by Ronald Malfi
“Things need to be done,” Nellie whispered.
Josh brought around a second chair and set it on the opposite side of Nellie’s bed, where he sat and did not say a word.
“The baby,” Nellie said. “How far along are you, dear?”
“Almost six months.”
“Boy or girl? Do you know?”
A smile passed along Marie’s face. “We don’t know for sure,” she said, “but Carlito thinks it’s going to be a boy.” She looked at him. “So do I.”
“God bless,” Nellie said. “Such a wonderful thing.”
“He’ll be our first.”
“Of many?”
“Oh, we’d like many.”
“Not too many,” Carlos interjected, grinning.
Marie winked at the old woman. “Many,” she said.
Nellie smiled. “You will name him—”
“Julian, after my father,” Marie said.
“Julian.” The word was difficult for Nellie to say. “How beautiful. So much greatness.” She extended her hand and Marie took it, gently. “You are a religious woman?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Very spiritual. You believe God to be good?”
“Of course.”
“And maybe sometimes frightening, too?”
Marie considered. “I suppose.”
“You are so confident,” said Nellie, “and that is such a blessed thing. Sometimes people don’t believe as strongly, and I then feel the need to reinforce God to them. He’s there; He exists.”
“Yes,” Marie said, “I know.”
“All right,” Nellie said, and her grip on Marie’s hand suddenly tightened. “Now close your eyes.”
Marie did.
Nellie shut hers as well. For what seemed like an eternity to Carlos, silence hung in the air like a physical creature, hovering above all their heads and examining their minds, their thoughts. On the opposite side of the bed, Josh sat in nervous concentration, bent forward in his chair with his fingers steepled beneath his nose.
“Think of the most beautiful memory from your childhood,” Nellie said. “Think it as clear as you can. Search for it if you have to.”
“Yes…”
“Can you find it?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You are young, still just a little girl…”
Marie’s voice had dropped to a mere whisper: “So beautiful.”
“It’s your family…”
“My father and my mother,” Marie said. “Both of them together. And me. We’re at the park. My father looks so young.”
Carlos heard his wife’s voice break. He squeezed her shoulder for support…but had the strange feeling that his wife could no longer feel him. Marie was now gone, lost in some remote part of her own mind, just as he had been that day Nellie forced him back onto that city bus. Marie was no longer in this bedroom.
“It is such a wonderful day,” Nellie whispered.
“Yes. It’s a picnic. My father would take us to the country for picnics when the days were pretty. He loved my mother very much. I can tell, just looking at him now. God…”
“Very handsome,” Nellie said.
“This is our last picnic. We never got to go on another one. He died the next week in an automobile accident. When we were told—my mother and I—I didn’t even know what an automobile was, that it was a car. Sometimes I wish I’d known that would be our last picnic. If I’d known, I think I would have done things differently.”
“We can’t know those sorts of things,” Nellie said.
“I would have hugged him and kissed his cheek and told him that I loved him, even though he knew. He knew we both loved him. Do you think he thought of that while he was dying? Do you think he was comforted by that?”
“I do.”
“It was such a beautiful picnic. I wish I could have told him I loved him.”
“So tell him,” Nellie said. “You’re here now.”
There was another long pause. Marie’s face was still and expressionless. Her eyes shut, her lashes moist, large tears spilled down her face. Her lower lip quivered. Carlos thought she even looked like a child then—perhaps like that little girl at the picnic that very day, so many years ago. That girl who didn’t know what an automobile was when she was told her father had been killed in one.
I would do anything for you, Marie, Carlos thought suddenly. I would do anything in the world without ever thinking twice. Maybe I am a hero after all.
“Daddy…” Marie whispered, her voice broken by silent sobs.
“You see?” Nellie said. “We can make some things right, only if it is in our own heads.”
“Yes,” Marie sighed. “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes.”
Nellie’s left arm stirred beneath the blankets. Carlos saw a hump rise, fall, rise again. In utter amazement, he watched as the old woman slid her paralyzed hand out from the blanket and carry it shaking across the bedspread. Her eyes still closed in concentration, she managed to work her bent and crooked fingers apart, worked them closed, worked them apart again.
She’s moving that arm and that hand with her mind, he understood. It goes against everything I’ve ever come to understand and believe in, but here it is, and she’s doing it with her mind. She’s controlling her own brain. She’s unlocked some secret door and now she’s in control.
With mounting astonishment, he watched as Nellie brought her paralyzed hand up to the swell of Marie’s belly, placed it right in the center. It was the most tender action he’d ever witnessed executed by another human being. He was confident that there was actual love in that touch—love and caring and compassion and something akin to sympathy.
“Let me inside,” Nellie whispered then—and Marie’s sobs hitched in her throat. She became silent. Her body jolted the slightest bit—rigid and briefly insecure. A strong whiff of citron rushed Carlos, so powerful that he had to take a step back once he realized it was actually emanating from the old woman. Even Josh, who had remained largely nonexistent throughout, stood and backed away from the bed. Hands on his hips, Josh faced the curtained window.
My God, Carlos thought, I can actually feel it.
