He took the few final steps gingerly, and listened outside of the door. Still nothing. He pushed open the door a crack. It swung easily, and bounced back from the wall.
Sprawled on the floor was the nurse—her legs stiffly stretched as if she had fallen backwards unexpectedly.
Her legs. That’s what his eyes were drawn to, because those legs were the only things that revealed that a woman was on that floor.
A mutilated pulp of flesh and gore lay where the woman’s torso should have been. Blood seeped outward from the ghastly heap in a steadily growing pool across the carpet.
A scratching sound came from the corner of the shadowed room—beneath the crib.
He couldn’t see what was under it from where he stood, but he was frozen for a moment. He knew without looking what was making the sound, but had to look anyway. Just to be doubly sure.
Dennis slowly knelt down and looked beneath the crib.
The baby crouched on its bandaged haunches, scraping around in the corner. Round eyes glowed red, and four sharp teeth glinted wet with blood in the light of the nursery lamp. Curved talons scratched the textured paint on the wall and over the baseboard as it picked around there, exploring. It looked at him for a moment, curiously, as if it recognized him.
“Jamie?” Dennis whispered.
The baby opened its mouth and mewed, its forked tongue darting out and over ashen lips like the tongue of a snake. Dennis backed away.
It scuttled out from beneath the crib and came for him.
He launched to his feet and went for the door, away from the chewed up corpse of the nurse. The child crawled toward him and as it came fully into the light he marveled at its size. Dear God, it had grown six inches since he’d last seen it.
It came for the door and reared up on its legs as if it were struggling to walk. He slammed the door closed. “Alison! Call 911!”
“What?” She came running out of the doorway of the bedroom in her robe. “Is it the baby?”
“Call the fucking police Ali, the nurse is dead!”
“What? What happened to Jamie? Let me in there!”
Alison lunged for the door of the nursery but Dennis barred her way. He braced his arm across her path and grabbed her by the waist.
She jerked away from him, turned in his grip and belted him in the jaw with her elbow as she turned the doorknob and pushed her way in. “Oh my God! Jamie!”
Alison rushed to the baby on the floor, lying at the feet of the dead nurse, now in a fetal position, crying. Alison snatched the child up into her arms and held it close.
Incredulous, Dennis ran for the phone and dialed 911.
26.
The police cordoned off the back of the hallway and the nursery and flooded the place with official police employees taking photographs, making sketches, taking notes, and keeping him and Alison away from the activity.
One of the detectives came and spoke with both of them, and then asked them to sit apart from one another for the time being, until they had a chance to talk individually with the detectives. He left two officers behind with them, to make sure they abided by his request. The officers smiled and stood in the corner, quietly talking now and then.
A detective named Klein interviewed Dennis. “Care to step outside?” asked the detective.
“Sounds good.”
They went out front. The street was a circus of official cars. The neighbors would have a field day with this one.
“Care to sit in the car?” the detective asked, lighting a cigarette as he spoke.
Dennis glanced apprehensively towards the front door.
“It’s okay. Another detective is talking with your wife. We’ll just talk for a while.”
Dennis frowned but followed the detective, got in the car and settled into the front seat. The detective pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started making notes.
“So, you were the one who discovered the body, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear anything that caused you to enter the room?”
“No. We were talking, wondering what had happened to the nurse. I’d gone out for a shake, and the nurse was supposed to greet me when I returned, but she wasn’t around. That’s when I checked the nursery.”
“Where did you go?”
“Earlier?”
“Yes, earlier.”
“I went down to Kroger to pick up some diapers and drove through Arby’s for a milkshake.” Dennis looked at the officer evenly. “I’ve got receipts right here in my pocket.” He pulled the crumpled pieces of paper from his pants pocket and held them out for the detective to take. “I wasn’t even in the house. I had to get out for some air. I certainly didn’t kill that woman.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Look for yourself. The receipts have the time-stamps on them.”
“That’ll be helpful. Did you see anything unusual outside the house when you drove in?”
“No.”
“How about when you walked into the house? Was the front door locked?”
“I came in through the garage entrance, but it was locked and the front door was locked when I opened it to let the police in.”
“Windows, back door? Those locked, too?”
“As far as I know. I’m pretty compulsive about that sort of thing. Had some bad experiences.”
The detective nodded.
“You said you went in to talk with your wife before heading to the nursery. Was she asleep?”
“Yes. She said she’d been sleeping since the nurse arrived. Besides, even if she had been awake, she’s in no condition to attack and mutilate a healthy woman the way that nurse was done. Alison just had a baby for cripes sake.” Dennis paused. “Look, when I walked into the nursery...” and as soon as the words began to form in his mouth he suddenly thought better of it. It was too late, of course.
The detective looked at him.
“Under the crib, I heard scratching.”
“Scratching?”
“Like an animal. And when I bent down to see what it was...I saw the baby.”
“Your baby?”
