It took Laura a moment to realize what was wrong. What was missing.
“You don’t have any children?”
The old woman looked at her, wrinkling her eyes. “There haven’t been children in this house in . . . my . . . sixty years?” She smiled, but there was something tight and wiry under her soft, wrinkled skin. “Are you all right, dear? You look—”
“I’m fine,” Laura said quickly, glancing around the room, trying to make things make sense. “I just thought. . . . ”
“How far along are you, dear?” the old woman asked, looking at her belly.
“Seven months,” she said, curling her arm around the bump. “Almost.”
“That’s lovely,” the old woman said, her smile just as pinched. “Would you like to—”
“There are no children here?” she asked again, looking for any sign: tiny boots, bottles on the side-board, small snow-jackets hung on the coat-hooks.
The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Dear, why do you keep asking that?”
She took a step toward the staircase, her eyes flicking from side to side, scouring the room. “I just thought. . . . Ever since we moved in, I thought I heard a baby crying. At night, mostly . . .”
The old woman drew in a sharp breath. “You’ve heard it too?”
Laura’s whole body sagged in relief, her face breaking close to tears. “Oh my God. You’ve heard it? I thought—”
“It’s the wind, dear,” the old woman said, her smile sliding into something sadder, pitying.
“It’s not—”
The woman reached out and laid her hand on Laura’s arm, squeezing gently. It was probably supposed to be comforting, but her fingers were cold, bony and hard. “It’s just the wind,” she repeated, her voice now so sweet it was almost acidic. “I’ve been hearing it for a long time.”
Laura seemed to fold back into herself. “How long?”
“Oh, years.” She tilted her head, as if trying to remember an exact date. “I was terrified the first time I heard it, but it’s just the wind. It’s an old house.”
Laura nodded deeply. Her breathing was slowing.
Just the wind.
“Oh goodness,” the old woman said. “You’ve really had quite the fright, haven’t you?” She squeezed her arm. “Did you really think it was ghosts?” She smiled widely. “It’s all right. The boys aren’t real.”
Laura took a step back, pushing the old woman’s hand off her arm, her eyes widening. “I didn’t say anything about ghosts.”
The old woman stepped toward her, her smile disappearing into the worn hardness of her face.
“Or boys,” Laura whispered. “I didn’t say anything about boys.”
This time, the woman’s smile bared her yellowing teeth. “Of course you did, dear,” she said sweetly. “You said you had been hearing things. Boys.”
“No,” Laura said, certain. “I said baby. You said boys—”
“No,” the old woman said, taking another step toward Laura. “You said—”
“I said baby!” Laura screamed. “I said baby.” And then she broke altogether, her chest heaving, tears on her cheeks. “You said boys. Why did you say boys? Why did—”
“Get out,” the old woman said flatly.
“—you say boys? And ghosts. Why—”
“Get out of my house.” The old woman pushed on her shoulder, and Laura was surprised at her strength, like coiled wire inside a fading pillowcase. She stumbled back a step.
“Get out!”
Not even sure how it happened, Laura found herself on the porch, the door slamming in her face.
“What did you do?” she cried out, pounding her hands against the glass at the top of the door. “What did you do to those boys?”
She could see movement through the curtains. The old woman was still standing there, watching her. “What did you do?”
“Get off my porch,” the woman yelled. “Or I’ll call the police.”
Laura leaned forward, pounded harder. “What did you do? What did you do?”
Meeting the woman’s eyes a final time, Laura stumbled away. It was only a few steps to the front door, a short moment of fumbling for the key. What had the old woman done?
It took all of her strength, all of her weight, to push open the front door.
She almost fell into the foyer, and stopped short, clutching at the doorknob to keep her feet.
There was a little boy standing at the foot of the stairs.
He wasn’t more than six or seven, tiny and blond, dressed in a pair of denim overall shorts and a white collared shirt. His feet were bare, and he jerked in surprise as Laura burst through the door.
“Who—” She couldn’t form the words.
His eyes flashed, and he ran almost straight toward her, veering off at the last moment and disappearing behind the door, into the soft shadows of the hanging coats.
Laura shut the door gently, careful not to startle him.
“It’s all right,” she said, stepping toward the coat-hooks. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She began taking coats off the hooks, casting them on the floor behind her, whispering the whole time. “Shh. It’s all right. I want to help you. Shh.”
She was careful not to make any sudden movements, lifting each coat slowly, carefully away.
“It’s okay,” she cooed. He must be so scared. “It’s all right.”
With each coat, she expected to see him, and the awareness started to rise within her as she thinned the hooks, but she refused to believe it until Curt’s heavy wool coat hit the floor: he wasn’t there.
There were just a couple of light jackets left, nowhere for even that little a boy to be hiding.
He wasn’t there.
She dragged all the remaining jackets off the hooks with one sweep of her arm.
He wasn’t there.
