The Darkest Lullaby

by Jonathan Janz

  “I hated Aunt Lillith.”

  He didn’t respond right away, but Ellie could tell he was struggling to quell his anger. Or was it hurt?

  He said, “I knew you didn’t care for her much.”

  “She didn’t like me either.”

  “How could you know a thing like that?”

  “She said I wasn’t worthy of you.”

  He pulled away, an expression of disbelief twisting one corner of his mouth. “She didn’t say that.”

  “She called me names and said I’d hurt you.”

  “Ellie…”

  “Lillith was insane.”

  “She was not in—Ellie, she helped raise me for chrissakes.”

  “She was jealous of me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She wanted you all to herself.”

  He seemed to recoil. “Where the hell do you get off…you talk like she was attracted to me.”

  “Call it what you want.”

  His eyes drew wide with disbelief. “I can’t believe you.” He glanced about the room. “She gives us everything she owns. Gives us a house. And you talk about her like she was some kind of pervert.”

  “What would you call her?”

  “A nice old woman,” he said, voice rising. “Jesus, I guess I’ll leave the rest of her stuff in the garage.”

  “There’s more?” Ellie said. “I didn’t know a spinster could accumulate that much junk.”

  Chris got up. As he left the room, a storm of guilt assailed her. He’d made a mistake, yes, but he’d been trying to please her. And she was so distraught over the news at Dr. Stone’s that she’d taken it out on—

  “Wait,” she called, rising.

  The screen door slammed.

  He was halfway to the Camry, still parked crookedly in the yard, when she burst out the back door. “Chris,” she called.

  He didn’t stop.

  Ellie sprinted after him, and suddenly it all felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy, her thinking he’d no longer want her after the news about her infertility. She’d picked a fight with him, driven him away, and as he opened the car door and got in she started crying again, but this time the tears were different. They were hot, scalding. If he left her now she’d have nothing, she’d—

  She dashed around the front of the car and slapped at the driver’s window.

  The engine started.

  “Please, Chris,” she said, her voice breaking. He didn’t make a move to roll down the window, but he didn’t put the car in gear either. The raindrops fell harder but she barely felt them, and now there was a muffled booming in the west.

  “Please don’t leave me,” she yelled, but her voice was failing. This was what she deserved for her meanness and self-absorption. He did deserve better than her. He would be better off with someone else. The tears taking hold, she crumpled against the window and sobbed.

  Distantly, she heard the engine die. Beneath her palms the door was moving, opening. She stepped out of the way and stared down at Chris, who was peering up at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  His mouth worked.

  “I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

  He climbed out of the car and embraced her.

  Chapter Seven

  They made love that afternoon and lazed in the bedroom all evening.

  Outside, the storm worsened. Winds buffeted the house, the old planks groaning under the strain. At around ten they were startled by a bloodcurdling screech from below. They hurried downstairs and discovered the rain gutter had torn loose from its moorings and was now dangling from the covered porch.

  Staring out the front door, Ellie watched the wind rocketing over the front lawn, the grass driven flat by the rain. Chris slipped his hands around her waist.

  “How about we give each other backrubs?” she suggested.

  “Backrubs, huh?” he said, and they were soon making love again.

  The next day they slept in till nearly noon.

  When they awoke, Chris checked the basement and announced that no water had leaked in during the storm. Their happiness vanished when he turned on the kitchen tap only to have his glass fill with a dark, sludgy substance that smelled like slow decomposition.

  Ellie eyed the glass. “We’re supposed to bathe in that?”

  Chris made a face and dumped it into the sink.

  They were surveying the damage outside when a sound from the pocket of her sweatpants startled her. The cell phone.

  She brought it out and stared at it. Though she didn’t have any bars, she’d somehow gotten enough reception to see she had a new message.

  “Your sister?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t recognize the number.”

  “Let’s go for a ride and see who it is,” Chris said. “We need to call a plumber anyway.”

  To his surprise, the cell got reception less than a mile from the lane. When the single bar flickered, Ellie told him to pull over.

  He watched Ellie dial her voicemail, and soon a change came over her.

  Concerned, he opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, but she brought up an index finger and continued listening. Judging from her face, which was pinched in a mask of perplexity, the news wasn’t good. Big surprise there, he thought.

  A moment later she took the phone slowly from her ear and stared at it thoughtfully.

  “Everything okay?” he asked. But Ellie seemed not to hear him.

  “El?” he said and put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  She faced him, uttered a breathless little laugh. “I’m pregnant.”

  Chris stared at her.

  “It was Dr. Stone’s office,” she explained. “One of his nurses, she wants me to come in for another examination…you know, to determine the risk of the pregnancy, all that stuff. But she said I’m definitely carrying a child. The blood tests came back a little while ago.”

  “Didn’t they say yesterday you can’t…”

  She nodded.

  “Is the baby healthy?” he asked.

  “They don’t know. It’s too early.”

  She started to laugh, tears already streaming down her face. He leaned across the console and kissed her.

  “You believe it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to believe.” Her chest shuddered, and soon she was sobbing. Chris wrapped her up, rocked her, kissed her hair.

