Standing at the kitchen window, she opened her robe and looked down at her nipples, inflamed as the rest of her. Her hands moved down to her stomach, and she held her breath, wondering when she’d feel the next kick. The child’s birth had once seemed so far away, something she wouldn’t need to worry about for much longer, but the day was rushing closer.
Would she be ready?
Hannah looked up as a bolt of lightning veined the sky. Birds began to scream in the swamp, and she ran her hands over the urn that held Mae’s ashes, unmoved for all these months. All she could hope for was that she’d be a fraction of the mother Mae had been, no matter how unprepared she felt for that level of selflessness.
She spun the spice rack like a roulette wheel and chose three spices at random. She turned on the oven element and poured herself a cup of coffee, then tapped out ground chicory root into the steaming black. A halved peach sizzled against the element for several seconds, then she spread a thin layer of fresh-churned butter into the hole left by the pit. She colored the melting smear with cinnamon and nutmeg. The peach released a stream of butter, spice, and its own sweet flesh into her mouth.
“It feels strange, waking up in an empty bed. Everything okay?” Callum asked from the doorway, yawning loudly. Hannah noticed his shirtless body had shrunk. The storm light cast shadows under his ribs.
Hannah closed her terrycloth robe and walked to him. She pushed a piece of peach into his mouth and he moaned his approval.
“It’s going to storm soon,” she said, ignoring his question.
He squinted out the kitchen window. “Looks like it’s going to be a bad one. Should I go shutter us up?” His hands moved absently over her belly.
“I don’t think it’ll do much good,” she said, surprising herself.
The petal touch of his lips against her cheek made her shiver. “Come now, doom and gloom. It’s just a thunderstorm.” He sniffed, and made a face. “Chicory coffee, huh? I never took a liking to it. Back to bed with you and I’ll take care of things. What would you like for breakfast?”
“I’m not sleepy.” She was thrumming at a low frequency, all her hairs on end. If someone leaned in close enough, they’d sense a buzz, like telephone wires in the high of summer heat. A gale wind struck the house, rattling the windows in their frames, and Hannah moved instinctively against the wall as a knock sounded from the back of the house.
“What’s wrong?” Callum asked, smoothing the worry lines along her forehead.
She cringed. “Nothing.” There was a known sound of glass and wood struck together, a friction that signaled weather. But what she heard now was unknown, some entity stirring in the shed. She wondered if something blanched and hairless was crawling through the waving grass. “Come back to bed with me. It’s Saturday. Let’s go under the covers and sleep through this together.”
He laughed. “I will, but do you really want a house full of broken glass?”
She worked her plush body against his sparse one, trying to coax him.
“Don’t worry,” he breathed into her ear, and unclasped himself. “I’ll be right back.”
Hannah stood with hands gathered nervously at the nape of her neck. The kitchen door slammed shut, and she saw Callum move shirtless through the wind toward the shed.
She moved on tiptoe toward the stairs, interlaced fingers moving to guard her belly. Each step made the whole house groan, and no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find her own shadow against the white wall.
As her feet touched the bottom step, the stairs began to shake. She turned to the window just in time to see a crow’s dark mass speeding toward it. The bird disappeared below the sill with a muted thud.
Hannah grunted as she lowered herself onto the bottom stair, a quiet ache blooming in her right side. At the back of the house, Callum began to hammer wooden boards over the windows. The sound seemed to come from a great distance.
As clouds filled the sky, darkness spread along the house. Hannah leaned her heavy head against the banister and watched the darkness seep through the curtains then constrict around the petals of her white orchid. It grazed picture frames, splayed itself across the armrest of Mae’s favorite chair.
Just as she closed her eyes, her breathing unnaturally slow, a sharp hammering began at the door.
“Callum, use the key,” she called out, but there was no reply. With a moan, she stood up and swayed toward the door. The doorknob was warm and clammy to the touch. I’m inside a wound. The thought seemed to come from outside her mind, and sounded almost like womb.
