Nila's Babies

by Jac Simensen

  “Me do it,” Julie said. “Big girl.”

  Nila smiled. “Yes, big girl.”

  The ringing of Nila’s cell phone was clear, but distant. “Whoops, left the phone in the car,” she called out. “Must be Daddy! Be right back.” She moved quickly to the SUV and grabbed her phone from the center console. “Hey! We’re home,” she shouted as she moved back to the kitchen.

  “Nila, it’s me—Mick.”

  “Oh, Mick. I thought you were Gordy.” She tried not to sound disappointed.

  “Mr. Hale’s not there, then?”

  “No, not yet. We just arrived. Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing, I just wanted to check with him about the problem in Tampa at the exam site. I thought that Mr. Hale would want to know what happened, so I called a precinct sergeant up there, a guy on my softball team, to see if he knew anything. He checked, and there was no record of any emergency services call-out anywhere in the area. Kinda strange, huh?”

  “Sure is,” Nila replied.

  “His exam was definitely in Tampa, right?”

  “Definitely in Tampa. Gordy was staying at a hotel a few blocks from the exam location. I talked with him on the phone when he was at the hotel.”

  “Must be some kinda misunderstanding. But now I’m curious. Can you get Mr. Hale to give me a call when he gets in? No hurry—I’m sure we can figure this out. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Mick. I’ll have Gordy call.”

  “How’s the weather there?”

  “Getting blowy and a bit misty,” Nila replied.

  “Still no change in the forecast. Just a tropical depression moving up the coast. Should pass in the next few hours. No big deal, but best if you remain indoors. Stay safe.”

  ~*~

  “Eeeeeee!” Janna screamed.

  Nila dropped her phone onto the kitchen counter and ran for the nursery. “What’s wrong?” she shouted as she entered the room.

  Both girls had shed their pull-ups and were naked, squatting close together in the middle of the carpeted floor. “Eeeeeee!” Janna screamed again while excitedly beating her hands against the floor. Nila quickly dropped to her knees. Julie lifted her right hand and Nila saw that they had captured a gecko—a small, harmless lizard that had found its way from outside into the house. The gecko was frantically trying to run, to escape from Julie’s chubby fingers, but was veering to the right and making little forward progress.

  “Toes!” Janna shouted as she held out the gecko’s dismembered, but still wiggling, front leg for Nila’s admiration. “More toes,” Julie squealed in delight as she grasped the gecko by the torso and tore away its remaining front leg.

  “That’s monstrous!” Nila shouted. “Stop it! Stop it this minute.” Nila pulled a tissue from her pocket, covered the still-struggling lizard in Julie’s fingers, and squeezed the tissue and the gecko into a ball. She felt nauseated, and tasted acid rising in her throat and mouth.

  Julie frowned. “Mine,” she called, holding out her open hand to Nila.

  “Good God, no!” Nila replied. She stood and quickly walked the few steps to the nursery bathroom, where she flushed the tissue and gecko remains down the toilet and then washed and dried her hands.

  When Nila turned back into the nursery, she saw that the twins were standing by the window. They had pulled the redand-white-striped curtains to the side and were gazing up at the windowsill.

  “Kayba! Kayba!” Janna shouted as she began to jump up and down.

  “Kayba!” Julie joined Janna in the chanting and energetic jumping.

  “What are you imps up to now?” Nila asked. Her question died on her lips when she saw the object of their attention—an icon glaring into the room from outside the open, but screened, window. The torso of the small icon, a vivid, brightly painted eyeball, was iridescently pulsing in time to the girls’ jumping. Two grisly heads emerged from either side of the eyeball torso—one with a face twisted in rage, the other with a cruel, cynical grin. The two heads alternately screamed and cackled.

  “Bloody hell!” Nila whispered. She reached out to grasp and close the curtain, but Janna yanked the drape from her hand.

  The children’s chanting increased in volume as their jumping intensified. Both twins were jumping vertically three inches or more off the carpeted floor. The lurid colors of the icon’s eyeball body—red, yellow, orange, blue, and purple—pulsed brilliantly in cadence with each jump.

