Cauchemar (19 page)

Christobelle nodded impatiently. The long, patrician nose was inches from hers. So close, Hannah could see the filigree of dark purple veins clustered across her cheeks, along her chin. There were flecks of gold in her mother's eyes, just like hers.

“I'd hear it first, a swishing across the floor like a fish dragging itself toward water. Then I'd see a flash of white out of the corner of my eyes. Not a pure white, but yellowed. Organic. Its movements were reptilian, like an alligator. It never felt threatening, just watchful. In my dreams, it never came close to me, just circled me. But lately …”

“Lately?” Christobelle prompted.

“I've seen it,” Hannah said in a whisper. “Out in the world. Not even in a half-sleep, but out walking in the woods.”

“I see.” Christobelle backed away. She bent at the waist and gently set the spider down onto the hay. It scurried away from her long fingers.

Hannah waited for more, but her mother turned her back and stood staring at the rafters. The words rushed out of Hannah. “I did wrong against someone when I was younger. A boy named Jacob. You said his name the other day, and I feel—punished. Ever since Mae died, nothing feels safe.”

“Child,” Christobelle said gently. “You have never been safe. We are all always at the mercy of the world, this one and the next, but fear serves nothing. Fear gives power to shadows, even though they can only exist in the presence of light. As for this boy, this Jacob, he was not what you thought. He would've harmed you. Guilt can be as dangerous as fear, if it's undeserved, if you take on too much of it.” Her mother's head shot up sharply, her fingers flexing at her sides. “He's out there.” Christobelle said.

Hannah rubbed her eyes. Having said it, having had it dismissed, lightened everything. Excuses and explanations suddenly soothed her like medicine: it was the hormones from the pregnancy and the grief at Mae's death mingling in her chemistry. The mind was susceptible when surrounded by so much quiet. “Callum.”

“Callum. I'd forgotten about the name. It means dove. Don't you find that interesting?”

“Should I?”

Christobelle shrugged and turned back to face Hannah, a half-smile haunting her mouth. “I'd like to meet him.” Hannah saw her teeth grinding back and forth “Will he be my son-in-law?”

Hannah gathered her hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She'd been waking up to find long strands of her hair mottling her pillow, coiling and knotting in her sleep. “I'd have to be your daughter by law first.”

“Law. Doesn't mean much out here, as I think you're starting to learn.” She gestured for Hannah to lead the way out.

Callum stood with his back to the barn, his hands in his pockets.

“Welcome to our swamp.” Christobelle said softly, stepping up to him.

Callum turned. “Thanks, but I've already been here for a while.” They watched each other like hawks circling the same mouse.

Callum searched Hannah's face. She tried to keep her features steady, despite the painful loosening in her womb, like a valve split from too much pressure.

“But you're only just now being welcomed in return.” Christobelle moved forward and gripped his face, her fingers sliding into his hollowed cheeks. “A cool reception, is it?” Her body reared suddenly, and though they barely moved, her hands shifted from clenching to cradling almost imperceptibly. Tenderness filled her face, and seemed ill-fitting. It made her seem younger. “I'm sorry, child,” she said, in a whisper.

Hannah forced a smile. “For what?”

Christobelle hugged herself. Her bony arms looked as if they might clasp around her corseted waist. Bits of hay hung from the hem of her skirt like decoration. “I thought I could, but—” Some realization had dawned on her. “I can't help him. I can't help either of you.”

Hannah cried out as warmth seeped out from between her legs.

Christobelle shushed her. Hannah began to retch, but her mother only whispered, “Let it work.” Hannah convulsed again.

“What's happening?” Callum asked, fear in his voice. “The baby?”

“Get the boat, boy,” Christobelle said quickly, “and take her home. Put her in bed.”

“What did you do?” he cried.

“I need you to remember this. She can't leave,” Christobelle said quietly. “Not with the child inside her. The house may still offer some small protection.”

“From what?” Callum asked.

Christobelle closed her eyes against Callum's desperation. “You must take her home.”