She opened the door.
On the doormat was the crow. Its neck was stretched and it peered at her from beneath one wing. One leg was strained toward the sky, talons pulsing open and shut like a fist.
Hannah backed away. She sighed deeply, knowing suddenly it was a dream, and recognizing the viscous quality of sleep. Her spine seemed soft, as if she might bend back like a weary stamen, her head rubbing gently against the ground.
Behind her, the thudding of Callum’s hammer continued. It, too, had slowed.
The crow followed her, balancing on one leg and its beak, black and gleaming like a crab’s pincer. The wings made a terrible rustling sound against the wood.
“What do you want?”
The crow paused, and one immense yellow eye blinked at her. It reminded her of the feathered bodies that had once made their nests in Sarah Anne’s backyard.
“Jacob, is that you?” Hannah asked in a low voice.
The crow began speeding toward her, and the pounding of its beak hurried her steps. She tripped over a stair and fell backward. The pain was real, a deep bruising in the small of her back. The crow stopped at her feet, then fastened its talon onto her leg. Blood beaded around the edges of its bite.
“What are you?” she whimpered, and before she could finish, the crow began to expand. Hannah shrunk back. Bald patches marked its swollen body, and they were speckled with crusted rot. Beneath the cover of feathers, its wings were tipped in pincers.
Still watching her, it planted its beak into her distended belly button through her robe. “This,” it croaked, long and deep, and Hannah had a moment to wonder what it meant, before the beak punctured the puckered skin. Hannah began to scream.
Her cry seemed to go on for a long time before she opened her eyes to Callum’s startled face. He was calling her name.
“Where were you?” she asked, trying to regain her breath.
“Outside, putting shutters on the windows.” Callum studied her face. “Jesus, woman. What’s wrong? You can’t just scream like a bloody banshee for no reason. Not after what happened at the apartment.”
Rain spattered the floorboards through the open front door as she stared at the empty floor in front of her. She’d just conversed with a disfigured crow that wasn’t there. A shudder wracked her body. “I fell down, but I’m alright.”
“You scared me shitless. I thought that old crony was back.” Callum frowned at the door. “Was someone here?”
Hannah shook her head. “No, I just thought I heard something out there. Probably a branch.” Then she felt under her robe, where a wet bead sat in the basin of her belly button. Her finger came away red.
“What’s that?” Callum asked, pawing at her robe. “Is it the baby?”
“The baby’s fine,” Hannah said with a certainty she didn’t feel. “I must’ve scratched myself in my sleep.” With a last glance outside at the sheets of rain that sprayed a fresh, green smell through the house, she stood and headed upstairs. “I think I’ll take you up on that nap.”
Callum looked up at her, exasperated. “Is it just me or are you a bit crazy these days?”
Hannah feigned a smile. “Might be,” she said. She looked beyond him toward the door, and felt a sneaking suspicion that though it was open, she couldn’t leave. It’d been years and years since her night
mares had felt so vivid, but this was the first time they’d actually left a mark.
“Well, stop it.” He massaged his temples. “Okay. Let me finish boarding up the house, and I’ll be up with some tea. Are you hungry?”
“You don’t need to do that anymore,” she said evenly, pausing at the top of the stairs. She looked down at Callum, her frightened penitent, and sighed. “It won’t do any good.”
In the bathroom, Hannah studied her belly button under the fluorescent bulbs. The cut was very small, but it leaked a slow, steady flow of blood. She pasted a Band-Aid over the tiny wound and sat down on the edge of the bathtub, caressing her belly.
At least the cut was proof that something had happened. There’d always been the real world that others saw and dwelled in, and then another, filled with pale shades. But something improbable had stepped through and made its malice known.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Hannah huddled in the back of the boat as Callum pulled it ashore. The storm had brought flooding, and many of the marshy beaches along the shore were now submerged.
