Aaaiiieee

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “My baby died.”

  “Aww. Oh, poor kid. I had a miscarriage once. How far along? Few months?”

  “Yeah. Few.”

  “It’s hard, honey, but it’s God’s will. We don’t understand His plan, but…maybe the baby wasn’t forming right. Most miscarriages are because of that. Or maybe he would have died some terrible way when he was older, and God spared him worse. It’s a mystery.”

  “Yeah.”

  The woman squeezed Devin’s foot through the blanket. “Be tough, hon. And merry Christmas.”

  “Thanks.”

  The woman took Devin’s hand and pushed her five dollars back into it. She winked, and left the room at that same hurried pace. Devin almost felt the urge to call her back, and a moment later she began to sob quietly but heavily, as if she had been abandoned. She felt not only physically hollowed out inside, with her baby gone, but that her very spirit had been hollowed out as well.

  Few months? No. Devin had been full term. Her due date had been next Tuesday.

  Intrauterine strangulation. Her child had been killed with his very own life line. Not even two weeks before, a nurse practitioner upon examining Devin had told her everything was okay. The baby’s heart had sounded strong. Devin had heard it herself. “Slow,” the nurse had said. “Could be a boy.” She had been right. Devin had picked the name Christopher, if it were to be a boy.

  Should she call Christopher’s father? Peter was way out in sunny California these days. He didn’t even know that she’d been pregnant. First the good news…now the bad news. But to Peter, which would be the good news and which the bad news? Would the death of his son be a tragedy, or a relief?

  How could Devin know, when she had struggled with such questions herself these past months? Was it a folly, going through with this pregnancy? Was this really what she wanted…to be a single mother?

  Maybe I should have had an abortion after all, Devin thought now. It would have been the same result. Only, she wouldn’t have had to go through twelve hours of labor had he only been two months old. Twelve hours of agony. Women coped with the pain because they knew there was a reward at the end. But Devin had suffered those many long hours already knowing that in the end only a different kind of agony would be her prize.

  I’m sorry, Christopher, she thought. I should have killed you a long time ago. I would have saved us both the pain…

  She couldn’t afford a plot for him, a coffin. Some people did that. But in her customer service job she made barely enough to scratch by. What would they do with him? She had to ask them…but at the same time she didn’t want to know.

  She had held him. They encouraged that, thought it helped with the coping. His face had looked so tired, so unhappy, as if he had merely been disturbed from his peaceful slumber within. Devin didn’t think it helped her to have seen him. She wished she had never seen how beautiful he was. Had never smelled his wispy fine hair, making a spiral on the back of his head as if God had left his thumb print there.

  Keep Your hands off my kid, asshole, Devin thought, unbeliever though she was. You condemned my son and hung him. Even if I did believe in You, I’m through believing now.

  How could that stupid old woman believe? How could she think that Devin could find comfort in the empty dronings of some sexually repressed priest? “God’s will.” Devin would have resented the woman for that, if she weren’t feeling so very tired. Tired and unhappy. Just like Christopher.

  * * *

  How often did it actually snow on Christmas eve? Well, it was snowing out there now, but she was in here. Not home. But what was home these days? Peter long gone. Her father dead and her mother remarried to that dick Phil, both in Florida for the winter. She hadn’t called her mother. Didn’t want to spoil her holiday. Didn’t want to talk about Christopher. This was her private ordeal. She was glad all the doctors were gone, all the nurses inattentive. She wanted to be alone. Still, she saw colored lights glowing out there beyond the dozing dark parking lot with its few cars, shrouded like old furniture. There were children in those homes, dreaming of the morning.

  She missed that stupid little TV lady. TV. That’s what she needed—distraction. Hopefully something really mindless; a Kung Fu flick, a Godzilla movie. She pulled the hovering set down closer to her, turned up the volume a bit. Six-twenty; early enough for some dumb old Christmas cartoon, maybe. Ah; on the special movie station they were playing a Christmas movie starring that redneck Ernest guy. Perfect.

