Devil's Mountain (8 page)

Bobby kissed me cheek. “Sleep now, Mammy.”

My eyes were heavy but I fought to keep them open, knowing this was the last I was to see of my poor Bobby. Before I knew it, I was lost to the oblivion of sleep.

Chapter 9

Caroline

“Aren’t you my big boy?” I cooed to Aidan as he swallowed a mouthful of strained carrots. He graced me with a toothless smile. “There’s my good boy.”

I looked around my previously immaculate kitchen that had in the last ten months become cluttered, filled with bottles, toys. Finally filled with life.

When we came home from Ireland Bobby urged me to go to the doctor. Convinced I had a stomach flu and not wanting to be disappointed again, I refused to take yet another pointless pregnancy test. But as days turned to weeks and my reliable period was still a no-show, I dared hope that some miracle had happened on that Mountain. I wished I could’ve asked my mother, but at that point we weren’t speaking. Or rather, she wasn’t speaking to me.

The day after we’d returned from Ireland my mother donned her good black skirt and heels and met me at our apartment for lunch. When I opened the door, she gasped.

“What, Ma?”

She touched my cheek. “Your face? What happened to your face?”

“Nothing happened.” I pulled her into the apartment. “Come in, don’t make a scene in front of the neighbors.”

Once inside the door she grabbed a fistful of my hair. “And this? What did you do to your hair?”

“Ouch, you’re hurting me!” I twisted away from her.

My mother’s face was pale under her meticulous makeup, and she looked old, frail.

Vulnerable. “Tell me you didn’t, Caroline,” she pleaded, her voice high and thin. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

I pulled away from her and walked into the living room. “What are you talking about?”

She followed me. “You know what I’m talking about. Tell me you didn’t make a deal with the devil.”

I flounced onto the couch, like a petulant teenager. “Jesus, Ma, you’ve really lost it, you know that? I went on a vacation. That’s all.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who do you think you’re fooling?” She sat next to me and took my hand. “I’ve always loved you, Caroline, and I’ve always thought you were a lovely girl. Sweet.

Kind. But truth be told, no beauty.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know yourself it’s true.” She touched my face again. “But how? How do you explain this?”

“I’m relaxed?”

He pale face flushed with anger. “Stop playing with me, Caro! What did you do? What did you promise Mary? What did you promise Him?”

Visions of the
pucan
, His black eyes boring into me, flooded my brain. Visions of Him possessing me. I shook my head. “Nothing. There’s nothing to tell.”

She leaned away from me. “You’re lying. They’ve gotten to you. That devil and His bitch. They’ve got you now.”

I reached for her hand. “Mom, I went on vacation. Mary was very sweet to me, very kind.

She’s not scary and she didn’t ask anything of me. She didn’t do anything.”

She pointed to the heavy gilt mirror across from us. “Did she not, love?” She pinched my cheek, hard. “Then how do you explain this?”

Tears filled my eyes. “I’m the same. I’m the very same.”

“Jesus, Caroline, you even smell different. Can’t you smell Him?”

“Mom, you’re losing your mind.”

She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “No, love, it is you who is lost.”

My mother was never in a room alone with me after that. She did her duty all right. She appeared at mandatory functions. Thanksgiving. Christmas. But she never met me for lunch again, or came to my house. Offered no congratulations when I announced my much longed for pregnancy. Three months after Aidan was born, she convinced my workaholic father to take early retirement. They moved to Florida soon after, far away from their five children. Far away from me.

Bobby too, essentially was motherless during the nine months of my pregnancy. Two weeks after our trip, Mary was found wandering around Kilvarren village without her coat or shoes, babbling gibberish. It was my Aunt Dorothy who coaxed her into her shop and called Orla. Mary spent close to a year in the county home, a sad stone building ten miles outside Kilvarren. Aunt Dorothy said it was shameful Orla signed her into such a place. According to Dot, psychiatric care at the county home, if you could even call it that, consisted of drugging the patients to the gills and making sure they didn’t get rained on. I tried talking to Bobby about it, suggested we bring her to New York, but he shut me down. He said he’d left home and he wouldn’t overrule Orla. He was sure she knew best. It was only after Aidan was born that Mary got herself together and convinced the doctors and Orla it was safe to leave her out, and for her to return to her Mountain.

