The Birthing House Read online

  He was a coward. He failed. He ran away. I never ran away. I won’t ever run away. Because if the world can take my child and my family, is it not possible that same world can deliver me another?

  This is why I chose this house. This is why I am here. Now I have found you, Nadia. I have been dying since that night. But I’m here to take care of you.

  This is a beginning.

  I understand why you are crying, but you should stop that now, Nadia. And trying to pull away. Now that you know my story, you must understand why I will never, never let you leave.

  33

  He waited in the silent room for her response, a judgment. Now that it had been told, a stab of regret went through him. What had he done? What must she think of him now? Telling her had been like going back there with Holly, a little bit. Okay, a lot. He could not really be sure what he had said and what he had seen only in his head. When another minute of silence passed, he suspected she had fallen asleep. Then a violent, full-body twitch seemed to confirm this, but no. She was awake. Whatever she’d heard, she’d heard enough.

  ‘Conrad, I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For you.’ Her voice had changed yet again. Or maybe he had been hearing Holly’s high voice and forgotten Nadia’s flatter tone. ‘But I don’t think we should do this. I want . . . I need to talk to my mom.’ She hitched a few times. He could hear the tears running down her cheeks, patting the pillow.

  He coughed. ‘Aren’t we a little past parents now?’

  ‘We can talk to them. They’re going to find out, anyway.’ She paused, and he let his silence tell her what he thought about that idea. ‘I’m hurt. Maybe when things calm down—’

  ‘The baby is home, where he should be. And as long as we take care of the baby we’ll be safe.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘We need to make amends and do it right this time, Nadia. There is no other way.’

  He counted seventeen heartbeats before she said, ‘What did you find downstairs?’

  ‘We’re being tested. But we’re going to be good now.’

  ‘Tell me. I know you saw something. It’s making you confused. ’

  He grabbed her hand and squeezed. ‘We’re healing. This is a new life between us. This life. And this life between us.’ He rested his other hand at the top of her belly to see that she understood. She stared at him, eyes glassy. ‘I just want to be a good father. Will you let me?’

  She rolled over on her side, her back to him.

  He slid under the blanket and pressed against her. His left arm fell over her hip, his fingers spread in a fan, the palm resting on her soft belly above the wound. She tensed.

  ‘I’ll take care of you,’ he said.

  Her breathing slowed.

  ‘You can choose,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Who is the father of your child.’

  She did not answer and he had to fight the sleep pulling him down.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You.’

  Later, early in the morning, Conrad dreamed of three gray women cloaked in black. They bowed their heads when they entered the room, following orders from another, darker presence that lorded over the proceedings. In the dream he felt the bed shift as the zeks carried her away to a place he was not allowed. He tried to scream but his muscles were frozen by her cool shape enveloping and pressing him to the bed until it was safe to let go.

  When he woke just past noon the room was bright and Nadia was gone.

  34

  ‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’ Gail Grum was placing souvenir bottles of barbecue sauce on the table in a neat little row, already sensing the need to restore order.

  He made a face of recollection, and his face was convincing, because he did not know. Conrad had spent yesterday - the long day that followed the morning Nadia had vanished - catching up on chores, cleaning the gutters he had neglected for the past ten days. He had called Jo half a dozen times, but still she was not answering. He thought of calling the police, but that would open a line of questions he was not prepared to answer. Having Nadia or Jo by his side would give him someone to lean on when the questions came down - inviting more on his own was unthinkable. He waited for the phone to ring all night, and he could not remember sleeping. He had been frantically washing dishes and sweeping the floor when he realized the sun was rising. He had seen their car arrive just after noon, and went to greet them with the news.

  Now, sitting in the kitchen with Gail while Big John unpacked the car, Conrad was not as nervous as he had imagined he would be. He was concerned, even frightened. But he had no answers, and acted as such.

  ‘Last time I spoke with her? Hard to say, Gail. I think . . . today’s Wednesday?’

  ‘It’s Friday, Conrad. Are you all right? You look like hell.’

  Did she suspect him of something? Or was this just part of the deal when you’ve come home to find your daughter missing?

  ‘Oh, I guess I’m not, Gail. I meant to call, but I didn’t want to worry you.’ Gail tensed. ‘It’s Jo. She’s left the training grounds. They don’t know where she is. A man mentioned health issues.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Gail put one shaky hand to her cheek. ‘She’s missing?’

  ‘She could be home any day now. Or not. We, uhm, we’ve been fighting.’

  ‘Have you called someone? Friends? Family?’

  ‘I appreciate your concern, Gail. But let me worry about that. I don’t want to burden you two on top of this other thing.’

  ‘Other thing?’

  ‘Nadia. I didn’t really think she’s missing, you know. I mean, she was still talking to Eddie. I heard her on the phone a few times. She didn’t share her plans with me.’

  ‘Nadia doesn’t make plans. That’s the whole problem.’

  ‘She’s a smart kid, though. Tough. We had some nice conversations. ’

  Gail frowned. ‘Conrad. I’m sorry. I’m still a little lagged from the trip. But is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did she go to a friend’s and ask you not to tell us? I understand - I encouraged her to talk to you, in fact. But it’s not like her not to call or leave a note, even when we’re fighting.’

