Cauchemar

by Alexandra Grigorescu

  Hannah gulped hard.

  “Expecting fathers can lose weight from sheer stress, or gain it,” the doctor continued. “It’s rarely more than five pounds in either direction. You were a slender build to begin with, so I’d like you to tell me what’s been happening.”

  The off-green walls highlighted Callum’s pallor, and the hospital light was interrogative, picking up fading bruises on his arms and the faint outline of ribs under his T-shirt. Hannah could see him clearly for what he’d become: an old man. A sick man.

  “We can talk alone, if you prefer,” Dr. Merrick said, and gave his watch a passing glance.

  “No, whatever you have to say, say it here. My appetite’s been shit. It’s been stressful. We’ve had some,” Callum gave Hannah a pained look, “extenuating circumstances. Really, I came here to find out what was wrong.”

  “Your liver’s failing,” the doctor said bluntly, then let it sink in. Slippered feet shuffled in the hallway, accompanied by the ever-present undertone of soft, reassuring beeps that signaled life. “The liver’s a very forgiving organ. It works quietly to filter out all the harmful things you might put in your body—alcohol, drugs, prescription and otherwise, and other everyday toxins—until it can’t anymore. It’s also one of the few organs that reaches a point of no return. You’ve heard of cirrhosis?”

  Callum nodded, scratching a raw patch of skin on his arm. Hannah put a soothing hand over his.

  “From the looks of it, you’ve had cirrhosis for several years. Except you haven’t. We have your liver function tests from a few years back, and they were, if not pristine, perfectly in line with a male in your age range.”

  Callum released a laugh and immediately covered his mouth. “Are those words supposed to mean something to me?”

  “You’re in liver failure. The only explanation for such accelerated symptoms would be hepatitis, but you’ve tested negative, as has Hannah. I’d like to admit you to hospital, except, Callum, I have to say that your levels are so low there’s not much we can do except put you on a transplant list. Before I can do that, though, I need to know what you did to induce this. The transplant committee has rules when faced with suicidal motives, indirect or otherwise.”

  Callum lurched forward and for a panicked moment, Hannah thought he meant to throttle the doctor, but instead, he clasped his hands together in a posture of prayer. “I have a child almost ready to push its way out into this world. How could I possibly want to leave it? No, no, I promise,” Callum said. “I just started getting sick, really sick. I came here half-expecting that you’d say we had a gas leak somewhere in the house.”

  Dizziness struck Hannah as she saw the thoroughly yellow tinge of his skin, the jaundice in his eyes. She’d never known yellow could become so morbid when imprinted on human skin. Tears trickled, hot and salty, into her mouth.

  “I’ll leave you to get dressed, Hannah. There are paper towels on the cart. Callum and I are going to have a chat outside.” Dr. Merrick flicked off the screen.

  Callum attempted a quivering smile. He was trying to be strong, but there was only so much strength to be summoned when the odds were stacked so high that they eclipsed all else. “We’ll just be a moment,” he said as he followed the doctor out of the room.

  After the door closed, sounding like an indrawn breath, Hannah swung her legs around and wiped the gel from her stomach. As she dressed herself, she cooed and shushed, whispering, “It’s going to be okay.” The words were meant as much for her as for the baby.

  She waddled into the waiting room and perched on the edge of a seat. She watched Callum at the end of the hall. He gestured frantically at the doctor, whose face was implacable. At a distance, Hannah could see his weariness, his fear, and she turned her eyes to the smears of mud on the emergency room floor and gum pasted to the candy-red plush chairs.

  When Callum came toward her, he was reduced. He’d fooled them both with his buoyant spirit. His hope had inflated him, made him appear larger. Now she saw him whittled. He knelt before her and laid his head against her belly.

  “What did he say?” Hannah said, hugging him tightly. Passing nurses looked at them knowingly, then gave them privacy.