He’d questioned her decision to come here, and why wouldn’t he? After she’d so firmly distanced herself from this part of her life, it must seem to him like another example of unhinged behavior.
“You don’t have to come,” she’d said to him.
He’d snorted. “How do you plan on getting there without me?”
“You’re not the only one with a boat.” She’d been halfway to the front door when he’d barred her way, arms raised in a gesture of surrender.
“Sorry, sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly apologetic. “But you’re right. It’s your family, no matter how estranged. You have a right to reconnect. I’m just not sure I understand why you’d want to, after everything we’ve been through. Do you really want to give the crazies in town more ammunition?”
“I doubt that the townsfolk will be watching the woods with their binoculars,” Hannah insisted, but found that she didn’t trust her own words.
“Well, good. As long as you doubt it.”
They’d boarded the boat and made the choppy journey in silence, Callum focusing on steering to avoid fallen trees. She hadn’t known how easy it would be to find her way back to where she’d first met her mother until they were on the water.
He stretched as he got off the boat and extended a hand to her. “Coming?”
Hannah nodded and looked beyond him to the large barn in the clearing. A single oak tree stood beside the barn, and the sun poured through its boards like divinity itself. A wide dock had extended the land so a corner of the barn seemed to float in the flood-raised water.
She spotted her mother by the barn, looking over the water.
“I can’t wait to meet the parents,” Callum said dryly as she stepped carefully off the boat and into his arms. He ran his fingers lightly over her neck. “I just want you to be safe,” he murmured.
Hannah squeezed him back, enjoying the moment, until she remembered where they were and why they had come. “Can you give me a few minutes? I want to talk to her alone first.”
His brow furrowed. “Will you be alright?”
She answered with a kiss.
A murder of crows, their feathers coated with an inky sheen, fell silent as she passed the tree. Their yellow eyes followed her, necks craning in tandem from their perch on a branch.
The first time she’d visited, she hadn’t known what to expect, but she found herself surprised now by the lack of pagan constructions. There were no upside-down crosses hanging from the lush green branches. The lawn was cut and unusually fertile, all weeds seeming to respect some unmarked border at the edge of the clearing. Even the water seemed cleaner, sparkling without murky undertones.
“So you’ve come,” her mother said, without turning around. A shirtless old man straightened at the edge of the water. There was an angry red lash where the rope he held had cut into his shoulder.
“I have,” Hannah said, staring at the ground. She felt strangely humbled, and it was uncomfortable. Hannah noticed that Christobelle looked healthier than she had the last time they’d met. A windblown blush rode her cheeks.
“You’re immense. I see you ignored my advice, but I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.”
“No, it shouldn’t.”
Christobelle shook out her black dress around her legs and sighed heavily. “The water’s rising, child, and the land’s disappearing. Someday, there’ll be no one left here. Just echoes. But for now, we’re still standing.”
The man in the water groaned as he hoisted the thick, frayed rope. Silver hair plumed at the sides of his head, and his chest shook with each tug, but muscles still flashed under his hanging belly.
“We should’ve settled in the North, found a decent parish somewhere. That’s a lesson for you: always find higher ground.”
“It’s stuck in the mud, ma’am,” the man called out, his face slick with effort.
“Get someone to help you, then.” Christobelle’s face was grim. “There are still more relics after this one.”
“He’s an old man, he shouldn’t be straining so much. Do you want to give him a heart attack?”
“No, child, I don’t want that.” Christobelle inspected the man. “But we all die, whether it suits us or not. Some of the more able-bodied men turned tail at the first sign of the floods and there’s work to be done. That damn storm nearly sunk the property. We were huddled inside while the wind and lightning did their business, and it’s not over yet, not by a mile.”
