Cauchemar

by Alexandra Grigorescu

  “You have a sister?”

  Callum cleared his throat. “She’s a few years younger than me. Was never too close with her either, but now she has a white-picket house in California and a little girl, and her husband is loaded. Sometimes it pays in unexpected ways, being a starving artist.”

  “You are starving,” she teased, punching his ribs under the covers. “You’re too thin.”

  “And you, my dear, are nesting.” He turned her around easily, fitting himself against her back, and patted her stomach. She gasped and swatted his hand away. “Don’t even,” he scolded. “I love it. I love it all.” His hand clutched hers. “What about you? Have you ever met your real parents?”

  Hannah sucked in air and sat up. She could make out the unblinking glint of his eyes in the darkness. “My real mother’s known in town. Or should I say, reviled. You’ve probably already heard about her, and maybe even made up your mind.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to say anything at all. I was just running my mouth.”

  Hannah hesitated, then, taking a deep breath, decided to trust. It felt like counting on a slender rope to hold her against the appetite of gravity. “Have you heard of Christobelle?”

  “That woman with the church? The spiritualist? I’ve heard a thing or two, usually from the too-good Baptist girls who heard it from their grandma. They say she’s a voodoo queen of some kind, whatever that means.” He made a scoffing sound. “Yeah, she’s legend.” Then, realization dawned on him. He sat up and slapped her knee in excitement. “Wait. That’s your mother?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The silence was heavy. Hannah imagined Callum leaving the room without a word, the shuttered windows shaking in the frames as he slammed the door. She braced herself against rejection, steeling her limbs.

  “Shit,” he said, and drew her into his lap. She trembled with the effort of staying stiff, staying strong, then gave in. “That must have been interesting for you.”

  Hannah nuzzled gratefully against his cheek.

  “We can be done with the conversation if you want, but—is there any truth to it? Speaking to the dead and all that?”

  “Funny how the ones who know firsthand are never the ones gossiping.” Hannah brushed back her hair and gathered it in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. It felt strange speaking out loud about things that she’d only ever turned over in her mind. “Who knows? After all, the power of voodoo is in the mind. You give someone a drink with crushed snails and sage, finish it off with a light psychotropic, and they’ll see whatever you want them to. Some of these potions that people peddle have clay, black sand, or even ground-up bones in them. I don’t know what she gives them, but from what I’ve heard, it’s always men that go to her, and they end up sick. Or worse.”

  “What’s she got against men?”

  Hannah remembered the way Christobelle rested against Samuel, depending on his presence beside her. How she’d called him her partner. “I don’t think she wants to hurt them,” Hannah said slowly.

  Callum whistled softly. “If I were you, I’d be so curious about it.”

  Hannah bristled. “She gave me up. Mae raised me, and that’s all that matters. I’m no more a part of it than anyone else, no matter what people might say. I’ve spent my whole life strung up for things I know nothing about.”

  “Well, not nothing. Don’t you ever wonder if you might have a bit of her in you? More than, say, her eyes or her nose?”

  “You think it’s catching? Talking to the dead?”

  “I’m just saying that if there are people on the other side, it might actually be charitable to start a conversation.”

  “I don’t put much stock in it,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady as she lay back down and burrowed under the covers. “I don’t really see how it’s easier to blame a toilet flushing in the night on some angry, constipated ghost than faulty plumbing.”

  “That’s some pressing unfinished business.” Callum stretched out beside her.

  “So?” she asked, trying to sound tougher than she felt. “Have I finally done it? Have I scared you away?”

  “Oh, definitely,” he said, a smile in his voice. “I’m shaking in my boots.” His breath dripped down the whorls of her ear. “A little thing like you? Who could you possibly scare?”

  That night, she dreamt memories. At six, she’d found shadows burned onto walls in the daylight, then wiped away at night. When she was nine, a very short man with filmy white eyes that looked as though they were wrapped in spiderwebs had come out of the water and offered her a fish. She’d been startled awake on dry land, alone, but the fish had been beating its death rattle on the ground beside her.

