by James Hunt
“All right,” Lindsy said, taking a breath. “Time to finish this.”
Lindsy stepped inside the house, the door hanging open, and she lingered in the foyer. She stared at the bloodstains on the staircase. She figured that’s where Mike must have been injured.
It was a lot of blood. Too much blood for one person to lose, and Lindsy felt her knees buckle. But she didn’t allow herself to fall. She used the image of her husband’s blood to build her strength, and when the anger began to grow, Lindsy pressed forward.
The front door slammed shut, and Lindsy turned around in time to watch the lock click into place. Lindsy only smiled. “Don’t worry, Evelyn. I’m not leaving until you do.”
Lindsy stared up to the second floor, knowing exactly where she would find the midwife. The nursery was the place where she was the strongest. And that’s where Lindsy would go.
But when Lindsy placed her foot on the first step of the staircase, she paused, a noise catching her attention from somewhere on the first level of the house. Her heart skipped a beat from the quiet giggles that drifted through the walls.
Of all the dreams Lindsy had over the past seven years, there was one that had given her some form of comfort amid all of the recurring nightmares she had from the miscarriages.
Because of Lindsy’s clairvoyant ability, she was sometimes able to see glimpses of different versions of the future. But these abilities only occurred when she was asleep, when her subconscious mind was free to take control. Sometimes the visions would be terrible, but every once in a while, they provided a moment of relief.
When the midwife had been in Lindsy’s head, she must have had access to every memory imaginable. And while Lindsy could read minds and follow a trail of breadcrumbs, she had never been able to see everything within a person’s mind. But the midwife was much stronger than Lindsy, and she’d had decades to hone her skills.
Lindsy followed the giggles down a hallway to a room with a closed door. Mouth dry, Lindsy forced herself to grab the doorknob and opened the door. The door swung inward, and Lindsy stood there in the doorway. Her jaw dropped as she witnessed a little girl, a full head of red hair, sitting at a small table with stuffed animals in the chairs next to her, having a tea party.
The little girl looked up from her tea set and smiled wide, her left front tooth missing. “Mommy!”
Lindsy’s voice caught in her throat, and her heart fluttered in her chest. She made a noise that was a part hiccup, part gasp, and part cough.
“Susie,” Lindsy said, whispering the name, as though speaking it aloud would cause the little girl to vanish.
“Come and play with me, Mommy,” Susie said.
Lindsy couldn’t stop herself as she wandered into the room, the door closing softly behind her without her noticing. She walked to the empty seat next to Susie, taking in every inch of the little girl she had dreamed about when she had been pregnant with her first child.
“Would you like some tea?” Susie asked, holding up her pretend teapot.
Lindsy picked up her small pink plastic cup and brought it toward Susie, who pretended to pour tea into the teacup.
“Sugar?” Susie asked.
Lindsy was captivated by the sight of her unborn child. The one she had lost in her first miscarriage so many years ago. Before Lindsy was even pregnant, she had a vision about her daughter. She would be a redhead, cheeks dotted with freckles, and the most beautiful blue, piercing eyes. But seeing her now, here, was almost too much for her to handle.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Susie asked.
“Nothing,” Lindsy answered, finding her voice. “It’s just… so good to see you.”
Susie giggled. “That’s silly. You see me all the time.” She set the teapot down and then picked up her little cup and sipped.
“I wish that were true,” Lindsy said, knowing this was simply the midwife creating distractions. “You’re so pretty.”
Susie laughed again, shrugging her shoulders. She had Mike’s nose and ears, and her thick, curly hair. “You’re pretty too, Mommy.”
Lindsy set the teacup down and then slowly reached out, which were trembling. “Can I get a hug?”
“Of course!” Susie slipped out of her chair and walked over to her mother, and the moment she was in Lindsy’s arms, she started to cry.
Lindsy held her little girl tight, the weight of her daughter feeling good in her arms. In her dreams, she had never been able to actually hold Susie. She could only see her from a distance, and every time she tried to get closer, she would wake up, and the dream would be over.
But here in this moment, Susie felt warm and comforting. Lindsy imagined that this was what it was supposed to feel like. She was sure of it.
“You’re not going to leave me, are you, Mommy?” Susie asked, whispering in her ear.
Lindsy didn’t want to go anywhere else for the rest of her life. She could sit here and drink tea and play pretend, and that would be the end of it. But she knew she couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Lindsy said, still holding her daughter. “I wish I could.”
Susie pulled back, sliding off of her mother, and looked up at her with indignation. “You promised me that we would be together. Why would you leave me?”
“Susie, I—” Lindsy reached for her daughter’s hand, but she retreated further.
“I hate you!” Susie yelled.
Lindsy shook her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do!” Susie screamed. “I hate you, and I never want to see you again!”
Even though Lindsy understood that none of this was real, the words cut into her like a knife to the gut, cutting out her heart and spilling what remained of her soul.
Lindsy stood on shaking legs and walked toward the door, knowing that the longer she stayed here, the harder it was going to be for her to keep moving forward.
She made it to the door when Susie and the midwife offered one final blow.
“Why don’t you love me?” Susie asked, her voice on the edge of tears.
