It was the end of December. The winter snow was coming down hard as the woman stumbled around the slums of London. Gasping and whimpering in her pain, she fell on the ground and screamed. She had fallen in front of the doors of a large, rundown building. She banged on the door. Almost immediately, a old woman thrust open the door and looked. She didn't see anyone at first, but glanced downward in the direction of the scream, and noticed the younger woman, lying on the ground. The old woman said, strangely calmly, "In labor, eh?"
The woman nodded through her tears. The old woman smiled warmly and then shouted into the hallway behind her, "Woman in labor on our doorstep!" as she dragged her inside.
Teenage boys and a couple older men and women rushed through the halls and all of them began to work on delivering the baby. Or babies, as the group soon found out. The woman had died in childbirth, but her two twin boys, not identical, but twins nonetheless, were healthy. The old woman smiled as she looked over the two infants. "They'll be ours, gents. We'll take 'em in."
Three months later, a man burst through those same doors. He was shouting about two twin boys being left there in the middle of winter, and how they were his. The old woman calmed him down, and brought him to the two three-month-old babies, sleeping at the moment. The man nodded. "I'll take 'em both."
The old woman smiled, and thanked him, but then said, "Y'know, just as a warning, o' course, that 'un," she pointed at the thinner, quieter baby, "that 'un is a bit strange, if you ask me. Queer things 'appen around him."
The man's expression hardened. "Is that so? One of her kind, eh?", he said to himself.
The way he said "her" sent chills through the old woman's spine. He said it with such hatred and distaste it was frightening. He turned to the old woman and said, coldly, "Well then, I'll just take him."
He pointed to the other baby, the plumper one, the normal one. Before the old woman could speak, he pointed at her and wagged his finger. "I'm not taking the other one. No questions, okay?"
The old woman muttered, "Okay," and handed him the baby he had chosen.
He exited without another word. A few seconds later, he reentered, and quickly, and fiercely, said, "Never tell anyone about this baby. Especially not his brother. Never."
The old woman nodded, scared. After he left for good, she waited a bit, and then looked at the abandoned little boy. "What makes you so special?", she muttered to herself, shaking her head.