Remember Why You Fear Me

by Robert Shearman

  The cramps were so bad this morning. Laura came to our room, and she was crawling along the floor, it was as if she’d regressed all the way back to a one year old. And there was blood. I insisted we take her to the hospital, and at first my wife refused, but I could tell she was scared, and I was able to convince her to do the right thing. And the doctor inspected Laura. He took X-rays. And even then I wondered whether we’d got the symptoms wrong, that Laura wasn’t pregnant, that our daughter was merely a fat kid who threw up. But no, he was amazed; he said he’d never seen anything like it; “Mr and Mrs Marshall, your little girl is with child.” “Yes, yes,” snapped my wife, “but what of the baby, is He all right, is He going to be okay?” The doctor smiled through his medical bemusement. “Everything’s all right,” he assured us, “the baby’s fine. You’re going to have a healthy granddaughter.”

  My wife didn’t say much in the car, and Laura didn’t either, she could tell her mother was cross. I tried to be cheerful. I said that maybe it’d be okay, or maybe the doctor had made a mistake. Until my wife retorted, “It’s not going to be okay, Jesus wouldn’t come back as a girl, would He? That’s just ridiculous.” So I said nothing for a bit. I then said, that maybe if the baby wasn’t Jesus, we could all have some fun thinking up another name for it instead? But my wife said she didn’t care, and Laura was still being quiet, and I had to admit I couldn’t think of anything appropriate.

  But when we got home there was a message on the answering machine. It was the doctor. And he sounded excited, and that wasn’t a surprise, he’d sounded excited from the start, he hadn’t had the time to get fed up with the pregnancy like we had. I nearly turned the message off, but my wife stopped me. And the doctor said they’d examined the X-rays of the foetus. And it was incredible. It was incredible, there were no words for it, it was incredible. Because she was pregnant. Not Laura—well, yes, Laura, but not just Laura—the foetus, the foetus inside her. The foetus was pregnant. Inside that little lump of life growing inside our daughter was another living lump littler still, not even a lump, no more than a speck, but it was thriving, and it was getting bigger, and it was human. And the doctor said he couldn’t tell the gender of the speck for sure, but he thought it might have a penis. A new baby. A new miracle. And my wife standing there listening to the news, and tears rolling down her cheeks—and my daughter, feeling at her stomach involuntarily, tears streaming too—and I thought I knew why they were both crying, there was despair on my daughter’s face, and I looked at my wife’s, expecting only to see relief and awe, but no, no, that was despair, I think she had a new despair of her very own.—And I have to be honest, I felt a bit emotional as well.

  Laura’s still cramping badly, but we’ve given her painkillers, and we’ve closed the bedroom door so we can’t hear her. And my wife and I are alone. And my wife has put on perfume, and she never wears perfume, not now. She’s come to me, and she’s smiling again, and I see the smile is made of lipstick. The smile is meant to be seductive, or maybe it’s trying to be happy, or maybe it’s just trying to look shy and awkward, and shy and awkward is its best bet. “I love you,” she says. “I love you.” And she kisses me, and we haven’t kissed for a long time, and I’m a bit taken aback, I don’t think of her as anything other than a mother anymore. “We’ve still got it, baby, haven’t we?” comes the whisper in my ear. “We’ve still got it?” And she asks me to make love to her. “Fill me with your baby juice, we can be special too, can’t we, we can be special too, tell me we can be special.” How she glows. And it seems wrong, that we’re competing with our own daughter like this, but my wife wants a baby of her own, and whatever she wants, that’s what I try to give. And I do my best. I really do. I strain inside her and try to think baby thoughts, I try to will something new to life. But I keep thinking of my grandchild on her way, and of my great-grandchild too, and all the descendants that may be following after, and I’m sad to say, I can’t help it, I droop a little, I droop, I feel so very old.

  FEATHERWEIGHT

  He thought at first that she was dead. And that was terrible, of course—but what shocked him most was how dispassionate that made him feel. There was no anguish, no horror, he should be crying but clearly no tears were fighting to get out—and instead all there was this almost sick fascination. He’d never seen a corpse before. His mother had asked if he’d wanted to see his grandfather, all laid out for the funeral, and he was only twelve, and he really really didn’t—and his father said that was okay, it was probably best Harry remembered Grandad the way he had been, funny and full of life, better not to spoil the memory—and Harry had quickly agreed, yes, that was the reason—but it wasn’t that at all, it was a bloody dead body, and he worried that if he got too close it might wake up and say hello.

  And now here there was a corpse, and it was less than three feet away, in the passenger seat behind him. And it was his wife, for God’s sake, someone he knew so well—or, at least, better than anyone else in the world could, he could say that at least. And her head was twisted oddly, he’d never seen her quite at that angle before and she looked like someone he’d never really known at all, he’d never seen her face in a profile where her nose looked quite that enormous. And there was all the blood, of course. He wondered whether the tears were starting to come after all, he could sense a pricking at his eyes, and he thought it’d be such a relief if he could feel grief or shock or hysteria or something . . .

  when she swivelled that neck a little towards him, and out from a mouth thick with that blood came “Hello.”