  Nila rushed from the nursery, out the kitchen door, and quickly turned the far corner of the beach cottage, toward the nursery window. A light, misty rain had begun to fall and the wind was increasing.

  The plants below the nursery window had clearly been freshly trampled. Someone had recently placed the disgusting idol on the nursery windowsill. Nila’s mind raced—who would do such a sick prank, and why? Her senses were on overload. She looked at the icon from the rear and saw that, unlike the torso and eyeballs, the back of the icon was a slimy gray that seethed like a ball of worms each time the front-facing heads wailed and snarled.

  Without hesitation, Nila reached out, grasped the ten-inch-high icon with her right hand and forcefully tore it from the windowsill. The icon’s cries increased in both volume and intensity. Nila felt a sharp stinging and saw that her hand was bleeding. Each of the icon’s two heads had bared snake-like fangs and had pierced Nila’s hand. She screamed, “Filthy beast!” She grabbed the icon with her left hand and tried to pull its fangs from the webbing between her right thumb and index finger, but the icon held fast. The bleeding increased. Blood was now flowing around her wrist, down her forearm, and dripping from her left elbow. Nila felt faint and was approaching complete panic. In an effort to free herself, she twisted the icon with her right hand, inadvertently pressing the power-stone ring on her left hand into the icon’s luridly painted, pulsing torso. A silent, bright-orange flash obscured Nila’s vision. She heard the icon emit a shrill, animal-like squeal as it released its snake-like grip on her hand. She hurled the now-silent and motionless effigy to the sandy ground at her feet. As her vision cleared, she grasped her right hand where the fangs had pierced her skin—but found no injury, no bleeding, and no blood on her hand, wrist, or arm.

  The icon lay on its back, facing skyward at Nila’s feet. She stared as the luminous paint covering the vile creature’s body began to melt, liquefy, and then stream away up into the air. Paralyzed by both terror and relief, she stood, hulking over the melting icon for some time, as the loathsome monster slowly degenerated into a clump of colorless dust. She examined her hands once again—no injury, and no blood. She kicked at the pile of dust that moments before had been the gruesome icon. The increasing wind picked up the heap of powder, carrying away all traces that the icon had ever existed. Nila began to doubt her sanity.

  The cat tattoo on her belly grew pleasantly warm—it seemed to offer reassurance of her mental stability. Della was right, she thought—I am a witch. The tattoo my grandmother placed on my belly, Father’s descriptions of the Ashanti legends, the power-stone ring that refuses to leave my finger, and the images of Mum trapped in the mini-lift, images that only I could see—they all prove that I’m a witch. Nila’s ring pulsed and then contracted, snapping her out of her trance-like state.

  She turned toward the house and peered through the window back into the nursery. The room was empty—the twins had disappeared.

  “My babies!” she cried.

  Nila rushed into the house, shouting for the children. “Janna! Julie! Come here this instant!” She rushed from room to room in the small cottage: guest room, master bedroom, living room, kitchen, and even Gordon’s little office. “Janna! Julie!” she called. Then she had a terrible thought.

  “Oh my God, the pool!” she shouted. As she raced to the sliding kitchen doors that opened to the lanai, a vision of two tiny bodies floating, face down, in the swimming pool fueled her panic. When she saw that the child-safety fence separating the pool from the surrounding patio was closed and locked, she was mome
ntarily calmed. Her relief dissolved, however, when she saw the open screen door to the beach noisily banging in the wind. As Nila looked out through the lanai screening, she saw two tiny, naked figures on the beach, hand in hand, walking toward the wind-whipped waters of the Gulf.

  “Janna! Julie!” Her anxiety turned the cry into a fearful shriek.

  29

  Devon slid the Lincoln key-fob across the granite kitchen countertop. “Time to go.”

  Gordon placed his hand over the fob. “I don’t wanna do this,” he whispered, rapidly shaking his head.

  Devon glared, her face a cruel mask. “Now, you go now!” she shouted. “You’ll do what I tell you. You bear my mark; you’re mine. Go now, and text me when Nila’s unconscious…You’ve got the suppository?”

  Gordon patted his front pocket. “It’s still where it was last time you asked.”