So Bobby and I were, in a way, orphans ourselves as we expected our child. We clung to each other, comforted each other and as soon as my belly swelled with our precious package, we were both so happy that even our mothers’ respective exiles to Florida’s Gulf Coast and the dreary halls of the county madhouse couldn’t dampen our joy.

At times I would rub my baby bump and stare out the window and wonder what my little boy would look like. I would try and imagine him with Bobby’s black hair and green eyes, but whenever I did I didn’t see the green eyes I woke up to every morning. Instead he had the glowing green eyes that had nearly devoured me in the old Collins cottage. When I first held Aidan and saw my own watery blue eyes stare back at me, I was more than a little relieved.

Aidan swallowed the last of his carrots. I lifted him out of his highchair. “Come on, little man,” I said, shaking myself from my thoughts. “Time to go.”

Marcie, one of the Wanna-Be Manhattan Moms who had also experienced success, lived a few blocks away on East 85th Street. A group of successful Wanna-Be Manhattan Moms had formed a little Upper East Side sorority. We would go to Mommy-and-Me classes, play dates and at times babysat for each other. I’m not sure exactly what happened to the not-so-successful Wanna-Be Manhattan Moms. None of us mentioned them.

Marcie agreed to babysit Aidan while I went to my acupuncture appointment at the Yorktown Natural Fertility Clinic. Bobby refused to go back to the New York Infertility Institute. In fact, it was all I could do to convince him not to use condoms. “I’ve got my beautiful wife and my beautiful son,” he said in a sing-song voice whenever I raised the topic of another child. “That’s all I want. That’s all I need.”

Why wasn’t that all I needed?

The first few months of Aidan’s life, I was completely satisfied. I’d never been so happy or imagined I could be so happy.

But then, the old familiar niggling started. I’d take Aidan in his stroller through Central Park and see a woman pushing twins in a stroller. Or a mother holding the hands of a small boy and a girl. And I would get that sour taste in my mouth, the same one I had tasted for years whenever I saw a pregnant woman.

And so it began.

I couldn’t very well steal a vial of Bobby’s sperm and take it with me back to Dr.

Feinberg’s office. But we had, somehow, managed to conceive Aidan on our own. Perhaps with some Chinese herbs and acupuncture we could conceive again. Marcie swore by acupuncture, and after she had been thrown out of two Manhattan IVF clinics she tried traditional Chinese medicine and conceived her own miracle baby. Why couldn’t I too, conceive a little miracle baby with the help of magic teas and shiny needles?

Just one more
, I thought to myself as I opened the heavy glass doors of the Yorktown Natural Fertility Clinic. “Just one more miracle. And then. Then I’ll be happy and content.”

I promise
, I silently swore to God, the universe or whoever else might be listening to my thoughts.

* * * *

A row of needles lined my bare stomach. They were in my ears, on my wrists and even between my toes. The acupuncturist, a hippy-looking woman in her mid-fifties with frizzy red hair, twisted the needles between my toes once more before she lowered the lights and left the room.

The first five minutes were always the hardest. Inevitably at least one of the needles would burn. Dr. Hippy-Dippy said that meant it was working. It was all I could do not to rip the offending thing out.

I breathed in and out slowly, and tried to focus on my breathing, on anything rather than the needles. As I lay in the darkened room, with only the sound of a small fan to block out the traffic from Second Avenue, my shoulders, which had felt like they were jacked up below my ears, relaxed. I continued my purposeful breathing and closed my eyes.

Someone took my hand. I opened my eyes and was no longer on the table, but clothed in a long red robe and standing in a forest. And the most beautiful man held my hand.

“My love,” He said, His voice harsh and guttural. And somehow familiar.

A lone ray of sunlight made its way through the heavy woods and shone on His black hair. His pale skin glowed and His jade eyes glittered in the low light. They drew me in.

Without another word He led me to a roaring fire outside of a cave. The fire was hot, and a small bead of sweat formed on my upper lip. The man unbuttoned the red robe and took it from my shoulders. Underneath I wore only a thin sheath of white silk that hid nothing from His probing gaze.

I should have been embarrassed, but the hungry look in His hypnotic eyes stirred a fire within me. With a finger, he gently followed the lines of my plump, full breast.

