So he bought Denny an LED collar.
It didn’t stop the strange feelings. They had happened again, even in other fields. He reasoned it had to be surrounding livestock. When they couldn’t be found it had to be kids playing games. And when he heard no tell-tale laughter it was someone’s lost pet. When they didn’t retreat at his shouts he blamed it on the wind and the new location and the differences between city life and country living.
He didn’t really believe his excuses, but as long as he had them and Denny and the torch he was okay.
And now the batteries on the Maglite had begun to fade.
“Who the hell is doing this?” he blurted.
Dark outlines and black silhouettes stood silent. Dying trees reached up towards the moon, their long shadows stretching across the grass; crooked wraiths of complete black reaching out for Paul’s feet. The void in front of him was like standing over a chasm into which he could fall at any moment. Where were the street lights? Why didn’t a place like this, where any number of murders, rapes and muggings could happen, have any street lights? Wasn’t he supposed to be on a road now? Where was the road? The pavement. The bloody street lights!
“Come on. Who’s out there? I’m warning you, if you don’t tell me who you are I’ll set my dog on you!”
Breathing. Fast, shallow breaths. Of someone who had been running. The sound reaching out towards him like steam. It came from his right. Snapping his head round, he felt a crack somewhere deep inside his neck as a tendon stretched. No pain. Only confusion as more darkness swallowed his vision. “Where are you?” he barked in frustration. “Come on! This is getting boring. Show yourself!”
The breathing came from his left.
He jumped, jarring as though jolted with electricity.
He pushed the torch into the aching blackness but it was little more than useless; its beam a yellow pencil line smudged by an eraser. And yet it was reassuring to know it was there. That if the creature out there was afraid of light, then he was holding something that was keeping him safe.
Scared. Frustrated. But safe.
Footsteps behind him.
Twisting around the beam caught Denny’s red lights and her breath’s faint murmur. He didn’t know whether to smile or shit himself. But he did know one thing:
“Come on girl. We’re going home.”
They ran towards the stile, the torch finally dying as Paul’s foot hit the wood.
Staring out from beyond stood The Shuttle, the ruby light atop its massive tower defying the darkness.
***
“Sally? Sally, where are you?”
“Paul! Get up here! Quick!”
He ran up the stairs towards the bathroom where his wife was having either her bath or shower before work. Steam emerged from the open door and he thought of Denny’s breath and the breath of the person standing beside him deep within the field’s blackness. He knew he’d kept this to himself for too long. Sod how big a tool it made him sound. He had to get it off of his chest.
“Sally, listen… oh fuck!”
“Paul! Paul please help me!”
His wife was indeed in the bath, a ritual that had started the moment her pregnancy had begun to show. She said the water’s weightlessness helped to ease the aches in her back whereas a shower would pummel them into submission. A bath gave her the opportunity to feel lighter, calmer and ‘less pregnant’. But this bath was different.
Paul dashed in, his own craziness forgotten, the sight of the blood seeping from that precious spot between Sally’s legs giving him a focus of the mind he had never dared believe in. “Shit, Sal. Shit, girl.”
He slammed into the corner bath’s curved edge, reaching for her, grabbing at her hands as they flailed for him. He knelt beside her, pressing his midriff into the bath’s rim, holding her. Clasping her tight. Picturing her as a cut finger. Stop the bleeding. He had to stop the bleeding. If he squeezed hard enough he could restrict the flow emerging from that point below her abdomen.
“Help me, Paul. For god’s sake, please! Help me! I can’t stop it. It won’t stop, Paul. I can’t make it stop.” Holding her against him he watched as she tried with her legs to stem the stream. Crossing them, pulling them into her chest, turning on her side and tucking them into the bath’s wall but nothing stopped that vile leakage. It oozed through the water, thick worms emerging from between her closed thighs; red, feathered tendrils twisting in the water. He couldn’t help but watch the flood break into a series of hair-thin wisps; the lines turning like a rollercoaster’s track. Most of it sought the surface where it floated like soap scum but some sank to the bottom, staining old grooves scratched into the white plastic.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Paul managed to blurt, watching the hypnotic awfulness play its scenario before him. This was nothing like the stuff in horror movies. This was nothing like the stuff they talk about in the antenatal seminars. This was the real thing and the real thing was far more cruel. He kissed Sally’s sodden forehead before standing.
