She had never been in such excruciating pain before. She had already birthed two children, naturally, and the pain she was presently feeling was nothing compared to either of those two events, even combined. In her present state, she did the only thing she could do. She screamed.
Not particularly caring who heard, she continued screaming in agony. She needed help and the only other person in the house was too young to do anything.
Flashes of white blinded her to her surroundings. The soft mattress beneath her back might as well have been a bed of nails for all the good it did her. She felt as though something was ripping apart her abdomen from the inside and for a fleeting moment, she wondered what on earth she was giving birth to. It didn't feel like anything she had ever heard about before.
As she clutched her bulging stomach in an effort to stop the pain, she prayed that Steven would be home soon. Gritting her teeth in an effort to keep from screaming out, her eyes flew to the clock on the bedside table. Another wave of pain ripped through her, but she had deciphered the hands of the clock in a few seconds of lucidity and realized that Steven should have been home already.
Where is he? she moaned in her mind. As if convinced of the power of telepathy, she screamed his name in her mind, willing him to come relieve the torture. She had managed to keep the tears at bay thusfar, but as she gasped for breath to scream again, she heard Robbie crying in the next room. Her child needed her help, but she was powerless to do anything. Grasping for whatever strength she could find, she managed to wiggle her way to the edge of the bed. Sliding her leg off of the bed, she placed it on the floor, but she was never given the chance to rise.
What felt like an electric current shot up her leg from the carpeted floor, causing her to cry out once more as it made its way up to her belly. Everything evaporated from her mind except for the possible danger this shock, whatever it was, could pose to her unborn child. She wrapped her arms even more tightly around her stomach, but she had no idea how to fight against something within her. Feeling incredibly helpless to help, not one, but two of her children, the tears spilled forth unchecked. She had no idea where Steven was, but she had the distinct feeling that if she didn't get help soon, she was in grave danger of not surviving the ordeal. Hoping against hope that the neighbors, the Tuthills, could hear her, she started screaming again.
::~*~::
Even though he could hear his son's cries from behind his closed bedroom door, Steven ignored them as he burst into the master bedroom. His wife was curled up into the fetal position on the bed, eyes squeezed tightly shut and arms wrapped securely around her abdomen. Somewhere between his departure from the car and his entrance into the bedroom, her screams had abated and now she was merely moaning. Not sure if that was a good sign or bad, he cautiously approached the bedside. Stretching forth his hand, he gently touched her shoulder.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed.
Leaping back, he flattened himself against the wall, momentarily terrified, not by her words, but by her eyes. When she had opened them, he had looked into them—and saw something that shook him to the core. Instead of her warm, chocolate brown eyes, he had seen darkness, unimaginable darkness. Not even the whites of her eyes had been visible. It was like someone had injected black ink into them, completely obscuring any other color that was there.
Then there was her voice. He had been so shocked by her eyes, that the change in her voice had gone unheeded, but as he stood there, back flat against the wall, the terrible moment played over in his mind. Her voice had sounded deep, much too deep for her to have achieved, even in jest. His eyes fixed upon her, he hated to admit it but he was too scared to move to her side. In fact, he was too scared to do anything, even though he knew he should call for Dana or an ambulance or both. He should even check on Robbie, but he couldn't move from that spot, no matter how much his mind was screaming at him to do so. He slid down the wall, to sit on the floor, his eyes never leaving her face.
::~*~::
As if the lack of screams from his mother had calmed him somewhat, Robbie's cries had turned into whimpers as he slumped down to sit on the floor in his bedroom. His wide-eyed stare never left the window where the tree outside stood, waiting. Robbie knew it was waiting to get him and he knew if he turned away, it would smash through the window to snatch him out of his room. To a three-year-old, anything was possible. An adult would scoff at the thoughts that ran rampant through Robbie's mind, would seek to assure him that trees attacking people simply wasn't possible. Robbie would have paid no heed had they tried to convince him otherwise. He had seen what no one else had and no one could tell him it wasn't possible.
