The Hidden — Chapter 21: THE BIRTH — T.D. BARTON & DEREK BARTON

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:  THE BIRTH

 

Zelda awoke to the sound of hushed voices chattering excitedly in the dimly lit chamber. She rolled over on one side and peered owlishly around the room, trying to get a grasp on the situation. Her mind was fuzzy with sleep and she strove to shake off the cobwebs. It was as though her head was stuffed with a great, fluffy cotton ball that had been dipped in Novacaine, swabbing her brain with numbness.
She struggled to draw aside the curtain and make some sense of her surroundings. In a moment, everything came rushing back to her, and her mind reeled with the events of the day. Nate was dead — Susie too. And she was being held captive by a pack of ghoulish beasts and half-crazy women who willingly copulated with them. The insanity of it all defied belief; but, as much as she desperately needed to believe it was all just a dream, the torchlight gleaming on the wings of the bats above forced her to accept reality.
The mat she rested on was infested with lice, and she itched in places she could not scratch. This was aggravated by the wool fabric of the sweater Lynette had given her.
Speaking of Lynette, where was she?
Tossing aside the dirty blanket, Zelda sat up and felt a rush of pain as her pulse throbbed heavily in her swollen lips. Her tongue came out to lick tentatively at the crust of dried blood lining her mouth. She tried to spit, but couldn’t muster the saliva.
Blinking rapidly, she turned her attention to a group of women gathered around a mat on the opposite side of the room, and she temporarily abandoned her search for Lynette. Something of import must be happening there, because all of the women appeared excited, bustling around and scurrying back and forth in a semi-circle about the mat. Several of the torches had been clustered together, and they bathed the little group in a dirty yellow light, but robbed the rest of the room, casting it into darkness. Zelda assumed that Lynette must be amongst these women.
She dragged herself up on unsteady legs and slowly crossed the room. All along, she kept a wary eye open, searching for signs of Alice. Big as a palace… and ugly as a phallus! she thought, and she smiled in spite of herself. The smile stretched her injured mouth and she winced. No one stopped her, however, as she approached the crowd and leaned in close so as to see over the shoulders of the women.
On a crusty mat, against the wall, lay a woman in advanced labor. Sweat stood out heavily on her face and trickled down her arms and neck. She was in the midst of “bearing down”, and her features were distorted as she grimaced, holding her breath. Lynette was acting as midwife, squatting between the woman’s legs and waiting expectantly for the appearance of the child. She wore a worried but determined look as she concentrated her attention on the opening to the birth canal.  Her gray hair hung in strands down the middle of her face. Zelda thought she looked nearly as miserable as the young mother. Her shift had slipped low on one shoulder and she was sweating too.
Suddenly the mother-to-be expelled a great burst of air and lay back gasping and wheezing. The entire group relaxed somewhat, as the woman panted and smiled weakly, the contraction having ended.
Zelda searched the gathering of anxious faces, looking for Alice, but she was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, birthing didn’t interest her. Then Lynette saw Zelda and called to her, “Zelda! Come closer.” Zelda stepped in to stand next to the midwife. She could see the woman was dilated and that birth was imminent.
“Ginny, this is Zelda,” Lynette said casually, as though she was introducing friends at a cocktail party. She addressed Zelda, her voice full of pride and controlled excitement. “Ginny is about to give birth for the cause. It will be her first!” She waited expectantly for Zelda’s response.
“How nice for her,” was all Zelda could muster, but it seemed to satisfy Lynette. In spite of Zelda’s rebuffs and snide comments, she seemed unwilling to believe that anyone could oppose the cause. Rather, like most fanatics, she was inclined to think everyone shared her enthusiasm. She beamed happily at Zelda and then returned to her work.
Ginny shared that look of inspired excitement as she smiled at Zelda, although it was tinged with a bit of fear and pain in the midst of her labor. A wisp of hair hung over her right eye and she blew it aside, shaking her head. Suddenly she gasped as another contraction struck her and her attention returned to the birth.
Zelda was forced to consider the strange effects of fanaticism and marveled at the way it held its followers in its iron grip. She thought this must be what it is like in a religious cult. She shook her head sadly as she mused over the fact that the victims were always the young and the willing — those whose endeavors if properly directed, could make such a difference in the world. Instead, it always seemed some ruthless or unstable person won their loyalties, and they followed him blindly, pinning their dreams on one lost cause or another.
