The Darkest Lullaby

by Jonathan Janz

  He sat beside her until she fell asleep.

  Then he took the box of Lillith’s things outside and burned them.

  Chapter Seven

  Ellie opened her eyes in the gloom. She peered at the window and saw spider-thin rivulets wending their way down the panes. She endeavored to roll onto her side, perhaps even get up to relieve her aching bladder, but the lassitude enveloping her sapped every ounce of energy she possessed. Defeated, she lay on her back and gazed at the ceiling. She could feel the drug working in her, an enervating inertia, and soon even keeping her eyes open was too great an effort…

  Ellie let sleep wash over her.

  When she opened her eyes, it was storming harder. The dream weather was even worse than it had been in waking, and Ellie realized with an uneasy tremor that she was back in England on her backpacking trip. Just as it had been during that long-ago time, the rain was punishing her and…

  Jake Henderson. Her boyfriend had been Jake Henderson, and she remembered how it had taken her a while to get past the fact that Jason Halliday, her first husband, had possessed the same initials.

  She didn’t want to follow Jake under the bridge now, didn’t want to hear the deafening rush of the river. She’d blotted out what happened under that bridge, but somehow she knew her mental shield was about to crumble.

  Ellie watched her younger self huddle next to Jake, the odor of overripe blueberries tainting the air. He offered her the bottle of cheap wine he’d stolen from a general store run by a nice old man, and she drank too much from it. Then came the whiskey. They were both drunk within half an hour, and soon the slimy rocks strewn with condoms, hypodermic needles, and other detritus became almost cozy. The stench of rotting blueberries faded.

  She watched herself laughing as Jake nuzzled her neck, but remembered too how badly her tummy had hurt, how scared she’d been of having a diarrhea attack with this handsome boy.

  From her distance of years, she watched him clear off a place under the bridge and beckon her to sit next to him. She watched him kiss her younger self and immediately start to unzip his jeans.

  She saw herself shaking her head, attempting to dissuade him without coming out and stating the real reason. How could she tell him such a thing?

  Jake laughed off her protests, and why shouldn’t he? They’d already had sex, had been screwing since before the trip, so why should this night be any different?

  “Let’s just wait,” she tells him. “Let’s wait till the storm ends.” The last word comes out a pained whisper because she’s been gripped by a violent stomach cramp. In her dream Ellie feels that serrated blade twisting in her gut, feels the baking heat sheening her skin with perspiration. If she doesn’t get out from under the bridge soon, she really will shit herself, and that might just kill the mood permanently. Grown women weren’t supposed to be incontinent and certainly not before sex, but Jake’s hand is squeezing her wrist, something more than simple arousal tightening his grip. Another stomach cramp wallops her as he yanks her down beside him, the damp sand stinking of rotten grapes, and before Ellie realizes it, her rain slicker is unsnapped.

  “Jake,” she says, but his expression brooks no argument. He isn’t just horny, he’s possessed. I’m gonna punish you, honey, his eyes seem to say. I’m gonna pound you till you beg for mercy.

  As if to confirm this thought, Jake bulldozes over her and in one bewildering motion, shoves her arms above her head and with one hand pins them. As if he’s done this before, she thinks, and perhaps because her fear has risen above all other emotions, she no longer has to relieve her bowels. With his free hand Jake unbuttons her jeans, unzips them, and though she struggles, he has them down within seconds.

  Practiced movements is the phrase that comes to her, and the rapturous glaze in his eyes…yes, she realizes he’s done this before. He’s enjoying it. There’s an eagerness in him far surpassing any he has so far exhibited. She clenches her knees together and pleads with him, but it’s as though he can’t hear her over the rush of the river and the mad conductor in his head. The fulsome odor of rotten fruit begins to gag her.

  “Now, now,” he says as her thrashing becomes frantic, and when she spits in his face he actually laughs. And punches her in the mouth. She’s so shocked by this that she forgets to fend him off. He’s between her legs instantly, his granite-hard penis invading her, tearing her, and she is screaming, but the river drowns her out.

