The force of its immense body hitting the tide sent her shooting downward.
With all her strength, she kept Instinct next to her heart. The force was so great that her arms began to loosen around the child. But she wouldn’t let go.
As she plummeted, her head screamed with pressure. She shot down like a torpedo until suddenly, in one quick jerk, something in the darkness grabbed her from behind and snapped her forward. It was slick and greasy and wrapped around her arms and legs. It pulled and forced her to release Instinct. The baby drifted in front of her. It looked like it was floating through space.
As she peered down, she saw what grabbed her. It was the umbilical cord! It was much smaller, but it was the same, and it wrapped itself around her body like an oil-slicked rope. It tightened around her skin and ensnared the baby, pulling him inches away.
The child, glowing green, squirmed and twisted in the cord’s slippery grasp. It choked him, just as it choked her. The water clogged her lungs.
With her dying breaths, she peered at Instinct as the darkness grew behind her eyes. The darkness consumed her. Within its expanding depth, a small crowd of people appeared, each glowing like Instinct. They could not see each other and stumbled around, lost and scared, arms outstretched , mouths open in perpetual anguish. She was being invited in, invited to join them in this space of unfulfillment and regret. She wouldn’t go! She still longed beyond life and death itself to hold her Aiden.
This darkness shifted around her. It had a shape, an all encompassing massiveness, but standing within it made the space feel small, like the inside of a closet. It was a void crowded by billions of glowing wanderers who reached out for her. She did everything to push herself away.
Her heart pounded, until something like rushing water could be heard somewhere above the darkness. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t matter. Her vision was fading. She took her last breath and—
—a sharp claw shot through the back of her right shoulder blade.
The darkness receded and when she saw the baby again, his eyes widened. He opened his mouth in a stunned expression before he exploded into hundreds of bubbles.
With a sharp tug, she felt herself rushing upward. The blackness of the water slowly lit up until she was out of it completely and felt the gust from the immense, flapping wingspan above her. She looked up and saw her rescuer’s white plumage taking her into the sky. It was a gargantuan bird.
As the bird ascended, she saw the trees again. The bird headed toward them. The last image in her mind before she blacked out was the face of Instinct just before he died. He hadn’t looked scared. He looked confused.
Chapter Eighteen
Steve rushed out of the Dunkin’ Donuts. He crinkled the bag in his left hand and squeezed a coffee too hard in his right. Some of it burned his fingers.
“Shit,” he said, power-walking down the ramp to his car.
He worried about his friend. Haunt called him three times last night. Steve’s band was playing at the Barn and he couldn’t call him back until they finished their set at 11 PM. When he called back, he received no answer. If something was wrong—and three calls in a row suggested something was—then why didn’t he pick up when he called back? Steve had a bad feeling about this.
He got in his car and drove the short distance to his friend’s house and parked in his driveway. Hopefully, this croissant sandwich will hit the spot, he thought. He checked his car’s clock. 7:45AM.
Crap.
He had to make this fast. The homeroom bell rang in less than an hour and he still hadn’t set up for today’s lesson.
He grabbed the bag and coffee and rushed the front door, hitting the doorbell with his wrist.
Steve waited 30 seconds. No answer.
“Come on, come on, come on.”
After another thirty seconds he peeked through the square glass in the door. He hit the doorbell again and waited, but no dice. Nobody was home.
He put the coffee down on the porch and tried the doorknob. It opened!
He thought it would be locked. But this was Randolph, a town with a crime rate of probably three incidents per decade. Maybe it wasn’t so weird after all. Steve lived one town over in Dover, and he definitely locked his door at night. Double locked it. The local paper didn’t go a day without talking about some kind of break-in incident, be it a car or house. It was a town with a different mentality and it was only getting worse. What a difference a few miles could make.
He picked up the coffee and breakfast and walked inside. It was quiet and the basement door was open. Steve shivered. He didn’t know why.
“Hello?” Steve called down the basement stairs. No response. He looked about the living room behind him. It was nice. There was a big screen TV plastered on the wall and a whole rack of DVDs, which was interesting, as he never took Jeff for a movie guy since they never talked about movies. But it was strange. For some reason, now that he thought about it, he had never been invited inside Jeff’s house before and never met Marigold, either. He never thought anything of it until now, but why was that? Sure, he never invited Jeff inside his own home, but that was different. His house was a mess, and it wasn’t his own. His dad wouldn’t have appreciated guests with it being so dirty. But Jeff could have let him in here. It was something he didn’t understand about his friend and it was unsettling. It didn’t make sense.
What was also unsettling was how quiet it was. He just wanted to drop the food off and see if everything was all right. He stared back down the basement stairs. “Jeff. You down there, buddy? Marigold?”
Nobody responded.
When he walked to the kitchen he threw up a little in his mouth. Vomit rested on the floor in front of the refrigerator. It was old and dry and looked like it had been here awhile.
Poor guy must have gotten blotto last night. I told him to swing by the Barn if he wanted company. Jeez, he couldn’t even make it to the toilet?
Unless—
He journeyed back to the kitchen. There was a red door that looked like it might lead to the garage and a hallway to his left that led to the back of the house. He headed down the hallway in search of the bedroom.
