The Birthing House Read online

  ‘I think that is the best way. Don’t you?’

  ‘Will you leave me alone now?’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘I need to be alone.’

  He stood in the baby’s room and listened to her crying through the wall.

  Later the same night, after she woke up and he fetched her another glass of water, she seemed to have improved physically but lost something mentally. She was drained, sinking into this quicksand he had accumulated for her.

  ‘Do you have a plan?’ she said.

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘Someone’s going to find him, if they haven’t already.’

  ‘You said he lives alone,’ Conrad said. ‘Right?’

  ‘How long has he . . .’ She could not finish.

  ‘A day and a half,’ Conrad said. ‘If they found him, they’d be here by now. We need to get our story straight.’

  ‘Our story? Are we going to jail? Are they going to take my baby?’

  ‘Hey, hey. Easy. I would never allow that.’

  She was crying again, without even changing her expression. This frightened him more than if she had been sobbing.

  ‘Nadia, we can do this. If you still want me, I will see it through to the end.’

  ‘Your wife is pregnant. Don’t act like a hero when all you want is to throw your life away, too.’ She coughed. ‘My parents are coming home in two days and then this shit is going to be the next local scandal. If you want to help me, it’s time to make it real.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  ‘Maybe I’m being punished. Do you think I’m one of them, too? One of the women who runs away but keeps coming back?’

  ‘Like the women in the photo?’ he said.

  ‘Like the women with nowhere else to go.’

  ‘No.’ But it had crossed his mind.

  ‘Do you think if we stay -’ she coughed ‘- it can be different this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about Eddie?’

  ‘Eddie let you down. I will never let you down.’

  He held her, and watched her cry until she fell asleep.

  When he woke later he had no idea if it was the same night or the next night, but it was still very much night. The room was pitch-black. Nadia was sitting up in bed, staring at the wall. She was speaking to someone. Repeating something.

  ‘. . . a young girl’s heart’, he heard her say.

  Conrad turned on a lamp. ‘What? Nadia?’

  Nothing in her expression had changed, but her eyes were different. Flat. Dead. And when she spoke, her voice came out the same way, as if under someone or something else’s influence. The voice was jilted, old and sore.

  ‘Thread through a needle cannot mend a young girl’s heart.’

  30

  Conrad moved around the bed to be in front of her, to see if she could see him. She stared right through him. She was flesh and bones - alive, but not aware.

  ‘What does that mean, Nadia?’

  ‘Thread through a needle cannot mend a young girl’s heart.’

  She had not blinked. Her eyes were watery, their pupils big as nickels.

  ‘Nadia, can you hear me?’

  She did not respond.

  ‘What happened? Is there someone here in the house?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Is there something in the house?’

  He moved from the bed to the chair, afraid to be close to her.

  ‘Nadia, what thread through a needle? What’s that?’

  Her head rotated slowly, stiffly, her chin tucked and her eyes averted. It was not her voice that answered. Her words came awkwardly, her sentences strung out.

  ‘Try take ohmma bay-bay way.’

  ‘Who?’ He went rigid in his chair. ‘Who took all your baby away?’

  ‘Man.’

  ‘Man? What man?’ He heard Roddy’s voice in his head, the reference to ‘the good doctor’. ‘Do you mean the doctor? The doctor who lived here?’

  ‘Was no docca no mine what he say.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘First he take all-ma mothers and women runsaway. Then she growed up and he took the insides away. Then he bury’m others and took ’em behbee away.’

  Conrad saw sketches of the house, the unsmiling women on the porch. His scalp began to crawl. He sat up straight and seriously considered bolting from the room, the house. But he couldn’t just leave her here.

  ‘Who are you? Where’s Nadia?’

  ‘Runsaway.’

  ‘Nadia ran away?’

  ‘Nah-dee run . . . away.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Nadia, are you Nadia, or are you telling Nadia to run away?’

  ‘All-ma.’