  “You’re going to be a mommy,” he said, crying now himself.

  “I want to be.”

  He pulled away, gazed at her terror-stricken face. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to us.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, glancing out the windshield and wiping her nose. “There are so many things that could wrong. Miscarriages, birth defects…what if I can’t carry it to term?”

  “You will.”

  “We don’t even know if it’s healthy yet. What if it’s…what did Kat use to call it…ectopic. What if the fetus is ectopic?”

  “When we get home, I’m taking the books away. We’ve got enough to worry about without scaring ourselves half to death with that crap.”

  “Chris…” she said. She shook her head slowly.

  He started, remembering something. “Didn’t they say they wanted to see you?”

  Ellie dialed the number.

  Chapter Eight

  Dr. Stone’s appraisal was frank but encouraging. He told them they had better than average odds of a miscarriage during the first trimester. However, he reasoned, they were already a good way through it. According to the ultrasound, Ellie was eleven weeks’ pregnant, give or take. With each successive week, the chance of losing the baby diminished.

  On the way home Ellie began to cry again. When Chris asked her what was wrong, she said nothing, she was just happy.

  Which was almost true. Most of her tears were for joy. Yet a small part of her, the part that sometimes kept her awake in the small hours of the ni
ght, had already begun to remind her of her past failures. She wiped her nose and stared out the passenger’s window just in case Chris should see how scared she was.

  You quit the dance team in high school, the voice wheedled. You quit the musical your senior year even though you had an important solo. It took you forever to finish college, and when you did you didn’t do a darn thing with your degree. Then you mooched off Jason while you were married.

  No.

  When your marriage failed too—which was bound to happen given your track record—you answered phones for an insurance agent who only kept you around because he wanted in your pants, and when that didn’t work out he fired you. And you didn’t put up a fight. You were relieved you didn’t have to get up early each morning. And lately you’ve longed to give up on the move to Indiana, haven’t you? The quitting urge is overwhelming you the way it always has.

  No, she thought dismally. No it isn’t.

  But there’ll be no quitting this time, will there? You can’t quit with a baby. It’s either carry the child through to the end or—

  She shook her head to scatter the thought, the awful, awful thought. No quitting, she told the voice. I’ll never fail this child. I’ll be a great mom and see this through, I’ll—

  “Ellie?” Chris asked.

  She glanced at him, her cheeks coloring.

  “What?”

  He held up a conciliatory hand. “Nothing,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He shrugged, studying her face. “You were grinding your teeth.”

  “Oh,” she said, turning to the window again. “I didn’t notice.”

  Aaron Wolf arrived an hour after they called him. Ellie was taking a nap when he pulled up, a fact for which Chris was later grateful.

  The man was shorter than Chris, but he was thicker, his shoulders broad and beefy. His russet beard was long and well groomed. The ruddy cheeks and red nose appeared to be a sunburn and not a product of hard living; to the contrary, Aaron Wolf exuded good health and virility. The clothes he wore were exactly like Daniel’s: navy blue work pants, a light blue work shirt and a black hat. The only difference was the pair of navy blue suspenders Aaron wore. He had a bit of a gut, yet even this served to enhance his powerful aura.

  The kitchen faucet worked flawlessly when Aaron tested it, so they descended into the basement with a work light. Chris followed and did his best to suppress the lingering chill brought on by Ellie’s story about the man down here.

  After making their way to the utility closet, Aaron asked, “You know where there’s an outlet?”

  Chris glanced about feebly, and though it was silly, a familiar feeling of uselessness began to sour his stomach. It was the same way he used to feel when his stepfather would ask for his help doing a job. When Chris was asked to perform some task, he never quite knew how to complete it. Hand me the needle-nosed pliers, his stepdad would say, and Chris would stare dumbly down at the multitudinous tools having no idea at all what needle-nosed pliers were. Eventually his stepdad would sigh in exasperation and grab the pliers himself while Chris looked on miserably.

  “Ah,” Aaron said and strode over to an empty light socket. On the conical white bulb housing there were two outlets. “Not grounded,” Aaron muttered. He produced an adaptor from his shirt pocket and slid it over the three-pronged plug. He plugged in the work light and a brilliant glow filled the room.

  “Hold this a moment,” Aaron said as he opened the utility door. Chris raised the work light and Aaron moved past the hulking furnace to a dingy white cylinder. Chris detected a clammy trace of moist steel in the air.

  “That the water heater?” Chris asked.

  “Older than Moses, isn’t it?” Aaron said, smiling. He got down on his knees, rubbed grime off a small brass faceplate. “1954,” he read.

  Chris asked, “Did your brother tell you I ran into him the other night?”

  A queer stillness seemed to settle over the Amish man. In a voice very unlike his usual one, he said, “He did.”

  “Did he say what happened?”

  Aaron slid the metal cover back in place, stood up, and relieved Chris of the work light. “Something about an argument.”

  Chris grunted. “Wasn’t much of an argument. He beat the crap out of a grocery clerk.”

