In the dark, he is malleable. But everyone is.
The mushroom night-light casts enough glow to see most of the nursery, though shadows remain thick and amorphous in the corners. She kneels on the floor to check the cavernous gouge of darkness under his woodland bed while a small voice rattles around the back of her skull.You’re going insane.
No, she’s being careful. If someone is hurting her son, she has to see. She has to know.
Someone, some… thing.
She saw it; she knows she did.
There is something wrong with this house.
Ever since Thanksgiving, she’s been slipping into his room six or seven times a night, a fresh urgency lit within her after seeing those red marks on his thighs. But he has school today. She won’t see him for hours.
She kneels by the bed, elbows resting on his mattress, her chin propped on her fist, watching the soft rise and fall of his chest among the blankets. He stirs, his long, dark eyelashes fluttering as his sleepy mouth moves, peaceful and unconcerned of the threats she protects him from.
Someday soon he will grow up and he will love her less, until he doesn’t love her at all. Need for her will thin until she becomes a decrepit revenant in the shadows of his life while he stretches tall and fills out and becomes—
Unmanageable.
Babies don’t grow up, she thinks, they are swallowed and strangers take their places who don’t care that their mothers are bleeding out their eyes because they miss their newborns.
Movement flickers behind her, the nursery’s hinges silent as the door swings inward. Elodie goes stiff and alert, alarm slicing through her skin. How long she’s crouched here, she doesn’t know, but her muscles have stiffened with cold and a sharp ache throbs behind her eyes as if they’re held open by pins. Something is coming in, something is—
“Elodie?” Bren is only a shadow in the nursery doorway, his sweatshirt bulky and rumpled, his long legs prickled with gooseflesh between the hem of his boxers and his raggedy football socks. “What are you doing?”
She struggles to her feet, numb and disorientated, and grips the end of the woodland bed to steady herself. “He… He needed me.”
“But he isn’t awake.” Bren sounds sleepy and baffled, rubbing his thumb at the corner of his eye.
She hurries across the toy-strewn floor and slips out of the nursery, closing the door carefully behind her.
“There’s something—” She stops, feeling disordered and fractious, close to babbling when she knows it is crucial she sounds calm. Her next breath is slower to hide the tremor in her voice. “The house keeps trying to…hurtme. And Jude. There’s something wrong inside the walls, you’ve seen it. It tried to stab me with a light fixture, and then it almost broke my hand by slamming the door on me. I can feel itwatchingme all the time. There’s thismouth… Bren, you… You need to listen to me.”
In the dark, she can’t quite make out his expression. She knots her trembling hands together, her fingernails digging into her own wrists as a metallic, syrupy feeling floods her mouth.
“Okay.” He stops as if he’s feeling around for words.
She’s shivering, hovering just out of reach even though she wants to crawl into his arms, into his rib cage, into his lungs. Just to be held, safe and warm. He has to believe her.
There’s something unsure about his voice. “Why were your hands at his throat?”
She freezes.
A molasses dark coats the hall, dripping down the walls with steadytip-taps that make her skin crawl.
She stares at him. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I—” He hesitates. “Let’s just go back to bed, okay?”
He’s going to ignore everything she said, just like that. As if they are frightened, stammering ramblings of a mad thing and he is being polite by looking away. But she doesn’t know how to push without spiraling into screaming at him, so she bites her tongue and tries not to cry.
When they return to their huge bed, he tugs her close, spooning his body to the shape of her back as if they have been carved to fit each other. His strong arms wrap about her, one hand cupped over the baby like he always does because he loves to feel the little kicks. She waits for his breathing to relax as he falls back into his easy, oblivious sleep. Minutes pass. When she tries to slip free and go back to Jude’s room, his arms tighten gently around her.
He presses his face into the crook of her neck. “Sleep.”
She doesn’t feel comforted and warmed as she thought she would. She feels pinned.
All morning she’s irritable, thoughshe blames it on the headache she hasn’t been able to shake since Thanksgiving. Her nose keeps dripping, so maybe she’s coming down with a cold. Just what she needs.