  ‘All ma? All mothers? Are you someone’s mother?’

  ‘All-ma not runsaway. All-ma stay.’

  Then he understood. Not all-ma. Alma. A name. Someone named Alma was speaking through Nadia. Where had he heard this before? Something from the past week. Then he knew. The woman in the room. She had been rocking her arms. Ohhmma take care of behbee . . .

  Oh. Holy. Fuck. This was not right.

  ‘You are Alma? Alma, what about Nadia?’

  ‘Nah-dee not fit. Nah-dee betray.’

  ‘What? Why - how did Nadia betray Alma?’

  ‘All-mommas give a life . . . if she wan haff a life.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To haff a life she must gif a life. Life . . . circle begins and end on-on-on same ssss-sphere. In betwee the juuur-nee from one side t’other, circle provides. For we each owes a life.’

  ‘No.’ He did not like the sound of that, or any of it. She sounded like Greer Laski, like an idiot child. ‘Nadia must stay. Alma cannot stay.’

  ‘Once long time house full of womans and behbees. But long time now circle . . . circle of this houses belong only t’Alma.’

  ‘This house belongs to me,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you to stay, Alma. I want Nadia to stay.’ But he was too shaken to say this with any real force or conviction.

  ‘Alma not runsaway.’ Her lips were trembling, sneering. ‘Alma stay.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Alma tur . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alma turn.’

  ‘Alma turn for what?’

  Alma - Nadia - looked up at him, her lips pulled back in a sickening and false grin. ‘Docca no! Alma behbee no take away,’ she said. ‘Docca never never never taken Alma behbee away!’

  Her eyes were black, murderous. Her hand lifted slowly from her side and hovered in the air between them. He leaned back. She reached out until her fingertips began to tickle his throat.

  Conrad slapped her face. It had been building inside and then his hand just moved. Immediately Nadia and the thing inside her recoiled, started blinking and coughing, and then she was crying. Softly, then louder, then softly.

  ‘Nadia? Nadia, wake up. Wake up, wake up—’

  ‘Chessie behbee mine,’ the girl croaked in Alma’s voice. Then her voice changed through her next words, reverting to Nadia’s softer tone. ‘No one, no, I won’t let them take my baby away.’

  ‘I know, it’s okay, Nadia, we’re okay,’ he said. Nadia was back, shivering all over, cold when he put his hands on her arms. Maybe it was a nightmare. Maybe she had been talking in her sleep. But he didn’t believe that. He had an idea who Alma was. He’d seen her before. Touched her . . .

  He held her until her breathing slowed and she slumped over, going limp in his arms. He rested her back on the pillows. He was too stunned to think through their situation, and eventually he gave up the fight and fell asleep.

  It was not restful or lasting.

  ‘Conrad. Conrad, wake up!’ She was hissing like an old woman.

  ‘Uhn . . . hm.’

  ‘Someone’s here.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He had been so far down, where there are no dreams at all. He just wanted to sleep forever. ‘Is jus’ Steve . . . took care him.’

&
nbsp; She shook him hard. ‘Conrad! Someone was here.’

  He came around again. ‘At the door?’

  ‘No.’ Nadia clutched the skin over his ribs, pinching into him. ‘She was here. Not sixty seconds ago. In the room. Standing at the foot of the bed.’

  ‘Nadia, don’t.’ Now he was awake. He sat up and faced her in the dark and saw the whites of her eyes. She made a tiny whining sound, like Alice when she was waiting to be let out into the backyard. ‘You were dreaming. I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘No. Conrad, no.’ He could feel the dry heat of her breath on his ear. ‘Same as the one in the window. She was tall, with dark black hair. She was wearing black clothes and her skin was white. When she moved - oh, God. She just stood there staring at me. I could - oh, Jesus, I heard her neck cracking in the dark.’

  Conrad swallowed. ‘How long?’

  ‘She was there when I opened my eyes. I’ve been frozen waiting for her to leave for almost an hour.’

