"I should call my wife," Greg said.
Lydia
She wasn't sure this was the right direction. She was feeling her way along instead of following signposts. She didn't know what kind of trees or plants grew here, and wouldn't recognize them. She only noticed one of the rotting pieces of shingle, with the name of the road painted on it. The letters had faded and worn away. She reached up and ran her fingers across the letters.
The night was still, the air pungent and warm. The scent of roasting meat drifted on faint smoke. Ordinarily this would have brought memories of family nights by the pool. At the moment the smell of meat made Lydia feel nauseated.
Underfoot the dry leaves and twigs crunched. Ferns swept across her ankles. It seemed that she had walked a much greater distance this time, when she stepped into a clearing and saw the house: robin's egg blue, with white shutters and cedar shingles. The blue-black night reflected in tall windows.
She flinched at fluttering wings and a woofing noise overhead. She looked back and saw the outspread wings of an owl in flight, down the unmarked route she had taken.
All of this, the blue-green shimmer of fir, the cottage, the clearing, carried a hint of memory, a fairy tale, or a recurring dream. She was smiling at this when she heard the first scream.
At once she knew it was the girl she had seen before. Instinct told her, with a thrill in her gut, that the girl was in pain. Before she could think of danger, Lydia headed for the cottage. With each step she could hear more distinctly the cries of the girl.
Lydia followed the walkway. She opened the door to the house, and went inside. Immediately she realized that this was not the front of the house as she thought, but the kitchen. The girl lay on a cot. The woman with fox-red hair stood on one side and on the other an older woman assisted. They were holding the girl down. They had pulled the covers away to reveal her legs, which were splayed and struggling against the sheets. Her abdomen was swollen to full term. She was in labor.
Another ear-splitting scream shot through the room the two women had prepared for delivery. Both wore aprons over their clothing.
Now Lydia could hear them, although they took no notice of her.
"This will only hurt as much as you make it hurt," said the woman Lydia had seen before. Under her apron, her dress was black with gold trim, and she wore gold earrings. Her hair was swept up in a French twist.
The other, older one, whose hair was tucked into a white cotton bandana, was trying to reach between the girl's legs. She might be a nurse or a midwife. Every time she reached, the girl screamed and wrenched away.
"Poor little thing," the midwife said. "I'll have to use the forceps. You know that. You have to settle down."
"Do you have to do that?" The other woman asked. "You might hurt it."
"Stop!" The girl shouted and struggled against them. Then she doubled up, in too much pain to make a sound. Her mouth hung open, drooling.
"There it comes," said the midwife. "Hold her."
The redhead in the black and gold dress followed her instructions and pinned the girl to the cot by her shoulders, draping her own torso across the girl's.
"No! No! I can't breathe!" The girl screamed.
The midwife grabbed her legs and quickly tied her ankles to the corners of the cot. She looked to the redhead, who made a frantic gesture to hurry up. The midwife reached with both hands toward the girl.
Lydia couldn't move. All she could do was hold her belly. She was trying not to vomit.
Writhing under the weight of the woman, the girl was crying and screaming at the same time. She gasped for air. The redhead screamed at her to be quiet. Then she grabbed a washcloth and stuffed it in the girl's mouth. The midwife gave a tug, just as if she were opening a package and taking out what was inside it.
Blood and amniotic fluid ran like snot, soaking the sheets and the midwife's apron. Her arms were bloody and dripping when she stood up grasping the infant in cupped hands. It was so small and wrinkled it hardly looked human. It wasn't moving at all.
Now that the baby was outside the girl, the red-haired woman who had held her down let go and left her. She reached out for the baby, but the midwife wouldn't relinquish it.
"What's wrong? Why isn't it crying? Let me have it!"
The midwife held the baby in one crooked arm and massaged its chest with her fingertips. She turned away so the redhead couldn't take hold of it.
"Give it to me!" The woman said. "It's mine! Give it to me!"
The girl moaned and whimpered, on the bed. She was still bleeding. The washcloth fell from her mouth along with vomit and saliva. The bedclothes were sodden, scarlet with white streaks, and the room smelled of blood, wet and metallic.
"She's not breathing yet," the midwife said. "Stand back. See to the girl."
"Give her to me, I'll make her breathe."
"Don't touch her!"
The girl was shivering. She held her abdomen with one bloodstained hand and with the other she grasped feebly at the sheets, her splayed fingers trying to pull them toward her, to cover herself. The sheets were slick and they kept slipping out of reach. Blood ran down the sides of the cot and dripped onto the tile floor. The girl looked up and let out a sigh, and then she stopped moving. She lay there dead in the mess, with her eyes open, looking at the women.
They didn't notice the girl at once. They went on shuffling and arguing, with the baby still clenched in the midwife's arms, until a phlegm-coated cry rang out from the infant's throat. The baby coughed and then broke the air with a shrill, wide-mouthed scream.