“Don’t leave me, Paul. Please!” she screamed, reaching for him as she had only moments before, her arms and fingers taut and straight; shaking with desperate, nauseating terror.
“I won’t,” he whispered, reaching into his jeans pocket for his mobile. “I promise you I won’t.” Kneeling back down, holding her tear-smeared face against his chest, he called for the ambulance. All the time his heart threatened to tear itself out of his chest. All the time silently asking himself why this had to happen. All the time wanting to reach into the water and scoop the blood back into Sally’s womb.
Put his baby back where it belonged.
Outside the weather changed. The rain fell, washing homes and cars, rinsing them free of the settled concrete dust.
***
They took her to The Countess of Chester Hospital.
They kept her in overnight for observation.
They saved the baby.
Finally Paul cried.
***
There was no need to walk the dog in the dark again. Able to take all of his accumulated holidays in one go with an added week of sick leave to watch over Sally, he took Denny on one long adventure around lunchtime, eradicating any chance of being caught in the night’s approach. By the time he returned to work and their usual routine, spring’s light mornings and evenings were in full swing. With a blue sky for company, the field was a completely different place. Even The Shuttle’s grey walls looked peaceful; industry’s demands cooled by the opulent landscape. Bird song gave life to the air; the overgrown grass providing Denny with fresh spots to mark. He kept his relief a secret to all except Denny - and as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months and the months remained incident-free, the field’s effect eased. Pretty soon it was no more than a memory confused with a dream. Walking Denny in bright sunlight melted away any remaining remnants of those dusky escapades. And he was soon shaving the bulge off his beer paunch. Not only that, he was finding it easier to get up in the morning (had he really been so unfit?) and falling asleep within minutes of lying down instead of hours. But most of all, more than anything else:
He was looking forward to becoming a dad.
The incident in the bath could not be so easily forgotten and both panicked each time Sally coughed or sneezed. It didn’t matter how healthy the doctors insisted their child was, neither one would feel everything was okay until people could be told mother and baby were doing well.
And even then images of cot deaths and accidents plagued their every thought.
Every time newsreaders basked in the horror of midwives letting new-born mothers down they felt sick. Reports of babies dying due to neglect sent Sally to bed and her husband to the brink. Everything scared them.
Sally stopped working so hard at the cafe, giving her body the chance to recover from their near miss. She no longer waited tables; dealing with monotonous paperwork instead. She worked more from home in the spare bedroom they called their office (an office minus a certa
in schedule), with colleagues visiting to give her updates from the café or baby advice. She saw it as a start of her maternity: eight months gone, carried through to junior’s first birthday. She’d built a good team behind her. She knew they could cope without her. So she would take care of herself and the little one by giving the younger, fitter and prettier employees the opportunity to charm the customers and serve them their delights.
She couldn’t shake the thought that if she’d done this in the first place, she might still be able to take a bath. But since the bleed she hadn’t even used the bathroom, preferring to experience the aches of a shower in the en-suite than even contemplate stepping into that bath again. Twice-weekly visits to the local gym’s swimming pool were enough to keep the back pain under control. When Sally told Paul where she’d been after her first visit he had been both delighted and amazed. When he asked why it had been so good for her, she answered his question with three words:
“The other women.”
He didn’t know what it meant but he did know better than to ask for an explanation.