  He was so astonished that for a moment he didn’t reply, just goggled at her. She frowned.

  “There’s a funny taste in my mouth,” she said.

  “The blood,” he suggested.

  “What’s that, darling?”

  “There’s a lot of blood,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes, that would make sense. Oh dear. I don’t feel I’m in any pain, though. Are you in any pain?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I haven’t tried to . . . move much, I . . .” He struggled for words. “I didn’t get round to trying, actually. Actually, I thought you were dead.”

  “And I can’t see very well either,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  She blinked. Then blinked again. “No, won’t go away. It’s all very red.”

  “That’ll be the blood,” he said. “Again.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Of course, the blood.” She thought for a moment. “I’d wipe my eyes, but I can’t seem to move my arms at all. I have still got arms, haven’t I, darling?”

  “I think so. I can see the right one, in any case.”

  “That’s good. I do wonder, shouldn’t I be a little more scared than this?”

  “I was trying to work that out too. Why I wasn’t more scared. Especially when I thought you were dead.”

  “Right . . . ?”

  “And I concluded. That it was probably the shock.”

  “That could be it.” She nodded, and that enormous nose nodded too, and so did the twisted neck, there they were, all nodding, it looked grotesque—”Still. All that blood! I must look a sight!”

  She did, but he didn’t care, Harry was just so relieved she was all right after all, and he didn’t want to tell her that her little spate of nodding seemed to have left her head somewhat back to front. She yawned. “Well,” she said. “I think I might take a little nap.”

  He wasn’t sure that was a good idea, he thought that he should probably persuade her to stay awake. But she yawned again, and look!—she was perfectly all right, wasn’t she, there was no pain, there was a lot of blood, yes, but no pain. “Just a little nap,” she said. “I’ll be with you again in a bit.” She frowned. “Could you scratch my back for me, darling? It’s itchy.”

  “I can’t move.”

  “Oh, right. Okay. It’s itchy, though. I’m allergic to feathers.”

  “To what, darling?”
/>   “To feathers,” she said. “The feathers are tickling me.” And she nodded off.

  His first plan had been to take her back to Venice. Venice had been where they’d honeymooned. And he thought that would be so romantic, one year on exactly, to return to Venice for their first anniversary. They could do everything they had before—hold hands in St Mark’s Square, hold hands on board the vaporetti, toast each other with champagne in one of those restaurants by the Rialto. He was excited by the idea, and he was going to keep it a secret from Esther, surprise her on the day with plane tickets—but he never kept secrets from Esther, they told each other everything, it would just have seemed weird. And thank God he had told her, as it turned out. Because she said that although it was a lovely idea, and yes, it was very romantic, she didn’t want to go back to Venice at all. Truth to tell, she’d found it a bit smelly, and very crowded, and very expensive; they’d done it once, why not see somewhere else? He felt a little hurt at first—hadn’t she enjoyed the honeymoon then? She’d never said she hadn’t at the time—and she reassured him, she’d adored the honeymoon. But not because of Venice, because of him, she’d adore any holiday anywhere, so long as he was part of the package. He liked that. She had a knack for saying the right thing, smoothing everything over.

  Indeed, in one year of marriage they’d never yet had an argument.

  He sometimes wondered whether this were some kind of a record. He wanted to ask all his other married friends, how often do you argue, do you even argue at all?—just to see whether what he’d got with Esther was something really special. But he never did, he didn’t want to rub anyone’s noses in how happy he was, and besides, he didn’t have the sorts of friends he could be that personal with. He didn’t need to, he had Esther. Both he and Esther had developed a way in which they’d avoid confrontation—if a conversation was taking a wrong turning, Esther would usually send it on a detour without any apparent effort. Yes, he could find her irritating at times, and he was certain then that she must find him irritating too—and they could both give the odd warning growl if either were tired or stressed—but they’d never had anything close to a full blown row. That was something to be proud of. He called her his little diplomat! He said that she should be employed by the UN, she’d soon sort out all these conflicts they heard about on the news! And she’d laugh, and say that he clearly hadn’t seen what she was like in the shop, she could really snap at some of those customers sometimes—she was only perfect around him. And he’d seen evidence of that, hadn’t he? For example—on their wedding morning, when he wanted to see her, and all the bridesmaids were telling him not to go into the bedroom, don’t, Harry, she’s in a filthy temper!—but he went in anyway, and there she was in her dress, she was so beautiful, and she just beamed at him, and kissed him, and told him that she loved him, oh, how she loved him. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t ever going to be angry with him. And that night they’d flown off to Venice, and they’d had a wonderful time.