  A nurse brought dinner. It was better than she would have thought. Another nurse came to read her blood pressure, take her temperature. Devin told her she was fine, just to get rid of her, but afterwards regretted that she’d forgotten to ask what would be done with her baby. She considered buzzing, decided not to. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She hadn’t wanted to know what became of her cat Sting last year after he had to be put to sleep. If only she had him to come home to. Not even that…

  After the Ernest movie, Devin clicked through the channels again, and paused out of mild curiosity when she reached channel Eight. Taped religious music played softly as a background to the one static camera angle of the St. Andrew’s Hospital chapel. The camera was apparently close to the ceiling, pointing down toward the altar. No lights were on in the chapel, but for one candle just to the left edge of the screen, its glow more visible than the flame itself. The scene was so dim, so grainy, that Devin watched it a few moments if only to discern what she was seeing. She saw the first two or three pews at the bottom of the screen but had no idea how many there might be altogether. An aisle between them led to a slightly raised dais, where a block shape must have been the draped altar table. In back of that were three thrones, as Devin thought of them, the one behind the table particularly tall. That was all she could be sure of. There seemed to be a podium set off to one side and a door in the corner, but it was just too murky. It was as lonely a place as this hospital room with its one occupied bed.

  Though she was not religious, and though her musical tastes ran more toward The Cure, Devin liked Gregorian chants and medieval music, so the background of very old Christmas music was agreeable to her. She left Chapel on while pulling toward herself a rumpled woman’s magazine someone had left in the top drawer of her side chest.

  * * *

  Devin awoke to silence. A glance to the wall clock; it was ten-fifty. She’d slept for hours, but given her day, she was surprised it hadn’t been longer. The lack of music finally registered, and she looked to the TV. Chapel was still on, but the taped music had ceased. No sound came from the television.

  Off down the hall somewhere, a baby cried. This was postpartum recovery, and a woman must have had her baby brought to her for nursing. The nursery was down the hall, but the babies in there were few tonight and quiet behind their glass wall. Devin was glad for that.

  Out the window, the snow had become thick, muffling the world under a caul.

  Devin was thirsty, and buzzed the nurse’s station. No reply after five minutes. She didn’t ring it again, reluctant to spoil their Christmas eve down there. If she got thirsty enough there was a bathroom in here, although she knew getting out of bed was discouraged.

  She switched through the TV channels. Jimmy Stewart was praising Clarence. A stupid dating game of wall-to-wall innuendoes. On the movie channel, Dances With Wolves, which she’d already seen twice. Peter looked like a prematurely bald Kevin Costner. Dating Peter was dances with werewolves, she reflected.

  Searching, she passed channel Eight again, on to channel Nine, but she switched abruptly back.

  Was that a person seated in the front pew, on the left?

  Devin frowned. Yes, had to be, though the dark shape’s stationary pose didn’t help her much. Some old patient gone into the chapel for a bit of comfort? Must be. It looked as though the person was a woman wearing a kerchief on her head…unless that was a nun’s habit.

  Well, this development hardly made channel Eight any more exciting. Devin moved on…r />
  A nurse came in to take Devin’s vitals again. Once more, Devin did not inquire about her baby’s whereabouts. The young woman asked, “Can I get you anything?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Devin said. “Lonely in here tonight, huh?”

  “It’s real nice and quiet up here, but I hear there was a horrible scene down in emergency. This young woman was brought in…dead on arrival. Somebody strangled her.”

  “Strangled?”

  “Yeah. Horrible. They said the cord cut right into her neck. They don’t know who did it. Scary. Glad I don’t live in this town.”

  “I guess.”

  The nurse left, and Devin frowned at the doorway after her. Strangled. Yes…horrible.

  It was now eleven-fifteen, and Devin again grew restless with the meager offerings on TV, jaded as she was by cable. She switched around the dial. In so doing, she grew curious about whether that woman was still praying in the chapel.

  There were several figures in the pews now. Three? Four? Devin wasn’t sure in that grainy gloom. But at least two of the newly-seated people seemed also to be nuns. Well, it was St. Andrew’s Hospital. Was there to be a midnight mass, after all?

