by James Hunt
“You can’t run away from this one, Lindsy,” Carla said.
“What are you talking about?” Lindsy asked, not realizing that she was stepping backward, getting away from Carla as much as she could.
“You forgot what it’s like to lose something precious,” Carla said. “It’s been too long since your miscarriages. Perhaps it’s time for another lesson.”
Lindsy stopped her retreat, and anger replaced her fear. “You should watch your step.”
“Or what?” Carla asked. “So long as I remain in this form, there is nothing you can do with that bracelet. And that’s the only way you’re going to get rid of me. You know it, and I know it.”
“I was able to push you out of Daniel,” Lindsy said. “I can push you out of Carla.”
“Are you sure about that?” Carla asked, that smile widening. “Because the bond of a mother and her child is one of the strongest that exists. You won’t be able to break her free of me. She’s already given everything she has, and she’s still mine. If you want to stop her, you’ll have to kill her.”
Lindsy had always been able to call a bluff. And what frightened her at that moment was the fact that Lindsy was certain the midwife wasn’t bluffing. She wasn’t going to give in.
“Carla!” Daniel’s voice was muffled in the stairwell, but when he reached the door, he pounded on it and jiggled the handle. “Carla, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, dear!” Carla responded in her sweetest voice. “Everything’s perfectly fine!”
“The midwife has her, Daniel!” Lindsy replied. “You need to break down that door and help me out here.”
Daniel was quiet for a moment before he replied. “Carla, are you still there?”
Lindsy was curious to see how the midwife was going to play this, and she was surprised to watch as the midwife dropped the act.
“You come in here, and you’ll never see your daughter again,” Carla replied, her voice warbling from the changes in pitch.
“You need to hurry!” Lindsy said. “I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to hold her off.”
Carla refocused all of her attention on Lindsy. “Finally, something we both agree on.” She lunged forward, sprinting toward Lindsy with every ounce of strength she possessed, and Lindsy could do little but brace herself for the blow.
The pair of women screamed when they made contact with one another, and Lindsy was flung backward hard against the wall. The back of her head smacked against the old plaster so hard that it put a hole in the wall, and Lindsy’s vision burst with stars.
Carla threw the disoriented Lindsy to the floor and then pinned her down. She wrapped her hands around Lindsy’s throat, and she squeezed.
“That’s it, bitch,” Carla said. “You never stood a chance against me. Do you think you’re the first psychic that has come through here over the years? Well, any of the ones that weren’t selling bullshit hit the road once they realized that I was legit. Because they were afraid, I’ll give you credit for coming in here and standing your ground. You gave me a little bit of a scare in the beginning, but in the end, you still couldn’t stop me.”
Lindsy squirmed beneath Carla as black spots began to dot her vision. The few breaths she managed to squeeze into her lungs were few and far between.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been doing this?” Carla asked. “Do you have any idea the power I’ve collected over the years? All of the children I’ve stolen, they all feed me. They’re still feeding me, and they’ll continue to feed me for all eternity. I’ll be around forever while your bones turn to dust.”
Lindsy knew she was out of time, and she was out of tricks. The only thing she had left to do was play her trump card, but she wasn’t sure what would happen when she did. She had only done it once before, and that had been with a far weaker spirit.
The midwife was strong enough to overpower Lindsy, and if the midwife gained Lindsy’s powers, adding it to her own, then nothing would stop the midwife’s conquest of terror.
“You think you’re strong?” Lindsy asked, her voice husky from Carla choking the life out of her. “Then you shouldn’t have any problem dealing with me.”
Lindsy reached for Carla’s head, pressing her palms on either side of the woman’s temples, and she focused every ounce of her mental energy on pulling the midwife out of Carla and into herself.
The midwife put up a fight at first, and Lindsy wasn’t sure it was going to work, but then the midwife realized the advantage of taking over Lindsey's mind, and she allowed herself to slip into Lindsy’s consciousness.
The moment the midwife was out of Carla, Carla came to her senses and stared down in disbelief as she kept her hands around Lindsy’s neck. “Lindsy, I’m so sorry—”
Lindsy bucked Carla off of her with ease, the midwife’s doing. She stood and then examined her new form.
“Well, well, well,” the midwife said. “I have to say I didn’t see this coming.”
Lindsy was suddenly thrust into the backseat of her mind as she quickly struggled to regain control of her faculties. But the haze that she had heard Daniel describe was real. It was like trying to find an exit in a maze where you could only see three inches in front of your face.
But she could still see everything happening outside of her body.
“Lindsy?” Carla asked, shaking with fright. “Are you in there?”
“Hang on, Carla!” Daniel shouted from the other side of the door. “I’m coming in!”
Something heavy hit the door, causing the wood to buckle, but the door didn’t break. Another loud bang caused the door to buckle again, and this time it splintered.
But the midwife wasn’t concerned.
“You think your husband is going to be able to help?” the midwife asked, looking at Carla.
Lindsy could feel Carla’s terror as the young mother backed against the wall near the hole she had put Lindsy’s head through.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” The midwife turned to the door, and with one flick of the wrist, it flung open, just before Daniel was about to ram it again with his shoulder.