  Jake’s face begins to change.

  She struggles madly to free her hands, but his grip is unbreakable. She gapes at him in terror, and yes, he has become the man from the videotape. She knows the man is Gerald Destragis, knows he has followed her into the past to do what he wanted to in the basement. His brow is wide, furious, his black eyes like polished obsidian. He revels in her terror, her shame, and his monstrous grin spreads wider, his teeth pointed and shark-white. Destragis is grunting like an animal, ramming her, and she screams herself raw. Her tears and saliva mix together, her sobs a gruesome backbeat to his savage thrusting. And when he’s done he sprawls on her a moment longer, face full of contempt. The voice, at least, is Jake’s again, the boy who invited her to backpack through England so he could rape her under a crumbling bridge. Conversationally, he informs her he will kill her if she tells, and though she can no longer look him in the eyes, she believes him.

  An eternity later he climbs off, spits into the sand, and tells her they’re moving on. As if it never happened. She does as he commands, and somehow this is worse than the rape, because she’s obeying willingly; out of fear, yes, but still willingly, and this is something her older self cannot accept. You coward! she screams at the half-naked, quivering body under the bridge. You stinking, mewling coward! How dare you follow directions like some kind of trained dog, how dare you let him control you after what he did.

  Ellie awoke, gasping, in her bed.

  The self-loathing, the stench of the exhumed memory, took her breath away, caused her to rock onto her side, but still the sobbing persisted, her chest so tight it felt like a medieval breastplate, the palms that hugged her knees too slick to keep hold.

  Shoulders quaking, she sucked in enough air to keep from passing out. She buried her face in the sweat-soaked sheet and ground it there, relishing the pain, wanting more than anything for her consciousness to be taken from her.

  Then, distantly, the thought came to her: Chris.

  He couldn’t absolve her of her self-condemnation, and he couldn’t cram that dreadful jinn of a memory back inside its bottle. But he could hold her, could moor her to this time, which was terrible but still better than it had been under that bridge. Under Jake Henderson.

  Under Gerald Destragis.

  His horrible, leering face was enough to compel her legs off the bed, the icy wood planks beneath her bare feet a welcome discomfort because they were present, they were of this time and not part of some long-ago nightmare.

  She concentrated on the floor, on drawing in deeper breaths. Gradually, it worked. She was still sick with shame and anger, but at least she felt safe. Her husband was in the house somewhere, Jake Henderson was long absent from her life and Destragis, despite what she’d imagined in the basement, had been dead for years.

  Ellie sat forward on the bed and was just preparing to stand when something from her periphery caught her eye. She glanced that way and gazed out the window. The front yard was steeped in shadow, the moon and the stars were swallowed up by the storm clouds, so she couldn’t be sure…

  But one shape near the edge of the yard, just a few feet from the treeline, looked uncannily like a human being.

  Ellie got up, moved closer to the window, and braced herself on the sill.

  Yes. The shape was long, but it was unmistakably human. The legs were sapling thin, the torso similarly slender, broadening only slightly at the shoulders. The head was elongated, and like the rest of the body, unmoving. She could make out no features, but she sensed the figure was gazing up fixedly at her window.

  Ga
zing at her.

  The wind gusted, and the shape seemed to dissolve. The branches overhead trembled like the fingers of magicians. She’d almost dismissed the figure as another drug-induced apparition when it pivoted and stalked into the forest. This time there was no mistaking its substance; she could even see the leaves of a low-hanging bough pendulum as its impossibly long head brushed against it. In the moment before it disappeared, she realized why the head was so long. The figure wore a hat, one of those tall things favored by the horse-and-buggy crowd.

  So an Amish man is spying on you, she thought. It could be worse.

  Or maybe he’s waiting for you to go to sleep again so he can break in here and have his way with you.

  Ellie’s arms went numb. Get Chris, she told herself. Now.

