by Joe Sullivan
Robbie is the first to break. He screams so hard and loud, his voice cracks. Here, covered in mud, pants dampened by scummy water and his own bodily fluids, he has been shoved into maturity, not at the hands of the beautiful naked woman of his wet dreams, but at the tendrils of some impossible monstrosity that might very well be the end of him.
The pool swells and dips. Water laps over the banks. I tell myself I have been lucky, that there is still time to get away, to get Robbie if I’m feeling brave, which I am not. Self-preservation is the dominant urge. I tell myself that whatever I do, I will have to make a choice soon and that the choice will be one I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life, assuming it doesn’t end here. I tell myself that at the very least I need to move away from the pool. I tell myself not to look at what’s there beneath the water. But I do because it wants me to, and I am powerless to refuse.
Robbie has already looked and now Robbie is laughing and rocking and tearing at his face as if ants have started to emerge from his pores.
I look down into that churning water at the enormous face looking back. It is the woman’s broken face magnified to fill the pool. It is the pool. Eels spill urgently from the hollow of her face. She still wears that smile, even as her mouth opens and the pool begins to drain into her throat. She has come to swallow the world and it starts here, today, with us as witnesses to the end.
My visions judders in time with the staggered hammering of my heart. I can’t remember how to breathe, only that it was once so easy. Sadness suffocates me as a pale hand only slightly smaller than Dougie Wayans’ car emerges from the water and clambers up the bank, darkening Robbie, still clawing at himself, in the shadow of its fingers. And those fingers are drowned people, pressed into the flesh and preserved mid-scream. Their drenched hair trails from the cracked fingernails and drips into the weeds. Robbie might have cried out before it got him, or that might have been me.
I doubt I’ll ever know.
4
I never saw Robbie again, and I never told anyone the whole truth. Not until now, that is. The story has always ended with Robbie telling me how he planned to run away because he was tired of the abuse at the hands of his brother and his parents’ refusal to do anything about it. When the police questioned Dougie, his violent reaction to their suspicion only added credence to my account, and before long, I was left alone. I told them Robbie borrowed my bike and probably used that to make his getaway. They searched but didn’t find it, at the pool or anywhere else. I would never see the warhorse again, and that was just fine with me. I sure as hell wasn’t going to look for it.
Most of you will read this account and think I’m a stark, raving lunatic. I don’t blame you. If I hadn’t lived through it, I’d think the same. But I did live through it and what’s haunted me even more than Robbie’s disappearance (I still think of it that way, though I know he’s dead, or worse) is the question of why the thing that took him didn’t take me too. Where was the second hand? Why am I not gone too?
Whether or not I suffered some kind of fit or attack and imagined all of this, I did manage to make a kind of peace with it. Counselors and therapists walked me through the worst of it, threw all manner of psychological mumbo jumbo at me to explain away my delusions and for almost thirty years, it suited me to believe them. I got on with my life. Had to. I fell in love, got married, had three kids and a good career. I was, by all accounts, OK.
Until three weeks ago when I woke from a doze on the couch to see a report on CNN about a sinkhole that had opened up back home in a Cincinnati suburb. These are no longer aberrations. We have fucked the planet into near oblivion with our drills and disregard, so natural disasters are the new normal.
This sinkhole was a half-mile wide and took out a strip mall parking lot and the outermost homes in a residential area not far from where I grew up. I did not study the aerial map closely. I didn’t need to. I knew it was the pool, returning to pull people and homes down into itself. In a panic, I woke my wife. She listened with her trademark patience and then went back to sleep with a promise that we would discuss it more the following day. That discussion ended with her demand that I see a therapist. He suggested I write this down and here we are. It hasn’t helped. I knew it wouldn’t. It’s just brought my memories into clearer focus and now I’m sick to my stomach with fear and it’s difficult to breathe. I can’t sleep or eat or work. I don’t want to leave the house.
Last Friday a sinkhole opened up on the freeway not ten miles from here. I saw that too on the news, which is the only window left from which I can see what’s coming. And I know it’s coming. It didn’t let me get away. It was just drawing all of this out for its own amusement, delighting in the many ways in which I learned to fool myself.
The earth vibrates every day now. Can’t you feel it? They’re waking up. We woke them up.
It doesn’t matter if you believe me. You’ll see the truth of it soon enough.
It’s inevitable.
I’m sorry, Robbie.
I’m so fucking sorry.
END
Born and raised in a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from a very early age that he was going to be a horror writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family full of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, seven collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy. When not writing, Kealan designs book covers through his company Elderlemon Design.
The Governess
Ania Ahlborn
The Governess arrived nearly a month after Phoebe had mentioned it to her mother. I want to get something for the baby, Mom had said, and Phoebe hadn’t hesitated in asking for the big-ticket item. Because Harrison was already creeping up on six weeks old—still tiny and helpless—about as helpless as Phoebe felt. And they had yet to buy a baby monitor to put her nighttime trepidations at ease.
When Theo came home from work, he rolled his eyes at the box on the counter.
