Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

'Hello.'

'Hey, asshole.'

'Jo?' Shit! He'd promised to call her.

'No, it's Nadia.' Panic and anger in her voice, heavy breathing. 'And this is so not funny.'

His antennae went up. 'What's wrong?'

'I'll call the police, you piece of shit.'

'Why?'

'Is this a game for you two?'

'Who? What game?'

'Who do you people think you are? Did you think I wouldn't figure it out sooner or later?'

'Nadia, slow down.' She was nearly hyperventilating. 'Is someone there? What's wrong?'

'Fucker. I trusted you!'

'Nadia, tell me what happened. Are you hurt?'

'You're such a shitty liar. I know she's there!'

'Who?'

'Your wife!'

'Jo? She's in Detroit.'

'Oh, really,' she scoffed.

'Yes, really.'

A pause on her end, a little hiccup of breath.

'Nadia? What makes you think my wife is here?'

'Your wife's not home?'

'No, I told you that.'

'Conrad?'

'Yes.'

'If your wife's in Detroit . . .'

'Uh-huh.'

'Then who is that woman standing at the window, staring at my house?'

21

He was in the office. Walking ten paces around the corner would not only give him a view of the library, it would put him in the center of the room. The house was dead quiet.

'Nadia?' His voice was quieted by extreme force of will. 'Tell me where you are. What do you see?'

'This is such bullshit.'

'I can't see. Tell me, please,' he whispered. The office door was open. If someone were in the library, it would be a short walk around the corner.

She was still crying, but that seemed to be tapering off some. 'She's right there. I can see her in the window. I'm - I'm not doing this!'

The line disconnected.

Conrad opened his mouth but the words caught in his throat.

Count to ten .

Listen .

He couldn't hear anything beyond his own pulse thumping in his ears. He turned toward the open door. He tried to see it before he went to see it. He knew that the library had two windows separating the wall-to-wall bookshelves. The largest window faced the street and was not visible from the Grum residence. The other window faced Nadia's house.

Go look. You must go look .

Where are the dogs?

She must be mistaken. What could she see that would look like a woman?

He had neither the courage to move nor wait in here all night. It occurred to him, too, that if there was someone here and she did come for him, he would be trapped in the office.

He pressed *69, wincing at the beep of each key. The phone rang three times.

'What?' She was annoyed.

He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. 'Nadia, wait. I'm stuck in the office. Help me.'

'Was she listening to us the whole time? Were you hoping to drag me into some sick game between the two of you?' Nadia sniffed and blew her nose.

Her insistence turned his bowels to water.

'What does she look like?'

'I can see her shape right now. She's tall, with long, dark hair. She's wearing a black dress or long coat.'

'Now?'

'Yes, now!'

'Wait, this is important. Don't hang up.'

'Conrad, is that your wife? That's your wife, right? I won't tell anybody. I don't even know why you're doing this. Just tell me that's your wife.'

He could no longer speak. The line went dead. He closed his eyes, letting his imagination play a cruel game with his mind. The game was called, Which One of These Things Is More Frightening Than The Other? The idea that there was an honest to God ghost in his house, right now, and he was about to see her, his sepia-toned woman sneering from the photo? Or that his wife was home? That Jo had been here all night, watching them?

No, not Jo. It couldn't be Jo. He'd just talked to her earlier today - no, that was yesterday. She could be here. But she wouldn't.

He imagined the other turning away from the window, the one he'd seen in the yard, her scratchy black dress heavy upon her shoulders and wide hips, lurching toward the garage where the eggs - and the babies, the buried babies, too - were hidden where the cross used to be. She was pregnant. She had the same dark hair and height and posture as Jo. Her mouth a slanted line with graying lips, her nose - no, she didn't have a nose. The woman bucking on the table didn't have eyes or a nose or anything above the mouth. Would her hair be coarse like the mane of a horse? Like the doll's? He could almost hear her black boots scrape against the wooden floor and--

And then not seeing was worse than seeing, and he moved. The steps to the doorway were slow and enormous, but he made them, turning ninety degrees into the hall, peering into the library, until only the front half was visible. The front window. The shelves of books.

He felt her. Her presence in the room like a scratchy wool blanket draped over his shivering cold body. He could feel her in the room as surely as if she were standing behind him breathing on his neck. He knew this as fact, and now he absolutely had to go all the way.

He took three quick steps, the floorboards creaking as he entered the library. The blood pounded up through him, threatening to blot his vision as it had in the room with the dogs, and he held the phone out to ward off whatever was coming for him. He blinked rapidly, willing the red and black dots clouding his vision to go away.

She was upon him.

She was--

The library was empty.

He was blinking, his heart stuck in an elevator ten stories below its natural position. He smelled cloves and something earthen, a sweet spice in the air, but after a few deep breaths that was gone, too.

'She's not my wife,' he said to the room. 'She's someone else. Someone lost.'

Gone. She was gone. It felt wrong, a let-down. He had been hoping for a confirmation, even if it drove him mad. At least he would have known.

He walked to the window, where Nadia claimed to have seen her. He wanted to deny her space, blot her out. He pulled aside the flimsy silk curtain and looked out to the Grums'.

A bedroom window, lights off.

He almost dialed her again, but what would be the point? He would only wind up scaring her worse than he already had. They'd been talking about Jo. Bad things in the house. Scary stories that were bound to have an effect on a girl in her condition.

'Luther! Alice!' His voice was hoarse, but he heard the whump-ump-ump-ump as the dogs unloaded from the couch and came trotting to the front stairs and the softer padding as they ran up the deep pile carpet runner to greet him, and for a second he was certain it would not be them, it would be her, come back to finish him.

But it was only the dogs. He bent to pet them, to reassure them and himself. When he stood upright he was face to face with the window, and in its reflection, as if superimposed over his face, a pale woman with black hair stared back at him.

He had been wrong about her face, so very wrong because she had no face before, in the room a few nights ago, but now it seemed, yes, even now her face seemed to be forming itself into something very old and something new. The flat, fish-belly white patch under her hair wrinkled and contorted as he heard the swish of her black dress fanning out behind him. Cool air pulled all around him and her starved ovoid visage filled the glass in jarring increments like a poorly edited film. He glimpsed a line of black stubble high on her head where her brow was filling in even as her stilted footsteps drummed across the floor and she fell upon him, her cold calloused hands wrapping around his neck.

22

Conrad, Luther and Alice slept on the high-school football field three blocks away.

When he had felt her cold hands closing around his neck, he'd screamed like a child and fled the house. The dogs had gone nape-hair wild and barking after him. When they reached the field, the dogs ran in wide circles - it was playtime for them. He'd fallen to the grass and thought about what was ruined now - their fresh start, the new life. Maybe that had all been a false hope, perhaps it was never meant to be.