“Incredible,” he says.
Malorie feels for the steak knife. She finds it and cuts her own cord. Then she cuts two strips from the bloody towel beneath her. She feels his sex and knows it’s a boy and has no one to tell this to. No sister. No mother. No father. No nurse. No Tom. She holds him tight to her chest.
Slowly, she ties a piece of the towel around his eyes.
How important is it that he sees his mother’s face when he enters the world?
She hears the creature shift behind her.
“Baby,” Olympia says, but her voice is cracked. She sounds like she’s using the voice of an older woman. “My baby,” she crows.
Malorie slides forward. The muscles in her body resist. She reaches for Olympia’s child.
“Here,” she says blindly. “Here, Olympia. Let me have it. Let me see it.”
Olympia grunts.
“Why should I let you? What do you want my child for? Are you mad?”
“No. I just want to see it.”
Malorie’s eyes are still closed. The attic is quiet. The rain lands softly on the roof. Malorie slides forward, still on the blood beneath her body.
“Can I? Can I just see her? It is a girl, right? Weren’t you right about that?”
Malorie hears something so astonishing that she is halted midway across the floor.
Olympia is gnawing at something. She knows it’s the child’s cord.
Her stomach turns. She keeps her eyes closed tight. She’s going to throw up.
“Can I see her?” Malorie manages to ask.
“Here. Here!” Olympia says. “Look at her. Look at her!”
At last, Malorie’s hands are on Olympia’s baby. It’s a girl.
Olympia stands up. It sounds like she steps in a rain puddle. It’s blood, Malorie knows. Afterbirth, sweat, and blood.
“Thank you,” Malorie whispers. “Thank you, Olympia.”
This action, this handing off of her child, will always shine to Malorie. The moment Olympia did right by her child despite having lost her mind.
Malorie ties the second piece of towel around the baby’s eyes.
Olympia shuffles toward the draped window. To where Gary stands.
The thing waits behind Malorie and is still.
Malorie grips both babies, shielding their eyes even more with her bloody, wet fingers. Both babies cry.
And suddenly Olympia is struggling with something, sliding something.
Like she’s climbing now.
“Olympia?”
It sounds like Olympia is setting something up.
“Olympia? What are you doing, Olympia? Gary, stop her. Please, Gary.”
Her words are useless. Gary is the maddest of all.
“I’m going outside, sir,” Olympia says to Gary, who must be near. “I’ve been inside a long time.”
“Olympia, stop.”
“I’m going to step OUTSIDE,” she says, her voice at once like a child and a centenarian on her deathbed.
“Olympia!”
It’s too late. Malorie hears the glass of the attic window shatter. Something bangs against the house.
Silence. From downstairs. From the attic. Then Gary speaks.
“She hangs! She hangs by her cord!”
Don’t. Please, God, don’t let this man describe it to me.
“She hangs by her cord! The most incredible thing I’ve ever seen! She hangs by her cord!”
There is laughter, joy in his voice.
The thing moves behind her. Malorie is at the epicenter of all this madness. Old madness. The kind people used to get from war, divorce, poverty, and things like knowing that your friend is— “Hanging by her cord! By her cord!”
“Shut up!” Malorie screams blindly. “Shut up!”
But her words are choked, as she feels the thing behind her is leaning in. A part of it (its face?) moves near her lips.
Malorie only breathes. She does not move. The attic is silent.
She can feel the warmth, the heat, of the thing beside her.
Shannon, she thinks, look at the clouds. They look like us. You and I.
She tightens her grip over the babies’ eyes.
She hears the thing behind her retract. It sounds as if it’s moving away from her. Farther.
It pauses. Stops.
When she hears the wooden stairs creaking, and when she’s sure it is the sound of someone descending, she releases a sob deeper than any she’s ever known.
The steps grow quiet. Quieter. Then, they are gone.
“It’s left us,” she tells the babies.
Now she hears Gary move.
“Don’t come near us!” she screams with her eyes closed. “Don’t you touch us!”
He doesn’t touch her. He passes by, and the stairs creak again.
He’s gone downstairs. He’s going to see who made it. Who didn’t.
She heaves, aches from exhaustion. From blood loss. Her body tells her to sleep, sleep. They are alone in the attic, Malorie and the babies. She begins to lie back. She needs to. Instead, she waits. She listens. She rests.
How much time is passing? How long have I held these babies?
But a new sound fractures her reprieve. It’s coming from downstairs. It’s a noise that was made often in the old world.
Olympia hangs (so he said so he said) from the attic window.
Her body thumps against the house in the wind.