  Then the dream changed. She was back in the house by the water. Hannah knew she was grown from the heaviness in her belly, the dull ache on either side of her breasts. Christobelle sat beside her on the living room couch. She held a handkerchief in her cupped hands, soggy and dripping blood.

  “Do you need this?” her mother asked. The blood drops were perfect and pristine as cherries on the rug, and Christobelle wadded the fabric in her mouth. Her cheeks turned convex with it.

  “Yes,” Hannah cried, diving to her knees at Christobelle’s feet. She pulled the handkerchief out of the woman’s mouth, but it was a dry, dusty pink. Her own initials were embroidered in one corner.

  “Whose blood is this?” she asked, and felt the handkerchief disintegrate in her hands. When she looked up, it was Mae lying on the couch, and the handkerchief was on her face. Rising and falling with wheezing breaths. Her hands worked furiously in her lap, slippery on a long strip of skin. She was on the seventh knot.

  Hannah stood carefully and moved away. Something scurried, something moving with four-legged agility under the dining room table.

  Hannah turned resolutely away. “No,” she said to it. A low scraping, like mussel shells against hardwood, answered her. She knew, without looking, that it was dragging toward her.

  A warm, wet claw closed on her thigh and she looked down to see the back of a bald head, sun-bleached and ridged down the middle like a walnut. It was facing the floor, its claw roving blindly toward her stomach. Small, sniffing sounds filled the room.

  “Wake up,” Mae intoned in Christobelle’s voice, the handkerchief seizing on her face. Her fingers flailed over the eighth knot. “Wake up now.”

  The claw closed, its thick fingernails sliding through the white skin of her stomach as if it were cream. Hannah heard a pop and felt something burst inside her, like a grape between teeth. Blood rushed out.

  Below her, the thing turned its head and the blood struck it squarely between its white eyes, flat and polished as marble. The blood dripped down its tapered nose. A tongue, coated in white fur, slid out to taste it. It hummed between her legs.

  Behind her, Mae screamed.

  Hannah opened her eyes to blinding light and Callum kneeling beside her, shaking her furiously. “Christ, it’s everywhere,” he cried out.

  The sheets were dark with clotted blood, slick as an oil spill. “I’m sorry,” Hannah whispered. “Your poor sheets.”

  “It’s too much,” Callum groaned, gathering her. “Hold on to my neck. I want to get you into the bathroom.”

  Callum set her down in the bathtub, stuffing towels between her legs. “Hold this,” he urged, guiding her hand. He disappeared and Hannah watched the white towels fill with poppy blooms.

  “I have an emergency. My girlfriend is bleeding.” She heard him on the phone outside the room. Hannah stretched out a red hand past the filmy shower curtain, toward his voice. “No, it’s like a period, but it’s very heavy. No, it started out of nowhere. It was hard waking her up and she seems confused. I don’t think she can stand on her own.” There was a long pause. “Thank you.”

  Callum sat on the edge of the bathtub and stuffed two pillows under her waist. He stroked
her hair roughly. “They’re coming, and they said to elevate you a bit. Are you okay? Can you talk?”

  Hannah looked up into his face. His teeth seemed askew between ill-fitting lips and his eyes were wet. “Don’t worry. It’s just a dream.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  Mildew veined between his shower tiles, and she pointed weakly. “Bleach,” she tried to say, but the room was slipping, siphoning into a single point of light. The pressure in her belly stopped.

  Hannah came to in a bright room painted in khaki tones. A blue plastic curtain was pulled to one side. Soft beeps, slight as insects, surrounded her.

  “Hey there,” Callum said, scooting his chair closer to the bed.

  “Where am I? What happened?” A dull ache shot over her pelvis. All she could remember was a handkerchief, and the suffocating smell of wet pennies. She leaned over the metal edge of the bed, gagging slightly. The linoleum floor shone like water, undisturbed.

  “Let me call the doctor,” Callum said. “He should be the one to explain everything to you.”

