Her mother was down on her knees and cupping the air in front of Hailey’s distended stomach. “If we ask?”
Hailey nodded, but she was not sure. Nothing was certain. “I think so.” At last she had her words back; the Slitten had returned her voice. “That’s what they told me, from inside here.” She flicked her belly with her forefinger. It made a sound like a tom-tom drum.
“No,” said her mother, standing now and shaking her head. “This is crazy. It isn’t real.” She turned away, flexing her fingers and stamping her feet, powerless to express her anger and frustration. “It’s fucking stupid.”
Darkness bled back into the room, filling the corners and shading the walls. The lamps seemed weaker than before, as if some of their power had been leeched away. The brightness Hailey had felt previously now dimmed, faded, went out. Her belly deflated quickly, flattening against its occupant. She looked down, still holding the hem of her shirt.
“See? We were hallucinating.” Her mother stood across the other side of the room, near the kitchen. She was lost in shadow, her dark form blurring at the edges. Only her eyes shone. “It’s the stress. We’re both tired… exhausted, really. We need to sleep and stop talking like this.” She did not move. Her outline bled away, as if unseen hands tore at her, picking her apart.
Hailey tucked her shirt into the waistband of her skirt. Her hands were shaking.
“Go to bed,” said her mother, opening the fridge. Light flared, spilling across the floor. She took out a wine bottle, slamming it down onto the bench. “Go to bed, now.”
Hailey turned away, the palm of one hand held against her flat, flat stomach. She was crying, but she dared not make a sound.
She retired to her bed without any more fuss, keeping her movements slow and easy to avoid any kind of disturbance.
The Slitten needed their rest, too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TOM WOKE IN darkness. He knew that he’d been disturbed, but he was unsure what might have caused it. Perhaps Helen had shouted, or the telephone had rung, stirring him from restless slumber. He waited for the sound to come again, and when it failed to appear he wondered if his own conflicted thoughts had roused him, his fears tumbling like performing clowns around his skull as he slept.
He sat up and looked around the room. Nothing had changed; it remained as always. He didn’t know why he’d expected any difference, and the thought confused him, making him doubt that he was fully awake. He slipped out of bed and went to the window, opened the curtains a few inches. The street was quiet and empty; not even a single car moved along its length. A slight breeze stirred the privet hedges along the garden fronts; litter prowled the edges of the gutter outside the house opposite.
Tom turned away from the window and went out onto the landing. Shadows pooled in the corners, like dark water. Yellow light, refracted from the streetlamps through the landing window, hung in the air like an incandescent fog. He walked along the landing, passing the open door to the upstairs bathroom. From the corner of his eye he spotted something, but when he spun around to look at it directly there was nothing there. He could have sworn that there was a man — or at least a man-shaped shadow — sitting on the edge of the bath with his hands held up to his face. But, no: more tricks of his tired mind, his aching eyes.
He walked slowly down the stairs, being careful not to make a noise. Helen slept well, but she was easily disturbed. Her ears, even as she rested, were attuned to even the subtlest of movements within the house. He turned at the bottom of the stairs and headed for the kitchen. Then he stopped. Backtracking, he turned again and went to Helen’s room. Her door was ajar — she always demanded that he leave it that way. She was too afraid to have it fully closed yet nervous enough that she would not rest if it was wide to the wall. She wanted to be able to hear him as he wandered about the house. She said his movements comforted her.
He played his fingers along the doorframe, and then traced a line across the middle of the door, grasping the handle. He pushed gently and stepped inside. His bare feet sank into the carpet — this was the only room where they’d spent a bit of money, because Helen was always in there, never leaving, even to use the toilet.
She was a huge mound on the bed, her bulk only partially covered by the heavy winter quilt she insisted upon using whatever the season. He often wondered how someone so fat could always be so cold. Then, ashamed and saddened, he would try to forget that he’d ever thought about her in that way.
She was his wife, and he loved her. At least he used to love her, before she became like this. He did, he loved her, with all of his heart. But he also hated her, and wished that she would die.
Gritting his teeth against these familiar thoughts, Tom approached the bed. Helen was snoring lightly, the air wheezing through her nose. Her lips shone in the darkness, coated with drool. Her hair — never styled these days, rarely even washed unless he did it for her — lay like rat tails on the pillow. She was flat on her back, with one arm raised above her head, as if grasping for the headboard.
A sea cow — a manatee: that was how he often pictured her. He’d watched a documentary a few years ago about the creatures, and the image had seemed appropriate. His sea cow wife: all fat and lazy and defeated.
“Helen,” he whispered. “I think I love you. I do still love you. I don’t know what I feel.” He often did this, late at night or into the early hours, when sleep was his enemy and he felt as restless as a thief. He came down here, to her sick room, and he spoke to her in low tones, telling her how he felt or how he thought he felt, sometimes even how he knew he was supposed to feel but didn’t, couldn’t, or just wouldn’t.
“You make my life a living hell, but I’m glad that I’m here for you, to take care of you. Yet I wish… I wish you would pass away quietly in your sleep.” He leaned in close as he spoke, his lips mere inches from her slack, flabby cheek. “I do. I wish you would just go away.” He closed his eyes. “When I open them again will you be gone?”
No, she was still there, on the bed, snoring and sweating and filling his life with regrets. His very own pet sea cow.
Tom did not even realise that he had raised his hand, curled it into a fist. He looked to his left, staring at the fist as it hovered in the air. He thought about bringing it down, as hard as he could, and repeatedly smashing her in the face. The distance between thought and action narrowed; it would be so easy to beat her to death.
“But messy,” he said. “Far too messy.”
He grabbed the other pillow, from the side of the bed where her head was not resting. He held it in both hands, feeling its soft weight, and scrunching it into a shapeless wad of material. He moved the pillow down, close to her face. There was an inch between pillow and skin; a tiny fraction that she filled with her stinking breath.
He could kill her in minutes. It would not be easy — he’d read somewhere that it was difficult to suffocate someone, that it took longer than you might think — but it would be clean and almost merciful. She would wake in confusion, gasping for air, and by the time she knew what was happening she would be on her way down, into the darkness.
Yes, he could do it. It was feasible that he could murder his wife. Especially if he continued to think of her as an animal, a wounded sea cow…
He replaced the pillow on the bed, turned stiffly away, his bare feet shuffling across the carpet.
No. he couldn’t do it; of course he couldn’t. He never would.
“Tom?”
He stopped dead, shocked that she was awake. Had she been awake all along, waiting with her eyes closed? Waiting to see what he would do?