“So ripe,” He whispered in a harsh rasp. “So fertile.”

That word hit me like a hard slap. I turned away. “No,” I choked out, “I’m not.”

He pulled me to Him, His lips mere inches from my own. His musky breath filled my nose. “You could be.”

His lips covered mine. At first soft, like the finest silk, but then more forceful, more urgent. My passion soon met His and I couldn’t help but run my fingers through His magical hair as he devoured my lips.

He tore the sheath in two and it fell away from me, leaving me naked. His green gaze bore through me, and it was almost as if I could feel the very cells of my body change. My breasts felt heavier and skin softer, my lips fuller. It was as if He transferred His own beauty to me. I ran my hands across my face first, and then my breasts, my nipples, taut and tender. Instead of being embarrassed, I reveled in my newfound beauty.

My skin was hot but His hands were hotter and they almost burned my flesh as they explored every inch of me. Every touch brought both pleasure and pain.

I pulled at His golden shirt, eager to see all of Him and He seemed surprised by my daring, my need for Him. He smiled, like a wolf about to catch His prey, and ripped the silk from His body as well.

This nameless man pushed me onto the soft grass beside the fire. Starting at my toes, His scalding tongue sucked and bit me. As He traveled up my calf and along my thighs, I trembled, not with fear, but with a hunger I’d never felt before. A ravenous, ancient hunger.

He spread my legs and His rough, scalding tongue explored me, possessed me. Before I could climax, He stopped.

“Don’t,” I begged. “Don’t stop.”

His animal gaze bored into me. “Are you mine?”

I threw my head back and arched my back, inviting Him to enter me. “Yes, yes. Go on!”

“Are you mine? Will you give me what I want?”

My skin was on fire, dying for His touch. “Anything,” I moaned.

A terrible smile contorted His beautiful face. “Don’t you want to know what I want?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I rubbed myself against Him. “Anything. You can have anything.”

“I want you to have my child. I want to share the blood with you.”

I don’t know where I got the strength, but I pushed Him off me. He lay on his back, more surprised than hurt. His eyes darkened, but before He could get up I pounced on him, lowering my swollen sex onto Him, allowing Him to fill me. I ground into Him and felt Him grow even larger within me. I rocked back and forth, overcome with ripples of orgasms as I fucked Him, as hard as I could. Like a woman possessed.

Like an animal.

* * * *

“Mrs. Connelly! Mrs. Connelly wake up!”

My eyelids felt like sandpaper, but with effort I opened my eyes. The overhead florescent lights blinded me for a moment.

“Get me some bandages, quick,” Dr. Hippy-Dippy shouted to someone.

I tried to sit up, but she held me down.

“I’m sorry. Oh, Jesus, nothing like this has every happened before,” she said, her voice high and panicked.

My mouth was dry, my tongue felt like it was twice its normal size. I struggled to croak out, “What? What happened?”

Another woman rushed into the room. Her face went pale.

“Call someone. I can’t get this bleeding to stop!”

I looked down at my stomach and saw rivers of blood before I passed out.

* * * *

By the time I regained consciousness, not more than fifteen minutes later, the rattled acupuncturists had cleaned me up, and already, whatever wounds I’d suffered had healed. My stomach, which only minutes before had deep gouges torn out of it, was now clear, unblemished.

Aside from a slight buzzing in my head, I felt fine. Better than fine.

When I refused to go to the hospital, the center insisted on calling me a cab home and suggested I take a nap before picking up my son. I tried to close my eyes when I got home, but sleep eluded me. I was too wired, so I walked the six blocks to Marcie’s and picked up Aidan.

When I got home, I raced around the house, tidying all the toys. I even shocked Bobby by calling him at the office and insisting he come home early because I’d cooked him his favorite dinner: roast beef and mashed potatoes.

Bobby arrived at six. Aidan was sleepy, and after his dinner he fell asleep in my arms at 6:30. Normally he was up past nine, and we spent our evenings focused only on Aidan. Now, Bobby and I had the evening to ourselves.

Unlike our usual fare of takeout eaten in front of the TV, Bobby and I ate like grownups.

Like we used to before we had Aidan. Wedding china, the good table cloth spread over the cherrywood dining room table, candlelight.