  “I don’t believe it. Any of it. I’m too young for this. He asked that I stay for a few days while they do more tests. I just don’t understand.” He sat up and looked carefully at her. “You believe me, right? You know I’m not using drugs?”

  Hannah searched his face, hating herself for a moment of doubt. Then, she nodded, although she was no longer listening. Beyond him, the seated men were garish under the light. Their faces drooped over their bones. Some clutched their chests, acknowledging angina and arrhythmia. Others lay slumped in their chairs. Only their panicked eyes, roving back and forth, betrayed their racing thoughts. How many were dying? How many were afflicted by Christobelle? In this town, was there any difference?

  “Hannah?” Callum came back into focus.

  “Let’s rest here tonight,” she said. Callum began shaking his head, but Hannah steadied it between two firm hands. “What if we go back only to have the baby come? The best thing we can do is find out what’s going on with you. I need you strong.” Her voice faltered.

  “You’ll stay?”

  “Of course.” Hannah wanted to end the conversation, to get him hooked up to machines that promised to subdue the sulfurous hue of his skin. “Where else would I go?”

  He sighed as though he was laying down the whole world onto the scuffed linoleum, and for a moment, Hannah thought he might lay down his body as well.

  She walked him to the line of stretchers by the wall. His eyes stayed glued to hers as he put his head down on the pillow. Dr. Merrick caught her eye from further down the hall and nodded.

  Hannah could only grip Callum’s sweaty hand in hers as an orderly began to wheel him into a hospital room.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  When Hannah first awoke, she thought it was morning. Bright lights buzzed above and machines beeped around her, announcing life. Callum’s hand was still in hers and his ragged breath came in spurts. She sought the numbers and wavy lines that blinked on the monitors around Callum’s bed for some answer, but didn’t know their language.

  Hannah felt her belly. A reassuring kick answered her roving hand.

  “Your baby’s fine, for the moment,” came a voice from behind Hannah. A woman sat in a chair in the corner. She pointed a knitting needle. “Strong and healthy, in spite of everything against it.”

  Hannah looked carefully at the woman’s stained teeth, doubting. “Who are—” she began, but the woman pointed to the other bed in the room, hidden by the curtain.

  “Name’s Laura. That one’s mine.”

  Hannah studied the woman’s face. Was there some semblance of Mae hovering in her features?

  “Well, aren’t you the very picture of gloom. Keep faith, child. Hope comes free.”

  Hannah turned back to Callum and brushed back his damp hair. Each labored rise and fall of his chest made her want to pray, although she wasn’t even sure what she’d pray to.

  “I think I did this to him,” Hannah whispered. The ache was double-edged: seeing the father of her child sick and struggling for life, and the spoiling guilt inside her at having put him in danger despite the many warnings. “I’ve been so selfish.” Hannah suddenly looked toward the drawn curtain beside Callum’s bed. “Is he—was he with Christobelle?”

  “No, although there’s not a corner of this swamp that the woman hasn’t touched with her ugly magic.”

  “She should be cast out,” Hannah said, not realizing what she was saying at first.

  Laura cocked her head. “She is unnatural, yes, but her aims are not evil. Once you see clearly, this world and the next, it can be difficult to stay permanently in either.”

  Hannah shuffled uncomfortably.

  The wo
man bared her ground-down crooked teeth. Her gums were spotted like a lizard’s back. “The living are born with sparks inside them, and spirits of all sorts flutter around them like moths. Some get sick and fall into the in-between place. Others knock on the door and can’t be surprised at what answers. And some are just plain suited to it, whether they like it or not.”

  Hannah flinched.

  Laura’s kind brown eyes squinted. “You’re frightened.” She set down the knitting and nodded to herself. “And you should be. Relations between the two worlds are seldom peaceable.” Laura hoisted her girth forward onto the edge of the seat. Her hair was white and rigid, almost as if it could be crumbled in a fist. “Us horses ridden by the orishas have felt this tension growing for a long time, but we can’t see the outcome. Something must change, but who would go willingly into the demon’s den? There’s brave and stupid, and you’ve got to know which you are.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I wasn’t raised with this,” Hannah said, then considered Mae’s gifts, the rejuvenation she experienced when rising from the breakfast table, the sleepy satiety after dinnertime. She had a vague recollection of an arts camp in town, children speckled with chickenpox, the affliction taking everyone but her. “I think my mother was trying to keep me from it.” She didn’t know whether she meant Christobelle or Mae.

