Cauchemar

by Alexandra Grigorescu

  Hannah. The two syllables stretched out through the hush, and she sped up. The voice repeated her name, and Hannah nearly tripped. It was patient, amused. She spotted a fence, half-hidden in a high bush, and steered toward where the house would be. Branches rose up to meet her, slapping her arms and face. Adrenaline numbed her to the sting. She ran the few feet to the clearing in front of the house, where she could see a group of four men sitting around a spit of meat. The smell was unmistakable.

  She burst into the clearing, trailing ferns torn from their roots. Go, it whispered in her ear, then the sound tapered off. The men looked up from the fire pit.

  “Can we help you?” Richie Lardeau asked, sluggish with whiskey.

  Hannah smoothed down her hair and managed a smile. “I was looking for Doug. I guess I took a wrong turn.”

  “You sure did,” another man offered from a striped lawn chair. His heavy cowhide boot was resting casually on the decapitated head of a large alligator. “Doug’s three houses west of here.”

  Hannah inched forward. The men scanned her bare legs, studied her breasts, and she stepped into their scrutiny, away from the patient watcher behind her. Its gaze bored into the back of her head, with an itch that felt like larvae stirring along her scalp.

  “What’d you need Doug for?” Richie asked, coaxing the embers with an iron stake.

  “Some berries,” she said, her voice faltering. “Maybe some eggs.”

  Richie smiled benignly at her. “Jodi!” he yelled, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “What?” a woman’s voice called from the house.

  “Be a peach and bring this nice lady some eggs.”

  There was a silence. “We barely have half a dozen.” Then, “What lady?”

  His smile widened, pristine white teeth winking at the corners. “Jodi, honey. Be a peach.” Each word fell from him like venom.

  Another man rose unsteadily from a lawn chair. He pulled off his baseball cap and silver strands tumbled loose above thick glasses. “It’s Hannah, Jodi,” he called into the house. “You all remember Hannah.” The men looked to him, expressions confounded by alcohol. “She lived with the black woman. Child of the cultist. Yes, sir.”

  Imogen Jarrod had hunted alligators for decades, and was known for his vicious killings. Hannah remembered him. Eleven and shopping in town, she’d heard Mae cry out and a gaggle of sour laughs rise up around her. Mae had bent over in the street and picked up something white and wet. Imogen had been sitting in the back of a pick-up truck.

  “I’ve got my eye on you,” he’d said, pointing at her with the alligator’s other eyeball.

  Hannah shrunk back from him now. Muscles still flexed under his tan, wrinkled skin.

  “You consort much with your kin these days?” Imogen peered at her with his obscenely magnified eyes. “I bet y’all just visit each other in the night, riding on broomsticks.”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure,” she said with bravado she didn’t feel. The smell of gator flesh was rising.

  “Let me tell you something, girl. I’ve been living in this parish since I was born. That’s my grandfather’s house behind me. My brothers left for Baton Rouge when they were teenagers, but I took to this life easy enough. It’s quiet. It’s decent. Folks know to leave other folks alone.” He squatted down over a dead alligator and, keeping his bug eyes fixed on her, dragged his knife through its belly. “Most folks, that is.”

  Hannah’s hands fluttered as they moved to cover her stomach and her mouth.

  “And then,” he continued in a low voice, “your bitch of a mother comes along with profane ideas. Things have been different since. And I’m not just talking about those fools that go straight to her. She showed up and we had three men killed by gators. Three, when we hadn’t had any in years. One of them was my nephew.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Hannah mumbled. “But I don’t know anything about it.” Jodi appeared in front of the house, shielding her eyes. She held a carton.

  Imogen rose, all the fat stripped from his old body, and strolled toward her. The knife hung from his fingers. “I’m sure you are.” He lifted the knife and sniffed it. “Gator blood smells a little different, a little sharper.” He looked around at the men. “Others kill them with a bullet behind the eyes, but I’m getting up in years, and I don’t have the steady hand to find an alligator’s pea brain. You feel it more, when you use a knife.”