  Even as Devin watched, that indistinct door in the corner opened and a figure moved out of it, a shadow against shadows. It drifted to the altar. The priest, no doubt. But when were they going to put the lights on? Maybe this was yet another nun, judging from the conical look of the head. Well, whatever…Devin lost interest again, flicked forward to Eleven.

  The news was on. A space heater fire had killed three children. Merry Christmas. Devin hurried onward. Where was Ernest when you needed him?

  A distant baby wailing again. Devin was tempted to get out of bed to go close her door, but she had had an episiotomy to facilitate delivery and the pain-killers had diminished. Soon enough, however, the crying faded away.

  God, even the poor offering of channels conspired to narrow her world, aggravate her sense of isolation, of being trapped in this bed. She clicked through the selections, impatiently going in circles. Seven again, Eight…

  Pious assholes, she thought; something was indeed up tonight. She watched the silent scene. Where was the sound? What comfort was watching services if you couldn’t hear them? Might a microphone be on but the people in the chapel so quiet that their movements were inaudible?

  A few new shadowy forms were gliding out of that vague door in the corner, slipping into the pews. The priest or nun was now sitting at his throne behind the altar, resting perhaps until everyone arrived. Was that the bottom of a great cross above his head? Was it an all-denominations chapel? Devin hoped so; where would Jews, Buddhists, Muslims take their comfort, otherwise? Only because it was Christmas eve and this a hospital founded by Catholics did she assume it was a Christian service.

  Devin glared at them, her fingers on the dial. Sure, celebrate the birth of a baby born two thousand years ago…but my son is in hell right now, according to you, because he didn’t live long enough to have a little water sprinkled on his head.

  Some would say only limbo, not hell. How comforting. The bottom line was, the unbaptized infant didn’t die in God’s good graces. Born with the sin of the world already in him…baptism a kind of exorcism. Wasn’t that how it went? Do something compassionate, you elitist scum, she mentally raged at the screen. Baptize my baby. Cleanse him of these so-called sins so he can be free. Go on—you’ve got your magic water in there, don’t you?

  Good thing she didn’t really believe he was cursed to some void…damned to eternal suffering. That would be a horror too great for her to recover from, short of remaining in a hospital of another sort forever.

  Eleven thirty-five now. She was not at all tempted to go down to the end of maternity to the chapel and sit in on their midnight mass…but maybe, just maybe, she’d watch it on TV. Just for the hell of it.

  * * *

  A woman sobbed softly, in forlorn moans. Devin was awakened by the sound, her first thought having been that it was the voice of a woman in another room, a woman who had lost her baby tonight. Then she wondered if perhaps it had been her own voice. But also, for some odd reason, she had the impression that the sound had come from the speaker of her television. However, that was impossible, of course, because there was still no sound coming from channel Eight.

  Devin sat up. Apparently mass had not yet begun; the pews she could see were nearly full, though the lights had yet to be brought up. She glanced to the time. Eleven-fifty.

  Ah, something was happening now. A robed figure proceeded up the central aisle toward the dais, carrying something behind him. Another figure had its end, as if it were a stretcher they transported between them. Indeed, it looked like a stretcher. Were they bringing in some poor old woman who couldn’t walk to mass? Why not a wheelchair, then?

  God, Devin thought. Perhaps this wasn’t a Christmas mass after all…but a funeral mass. The shape upon the stretcher the two figures carried resembled nothing so much as a human body covered entirely by a sheet.

  She pulled the TV nearer, squinting at the screen. Shut off her personal light, the resultant gloom making the image slightly clearer. Watched as the stretcher was brought up upon that stage. They lifted the sheet reverently, like a flag folded at a military funeral, and spread it out on the floor at the foot of the altar. Then the body—yes, it was a body—was lifted from the stretcher and laid upon the sheet on the floor.

  Granted, Devin was not a religious person, but she had never heard of this ritual before.

