The HUM: The complete novel

by Michael Christopher Carter

  Carys let out an involuntary scream. “Get away from me!” she cried. She had no idea what time it was. If she’d had her wits about her, the half-light and empty streets would have told her it was very early.

  “Get away!” she yelled louder. The two aggressors moved slowly towards her. There was no hurry. It didn’t matter where she went. When they were almost upon her, Carys made the choice that she was too exhausted to run anymore. She rolled onto the ground, instinctively protecting her bump from whatever cruelty she was about to suffer.

  As she lay curled into as tight a ball as her gestational proportions would allow, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was pulling at her. She could hear a voice, but her panic stricken mind couldn’t decipher the words.

  Determined to defend herself, she rolled over just enough to free an arm. Pushing herself up with her other arm, she struck out hard in the direction of the voice. Who was that? She didn’t recognise them. It wasn’t the Amish man, nor the Rebecca. Who had joined the gang of tormentors now?

  As her clenched fist made crushing contact with the jaw of the unknown face, the words she had just spoken reached Carys’s ears too late. “Are you okay?” the words lost in the morning air. The owner of the face succumbed to the pounding blow, and fell unconscious beside Carys.

  Carys’s arms were suddenly forced behind her back; hand cuffs pinched into her wrists. Aware of another voice reading her rights, she didn’t listen. She’d heard them all before.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Extra Biological Entity

  Geraint was still unaware of his daughter’s predicament, but his colleagues were, as she was currently languishing in cell three.

  “Go and check on the girl we brought in this morning please, Steve?” the desk sergeant asked of one of the constables working with her on the detention block. “She’s being unnervingly quiet after the noise she’s been making all morning.”

  Steve walked nonchalantly to the cell. He slid back the cover from the observation-hole, and peeped inside. He could see Carys standing on the bed. He was terrified she might be about to hurt herself. Her mental health problems had been quickly ascertained when they’d arrested her, so his immediate worry was that she’d found something to hang herself with and he quickly unlocked the door whilst calling for assistance.

  It took a while for Carys to realise it wasn’t her attackers lifting her up and plonking her in the back of a car.

  “Keep them away from me. Keep them away from my baby,” she shouted when she finally grasped the situation.

  “Keep who away from you?” the arresting officer frowned, “There’s no-one here!”

  “They want to hurt my baby,” she answered, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the town hall and Rebecca’s cell. Realising she was making no sense, the officer humoured her and assured her of a safe passage to the police station.

  The journey, indeed, went without further incident. Since arriving at Haverfordwest Police station and being booked in however, things had changed.

  It took only moments of her being alone in the cell before they both appeared in there with her. The Rebecca, now her identity as a man was known, was not bothering with her bonnet and looked the more menacing for it.

  Amish man looked much the same but rather smug, knowing that after all Carys’s effort she was now more at his mercy than ever. “Now, let’s finish that atrositteey off, once and for all.”

  He punched Carys hard in her stomach, bringing her to her knees. Even though the Rebecca grasped her throat from behind, she was still able to shout for help.

  The first few times the sergeant looked in at the noise, she saw Carys in various contorted positions as though she was play acting. She put Sergeant Amy Evans in mind of her own six year old son fighting imaginary foe whenever he entered a room. He always added punching sound effects with his voice. Whilst he usually emerged victorious, he sometimes let the baddies have their day.

  Watching a grown woman go through the same act was disturbing. The mentally ill had always been a bother to Amy. She just didn’t get it. She certainly had no plan to open the door to check on her charge without reinforcements. A choke hold had almost been her demise, perpetrated by one very quiet drunk who was determined he was the reincarnation of Moses. She had definitely learned her lesson to be cautious.

  As the door opened to Carys’s cell, PC Steve Lewis winced at the sight of blood pooling on the floor. He sidestepped it in time to save a hazardous slip, but that distracted him just enough for Carys to perform what was rapidly becoming her signature move of a forearm to the jugular.

  Steve went down in the bloody mess just as the assistance he’d called out for arrived to see it. Angered by the attack on one of their own, the two additional officers waded into the room to give Carys what for.

  “Careful. She’s pregnant,” Sergeant Amy warned them, causing them to restrain her in a far gentler manner than they’d intended.

  “Keep them away from me! Help me! They want to kill my baby. They want to kill my baby,” Carys repeated, breaking into hideous sobs.

  In view of the blood, and Carys’s pregnant condition, they called an ambulance. One of the officers accompanied her to hospital as she was still technically under arrest. Carys looked imploringly at him.

  “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. They can’t hurt me when there’s someone with me.”

  The maternity staff ascertained that immediate danger of miscarriage was small. They advised her to stay in hospital overnight to be sure. Whilst there, she received a visitor from Bro Cerwyn centre across the road from the main Withybush hospital, a separate unit that dealt with psychiatric patients.

  A thorough examination took place in the side room Carys occupied. At the end of which, the on-call psychiatrist prescribed medication for immediate use that could be reviewed once she’d given birth. She was reassured that hallucinating people under stressful conditions wasn’t that unusual. And help was available to eliminate them, or to at least help her cope with the hallucinations.