And he could…although he didn’t understand exactly what it was he was feeling. A sensation? An electrical charge in the air? It was like standing in the synapse of some powerful, organic machine, as it fired currents right through his body.
—brain—
He was cold, he was hot. His skin was crawling, was sweating, yet he was shaking from a coldness at the pit of his stomach. And it wasn’t just him: across the room, Josh had buckled against the wall, shivering with his head tucked down, his chin pressed against his chest. Whatever power was here—was being created by Nellie—had filled the entire room. There was no describing it, no understanding of what it meant to even feel it pass through his body, yet somehow its very own lack of definition was also its confirmation. And if he concentrated, he could almost pick up glimpses—
(pocket fear this cavern this body this blood this safe pocket)
—of ideas and notions and thoughts that were not his own.
The human brain has capabilities we will never fully understand.
His mind reeled.
(safe-safe-blood)
(this baby is going to die)
Marie jerked forward in her chair, her beret falling off her head, hair spilling out. Her free hand broke into a claw, pitched upward and outward as if to strike some unseen figure. She moaned. Fell silent. Shrieked—once, twice. The clawed hand swatted at the air to her left and she jerked her body forward in the chair again. The rigidity of her posture suggested bands of tense muscles, of cramped fingers and toes.
Carlos, fearing his wife would unintentionally knock herself off the chair, rushed to her side. He froze when he saw her face.
There was pain there, etched in every line of her face, every wincing crease of her eyelids. Her lips were pulled back from her gums, her teeth pressed tightly together. She was sucking wind through he
r teeth—he could hear it: shhhhhhhhhh!
“Marie…” His own voice sounded dead, a blown amplifier speaker.
Trapped inside the vacuum of her mind, she did not react to his voice.
He reached out and clamped his hands down on either side of her face, trying to force her lips closed, yet only succeeding in producing a grotesque grimace. He repeated her name over and over again, although he could not be certain if he were shouting or whispering. Like a stone gathering momentum down a hillside, he felt something shift and pitch forward inside his gut—as if the floor had just given way. Beneath the palms of his hands Marie’s flesh sent electrical vibrations up his arms, his shoulders, straight to his brain.
“Damn it, help me!” he finally shouted. “She’s hurting!”
Josh was buckled over against the far wall. At the sound of Carlos’s voice, he eased his head up part way, strings of greasy hair hanging before his eyes. He was shaking, his entire body wracked with tremors.
“Goddamn you, Josh!”
“She’s—” Josh began. His words died in the air moments after they were spoken.
“Help me!”
Nellie’s withered old hand caught Carlos’s attention at that moment. The old woman’s fingers were bent into crooked hooks, pushing forcefully against the swollen flesh of Marie’s abdomen. And for one wild instant he imagined Nellie’s fingernails elongating and piercing the flesh of his wife’s belly, a spreading stain of blood appearing across the bottom half of the rose-colored blouse she wore…and those fingers going deeper and deeper inside his wife, probing, searching, tearing at her womb. And in that crazy instant, he realized the irony of such a situation—that Nellie’s touch would suddenly and undoubtedly result in the death of his son and perhaps his wife too…that perhaps the prophecy merely required the prophet’s own fulfillment and life was just a sick and twisted circle…
These thoughts and images appeared and disappeared almost simultaneously. But before he could even rationalize the situation—and what was there to rationalize, anyway?—he reached down and closed his hand around Nellie Worthridge’s frail wrist. Tight. And with the force of someone much greater and stronger than himself, he tore the woman’s hand from his wife’s body, tore it back and—
—and there is a child who is living and breathing inside this body and I can see it I can see it and I can smell and taste and feel it too and it is real it is real this is not a dream and I am inside sweet God I am inside I am inside inside inside and I am right here with my baby my son my Julian—
As if he’d just grabbed a live wire, Carlos released Nellie’s hand and felt himself thrown back against the far wall of the bedroom by some powerful yet unseen force. His head cracked the wall, his teeth rattling in his head, and he hit the floor like a wet sack of laundry. Stars exploded. And then, for the briefest of moments, he was aware of a young woman standing in the middle of some snow-covered hillside screaming as a towering inferno blazed all around her.
“Doc,” he heard Josh say somewhere in front of him. And when he couldn’t see him he was certain he had been blinded, perhaps by the crack on the back of the head. Then he realized his eyes were shut.
Shaking, Carlos opened his eyes. Like reality following a dream, the bedroom swam back into perspective. Marie was slumped back in her chair, slowly shaking her head from side to side, the expression on her face one of dazed incomprehension. Nellie remained unmoving beneath her bedclothes, one bony arm hanging limp over the side of the bed.
Dead, Carlos had time to think.
Josh rushed to him, bent with one hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Doc,” he said, his voice fading in and out. “Jesus Christ…”
“Marie…” he managed. He could feel his heart racing in his chest and about to burst into flames.
Marie turned to face her husband, still numb. Her eyes were vacant.
“What the hell happened?” Carlos said, refusing to let Josh pull him to his feet. He feared he might pass out if he stood too quickly. “Jesus Christ, what the hell just happened here?”
“Take it easy,” Josh said, out of breath himself. “It’s over now.”