The relief she had experienced in the pool on that first visit had been pure bliss. She had rested in the shallow water, savouring the cool waves lapping over her skin; the soothing manipulation of her lower back’s seized muscles. And her eyes watched that spot below the belly, fearful but growing in reassurance as nothing emerged.
Baby was still in there. Safe and warm.
***
As they applied the final coat of ‘egg-yolk yellow’ gloss to the nursery skirting board, Paul gave voice to the thoughts he’d had bouncing around his head for the last month. “I need to change my job.”
Sitting on her office chair, left in the room while all the decorating work had been carried out so she could keep her husband company, Sally had been admiring their colour choice when he spoke. Surrounded by dyed rags and paint charts, both had agreed that because they still didn’t know Junior’s sex, they needed to choose a warm natural colour – and definitely not white! And since Paul had insisted it could be any colour except red (after what he’d seen seeping from between Sally’s legs, he never wanted to see red paint again), yellow was the most obvious choice. Yellow. Like a warm summer’s day. Giving hope and joy for the summer baby soon to be taking residence. The flat-pack furniture was all ready to build and the first lorry-load of nappies was ready to fill them.
Due date was less than three weeks away. Events were motoring along.
Looking up from her charts and the Mothercare catalogue hidden beneath, trying to decide if the room needed more than just the Winnie the Pooh border they’d applied beneath the dado rail - a mural perhaps? - she queried her husband’s thoughts.
“Think about it,” he replied, adding some finishing touches. “We’re going to need more money. Your maternity pay will only cover so much and my wages are toss. My wages as a duty manager are little more than the rest of the staff, and after six years in the role, we both know a promotion is wishful thinking.”
Sally struggled to hide her surprise at her husband’s announcement. “I don’t understand. You love working in the bookshop. It’s your dream job. You’ve always said it. To be surrounded by books is your heaven.”
“It is; always has been. But we’re about to have a baby!” Denny padded into the room, her claws tapping off the exposed floorboards before she lay down at her mistress’s feet. The carpet was due tomorrow. The painting had to be finished tonight.
“But where would you go? It’s been so long since you last did something else. Do you even know what you can do?”
“Not really. I mean, I know what I’d like to do: I’d like to do what I’m doing now and be paid better for it. But that’s just not possible so I’m going to have to think of something… there! Finished!” He stood, revealing the mess he’d made down himself throughout the whole decorating process. His dilapidated black tracksuit had become a Jackson Pollock canvas heavily splattered in yellow snowdrops. Placing the brush in the paint-pot, he grabbed a rag already soaked in caustic turps and began wiping his hands. “And you can forget any ideas about murals, young lady. If you want something going on a wall, I’ll happily hang pictures and stick up posters but that’s it! Emulsion and gloss are hard enough without you going all arty on me!”
Sally smiled, throwing the charts and brochure aside, scaring Denny. “Yes boss,” she murmured, stroking her dog in apology.
“Good! Now come here, mum-to-be. I want your sole attention while it’s still mine.”
Throwing the rag onto the colour charts, he helped Sally to her feet. Upright, she leaned forward as though her centre of gravity were higher than normal. They embraced, their love hovering over Denny who glanced up nonchalantly before rolling back into her bored slumber. “Seriously, Paul,” Sally said quietly, wrapping her arms around her husband’s neck, resting the small of her back into his hands where he had linked them to support her. “What do you intend to do about a job? I don’t want you to leave if you’re not going to be happy. I’d rather struggle through than have you miserable all the time.”
Returning her smile, he kissed her forehead, tightening his grip on her bulbous waist so he could hold her close. Christ how he loved this woman; a woman who had grown evermore beautiful with each passing day of her pregnancy. A woman who made him want to cry when they were apart. “I’ll be alright. I was thinking of asking if there was anything going at The Shuttle. I mean, it would make sense for me to be just up the road than half an hour away in Chester.”
“The Shuttle? What makes you think there’s something at The Shuttle?”
