Head turned toward his wife and son in a state of pleasant exhaustion, Gary had smiled in the moments before he too fell asleep. As new parents, he and his wife had already been given advice about catching sleep whenever the opportunity presented itself, that the demands of a hungry, soiled or lonely baby would preclude the previously taken for granted restful nights filled with extended hours of uninterrupted sleep. In a few hours at best, young Gabriel Atherton would rouse his mother and father with a tremulous cry, a parental call of duty, but for now all three slept soundly.
Beyond the intermediate shadows of the mother’s bed and the father’s chair, in the farthest corner of the room, by the closet where Gary had stashed an emergency duffel bag filled with clothing and reading material and other supplies, a dark figure waited, inhumanly still.
Straggly black hair obscured her pale face as she stood in the corner, head slightly bowed, clawed hands resting atop her protruding midsection. When the father’s breathing deepened, she moved forward in a silent gliding motion and slipped between the large padded chair and the hospital bed. But her urge to savage the man remained suppressed, overruled by a deeper need. Instead of sinking her claws into his abdomen, she leaned over the hospital bed, letting her matted hair fall away from the back of her neck to reveal a pulsing, slimy hole at the nape.
The strange orifice puckered and swelled, extruding a slender, quivering tentacle. Unerringly, it snaked its way across the bed covers and over the mother’s chest. Nearing its target, the tip of the thin tentacle flexed outward to reveal a ring of tiny lamprey-like teeth coated in a clear viscous fluid. A moment later, they clamped onto the infant’s neck, establishing a gentle seal. After the clear fluid numbed the delicate skin, the narrow teeth sunk further into the newborn’s flesh. Then the tentacle pulsed, contracting to suck, feeding…
Knuckles rapped on the heavy wooden door.
Lulled by the feeding cycle, the dark figure took a moment to react to the interruption. Then her head swiveled toward the door as the shaft of light from the hallway widened, banishing shadows across the room.
“Excuse me, folks,” the young nurse said as she took a step into the room. “Wondered if I could get you—?”
The question forgotten, the nurse stared back at her, also momentarily frozen as her mind attempted to make sense out of something from a waking nightmare. Failing, the nurse screamed, her hand sweeping against the wall as she frantically tried to flip the light switch.
In that confused moment, the dark figure stopped feeding. The tentacle retracted into the neck orifice much quicker than it had appeared. If the intruder had glided forward before the feeding, she now rushed backward, faster than human legs and feet would allow, instinctively returning to the darkest corner of the room.
When the nurse found the switch and flicked on the overhead lights, the intruder was gone, the far corner no longer dark, but empty.
* * *
Nurse Maggie O’Brien stood in the doorway with her hand clamped over her mouth. She barely trusted herself not to scream again. If anything had stood in the corner, revealed by the light, she would have screamed. Of that she was certain.
The sound, however, had been more than sufficient to wake the entire Atherton family, mother, father and child.
Gary had startled awake, as if he’d been jolted by a powerful electrical charge, back arched, feet instinctively dropping to the floor to prepare himself for an emergency. But Denise had merely flinched, her entire body tensing as her arms wrapped protectively around her child. Following the nurse’s example, Baby Gabriel had decided screaming was a splendid idea and wailed with all the power in his newborn lungs.
Mothering instincts kicking in, Denise attempted to soothe Gabriel, hugging and rocking him while whispering soothing words into his ear.
“What the hell happened?” Gary asked, eyes wide as he shook his head to shake off the last traces of lethargy.
Maggie imagined the incident from his point of view: He’d heard their nurse scream at the top of her lungs and yet nothing seemed amiss. But she had yet to recover from the effects of the nighttime shock and couldn’t begin to explain what she saw. With one hand pressed to her chest and the rapid pounding of her heart, Maggie tried to slow and deepen her shallow breathing. She pointed to the back of the room with her other, trembling, hand. “Did you—? I saw—I don’t know what—! It was—was horrible.”