Dammit, Steve. Stop snooping around.
But what if he did something to himself last night, an intimate and close voice said in the back of his head. Or what if he killed his WIFE?
No way. Jeff’s not a killer. He wouldn’t harm a fly. Would he?
The intimate voice didn’t respond.
“Jeff?” Steve said, pawing the yellow wallpaper as he shuffled down the hallway, “Marigold?”
Soft yellow light spilled out into the hall from a slightly open door. He knocked and pushed the door open further. The white tiled bathroom inside was empty. At the end of the hall there was another door. He figured it must be the bedroom.
“Jeff? You in there? Marigold?”
No response. Cold sweat trickled down his bald head. In a flashing vision, he saw his friend’s wife with her face shot in and her hair and teeth splattered all over the wall and covers. He also saw his friend lying beside her, his wrist slit diagonally, a homicide/suicide. Had Jeff gone postal last night? If he had, it was all Steve’s fault. If he hadn’t given that speech on honesty yesterday in the car—He nudged open the door.
“Jeff?”
The door creaked open…the room was empty.
“Jesus.”
Steve’s heart kept racing. He turned back toward the door and as he approached it, his foot made contact with something on the floor. A small bronze figure of boots sat at his feet.
Huh? Maybe she threw it at his face when she found out that he got fired.
Was Marigold really like that? Jeff made her seem like the most understanding wife in the world whenever he talked about her.
Whatever had happened here, he was happy it didn’t involve him finding their stiff corpses sprawled out across their bed. Unless, well, the basement door was open when he entered the house...
He rushed down
the hallway back to that door and swung it open, cringing at the thought of finding blood all over the walls and floor, but no, there was nothing down there, either. The boards looked a little rotted, but it was nothing more than that. A calmness settled over him. What did he expect to find down there anyway? A single leg sticking up on the bottom staircase? Still, he had to be sure.
“Jeff. You down there?”
No response.
He took a few steps down, but stopped. He was going overboard now. What if they walked in all of a sudden and saw him creeping down their steps? What would they think then? It’s one thing to come into the house and leave food, and another to go down into their basement. What could he possibly say? Uh, just thought I’d do some laundry while I was dropping off some food? Yeah, right. He checked the time. It was 7:50 anyway. He didn’t have the time to investigate further.
He climbed out the basement. He was just paranoid, that’s all. But then, what about the vomit, and well…What of it? Dude probably got sick and the two of them yelled it out and made up. They probably made love in the vomit, and then, went out for some pancakes this morning at IHOP or something. Sure, the story didn’t make a lick of sense, but at almost 8:00, it would have to do.
He closed the basement door. Nope, better leave it the way he found it. Hopefully, when they come back, wherever the hell they went, they’ll see the food and thank me.
He walked back into the kitchen, wincing at the vomit again, and then thought, Shit, how will they even know who left it?
He took out the croissant sandwich he bought for himself and tore a shred off the top of the bag, flattening it on the table. He patted his pockets for a pen. He found one and wrote:
From Steve.
For Jeff.
Sorry I missed your calls last night, buddy. Hope it wasn’t TOO urgent. I called you back a few times but you didn’t pick up. I thought that you might be hungry this morning so I brought breakfast. I must have just missed you, man.
Steve
PS. Sorry I kinda “broke in”
PPS. Call me if you need anything. I’ll call you back when I can.
On his way out, he peeked out the front door to make sure people didn’t get suspicious seeing a black man creeping out of one of their neighbor’s houses. When he saw the coast was clear, he walked to his car. He just couldn’t get that nagging feeling that something was wrong off his chest. Looking at the garage he thought, why not take a peek inside?
He made a little awning over his eyes with his hand at the window and saw two cars in there, one white and one beige. The beige one was Jeff’s Chrysler Town & Country, but the other one he couldn’t make out.
Did they go for a walk or something?
Steve squinted. What was that dark shape in Haunt’s car? It seemed to be hunched forward and…
Jesus Christ, no! That sounded like the engine running.
Oh, my God. What did you do?
Steve banged on the glass. Fuck the neighbors. He slammed on the windows and kicked on the bottom of the garage door hoping he’d see some sign of life or movement.
He didn’t.
He ran to the right side of the garage to find a door. It was locked. He banged on the glass several times, hoping he’d break it and be able to reach into the window and grab the door knob. But then, it hit him. The red door in the kitchen. He ran back around the house and through the front door and rushed to get to the one door that he hadn’t checked. He hopped over the vomit and opened the door to the garage.
As he stood at the top of the three steps, the motor rumbled and he saw his friend with his head leaning forward on the steering wheel. The smell of gasoline overpowered him, and he almost fell backward from the odor. But seeing his friend like that got him moving.
He squeezed in-between the white car and the wall and grabbed the door handle. It was locked. Jeff looked so pale.
“Shit!” Steve banged on the glass with his fists. A sickening sensation clawed up his throat. His friend didn’t move. Steve rammed the window with his shoulder, but it didn’t break. His eyes darted about the garage and he saw a can of paint in front of Haunt’s car on a wooden shelf. He ran to it, grabbed the thin handle, and rushed back to the driver’s side. He slammed it into the window three times before the glass shattered into thousands of pieces on his friend’s clothes and lap.