  The figures set a candle at the head of the body, another at the feet, and lit them. The light didn’t do much to illuminate the chapel or its congregation, but it did define the body on the floor a bit better. Devin saw bare feet outlined; she could imagine how cold they must feel. The toenails were so dark, they must be painted. The feet of a young woman. Devin never painted her nails in winter…but this mundane thought was quickly gone from her mind as she concentrated further on the head of the corpse.

  The young woman’s long dark hair was draped around her neck and across her shoulders. Her mouth hung open wide. Devin couldn’t believe that her features hadn’t been made composed. This body hadn’t been prepared for a funeral. Was this to be some ceremony prior to the mortician’s work?

  The candlelight seemed to glint on something at the woman’s throat. A necklace under her hair? No, Devin realized. It was a wet glistening.

  That wasn’t entirely her hair across her throat, darkening it, hair upon the shoulders of the white gown she wore. It was blood so dark it looked black. Soaking into the gown. Winding down her neck. Still drying. And now Devin knew whose body this was. She didn’t know the young woman’s name…but she knew how she had died. Been murdered, rather.

  “What is this?” she breathed aloud, then regretted her words, as if afraid the congregation would hear her eavesdropping and turn to face the camera in unison. And then, as they stared back at her, she would see their faces. And suddenly, intuitively, Devin did not want to see those faces.

  A final figure had come up the aisle carrying a smaller bundle, which was passed into the hands of the officiating priest, who had risen from his throne. The new figure helped unwrap the parcel, and then the priest held it high above his head.

  It was too dark to make out what he held. But something dangled from it. A short length of…rope?

  Again, intuitively, Devin knew. It was a length of umbilical cord, sliced at one end but the other still wound around the neck of the infant the priest held above his hooded head.

  Devin screamed, twisted, jabbed her finger into her buzzer and held it there.

  “Help me, oh my God, help me! Stop them, STOP THEM! Hurry!” she shrieked. And her eyes darted to the time.

  Eleven fifty-five.

  They were going to take him. Those who claimed the unblessed.

  Devin didn’t wait for the buzzer to be answered. There was no more time to spare. She flung the blanket off her and swung her bare fee
t to the cold floor. She didn’t even bother with slippers. Bare feet offered better traction. She ignored the pains that lanced her and just bolted for the door.

  At the end of this floor, the old woman had said. Past the cafeteria…

  If God would not intervene, then she would have to do it. And if she could not stop them, then she would go with Christopher, wherever they took him.

  At the very end of the hall were twin doors she hadn’t noticed when she’d first come in. The end of the corridor was in gloom, but she could read the gold letters that spelled: St. Andrews Hospital Chapel.

  The doors were locked.

  Devin jerked at the knobs, cursing, screaming. She pounded with her palms. “Let me in, you bastards! Let me in!” She turned, looked wild-eyed around her. There was nothing to use as a battering ram. No fire axes on the walls. Devin threw her weak hurting body against the blank panels and wailed, “Oh, God, help me!”

  She pounded with both fists, seized the knobs in both hands, and turned them. They clicked.

  Shocked, for a moment she nearly hesitated. Then she flung the doors open.

  None in the congregation had admitted her; they were too obviously surprised as they whirled toward her. She did not look at them, being too close to madness already. Instead, she turned to the left and right, searching for something she knew must be there. A fount…

  The figures were shadows, and the shadows poured at her like dark winds, reached out hands to her that even before they could touch her were arctic cold. But Devin still didn’t look. She cupped both hands into a wall-mounted receptacle of cool water.

  Then, she walked up the aisle, carrying her dripping chalice of flesh before her. The reaching hands withdrew sharply, the dark forms recoiling like a black parted sea. There was a gasp of revulsion from their throats more like a rustling of autumn leaves. Devin ignored them. She wanted to run to the altar, but didn’t dare spill the water. The tears in her eyes made the candlelight scintillate, but she saw the head priest more clearly now. She saw that in the time it had taken her to reach and enter the chapel, he had set the nude little body of her son upon the chest of the woman on the floor, and draped one limp arm of the woman over him. It was not the umbilical cord around his neck—of course, the doctors had removed that. It was a black rope, representing that life line. Devin knew, then, that it was a black cord with which the young woman had been strangled.