“I don’t. But I figured it would be as good a place as any. I mean, imagine it. Having me home every lunchtime; my dinner on the table and my wife ready and waiting in bed! Finally becoming the wee wifey every man dreams of!”
Sally playfully slapped him across the arm. “You mean an angel in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom?”
“I don’t see why you should restrict your whoreishness to just the bedroom. In here would do just as fine,” he answered, breaking the embrace in an attempt to escape Sally’s flailing arms.
“What? And risk draining you of all your energies and man juice?”
“Oooh, such a nice turn of phrase there.”
“Well, you did say you wanted me to be your whore.”
They giggled, enjoying their camaraderie as though it were something that had become foreign to them. In a way, it had. Ever since that morning in the bath, camaraderie was something they found so difficult they struggled to even spell it. The dark memory encased their every thought like a fucked-up version of a cloud’s silver lining. Only as the big day drew closer did that vile episode begin to vanish into history’s fog. And when it did, they felt like they could enjoy each other again.
Their laughter ended with a second embrace, away from Denny and far more passionate than before. And yet, like last time, Sally broke it with questions about work. “But I don’t understand why you’d want to work at The Shuttle. All that dust and machinery – it’s your idea of hell.”
Paul sighed, resigning himself to knowing the conversation was going to take precedence over his carnal desires. “I don’t know. It just seems to make sense. It’s close and according to those in the pub, it should pay well.”
“Should pay well? You mean none of them know?”
“None of the ones I’ve asked. They reckon they must have extremely loyal and highly paid workers because no one local actually works there. It’s all people from outside the village.” He commenced collecting the decorating paraphernalia, placing it all into the centre of the room. Cleaning brushes of gluish gloss was something he’d given up mastering long ago; these days he bought cheap and threw away when finished. The left over paint would come in handy for covering up inevitable dirt marks and chips.
“That’s weird. You’d have thought most of the village would work there – what with it being only a couple of miles down the road.”
“Yeah,
well, according to the few connections I’ve made in there, it ain’t necessarily so. They also say they leave and arrive via the underground quarry. No one ever sees the workers going about the place. Imagine that! Going to work through an underground tunnel. I’d be like Batman!”
“More like Penguin!”
“Oh ha, ha, Joker!”
“It was my pleasu… ow!”
Paul stopped what he was doing, freezing as though caught in Medusa’s stare. Staring at his wife with panicked terror causing him to drop his chin into his chest, he managed to mumble: “Wha’? What is it?”
Holding her belly, her hands wrapped around the mound as though it were made of gold, she looked at her husband with a radiating smile. “I think it’s started.”
Moving across the room, Paul placed his hands on top of Sally’s. “What? Already? But… but… it’s early.”
“I know but I’ve been feeling it for the last half-an-hour. Contractions; every few minutes.” She yelped as another spasm took her. “Take it from me, Paul” she muttered between deep breaths, “you and I are about to start calling each other ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’.”
“Holy shit,” he whispered through his grin.
“Yeah. Well. Perhaps now would be a good idea to get my overnight bag?”
They stared at each other, their looks scorched with bliss. Giving her nose a peck, Paul ran from the room, calling Denny with him. “Come on, dog. Now’s not the time to be sleeping. Now’s the time to be doing! Doing! Doing! Doing!!”
Giggling, Sally reached into her maternity dress’s pouch, retrieving her mobile. By the time Paul returned with her rucksack the ambulance had left the hospital.
It was on its way.
***
“Where’s Hazel McDougal? We were told Hazel McDougal had been allocated to us as our midwife.”
Paul stood in the hospital corridor with a stranger. Beyond the double doors behind the woman he had grabbed for questioning, Sally lay on her bed, her ankles strapped in stirrups; her legs prized open. She had a nurse with her, caring for her pains with gas and air as the epidural went to work. She’d suffered the embarrassment of an enema and watched a student nurse mop up her waters but now waited in the demeaning position for her firstborn to arrive.
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