“So, you did ask for it,” he murmured, scanning the sides and reading the text. But Phoebe didn’t give a second thought to his lack of confidence. The authoritative descriptions of how the Governess would protect baby Harrison was enough. The monitor had all the bells and whistles; breathing monitoring, push notifications any time the kid moved, even a built-in speaker so she could hear when Harrison was waking up, all right from a convenient app on her phone. The Governess practically guaranteed she could put her worries about SIDS and suffocation to bed. Which was good, because Phoebe’s anxiety wasn’t abating. If anything, it was getting worse.
Theo, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have a worry in the world. He paid no attention to the horror stories Phoebe would relay while they prepared dinner together each night. When she had showed him the Governess website months before Harrison was born, Theo had exhaled a slow breath and given her that look—the one she hated.
“Pheebs, you need to relax. You know the odds of this stuff happening, right?” he asked. “Like, point zero zero zero one. As in, it’s not going to happen.”
“It happens to some people,” Phoebe argued. “Which means it can happen to us.”
“These companies are banking on you believing that,” he said. “They pray on people’s worries, and you’re their prime target.”
Apparently, their prime target was first-time mothers living in cities thousands of miles away from any help, any real friends, and any family. Most days, Phoebe didn’t mind the distance. She’d always been independent, never one for big, awkward family gatherings where her own mother would laugh about her “worrywart” of a daughter’s various concerns.
But the isolation did catch up with her every now and again. Like the time she had a mid-shower panic attack while staring at her massive, distended belly. Or the crying jag she’d
suffered while marathoning The Great British Bakeoff, struck by the reality that she’d probably never have time to binge another Netflix show or bake a cake or be anything but a mom ever again.
But as her due date crept closer, more pressing worries began to nag at her already overanxious mind. Like whether she should try to talk Theo into dropping nearly two-grand on banking the baby’s cord blood in case Harrison was stricken with some terrible childhood cancer. Or whether she’d produce enough milk to sustain him—a worry that developed after reading an article about a woman who literally starved her newborn to death. It had been a tragic, terrible accident that Phoebe couldn’t get out of her mind for days. Because these things did happen, whether anyone liked to admit it or not.
“No,” Theo had said, “they really don’t. You need to get off of Facebook because you’re reading too many of those stupid mommy blogs.”
And he was right. She was reading too many of them, and they were stupid. Every day she found herself terrified by some other looming, invisible danger. But SIDS wasn’t something you could lump in with the rest of the million-to-one tragedies. SIDS was something she could spend an entire day reading about on official-looking medical websites because SIDS was real. Which was why she didn’t just want the Governess, she needed it. And now that it had arrived, she could breathe a sigh of relief.
The monitor started to glitch right away.
The phone app constantly crashed and froze, and the night vision would go in and out, often leaving baby Harrison in pitch darkness while Phoebe repeatedly jabbed her finger against her smart phone screen.
“This is ridiculous,” she hissed beneath her breath. “Do you know how much this thing cost?”
“I’m guessing a lot,” Theo responded. “Good thing we didn’t actually pay for it.”
“That’s beside the point,” Phoebe muttered. “Someone paid for it.”
“Yeah, Grandma.” Theo snorted. “Maybe you can have her install the app on her own phone. That way she could at least see her grandkid every now and again.”
Phoebe frowned, in no mood to traverse that topic again. At least not now. Theo sighed and mercifully change the subject.
“Was this thing one of those Kickstarter deals?” he asked. “You know those products never work.”
The device that was supposed to be giving Phoebe peace of mind was turning out to be nothing but a new source of frustration.
If the night vision didn’t go out completely, it would often turn her entire phone screen purple.
Sometimes the picture would get stuck in a feedback loop, leaving baby Harrison looking like he was in a found-footage horror flick, his movements jerky and robotic and deeply disturbing, like something out of an Exorcist remake.
The built-in speaker seemed to be having its own troubles. What had once been crystal clear sound was now experiencing frequent bouts of static. Sometimes, Phoebe would hear things that didn’t make sense. Sounds of the baby stirring when he was fast asleep. An occasional creaking of the floorboards. One time she heard Harrison laughing, but when she checked her phone, he was snoozing away.
And then there were the times when Harrison would just lie there and stare up at the four tiny red lights shining down at him, nothing but ultraviolet pinpoints. Sometimes the night vision would cut out during his staring episodes and when it would click back on, Harrison—with his pupils shining like the eyes of an animal caught in oncoming headlights—would be grinning a disconcerting, toothless smile.
Theo thought it was funny, but Phoebe hated it.
“He loves lights,” Theo explained. “You know that.”
Sure, she knew that. But it didn’t change the fact that a baby smiling at nothing in a pitch-black room was downright creepy.
Something about it felt off. It felt wrong.
The woman working the Governess customer service line didn’t have any solutions, either.
“I’m so sorry this is happening,” she said, trying her best to be gracious despite Phoebe’s annoyance. “We have occasional hiccups, but I’m not seeing any outstanding bugs or outages right now. I’ll forward your issues to the developers right away.”
This left Phoebe with exactly two options: live with the glitchy issues until they could be resolved or turn the damn thing off.