“Carla?” Daniel stepped inside, breathless and sweating. “Are you all right?”
Carla sprinted across the room to run to her husband, but the midwife intercepted her before she was able to make contact, putting her in a chokehold.
“Not so fast,” the midwife said, keeping a tight hold around Carla’s neck. “I think we all need to have a quick little chat.”
Daniel looked at Lindsy, confused. “What are you doing? Let her go; we have to—”
“Oh, you think Lindsy is still here?” the midwife asked. “Well, that’s very sweet of you. I’m afraid she’s gotten lost in her own mind.”
Daniel’s face slackened. “No. Lindsy, listen to me! Mike is hurt! You need to snap out of it!”
Lindsy heard the words, and she tried harder to regain control.
“He’s bleeding bad, Lindsy, c’mon!” Daniel shouted.
Lindsy continued to travel through the fog in the space in her mind where the midwife had placed her. No matter how far she ran, or for how long, she never gained any ground. It was like she was running in place.
But then she remembered how Daniel had felt like he could still see what was going on, like he was right there in the middle of the action.
And maybe she was.
Lindsy used every ounce of concentration she possessed and focused on clearing the fog. The midwife resisted at first, and Lindsy wasn’t sure she was going to be able to push it away. Still, she dug deep, finding a level of grit she didn’t know she possessed. Slowly, the fog cleared, and when it was gone, she saw Evelyn Carter, the midwife, staring back at her.
“I see you,” Lindsy said, though she was visibly drained from the effort of finding her.
“And what do you think that will accomplish?” the midwife asked. “Look at you. You can barely keep yourself upright.”
“I’ve still got some left in the tank,”
Lindsy said.
The midwife smiled. “No, you don’t. You can’t hide anything from me. Not while I’m in here.” She walked two steps forward. “I know all of your dirty little secrets. I know all of your fears. And I know how to use them against you.”
“You think you can conjure up something that I haven’t already done to myself?” Lindsy asked, scoffing. “Good luck.”
“Oh, I don’t need luck.”
Lindsy didn’t know what the midwife was planning, but she realized she had an opening, albeit a tiny one, and she didn’t know if it was going to work. But she would only get one chance at it. She had a theory that if she were able to knock herself unconscious, then the midwife would be knocked out as well, and while both of them would have been rendered pretty useless, Lindsy hoped it gave her body and mind the needed time to recover to fight back.
Lindsy knew she wouldn’t be able to take control of herself fast enough to knock herself out, but she could muster up enough strength to try and get Daniel to do the dirty work for her.
The midwife creased her brow as she frowned. “What are you up to?”
Lindsy knew the longer she dwelled on her thoughts, the sooner the midwife would see what she had planned. If she was going to do this, then she needed to do it quickly.
Mustering the rest of the strength, Lindsy thrust herself past the midwife and retook control of her mind. She saw Daniel and Carla by the door, watching her like she was crazy.
“Daniel, you need to hit me!” Lindsy said, screaming at the man. “You need to hit me, and you need to do it now! Knock me out!”
Daniel had heard her, but he looked at her like he hadn’t. “I can’t—”
“Do it now!” Lindsy felt the midwife rearing in her head, pulling at her ankles to take back control, and she already felt herself slipping. “You want your child back, then do it!”
Lindsy’s last moment just before the midwife took back control was of Daniel’s charge at her as he raised his fist to strike, and then everything went black.
23
The voice was muffled at first, almost like it was nothing more than an echo in a cave. For a moment, Lindsy thought it might be Mike trying to stir her awake. But then the voice became more defined, and she realized it was a woman.
It was the midwife.
“That was a smart move, Lindsy,” the midwife said. “But all you did was delay the inevitable. All I have to do is wait a few more hours, and then those papers are signed, and the resort will be a done deal. And then all I have to do is sit back and wait for the people to show up. Wait for the families to arrive, set down roots, and then I’ll go after what I’ve been taking for the past one hundred years. You failed.”
“Lindsy!”
Lindsy snapped her eyes open, jolting awake. It didn’t take long for the pain to catch up with her consciousness, the throbbing in her head feeling like someone had cracked her skull open and she had brain matter dripping out.
“Hey, can you hear me?”
A pair of hands were on her. Lindsy’s vision was still blurred, but as it cleared, she saw that it was Daniel standing in front of her.
“Lindsy?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah.” Lindsy grimaced and then shrugged Daniel off of her. She realized she was outside, and she was sitting on the porch with her back up against the house.
“I wasn’t sure how hard I should hit you, but I figured it was best if I only had to do it once,” Daniel said.
“Yeah, good call.” Lindsy grimaced again and gently prodded her head.
“Here.” Carla appeared with a bag of ice. “Put this on your eye.”
“My eye?” Lindsy asked, and then she winced as Carla applied the cold press to the shiner Daniel had given her on her left eye. After a minute, the ice felt good, and she calmed down.
“So, did it work?” Daniel asked. “Are you… you?”
