Cauchemar (25 page)

Hannah lay on her stomach, looking in through the basement window. The smoke parted enough to show her Jacob. Half of his hair was gone, the remainder singed and smoking. The fire was a creature, hissing and spitting through the house. Hannah could hear it behind him, each crackle signaling another inch gained. It wailed and whistled like an indiscriminate banshee around them.

Jacob fixed one inconsolable eye on her. Its twin was roasted, swollen like a termite mound. Between lips charred to the gums, a pink tongue appeared. It stretched out and forked as Hannah watched. “You,” he hissed.

“Is someone down there?” Sarah Anne's voice was filled with alarm. The shock was wearing off.

“Sarah,” he wailed again, and Hannah began to close the window.

“What are you doing?” Sarah Anne screamed, lashing at Hannah's arms. She struck Hannah's head, beat at her back.

“It's not him,” Hannah yelled.

“Jacob!” Sarah Anne threw herself over Hannah's body and reached her arms through the window. “Hold on to me!”

Hannah swore as she tried to fight the girl off, but her weight, bird-like minutes before, was suddenly immobilizing.

“That's right, little bear,” Sarah Anne said, her voice calmer. “Climb onto the chair and …” The girl trailed off with a quivering exhalation. “Oh God, Jacob. Okay, take my hand.”

Hannah felt Sarah Anne's body jerk above her, hauled forward with incredible force. “Not so hard, Jacob.” Her voice had changed, now tremulous with fear. Then she screamed.

Hannah squirmed out from under Sarah Anne's body just as it almost disappeared through the window. She caught Sarah Anne's feet and pulled, the tendons in her arms feeling as if they might snap.

Over Sarah Anne's blonde halo, she saw Jacob, scorched and grinning. Beyond that, orange flames were rushing like waves toward the open air. Hannah gritted her teeth and locked her elbows. Some part of her listened for sirens, for cries, but the swamp was silent as a padded room that absorbed all commotion.

Jacob cried out, and Hannah saw Sarah Anne lashing her nails over his ruined skin. He backed away but still held firmly to one of her arms. His features, what remained of them, were steeped in surprise. “Sarah,” he whispered, just as the fire began to lick him.

Hannah pressed her mouth against her arm and tried to stifle her gasping breaths. Jacob was thrashing his body, dancing like a crazed marionette, to escape the fire. But then it crowned his head, spread over his face in an avalanche.

Hannah was paralyzed by the sight. It took Sarah Anne's piercing screams for her to realize that Jacob was still clutching the girl's arm. She watched the flames tiptoe across Sarah Anne's beautiful, porcelain arm as if it were a dream. Hannah heard Jacob beat his fist or head against something, and heard him roar as Sarah Anne shook free. She saw Sarah Anne's pleading look as she cradled her bubbling flesh, and the only urgency she felt flashed as a single word in her mind.
Run.

So she did.

The baby's kicking woke Hannah, and she was surprised to find herself in bed. She vaguely remembered Callum leading her upstairs the night before. At first light, she'd walked the perimeter of the house, expecting shattered skulls from the birds' suicides the night before, but the grass held only the desiccated remnants of fallen cicadas. Their bodies would crunch underfoot for weeks to come.

“Martha gave me a talking-to,” Callum admitted as he presented her with a tray of English muffins aglow with honey. “She said I'm being, and I quote, a proper jackass. That I'm not to leave your side until we hear that baby screaming.”

Hannah finger-painted a child's sun with the runoff honey, searching herself for any hint of appetite. There was none. Still, she forced herself to take a bite, telling herself it was for the baby.

“To that end,” Callum continued, “I've taken an official leave of absence from the boat. I plan to be at your beck and call for the next month.”

“It'd be nice to focus on fixing the house for a while. If an alligator decided to set his sights on us, he could just wiggle through any old hole in the foundation.” Hannah looked away as she thought of something else that could worm its way in, something white skinned and clawed. Maybe something was already inside.

“I was thinking we could put a moratorium on the repairs for now. It might be smart to start thinking about the move instead.” His voice sounded casual, but Hannah knew the words were calculated.

“We'd need to fix it up before trying to sell it anyways, wouldn't we?”

Callum sighed at her question and Hannah patted his hand.

“Never mind. We'll talk about it later.” She was afraid to leave. She was afraid to stay.

In the afternoons, when Callum's increasingly discordant notes sounded from upstairs, she sometimes sunk to the floor in the kitchen with a knife squeezed between her hands, watching the back door and the holes in the walls, her tired eyes almost tricking her into believing that something was about to burst in from the other side. She collected sun-dried rocks and pebbles and arranged them in a circle beneath their bed.

In the evenings, as they lay twisted together like pretzels on the couch, she watched Callum. Tracking his weight loss from day to day, and watching the shaking of his hands.

At night, she listened, creating an inventory of sounds. Itemizing rustles. Each unexplained sound was the shape of her fear climbing the stairs, its muscled, scaled tail strong enough to hold down a grown man. Its jaw big enough to close around her belly and squeeze as though popping a grape.