“The baby...detective, have you seen the baby?”
“Yeah, cute kid. Had one myself many moons ago. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
Dennis looked at him. The detective was dead serious and waiting for more.
“The child was under the crib, scratching?”
Yes, but it was gray and black and its eyes were fucking glowing.
“Yes.” He managed, but wouldn’t say the rest.
“Anything else?”
Dennis shook his head. “No,” he finally said. “That was it.”
The detective asked more questions about Alison and what they’d been doing before he left the house, covering every last detail that Dennis could or couldn’t remember.
The afternoon grew into evening.
27.
“Stay here. I’ll see if they’re finished questioning Alison yet.” The officer opened the car door, leaving Dennis sitting in the passenger side staring out of the streaked window.
He watched as the detective disappeared behind the front door. His front door, damn it, the one they were telling him he couldn’t walk through until they were finished with their procedures. He wasn’t sure what they had hoped to uncover. He was at the store and Ali was asleep in bed. That was that.
Alison’s questioning went on for another hour. Dennis dozed off until the detective rapped on the car window and startled him awake.
“They’re done in there now.”
“Shit. What did they think they were going to get out of my wife? She was asleep the whole time.”
The detective shook his head. “She was the only one home at the time, Mr. Walker. Sleeping in one’s bed doesn’t produce time-stamped receipts, unfortunately.” He smiled weakly.
Dennis scowled, and jerked open the car door, hobbling his way up the front steps and into the house. Alison lay on the couch, h
er feet up, a glass of milk in her hand. At least they had taken care of her, he thought.
The police cleared out, but the crime scene would have to remain undisturbed for the time being. They left it taped-off.
Exhausted from the grueling interrogations, Dennis and Alison went into the kitchen to start dinner. They talked half-heartedly about getting a hotel room, but with the baby that seemed like too much trouble.
Dennis looked across the kitchen table at “the baby.”
It had grown more, and now its skin was pink and rosy. Its cheeks were pudgy and its smile was all gums when Alison would talk to it and make cooing sounds and laugh.
He watched her with a deadpan expression. His stomach churned at her complete disregard for the reality—or surreality—of what was happening to them. But when he looked at the baby, it somehow pulled him toward wanting to believe her delusion. That everything was okay, now. The child had just needed...to kill. A voice from the back of his mind finished the thought. The saner voice of reason. Kokumuo: this one will not die. The words echoed in his mind, over and over and over again.
“Alison,” he said.
She looked up from playing with Jamie. Her eyes shone with joy and her face glowed with a smile that never seemed to leave her face. It was a pained display of happiness, as if she had to force it, as if perhaps something inside of her really was still pinned to reality.
“Ali,” he said again.
When she looked at him, the look in her eyes was one you might expect to see in the face of a drug addict; sleepless and bloodshot, dark pools of shadow, wan cheeks just this side of sallow, hair ever so slightly askew.
He shook his head slowly and reached across the table to touch the side of her face and bring his hand to rest on her shoulder. She closed her eyes. Jamie was still clinched and squirming in her arms, and moaned at his touch.
Dennis stood up from his chair and came around the table to kneel before her. He searched her face for any trace of the woman he’d held in his arms only a few days ago, when their deepest worry had been when and if they’d ever have a child to share their lives. And now...this.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly. “The baby, Jamie, is growing...fast.”
“I know!” Her eyes lit up and her face erupted in a grimace of joy. “He’s getting so big.”
“Alison. Don’t you think we should call the hospital and have someone come and take another look at him?”
“He’s fine, Dennis. I’ve had enough of the hospital.”
Jamie squirmed in her arms and made a hiccupping sound. She put the child over her shoulder and patted his back.
“I’m going to call Dr. Holt, okay? I just want to make sure everything’s okay. Don’t you think that would be a good idea?” He was hoping that the doctor would discover something more that could convince Alison that it was inhuman, that he could talk to her—to them—about what their options might be.
“That’s fine, honey. But see if he can send somebody to the house.”
Send somebody to the house.
Something told him the nurses would be drawing straws to see who got to make the trip.
Dennis walked through the hallway to the den. He picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Holt’s number while looking at his business card. He waited on hold while they paged the doctor.
“This is Dr. Holt.”
“Hello, Dr. Holt, this is Dennis Walker. My wife—”
“Yes, Mr. Walker, I meant to call you earlier. I have some interesting results back on the samples we took from the baby. I think we should meet and discuss them. I’ll have the nurse schedule you for an app—”
“Doctor, is there any way you could come to the house?”
“I’d prefer to speak to you here at hospital. There’s some reason to believe the child should be under observation.”
“I understand this is an unusual case, doctor, but that’s kind of the reason it might be good for you to come here. If possible.”
“I don’t think I can make the trip myself. I might be able to send someone, but, why?”