  She hurried down the hall, made the foyer, and was heartened to see light emanating from the left, the direction of the living room. Chris would be here, reading a book.

  Or watching the tape.

  No, she thought as she approached the corner, she found that she no longer wanted him to view that spookshow, at least not tonight. A week from now, maybe, when the daylight showed bright and reassuring outside and they were getting along the way they were accustomed to, then maybe they would watch the tape together so he could see why she’d reacted so strongly. But right now all she wanted was his presence, his kind smile and his steadying solidity.

  The television came into view, and no, it wasn’t on. She stepped farther into the room and spotted his feet on the couch, the athletic socks with holes in both heels. Her gaze traveled up his body and rested on his peaceful face, his eyes closed in sleep. She took in the rumpled blue T-shirt with a dark stain just under the neckline: barbecue sauce, probably, or ketchup. His grizzled cheeks aged him a little, but this too comforted her, reminded her of winter breaks when he’d let his beard grow out in celebration of his momentary freedom from students. She’d always take vacation time then, too, and they spent those breaks curled up on the couch watching movies or reading books or sometimes just talking.

  Standing over him now, the lamplight yellowing his skin, Ellie felt the memories of Jake Henderson and Gerald Destragis slip from her like filth under a hot shower. The vision of the figure by the forest, too, washed away in the glow of this man she loved, this man who had fathered the child now growing in her belly. She knelt and kissed one whiskered cheek. She rested her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes and for the first time that day, felt there would be a future, felt that a world without horror was within reach.

  She awoke on the couch, the morning light spilling over her a glum gray. She sat up and wondered how she’d ended up on the couch. She listened for Chris and heard the sound of running water from the kitchen.

  Her stomach a hollowed-out pit, Ellie got up and ambled through the house. As she neared the kitchen the smells of bacon and fried potatoes wafted over her. She rounded the corner and beheld the steaming plates of food.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Chris turned from the stove, smiled at her. “Figured you’d be hungry after skipping supper last night.”

  She realized with surprise that she had skipped supper. Ordinarily that would’ve been unthinkable—she became a bear if food was half an hour late—but the last couple days had been anything but ordinary.

  She moved next to Chris, stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Sit down,” he said, nodding at the table. “There’s orange juice, hash browns, bacon. These are almost done.”

  He was frying eggs on the skillet. Sunnyside up, the way she liked them.

  She sat down and breathed in the aromas. Chris put the skillet in the sink and sat across from her. “You didn’t have to wait for me,” he said as he forked a mouthful of hash browns into his mouth. Watching him chew his food, she decided she liked the shadow of beard he’d let grow.

  They ate in silence, and though her plate was soon half empty, she found she couldn’t shovel it in fast enough. Chris was refilling her orange juice when he said, “Sorry again for last night.”

  She swallowed a bite of eggs. “Me too.”

  “Don’t, Ellie.” He put the empty orange juice carton on the counter. “Don’t apologize for anything. The things I said to you…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I deserve a good punch in the nose.”

  “I thought I was the one who was gonna get punched.”

  Chris slouched, an expression of utter misery on his face. She realized he was holding back tears. “I’m so sorry, Ellie. God, I don’t know what got into me. It’s like…” He pressed the heel of a trembling hand into his eye socket. “…it’s like I was someone else.”

  “You were mad, honey.”

  “That’s not the only time, though,” he said and glanced at her sharply. “It’s been happening for a while now. I don’t know why, but…it’s as if I can’t let myself just relax and enjoy what we have here.”

  She felt a stirring of dread but kept quiet about it. She could leave the question of moving for another day. There’d been enough fighting.

  She reached across the table and took his hand. “We’re the same people we were.” She squeezed his hand. “Except, of course, that we’re going to have a baby in seven months.”

  Chris gave a start, uttered an amazed little laugh. “Jeez, I keep forgetting. When did Stone say your due date was?”

  “Early January.”

  He smiled. “A New Year’s baby.”

  She watched his face grow troubled. “What is it?”