Hannah met the eyes of the man on the bank, hoisting another cracked statue from the water. He fell to the ground with it, hugging its painted plaster. A greasy, browning vine hung from his neck like a noose. Hannah's moans didn't register on his face. Beyond him, she saw the two men from the barn, slumped in the grass. They shook their heads from side to side, raising and dropping their arms as though taken aback by the ability to do so. She saw their faces. Horror and amazement conjoined.

Callum stepped toward Christobelle, rage puckering his face. “You did this!”

Hannah doubled over, and she tried to focus her vision on something that might calm her. The kicks inside her felt bruising. Spit flew from her lips as she shushed senselessly. She meant it for the baby but addressed a beetle on the ground that thrust its horns impotently against a rock.

“What have you done to her?” Callum cried, moving as if to strike her mother. The two men rushed toward them as if they'd sprung up from the damp earth, waiting for a signal.

“Go home. All that is left is to wait.” Hannah felt her mother's hands on her head, tangling in her hair. They pulled painfully as she stroked. “You should've listened to me. Now you're exposed.”

“Come on,” Callum urged as he pulled Hannah toward the boat. “What did she do?” Hannah shut her eyes, unable to speak. Unable to tell him that some small part of her had known, and had drunk. Callum folded her into the boat and gunned the motor.

“They have you,” Christobelle called out after them, her head bowed like a willow.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Hannah stayed in bed for days, her finger circling the small puncture wound in her belly button. Outside, the world moved feverishly as another storm descended and falling branches shattered windows. She watched the bedroom door, her pulse pounding in her throat, but there was only Callum calling out, “Just a window, honey. I've already locked Graydon away.”

Cramps choked her stomach, signaling blood, but the sheets remained unmarked. It was only this that kept Callum at bay, even as he paced the length of the bedroom, threatening to call James, to rain down police batons on Christobelle's men.

“Your own mother,” he repeated again and again, and Hannah was too weary to clarify that they were family only in the barest sense of the word. He brought her ginger tea, his face worried. “Wake up, sweetheart,” he cajoled, his voice increasingly fatigued, but she remained on her back, her limbs at once leaden and liquid.

She dreamt of the child excavating patiently through the red dome of her womb, braiding veins as it went, then swinging from the vines. Always, its hands were clawed. She dreamt of Callum lying on the floor outside their bedroom, her child's heartbeat resounding through the house. His body thinning, his very skin growing more transparent with each pulse.

Callum finally called Dr. Merrick. He kept his leather bag tight against his chest, the very picture of a small town doctor, as he moved around the room. He avoided touching the furniture and he gasped when a large black raven met his eyes from a branch outside the window.

“It's taken up residence,” Callum explained, tapping on the window. “I think it's probably after all the dead frogs.”

Dr. Merrick sniffed the air like a possum, frowning at the ammonic smell of her body. “Smell that?” he asked Callum, anger in his voice. “Smells like
Fetor hepaticus
, or breath of the dead. It's the terrible sweetness of a liver fighting too much toxicity in the blood.”

No matter how Hannah turned, how she stoppered her face with pillows, the smell was pervasive. It inhabited her.

“Tell me the truth now,” the doctor said. “Have you taken her to some traiteur on the bayou?” Callum regarded him blankly. “A witch-doctor, son.”

Hannah slammed the heel of her foot down on the mattress and threw Callum a warning look.

“Of course not.”

Dr. Merrick gently pulled back the sweat-drenched sheets to study her body. His eyes settled on her stomach. “What's this then?” Hannah rose onto her elbows to see the faint outline of a cross over her belly.

“Jesus, I don't know,” Callum breathed, staring wide-eyed at Hannah. Dr. Merrick made a sound of disgust as he handed Callum his stethoscope and placed the end on her belly. Watching his face relax, Hannah could almost hear her baby's heartbeat.

“I can't figure it out.” Hannah heard the doctor say. “That smell …” He hesitated. “When the chemicals produced by the body aren't filtered out anymore, they seep into the lungs. But her blood pressure seems to be fine, her circulation's good, and there are no clear signs of jaundice. What's she eaten in the last few days?”

When he only shrugged, the doctor considered Callum carefully. “You're looking a bit ill yourself.”