“What’s over?”
“The exchange.”
“Goddamn…”
“Are you all right?”
He pushed Josh away. “I’m fine.” Struggling to his feet, he said his wife’s name again. This time he noticed some recognition in her eyes…and then everything hit her like an open floodgate, and her face creased down the middle and she burst into tears. Bringing her hands up to her face, she sobbed greatly. Carlos rushed to her, aware that the room was still spinning slowly, and gathered her up in his arms, held her tight against his chest.
“Quiet,” he whispered. “Quiet.”
Through her sobs she was trying to form words. He couldn’t understand them.
“Doc,” Josh said from behind him. Then again with greater urgency: “Doc.”
Carlos turned to see Josh half-bent over Nellie’s prone body, his face practically pressed up against the old woman’s. When Josh met his eyes, he suddenly knew what had happened without Josh having to say a word.
Carlos said, “She isn’t breathing.”
“Shit,” Josh barked, pulling back from the woman. “Goddamn…”
For a second, Carlos was struck dumb by a moment of jamais vu—that he didn’t know who he was or where he was, or who any of these people were in the strange room with him. Then he felt something in the back of his mind click and he was thrust back into some semblance of normalcy.
“Hold up,” he said, allowing Marie to slump down in the chair and out of his arms, and moved to Nellie’s bedside. No—she wasn’t breathing. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Cardiac arrest? Damn it all, he thought. Where the shit is God now?
He fisted his hands together and pressed them against Nellie’s frail chest. Five succinct pumps, his mind suddenly elsewhere. In the chair behind him, Marie managed to pull herself up and to her feet. She swayed, appeared ready to fall. Josh was quick to her side, but she froze him in midstride with one hand, palm out.
“No,” she breathed. “Don’t.”
Josh shook his head. “I want to help.”
Carlos breathed into the old woman, pumped more, breathed more, and then she breathed back. Sputtering, turning her head from side to side, greasy slicks of sweat at her temples, Nellie’s eyes fluttered open. Her pupils were dilated, and there was a lack of comprehension in her gaze.
Carlos straightened. “Nellie? Nellie? Can you hear me? Nod your head if you can hear me.”
Slowly, the old woman nodded. She struggled with words: “…hear…”
“Call a doctor,” he said to Josh, turning away from Nellie and moving toward his wife. Like a child he reached out for Marie with both arms, her lower lip quivering, her eyes like two silver dollars. “Shhhh,” he said, grabbing her, holding her tightly against him. He could feel her frame shaking, could feel the soft push of her belly against his own. “I’m sorry, Marie, I’m sorry. Shhhh. I’m sorry.”
Through the tangles of Marie’s hair, Carlos saw Josh standing distraught in the space between Nellie’s bed and the wall.
What did you people just do to my wife? his mind screamed. What in the world just happened here?
Marie’s hands found the small of his back. Her fingers pushed into him hard as her sobs subsided.
“Okay,” he whispered to her, “we’re getting out of here.”
Chapter Twenty
“What do you remember about the day we met?”
Kneeling on the floor in the hallway, searching through a series of water-stained cardboard boxes he had pulled from the hall closet, Gabriel Farmer looked up at Kelly. The boy he had once been briefly emerged in his features, his face looking very young and very innocent. There had always been a sense of purity in Gabriel, and such purity had somehow managed to follow him into adulthood. It conveyed a soothing element of trust, of compassion, that put Kelly at ease. He was smart and creat
ive and talented and very good-looking. Not for the first time, Kelly wondered why he was alone in life.
“Embarrassment,” he said, grinning to himself.
“What? Why?”
“Here I am, whining like some damn baby, and then out of nowhere this beautiful young girl appears. Sneaks up on me, really. Almost gave me a heart attack. Then again, I think you might have actually saved my life that day.”
“How’s that?”
“Well,” he said, “I’m sure I would have tried to tackle that tree swing at least one more time. Who knows? I could have killed myself. In fact, I’m almost certain of it.”
“Or you could have made it to the top,” she suggested.
Gabriel shook his head. “Not a chance. Thump—right on the ground.”
Kelly laughed. “You certainly were a dumb kid,” she joked.
“Ouch. Salt in the wound now?”
She smiled. “You weren’t the only one who was hurt,” she said. “Do you remember?”
“Hurt.” He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “You mean the blood? The cut on your forehead?”
“So you remember…”
“Sure.”
“I can’t remember how it happened.”
Gabriel shrugged, occupied with his search. “Don’t really remember. We were kids playing in the woods. Kids fall and bleed.”
“We both remember how you got hurt. We remember the tree swing.”
“So?”
“I’ve just been thinking about that.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. In fact, the quality of his voice reminded her now of Josh Cavey—and she suddenly hated herself for not having called him as she’d promised. Anyway, she didn’t owe Josh anything. They were just friends. They weren’t even that close. Yet, like a sharp spear to the heart, the notion pricked her: Do I love Josh Cavey? And where did that come from, anyway?
“This is from before,” Gabriel said, not looking up. “This is about finding yourself again, right?”
“I think I hate this town,” she said. “I mean it. Really hate it.”
“Welcome to my head.”