  Hannah grabbed his hand. “No. Please tell me.” She noticed her wrist was bare of Mae’s copper bracelet. “Where’s my bracelet?”

  “The doctors couldn’t find a clasp so they cut it off when they needed to put your IV in.” Callum winced. “There was a complication with … Well. You’re pregnant. They said it’s just over a month old.”

  Hannah shrank down into her pillow. Blind panic surged through her. “They must be wrong.” Even as she said the words, she questioned them. She thought back over the last few months and was met by memories of carefree passion. Any of them could have been the moment of conception. Her fingers moved under the sheet to feel her stomach. The terrain was suddenly unknown.

  “Is it—” He coughed and turned away. “Is it mine?”

  “Either that, or an immaculate conception,” Hannah said. “But I seem to remember us getting busy once or twice.” Warm relief spread through her chest when he smiled.

  “I thought we were being careful.”

  “I took my birth control,” she said, defensively. “But, I guess, it’s a truth from elementary school. Nothing’s safe except—”

  “Abstinence,” he finished. “But where’s the fun in that?” Callum’s smile slipped as his eyes traced the white sheets. “I was scared.”

  “I’m sorry.” Hannah ran her thumb along his lip. He looked tired under the hospital fluorescence.

  “They said you almost lost the baby.”

  Hannah’s attention snapped back like a rubber band. “I didn’t? I’m still pregnant?” Hannah could feel Callum tearing loose threads from the sheets.

  “Yes. And I know it’s too soon to talk about this, but I was wondering if we could keep it.” The words raced out of him. Then, he reached forward and covered her mouth gently. “Don’t answer right away. Please, think about it.”

  She did. Over the rough skin of his fingers, she studied him. What should’ve taken months, or years, she compressed into seconds. But the question that rose above all others was whether she could envision a life for her child without Callum. Could she even imagine her own life without him?

  “How can we know we’ll last? I don’t know anything about being a mother.”

  “Look,” he said, sitting up. “It feels right with you. I’m not saying we get married tomorrow—” His mouth tightened. “Although if you wanted to …” He trailed off as she shook her head, smiling. “But we could give it a try. Hell, I care about you. A lot.”

  Hannah licked her lips. Did he love her, though? She wondered whether it was a prerequisite, whether she’d be satisfied without it. He began to stroke her hair, and she felt his hand shaking through the gentle, rhythmic movement. Maybe love was just a word, standing in for a sentiment as irrepressible as the ocean.

  “Okay. We can talk about it,” she said, then the panic returned. “Oh, God,” she whispered, and began to cry. “I’m not ready to be a mother.”

  Callum stood and leaned over her. He squeezed her shoulders and his face centered in her vision. “Well, we’ve got eight months to get ready.” The blue eyes that had eased the ache of her past few months now showed his fear.

  “What will we do?”

  Callum laughed suddenly, despite the tears shining in his eyes. “Fuck if I know,” he said, then switched gears when she sobbed harder. “We’ll figure it out together. I don’t think anyone really knows what they’re doing when it comes to raising another person. It’s instinctive, Cro-Magnon stuff. I’ll fetch the meat and pelts, and you’ll tend the hearth.” She almost smiled.

  “Where, in your apartment?” she asked, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

  “Sure. Or we’ll get a new place. We’ll pick a spot of our own.”

  Hannah fell silent. Some part of her had always wanted to leave the silence and the water that frightened her with its ever-shifting surface. Hadn’t she always envisioned a city somewhere, where she might open a café and spend weekend afternoons potting geraniums over a rickety fire escape? But in that moment, she realized that the land she’d been raised on pulled her still, drew her with its hazy mystery, its loon calls seeping into her morning dreams like a half-heard conversation.

  And how long before the townspeople noticed the bloat of her belly? Who would be the first to push her to the ground?

  “What if we went back to my house?” Hannah paused and considered her words. “It has more than enough room for three.”

  Callum frowned. “Is that really what you want?”

