Or had they started to change before Caleb was born? Even before he’d been conceived? She was a strange child, curious and remote. There was no gainsaying that. Even David admitted as much, although he seemed to take delight in the very strangeness that Roberta found unsettling.
And just when had she begun to find it unsettling? Before Caleb’s birth? Before his conception? Well, she’d been so unsettled herself during that stretch of time that it was hard to separate causes and effects. Twice-weekly visits to Gintzler for maintenance doses of therapy and Valium.
The whole business with Jeff was going on then, impossible to handle but more stimulating than the therapy and more addictive than the Valium. She could see now that she’d been skating closer to the edge than she’d ever realized. Now that she’d come back from the edge, now that she was settled again with a baby and a house and a stable daily routine, she could begin to appreciate just how unstable her life had been for a while there.
She put her cup down. Shouldn’t drink coffee late at night, she thought. It made her mind race. She’d come a long way from ghosts and haunts and things that went bump in the night.
She lit another cigarette. If she just stayed up late enough, perhaps she’d sleep through the ghost’s command performance.
She was dreaming. In the dream the old black woman from the park bench at the Battery was sitting on her haunches beside an enormous wicker basket filled with fresh fish. She was taking up one after another, gripping each fish in turn in one bony hand while with the other she wielded a nasty little knife, slitting the fish up the belly and expertly gutting it. While she did this she spoke of the supernatural, of ghosts and haunts and the walking dead, of voodoo curses and the power of a mojo tooth. The wicker basket gradually emptied and the pile of gutted fish at the woman’s feet grew steadily.
Then she was holding not a fish but a human infant. “The manchild, he be good eatin,” she said, and smacked her lips. Roberta noted for the first time that she had no teeth. Her mouth was black and bottomless.
Roberta tried to move. She was frozen, incapable of motion. She could neither act nor cry out. The old woman cackled, and the knife flashed, and Roberta sat up in bed and wrenched herself out of the dream.
It was a dream, she thought, fastening onto the thought and repeating it to herself.
Then, in the corner of the room beside the window, she saw the woman. As on the previous night, the figure was facing the window, with hip and shoulder toward Roberta. Tonight, however, her form was more completely defined, as if her presence became more concrete with each appearance.
She’s a ghost, Roberta tried to tell herself. Ghosts are harmless. You had a bad dream and now you’re seeing the ghost, but dreams can’t hurt you and ghosts are harmless.
It didn’t help. The dream had shaken her badly and the sight of the woman was considerably more frightening than it had been on the two previous nights, her thoughts notwithstanding. An air of evil was present in the room. The woman bore it like a perfume and it was palpable in the thick night air.
“What do you want?”
Had she spoken the words aloud? Was she talking to this apparition?
Slowly, like a statue on a revolving platform, the woman turned to face her. Roberta saw the heart-shaped face, the bloodless lips, the pale eyes burning in the pale face.
The eyes held Roberta’s own eyes. Something unspoken and unspeakable passed between the woman at the window and the woman on the bed. Then, against her will, she dropped her eyes to see what the woman was holding in her arms.
A baby.
A male infant, his body swaddled in a part of the woman’s shawl, only his face visible. His face was as pallid as the woman’s own and his wide eyes burned with the same pale fire.
Slowly and magically, like trick photography in a television commercial, the baby’s face lost flesh and turned to a gleaming skull. And the woman, too, was a bare polished skeleton wrapped in a shawl. And she drew away, the skeletal infant in her arms, floating through the closed window and out into the night.
Roberta cried out. She opened her mouth and screamed.
There was a gap, a blank space. Then she was being held, a hand patting awkwardly at the back of her head. She breathed in the smell of alcohol sweat and knew then that David was holding her, trying to comfort her.
“A dream,” he was saying. “You had a bad dream. That’s all.”
She wanted to correct him but she couldn’t, not right away, because her heart was racing and she couldn’t catch her breath, and if he didn’t continue to hold her very tight she felt she might shake herself apart.
Then, when she could speak, she tried to explain. She told about what she’d seen for three nights running.
“A dream,” he said.
“Night after night?”
“A recurring dream. I’ve had one off and on for years, I’m someplace dangerously high and trying to get down from it, endless fire escapes and catwalks, and I’m frightened and I can never get back to ground level. Variations on a theme. You know about dreams, all those months with Gintzler, stretched out on his couch.”
“This wasn’t a dream.”
“All right.”
“I had a dream first, a crazy dream about a black woman cleaning fish.” She hurried on, not wanting to recall the dream’s ending. “Then I was awake and I saw her again. She was standing right there.”
“She’s not there now.”
“Of course not.”
“You think you saw a ghost?”
“I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know anything about ghosts. It was some sort of... some sort of spiritual presence.”
“A being of another world.”
“It had that feeling to it, yes.”
“Why was it so frightening?”
“She was holding — I can’t say it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t make myself say it. I’m afraid.”
He looked at her.
“Hell,” she said. “She was holding a baby.”
“So?”
“The baby died. She turned to show me the baby and I watched while the baby turned into a skeleton. Then the woman was a skeleton too, and they went out the window and disappeared.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m telling you what I saw, David.”
“Now tell me why it’s frightening.”
“Are you crazy?”
He shook his head. “Why’s it frightening to you? What are you scared of, Roberta?”
“You know.”
“Tell me.”
“Why do I have to say it?” She turned her eyes away. “The baby,” she said.
“You’re afraid of the kid she was holding?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I think you should say it.”
She closed her eyes, lowered her head. “Caleb,” she whispered.
“What about him?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“God damn you!” She made a fist, struck out at his chest. “I’m afraid my baby’s dead, you son of a bitch!”
He said nothing. Her hands dropped and her shoulders sagged and she wept soundlessly, the tears streaking her cheeks. After a time the crying stopped and she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.
“Roberta?”
“What?”
“Do you really believe—”
“I don’t know what I believe. I never believed in ghosts until I saw one. Or whatever the hell I saw.”
“Why don’t you go check Caleb.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t — I’m afraid.”
“I’ll go with you.”