  “Pity,” Laura said. An expression of pure longing filled her face. “You have what others spend a lifetime striving for. The orishas are with you right now.”

  Hannah jumped up. A scatter of light faded where she’d been sitting, dissipating like startled fireflies.

  The woman frowned at her and clucked her tongue. “There’s no malice. Just curiosity. Nothing charms the other side like a new birth.”

  “I just want to have my child, and have my life. I want a normal life.”

  “That’s an awful lot of want,” Laura chastised.

  Hannah stroked Callum’s arm, warming the goosebumps. “This is the father. What life will my child have without him? Will these spirits, these orishas, even let it live? They’re breaking down my house and tearing the swamp apart to find me.” She looked nervously around for flickers in the light, lines that wavered. “They want my baby.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she said slowly, “you don’t understand.” She waved a hand. “The orishas are not malevolent. Elegba’s tendency for tricks can sometimes be misunderstood by us, but the orishas rarely intervene of their own accord into human affairs. Except to steer things onto their proper path.” Her eyes ran a slow circle around Hannah’s head. “It’s something else that haunts you.” The woman puckered her mouth. “It’s a crown.” She sighed as she looked at Hannah with an expression of immeasurable sorrow. “One not meant for you.” Laura fingered her gums, running her nails up and down the translucent enamel of her teeth.

  “What do I do?” The words slipped out unbidden.

  The woman shook her head and muttered something inaudible as she went to sit back in her chair. The knitting needles began moving again in her deft hands. In the silence, Hannah watched the woman’s brows move as if they were conducting an argument. A shape was taking form out of the soft blue yarn in the woman’s lap.

  Hannah had no choice but to sit, even though her body was flooded with nerves. Her knees chattered together and her fingers performed elegant concertos up and down her thighs. Deep inside herself, she could feel her child, feeding and growing and very nearly ready to breathe the air.

  “Mae was very special,” the woman said. “She was never properly ordained into the faith, but the orishas granted her favors, because she never asked for herself. She was able to protect you.” Hannah shut her eyes. All she saw were Mae’s hands, cleaning frog legs, crushing peppercorns. Smoothing frowns from Hannah’s mouth with a swipe of her thumb. “The orishas asked for a promise of balance in return. Your mother made it, but didn’t keep it. Maybe they overestimated her humanity. Or underestimated it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who can say what she sees in the darkness? Is it someone she loved? Or is it herself, gorged on suffering? Maybe it’s the most unbearable thing of all: just darkness. And now,” Laura looked up at Hannah, “a new generation must be protected.”

  Hannah looked down at her stomach, bulging with her child, nearly ready to scream its way into the bright world. “I’ll do anything,” she said.

  A deep sigh came from behind the hospital curtain and Laura regarded it with a half-smile. “Tell me, child. Have you seen a white alligator?”

  Hannah’s head snapped up. She braced herself against the bed frame, ready to run.

  “They’re extremely rare, and extremely lucky. A normal alligator can camouflage itself, but the albino alligator, especially when just a baby, is like a beacon for predators. They almost never make it past their first year. But somehow, one has survived. One that’s been seen wherever something bad happens. Some claim it’s an omen, forecasting the place of a tragedy, of a death.”

  “It’s evil,” Hannah whispered, but Laura shook her head.

  “Some might think so, but I think differently. After all, Elegba has many faces, and what crossroads is more significant than the moment between life and death. Or, when new life begins.” Laura’s voice faltered. “I told you the orishas don’t interfere; that’s true. But sometimes, they correct as they see fit. In everything, there must be balance. The scales have been tipped toward death for too long.”

