Cauchemar (18 page)

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Hannah huddled in the back of the boat as Callum pulled it ashore. The storm had brought flooding, and many of the marshy beaches along the shore were now submerged.

He'd questioned her decision to come here, and why wouldn't he? After she'd so firmly distanced herself from this part of her life, it must seem to him like another example of unhinged behavior.

“You don't have to come,” she'd said to him.

He'd snorted. “How do you plan on getting there without me?”

“You're not the only one with a boat.” She'd been halfway to the front door when he'd barred her way, arms raised in a gesture of surrender.

“Sorry, sorry.” He didn't sound particularly apologetic. “But you're right. It's your family, no matter how estranged. You have a right to reconnect. I'm just not sure I understand why you'd want to, after everything we've been through. Do you really want to give the crazies in town more ammunition?”

“I doubt that the townsfolk will be watching the woods with their binoculars,” Hannah insisted, but found that she didn't trust her own words.

“Well, good. As long as you doubt it.”

They'd boarded the boat and made the choppy journey in silence, Callum focusing on steering to avoid fallen trees. She hadn't known how easy it would be to find her way back to where she'd first met her mother until they were on the water.

He stretched as he got off the boat and extended a hand to her. “Coming?”

Hannah nodded and looked beyond him to the large barn in the clearing. A single oak tree stood beside the barn, and the sun poured through its boards like divinity itself. A wide dock had extended the land so a corner of the barn seemed to float in the flood-raised water.

She spotted her mother by the barn, looking over the water.

“I can't wait to meet the parents,” Callum said dryly as she stepped carefully off the boat and into his arms. He ran his fingers lightly over her neck. “I just want you to be safe,” he murmured.

Hannah squeezed him back, enjoying the moment, until she remembered where they were and why they had come. “Can you give me a few minutes? I want to talk to her alone first.”

His brow furrowed. “Will you be alright?”

She answered with a kiss.

A murder of crows, their feathers coated with an inky sheen, fell silent as she passed the tree. Their yellow eyes followed her, necks craning in tandem from their perch on a branch.

The first time she'd visited, she hadn't known what to expect, but she found herself surprised now by the lack of pagan constructions. There were no upside-down crosses hanging from the lush green branches. The lawn was cut and unusually fertile, all weeds seeming to respect some unmarked border at the edge of the clearing. Even the water seemed cleaner, sparkling without murky undertones.

“So you've come,” her mother said, without turning around. A shirtless old man straightened at the edge of the water. There was an angry red lash where the rope he held had cut into his shoulder.

“I have,” Hannah said, staring at the ground. She felt strangely humbled, and it was uncomfortable. Hannah noticed that Christobelle looked healthier than she had the last time they'd met. A windblown blush rode her cheeks.

“You're immense. I see you ignored my advice, but I suppose that shouldn't surprise me.”

“No, it shouldn't.”

Christobelle shook out her black dress around her legs and sighed heavily. “The water's rising, child, and the land's disappearing. Someday, there'll be no one left here. Just echoes. But for now, we're still standing.”

The man in the water groaned as he hoisted the thick, frayed rope. Silver hair plumed at the sides of his head, and his chest shook with each tug, but muscles still flashed under his hanging belly.

“We should've settled in the North, found a decent parish somewhere. That's a lesson for you: always find higher ground.”

“It's stuck in the mud, ma'am,” the man called out, his face slick with effort.

“Get someone to help you, then.” Christobelle's face was grim. “There are still more relics after this one.”

“He's an old man, he shouldn't be straining so much. Do you want to give him a heart attack?”

“No, child, I don't want that.” Christobelle inspected the man. “But we all die, whether it suits us or not. Some of the more able-bodied men turned tail at the first sign of the floods and there's work to be done. That damn storm nearly sunk the property. We were huddled inside while the wind and lightning did their business, and it's not over yet, not by a mile.”

The man was panting in pelican honks, but Christobelle only rubbed absently at her mouth. Eczema was spreading around her mother's pale lips like lichen. Hannah had seen it inflamed, a septic red that made children's eyes widen in horror, but now it was subdued, a needlepoint only slightly darker than her fair skin. A fine coat of antique lace. “We'll take what we need, and the rest will drain down the river. I suppose you'll be leaving for town now?”