  So, not Venice then. (Maybe some other year. She nodded at that, said, “Maybe.”) Where else should they spend their anniversary then? Esther suggested Scotland. Harry didn’t much like the sound of that, it didn’t sound particularly romantic, especially not compared to Venice. But she managed to persuade him. How about a holiday where they properly explored somewhere? Just took the car, and drove—a different hotel each night, free and easy, and whenever they wanted they could stop off at a little pub, or go for a ramble on the moors, or pop into a stately home? It’d be an adventure. The Watkins family had put their footprints in Italy, she said, and now they could leave them all over the Highlands! That did sound rather fun. He didn’t want it to be too free and easy, mind you, they might end up with nowhere to stay for the night—but he did a lot of homework, booked them into seven different places in seven different parts of Scotland. The most they’d ever have to drive between them was eighty miles, he was sure they could manage that, and he showed her an itinerary he’d marked out on his atlas. She kissed him and told him how clever he was.

  And especially for the holiday he decided to buy a satnav. He’d always rather fancied one, but couldn’t justify it before—he knew his drive into work so well he could have done it with his eyes closed. He tried out the gadget, he put in the postcode of his office, and let it direct him there. It wasn’t the route he’d have chosen, he was quite certain it was better to avoid the ring road altogether, but he loved that satnav voice, so gentle and yet so authoritative. “You have reached your destination,” it’d say, and they’d chosen a funny way of getting there, but yes, they certainly had—and all told to him in a voice good enough to be off the telly. The first day of the holiday he set in the postcode to their first Scottish hotel; he packed the car with the suitcases; Esther sat in beside him on the passenger seat, smiled, and said, “Let’s go.” “The Watkinses are going to leave their footprints all over the Highlands!” he announced, and laughed. “Happy anniversary,”

  said Esther. “I love you.”

  On the fourth day they stayed at their fourth stately home of the holiday a little too long, maybe; it was in the middle of nowhere, and their next hotel was also in the middle of nowhere, but it was in a completely different middle of nowhere. It was already getting dark, and there weren’t many streetlights on those empty roads. Esther got a little drowsy, and said she was going to take a nap. And the satnav man hadn’t said anything for a good fifteen minutes, so Harry knew he must be going in the right direction, and maybe Esther sleeping was making him a little drowsy too—but suddenly he realized that the smoothness of the road beneath him had gone, this was grass and field and bushes, for God’s sake, and they were going down, and it was quite steep, and he kept thinking that they had to stop soon surely, he hadn’t realized they were so high up in the first place!—and there were now branches whipping past the windows, and actual trees, and the car wasn’t slowing down at all, and it only dawned on him then that they might really be in trouble. He had time to say “Esther,” because stupidly he thought she might want to be awake to see all this, and then the mass of branches got denser still, and then there was sound, and he hadn’t thought there’d been sound before, but suddenly there was an awful lot of it. He was flung forward towards the steering wheel, and then the seatbelt flung him right back where he had come from—and that was when he heard a snap, but he wasn’t sure if it came from him, or from Esther, or just from the branches outside. And it was dark, but not yet dark enough that he couldn’t see Esther still hadn’t woken up, and that there was all that blood.

  The front of the car had buckled. The satnav said, “Turn around when possible.” Still clinging on to the crushed dashboard. Just the once, then it gave up the ghost.

  He couldn’t feel his legs. They were trapped under the dashboard. He hoped that was the reason. He tried to open the door, pushed against it hard, and the pain of the attempt nearly made him pass out. The door had been staved in. It was wrecked. He thought about the seatbelt. The pain that reaching it would cause. Later. He’d do that later. Getting out the mobile phone from his inside jacket pocket—not even the coat pocket, he’d have to bend his arm and get into the coat first and then into the jacket. . . . Later, later. Once the pain had stopped. Please, God, then.

  Harry wished they’d gone to Venice. He was sure Venice had its own dangers. He supposed tourists were always drowning themselves in gondola-related accidents. But there were no roads to drive off in Venice.

  He was woken by the sound of tapping at the window.

  It wasn’t so much the tapping that startled him. He’d assumed they’d be rescued sooner or later—it was true, they hadn’t come off a main road, but someone would drive along it sooner or later, wouldn’t they? It was on the satnav route, for God’s sake.

  What startled him was the realization he’d been asleep in the first place. The last thing he remembered was his misgivings about letting Esther nod off. And some valiant decision he’d made that whatever happened he wouldn�
�t nod off, he’d watch over her, stand guard over her—sit guard over her, he’d protect her as best he could. As best he could when he himself couldn’t move, when he hadn’t yet dared worry about what might damage might have been done to him. What if he’d broken his legs? (What if he’d broken his spine?) And as soon as these thoughts swam into his head, he batted them out again—or at least buried them beneath the guilt (some valiant effort to protect Esther that had been, falling asleep like that!) and the relief that someone was there and he wouldn’t need to feel guilt much longer. Someone was out there, tapping away at the window.

  “Hey!” he called out. “Yes, we’re in here! Yes, we’re all right!” Though he didn’t really know about that last bit.

  It was now pitch black. He couldn’t see Esther at all. He couldn’t see whether she was even breathing. “It’s all right, darling,” he told her. “They’ve found us. We’re safe now.” Not thinking about that strange twisted neck she’d had, not about spines.