  ‘Did you see her leave?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you hear her leave?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you didn’t hear her . . . her footsteps . . . she’s not real, is she?’

  Nadia pointed to the foot of the bed. ‘There.’

  He could not see past the frame where their feet had piled up the blankets, kicking them off in the heat. He sat forward on his knees, one hand lingering on the girl as he focused on the shape. A low, guttural sound rose from the end of the bed, followed by two, then three faint clicks on the wood floor.

  ‘No—’ Conrad lunged forward. ‘Leave us alone!’

  Nadia turned the switch on the lamp and screamed.

  The dark shape lunged up, then scrabbled back, growling. Conrad fell on to his stomach. Alice barked at the two of them, as startled as they were. Nadia scrambled out of bed and fell to the floor. Alice panicked and fled the room.

  ‘Stop it!’ Conrad said. ‘It’s just Alice.’ The adrenaline washed away, leaving a tired anger behind. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I can’t take this.’ Her knees were tucked into her chest, one leg sideways. Sitting in the corner, she appeared at that moment like an ugly, misbehaving child and he barely suppressed the urge to smack her again for scaring him.

  ‘God damn it, Nadia.’

  ‘I saw her.’

  ‘You had a bad dream.’ He forced himself to lower his voice, lest he raise Steve Bartholomew again. ‘You thought you saw something, and you did. My dog, Alice, who is now scared shit-less on top of being cut to hell. So please. Before the police decide to lock us both up.’

  But Nadia was still shaking her head. ‘No. There was a woman.’

  Conrad stared at her, telling himself that there must be another explanation, even though he knew it was a lie.

  ‘I’m sorry. Get back in bed. I need to check your bandages.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter—’

  ‘Then what the fuck is that?’ Her arm shot out, pointing.

  ‘What? I don’t—’

  He walked to the doorway.

  It was lying on the floor, center to the doorframe as if it had been delivered. Of course he recognized it; it had come from his kitchen. He picked up the knife. It was the long serrated one, the thin blade that came to an almost needle-like point made for cutting fish. Tied to the handle was a thin yellow ribbon laced through a scrap of yellow paper.

  On the yellow paper, in a fine and femininely looped script, four words in black ink . . .

  other mother must go

  31

  ‘It’s your wife,’ Nadia said. ‘She came home. I need to leave.’

  He was still holding the knife, reading the four words over and over. Jo’s handwriting? He didn’t think so, but it still made him feel sick just holding it. He set the knife on the dresser, wishing for it to disappear. Nadia had gotten to her feet and was bent over in pain. He knew that if she had the strength she would have bolted.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ He rushed to her side and tried to maneuver her back into bed. ‘Not in the middle of the night. Let’s think about this.’

  ‘I need to go home.’ But she sat down, winced, and leaned back into the bank of pillows he was arranging for her.

  ‘It’s not Jo,’ he said. ‘Why would Jo do this?’

  ‘What do you mean, why? Because she’s trying to send us a message? Because she’s crazy? How should I know, she’s your wife!’

  ‘No, no. Jo is not the kind of woman to play tricks. I’m not saying she doesn’t have a temper. And, yes, if she saw us here, if she came home and found us . . . convalescing together, she would be upset. She would be very fucking upset.’

  ‘Oh my God. Are you trying to make me lose my shit? This is so wrong. Please take me home.’

  ‘I’m just saying, Jo wouldn’t be creeping around at night, watching us. She would be screaming her head off. And the dogs. No way would she be able to get within half a block of the house without the dogs going wild. They haven’t seen her in a month. No. Uh-uh. It’s not Jo. This is something else.’

  Nadia gathered herself up, trying to maintain. ‘When was the last time you talked to her?’

  ‘Just yester—’ It seemed like yesterday, but the last time they had actually spoken was at least three . . . no, at least four or five days ago, before the incident with the dogs and the mirrors.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I can’t believe this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t remember the last time I talked to my wife.’