  “Understand? As soon as she’s unconscious, you text me. Hattie and I will come into the bedroom and I’ll mark her. It won’t take more than a few minutes. Go now.”

  Gordon nodded and wordlessly exited the house through the sunroom. His head was spinning—gauzy images of Nila and the twins hovered in the air in front of his eyes. A distinct, dark visage displaced the image of Nila, a laughing, cackling face, Devon’s face. As quickly as it had appeared in his consciousness, Devon’s image began to burn and then explode. At the same time, Gordon felt a stab, a searing pain to his testicles. “Aaaggh!” he screamed. The burning pain subsided and vanished as quickly as it had occurred. He stumbled to the Lincoln, disoriented and profusely sweating, the echo of his beating heart pounding forcefully in his ears.

  Gordon struggled with the car door and finally managed to drag himself into the driver’s seat. He backed the big car from the garage and then drove the hundred-yard loop to the beach cottage, where he parked next to the rented SUV. He looked through the side window into the back seat—the child seats were still in place, a backpack and diaper bag sat on the floor, and partially eaten cookies littered the seat. Nila hadn’t unpacked yet.

  The rain increased from a trickle to a steady shower.

  The cottage’s security entry light blinked green. Gordon’s thoughts were chaotic. He was anticipating a joyful reunion with Nila and his daughters and at the same time fearful that the events of the past two days might have damaged his loving relationship with Nila.

  “Nila,” he called from the kitchen. Anticipating that the babies might be in their cribs, he peered into the nursery from the hall. No babies. He checked the master bedroom, and the living room. No Nila, no children.

  “Strange,” he said aloud, moving back to the kitchen. The sliding doors to the pool were partially open, and the gusting wind was making the lightweight nylon curtains near the pine table flutter. As he reached out to close the doors, Gordon saw movement on the beach, near the waterline. The rain distorted his vision, but he clearly saw figures along the tideline where the normally placid Gulf waters had become wind-driven whitecaps. The long hair of the largest figure was blowing out like a banner.

  “Nila!” he shouted through the partially opened doors, but the wind drove the words back into his face.

  ~*~

  Devon was bent over the kitchen sink. She clasped her neck with both hands and forcefully vomited a stream of yellow bile into the drain.

  “My Du-mon,” she choked through the foul mucus that covered her mouth and dripped from her chin. “My Du-mon’s destroyed.”

  Hattie ripped a handful of paper towels from the spindle on the counter. She held the towels to Devon’s face and turned on the water.

  “Destroyed? How you know that?” she shouted.

  “The powers I transferred to the Du-mon are gone. Gone! I hurt all over,” Devon cried.

  Hattie tore off more paper towels, tossed the disgusting, used towels into the trash bin, and continued to clean Devon’s face with fresh, wet towels. She pulled a chair close to the sink.

  “Sit down here, Lilith, while I clean you up.”

  Devon sat, rocked from side to side, and moaned. “My Du-mon is gone. Destroyed. Vanished. Everything I created is undone.”

  Hattie drew the plastic waste-bin near, in case Devon needed to vomit again. She massaged Devon’s shoulders and back and, after several minutes, Devon’s breathing calmed. Devon stood, grasped the rim of the sink for support. “Get me a glass, so I can wash out my mouth.” Devon splashed tap water on her face and washed her hands, while Hattie handed her a water glass.

  “Rinse out your mouth with this water, but don’t drink none. That’ll get the nasty taste outa your mouth.”

  Devon rinsed her mouth, spitting the foul yellow residue into the steel sink.

  Devon’s cell on the counter vibrated. Hattie checked the screen. “This is blank; it don’t say nothin’.”

  Devon retched twice, but failed to bring up more bile.

  “I hurt!” she struggled to say. She turned her head toward Hattie. “Let me see that phone.”

  Hattie stared into Devon’s face. Her jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide.

  “Oh, shit!” she called out. “How could it happen now?”

  Devon saw the shock and astonishment on Hattie’s face. “What’s wrong with you, you stupid girl?”

  “Lilith! The transformation’s begun!”

  Devon shook her head. “That’s not possible—I have years before this body will need to be replaced.”