Hannah blinked. The thought of the house, left empty in their wake, had never occurred to her. She imagined the windows hollowed out like pocks. “The house is fine,” she said slowly. “Where's Samuel?” Hannah had never before seen her mother without him.

Christobelle flicked her head like a horse sensing a fly. “He's unwell.”

Below them, the man finally pulled the statue free. Hannah was surprised to see that the figure resembled Mother Mary, her robes coated in thick grime, her clay hands full of mud and torn roots. He rolled it onto the bank and bent over, hands on knees. With each rapid breath, his ribcage appeared and receded.

“We'll keep rebuilding,” her mother muttered as she dropped down into the wet earth and began cleaning the statue's face with the hem of her skirt. “What a thing, to birth a savior.”

Hannah closed her eyes as an unfamiliar pity and the ever-present anger crested in her, rolling over each other, frothing like surf.

“Come inside,” Christobelle said, straightening suddenly. She looked toward the boat dock and nodded to herself.

Hannah hesitated. She took a step toward the kneeling man, whose head lay against the wet earth, his hair filled with peat, then followed her mother into the barn through a side entrance. The thick wooden door was inscribed with scrolls and blank, knowing faces. “What are these?” Hannah leaned close to study an open mouth, toothed and black. She imagined the sharpened points would prick.

“They impress the uninitiated,” Christobelle said, with a sly backward glance. “We bought the land, complete with the barn, from a recluse. He was what people might call a medicine man, or a shaman. He had his ideas about the order of things, and thought this was a sacred space. A place well suited to conversing with the other side.” Christobelle tapped the feet of a carved figure, a hunched woman in heavy robes seated at the top of the door. She seemed to preside over the faces carved below. “This is Nana Buluku. She goes by many names. She stands in for the creator in many religions.”

“Isn't God supposed to be a man?” Hannah asked, and immediately remembered being twelve, Christobelle unexpectedly out in the town streets, flanked by her entourage. How Hannah had stopped dead in the street, so suddenly that Sarah Anne and her mother stumbled into her. How distrustful eyes had followed Christobelle from behind half-closed shutters as if they were in a scene from a Western. How Christobelle had stood stiff-backed to the side, hands clasped at her waist.

“Hello, children,” she'd said in an unfamiliar, saccharine voice.

“Move along, Hannah,” Sarah Anne's mother had urged.

Christobelle's unblinking gaze had slid smoothly to Sarah Anne. “You two look to be good friends. Where did you meet?”

“At church,” Sarah Anne had answered. She'd raised her eyebrows at Hannah.

“I myself am not especially devout,” Christobelle had said. “I prefer to worship at home.”

“Where's home?” Sarah Anne had asked sweetly, tossing back her mane of curls.

Hannah had pulled on the edge of Sarah Anne's jacket as Christobelle's eyes affixed to the girl's rapidly atrophying smile. “I think you know.”

Now, Christobelle clapped her hands in front of Hannah's face and studied her. “Speak to many people and you'll find they have many ideas about what God is, and many names for him. Or her. They find comfort in religion, or science, until they encounter something that cannot be explained by either. And there are such things.”

Hannah's eyes struggled to adjust to the dim as they stepped into the barn. Sleeping bags and crude ceramic washbasins sat against one of the walls. Another lined with pews.

“I quite like crows,” Christobelle said, seemingly out of nowhere, “despite their reputation. They gossip among themselves, and remember the faces of those who have wronged them. It's why scarecrows are so effective,” Christobelle said, waving her hands toward the ceiling. “Dark little rumor-mongers whispered something in my ear last night.”

Hannah looked up into the rafters, hearing the flutter of wings. The sagging beams of wood were shedding yellow hay. “It's funny that you mention crows. Was it you?”

Her mother cocked her head. “What?”

Hannah squinted. Light squeezed through holes in the ceiling, like a pinhole camera. “Was it you,” Hannah repeated, “who sent that bird, that
thing
?
Were you trying to scare me?”