  ‘As I said, I was a bit wrapped up in my own problems. But that’s not the whole truth, Gail. Nadia told me she was planning on running away. She asked me to drive her to the airport.’

  ‘Running - the airport!’ Gail had forgotten about the barbecue sauce.

  ‘I know, hold on. I talked her out of it at the time. But she said she wanted to go to Seattle.’

  ‘Who does she know in Seattle?’

  ‘I was going to ask you. I thought maybe you had family there.’

  Gail dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and dropped her face into her hands. ‘Our family. Is in Wisconsin!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Conrad jumped at the father’s voice. Big John Grum was standing at the kitchen’s entrance.

  ‘Nadia’s run away again,’ Gail said, bursting into tears. ‘Welcome home.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Conrad placed the check for four hundred dollars on the table. ‘I didn’t do enough to deserve this. Let me know if I can help.’

  Gail was still staring at the check when Big John patted Conrad on the back and walked him out.

  He was headed for the grocery store with visions of iced tea waterfalls in his head when a new thought nearly drove him off the road.

  There is a dead baby in my house.

  Inside, he ran past the dogs, up the stairs and into the guest room. Sickened by the thought of the lifeless, skeletal form - and by the spell that had caused him to leave it there - he flung the door open and latched on to the rails of the newly assembled crib.

  The crib was empty.

  He forgot about going to the store, about food, about sustaining the illusion of normalcy. He simply walked down the stairs and fell on to the couch. His heart beat faster and harder. He consider
ed the angles, finding no solace. Either he was imagining things or the house was haunted - and those could be two extensions of the same phenomenon. Whether the house contained spirits, other environmental conditions acting upon his perceptions, or his mind was simply playing tricks on him was at this point a discussion for academics. People who were not involved. They boiled down to the same thing - he could no longer trust his eyes, ears or thoughts. Not while under this roof.

  Still, he tried. The answer was in here somewhere. He was missing something, something vital. A ghost was something perceived. He needed evidence.

  Time was running out. He could run. Just put the dogs in the car and drive away. Withdraw his inheritance and disappear to Canada. Would she follow him to a cabin in the woods? Would she emerge from his nightmares under any roof, not just this one?

  No, he had to stay because he had to know. And because one of them would need a father.

  If the tiny skeleton had been real (as real as the knife, the note) and his house was not haunted, then someone had been here. Someone could be here still, alive. Fucking with him. Jo? Whoever did this had to be insane, a broken soul gone way, way over to the other side of everyday criminal behavior. The sounds, the visions of the woman in the house, the absolute inhumanity required to exhume and deliver a dead child into another man’s home? That wasn’t Jo. He did not believe his wife insane.

  I got news for you, kid, Leon Laski had said. A haunting is just history roused from her sleep. Any house can be haunted, even a new one. Know why? Because what makes ’em haunted ain’t just in the walls and the floors and the dark rooms at night. It’s in us. All the pity and rage and sadness and hot blood we carry around. The house might be where it lives, but the human heart is the key. We run the risk of letting the fair maiden out for one more dance every time we hang our hat.

  So it’s me? You think I’m nuts? Conrad had responded.

  I didn’t say that. I said what makes ’em haunted ain’t just in the walls. Which led him back where he started. As much as he wanted to, he no longer understood his own motivations, and that was a circular thought best left unexamined.

  Listen to the woman of the house. Be a man, but keep your pecker in your pocket unless you’re planning on putting it to righteous use. And listen to the woman of the house.

  Maybe he was losing his mind. And maybe before losing his mind the void in his marriage and the lust in his heart had set the rest of it in motion. He’d been caught trying to put his pecker to use. The events of the past few weeks had been a lot of things, but none of them were righteous.

  Suppose Laski’s fair maiden was real. Had he meant the woman of this house? Alma? Was he to stay and learn what she wanted? She had obviously come back for her child, or a child. Was he to remain and do her bidding, to deliver her another? Was that righteous?

  Or had Laski been selling a simpler wisdom, some marriage survival tip about deferring to the wife? Maybe in this version Jo was the fair maiden. Mrs Laski had spoken of this blessed house, and how God always provided her with more children - despite their lost ones. Was Leon Laski blind to the rest? Or did he just know the secret to keeping the ghosts at bay? Refrain from original sin and do right by your creator, except when your wife starts cooing for another child to keep her warm on those cold winter nights?

  Maybe the fair maiden was both. Maybe Jo and Alma were two sides of the same coin. Maybe Alma was using Jo to show him a version of herself he would recognize, and one day embrace.

  He was willing to be righteous, to embrace the woman of the house.

  But first she had to come back.

  He waited for all of the women to come back, but mostly he waited for her.

  He moved to the bedroom, then the library. This was the place he had first seen her. This was the nexus of the house, the seat of her longing.

  He sat. He waited through the evening and into the night.

  His back ached. His legs were stiff. He was dizzy from lack of food. He wanted a glass of iced tea, it seemed, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. But he dared not go for it. That would require a trip to the kitchen, and anything could happen while he was away. She might show herself.