“Jeff!” Steve unlocked the door and turned off the engine. He pulled Jeff out of the car. His stiff skin and limp joints sent a chill down Steve’s spine when he held him.
“Wake up, man, wake up! Don’t do this to me, man. C’mon!”
Haunt’s eyes were closed, as if he were asleep. But the stiff figure in Steve’s arms was anything but asleep. Without even thinking about it, he dragged the body out of the garage and into the kitchen. When he laid him down, he put his ear to Haunt’s chest and listened for a heartbeat, but there wasn’t one.
He pulled out his phone and dialed the three digits.
“911,” a woman said at the other end of the line like a robot. “What’s your emergency?”
“My friend…He left the engine running in his garage. He’s…”
He didn’t know how to say it.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m in Randolph, New Jersey, on,” Steve said, blinking the tears out of his eyes. He drew a blank on the name of the street.
“It’s okay, sir. We see you’re located at 57 Piaget St in Randolph, New Jersey. We’re sending somebody there immediately.”
“Okay,” Steve hung up.
And then, looking at his friend’s lifeless body he thought, Where’s Marigold?
Chapter Nineteen
Haunt jolted up in his seat when he heard the stiff pounding behind him. The steering wheel sat before him and he realized he was still in his car. He turned his head and saw his wife’s Celica. What time was it?
“Jeff!” A voice shouted behind him. It sounded slow and muddled, like a deep sea diver screaming “shark!” underwater.
Haunt looked back. There was a misshapen silhouette in his garage door’s glass windows. Its angles were sharp and jagged.
He opened his car door and stumbled out. The car still ran but he had no desire to turn it off. He rubbed his eyes. Everything was too bright. Also, everything ached. The frantic knocking continued and it intensified his headache. He swiveled his neck and saw the vague silhouette run to the right and disappear.
“Who are you?” he yelled.
For a moment, all was quiet, but the banging began again, this time from the side door that led from the garage into the kitchen. Haunt’s hand snuck underneath his glasses and he opened his eyes wide and kept them open with his thumbs and forefingers. He didn’t understand why every sound seemed so loud this morning. He felt hung over even though he couldn’t remember drinking last night. He never drank on a school night.
The slamming intensified, rattling the entire window.
“Stop! You’re going to break it,” Haunt shouted.
The noise grew louder still and Haunt growled.
“Alright, jerk, that’s enough.”
He placed his hand on the hood of his car to keep his balance and staggered to the rattling door. But as soon as he grabbed the knob, he shook out his hand. It was freezing.
“Dammit.”
Using his tie as a barrier between his skin and the ice-cold metal, he turned the knob.
“Alright, already, alright.”
He flung open the door and found a snow-white, empty room. The silhouette, with its hand raised to pound on the door again vaporized.
This had to be a dream! White rooms don’t just appear out of nowhere. People don’t just disappear.
As his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the space, he saw that the room wasn’t empty after all. On the far wall, a plush white couch stretched from one corner of the room to the other. Its dense cushions and layers of snow-white pillows looked like a polar bear curled up in hibernation. He stepped into the windowless room, and
felt a quick breeze followed by the sound of a slam behind him. He spun and saw a white wall where the door once was.
“Wait. What’s the big idea!”
He clawed the wall but only managed to scrape a bit of dried paint with his nails.
“Hey! Let me out of here!”
He plastered his ear to the wall, listening for any kind of response, but all he heard was the rumbling of a car engine. And then, it hit him—the still-running car, the sick feeling he felt in the garage, the doorway into a mysterious white room. He wasn’t dreaming. He was dead. Killed himself in his own car. Left the motor running. The end.
And this is the afterlife.
The room was whiter than white and had the pleasant smell of honey. For a brief moment, he stretched out his arms and smiled.
I still exist!
He took off his glasses and put them in his breast pocket. After a few blinks, he realized he could see fine without them. Actually, he could see better than fine. The white sofa looked sharper and vibrant.
Something was off, though. He could feel it in his gut. He closed his eyes and tried to think. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw a dark cloud. The cloud spread and revealed something to him that made him feel dirty inside. The glasses that were now in his breast pocket were replacing something else that once was more important to him.
A picture, a voice whispered. They’re replacing a picture of your wife. The picture’s gone.
His eyes widened. The gears in his head started to rotate.
If he was in the afterlife and dead, then that meant that his wife and child were both still alive and alone. And now he…And now…
“And now, you need to stop worrying,” a familiar voice said.
“Ma?”
Sitting on the couch was his mother. She had a long, pale face partially hidden by stringy black hair that clung to her neck and cheeks as if it were wet. She wore a red Christmas sweater, black corduroy pants, and brown moccasins. She sat with her legs crossed and he could see the veins in her ankles. She held two knitting needles in her hands, and her work-in-progress, a grey afghan, spread out across her lap. The needles were crisscrossed as if he had caught her mid-stitch. She barely looked up.
The Darkness of the Womb Page 6