  Hannah knew the scent. Old alligators would sometimes drift up to the bank behind the house and smaller prey would set upon them, chewing wildly as if knowing this inversion of the natural order was temporary.

  “That’s enough, Im,” Jodi said, slapping him lightly on the back of the head as she passed. “Here. Three’s all I can spare.” She wrapped an arm around Hannah’s shoulders and turned her toward the woods. “Say goodbye now, y’all.” Then, in a lower voice, “They’ve been drinking since noon. You know how it is with men when you get them in packs over some roasting meat. They get like wolves.”

  Imogen called out, “Stay on your own goddamn land.”

  “Thank you for this,” Hannah whispered to Jodi, clutching the near-empty carton.

  “No problem.” Jodi let go of her at the edge of the trees and cast a cursory look into the deep shade. “You better get home quick before the sun goes.” She shook her head. “I hate these goddamn woods. They spook me just about every other day.”

  “Do you ever see things? Out in the trees, or on the water?” Hannah whispered. Leaves shivered like feathers. The whole tree line a sleeping bird, with claws made of roots.

  Jodi blinked. She pulled the elastic from her short dun hair and fanned it out around her ears. “Oh, sure, but it’s just your imagination playing tricks. The sorts of things you see with your mind’s eye. But these old eyes explain it all away.”

  “Have you ever seen a white gator in the woods?”

  Jodi’s eyebrows rose. “A white gator? Who ever heard of a thing like that?” Then she squinted into the trees. “But you know, the land here’s always full of surprises. You can never be too sure what it’s going to spit up from day to day.”

  Richie whistled from behind. “Thanks for the visit. If you women are done clucking, the gator’s nearly smoked. Lady, you’ll understand if we don’t ask you to stay.”

  Jodi shoved her. “Go on, lucky duck.”

  Hannah stumbled back through the woods, walking quickly. As the shadows gathered, she noticed how many hiding places there were for something ill-intentioned to lie in wait. Each snap of a twig made her heartbeat race.

  By the time she finally arrived at the house, she was soaked in sweat and almost wheezing for breath.

  “Good God, what’s wrong?” Callum cried when he saw her. He sat her in a chair and fanned a newspaper over her warm skin. “What’s happened?”

  “Just got spooked,” she said shrilly, and leaned on his shoulder. She massaged feeling back into her fear-numbed legs. “I thought something might be following me.” Her words sounded ridiculous to her own ears. “Never mind me. I feel stupid.”

  “You are,” he said, soothingly. “You’re stupid to go headstrong into the same woods where you told me alligators make their dens, but I’m the bigger idiot for letting you go. I hope you know I won’t be making this mistake again.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Really, it’s nothing.”

  He opened the carton and shook his head at the eggs. “Well, we needed everything from carrots to bread, and you came back with three eggs.”

  “I know those woods well enough to walk them in the darkest night, but somehow I got turned around.” She willed her hands to stop quaking. Graydon hopped up on the back of the chair and nudged the nape of her neck. Slowly, her breath became even.

  From that day on, Callum took over all the chores that required traveling any significant distance. As summer s
et in, Hannah planted herbs behind the house and sometimes sat cross-legged in the dew-wet morning shade amongst them, sniffing deeply, wondering if this would be the baby’s first experience of chicory and basil.

  Hannah was heating tomatoes in a skillet one afternoon when she heard the sound of a large motor coming toward their dock. Her stomach sank as she saw Samuel rise from a boat.

  She said a small prayer of thanks that Callum was out, that the two halves of her life could remain separate for a while longer, and waited in the back doorway as Samuel hobbled toward her.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Don’t be tiresome, child.” Samuel spoke in a low voice. “She hasn’t been feeling well. She wanted to speak to you. Where should we put her?” He rose on tiptoes and peered past Hannah into the living room. A stack of fresh laundry teetered on the edge of the sofa.

  “Wherever you please, but get on with it.”