Christobelle gingerly bent at the knees and plucked a large, thick-legged spider from the plush hay. “Here you are in my house, girl,” Christobelle said lightly. “It is a place of worship, where those who are willing can see beyond the limits of sight. You speak when spoken to, and listen well.” She took a step toward Hannah and extended her arm. The barn spider sat on her middle knuckle, its striped legs fit to the trenches made by tendons in the woman's hand. “I pity you, having grown up lost. The world must be so frightening when you know so little of what comes next.” A slight tremor went through her hand and the spider stirred, tiptoeing up her finger. “I imagine it must make you feel helpless.”

Hannah straightened her shoulders as Christobelle's hand brushed her collarbone. Her whole body quivered. She felt the spider hesitate against her neck.

“Child,” Christobelle said, her voice velvety. “It's just an insect. It's a fraction of your size. You kill them without even noticing, without giving it thought.”

“It's repulsive.”

“Is it?” Christobelle looked down at it as if admiring a ring. “I find it pleasing. It's one of nature's many indulgences.”

With great effort, Hannah forced herself to brush her mother's hand away. “I'm too old to be receiving lessons from you. Especially on what I should and shouldn't fear.”

“But you are afraid.” Christobelle placed the spider onto her shoulder and fanned out her skirt. Hannah saw the papery skin around her mother's ankles. “It comes off you like an odor.” A shade of sadness passed over her mother's face, quick as a door closing.

“Nature is against me.” Hannah sagged forward. A stroke of color caught her eye. Below a rough hill of hay, she could see a patch of dark red staining the floorboards.

Christobelle breathed a long sigh. The blush seemed to drain from her cheeks as her eyes pouched inside violet-veined skin. “Leave us,” Christobelle said softly, and Hannah scanned the room. Two men rose, as if from a deep, confused slumber, from the hay stacked in the dark corners of the barn. They seemed like shadows come unstuck, stepping through the back door and into the sunlight.

Christobelle turned back and stared at Hannah's stomach with ravenous intensity. “What's happened?”

“I had a dream that wasn't exactly a dream.” The words sounded ridiculous. “A crow came into the house, but it was wrong, wrongly made somehow. It attacked me here,” she pointed to her belly button. “And it spoke. Or, I thought I heard it speak.”

Christobelle frowned. “It came into the house? I saw it circling when I was last there. An unusually large one.”

Hannah's mouth opened, then closed. “It attacked me,” she repeated. She'd expected more, having forgotten not to expect anything. “Something's wrong. It's in the air, in the floorboards, everywhere. Everything feels threatening.”

“Because you are threatened.” Christobelle moved forward over the bleached hay, seeming to float. Nothing rustled beneath her feet. “The child is distressed,” she whispered. She pulled a small vial out of her innumerable layers and handed it to Hannah. “Drink.”

“What is it?” Hannah asked, not reaching for it.

“It's for the child,” Christobelle said evenly. “To calm it.” Then, exasperated, “You came for help, and this is it. Drink.”

Hannah took the vial, then hesitated. She held it up to the light. The liquid inside was dark and thick, and sat over a layer of black sediment, but even after she opened it and breathed in, she couldn't guess what it might be. Hannah gagged slightly against the few drops that slid down her throat, metallic and sour as spoiled meat.

Christobelle locked her hands over Hannah's stomach and the chill permeated deep into her gut, sinking though her bladder. A low pain began between her legs. Hannah groaned and the sound hung between them. “It's time to speak the truth, Hannah, all of it. Some things are written on your face, so tell me.”

Hannah's body felt constricted, as if all her veins were bathed in frost.

“What else have you seen?”

The child kicked inside her and Hannah looked into Christobelle's face. Her irises lowered as she blinked. She'd felt it. “It's something I used to dream about when I was young.” Hannah's voice cracked. There would be no unspeaking this. There'd been an implicit treaty of silence, some sense that acknowledging it through speech would make it real. “A recurring nightmare that always started the same, in a house that wasn't mine, but I thought was mine through that strange dream logic. I always felt watched.”