Christopher Ransom: The Birthing House

See what you have done? Turned your beautiful wife into a monster .

'Jo, stop this. Someone's going to get hurt.'

She stabbed the knife out like a spear. 'Don't fucking move!'

'I'm not!' He stopped behind the threshold. 'Your fingerprints are all over it now.'

Her expression changed. Some new wave of disgust that he would try to implicate her. She lashed out with the knife twice more, but she was too far back to cut him.

'What are you doing? Will you at least tell me that?'

'Stay away from me!'

The dogs whined from the basement.

'You had to crawl through the dog door, Jo. Do you think I actually remembered to lock up before I chased you into the yard? And who put the dogs in the basement? Don't be crazy. Someone was here. They could be here now.'

She opened the basement door. The dogs scrambled out, and he knelt before they could get a handle on the menace building between mistress and master. They might sense danger, smell blood and take up sides. If they did, he had no doubt whose they would choose. Between his six-foot wife and the hundred pounds of street mutt, he wouldn't live to see his way into a jail cell.

He reached for them. 'Alice, Luther, it's okay now, come here--'

'Don't touch them!'

The dogs jumped and pushed off her like she was holding Snausages instead of a knife.

'God damn it, put that down, you're going to cut them,' he said, stepping in.

She came at him with the knife waist-high, jousting. He sucked in his breath and leaned back on his heels. The knife swooped at his chest and the blade glanced off the doorframe. He fell forward and she brought it back. He thought she was breaking for the stairs, but her arm went forward once more and she put the blade into his belly as if she were trying to stop his fall. She jerked back and the knife was standing out of him like diving board.

'See!' she said, staring at the knife in him.

The pain going in was like a punch, and then it was hot, searing him. Conrad hissed, glancing down. It was off to one side, but it was in more than halfway. There was very little blood.

'Okay, it's okay,' he said, reaching for the knife. But when he touched the handle the burning shot through his guts and made it impossible to move.

'Oh my God,' she said.

'Baby, I can't . . . walk.'

Her face was a mask of horror and shock, and then neither. She remained still, a dead calm descending over her, into her. Her features slackened, became blank. She wasn't crying, he noticed. Not even breathing hard now.

The dogs whined, sniffing something new, and then backed away, growling at her. Conrad stared at his dogs, their dogs. They had never been afraid of her before.

Jo's eyes had gone cold, dead-black as they had been in the tub. As they were in the photo from a century past. He remembered the figure in the backyard, dragging something on the ground. He remembered how confused she had been about coming home, how out of it she had been until after she left house to talk with the neighbors. The change that had come over her then, as if something was leaving her. She had vomited in the yard. How she'd come out of the bathroom a changed woman. Ever since she had come home, this duality had been inside her. One woman fighting the other. The red crusts under her fingernails were not from her miscarriage. Now, too late, he finally understood what had happened to Nadia.

Jo had come home, and Alma had found a new home.

'Jo. . . ?' He coughed, and the tightening of his abdominals seared him all over again. 'Aw, no, Jo . . .'

She walked forward in three halting steps, her movements stilted. Her hand was steady and she placed it on the handle.

'Comes,' she said, her voice grown much older and much colder. 'Comes the time Nah-dee join the red hair of fire.'

'You didn't,' he said. 'Please say you--'

'Alma turn.'

'Jo . . . '

'Alma git rid Connie's lil' whore . . . now Connie be righteous father.'

She was smiling. Mother of God, this monster inside of his wife was smiling. He waited, pleading with her, searching for the woman he had known.

She looked into his eyes, into his soul.

He inhaled long and slow for one last attempt to reach her. The pain was glorious. Her face was inches from his mouth.

'Joanna come back!'

'Noooo . . .' Alma's voice cracked, and he could swear then that she was still there, fighting this thing inside of her until the one that wanted to keep him alive lost the battle to the one that wished him dead.

And that was his mistake, because Alma did not wish him dead.

Alma wanted a father for her behbee.

'I won't tell--' he began.

Jo blinked. His wife saw him for the monster she thought he was.

'Murderer,' she said and twisted the knife once, ruining something inside, then yanked it free. Blood poured, wetting his pants.

He screamed but no sound escaped his lips.

'Oh my,' his wife whispered, backing away from him. She was still holding the knife as her eyes rolled back in her head and she turned away and stumbled up the butler stairs. The dogs followed close on her heels.

'Don't leave,' he said, dribbling pink spittle.

The pain was enormous, a star. He was on fire from his knees to his throat. Urine leaked out, hot against his leg. He didn't want to die here. Not like this. Not at all. Not alone. He wanted to be with her. He knew he'd been bad, but she could help him die. She could do that. And though it blinded him, when he focused and bit through his cheek, he found that he could move after all.

He began to climb the stairs. He could hear her stomping through the library. With the dogs in tow, thudding on the floorboards.

She screamed. Once hard and sharp, followed by a second scream that went off like an air raid siren.

He was halfway up when the second scream froze him on the landing. Even in his dizzy, searing state he was certain the first scream had not been his wife's. Jo's was the second, the one that was still going in a great winding wail.

The first scream belonged to someone else.

'Aw, no,' he moaned. 'Nah, nah . . .'

The dogs began barking furiously and he lunged up, taking the six remaining stairs in two steps, snapping the handrail free of the wall as he hit the second floor and tripped, sprawling in his blood.

Claws scrabbling on wood. Jo struggling, fighting Alma. More barking.

A hoarse, animal voice. 'Get out of my house!'

'Leave me alone!' his wife shrieked.

'Alma save the behbeeeee!' she screamed.

The thump and crash of dead weight hitting the floor.

He was on his feet again, halfway down the hall. He could see across the library into the slit of the other doorframe where she danced, into the hall where the black maple banister curled all the way around.

The dogs have gone into a bloodlust. They're attacking her .

He loped, his guts boiling. Seconds stretched into minutes.

'Jo! I'm coming.'

His shoulder hit a shelf, knocking books to the floor.

Through the doorframe on the other side he saw a flash of gray skin. The curl of black cloth. The dogs jumping, gnashing. Jo's pink sweatpants kicking out. The whole mass twisting, flashing out of view.

Falling . . .

'Jo!'

He made it across the library but the dogs were pulling and pushing her in a frenzy. He had time to see the knife on the floor and her arm yanked back -

'Justin Gundry Justin Gundry,' the darker voice screamed. - as she slipped from between the dogs and he lunged, his fingers missing her shirt by inches as she fell over. He reached out but his hips connected with the banister and stopped him from going down with her.

He was stuck watching, their eyes meeting for the last time as she arced back, her long body bowing as she tilted head first, sliding down in some gymnast's move gone awry. For the next few feet she seemed to hover like that, sliding down in perfect balance, the banister pressed into the small of her back like a fulcrum while her body made up its mind which way to go. Gravity chose for her. Her upper body was where all the weight lived and it sunk first.