“My wife is, ahh,” he lowered his voice and flicked his eyes toward the opening of the den that led into the hall, “not really feeling well. She’s acting strangely. And the baby...doctor, the in-home nurse was killed in the nursery this afternoon. Police have been here all day and just left a while ago. But the baby...it looks completely normal now. But growing. Fast.”
“A nurse was killed? At your home?”
“Yes.”
The next natural questions were “How” or “By what” but he didn’t bother to ask. Dennis sensed an unspoken understanding between them. The doctor had seen what had come out of Alison in that delivery room. And it hadn’t been human.
“How fast is the baby growing?”
“It’s probably grown eight inches since we brought it home.”
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, after what we experienced during the pregnancy. That child should really be back here for observation, Mr. Walker. And if your wife is experiencing some dementia, then you all need to return.”
“Can you send someone this evening, doctor? If someone came and told Alison face to face that it was in her and the baby’s best interest to check back into the hospital, it might go better.”
“I’ll have to see about that. It may have to wait until tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, you need to make sure and return if anything abnormal occurs. And keep an eye on that child. Can you do that, Mr. Walker?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Good. Stay in touch. Page me if you need to. I’m on call tonight.”
“Thank you.”
“Good bye.”
Dennis set the receiver on the desk and then looked up. Alison was standing in the doorway of the den, looking at him. She’d moved through the hallway and hovered there, silent as a shadow.
His breath caught in his throat.
He remembered the “Alison” that had appeared to him on those previous nights—the Alison that had transformed into a winged thing before it maimed him.
She was framed in the doorway, hair slightly tousled, face expressionless.
“Ali?” He felt his heart skip a few beats, stuttering in his chest. He gripped the edge of the desk, thinking of something he might be able to use as a weapon. His fingers groped across the desktop for the letter opener.
She took a slow step across the threshold and moved deliberately towards him. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who were you talking to?”
“The doctor. I told you.”
“Why were you talking so low?”
“I was just talking, sweetheart. Some of the test results are back. He wanted us to come in but I asked him to send someone here instead. So you didn’t have to go back right away.”
“They want to take Jamie.”
She had circled around the desk and faced him now. Her eyes were angry, lips set tight together.
“He should be under observation, Ali. For his own good. He’s growing too fast. Don’t you want to make sure he’ll be okay?”
“You want him gone.”
“What? No, Ali—”
“You haven’t even held him, or talked to him, or fed him, or anything. You think he’s a monster.”
She had crept close to him and she was staring right into his eyes with a hint of cruelty he’d never sensed in her before. Dennis steeled himself inside, his frustration with her boiling like magma to the surface. He felt heat in his cheeks, felt his jaw muscles tense and his nostrils twitch.
“Alison, you seem to have completely forgotten everything that fucking happened here. This isn’t a gift from the stork, damn it, we were raped. Raped! And whatever raped us—a fetish, a demon, Kokumuo, whatever the hell it was, planted that...thing in you!”
Alison’s hand slapped quick and sharp across his face and before he could recover she came at him again and clutched his bandaged groin tight with her fingers, digging in with her nails. Dennis felt the stitches of his wo
unds rip open as she twisted and he was helpless to do anything but fall back into his desk chair and gasp in pain.
“I haven’t forgotten anything, you son of a bitch! That you fucked some other woman in here while I was sleeping—I haven’t forgotten that, Dennis. That your son and your evil bitch of an ex-wife have been an albatross around my neck for the past three years—I haven’t forgotten that either!”
She mercilessly twisted one last time before letting go.
“I’ve done my part, Dennis.” She lowered her voice, speaking quietly, evenly. “I did it for us. And now that Jamie’s here, no one is going to take him away.”
She spun in a fury and stormed through the hall to the bedroom, where the door slammed closed.
Dennis collapsed into a heap on the floor of the den and groaned in pain.
28.
Alison didn’t come out of the bedroom for the rest of the evening. Dennis had gone into the living room to sit and nurse his wounds, but the combination of the pain and Alison’s pervasive absence only served to remind him what a terrible fucking wreck his life had become in a matter of days. He stared at the television, but nothing it said seemed to make sense.
He decided to try and talk to Alison. First things first, though. He went gingerly into the dark kitchen for a glass of water and a Hydrocodone. He stood in the shadows, surrounded by the dark shapes of the room, the refrigerator humming its solitary note. His eyes scanned the night beyond the windows and he listened closely to the room. Water trickled from the frig door dispenser into his glass, and he popped the top of the pills and threw one into his mouth, chasing it down. He swallowed twice and listened again.
Silence.
Where is Jamie?
He realized he hadn’t heard a cry or a peep since Alison’s outburst when she’d closed herself up in the bedroom. He set the glass lightly into the sink. He turned slowly and looked at the entry to the hallway again. He’d half expected to see it there, like he’d seen it earlier today in the bedroom near the corpse of the nurse...gray skin, red eyes, long black teeth...
Then Comes the Child Page 7