  It was. “I’m not sure.” Or she thought it was. The two were interchangeable for the moment. “Maybe?” She wanted her child to be born knowing the scent of oregano and patchouli that had seeped into the very wood of the place. She wanted to create the same sense of safety that Mae had forged for her.

  Callum cupped her face and freckled her with wet kisses. “Maybe,” he agreed.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  At ten years old, while they made cookies one afternoon, Hannah had asked Mae about babies.

  “What fool question is that? You’re a child still.”

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t want one now. I just want to know what it’s like.”

  Mae glared at her. “I suppose you already know where they come from. No good telling you tall tales about storks?”

  Hannah dipped her finger in the sweet cookie batter and sucked. “I know a bit about it.”

  “Well, then, you know as much as me,” Mae said, and slapped Hannah’s hand away. “Have you washed those busy fingers lately?”

  “Why did Christobelle give me to you? Was it because she didn’t want me?”

  Mae’s jaw clenched, a hinge rocking back and forth. “Why, you don’t like me anymore?” She let out a strained laugh.

  Hannah ran her nail through the maze of wrinkles on a walnut shell, then stuck her hands in the pockets of her denim overalls. She waited.

  “That woman experienced whole lifetimes worth of hurt. It’s not that she didn’t want you, but she knew well enough to know that she wasn’t fit to raise you. She thought she was doing right by you, and frankly, I think we’ve done alright here, you and me.” Mae fiddled with the metal clasp of Hannah’s overalls. “Her actions aren’t for us to understand, or to judge. The day will come when she’ll answer for all she’s done.”

  Hannah chewed her bottom lip, considering. “What about my father? Did she love him?”

  “More than you can imagine, and losing him was more than she could bear.” Mae ran the spoon, speckled with batter, under the faucet and scrubbed hard. Hannah had to step forward to hear her over the water. “Truth is, when the spirit world decides that things have run their course, you can’t cite fair or unfair by our human standards. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “So how did you get stuck with me?”

  “Lord
, child, you’ve got questions today. That’s enough, unless you don’t want dinner.” Mae gestured to the fragrant pot of crawfish and pork-liver sausage, hot sauce belching out between pockets of rice.

  “Please?” Hannah asked, knotting her fingers under her chin.

  Mae rolled her eyes. “When I met you, you were still in the womb. Your mother came to me because I had a reputation for midwifery.” Hannah frowned and Mae waved her hand. “I helped women birth naturally at home. You were a real kicker, feisty even then. After you came, well, Christobelle trusted me by that point. She realized she couldn’t take care of you properly, and didn’t give much consideration to how much experience I had. Figured since I’d gotten the babies into this world, I could probably raise them, too. Come here.” She jostled Hannah’s collar into submission.

  Mae’s eyes were a deep earnest brown. New lines, thin as cat hairs, appeared each day, whiskering out from her mouth and eyes. “I know it’s not a perfect life, but no life is.” Hannah looked at Mae with her chin raised haughtily, knowing even then she was being told only a fraction of the story.

  Mae stepped back and studied her. “And at least there are cookies. Get busy with those nuts.”

  Now, something stirred inside Hannah. Some thing because of how it writhed, clapping against the walls. It felt like a gator, rousing in the marsh of her belly. Callum rested his ear on her belly for a full hour, listening patiently, but there were only the stomach gurgles that preceded another bout of morning sickness.

  Dr. Merrick, who’d given Callum his card at the hospital, had called to remind her of a scheduled check-up but Hannah refused.

  “They said it looked like a healthy fetus,” Callum assured her, but they wouldn’t have known what to look for. The shadow of her mother’s hand hidden in the oscillating black of her womb, the toothed mouth of a nightmare creature. “They need to make sure it’s growing properly.” Callum pulled her onto his lap. Together, they watched a wasp circle a honey-sweetened cup of tea. “Which I’m sure it is,” he added quickly. “Dr. Merrick said you might be scared. Something about it suddenly being real once you see it.”