Your belly swells pale as the sky, and just like last time there's the congratulations. Inbox full of unanswered emails. John, gruff sometimes, holding your gut with wish-calloused palms. Your house has changed, maybe in salutation; tree outside it bare-knuckled, scraping brittle fingers over your window when the wind mumbles through the streets. Dean doesn't like it. You haven't told him that the noises live under your skin. He's scared of the dark, anyway. Dean is four, a little thing, affectionate. Eyes like winter rain.
He's looking forward to the baby- to Sam if it's a boy, Emily if it's a girl. You're relieved; kids can turn into little monsters when they get a sibling, you've heard. Too many stories from roll-eyed friends about this kid biting that kid on the arm, that kid threatening this kid with a butterknife. But Dean's sweet. He's a good kid. Not a mean bone in his body. Freckly, all scattered stars and careful fingers.
Who knows what Sam-or-Emily will look like. Your body is changing. This is not your first pregnancy. This is not normal. The moon throbs in the hollow of your wrists.
Unable to see your toes, and the baby has yet to kick. The room you've picked for a nursery is painted yellow, all new and fragile. Mobile above the cot sways like something dying. Dean plays in there sometimes, crawling around with toy cars clenched in fists, blowing dandelion-silk hair from his eyes. Asks questions: mommy, how many teeth will Sam-or-Emily have?
None, sweetie, you tell him. At first.
Feeling strange, bloated. The back of your throat itches. John falls asleep in his bathrobe on the sofa every night; says he's coming to bed, bleary, oil under his fingernails. When you wake in the small hours, moonlight itching at the floorboards, the other side of the bed's still empty. A figure looms over the foot of the bed. Leaching shadow. Its warmth hurts your eyeballs. How sinister, how friendly the droop of its head is. Like a broken-stalked flower. How it crawls onto your bed and plants its hands, one either side of your head. Scent of thyme. Scent of air thrumming with contained storms. Scent of unburst rainclouds, heavy as your milk-swole breasts. Glint and nasty glint of iron teeth. You think of it as the silent man.
Its kisses taste like grave-earth; you should know.
Porcelein angel on a shelf in Dean's room. You found it in a garage sale, three months before his birth. You like to think he's being watched over. Sometimes in the night you stand at the end of his bed, look down. He sleeps all curled, like he's forgotten he's out of the womb. The house is full of these pulsing dark chambers. Like atria. Ventricles. You paid attention in school; dreamed of leaving the life. Truth is, domesticity? Festering. An open sore. John's mind rubbed raw, busting for an argument. You wanted to throw a plate at him last week. He'd been remniscing about his time in the Marines, had lost it, had screamed at you that you'd never been a fighter, you've never understand. Six years ago, you'd've spat in his face.
That's ended. No more members of the Campbell line will grow up breathing gunpowder.
March swinging into April. Your gut grows and grows. Nights taste of moist-earth kisses; sometimes the silent man's eyes flash saturn-yellow. Weeks since John last came to bed. Dean doesn't seem to feel the change in the house, though you find him sobbing in the airing cupboard once. He won't tell you what's the matter. Perhaps he's scared of the lightning storms that hover over Kansas like raging gods, refusing to break, refusing to let it rain. The heat is sick and cloying. Stench of roadkill in the dusty streets. Streetlamp outside your house explodes in a rain of sparks. Next door's baby wails through the walls.
Maybe Sam-or-Emily hears it. Sam-or-Emily starts at last to kick. Sometimes your stomach seems to pulse like a beating heart.
Dean lays his little hands on it, and his face cracks open in a grin when he feels the quickening. It's weeks since he smiled that widely, you realise, weeks and weeks. You add extra jam to his sandwiches from then on, make sure he's kissed goodnight. He seems to perk up a little.
Your stomach bobs in front of you, so heavy that walking is a chore. It's a week since the silent man's last visit. Clouds still hang low in the sky. It hasn't rained in months.
Then one night you get out of your bed, hand on your belly. Go down to the kitchen without turning on any lights. John's snores drift out from where he's fallen asleep in front of the T.V; some rom-com plays quietly on. But, Jack comes a female voice, soft and tearful. I don't think you get it. I don't think you understand. How much I love you. How much I adore you.
Oh, Beatrice. Male voice. I've loved you since the moment you stepped out of that aquarium. I refuse to pretend otherwise. You're so beautiful- did I ever tell you that?
John's whiskey nestles at the back of the cupboard. You draw it quietly out. Sudden motion: smashing the bottle on the edge of the table.
No, Jack, you never told me that.
Half of it left in your hand, shards all toothsome glowing green. You never killed a monster with a broken bottle before. You imagine grinding it down John's face, the slop and burst of viscera, slobbery blood of broken teeth, ragged wet holes torn in cheeks. Whimpering like a dog. Meaty faecal stink of something dead. Intestines hidden in the lampshade. Hands stuffed in vases. Molars under pillows, head quartered and fed to the neighbour's nasty cat. Dean would never have to know.
Well, it's true, Beatrice. You're beautiful and I love you.
You wake in bed to the sound of falling rain. It's the first of May. The space beside you is empty. No broken bottle in your hand. No stink of blood and guts. Only the sensation of water trickling from between your legs, and something that wakes up inside you, something that roils and crawls to be let out.
Bedsheets reek of sulphur. You feel that there is something wrong.