like an unnaturally long span of seconds. Then without warning, Spencer’s body twitched, as if his corpse were giving in to a final death spasm. As she looked at him, she realized, to her horror, that this was not the involuntary shudder of a dead man. Rather, it was a shrug, a shake of his entire body as if he were somehow throwing off the mantle of his horrible death.
Then, before Jillian’s terrified gaze, Spencer’s body seemed to open and something, some thing, rose out of the corpse, as if an evil soul were vacating a useless cadaver.
Suddenly, the insect-like screaming began again, louder then ever. The twin fetuses inside of her kicked an abrupt and violent tattoo against the wall of her womb as if welcoming the hideous apparition and betraying her at the same time.
The thing was light and dark and without corporeal form. She sensed the thing rather than actually saw it—and what she sensed chilled her to the depths of her soul. She could feel the presence of absolute evil in that cold wet room and it emanated from that thing like the heat given off by a roaring bonfire.
Then the entire room went berserk. Every appliance in the kitchen turned on—flames erupted from the burners on the stove, sending jets of fire halfway to the ceiling, the microwave seemed to scream, the dishwasher churned as if it contained a hurricane, and the refrigerator door flew open and vomited forth its contents. Food flew in every direction and ice cubes ricocheted like cold bullets, snapping and cracking on the tiled walls.
And the radio turned on, the dial running crazily up through all the bands, trailing a mad scrabble of speech and snatches of music, and then it shot back down again and stopped at its special place. The speaker erupted with the screeching, the scream of the alien.
The thing itself was everywhere in the room and it was nowhere as well. It danced around the chaotic kitchen, darting to the ceiling, then plummeting to the wet floor. But no matter where it was, she could feel it drawing ever closer to her, as if it were attempting to dominate her, to overcome her resolve.
Then suddenly and without warning, it was on her, pressed against her with unimaginable force, stuck to her like a second layer of skin. She could feel it trying to physically enter her, trying to burrow in and possess her, both body and soul.
In an instant all of her nerves were alive and tingling, all of her defenses were up. Her muscles tensed until they. were as tight as steel cables and her jaw clenched until her teeth cracked. She summoned up every ounce of strength she possessed, every last iota of will in her mind to fight the power that bore down on her so relentlessly.
But Jillian found herself fighting a battle on two fronts. She struggled against the power outside of herself while her twin babies seemed to gnaw at her from within, as they were urging her to surrender herself to the power so much greater then she.
“No, no, no!” She said through clenched teeth. “I cannot let this happen.” She may have been talking to her unborn children, she may have been trying to convince herself.
Then there was nothing.
It was as if in response to her words, but the struggle abruptly stopped. The force backed off, pulling away from her. She could feel it go. Deep down inside of her body, the twins fell silent and still. She was trembling with the effort she had expended.
Jillian used that moment of quiet to draw a single, deep calming breath. For a split second she allowed herself to relax…
Then out of nowhere, it struck, hitting her with the force of a wrenching body blow, overwhelming her weakened defenses. She could feel the power of the alien pour
ing into her, as if it were water rushing through a break in a dam. Suddenly, she felt as if she were drowning in the slimy spirit of this foreign, unnatural thing. She could feel it deep inside of her. It was corroding her soul like acid.
Terror seized her as she realized that she had come face to face with the end of her own life. She opened her mouth to scream at the horror of it all, but the sound caught in her throat, as if ensnared in a terrible trap.
Jillian’s eyes opened wide and the pupils seemed to glow crazily for a moment Then her face—her eyes—shut down, closing flat and dead. The last of the evil had entered through her eyes and then shut off the light of life that had glowed within her. She was very still for a moment, as Jillian floated over to the other side. Then her shoulders slumped slightly and her head fell forward as her eyes re-opened. And to look in them was to know that the old Jillian was as dead as the man who had once been Spencer Armacost…
Postscript
Seven years later
It could have been a scene you might see anywhere in America. Two little boys—tow-headed identical twins who had passed their fifth birthdays and were well on their way to their sixth— walking down the driveway of their neat little suburban house.
Right behind them were their parents. The father was square-jawed, clear-eyed and his hair was brush-cut—just the look you expected of a man dressed in the flying suit of a pilot in the United States Air Force. His wings were embroidered on his chest, his captain’s bars on his shoulders. His wife had dark hair and was petite and pretty—the former Jillian Armacost. She carried two paper bags, two identical lunches, and she tucked them into the pack each boy wore on his back.
“Ready for your first day of school?” Dad asked.
With a calm that suggested that the two little boys were older than their years, they answered: “Ready.”
Their mother tapped the backpacks. “I gave you each an apple. And I want you to eat them. No trading, okay? Promise?”
Simultaneously the two little boys answered: “Promise.”
A beep sounded and the little family looked up to see a bright yellow school bus pulled up to the curb. Stenciled on the side of the vehicle were the words: Nellis AFB Elementary School.
“There it is,” Dad said.
“Give me a kiss,” said Mom, kneeling down.’ Both boys kissed her on the cheek and Jillian held them tight. As the bus horn sounded again, the two kids broke from the embrace and raced across the lawn for the bus.
The two proud parents watched them go. “What do you think they’ll be when they grow up?”, Jillian asked.
Her husband laughed. “Grow up? Give them some time, honey. It’s only their first day of school.”
Jillian put her hands on his shoulders and turned him away from the school bus and the twins, then pulled him into a tender embrace.
She laid her head on his shoulder and watched as her boys stopped in front of the school bus door. They looked back over their shoulders at their mother.
“I think they are going to be pilots,” she said softly. “Just like their father… ”
“Stepfather,” he said with an air of self-deprecation.
But Jillian did not appear to have heard him.
The twins were looking back at their mother. The sunny little-boy smiles gone now, as if their faces had been wiped blank and replaced with cold, dark, adult stares. Their eyes locked onto Jillian’s for a moment, and mother and sons stared hard at each other for a moment as if joined in some wordless form of communication.
“I’m only their stepfather,” the husband reiterated.
Jillian traced the embroidered wings sewn onto the chest of his flight overalls. “No,” she said firmly. “You are their father now.”
The bus horn beeped one more time and the link between Jillian and her twin sons snapped. There were smiles all round again, as if storm clouds had passed. The twins waved and clambered onto the school bus.
The twins knew most of the kids on the bus; they all lived near one another on the air force base. The other kids generally tried to make the ride to school a barely contained riot, but the twins seemed airily above it all. They walked to the very rear of the school bus and settled themselves in their seats. Each pulled a Walkman from his pack, plugged a pair of headphones into it and started the tape. As the sound reached their ears, the twins suddenly looked very peaceful, eerily so. The shouts and yells of their schoolmates faded away as the twins listened to that terrible sound, growing louder as the seconds passed. It was as if it were sweet music in their ears…
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Document creation date: 07.01.2011
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