The man was panting in pelican honks, but Christobelle only rubbed absently at her mouth. Eczema was spreading around her mother’s pale lips like lichen. Hannah had seen it inflamed, a septic red that made children’s eyes widen in horror, but now it was subdued, a needlepoint only slightly darker than her fair skin. A fine coat of antique lace. “We’ll take what we need, and the rest will drain down the river. I suppose you’ll be leaving for town now?”
Hannah blinked. The thought of the house, left empty in their wake, had never occurred to her. She imagined the windows hollowed out like pocks. “The house is fine,” she said slowly. “Where’s Samuel?” Hannah had never before seen her mother without him.
Christobelle flicked her head like a horse sensing a fly. “He’s unwell.”
Below them, the man finally pulled the statue free. Hannah was surprised to see that the figure resembled Mother Mary, her robes coated in thick grime, her clay hands full of mud and torn roots. He rolled it onto the bank and bent over, hands on knees. With each rapid breath, his ribcage appeared and receded.
“We’ll keep rebuilding,” her mother muttered as she dropped down into the wet earth and began cleaning the statue’s face with the hem of her skirt. “What a thing, to birth a savior.”
Hannah closed her eyes as an unfamiliar pity and the ever-present anger crested in her, rolling over each other, frothing like surf.
“Come inside,” Christobelle said, straightening suddenly. She looked toward the boat dock and nodded to herself.
Hannah hesitated. She took a step toward the kneeling man, whose head lay against the wet earth, his hair filled with peat, then followed her mother into the barn through a side entrance. The thick wooden door was inscribed with scrolls and blank, knowing faces. “What are these?” Hannah leaned close to study an open mouth, toothed and black. She imagined the sharpened points would prick.
“They impress the uninitiated,” Christobelle said, with a sly backward glance. “We bought the land, complete with the barn, from a recluse. He was what people might call a medicine man, or a shaman. He had his ideas about the order of things, and thought this was a sacred space. A place well suited to conversing with the other side.” Christobelle tapped the feet of a carved figure, a hunched woman in heavy robes seated at the top of the door. She seemed to preside over the faces carved bel
ow. “This is Nana Buluku. She goes by many names. She stands in for the creator in many religions.”
“Isn’t God supposed to be a man?” Hannah asked, and immediately remembered being twelve, Christobelle unexpectedly out in the town streets, flanked by her entourage. How Hannah had stopped dead in the street, so suddenly that Sarah Anne and her mother stumbled into her. How distrustful eyes had followed Christobelle from behind half-closed shutters as if they were in a scene from a Western. How Christobelle had stood stiff-backed to the side, hands clasped at her waist.
“Hello, children,” she’d said in an unfamiliar, saccharine voice.
“Move along, Hannah,” Sarah Anne’s mother had urged.
Christobelle’s unblinking gaze had slid smoothly to Sarah Anne. “You two look to be good friends. Where did you meet?”
“At church,” Sarah Anne had answered. She’d raised her eyebrows at Hannah.
“I myself am not especially devout,” Christobelle had said. “I prefer to worship at home.”
“Where’s home?” Sarah Anne had asked sweetly, tossing back her mane of curls.
Hannah had pulled on the edge of Sarah Anne’s jacket as Christobelle’s eyes affixed to the girl’s rapidly atrophying smile. “I think you know.”
Now, Christobelle clapped her hands in front of Hannah’s face and studied her. “Speak to many people and you’ll find they have many ideas about what God is, and many names for him. Or her. They find comfort in religion, or science, until they encounter something that cannot be explained by either. And there are such things.”
Hannah’s eyes struggled to adjust to the dim as they stepped into the barn. Sleeping bags and crude ceramic washbasins sat against one of the walls. Another lined with pews.
“I quite like crows,” Christobelle said, seemingly out of nowhere, “despite their reputation. They gossip among themselves, and remember the faces of those who have wronged them. It’s why scarecrows are so effective,” Christobelle said, waving her hands toward the ceiling. “Dark little rumor-mongers whispered something in my ear last night.”
Cauchemar Page 14