  It was decided she should be de-arrested as charging her seemed pointless. The accompanying policeman wished her well, and she finally settled into a much needed sleep. The Amish man and the Rebecca stood in the corner of the room, but with the hustle and bustle of the ward, she knew was safe. Maybe they’d fade with the new medication. Sighing, she allowed a calmness to settle on her shoulders.

  “Hello you!” Diane gushed as she walked in to visit her daughter. It was just about the best person she could have hoped to see. If anyone would understand what she was going through, it was her mental mum!

  “Hi,” Carys managed through an emotion filled throat “Have you heard what I’ve been doing? I rather lost the plot I’m sorry to say.”

  “It’s your hormones!” Diane offered as an explanation that let her daughter off the hook. They both knew the truth, that she had inherited her mother’s problems.

  They chatted for a while about different medications that Diane had tried over the years. What she’d found effective, what had not worked. Carys found after their chat that she was feeling almost back to her normal self. Diane left them to it when Marco came in to visit. He walked sheepishly through the door, uncertain of the reception he’d get.

  When he met Carys’s misty eyes, he knew she was back. Silently he walked over and hugged her. Carys squeezed a tear down her cheek. Trickling onto the upturned corner of her mouth, she sighed in contentment. He’d seen her at her worst now, and he still loved her. Maybe she’d drop her guard; relax into things and trust Marco, and actually admit that maybe she loved him too.

  With the scare for her baby’s health, along with the mental health scare, Carys received visitors daily. The community midwife, a little Welsh woman with Dana hair and a strange Greek sir name, visited twice a week. And the newly appointed CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse), Eleri, visited on the other days.

  Carys was invited to voice any worries she had about anything, especially regardin
g her safety. She would never reveal all her worries though. Despite mild tranquilisers and some anti-depressants proving undoubtedly helpful, there was nothing that could relieve her of the burden that the baby inside her was of alien origin. She was happy to keep it to herself now though, and nod and smile like a good girl.

  Her mood stabilised for a while. Carys resigned herself to her baby’s fate when it was born, and even managed to rouse herself enough to get a little excited, about baby clothes. Her appointment with Mr Overton, the obstetrician was no longer necessary as she had seen him on his rounds during her stay on the maternity ward.

  He had confirmed her foetus did have a big head; unusually large. But the indicators for spina-bifeda weren’t present, so it was possibly a genetic, hereditary condition. He warned it was likely it could be caused by hydrocephalus - fluid on the brain. She wasn’t surprised to learn this was a dire scenario which might cause a number of problems with her baby’s speech or walking.

  She’d smiled in acceptance, but her own explanation offered a new advantage. Her version didn’t mean her baby would be disabled.

  Marco was due to take paternity leave from his job selling insurance. Carys was hoping to catch up with the college work she’d missed whilst she was ill, and planning to continue with college until the last possible moment (and hopefully coincide with Easter break if baby was good and came when he should.)

  Thirty three weeks pregnant now, another seven to go, but with the extra-large head she had pushing its way around her huge belly, the due date could be any time after thirty six. She was banking on it being three weeks, not seven; her hugeness was getting out of control.

  The CPN had suggested for her to get out on days she didn’t have college. Today was one of those days so she’d elected to do the weekly shop. Gazing from the window of the bus to Haverfordwest, a dusting of snow on the mountain showed spring was late this year.

  She thought it would be amazing to be on the summit looking out over most of Wales and Devon and Cornwall, and sometimes even the Wicklow hills of Ireland on a very clear day like today. Holding her bump, she mouthed ‘Not gonna happen today, is it.’

  The bus stopped at the supermarket and Carys stepped down onto the tarmac. She fumbled for a coin to release one of the trollies and set off on her journey around the aisles. She had a list in her handbag which she fished out and clutched like a map she had to follow.

  Staring at the paper, the words jumbled together. Squinting down at them, she gripped the handle of the trolley, fearing she would fall if she didn’t hold on. What was wrong? Her mind took a second to catch up with what had assailed it: an enormous pain in her stomach.

  She’d felt nothing like it since the attack from her hallucinated Amish attacker. A flood of liquid from between her legs puddled on the floor, soaking her legs and her shoes. Panic exploded neurotransmitters in her brain, tensing her fist, but calming instantly at the sight not of blood, but amniotic fluid from her womb.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” a savvy lady customer announced as she got the situation at once. A chair was brought for her to sit on while she waited for it to arrive. This is it, she thought, ‘B’ day!

  The paramedics arrived promptly, the hospital being only a mile and a half away. She was booked into maternity and a midwife in-between her legs before she knew it.

  “We’re trying to contact your husband for you, but is there anyone else you’d like here if we can’t get hold of him?”

  Carys wasn’t sure she wanted anyone to see her baby come out. If there was something wrong; one of the things Mr Overton had warned her about, or her own concerns, she would prefer to be alone. Half an hour later gave a different story.

  “I need my mam!” she shouted, now the labour pains had started fully. But she’d left it too late. Despite attempts to contact her, allowing for her journey would make her arrival the best part of an hour away.

  “Six centimetres dilated,” one midwife reported to another. “It won’t be long before you can push.”