Lindsy paused, her back still to the apparition of her daughter. Tears rolled down Lindsy’s cheeks, and she slowly turned around, eyes bloodshot and rheumy. “I’ve loved you the moment I felt your first kick in my womb, Susie. But this… You’re not real.”
Susie cried harder, her cheeks red and wet. “Why would you say that!”
Lindsy shook her head. “I have to go.”
“NO!” Susie sprinted forward, wrapping her arms around Lindsy’s leg, holding tight with all of her strength. “Don’t leave me!”
Lindsy struggled to remove the girl, her arms shaking as she cried too. “I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She eventually peeled the little girl off of her and quickly stepped back into the hall, slamming the door shut.
Susie pounded her little fists against the door, crying out for Lindsy. “Please, Mommy, don’t go!”
Lindsy stepped back from the door, horrified by the experience, and returned to the staircase, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her breaths continued to catch in her throat, and she had to lean against the stair’s railing to keep herself from collapsing. Even though she knew what she had seen wasn’t real, it didn’t stop feeling real.
The midwife had decided to play dirty, pulling on the dreams she had experienced. Lindsy knew that all of this was only meant to distract her, and she couldn’t imagine what would be waiting for her as she made her way upstairs.
Lindsy used the railing to help guide her up to the second floor. She still couldn’t stop herself from trembling, no matter how hard she concentrated.
The emotions Lindsy had buried after the miscarriages were never supposed to be dug up again, but because she had let the midwife inside of her head, the old ghost was able to see everything, even the images Lindsy wished to keep secret. And Lindsy was certain all of those old graves would be dug up again here tonight.
When Lindsy reached the second floor, the entire house trembled like there had been some kind of an earthquake
. Lindsy gripped the handrail to keep herself steady, and after the rumbling was done, Lindsy saw that the second story stairs had been destroyed.
The stairs led to nowhere. At first, Lindsy assumed that it was just another projection the midwife was putting into her head, but when Lindsy attempted to actually step on the stairs up to the second floor, she nearly fell back down to the first floor.
Lindsy glanced up at the top floor, trying to figure out how she was going to get up there, when the sound of music drifting from down the hall pulled her attention toward it. The melody was so familiar. She had heard the song before. She had listened to it obsessively when she was a teenager.
Lindsy glanced down the second story hallway and saw that it had transformed into a shorter hall someone would find inside of a house. It was warm and inviting, and again Lindsy found herself being pulled in the direction of the noises of something that seemed both from her past and of her future.
Lindsy knew it was the midwife’s doing, and until she investigated what was down there, then the third floor would remain off-limits.
The singing continued to be off pitch, but there was a playful note to it that caused Lindsy to smile, and she opened the door like she had downstairs and was greeted to the sight of a young woman on the bed, lying on her stomach, feet in the air, kicking aimlessly as she read from a book.
Lindsy saw the record player on a dresser near the door and the old vinyl that was stacked next to it. She saw the cover of the current record and noted that it was Madonna’s album Like A Prayer, and the title song was currently playing. It was the same album that Lindsy used to play when she was a teenager, but as she looked at the girl on the bed, she was sure it wasn’t her.
The girl finally rolled to her side, and when she noticed Lindsy standing there, she jolted in surprise. “Jesus, Mom! Way to be a creeper.”
Lindsy stepped aside as the girl walked over and turned the music down. She was tall, almost Lindsy’s height, probably around sixteen years old. She had jet black hair and thick dark eyebrows, and beautiful brown eyes. She looked like Mike. And Lindsy realized this was another vision of the future. Though Lindsy had never seen any of her children grow up this much in her dreams. They had always been infants or toddlers. This was something new. This was her second miscarriage, Rosie, all grown up.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Rosie asked, twisting her face up in the same smirk that Mike would do.
“You look just like your father,” Lindsy said.
Rosie rolled her eyes and then returned to the bed, flopping down on her side. “You say that all of the time.”
“I do?” Lindsy asked.
“Yeah,” Rosie answered.
Lindsy nodded, smiling as she looked back to the stack of records. She sifted through them and found that while she was listening to Madonna, she had her father’s taste in music. Lots of easy listening music and jazz. “Your father gave you these?” She lifted the stack to show Rosie, and the girl nodded. “Figures.”
“He says it’s good to have a wide variety of taste,” Rosie said. “But I do like the pop stuff. It’s fun.”
Lindsy nodded. “That’s what pop is for. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to let you escape.” She set the stack of records down and then examined the player.
It was the same record player that Lindsy had when she was a teen. Her father had introduced her to the wonders of vinyl. There was just something different about listening to a pressed album. The imperfections made the sound so much more real. There wasn’t anything artificial about it, and that was something Lindsy had always appreciated.
But the record player had been sold off when Lindsy and Mike had decided to embark on their adventure seven years ago. She hadn’t listened to an actual record since then.
“Why’d you give up?” Rosie asked.
Lindsy looked away from the record player and faced her teenage daughter. “What?”
“The music,” Rosie said. “You just threw it away like it never meant anything to you.”