  He waited for Aaron to respond, but the bearded man was frowning and holding the work light aloft.

  “Funny,” Aaron said.

  “What?” Chris asked, following his gaze.

  “There used to be a workshop there.”

  Beneath him, Chris felt the muscles of his legs liquefy. “Workshop?”

  Aaron nodded toward the wall, strode over to it. “See?” he said, holding the light against it. “You can still see the outline right here.”

  And Chris did see it. A faint rectangle exactly where Ellie claimed she’d beheld a man hulking between her and Petey.

  “Here’s the mortar line.” Aaron traced it with a finger. “And right here’s where the top of the doorway was.”

  Chris’s throat had as gone dry as chaff. “Why would someone seal it off?”

  Aaron shook his head wonderingly. “I wouldn’t know.” He rapped on the sealed doorway. A dull echo resounded from within.

  “So why’d your brother beat up Campbell?”

  Aaron seemed not to hear him, instead made his way past Chris and unplugged the light. In the darkness, the big man looped the cord on his thick forearm. “How much do you know about the history of this place, Mr. Crane?”

  “Only what Doris Keller told us.”

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know…it’s all crazy. Doris said there used to be a cult here.”

  Aaron didn’t look up from the coiling cord.

  “Something about weird rituals, sacrifice. Of…” Chris swallowed. “…of infanticide.”

  “What else?” Aaron asked in a quiet voice.

  Chris thought of Doris’s raving about demons and vampires; he thought of Campbell’s knowledge of the woman in the woods. How to say all that to Aaron Wolf? How to explain it when he didn’t understand it himself?

  “That all?” Aaron asked.

  Chris opened his mouth, paused.

  “I suspect not,” Aaron said, but he didn’t probe any further. Instead, he moved toward the stairs. When they’d reached the kitchen, Aaron said, “I’m not sure what’s wrong with your plumbing, Mr. Crane. Well water’s a funny thing. If it doesn’t happen again, I’m tempted to write it off to rust. These pipes haven’t been used in ages, so even if your inspector ran them, he probably didn’t get all the rust out of the lines.”

  Chris nodded, but the water was the last thing on his mind.

  “As for your question,” Aaron said and moved toward the back door, “I know why my brother used his fists on that man.”

  Chris followed Aaron to his black pickup truck. Aaron opened the passenger door, set the work light on the seat, then swung the door shut. Leaning against it, he said, “If you go digging, you’ll find a lot of folks who’ll claim there’s something wrong with the land itself. That Destragis was only a symptom.”

  “Like the land attracted him?”

  Aaron nodded. “Some say so.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Aaron said. “I can only tell you what happened with Daniel’s wife.”

  Aaron drew in a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “The cult was going strong in the early nineties. Right around the time my brother married Sarah.”

  “Was the marriage…” Chris sought for the most inoffensive way to put it, “…you know, arranged?”

  Aaron grinned. “We don’t usually do it that way, but no, it wasn’t. Daniel met her at the county fair.

  “We all thought she was a great little gal. Sharp, too. She’d gotten her degree in nursing. Things started off real well for her and Daniel.”

  Aaron’s face clouded. “Then
she started wandering around the forest.”

  Chris had an idea what was coming, the memory of the other night rippling his skin into gooseflesh. He knew a little about wandering in the forest.

  “You’re probably aware how close Daniel’s land is to yours?”

  “Just across the road, right?”

  Aaron nodded. “I’m on the north side of you, Daniel’s on the east. Sarah crossed the road to these woods one night, and from what we could gather, she stumbled onto Destragis’s cult.”

  “Campbell was one of them,” Chris guessed.

  Aaron’s eyes did a slow pass over the trees. “Campbell wasn’t one of the ringleaders, but yes, he was part of it.”

  He sighed. “I don’t like to gossip, so I’ll spare you all the personal stuff. Let’s just say Sarah didn’t resist joining in for very long. Soon she was sneaking out every night after Daniel had gone to sleep.

  “She got pregnant, though we’ll never who…” He trailed off, a sour, introspective expression darkening his ruddy face. “About the time she told Daniel she was expecting, he decided to follow her into the woods. He’d awakened one night to find her gone, and he’d already grown suspicious of the way her…”

  Aaron stared at the upper reaches of the trees. “You sure you wanna hear this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you have a right to, this all belonging to you now.”

  Chris felt another chill. He assumed the plumber meant that the land and the house belonged to him, but the way he said it, he couldn’t escape the impression that it was the story he now owned, the events that took place two decades ago.

  “Sarah was on some sort of altar,” Aaron said. “She was surrounded by several people, and though she was stark naked, she acted as though that didn’t bother her at all.

  “By this time my brother’d realized that every last person in that clearing was naked, too. Then, they started in…

  “Evidently, they’d known Daniel was there. Must’ve had people hidden nearby keeping watch because my little brother was always a good hider. But they found him, and though he bloodied a couple noses, they forced him into the clearing. Told him to join in, but he refused.”

  Chris scuffed the dirt with a sneaker. “Did Sarah…resist at all?”