She sagged against the wall, bracing herself to keep from falling as waves of nausea and exhaustion rose up in her. When had she last eaten? When had she last slept?
But none of that mattered. Where was he? Where could he have gone?
The wall was cool and rough under her hand.
The wall . . .
Straightening up, she ran her hands slowly over the grainy surface. Was the wall too warm? Too cool? Something about it didn’t feel quite right.
Had the boy disappeared into the wall?
But that was—
Something caught the edge of her hand, and she stopped, leaned forward.
It was a slightly raised crack in the plaster, with a thin layer lifting away from the surface underneath. She picked at it with her fingernail, and it flaked off, a hardened fleck of paint about the size of a dime that fell silently to the floor.
She slid her fingernail into the crack itself, pushing it as deep as it would go, then bent her finger, trying to hook deeper. Something had to open. There had to be something. She bit her lip as she pried at the wall, her fingernail splitting, tearing off.
She looked at the bleeding tip of her finger dumbly for a moment, then put it into her mouth, the taste of her own blood sharp and metallic on her tongue.
She needed something stronger. A knife maybe.
No, a hammer.
And then she remembered the short crowbar in Curt’s pristine toolkit, on the shelf by the back door. That would work.
As she turned toward the kitchen, the boy was standing at the foot of the stairs again.
This time, he didn’t run. He smiled at her, almost shyly, before turning away and climbing carefully onto the bottom stair.
“Wait!” Laura called, starting after him. The room shimmered and wavered around her, and she had to fight to keep her balance. “I just want to talk to you.”
He stopped on the third step and turned to look at her. He
waited until she had reached the bottom step, until she had lifted her foot to step up, before he turned and continued climbing the stairs.
“Stop,” she begged, stepping unsteadily up the stairs. “I just want—”
He stopped a half dozen steps away and turned, smiling so beatifically Laura almost gasped, a tiny hand clutching around her heart. He bounced on his feet as if he could barely suppress his forward motion, like he was excited to be leading her, at the prospect of showing her something.
“Are you taking me to the baby?” Every step seemed higher than the last, every lifting of her feet slower, more tentative. “Is that what you want to show me?”
His smile broadened and he skipped up the next few stairs.
“I’m coming,” she said weakly the next time he turned around. She was almost pulling herself up the stairs by the banister, her head swimming, her shirt soaked with sweat.
This time he waited until she was only a couple of steps away before turning and starting upward again.
The next time, he was only two stairs away before he turned. Almost close enough to touch. Almost close enough to take his hand.
She grew weaker with every stair. She had to stop several times to close her eyes and take deep breaths to fight the dizziness, the swaying of the staircase.
She’d call an ambulance from the bedroom phone. It had gone too far. She needed to eat. She needed to sleep. Once she found the baby. . . .
It wasn’t far now. A few more steps.
She was right behind the boy when he stopped at the top of the stairs, when he turned to her for the last time. He lifted his hand toward her. She felt the slightest pressure against her belly.
She flinched.
The loose board shifted under feet.
She tried to steady herself, tried to hang onto the railing as she felt herself starting to fall backwards.
Her arm twisted as she clung to the railing, as her body half-turned. Weak, and with the extra weight, there was no way she could stop herself. Her arm popped at the shoulder. She screamed, and let go.
Her body thundered down the stairs, turning and twisting as she tried in vain to curl herself around her belly, her head bouncing off several of the balusters as she tumbled.
She did all she could to save herself, to roll rather than fall, but three steps from the bottom of the staircase she hit her head first, the weight of her body crushing down on it, snapping her neck before she came to rest, splayed over the bottom stairs.
And then there was nothing: no light, no dark, no sound, no time. Not even the sense of distance, of comfort, that accompanies the deepest of sleeps, the darkest of nights.
Nothing.
The world returned with a wave of noise and a slap of cold, Laura shivering in the foyer, staring down at her body on the bottom steps. She wrapped her arms around herself, but she couldn’t look away.
Her eyes were open, wide and blue, looking sightlessly toward the ceiling. They began to mist over, to dull. Her head was almost parallel to her shoulder, her neck distended and twisted. One arm was tight against her belly.
Without thinking, she slipped her hand down, over the rise of her abdomen. She waited a long moment, until she felt the baby kick. She rubbed her belly, and she half-smiled, and felt the tears burn in her eyes as she looked at the body at her feet. If her baby was kicking. . . .
She stared at the hand on the body’s stomach. She hadn’t been able to save the baby.
But it was with her. Always.
Always?
Her hand stopped.
She had died. They had died.
It wasn’t a surprise, or a shock, simply a state of being. She was. They were.
She didn’t hurt. Her mind was clear. She was cold, but she was beginning to get used to it. She felt a tugging inside herself, a feeling of emptiness, of longing, but she suspected she would get used to that, too.
Mostly, she was aware, more than she had ever been before. Everything had changed.
