Cauchemar (31 page)

“It had your eyes, Hannah, if that doesn't sound too crazy. It looked long and hard at me, and then slunk back into the water. I knew I had to come find you, and thank God I did. Our baby was in your arms. He was barely breathing, but he's going to be alright. They're taking him to an incubator.”

“Him.” Hannah closed her eyes. “Don't go,” she begged.

Callum lowered his face and his curls rippled against her nose. He lay beside her, filling a space that had been recently vacated, still indented with its shape. “Never,” he said, his voice cracking as if it were swimming upstream, pounding against pebbles. Trickling over her closing eyes.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Hannah stood up straight and studied Callum's body, lying on the blanket. Since their child's birth, it had grown, fueled by a ravenous appetite. The whites of his eyes were pristine. In the full Texas sunlight, he was ignited as a meteor toppled.

Here, desert and greenery mixed together. Cacti pierced the wavering mirages on either side of their new house like alien barbs, and in the distance, ruddy mountain ranges loomed. Texas was a single state over, but a world apart from the swamps she'd spent her life in. The heat was dry, the earth arid, and the bones of horses and occasional stag horns were out in the open, bleached and harmless as rocks.

When they sold the house by the swamp to a wealthy middle-aged couple from Georgia, they'd disclosed as much of the house's dark past as they thought could be believed, and focused on the damaged foundation, but the woman, face ruddy with makeup, put her palms together and declared it a “colorful history.” The man bobbed back and forth on his heels, and sheepishly admitted that they were more interested in the land and planned to demolish the house.

The couple's offer had easily paid for a three-bedroom Texan ranch. It had a pond set in the middle of a plant-filled backyard, as if some small part of Louisiana had been uprooted with them.

Hannah looked around at it now, appreciating the sight of so much vast sky, then sighed, prompting Callum to look up at her.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Just admiring you, that's all.”

Callum patted his belly. “I could be a bit more … let's say aerodynamic.”

Hannah smiled slyly. “Blimps are aerodynamic.” He dove for her and caught her around the waist.

Callum's health had improved, and he wasn't alone. Within days of Christobelle's death, more and more men experienced the same thing. Advanced illnesses faded away. Callum didn't ask Hannah what had happened, and she knew he'd compile theories. Somehow, it was better than the truth.

He kissed her neck while Gavin cooed in his stroller. His head was covered in fine white-blonde hair that curled like his father's. Wide eyes considered the world seriously, one hazel and one green.

“Look at those eyes,” Callum whispered in her ear, hugging her from behind. “Do you think he sees the world differently?”

Callum pulled her down onto Mae's afghan and ran his hand over her stomach, now empty. She was still surprised by how much she missed the sensation of having something growing inside her. It was a new loneliness. Now Gavin was outside her body, a free agent subject to all dangers.

Hannah moved to kneel by Gavin's stroller. She put her lips against one pudgy leg and whistled a sweet note. Gavin's eyes widened, then he burst into convulsive laughter. His pleasure was endless and intoxicating. “Our little chimera. You know Dr. Merrick said his eyes are fine. Just a kink somewhere in our genes.”

“What about chimerism?” Hannah had asked Dr. Merrick at their first check-up, having stayed up late to read all the possible causes. “Isn't it true that two different blood groups could come together within one body?”

“Gavin's healthy. We'll monitor him, of course, and if anything develops, we'll deal with it then. You sustained a significant amount of damage during birth,” he'd paused, allowing Hannah the opportunity to explain the contusions on her belly, her broken arm, her mild concussion. Hannah remained silent.

Hannah tugged the squirming boy from the stroller and laid him down between them. They watched him silently as he rolled himself over. A cricket paused its noisy hand-rubbing and Gavin giggled again, blowing spit. He waved his hand over the insect until it hopped away, then smiled up at her.

“Are you grinning at your mama? Can you say ‘mama'?” Callum asked, tickling him.

Hannah felt her own smile freeze as she thought of Christobelle. It was still difficult to think of herself as an orphan. Days after Gavin's birth, she'd begun to poke and prod for details of what had happened. Hannah's memory of the birth was hazy, although she remembered Christobelle's voice and a presence that had sheltered her against the chill. Her mother's body had been found collapsed in the kitchen, the faucet overflowing. “She drowned herself,” Callum said, his eyes haunted.

Hannah thought she'd misheard. “Drowned herself?”

Callum nodded. “There was nothing under her fingernails, no bruises on her neck. The only sign of struggle was Mae's broken urn. Christobelle's were the only footprints in the ashes. Even the way she, well, breathed the water seemed to be peaceful. It's as if she put her head down and went to sleep.”

“What about Sarah Anne?” She tried to remember Sarah Anne as the honeyed girl she'd once been, not the hateful creature she'd become. She knew, instinctively, that the girl wasn't entirely to blame, that other forces had shaped her.

“Sarah Anne?” Callum repeated, cocking his head. “James said they found her uncle's body in the house, and the girl's missing, but—” He studied her face. “That has nothing to do with what happened to you, does it?”

Hannah knew that Sarah Anne would never be found. Somehow, although matter could neither be created nor destroyed, hers had softened and dissolved into the peat and moss.