  Hattie cast around the kitchen for a mirror. Seeing none, she stepped to the side of the stove and pulled a wide stainless-steel knife from the wooden knife block. She held the broad, flat side of the knife in front of Devon’s face. Devon reached out and grasped the knife, her hand around the blade.

  “Impossible!” she screamed as she saw the reflection of her face in the polished metal.

  Blood dripped from her hand where she grasped the knife blade. She sprang from the chair and rushed to the large decorative mirror in the dining room. Devon dropped the knife to the wooden floor.

  “No!” she moaned. “No!”

  “Your skin!” Hattie cried.

  “The Du-mon, the Du-mon—my power!”

  Devon ran her hands over her face, leaving behind stripes of blood from the knife wound on her fingers. Her skin was quickly turning gray and her teeth black.

  Hattie was horrified as she watched clumps of Devon’s brown hair fall to the floor, leaving open, raw sores on her rapidly balding scalp.

  “Do something!” Devon screamed, as black claws began jutting out from beneath her fingernails and toenails.

  Hattie grasped her own forehead and pitched rhythmically backward and forward. “The druggie whore—the violent, druggie whore; you should have listened to me! That filthy woman was pure evil. But you had to have that body, and that face. Her evil is hatching inside your body, Lilith. Jus’ like a horde of maggots crawlin’ out from rotting flesh! You gave that vile Du-mon your powers an’ now they’re gone—an’ you can’t protect yourself! Tha’s what’s happening to you.”

  “Daughter—help me! Help me!”

  “We gotta get ya out of that sick body, so you can start over again. We did this once afore—long, long time ago. You remember? You move into my body and share it with me ’til we can get you out and into a new one again.”

  “Do it! Do it now!” Devon screamed. “The pain! The pain! Don’t wait!”

  Hattie picked up the knife that lay at Devon’s feet. “This gonna hurt a lot,” she said, slowly articulating one word at a time. Hattie stepped back and forcefully plunged the large blade into Devon’s throat, twisting it back and forth and thrusting again until both carotid arteries were severed and crimson blood spurted from the broad wound.

  ~*~

  Gordon didn’t notice when the cell phone dropped from his hand and broke apart on the tile floor. His senses were concentrated on the figures by the shoreline. Everything else surrounding him seemed frozen in time. It was as if the last two days he’d spent with Devon had never happened. He slid his
hand into the side pocket of his jeans and removed the tiny plastic bag with the suppository that Devon had intended for Nila. He dropped the bag to the floor and squashed it with his shoe, twisting his toes as one would do to kill a cockroach.

  “Nila! My babies!” he yelled as he dashed through the lanai and onto the beach.

  Gordon raced toward the shoreline, wet sand flying in his wake. The warm rain was matting his hair and flowing into his eyes. The figures he’d seen from the cottage came into focus—they were unmistakably Nila and the twins. The three girls were holding hands and running toward the breaking waves. All three were naked and dripping wet: naked, wet, and laughing.

  Janna was the first to see him. “Daddy!” she called, jumping up and down, her small arms outstretched. Julie unclasped from Nila’s hand and ran to Gordon. “Daddy! Daddy!” she echoed. “Come play escape!” Gordon gathered Julie up in a bear-hug, while Janna locked her arms around Gordon’s leg.

  A broad smile on her face, Nila stepped back while she delighted in the twins’ outpouring of affection for their father. “We’re escaping from the waves,” Nila shouted over the crashing surf.

  Gordon wrapped his free arm around Nila’s shoulders and pulled her close. The four of them held tight to one another, transfixed by the protective love that sprang from Nila and enfolded her family.

  The rain had become a downpour. “We best go inside before we drown,” Nila said, laughing. “Let me get my sodden clothes and shoes.” She trotted around the nearby sand dune to her balled-up, brightly colored dress and sandals. The twins followed after her.

  “Mama, look!” Janna nervously cried. Julie ran to Janna’s side and pointed to a mass of bloated flesh and limbs, a body lying face up, partially covered by the blowing sand. The vultures had clearly discovered the corpse, torn out one of the eyes, and started to rip the soft lips and breast tissue.