  Worse, despite his thirst, he needed to take a piss. As soon as the thought was there, it would not go away. He needed to go now.

  He glanced at the window where her reflection had been, and stole away from the library. It was only a few short steps to the bathroom, and he flicked the light on as he entered. He sighed over the bowl, and flushed. He turned back to the door, but the window facing the backyard caught his eye, and he stopped.

  How many nights had it been since he’d seen his fair maiden out back, walking that path to the garden? The night he’d run outside, and wound up on Nadia’s porch? He could not remember, but by the time he stopped trying he was already there, at the window, looking out. He cupped his hands around his eyes, but the yard was dark and he couldn’t see with the glare from the light. He backed up and flicked the switch off, then moved back to the window.

  His nose touched the cool glass. He squinted.

  After what could have been no more than thirty seconds, his eyes adjusted to the night and he began to make out shapes. The walnut tree. The bushy pines off to the left. The slope of grass riding down like an ocean swell. The garage, with only the faint red glow. His snakes! Christ - he hadn’t checked the Boelen’s or the eggs for days now. But he could not go out there tonight. He needed to be here for her. First thing tomorrow, then. His eyes walked back up the path and were almost to the deck directly below when he saw movement. A shape.

  It was tall, rigid, halfway down the path. His eyes dilated. It leaned forward, pitching itself at an odd angle as a young tree bows to the wind. It took a step. Then another. It was moving slowly, almost plodding along, leaning forward the way a mule goes strapped to the plow in deep soil.

  She was dragging something on the ground.

  A burst of clicking ratcheted up the stairs and Conrad whirled away from the window, his top teeth biting over his bottom lip, drawing blood.

  Alice and Luther were standing on the carpeted landing, staring at him.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, exhaling. They were hungry. They had heard him flush and decided he was awake. ‘God damned dogs.’

  He turned back to the window, but after a full minute of squinting and standing on his toes to peer down, there was no sign it. Of her.

  I was imagining it.

  He returned to the library and sat. The dogs stepped around him, whining and sniffing for food. He patted them reassuringly and sat down.

  ‘Soon. Soon.’

  Scenting the foul spirit he carried, they gave him one last confused look and returned to the kitchen. He heard them scratching at the door, knocking open cabinets for something to satisfy their empty bellies, and his own growled in sympathy. After several minutes, they click-click-clicked their way back to the living room to lie in waiting on the couch. His eyelids grew heavy and he fought to stay awake.

  He drifted off and fell to his side, curled fetal on the floor. Hours - or perhaps just very long minutes - passed. He doze-dreamed of the dogs feeding. Heard their frenzy as the bag was ripped. The tinkling of the kibbles spilling, impossibly, into their bowls. Were they feeding, or was someone feeding them? There was a long silence. He lost track once more, and slept on.

  It was still dark when he woke again, this time to the sound of water running. He listened with his eyes closed, trying to trace the flow through the pipes, to understand from where the water was flowing, and to what end. The flow stopped. The sound of dripping - plop plop plop - continued for a few seconds and then ceased. The woman was crying. Soft sobs that ebbed and flowed over the course of minutes that stretched on and on. Definitely not the child this time. This was a mother grieving as only a mother can.

  She was in another room. She had come for him, and she wanted him to come to her, to find her. She wanted him to understand.

  In the hot nigh
t a controlled panic entered his bloodstream, propelling him to his feet. His legs were throbbing, and he grabbed a bookshelf to steady himself. The blood fell down and he almost blacked out.

  Water. She was in the bathroom, then. He walked out of the library, into the rear hall toward the bathroom. His feet shuffled on the carpeted landing, swishing.

  A dim glow was visible under the bathroom door, which was open a hand’s width. Hadn’t he left it wide open only hours before? He went to it and pressed his palm to the old wood. He pushed the door open.

  The woman in the tub was sitting upright, hunched over. Her long black hair draped in strings over her shoulders and breasts, on to her knees. She was not moving. Her hands and arms were dirty and he saw the maroon crusts around the shores of her fingernails. She was no longer crying, and he saw no intake of breath.

  The bath was shallow, its water a pink cloud.

  She lifted her head and stared at him.

  Her eyes were also black and deeply set in a pale countenance. The mouth appeared as a seam, the scar above running from her top lip to her thin nose, then opened, revealing small teeth. She was dreadfully beautiful. The eyebrows were thicker, grown nearly together and her eyes were devoid of color or emotion. He could feel her weight, her bone structure, her hardened flesh in his mind as surely as if he were holding her in his arms.

  His words were hushed. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘There’s no one here. It’s just me.’ Her voice was raw. ‘There’s no one here.’

  He moved closer, weightless with fear. He knelt beside her, looked into her eyes, the dark circles around them. Her metallic scent enveloped him.

  ‘What have you done?’

  Her eyes were full of death. This lifeless creature could not be his wife.

  ‘Our baby is dead. I’m waiting for it to come out.’

  35

  But of course it was Jo. At last she had returned.