  “She was hoping you’d come to her, you know,” Samuel said.

  “I know,” Hannah said sharply, and kicked off her slippers. “But I hoped if I waited long enough, she’d forget about me.”

  Samuel’s mouth tightened. It pocked his cheeks into craters. “You’d best respect your mother—”

  “Do something or don’t, but do it quick. I have my own chores to look after.”

  His oily eyes still on her, he raised a hand into the air and gestured behind him. Christobelle was pulled gingerly from the boat by three solemn men, and Hannah saw that her mother had shrunk alarmingly. Her linen shirt hung off her body, and her long skirt was fastened around her waist with a worn leather belt. Even in the heat, she clutched a scarf tight against her neck. Christobelle suddenly doubled over and Hannah saw a thin line of spittle fall from her mouth.

  “Not a word, child,” Samuel warned.

  Two of the men half-carried her into the house, while the other waved a newspaper to fan her and knelt to remove her shoes. “Never mind that,” Christobelle muttered.

  For the first time in a long time, Hannah felt unafraid. She led them into the living room, then planted her feet firmly and imagined she was an oak tree, bred to withstand. “Set her down there,” Hannah said, gesturing to the couch.

  There was fussing for another minute punctuated by groans and coughs, all done so quietly that if she closed her eyes, Hannah could almost imagine it was some house down the street being eclipsed by her mother’s presence.

  And then there was perfect silence, and a tableau. Her mother in repose, her feet neatly side by side beneath the hem of her floor-length violet skirt, and the men standing around the perimeter of the couch like fence posts.

  “Well then,” her mother said, smiling with effort. “Is there lemonade?”

  Hannah crossed her arms over her chest. “Samuel, would you?”

  He blinked. A squawk of air left his mouth. He met Christobelle’s eyes, which narrowed at him.

  She shrugged. “My daughter and I have things to discuss. You might make yourself useful. The rest of you should go by the water and cool yourselves.”

  They bowed their heads and sidled out of the house, squeezing past Samuel. Their blind obedience unsettled Hannah.

  “There’s a jug of iced tea in the fridge,” Hannah said evenly to Samuel. “Lemons are in a bowl on the counter. There’s no ice, but you could make some.” She unwound her apron strings, and webbed her hands over her belly. “Depending on how long you’re planning to stay.”

  Her mother stared fixedly at Hannah’s hands, eyes boring into the bump beneath them, her expression filled with appetite. “Child, your temperature’s high.”

  “It’s summer. Not all of us are blessed to live in the shade of half-life.”

  Her mother’s mouth twisted into something like a smile. She stretched out her legs and played demurely with the hem of her skirt. “Today the shade’s thin.”

  Hannah sighed and pulled a magazine from the pile under the coffee table. She sat across from her mother and fanned her halfheartedly. “Samuel mentioned that you’re not feeling well?”

  Christobelle scanned the living room and paused when she saw the guitars set on their stands. The woman’s hair had grown in unevenly since the last time Hannah had seen her, and she spied bare scalp beneath the mix of strawberry blonde strands and icy-white tufts. “I’ve been feeling a bit faint lately. I’ve had to extend myself further than I’m accustomed to, but it’s nothing for you to concern yourself with.” Her eyes closed against the meager breeze. “I waited, thinking you’d come visit me. Hoping that you’d have questions now that Mae is gone.”

  “Visiting is for people who have relationships,” Hannah said coolly. “As we don’t, I didn’t think it’d be appropriate, although you seem to disagree.”

  “This was my house, child,” Christobelle said. “Don’t forget that you’re only living here because I granted it to you. Besides, you’re barely of age. I was concerned.”

  Hannah remembered studying her profile as a child. The same feline cheekbones sat before her now. They had the straight, stately nose in common, and a deep basin above their mouths, but her mother’s lips were thin and tinged in purple. She touched her own hair now, wondering if the woman’s bald spots, white scalp like bone under fur, lay in her future.