Gary looked over his shoulder, but obviously nothing was there for him to see anymore, and returned his questioning gaze to her with a confused shrug. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s gone now,” she said. “But there was something by the bed, standing over Denise and the baby.” She spoke slowly in an attempt to frame her overwrought words in a way that might preserve her reputation as a sane and rational maternity ward nurse while explaining the reason for her frightened outburst. But how could she explain the strange shape that looked like a woman but wasn’t a woman—or human for that matter—or the snakelike appendage sticking out of her neck?
Having heard the commotion, Nancy Dougherty and Janice Aquino, the two other nurses from her station, arrived and posed the same questions the Athertons were asking. Questions that had no easy answers. “Somebody was in the room,” Maggie explained over and over again. “When I looked in, I saw… someone standing there.”
“It’s past visiting hours,” Nancy Dougherty reminded her. “If it wasn’t one of us, who could it have been?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said, afraid to cross the threshold of the room. What if she—it—came back for her, the only witness. “She was standing by the bed. But she heard me call out and before I could turn on the lights, she… retreated to the corner.”
She remembered the freaky way the intruder had moved backward, not as if she took the required number of steps to walk from bed to corner, but almost as if she had willed her body to glide across the floor.
“A woman?” Gary asked.
“Think so,” Maggie said. “But I’m not—I can’t be sure. It was dark…”
Because she wouldn’t commit to the truth, she realized how lame her explanation sounded. She wanted to tell them she couldn’t be sure what she saw was human. In fact, she was almost certain whatever had been in the room was not human. But how could she admit that aloud to patients and colleagues?
With all the uncertainty hanging over them, Nancy Dougherty decided to search the room. She opened the door to a small supply closet—obviously much too small and confined to conceal a full grown woman—before crossing the room to look in the patient closet, where she revealed Gary’s coat and duffel bag but nothing sinister. She faced Maggie, spread her arms and shrugged. A birthing room offered precious few hiding places for an intruder.
Finally, Nancy dropped to one knee and peered under the adjustable bed, which made Maggie feel like a small child frightened of her dark bedroom. Oblivious to the damage she continued to wreak on Maggie’s self-esteem, Nancy said cheerily, “All clear!”
Maggie had to acknowledge this wasn’t about her or her bruised ego. The lighthearted search was meant to calm and reassure the agitated patients, something Maggie herself was incapable of accomplishing in her present state. For that at least, she was grateful for Nancy’s presence.
Janice took Maggie’s hands. “You said the lights were out,” she reminded Maggie. “I’m sure it was just a trick of light and shadows.”
“Sure—you’re right. You must be right,” Maggie said, unconvinced but unwilling to jeopardize her reputation any further by insisting on an impossible explanation.
She fully expected the Athertons to lodge a complaint about her behavior as it was, without compounding the damage. But Nancy and Janice had certainly helped to smooth things over. Gabriel was quiet, his breathing punctuated by faint, hitching sobs as he drifted off to sleep again.
After the other nurses left the room, Maggie addressed the Athertons. “I’m so sorry. For startling you, for waking the baby. I’m near the
end of a double shift and I must be more tired than I knew. I’m sure Nurse Aquino was right. Trick of the shadows.”
Gary and Denise nodded as she backed out of the room, seemingly more concerned with getting Gabriel back to sleep than dwelling on what had awoken him in the first place. That was the best outcome she could hope for at the moment, a return to normalcy. Come morning, she might face consequences for her involuntary reaction. But she couldn’t help what she saw—or thought she saw.
Mortified, she stood outside birthing room 3C and leaned against the wall for support. Her legs felt like limp noodles and her hands still trembled when she held them out. Though she had begun to doubt her own eyes, the fear she’d experienced in those brief, horrifying moments still coursed through her veins.
She had barely managed to calm herself when Dr. Hartwell showed up outside the Athertons’ room, a look of professional concern on her face.