::~*~::
Steven was stuck in a stupor. He had almost gathered the courage to move to the telephone when Diane mumbled something unintelligible. Momentarily frozen in place, he fought an inner battle on whether to go back to her side or whether to call for help. Where is Dana? He hadn't heard anything from her since he had arrived home and he was beginning to doubt that she was even in the house. She should be here, helping her mother. None of this would have happened if she had been here.
Diane mumbled again and Steven was spurred into action as he finally caught her words. She was pleading for help. Rushing to her side, he cautiously reached forward to touch her shoulder again. Fully prepared to pull away at the faintest hint of the terror that had come over her before, he was relieved that she didn't scream at him and when she opened her eyes, he saw they were back to the familiar brown. Maybe I imagined the whole thing? The thought was comforting and distracting at the same time. Pushing aside the frightening image, he gripped her hand tightly in his and held on. He winced in pain of his own as she tightened her grip on his hand, but relaxed it several seconds later. This kept up for a few minutes more before Diane spoke.
"I don't think we have time to make it to the hospital," she gasped as, what Steven had finally identified as a contraction, overtook her.
"I think we should try," he whispered in her ear. "Something's not right this time."
"No," she insisted. "I can't move."
"I'll carry you if I have to." He couldn't really say why, but he did not want this child born inside the house. He felt that everything that had happened in the last few minutes had been a bad omen for the birth and he wanted to get his wife out. He really didn't care if that meant going next door and delivering his child in the neighbors' bathtub.
Instead of replying, she screamed out in pain as she gripped his hand so hard, he felt she was in great danger of detaching it fully from his arm. Gasping in pain, he almost didn't hear the master bedroom door open quietly.
"What's happening?"
Steven jerked his eyes away from Diane's sweat-drenched face to see Dana standing in the door. She was holding Robbie in her arms, though a more accurate description would be that Robbie was clutching his sister as if in fear for his life. Steven couldn't blame him. Locked behind a closed door with his mother screaming in the next room—he wouldn't be surprised if Robbie had nightmares for months.
"Call an ambulance! Now!" he ordered, even as Diane's grip tightened once again. Robbie clutched at his sister even more, terrified by his father's voice. The two children fled the room to the downstairs where Steven could faintly hear Dana's hysterical voice as she called for help.
Diane screamed once again as she squeezed Steven's hand, but something was different about it. Turning his eyes back to her, he saw that she had rolled over to lay on her back and she was now, quite obviously, pushing. There was no more time and Steven felt it would sound incredibly selfish for him to ask her to hold on even for a few more minutes. Shouting down the stairs for Dana to come upstairs, he felt utterly inadequate for the whole situation. They should be having this baby in the hospital where people infinitely more knowledgeable than himself could be handling everything and all he had to do was offer encouragement to his wife while wiping her brow. He knew Hollywood was the last place he should be looking to for help, but it was all he really had.
Dana took far longer in coming upstairs than she should have, but before he could angrily ask her what took her so long, she said that she had run Robbie over next door so that he could be properly looked after while everything was happening over here. Sparing only a fraction of a thought for his little girl growing up so fast, he told her to bring hot water, clean towels and a pair of clean scissors quickly. He had no idea what half of that stuff was for, but he knew that they were always requested on those late night TV shows he watched with his wife.
When Dana returned, Steven grabbed one of the towels out of her hands and started mopping the sweat off Diane's face as she kept pushing. She seemed to have realized she was hurting Steven with her deathlike grips and had moved her hands to gripping the bedsheets which were rapidly being soiled beneath her. Her fingernails ripped through the sheets, but Steven had already given up any hope of salvaging the sheets.
She continued pushing, but, having been through this ordeal twice before, she coached her husband and daughter through what they were supposed to do between strained breaths. Steven felt his confidence waver. He had no doubt that Diane knew what she was talking about, but when he started to see the head of his unborn child, he started wondering how much longer until the ambulance arrived. When she instructed him to hold the head and help the baby out with her pushing, he nearly fainted.