“It's just stress.” Callum's mouth tightened as he pointed the doctor's attention back to Hannah. “Sleep has become a luxury we can barely afford.”

“It could just be a bad flu, but in the meantime, I'd like to get her in for some tests.”

“No,” Hannah groaned from the bed.

The doctor nodded to himself and pulled out a syringe and five vials. “Then we'll do them here. One way or another, young lady.” Hannah glared at him as she extended her arm. He wiped down a fat blue vein, then plunged the needle in. Her blood was viscous, flowing slowly into the ampules. “Whatever happens,” Dr. Merrick said to her in a low voice, “don't turn to folklore. It'll do more harm than good. Mae fooled around with it, but underneath it all was a foundation of medicine, pure and simple. You have more than yourself to think of now.”

Hannah stared fixedly out the window at the cloud-laden sky until he left.

She knew the smell wasn't her body leeching poison, not entirely. It was laced with the pungent stench of fear, at what waited outside and what lay inside her. Christobelle had said that she couldn't leave with the child inside her. Hannah felt cornered, paralyzed by the sense that leaving the land, leaving the swamp, might cause the child harm.

Her own mother had given her what was, by her definition, a remedy. Lose the child and leave freely. Keep the child and live in fear. She didn't yet know the dimensions of her prison, but she was caught like a moth in a killing jar.

Callum sat back in the chair beside the bed. He massaged his chin with his thumb. “What can I do?”

Hannah shook her head wordlessly and rolled over, seeking the refuge of sleep. In her sickness, the memory of his kiss with Leah felt like an infected wound. She'd dreamt of Leah, unafraid, before a sea of men's hands and eyes. Many of the mouths that closed around Leah's were Callum's, his lips replicated and insatiable. She woke confused. While it might be sanded away, polished and painted over, it would never really fade. A careful touch would always find its edges.

At some point, the storm calmed. She woke to the gentle chime of trees shedding their last raindrops into puddles outside the open window. The air smelled laundered. And then the drumming started. Hesitant at first and deep inside her, her child began to tread water. Each kick pulled her into consciousness and the motoring of its legs felt like it was frothing her insides, all the heaviness of days past turning to spume. Hannah wiggled up onto her pillow.

“That was quite a storm,” Callum said from the doorway. “I thought it might tear the whole house apart.”

Hannah's eyes felt swollen, her throat parched. “Water, please.” He hurried away and returned with a tall glass. She took the glass, then pulled his hand onto her belly. “Feel,” she ordered.

Callum's laugh was half gasp. “There it is! God, he's strong. He's alright.” His hand followed the child's movement, darting like a minnow. “You missed the strangest thing. There were frogs in our backyard. Dozens of them, all drowned.”

“What are you talking about?”

“From the storm, I guess. Graydon was pawing at the kitchen window, meowing like mad. They were just bloated and washed up in the grass.”

“How high is the water now?”

“It's risen but only by a few feet,” Callum said. “There's a bit of flooding in the basement.”

“It's testing us,” Hannah whispered. “It was a warning.”

Callum squinted at her, and licked his lips. She had the sense that he was summoning up patience. “Honey, you've been ill. There was a tropical storm down in Florida, and we've been getting the backwash. The critters got spooked. I bet every house around us for miles had some kind of fish or frog flopping on their doorstep this week.”

Ignoring the protests of her body, she stood and walked to the window. They were still there. Swollen, slick specks bobbing above the shallow water that had crept toward the back door. “How did they drown?”

Callum shrugged and left the room. “I'm running you a bath, okay? What do you want, lavender or citrus?”

She parted her robe and looked down at the hard bulge of her belly, her skin irritated from the terrycloth. “I shouldn't have baths,” she called back. “It can harm the baby.”

The water turned off, the sound replaced by the bathtub draining. “How can I relax you? Anything you want.”

She felt restless. With sunlight warming her skin, she found it hard to remember why she'd placed so much stock in her mother's warning that she couldn't leave the swamp. A test was in order, and even though the thought of boarding a boat and running the motor straight into the Atchafalaya and beyond drove a spearing ache into her gut, she ignored it. “I want to get out of here for a bit.”