“Hi, Maggie,” Dr. Hartwell said. “How are you?”
“Okay,” she said unconvincingly. She attempted a smile and wondered if it looked as ghastly as it felt. “Hard to tell around here sometimes, right?”
Dr. Hartwell nodded. “I’ve been hearing some… odd stories about you and the Athertons from the other nurses.”
“Not the Athertons,” Maggie admitted. “All me.”
“Everything under control?”
“Now?” Maggie asked. “I think so. Hope so, anyway.”
“What happened—exactly?”
“I, um, startled the Athertons.”
“Screamed, is what I heard.”
“I would say that’s accurate,” Maggie said, mortified all over again. “The Athertons were sleeping. Baby too. So I managed to wake them up—suddenly.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Oh, that’s probably not a good idea. All things considered.”
“Let me rephrase,” Dr. Hartwell said. “Tell me about it.”
Forcing another weak smile, Maggie said, “You’ll refer me to the psych ward.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“So, I went in to check on them,” Maggie said. “Totally routine. See if they needed anything. Lights were dimmed, but I could see well enough. At least, I thought I could. Gary was in the chair, Denise in the bed, naturally, baby at her chest, all asleep.”
“Go on.”
“But, for a moment, I thought I saw something else in the room with them…”
“Someone else, you mean?”
“Right. Someone,” Maggie said. Though her original description was more truthful, it would also be more damning to her reputation. “A woman, dressed in rags, with long stringy hair.” She took a deep breath. “There’s more…”
Dr. Hartwell held a patient chart on a clipboard in her hands. As Maggie described the intruder, the doctor clutched the clipboard against her chest. Maggie knew enough about body language cues to assume Dr. Hartwell rejected her account of the intruder, blocking her entire story, unconvinced or unswayed by Maggie’s calm description.
Disheartened and knowing she had yet to reveal the most farfetched part of her account, Maggie continued. “Something stuck out of the back of her neck. Like a tube or something. And it seemed to… stretch from her to the baby.”
“A tube?” Dr. Hartwell frowned. “Medical equipment?”
“Something odd,” Maggie said. “I only saw it for an instant.”
“Is that all?”
“It was so strange and… unnatural—” I sensed it was evil, but how do I tell her that? “—it startled me. That’s when I sort of screamed.”
“Sort of?”
“Actually screamed,” Maggie said, chagrined. “But it was totally reflexive. I had no control over it.”
“Of course not,” Dr. Hartwell said. “What then?”
“I turned on the light to get a better look and… then it was gone.”
“Disappeared?”
“Crazy, right?” Maggie said. “Probably something weird about the shadows in the room, like Janice said. But for those few moments before I turned on the lights, I could have sworn it—she was standing right there, between Gary and Denise. I don’t know how to explain it, but I was scared—really scared—for the baby.”
Dr. Hartwell nodded again.
Maggie continued to assume no one gave credence to her story. She doubted she would have believed it coming from Nancy or Janice. You had to be there, she concluded. Otherwise, nothing will convince you.
But what Dr. Hartwell said next completely surprised her.
“Let’s have a look at the baby.”
EIGHTEEN
In the morning, Sam, Dean and Castiel returned to the Holcomb house—site of the first murder—in the Impala, with Castiel following in his gold Lincoln in case they needed to split up at some point. On the way, Dean fiddled with the radio dial until he found a station wrapping up a block of Zeppelin with “Ramble On.” As Dean swung over to the curb, Sam noticed a blue Dodge Ram 1500 that looked as if it had spent equal amounts of time off-road as on, parked in front of the house. Painted on the door panels of the pickup in slanted blue letters on a white oval was the company logo for Vargus Fabricators.
“Good timing,” Dean said.
They’d come to talk to Sally about her husband’s new job at the company to confirm or rule out a connection between Holcomb and Aidan Dufford’s unemployed father. Rather than relying on second-hand information from Sally, it looked like they had an opportunity to question Stanley Vargus himself.