  Hannah massaged her belly. What would happen when her child was exposed to the madness of the outside world? Would she have the strength to send it away, as her mother had done to her? Would it survive?

  “I wish I could help you,” the woman said. “But you must face them. They won’t be ignored, they’re almost strong enough now. They’re weaving into her very flesh, into the bones of her body. They won’t be expelled.”

  “Whose body?”

  The fluorescent lights above cast Laura’s face in a nimbus of light. Her gold-flecked eyes were shrewd. “Death’s.” She snapped the yarn with her teeth and smoothed the garment in her lap.

  Hannah covered her belly. “I won’t give the baby—”

  “Then give the man.”

  Hannah shut her eyes tightly and gritted her teeth. “I can’t.” She shook her head vehemently, then felt something soft set down over her belly. A baby’s hat, sized for a newborn.

  “Your options are few, child, and prayer is chief among them. Tie copper around your wrists, your ankles. Tie nine knots in it. Nine knots can be a protection, if you will it so. Ward them off.” Laura cocked her head toward Callum. “What will you do about him?”

  As spasms passed through Callum’s body, Hannah tried to conjure up the first night. It was perfect for having been new, for having been the first. She remembered the red scarf. His smell, raw beneath shampoo and soap. What she’d seen crawling from the corner of her eye. Maybe it had been a warning from the very beginning, but pure emotion had overridden it.

  “Will he forgive me?” she asked, pointlessly.

  Laura bundled her yarn, and her knitting needles disappeared into a bag. “Who can say?” She stood and smiled down at the bed behind the curtain. “Nothing is easy.”

  “Hannah,” Callum whispered and Hannah turned to see his eyes flutter open. “Where are we?”

  “The hospital. We’re getting you some help,” she said.

  “I just need to sleep for a bit,” he said, and his head sunk heavily into the pillows.

  She tried to imagine the open road rushing past them, the rain-stained buildings of a city. They would be happy for a time, encased in concrete. The echo of high heels on pavement would replace the clicking of crickets, and Hannah would bundle herself through the winters. Snow would startle her. But how long until they were found?

  She nuzzled against the bristles on the side of his face to hide the tears in her
eyes. “I love you, you know that?”

  His face softened as he looked at her. He noticed her tears and tenderness filled his eyes. “I love you, too.” He craned his head back further. “You’re so beautiful.”

  Hannah felt a forceful kick in her belly.

  “He’s almost here,” Callum murmured, his voice choking off.

  “Yes,” she said simply, and covered his mouth. Wet breath moved through the grate of her hand. “I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t.” A whole conversation flared to life across his face. His hands fluttered up, then fell gracefully, like butterflies dying mid-flight. “You’re safer here. The baby is coming any day now.” Whatever cocktail of drugs was seeping into his arm held him down better than she ever could.

  She tried to bolster her words with the memory of Callum and Leah, together against red brick. She tried to convince herself that she’d forgiven too much. But then, she saw the raw fear in his eyes, and thought of Mae. Maybe all faces were alike in the loneliness and helplessness of death. Hannah suddenly knew that someone had been in their living room, standing blank-faced above her adopted mother’s choking mouth. Coaxing another feather, another wingtip between her lips.

  Then she thought of Christobelle. How many men had she reduced to husks of their former selves? Surely she’d stood over some of them, watching their faces wrestle through the same dumb motions of fear and hope. Had she felt as Hannah did now?

  The thought that she was the source of that look in his eyes made her sick, but she bore it; she let herself be filled with the certainty that she had to let him go.

  “I have to.” The baby kicked again. “I’m making you sick.”

  He would never forgive her, she realized. The child was equally theirs, but the choice to take this risk was hers alone. How would she bear her life, without his breath beside her in sleep, without his exploring fingers guided against knots in her back as if by magnets? All the possible versions of their child that they’d imagined were rushing away from her.