Eventually, the power of Martha's admonishments faded, and Callum took to the water again. At first, she studied the unfinished recipes, scrawls in books that she'd found in a slender wooden box behind the fridge. One word, one name, was repeated and invoked:
Elegba
. Hannah wondered if it was a spice, or the name of a dish, but Mae had jotted down what seemed like pleas in which she called it the owner of the crossroads. The remover of obstacles.

Beside the incantations that bore his name, Mae had sketched two lines crossing in an X. At first, Hannah mistook it for a cross, but then remembered James's words. “The house is a crossroads,” she whispered to herself. Then, with a trembling hand, she lifted her dress and looked with horror at the lines that still remained on her belly. Could it be that her mother had meant to protect her? Then came a more troubling thought. Maybe she herself was the crossroads. Maybe she had been all along.

Hannah's practiced, blissful smile ushered Callum out the door. She waited until the sound of his motor faded before wrapping her sweater around her ever-growing body. Then, almost as an afterthought, she grabbed a knife. Hannah wondered if a prayer would be appropriate, but those she'd learned in Sunday school seemed to belong to a world that no longer applied to her. “Protect me,” she said instead, with a conviction that seemed to rise from a part of her she didn't know existed. “Father of the crossroads.”

She walked carefully up the hill, trying to stick to known paths. When she arrived at the road, she sped up. She hoped that Callum wouldn't return early. She hoped that the feeling surging through her, whether courage or desperation, wouldn't fail her.

She heard a car up the street and she moved to the side of the road, trying not to step too far into the shadows of the trees. The car slowed and pulled up beside her. The door opened and a man's emotionless voice said, “Get in.”

Hannah smiled tightly and clutched the cloth bag that housed the knife. “I'm alright, thank you.” She risked a glance at the shadowed face behind the wheel.

“She sent me.”

Hannah wasn't surprised. She searched the trees, weighing her options, then slid into the front seat.

The man gunned the engine and she reclined against the headrest, watching the road pass by in a blur, grateful for the stern silence of Christobelle's man.

Hannah was led past the barn to a squat, single-floor structure with small windows. The man stood to the side when they reached the front door and nodded his head. Inside, the house looked like little more than an oppressive single room. Dark red wallpaper seemed to peel before Hannah's eyes to show the cracked plaster underneath. Candles were lined up at the base of the wall and along the narrow shelves of polished-wood bookcases.

Christobelle sat on a cushion in the center, her legs crossed. Her arms were bare, her skirts hoisted high over her thighs. She gripped a fat red candle between her legs. The wax dripped and thickened on her arm, a growing sore.

“She comes again,” Christobelle said.

Hannah lowered herself slowly into a rickety Queen Anne chair. “What is this place?”

“This is my home. Modest, I know, but more than enough. It's the living that matter, not the dead wood below their feet.” Christobelle opened her eyes. “You're hurt,” she said, her eyes lingering on Hannah's right wrist, then smiling slightly as she took in the bag that held the knife. “And perhaps you intend to cause hurt?”

“It's nothing. An accident,” Hannah said, ignoring the question. The baby had started squirming as soon as she'd entered the room. It was paddling frantically now, sending out uncoordinated frog kicks. She breathed through the pain and tried to prepare her words. There was a block inside her, even now that she'd come. “I need your help.”

Christobelle ran her thumb over the flickering candle. “Callum,” she said simply.

“What's happening to him?” Hannah asked. Her voice was tinny, pleading.

The gaunt hollows of Christobelle's body shifted in the candlelight. “If he's ill, he should consult a doctor,” Christobelle answered. “It would seem that you're immune to my brand of medicine.”

“What did you give me that day?” Hannah asked, prompted by only the weakest curiosity. She no longer needed an answer.

“A solution, child. And also a test.”

“You tried to abort my baby.” It was the first time she'd voiced her thoughts, and they startled her. “What kind of solution is that? What kind of test?”

Christobelle licked her finger and snuffed the flame. “Those are harsh words. Some would say that it is not a life yet. You are. There is a hierarchy of need that you, in your current state, are blind to. As for the test … mother and child are well, as I suspected.” Hannah noticed a cherubic young man sitting in a crushed velvet armchair behind her, slack jawed. He seemed to be sleeping although his fingers flexed desperately over the chair's arms. “That's Timothy. He's new to our flock.”

“I can tell.” His body was taut with the youth that would leave him soon enough.

“You look tired, child. I can have someone cook something for you.”

As Christobelle spoke, Hannah felt herself sway, her whole body growing heavier. There was a rhythm running through the room. “Don't trouble yourself. I know poison can't come cheaply.”

Christobelle's mouth tightened.

“Something's wrong with him. With Callum. It's like he's fading a bit more each day. Mother,” Hannah said, her voice breaking. The smoke from the candles was viscous in her lungs, coiling in a veil over her eyes. “Tell me.”