For this repeat visit, Sam and Dean had dressed down while Castiel, as always, wore his suit and overcoat. Though he looked the part of an FBI agent, the Winchesters led the way, and Sam stepped back as Dean rang the doorbell. Once again, Sally’s grandmother Mary invited them inside.
Sally, who seemed oddly distracted but more composed than she had been the day before, sat in the middle of the sofa, with Ramon to her left and a tall man with a thick wave of black hair wearing a denim shirt, jeans and scuffed work boots on her right. The tall man held a bottle of Triple XXX Root Beer—taken from a cardboard six pack on the coffee table—by its long neck.
Sally started to stand with the tall man, but Sam told her, “Please, don’t get up on our account.”
She stood nonetheless and said, “Agents Rutherford, Banks and… Collins, wasn’t it? This is Dave’s friend, Stanley Vargus. Stan, they’re with the FBI. They don’t believe it was an animal attack.”
After exchanging handshakes with the new arrivals, Vargus sat back down, along with Sally. Sam and Dean took the wingchairs while Castiel seemed content to stand between them.
“The police have their doubts too,” Dean said. “But the medical examiner is clinging to the animal attack theory.”
“What the hell kind of animal gu—attacks a man like that?” Vargus said, casting a quick apologetic glance at Sally for what he’d almost said. “No offense to the medical examiner.”
“There have been other, similar attacks in Braden Heights,” Sam said. “We don’t believe an animal was involved or that the attacks were random. We’re looking for a connection between the victims.”
“We were hoping you could help with that, Mr. Vargus,” Castiel said.
“Me?” Vargus replied. “I don’t understand, Agent Collins. I’m here to support the family. Beyond that, how could I possibly help with your investigation?”
“The second victim was a young man named Aidan Dufford,” Castiel said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Aidan—oh, Dufford! That’s Don Dufford’s boy,” he said. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Don is an employee—a former employee of mine.”
“And Dave Holcomb was gonna be a future employee,” Dean added.
“Not so,” Vargus said. “I hired Dave already. Done deal. He hadn’t officially started, but there were no conditions he hadn’t met. He simply asked for some time to get things in order around here.”
“Did Dave’s hiring have anything to do with Don
ald’s termination?”
“No, sir,” Vargus said. “Donald was an hourly employee working in the plant. I let him go because I couldn’t count on him to show up on a regular basis. Let me be clear, Vargus Fabricators is not some massive corporation. We have fewer than two hundred employees. I rely on them and they rely on each other. You know what they say about the chain only being as strong as the weakest link? Well, Donald got to the point recently where I felt I needed a fresh link in the chain.”
“But that wasn’t Dave?” Dean asked.
“Hell no,” Vargus said emphatically. “One decision had nothing to do with the other. Besides, Dave was gonna be my night manager. I haven’t figured out a way to not sleep at least once a day. My old night manager was set to retire. I asked him to stay on… until I can make other arrangements.”
“No animosity between you and Mr. Dufford?” Castiel asked.
“Not on my side,” Vargus said. “I know the man has some personal problems but I could only carry him for so long. But right about now, I can guess he’s not my biggest fan.” He shook his head and sighed, took a long pull from the bottle of root beer. “But I don’t see how that weighs on what happened to Dave. If you’re suggesting Don was out for revenge, I doubt those two ever met each other. Donald would more likely have punched me in the mouth than go after another Vargus employee. And if you think I would hurt a former employee’s son for any damn reason, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Understand, we need to follow up on any leads,” Sam said.
“Certainly,” Vargus said. “But this particular lead of yours is pure coincidence.”
“Like the pregnancies,” Dean said to Castiel.
Castiel nodded.
“Excuse me, Stan,” Sally said abruptly, “are you finished with that bottle?”
He tilted the bottle side to side. “Would appear so.”
“Let me take it out to the recycling container,” she said, grabbing the bottle and rising.
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