  ‘So, there you go. Michigan is like twelve hours by car and an hour by plane. She could have come home, maybe seen something strange and decided to wait and see. She could be watching us right now, Conrad!’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘You’re going to hurt yourself.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ she said, hiccupping.

  ‘Nadia, it’s not Jo. Where would she be staying? The Dairyland Motel up the street? This isn’t some murder mystery with stakeouts and the jealous wife. That’s crazy.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because it sort of feels like it.’

  ‘I know her. Trust me.’

  ‘Maybe you’re not telling me everything.’

  ‘Nadia, for all I know you put the knife there.’

  ‘What? Why would I do that? How would I even—-’

  ‘You were talking in your sleep. Completely out of it.’ He dared not tell her about the ‘conversation’ he had with Alma. For one, he was trying not to believe it had actually happened. For another, telling Nadia she had been invaded by a spirit that wanted her to ‘give a life to have a life’ would only confirm her worst nightmares and send her jumping out the window.

  ‘So, what are you saying? You think I’m a total psycho now?’

  ‘No. Just . . . maybe we don’t know everything we’re doing here.’

  ‘How do I know you weren’t the one who brought the knife back? And how would I know where you keep your knives, anyway?

  Conrad frowned, not at all appreciating having the tables turned. ‘You think I’m part of this? I’m trying to help you, not scare you away.’ He grabbed the knife off the dresser. ‘For all we know, Laski’s wife’s gone off the deep end and come back to scare both of us. Now, she was fucking nuts.’

  ‘Mrs Laski is not a tall woman with black hair. Your wife is.’

  He had no response for that. He headed for the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To search the house.’

  ‘No way. You cannot leave me here.’

  ‘Nadia, I specifically remember locking the doors, twice. If someone broke in, I’ll know.’

  ‘What if she didn’t break in?’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I said. What if it’s . . . her?’

  He knew, but he didn’t want the girl to believe it, too. ‘I didn’t see anyone in the library.’

  She watched him.
‘You’re lying. You’ve seen her, too.’

  ‘If it was her, then you don’t have to worry.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have to say it now? Okay, because she’s a ghost.’

  ‘A ghost,’ Nadia said.

  ‘Sure, why not? And who cares, because what can a ghost do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nadia said. ‘This one seems to have written a note and dropped a knife on the floor.’

  She said this almost flippantly, but the notion rocked him. Alma had taken control of Nadia long enough to speak in her tongue. Could she have come back and sent the girl to fetch the knife? To write a note? Warning herself - Nadia, the other mother - to go away?

  If they stayed another night, would Alma command Nadia to take her own life? Or his?

  He rubbed his eyes, hard. ‘I have to check the house.’

  ‘You better come back soon.’

  ‘I will. I promise, no one’s going to hurt you.’

  He moved around the stairs, through the library. ‘Alice, Luther,’ he called. ‘Come on, doggies.’

  The sound of their nails clicking on the wooden floor echoed softly up the butler stairs. He paused in the back hall, listening. Somewhere a door creaked. He thought that must have been Nadia, deciding she would be safer with the bedroom door closed.

  All three doors were locked.

  The dogs were on the couch. Alice raised her head when he entered the room, giving him that Are you going to feed me now? look. Luther yawned and stretched his back, producing a disturbingly human-sounding fart. If they were still in the living room, what was with the clicking? Had they walked into the kitchen, then gone back to the couch?

  He left the dogs and set the knife down on the kitchen table, glancing at the note one last time. He went to the fridge and poured a tall glass of iced tea, letting it drip down the hollow of his throat while he stood over the sink.

  The knife was just about the worst kind of unsettling. He did not believe Jo had gone that far off the rails. But another part of him, the part that had read enough detective novels to question motive, wondered if it wasn’t possible. The enraged wife thing was an obvious angle. The problem was, it didn’t feel like Jo.