It wasn’t just the recognition of her own body at her feet, the greying of her eyes. She had woken into this new world, this new awareness, knowing somehow. Knowing more, than she had.
She knew that the roaring she was hearing was the sound of the furnace, a distant hum once, now echoing through the house, her ears suddenly keen, and almost overwhelmed. She knew that she could see more clearly, as if all her senses had suddenly been reborn, free of decades of wear and disintegration.
And she knew that the little boy—
She looked toward the top of the stairs.
His face was tight and drawn, his mouth turned down, his eyes frantic, as if he were on the verge of tears.
“It’s okay,” she said, quietly and calmly. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”
He took a step back from the top stair.
“It’s all right,” she said, taking a step toward him. “It’s okay.” Another.
He pressed his hand to his mouth, biting between his thumb and forefinger, as she approached him, eyes tightening, but he didn’t step away.
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt us,” she said, as she came to the third step from the top. “It’s all right.” She extended her hand. “Is there something you wanted to show me?”
The boy hesitated, then nodded. His eyes were locked on her hand.
“All right,” she said. She wiggled her fingers.
The loose step didn’t move under her foot.
When he reached out, she closed her hand around his. It felt as if there were nothing there—no warmth, no weight—but there was a definite presence, a sense of his fingers, a sense of him, a sense of connection.
It was . . . it took her a long moment to figure it out.
Comforting. It was comforting.
“All right,” she said again, and he led her toward the bedroom.
Seeing their home from this side—the other side, she thought—was like seeing it through someone else’s eyes. The hallway seemed narrow, and dim, the bedroom small and cluttered and grey, somehow, as if she were seeing it through a screen.
But something about it pulled at her, the empty hollow within her surging as she looked at the bed, the covers thrown back, the pillows still bearing the imprint of their heads.
She stopped. For a moment, it was like she could smell Curt in the air, the warm damp of him fresh out of the shower, faint soapiness.
Curt . . .
Her heart turned in her chest. Curt was going to be devastated.
She could picture him at the breakfast table, a half grapefruit in front of him, a single coffee cup. She could picture him in their bed, still on his side, his arm across the emptiness beside him.
For the first time, she wanted to cry.
The boy pulled at her hand, and she turned away from the bed.
He led her to the corner of the room, the corner closest to the neighbour’s, the corner where she had first heard the crying.
“Here?” she asked, when he stopped. “What did you want to—”
The boy stepped into the wall, disappearing into the plaster. Laura watched as her own arm slid through the eggshell surface, then she was stepping through.
The space behind the plaster was dark and narrow, less than eight inches deep before the backside of the neighbouring wall, hemmed by timber studs two feet apart, grey and dusty with age. There was no insulation, no wiring, just the cramped confines.
The boy’s grip tightened.
“Oh my God.”
The boy’s body was pressed against the back of their neighbour’s wall, hands extended above its head, the flesh dried away, leaving desiccated sticks, wrapped in grey, leathered skin. At the tips of its fingers, the nails had peeled back, bones poking through the fingertips, each dug into the wall in matching trenches. The mouth was pulled open in what looked like a never
-ending scream, the hollow dark and black, the baby teeth still white, still shiny.
And Laura knew. She could see it all. The woman next door pushing the boy into the wall, holding him there while her husband plastered over the opening, his fingertips digging into the wet plaster as he screamed.
As they screamed.
At the body’s feet was a small bundle, wrapped in white that had turned black in the decades it had been there, the opening at the top revealing the shrunken, leather face of the baby, eyes forever shut, mouth forever wide.
A baby.
Crying.
And she knew.
Releasing the boy’s hand, Laura reached down, reached into the bundle of fragile twigs, and lifted the baby free of its mummified body, drew it close to her, where it squirmed and cried for a moment before settling, before nuzzling into her.
She cupped her hand under the baby’s head, leaned close, brushed her lips against the tender of its scalp, the soft fuzz of its hair.
When she looked at the boy, he was smiling. Sad, but smiling.
Adjusting her grip on the baby, she reached down and took the boy’s hand.
In the distance, she heard the front door opening, Curt’s voice crying out in the empty house.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, but she wasn’t sure if she was telling the boy, or herself.
She blinked, and they were back in the foyer, she and the baby in her arms, the boy’s hand still in hers.
Curt was crouched over her body, his face twisted into an anguished rage as he screamed, as he shook her shoulders. In her stomach, the tugging that had brought her to him pulled her closer, closer, until she was near enough to reach out for him.
Instead, she whispered, “Curt? Curt?”
But he didn’t seem to hear. Not yet.
“Laura!”
All she wanted was to soothe him, to tell him it would be all right. To tell him they could be together. They could be a family, together.
She squeezed the boy’s hand.
She would wait. In the dark, she would call for him. In the night silence, he would hear. He would come for her. He always came for her. It was one of the things she loved about him.
Seven Crow Stories Page 10