Greg
Greg was halfway home when the wheeze in the engine started a second time. He drew a sharp breath. With one hand on the steering wheel, he tried the cell phone. No luck. Now he kicked himself for leaving Lydia by herself. What was he thinking? What was he trying to prove by going out alone to dine with people they would forget about in a couple of months? They would never see these country bumpkins again, and yet he had said yes without hesitation. He had been pleased when Lydia refused to join him. That was the part that made him cringe. His first thought was freedom. Now Lydia was alone and he couldn't reach her to say he was on his way.
Adding a gargantuan red cherry to his day, the car was threatening to stall. Probably just overheating, but who the hell knew? He could walk from the Colquitt house to his own. It wasn't that far. He just hated having car trouble when they were already strapped for cash. Now that he thought about it, why had he taken the car? It wasn't raining. It wasn't cold. He needed the exercise. Yet he had driven to the Colquitt place. Served him right if the car broke down, but Lydia would never understand.
He passed one of the road signs, a "Connie Sara Way" marker made of cedar, nailed to a tree trunk. He wondered: if the transportation department knew this place had been dubbed by Burt Sanders, resident drunk, would they pull the signs down and give the road a real name? Could he make an anonymous call to the county, or would his neighbors know? How terrible to be known in a town this small as that guy from Seattle who called the authorities and had a grieving father's tribute to his dead daughter torn down.
It was dark out, with no traffic lights, no street lamps, just the road flanked by tall trees. He was tired. All he wanted was a shower and bed, clean sheets, a happy wife. He hoped Lydia had done laundry while he was gone, and then he kicked himself for being a jerk again. She must have been bored to death the past two weeks.
There was the wheeze again, a woof-and-whine. This time it held on and grew louder. A shadow across his peripheral vision made Greg shiver and slow down. That's when the engine died, and the car glided to a stop.
The trees on either side of the road looked flat and opaque. The last faint threads of daylight had given way while he was indoors, in perhaps the only room in the Colquitt house without windows. Greg tried the cell one more time, and gave up. With clenched jaw and a determination not to dwell on the tongue-lashing he would get when he arrived at home, he got out of the car.
He propped the hood open. When he stared down at the engine he wondered how many men had done this, since the car was invented? How many men had stood gazing down at this incomprehensible shit, trying to figure it out by magic? He shook his head and laughed. The whole night was ridiculous. Lydia would think so, too. The way he would tell the story, she would laugh. Thinking of this, knowing he was grasping at straws, he became aware of the road shifting.
On second thought, it wasn't the road that was changing but the air around him. It seemed thicker, viscous and heavy. Silver shadows moved on all sides and folded in on themselves. Greg squinted, refusing to believe what he was seeing. From the trees and empty fields, from the forest down to the blue-black asphalt, narrowing to the car and a bit of ground around it, came fog.
"No way," Greg said out loud.
Then he laughed. It was preposterous. What else, in this stupid town? What next?
For a moment he wished and hoped like hell that Lydia would see this rolling in. He imagined her standing at the window in the living room. He remembered the way she had danced with delight on their first foggy day together in Seattle. He was momentarily lost in the beauty of it.
He wondered how this could happen in the summer. He couldn't see the mountains from this spot even during the day, and he didn't know how close the nearest body of water was. He tried to work out an inversion theory, and then realized that he was distracting himself. In fact it was hard to keep his mind on what he needed to do. He had to finish the trip on foot. He had to walk home, and he needed to get started, but the fog was so dense and beautiful.
"No friggin' way," he said, shaking his head.
Pearl-gray tendrils of the fog went scuttling across the road. Reluctantly Greg started walking. He trained his eyes on the path that kept disappearing ahead.
The fog swelled and enveloped him. No cars passed. No lights.
All right, he said to himself: No problem. He tried the cell again. His call didn't go through. One great, weird thing happened and he couldn't even share it! His view of fog rolling up onto his feet made him shiver. He put his cell away, and kept walking. By now he could only see a couple of feet in any direction.
Beyond his view, nocturnal animals were stirring. Now and then a shadow would dart from one tree to another, into the underbrush or the leaves of a maple with a quick, sharp rustle.
Greg trudged along, thinking that he must be close. It seemed that he had been walking long enough to reach the driveway. Then he wondered if he had passed it. He was going on instinct and the knowledge that his house was just up the road and on the left. He had never taken the route on foot.
After a few minutes the noises on either side of him died away. Then there was no stirring at all, not a sound. From the thickening fog, he heard nothing.
When he stopped and looked back, he couldn't see the car parked on the narrow shoulder. He couldn't see the shoulder. He couldn't see anything. If he reached out a hand, it would fade away before he stretched his arm to full length.
He was sorry he had decided to leave Lydia at home. She had refused to go, but he could have canceled. Why did he feel compelled to be nice to the Colquitts? They didn't mean a thing to him, the preacher who made up his own religion and his horsy wife, with their trophy house.
He could still picture the hallway lit by the living room, crowded with animal heads, the room's amber light shining around the crazy one, Marietta, when she stood in the front door watching him leave.
"I'm sorry Lydia decided not to come, too," she had said. "It would have been good if she had come with you."
That seemed like an accusation. Yet it was true. What could he say?