After the policemen ruled out foul play, Hannah had knelt carefully by the mound of gray ash and sifted through it. She found a few specks of black.
Raven feathers
, James's voice echoed in her mind, and she pressed her forehead against the cool counter to calm herself. Then she began gathering the ash into an empty spice container.

Hannah had found Graydon's limp body on their bed as they finished packing up the house. From afar, he seemed to be sleeping, his small, pink tongue hanging from his mouth. Tears hurried into her eyes but didn't drop. As she stroked the cat's cold fur, sapped of its sheen, she knew he belonged to the house.

“Should we go in? It's almost dinnertime,” Callum asked, picking up Gavin and cradling the child's head against his shoulder. He hesitated, closely watching her face.

“Sure. Are you cooking?” she asked, slapping his arm lightly.

Hannah's return to the kitchen had been hesitant. She was cautious in improvising recipes, knowing now how magic could be couched in the simplest of ingredients, but couldn't resist the scents of cooking and their familiar effects. She followed blind instinct, and discovered she was talented.

The container of ash she kept in the very back of the pantry, labeled “Mae.” Although the woman's wish had been to have her ashes scattered, the Texan night winds were strong, and Hannah couldn't bear the thought of her Mae spread so thin over an unfamiliar land. Occasionally, she would tap out a few specks across their front doorway as a shield, and sometimes she'd light a slender white candle and set it in the kitchen window.

The nightmares persisted for months, but the memories began to fade. The bruises on Hannah's belly faded as well, although she found she still sometimes woke in the night, scratching out an X across her belly button. The startling brightness of the Texas sun and how it heated the pond's rock enclosure made the dankness of the swamp seem surreal, the open space erasing the enclosed feeling of cypress trees packed together.

It was too hot for fish, but she'd found lizards with bold, iridescent scales sunning themselves, one leg languishing in the warm water. Gavin liked to be set a small distance away from them. He'd dip his finger in the water and wait with infinite patience, statue-still, until their webbed feet tapped over his hand. The eyes, set like gems in scaled faces, made Hannah's hairs stand on end. Some unremembered dream teased the edges of her mind.

Each morning, Hannah made their bed with sheets the color of granite. When Callum entered her, one hand pasted over her mouth, the mattress didn't sag with the imprinted memory of former bodies. She arced her back happily, with abandon. The birth had caused tearing, and when she was well enough to have sex, they moved slowly. She felt each thrust like a war drum.

They were synchronized, passing coffee and orange juice back and forth. Synchronized, too, in their mutual refusal to discuss that day. Sometimes she caught Callum watching her, the trauma of so much unexplained brutality obvious in the unconscious way he chewed the inside of his cheek. The day she dropped on one knee and slipped a simple silver ring onto his left hand, saying only, “You mean everything to me,” his arms closed around her back like a second skin. Like a turtle's hard shell.

One night, in the dry June haze, Hannah slept fitfully. She dreamt that she pulled on a terrycloth robe and stepped into the Texas night, the moon gleaming over the sand like a lesser, arctic sun. She had the sense that something was calling her, on a frequency too low to hear.

The garden looked frost-tipped in the cold light, and she touched the violet blooms of the purple sage bush as she passed. She unlatched the back gate and stepped into the expanse. Small eddies of dust rose like temporary towers.

She didn't see it at first, so camouflaged against the desert. The spiny ridges down its back shone like ivory. Its body was pointed away from her, its head turned over its shoulder. Hannah looked down at her bare feet and saw the telltale smear of sand leading up through the open gate and toward the house. When she turned back, it was gone.

She awoke standing at the entrance to Gavin's room. His mobile drew shapes in colored lights on the walls and released lilting xylophone notes. Beneath the glow, he was standing, gripping the bars of his crib.

“Sweetheart, you did it,” she said. She moved quietly, trying not to startle him. “I'm so proud,” she said. Her hands covered his own impossibly small ones.

His mismatched eyes met hers, then drifted over her shoulder.

“Gavin?” she asked, leaning closer.

He peered intently at the empty space behind her and burst into a chiming laugh.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my parents and my family, without whose love, patience, and trust none of it would have been possible. I am so lucky. Thank you for never letting me stop striving, hoping, hammering through.

Sincere thanks to the countless educators and mentors who have helped me along the way, with special mention to David Baird, Mr. Pearce, A.F. Moritz, and Myna Wallin.

Thank you to the University of Toronto and Rosemary Sullivan for spearheading a tremendous M.A. program, which introduced me to the indispensable mentorship of Jeff Parker and Camilla Gibb, and a solid group of fine people—Andrew MacDonald, Laura Clarke, Spencer Gordon, Catriona Wright, E. Martin Nolan, Matt Loney, and Jon Simpson.

Special thanks to my agent Sam Hiyate (and the Rights Factory), who stood strong by this book during its many tweaks and turns.

Many thanks to the whole wonderful team at ECW Press, in particular Jen Knoch and Crissy Calhoun—your humor, kindness, and keen eyes turned the editorial process into a true pleasure.

Finally and importantly, more love and thanks than I can express to my husband, Mark. Your belief in this, support for this, and influence on this can't be measured, and neither can my gratitude. Thank you for teaching me how to write a love story.

Alexandra Grigorescu has a Master's degree in creative writing from the University of Toronto. She lives in Toronto. This is her debut novel.