  He shook his head, averted his eyes. “You still want to talk about Lillith?”

  “Let’s let that go for now, huh?”

  “You sure? You seemed—”

  “We both need to calm down and put that stuff aside.”

  He nodded, the relief plain on his face.

  “That’ll give us time to get back to normal,” she continued, “and get the bridge fixed.”

  His expression was rueful. “I can’t imagine what it’s gonna cost.”

  “It has to be done,” she said simply.

  He didn’t argue.

  Ellie crossed the yard and stepped onto the lane. She wanted to check out the bridge herself. Maybe the job wouldn’t seem so imposing in better weather; maybe getting the darn thing fixed really wouldn’t require them to drain the rest of their savings. Before she got fifty yards down the lane though, something about the woods made her stop and stare.

  No, she thought, that was wrong. It wasn’t only the woods, it was the lane, too. Just yesterday the gravel path had been more distinct than this, both wheel ruts several feet across with only a slender filament of grass between. Now the island bisecting the gravel strips was wider, the weeds sprouting there high enough to whisper over her shins.

  So? her mind rejoined. What’s the big deal? Plants grow during May, or did you miss that part of elementary school science? It’s warmer now, and it’s rained damn near every day. What’d you expect the weeds to do, wilt?

  Yet it wasn’t just the weeds that had grown; the forest, too, now seemed to encroach more closely on both sides of the path.

  Kat’s voice, mocking her: Yeah, El. The trees are coming alive, Wizard of Oz-style. And Lillith is the Wicked Witch of the West.

  But the trees were closer, she was sure of it. She assumed their branches had been growing due to the rain and warmer weather, but was it possible they had really grown this much?

  Not possible, she thought. Except they have.

  Where before there had been six or seven feet of grassy shoulder on either side of the lane, now there was only half that much, and in some places the undergrowth actually bulged to within inches of the wheel ruts. Further, the woods were ominously quiet, the birds and other animals either having fled or grown too frightened to make noise. It was seventy-five degrees at least, but Ellie shivered just the same.

  Time to head home, she thought.

  No, the obstinate part of her bit back. You aren’t going to hide inside the
house like some superstitious fool, throwing salt over your shoulder and jumping at every chirping bird. You’re going to keep going and do what you came here to do—you’re going to survey the damage to the bridge so when Chris comes back with the estimates, you can discuss it intelligently.

  She slapped her forearm, teeth bared. The famous Indiana mosquitoes, she thought. Another twinge of pain in her calf, the damn things hunting her now. She should have worn repellant, but she didn’t know if it was safe for the baby.

  Safe for the baby? Kat’s voice demanded. You think this haunted plot of land is safe for the baby?

  Ellie gave an inward chuckle at the word haunted. Yes, she’d seen some peculiar things since arriving here, but they had nothing to do with ghosts.

  Savaging your hands on the razors?

  Bad luck, she thought.

  The creature licking your fingers?

  Petey, she thought angrily. That was Petey, and you know it.

  The man in the basement.

  Uh-uh, she thought. Now’s not the time to go there. She wasn’t sure there’d ever be a time to revisit that macabre memory, but if there was, it sure as hell wasn’t now.

  “Shit,” she said through clenched teeth as another mosquito drilled her flesh, this time just below her right ear. She’d begun to sweat, and the mosquitoes were swarming her now like she was a walking blood distillery. Definitely time to go back.

  She was about to turn when something ahead arrested her thoughts.

  “Oh man,” she muttered. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Not just one, but two gigantic trees had been felled by the storm. And despite having heard falling trees during the storm, the reality of these dead giants was somehow unbelievable to her. They seemed unrelated to the storm, colossal roadblocks meant to trap her here.

  Her entire body went numb, a scent enveloping her like a shroud.

  Diorissimo.

  It wasn’t possible, had to just be her overactive imagination, but it was there just the same. Cloying, smothering. She took a step toward the fallen trees when a voice from the forest whispered, “Eleanor.”