His face brightened, the corners of his mouth fluttering toward a smile. “Sure. I can make reservations for dinner in town. Any preference?”

She shook her head. “No. Let's go for a walk or something.”

“The ground's too soggy right now. I don't want you to slip.”

“I'll hold on to you.” The need to flee was almost physical, a slingshot trembling for release. “Look, you asked. This will relax me.” He came to stand beside her, his eyes sunken and dark. Each time she'd roused from her fever he'd been there, watching her. “You look tired. More tired than I've ever seen you,” she said, running her hand through his beard. The white speckles had turned to full strands.

“I've been worried.” He nuzzled his chin against her palm, then looked past her. “Scratch worried. Angry, maybe. Terrified, definitely. I've been having nightmares to set your hair on end. But Hannah, if there's something wrong, you have to tell me. You have to promise me.”

How could she bring him into her world? He'd grown up in the light of the easily explainable, a place where the laws and medicine of men could tend to most harms. She thought of Mae, her poor neck strained, her face contorted by fear. Mae had died afraid, Hannah suddenly realized.

She couldn't help but feel that there would be more loss to come, but she knew that the ultimate loss, the one she wouldn't be able to bear, was him. Her selfishness dripped bitter down her throat even as she said the words, “I promise,” her eyes unflinching.

She used the clause from childhood, the chant of
cross my heart
and crossed her fingers behind her back like a baseball sign. It was an old trick, done by looking at the valley between the eyes. “A walk will do us both good.”

“I'll get your shoes,” he said.

Hannah watched him go, then turned back to the window. The frogs lay on the ground below like an offering. From this high, Hannah could see what Callum had not. They were lined up in a watchful perimeter around the house.

Hannah struggled with her swollen, water-logged ankles, and it was an effort to keep up with Callum.

“It's true,” he was saying, “everything's stranger on this little patch of swamp.”

Hannah hooked her hand around Callum's arm. “It's hard for me to imagine how it looks from the outside. People can get used to anything, if it's all they know. I think I'd find it stranger in a city, around all that concrete with greenery struggling to break through. I'd find the noise distracting.”

“You should've heard the racket that damn storm made, breaking into our septic system. I used to think I was enough of a man's man, enough that my father didn't worry too much when I turned to music,” Callum said, plucking at his light sweater. “But it hurts my pride to say I'm not sure I know how to fix it. There's sludge coming through by the fistful. A roughed-up carp bubbled up when I flushed the toilet the other day and Graydon lost his damn mind. He's still got some kitten in him.”

“I would've liked to see that. Well, as appealing as a swamp sludge bath sounds, you should just hire someone to fix it up,” Hannah said, focusing all her attention on stepping between the puddles. The land sagged with rain.

“I liked fixing up the windows, though, and I was thinking we could put in some stained glass to fix the one that broke. Add some character to the place.”

Hannah snorted. “It doesn't have enough character for you?”

“It's a great old house. But we could really make something of it, once we're done getting the baby's room ready. What do you think of the room with the bay windows, the one that used to be yours? It'd need a few quick coats of paint and maybe some new netting on the windows.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “It would add to its resale value.”

Hannah stopped and stretched, both hands digging into her lower back. The symmetry was fitting: her room, where she'd wept and laughed and even tentatively masturbated for the first time, passed over to the baby. His last comment she doggedly ignored, even though she'd been expecting it. Callum knew normalcy. Of course he would want to return to it someday.

“Isn't it kind of big for a baby's room? I've been led to believe they come out small.”

Callum retraced his steps, and pecked her ear with dry kisses. “The whole house is kind of big. We have more space than we know what to do with, and with the money we'd make from the sale—”

“You know it was Christobelle's house originally?” Hannah said, moving her head away.

“No shit?”

“She settled here when the movement was in its infancy. I guess the congregation was more manageable then.”

“You mean to tell me there were services in that house? Real-life ghost conjurings?”

Hannah cringed into the sun and thought of the living room's tall windows pouring light into the slack mouths of men. “I don't know how real-life any of it is.”