  “Can I have something else for the pain? This gas and air isn’t f***ing working!” The midwives were used to bad language at this stage of labour, especially from young, first-time mums. They didn’t want to upset her, but things were moving far too fast to consider an epidural now.

  “You’re doing brilliantly. Have another good suck on that and then we’ll have a go at pushing, shall we?”

  Carys could have been grateful that as it turned out, there had been plenty of time for her mum, dad and husband to get to the hospital. But the pain she was in gave her a different perspective.

  Pushing hadn’t gone to plan. After two hours with her mam and Marco taking turns holding her hand, and Geraint pacing the corridor, the obstetrician was called.

  It was decided the baby’s large head, even at only thirty-three weeks, was causing enough problems to necessitate a Caesarean Section. She wheeled away to theatre, past the faces of her family, fixed with tight smiles but with moist eyes betraying their true emotions.

  “I’ll be fine,” she reassured from her lofty nitrous oxide perspective. Images of the fork-tongued baby from ‘V’ came back into her mind, and she laughed and was still chuckling as the anaesthetist gave her the epidural she’d wanted hours before.

  The operation went as well as hoped, and the moment of seeing the life that grew inside her for eight months was upon her. Fears for its biological origins, and being tortured by mental illness and hallucinations all raw in her memory, but finally her child was here.

  No sooner was the baby plucked from her womb, it was plonked unceremoniously on her chest and she saw it for the first time.

  Its head had the appearance of a water balloon, swollen, and disproportionately large. Its eyes, too, were huge, and dark as the ocean. If you were so inclined, it would be perfectly believable that this baby wasn’t human. But who, apart from Carys, would believe such a notion?

  “Congratulations, it’s a little boy!” the nurse announced as she placed him on Carys.

  “Hello!” Carys cooed at the odd little face. After the initial introduction, the midwife scooped him up again.

  “Nothing to worry about, it’s just he’s so early,” she said, and later, “He’ll need to be incubated for a few days, and come out for feeding, so you’ll stay in hospital until baby’s ready to go home. Okay? Have you thought of a name for the little baba?” she said, glancing at Carys as she pottered near the incubator.

  “Yes. Ebe. It’s Dutch,” Carys explained. If he’d been a girl, it would have the same name, but the explanation would have been that it’s Egyptian, meaning ‘wonderful’. Neither was the genuine reason.

  She had decided on the name Ebe as an acronym: Extra Biological Entity. She thought it was most appropriate.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Marco has a plan

  Incubation wasn’t all Ebe had required. Before they could come home, they had to wait for three weeks as Ebe’s large head put him in danger of suffocation whenever he turned his head to the side. Carys was beginning to succumb to the baby blues.

  When they did come home, the relief she’d yearned for didn’t materialise. Ebe was so demanding: completely unwilling to settle to sleep anywhere but on Carys’s chest, either suckling, which was already becoming saw, or with his face pressed into hers. Claustrophobia didn’t help lift her spirits any.

  The midwife, a different one to the lovely Greek/Welsh woman who had visited throughout the pregnancy, now visited daily. Carys did not like her.

  “The baby blues is perfectly normal,” she told her in a lazy Welsh lilt that irritated Carys every time she heard it (It was in fact very similar to her own which she had always liked.)

  “It’s a little bit early with you, but Ebe is quite demanding isn’t he? It’s him being prem, see. He don’t wanna be out yere yet, do you Bach?” Carys bristled with every word.

  She knew that this stupid midwife had been told about her previous mental health problems; she’d even collec
ted a prescription for tranquilisers and anti-depressants one time.

  Carys wasn’t a fool. She knew exactly what she should expect to feel, given that she wasn’t allowed a single second to herself any time of the night or day without this weird little creature clinging onto her.

  She knew deep, deep down she loved her baby, but she was growing to hate the clingy little shit too. It might be normal to you, she thought, but shouldn’t we be a teensy bit concerned where this might be heading.

  “It’s a bit early to diagnose postnatal depression. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?” Carys’s protests were wholly ignored, but she flinched when Carys gave her a glimpse of what she was capable of.

  “Let’s wait until I’ve sliced my arm off and killed myself shall we?” Carys mocked the midwife’s tone.

  “You have thoughts of suicide do you?”

  “Sometimes, yes,” Carys admitted.

  The midwife looked silently down at her notes. “When does your CPN come round next?”

  “Tomorrow,” Carys mumbled, suspecting rightly that the buck was being passed.

  “Okay. I’ll leave something in your notes letting her know how you’re feeling. Okay?” she said with squinty, pseudo-care in her eyes. Really she couldn’t wait to go. She put her hand on Carys’s knee and increased the squinty look before standing up to leave.

  “See you on…” she looked down at her diary again “… Wednesday, Okay?” she didn’t wait for an answer before walking briskly to the front door.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll see myself out,” she called, closing the front door behind her. I wasn’t worried, Carys thought. But the idea of the midwife calling again in a couple of days raised an anger in Carys that frightened her. Ebe wasn’t safe with her. She didn’t know what she was capable of in the state she knew she could get. She’d already hurt strangers. What if she hurt Ebe?