She had offered more wine, then dessert, and finally insisted on wrapping up a piece of cake for him to take home to Lydia. Marietta had still been there, watching from the door of her house as he backed the car out and turned and headed down the road. Later when he got out of the car and started walking, he had forgotten the slice of cake, left it on the seat.
While he was remembering the details of the evening, someone joined him. Simply and distinctly he became aware that someone was walking, to his left, keeping pace with him. He hadn't heard or seen anyone approach, but there was someone, no more than an arm's length away, in step with him. Yet when he glanced down and to the left, he saw that this was impossible because there was a trench alongside the road, where the person would be.
With all of his might he resisted the urge to run. This was pure instinct, overwhelming and negating his reasonable need to find out who or what was there in the fog beside him.
The fog. In a movie theater or watching a DVD in his living room, it would be ludicrous. He would have laughed. But he was alone and the only sound was the tread of his shoes, and the scrape and tap of the other one's step.
He kept walking and he tried to breathe normally. He tried not to speed up. If he panicked and broke into a sprint; no, he must not do that, no matter how much he wanted to escape, no matter how crazy it felt to him. He imagined a dangerous animal, so close it nearly touched him. He had to keep walking and stare straight ahead.
His skin tingled. He had broken out in a sweat. His breathing grew shallow, but he couldn't help it. The air was thick and vaporous. He tried to think how far he must have traveled, but he had no idea. He didn't know the landscape, not that it made any difference. He was walking blind.
All at once he had to pee so badly that everything else seemed unimportant. He had to pee. How could he do it? He would have to unzip his pants in the dark, in the fog, and stand there, not knowing what was about to happen.
What the hell was it? Was he freaking himself out with his own shadow? The sound? It couldn't be an echo. It wasn't possible.
His nerve broke. He bolted. He ran hard, with arms pumping. His feet began to sting, soles of his shoes hitting the asphalt in a wild rhythm. He wasn't breathing so much as gulping air, breaking out in a full sweat and trying not to scream.
Lydia
Waking from feverish sleep, Lydia moved slowly through the house. The rooms felt natural to her now. For the first time she didn't feel homesick or bored. She decided to take a bath. Greg had not called, or if he had she was asleep. It didn't matter. He would be home soon.
She ran the bath water. She undressed slowly, being gentle with herself. From now on, she would do this: She would treat herself the way a woman in her condition ought to be treated. It was that simple. It was all very simple.
She eased herself into the bath, using the handles built into the wall, and thought: At least the old lady who lived here before was good for something.
This was a fine house, actually, though not robin's egg blue. Where had she seen a blue house, with a shingled roof?
The water was a joy to touch. She splashed the surface like a baby taking her first bath. Then she leaned back, rested her neck against a rubber cushion, and let her belly rise until it broke the surface. She relaxed and tried to let all the muscles in her body recover from the day. Everything took so much effort. By night she was worn out even if she hadn't accomplished a thing.
She tried to find the center. It felt like a knot. She wanted, more than anything, to let go, to unclench the fist at the center of her body.
When she got her energy back she would redecorate. She would paint the living room goldenrod and cream, or hire the Dumpy Dempseys to paint. Then it would be so beautiful.
Bitches. That's what the women of this neighborhood were, all of them. Especially that one with the crazy eyes, who had a lot of nerve to come around telling weird stories and upsetting her. Bitches like that ugly fat girl who worked in her Misty Mommy's store up the road. She smoked outside next to the trash dumpster where her mother didn't see her, and she thought she was so smart. Bitch-cow. Her hair was dry as a haystack and she smelled of cow milk.
The longer Lydia reclined in the bath, stretched full length, heels pressed against the end of the tub, the warmer the water became. It was a luxury, really, being like this. Why g
et so wound up? Before she knew it things would be back to normal. Everything felt good, when she thought this way. It was all so good.
Lydia woke and she couldn't tell how long she had drifted. She couldn't say if it was nighttime, although the house beyond the bathroom door was dark. Then she heard it, the sound that must have awakened her. She sat perfectly still and listened with her whole body.
Front door. That was it. The doorknob rattling, then silence. Someone was knocking, lightly. Greg wouldn't knock. Someone, not out front, no, but at the back door, tap, tap, tap.
Lydia held her breath. There was nowhere to hide, nothing she could do now. Something seemed to be circling the house, wanting in. Worst of all was the feeling, no, the certainty, that this, every sound, every moment, had already happened. But how could it? How could it?
Now the tapping came from the front door again, and this time, this time, she heard the lock tumble, the lock was giving way. It wouldn't hold against whatever wanted in. It was coming in, and she sat frozen, stuck in the animal heat of her own body, trapped in the center, in the light, with whatever it was coming closer.
It was walking along the hallway, to the door at the center of the house. Lydia looked down into the water. She found she was sitting in a bath of her own blood, not pink but crimson, dark, thick, and warm.
Greg
Greg was out of breath when he stumbled up the driveway, fumbled with his keys and opened the front door. He had never been so grateful to finally reach home.
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