Lindsy shook her head. “No, it meant a lot to me. Just because I threw it away doesn’t take away its value.”
Rosie arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the exact definition of not having value? Throwing something away is telling the rest of the world that you don’t care about it anymore.”
Lindsy could tell where this was going even before the words left Rosie’s mouth, so she turned toward the door.
“Just going to walk away?” Rosie asked. “I guess you threw me away too.”
The anger that flared up in Lindsy surprised her, and she spun around, looking at what her subconscious mind believed her teenage daughter would look like even though there was no way to tell for sure.
“I never walked away from you, or my family,” Lindsy said. “You died. I felt you die, watched you die—more times over than I can count. Every time I had a vision, it felt like the real thing.”
“You could have done more,” Rosie said. “You could have done so much more to save us.”
The anger triggered tears, but they didn’t flow as freely as they head downstairs. Most of them burned up before they had a chance to fall. “I did everything I could.”
Rosie gestured around her. “Apparently not.”
“You think that I could have just made something like this up?” Lindsy asked. “Conjured all of this out of thin air? I can see the future. I can see the past. But I can’t create… this.”
Rosie got off the bed, standing toe to toe with Lindsy now. The arrogance radiating off of her was no doubt coming from the midwife. “You’re not as strong as she is. You know it, and so does she. You’re going to lose, Mother. You’re going to lose everything. Just like how you lost me.”
Lindsy turned for the door, not wanting to hear any more of this nonsense. The last thing she needed was to get herself in some kind of trouble like this; she needed to move on, get out of here before—
Rosie lunged for Lindsy, yanking her backward and down onto the floor.
“You’re a bitch of a mother!” Rosie screamed. “That’s why you could never have any of us! Because you would have ruined us! Just like how you ruined your own life!”
Rosie charged again, and Lindsy thrust her arms up to defend herself. The girl landed blow after blow against Lindsy, each strike hurting more than just the physical pain. But even though she was getting pummeled, Lindsy couldn’t find the nerve to fight back. Because even though this was just an apparition of her mind, Rosie still looked like Mike.
Eventually, Lindsy managed to grab Rosie’s wrist and keep the girl from striking her in the face. But Rosie was much stronger than Lindsy had anticipated. As much as it pained her, she would have to fight back.
Lindsy kneed Rosie in the stomach and then flung her daughter off of her and to the ground. She took the opportunity to dash for the door, but Rosie reached out, grabbing hold of Lindsy’s ankle and yanking her back to the floor.
Rosie scrambled forward once Lindsy was on the ground, once again pinning her to the floor, striking her with all of the fury and rage a teenage girl could muster. And she kept hitting Lindsy until her anger bubbled over, and she no longer cared about who she was hitting; she only wanted the pain to stop.
Lindsy bucked Rosie off, throwing the girl off balance, and then punched the girl in the stomach with all of her might. She finished off the combination with a quick uppercut to the chin. The force of the blow triggered pain that rippled through Lindsy’s arm, but the blow was strong enough to push Rosie back and stop the attack, which was what Lindsy wanted in the first place.
“You think that you’ve won?” Rosie asked, staying on the ground as blood dripped from her mouth and down her chin. “You still won’t have what it takes to stop this. You will never have the strength that’s needed to beat her.”
Lindsy stood and quickly backtracked to the door. “I will beat her. And then this wretched vision of what my daughter would have looked like will be gone forever.”
Rosie smiled, but she had lost all semblance of her father as the mischievous grin stretched wide. “You know that’s not true. These images will be burned into your memory forever because of how connected they are to your reality. There is no escape from this, no matter what you do or how far you run. You will always be the mother who failed. You will always be the mother who allowed her children to become this.” Rosie spread her arms wide, the blood dripping onto her shirt now, and she laughed with an enthusiasm that made her cackle seem like it was not of this world.
Lindsy escaped out of the room and then slammed the door shut. She closed her eyes and started to hyperventilate. “It’s not real. None of this is real. It’s not real.” She waited to catch her breath before she opened her eyes, and when she did, the hallway was back to normal.
Lindsy returned to the stairwell, finding the flight of stairs leading to the third and final floor. She glanced up the last steps, wondering what would be waiting for her upstairs because she couldn’t imagine how the midwife planned on topping what she’d done so far.
Once Lindsy safely reached the top of the stairs, she saw that the door to the nursery was open, just like it had been before. She adjusted her grip on the bracelet and then walked into the room.
There were no tricks or illusions when she entered. The room was exactly how it had been when Daniel and Carla Maples inherited the house from a late aunt who never visited this town.
“All of this because of some gift,” Lindsy said, shaking her head.
Lindsy waited in the room, thinking the midwife would show herself as she had before, but after some time, Lindsy started to grow impatient.
“Is that the plan?” Lindsy asked. “Just going to wait it out like a coward? Because I don’t have anywhere else I need to be, and even if the deal goes through, it’ll be months, maybe years, before you see the fruits of your labor! And that’ll still give me plenty of time to bring you down!”
Lindsy hoped the taunt would draw the midwife out, but her voice only echoed back to her as she remained alone in the room.
And then she heard it—the midwife’s final taunt.