  “But the house isn’t the reason for my visit,” Christobelle said the last word deliberately. “I’ve heard things. All manner of things.”

  A pair of Callum’s boxers hung off the edge of the couch. Hannah moved to hide them, then shifted back, reminding herself that she was a grown woman. Her life and her body were hers to do with as she pleased. “Which side was talking?”

  “Both,” Christobelle said. She watched Hannah with unfocused eyes, but Hannah felt that if she tossed an orange from the bowl on the table at the woman, a strong hand would whip up to catch it. “The living are usually less reliable, but when both sides come together on a story, well, there’s not much wiggle room.”

  “Why have you come?”

  Christobelle looked pointedly at Hannah’s belly. “That’s a stupid question.”

  Hannah patted her stomach. “I thought your business was death.” She was surprised to see a bead of sweat grow at the edge of her mother’s nose. The woman’s touch had always been arctic. The sight of sweat on Christobelle’s skin, and the blush rising above her scarf, were unusual.

  “Right now, my business is you. Who fathered the child?”

  Mae had told her little about Christobelle, but she’d always implied that the woman had an omnipotent knowledge of Hannah’s life. Hannah had grown up with the sense of being watched from a distance, which was infinitely worse than being watched from proximity. There were no corners to hide in.

  “I would’ve thought you’d know all about him, being so well informed.”

  Christobelle massaged the knuckles of her left hand. She ground her teeth in even, measured spurts. “He’s hidden from me. Veiled.” The room filled with the aching sound of enamel flaking away.

  “I appreciate the concern, but it’s none of your business.”

  “It is precisely my business!” The yell was masculine, enraged, and Hannah shrank back.

  To calm herself, she pulled a few socks from the laundry basket beside the couch and began pairing them. “Callum. You might’ve seen him at Mae’s funeral.”

  “The blue-eyed man? The light-haired one?”

  “That’s him,” Hannah said, rolling her shoulders. “He’s a good man. He’s taken good care of me.”

  “I see feathers,” Christobelle muttered under her breath as she rubbed her forehead. “Only feathers around you.” She squinted around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

  “Anyways, there’s been talk of marriage, but we’re taking things as they come. We agree there’s no need to rush into things. We’re happy here.”

  “You’re going to keep i
t?”

  Hannah tossed the balled up socks aside and stood up, her hands clasping around her elbows. Although in her darker moments, she still sometimes wondered if she’d made the right choice, the idea that she might not have kept the child, now that she’d grown used to the heaviness inside her, felt foul. “Of course.”

  “That’s a mistake.” Christobelle spoke slowly. “It will weaken you. It will come out wrong, child, if it comes out at all.”

  “My baby is a mistake,” Hannah repeated in a flat voice.

  “You cannot imagine the sacrifice it took to bear you or the effort to protect you all this time. At least I had Mae to bolster me. I fear it will be the same for you, and you need your strength for yourself. ”

  Hannah plastered a smile onto her face. “Samuel,” she called into the kitchen, “time’s up.”

  Christobelle spoke over her, intoning each word carefully. “You are my child. You are my blood. You can ignore it, but you cannot avoid it. Things transfer.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” Hannah said, her smile tightening.

  “They are gathering around you, child. You’re wide open, and lit up like a flame. If you cannot control it, they will consume you—” Her hand lashed out, palm straining for Hannah’s belly, and her irises disappeared upwards. The whites of her eyes were tinged with yellow. She chanted in a low voice.

  Hannah backed away. Hissing came from behind her and she turned to see Graydon, his old teeth gnashing. She rushed down the hallway on unsteady legs. “Out,” Hannah called. “Right now.” Christobelle’s incantations still came in whispers from the living room. “I want you out.”

  The men lined up in front of the door, expressionless. The youngest was in his teens, his unlined skin hanging loose from a skeletal face. Hannah couldn’t assign an age to the oldest, whose back stooped like a grandfather’s.

  “Go and get her,” she said to the men, but they continued to stare straight ahead, frozen like wax statues.