It was a funny question to ask, and Lindsy wasn’t sure how to answer at first, but then she finally nodded. “Yeah. I’m me. For now.” She knew the midwife could try and make a move to get inside of her again, or she might just be lying dormant, but Lindsy’s instincts told her that she was free of the midwife for the moment.
“So, what do we do now?” Carla asked.
Lindsy knew they weren’t out of the woods yet, but her head was swirling with pain. And then a thought pierced through the confusion, and she sat upright. “Mike.”
Once Lindsy was on her feet, she immediately lost her legs, knees buckling, and she slid back to the porch before either Daniel or Carla could catch her. When they both reached for her, she dropped the ice pack and grabbed hold of each of their arms. “Where is he?”
“Deputy Williams took him to the hospital,” Daniel answered. “He didn’t think they could wait for an ambulance.”
Lindsy choked up. “How bad was it?”
Lindsy didn’t want Daniel to keep the details from her to spare her the feelings, and she knew she could have gotten the truth out of him no matter what, but he didn’t even need to say a word because the expression on his face told her everything she needed to know.
“Oh my god.” Lindsy covered her mouth and bowed her head. She cried silently to herself for a moment, the fear of losing Mike overpowering the pain that was ripping through her skull.
Carla placed a gentle hand on Lindsy’s shoulder and then joined her friend on the floor, allowing Lindsy to lean up against Carla as she cried.
“You have to think positive,” Carla said. “He’s going to be all right.”
Lindsy had tried to think positively in times of crisis before, and each time she had done that, she had been let down. The only time she had any type of success in dealing with hard times was when she took matters into her own hands.
“What time is it?” Lindsy asked, wiping her eyes free of the tears she had shed.
“It’s almost five in the morning,” Daniel said, sounding exhausted.
“Then we still have time,” Lindsy said, and she stood, Carla helping to steady her once she was upright.
It took Lindsy a moment to find her balance, but once she was sure she wasn’t going to collapse to the side, she waved Carla off. “I’m all right.”
“What can we do?” Carla asked.
Lindsy turned up at the house, which looked more ominous in the dark of night. “Are the mayor and the sheriff still here?”
“Yeah, I have them tied up in the RV,” Daniel said. “It was Mike’s suggestion before—” He cut himself off. “It was his idea.”
“Get them to city hall,” Lindsy said. “We’ll need the mayor to be in a position to call off the deal before eight o’clock hits.”
“And how the hell are we going to convince him to do that?” Daniel asked.
“After I destroy the midwife, her hold on everyone will vanish,” Lindsy answered.
“Yeah, except the mayor isn’t under the midwife’s influence,” Daniel replied.
“What?” Lindsy asked. “How is that possible?”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m just telling you what Mike told me.”
“The sheriff?” Lindsy asked.
Daniel nodded. “Yeah, he is.”
Lindsy thought for a moment, her mind sluggish from the blow to the head. She thought she might have a concussion. “The sheriff will have to arrest the mayor after what happened. The mayor might not have been under the midwife’s control, but he still broke the law. Have the sheriff arrest him, and the deal will be void.”
“And how are you going to stop the midwife?” Carla asked. “We’ve already tried that, and it didn’t end very well.”
Lindsy patted her pockets down, searching for the bracelet, and she started to panic when she couldn’t find it. “Where is it?”
“I have it.” Carla fished the bracelet out of her pocket, handing it to Lindsy. “You dropped it after Daniel punched you.”
Lindsy sighed relief. “Thank you.”
Carla nodded. “That still doesn’t answer my question. How are
you going to beat her? She’s had us on the ropes this entire time. What makes you think going back in there again is going to change that?”
Lindsy hadn’t thought that far ahead. But with Mike’s life precariously hanging in the balance, she wasn’t about to let the person who was responsible for all of this walk free.
“Just keep everyone out of the house,” Lindsy said, and then remembered how the midwife enjoyed using people against her, she turned to both Carla and Daniel. “Both of you leave. Now. You should be ready to go to the city hall the moment this is finished. It could come down to the wire.”
“We can’t just leave you,” Carla said. “This woman—”
“I’ll do everything I can to bring your daughter back,” Lindsy said. “But if I fail, you need to get as far away from this place as possible. Because she won’t be able to be stopped. Do you understand?”
Daniel pulled his wife close to him, nodding. “We will.”
“Just be careful,” Carla said.
Lindsy smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
She waited until both Carla and Daniel were in the RV and heading down the road and out of sight before she turned back to the house.
The three-story behemoth in the middle of the forest looked foreboding with its darkened windows, old paint, and rotting wood. It didn’t seem right that something so old and so weak should be able to inflict so much damage. But here she stood, barely, head aching and her husband in critical condition.
But Lindsy truly believed the midwife could be beaten. And she thought she could be the one to do it. Because while she might be exhausted, broken, and bruised, when the midwife took over her body, she felt something from her as well.
Hunger.
The kind of hunger that made someone angry, but it also revealed a weakness. The Maples daughter was the first child the midwife had taken in decades, and while it might have given her a brief boost in strength, Lindsy sensed that bit of strength was waning.
Which also meant the child’s life was waning. If Angela was still alive, then she wasn’t going to last much longer.