Somewhere, in all the noise that was being created in the room, he thought he heard the sound of pounding from downstairs. Feeling relief at the arrival of the ambulance, he sent Dana to let them in. Diane kept pushing and he kept reassuring himself that it was only a matter of seconds before people who knew what they were doing could replace him. Seconds turned into minutes and still no one arrived in the room, not even Dana.
The tiny body was almost completely out and Steven felt tears stream down his face as he discovered the child was a girl. Almost faint from the exertion she had endured, Diane breathlessly told him to cut the cord with the scissors when the child was completely out. Even though he had seen the doctors do it twice before, the request thoroughly alarmed him. What if he cut it wrong?
Exhausted beyond belief, but conscious enough to feel the feet slipping out of her, she motioned for Steven to cut the cord. Even through her blurry vision, she saw him hesitate and she urged him again to do it.
With the utmost apprehension, he did as she asked, but was unsure what to do with the portion that was still connected inside of her body, but as she didn't offer any suggestions he figured he would leave it where it was until the ambulance got there. Speaking of which... Wrapping his newborn daughter up in one of the many clean towels, he ignored the fact that she was still covered in blood, but it did strike his notice that she hadn't started screaming like babies were supposed to when born.
"Diane," he said quietly, "she didn't scream."
Diane had started falling into a semi-conscious state, but at her husband's words, she pushed the fatigue away as best she could. Struggling to prop herself up a little on her elbows, she forced her eyes to focus on him. "What?" her voiced reflected her appearance, groggy and semi-lucid. "Well, is she breathing? What color is she?"
Steven set his daughter on the bed and tried to figure out how to tell if everything was alright. Diane's focus seemed to have sharpened as she collapsed back against the pillows with a sigh of relief. "Her color is good and her chest is moving." Closing her eyes, all she wanted to do then was sleep.
Steven immediately honed in on what his wife had seen, wondering if he had been so overwhelmed with everything else that was going on, that he hadn't picked up on the fact that his daughter had in fact been fine the whole time. Picking her back up, he settled her in her mother's arms while he went downstairs to find out why the medics hadn't come upstairs.
::~*~::
Immediately he knew something was wrong when he reached the bottom step and found his older daughter curled up in a ball in the corner behind the door with her hands clamped tightly over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut.
"Dana!" he exclaimed, anger at being left alone upstairs welling up inside of him. His daughter jumped at the sound of his voice. "Why didn't you let them in?" He could see the red and white lights of the ambulance reflecting off of the walls as they shone brightly through the front window. He yanked the door open. Upon seeing the door opening, the medics that were standing on the front porch hesitated in shock before hurrying thru the door into the house. Seemingly surprised about something, they filed past Steven as he pointed them up the stairs to the master bedroom. Throwing suspicious looks over their shoulders, they disappeared from sight.
Dana was crying energetically, great heaving sobs, as she kept pointing to the door and window. "Daddy, I tried!" she sobbed. "The door! It wouldn't open! I tried, but it wouldn't open. I unlocked it, I did. I even tried the other doors, but none of them would open. The paramedics even followed me around the house, trying to break them down, but they wouldn't move. They even tried breaking the windows, but they wouldn't break. We tried. Really, we did."
He had stood there, in absolute shock and his first thought was that she was lying to him, but he knew she wouldn't claim the medics had tried to help if it was a bold-faced lie, especially one that could easily be verified with them himself. That doesn't explain how the door opened so effortlessly at my own touch.
Glancing up the stairs, where he knew the medical crew was overseeing his wife, and then back at his daughter, his thoughts finally had a chance to process everything that had happened. Something was very wrong.
::~*~::
A/N: I just want to point out, for the record, that I have never given birth, nor have I ever seen a live birth, in person, so I have no idea how accurate my portrayal was (probably not very), but it was the best I could do. Like Steven, all I had to go on were Hollywood portrayals. I hope you enjoyed this concluding chapter. I decided to leave it with a cliffhanger sentence, but nothing really happens until the events in the movie. My train of thought says that unusual things happen here and there, but the next truly terrifying events for the Freelings are the ones depicted in the film.