She tried not using it for an afternoon, but her attempt lasted half an hour. She couldn’t handle not being able to see Harrison in his crib. It triggered auditory hallucinations—the sound of crying despite the baby being fast asleep. It forced her mind into worst-case scenario mode, because what if the baby had spit up and was now choking to death while lying on his back? What if he’d managed to roll onto his stomach and wasn’t able to breath?
“Just forget that thing is even in his room,” Theo said, confiscating Phoebe’s phone and placing it onto the corner of the coffee table, just out of reach. “Let’s just watch a movie, have some ice cream, relax. If he starts crying, we’ll hear it.”
The baby’s room was, after all, just beyond a single wall. Certainly, if Harrison began to fuss, Phoebe would hear him the second he started up.
And that she did.
Because rather than crying, Harrison screamed instead.
The second she heard him, she was off the couch and in his room, sweeping the baby up into her arms and pressing his sobbing face into the crook of her neck. She didn’t notice the wide-open closet door until after Harrison had settled down. As a kid who spooked easily, Phoebe had grown into an adult with an aversion to dark, gaping doorways. It was why Harrison’s open door was out of place. She always closed it. It was a compulsion. A neurosis. Almost a mania.
“Did you leave Harry’s closet door open?” she asked Theo after having put the baby back down.
“What?” Theo raised an eyebrow at her from the couch, momentarily diverting his attention from the glowing screen of his phone to cast a glance at his wife.
“The closet door,” she repeated, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “You know I hate it when it’s left open.”
Theo stared at her, and for a moment she was sure he was going to claim it hadn’t been him. But instead of insisting on his innocence, he lifted a single shoulder in a boyish sort of shrug and murmured. “Yeah, sorry.”
They never finished the movie. Phoebe decided to go to bed, instead.
Harrison screamed himself awake the next night, same as he had the night before, and Phoebe spent the evening searching Google for answers that didn’t seem to exist. Gas. Reflux. Ear infections and sleep regressions. There were a multitude of possibilities, but nothing fit.
That, and the closet door had been left open again.
Frustrated, Phoebe didn’t bother confronting Theo about his repeat transgression. Because not only would it end in a fight, but it made her feel crazy. Because it shouldn’t have bothered her so much. It wasn’t important. Just a childhood fear rearing its ugly head.
So, rather than talking about it, she turned her focus back to the mommy blogs and message boards Theo so enjoyed admonishing her for instead.
She typed: six-week-old suddenly screaming himself awake into one of the website’s search bars. A dozen articles popped up. Night terrors were a possibility, but was it likely? Phoebe leaned in and began to read. Because if she had been a scared kid, maybe she’d passed it down to her son.
On night three, with the Governess’s glitchy app running full-tilt on her phone, Phoebe tried to unwind with a cup of tea and a book she’d been trying to finish for the past four months, but she couldn’t focus as she waited for Harrison’s screaming to start up again. Her eyes kept flitting to her phone. She winced as she watched Harrison wriggle in his crib and open his eyes.
“Come on, baby,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
That’s when she saw it.
Something passed through the black-and-white picture on her screen.
A smooth-moving shadow, almost like an arm.
And then, a shapeless figure appeared.
For a span of two seconds, she rolled her eyes. Because she’d had it with this stupid monitor and its useless app. She was pretty sure it came with a 90-day money-back guarantee. She’d have to call her mother, ask if she still had the receipt. If she did, Phoebe could use the money to buy something else. Something better. Something that actually worked.
But as she sat there, it hit her.
The image wasn’t frozen.
It wasn’t looping back on itself.
She could see Harrison’s tiny socked feet kicking.
She could hear the creaking floorboards in his room.
And then there was that misty, almost pulsing darkness obscuring Harrison’s face and torso.
There was the sound of him struggling, as though he couldn’t breathe.
Phoebe tried to scream, but it was useless. She couldn’t gather any air.
She tried to call out for Theo, but his name left her throat as a dry whisper, nothing more.
Her book fell to the floor as she stumbled to her feet, her cup of tea crashing onto the rug just before she careened down the hall toward Harrison’s nursery door.
Harrison screamed just as her hand grasped the door handle.
The closet door was wide open again.
And this time, there was a smell.
“I didn’t imagine it,” Phoebe said, flabbergasted that Theo would even question the veracity of her claim. “I know what I saw, Theo, and there was something in Harry’s room.”
She frowned at him as he fiddled with her phone, as if the app had a setting marked make my wife sound less insane. When he didn’t look up, she lost her patience, reached out, and snatched the phone from his hands.
“Are you listening to me?”
Theo looked momentarily stunned, but he was quick to shift his surprise into a familiar expression. Lifting his hands as if to show her he was unarmed, he arched both eyebrows upward in a fake, wounded sort of innocence that struck her as both manipulative and smug. A don’t-shoot-the-messenger type of play. Every time she saw it, she wanted to slap it right off his face, and this time was no different. If anything, this time—with her fingers curling into fists—she had to restrain herself from winding up and letting fly.