While Zelda was lost in her wool-gathering, the baby was making its entry into the world. “I can see its head!” Lynette announced excitedly, and sure enough, Zelda saw the pink little cranium poking its way out into the torchlight. “Now’s the time… push, honey… PUSH!” Lynette cheered Ginny on.
The young woman gulped in a huge breath of air and bore down with all her might. Veins protruded, thick and purplish, across her neck and a small one stood out, pulsing rapidly, at her temple. Zelda held her breath in sympathy and leaned over, unconsciously craning her neck to see. With a rush, the baby entered the world, sliding out to be safely cradled in Lynette’s experienced hands.
Little cries of delight escaped the women gathered to watch in the light of the torches, and the baby was welcomed with cheers and applause. Zelda smiled broadly, in spite of herself, the instinct of motherhood moving strongly upon her soul.
She turned to gaze happily at the woman who crowded in next to her.  Surprised and a little horrified, she found it was Alice. Alice’s ugly, hairy face didn’t share the look of wonder that shone upon Zelda’s. Instead, Zelda saw she was contemplating her malevolently, glowering at her through swollen, puffy eyes. With a quick jerk of her head, she indicated that Zelda follow her as she withdrew from the crowd of excited ladies. Anxious about receiving another drubbing at the hands of this brute, she knew she had to follow. With a shrug, she moved away, leaving the excited Lynette to cut the umbilical.
Alice sat on a rock outcropping beneath the sputtering flame of a torch. Her elbows rested on her knees and her hands hung limply before her. The frowzy mop of hair hung down from her head and all Zelda could see was her glowing eyes shining from the shadows that masked her face. She stared somberly off into the distance as though something weighed heavily upon her mind.
As Zelda approached, she saw those beady little eyes swivel in their sockets to watch her every move. Alice was gross to look at, but she was nobody’s fool. She had fought hard to be the boss hog of this lot, and she wasn’t about to let anybody get the slightest start in usurping that position. Alice looked like an enormous, evil toad — one with a sly plan to get the princess to kiss him and transform him into a handsome prince, if only so that he might have all the gold for himself.
Zelda stopped about four feet from Alice. Owing to her respect for the speed the large woman had exhibited before, she gave herself plenty of room to duck, should the need arise. Alice appeared to have no intentions of slugging her and returned to gazing, glassy-eyed, into the distance, and she ignored the woman standing before her.
After a few minutes had passed in silence, Zelda cleared her throat and spoke, “You wanted something?” She tried to sound both bored and tough, hoping the fear wouldn’t show in her voice, but she felt like a little girl, trembling in the principal’s office.
Alice’s eyes rolled to regard her and they gave her a once-over, cursory glance. “Sit down,” she said. The timbre of her voice was low and guttural, punctuated with a slow southern drawl.
She reached into a small earthen pot at her feet and pulled something from it. Regarding the object for a moment, she then popped it into her mouth and held it, pinched between her thumb and forefinger, while she gnawed upon it. “I need to ask you a favor.” She spoke around the object in her fingers, and it came out sounding like “… athk you a thabor.”
Suddenly there was a loud, “crack!” as one of Alice’s dark remaining teeth broke through whatever she was gnawing on. With a slurping sound, she sucked something from it and munched, contemplatively. After a moment, she swallowed and tossed the remains on the floor. In the torchlight, Zelda could see it was a snail shell and her stomach did a slow roll. Alice reached back into the pot.
“Word has it that you belong to Chirkah… that right?” her cold face turned toward Zelda for a moment and froze in a mask. She awaited the reply.
“So they tell me.” Zelda’s answer was cautious, and slow in coming.
Alice nodded her shaggy head and popped another snail.
“Chirkah is the pack leader, you know.” The empty shell fell to the floor with a light clacking sound. “Whatever he says… goes. Could be a good position to be in, know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t think I do.” was Zelda’s honest reply.
Alice looked at her for a moment and then spoke, sounding a bit annoyed at having to explain the obvious. “Listen, honey, they make a big deal about humping for the cause and all that, but, comes right down to it, they’re just like any other man. They like to have their pole greased now and then, get it?” She leered for a moment at Zelda, making the younger woman feel a bit disgusted.
“Only difference is, these bastards treat a woman like a woman — none of that namby-pamby romance shit. They just slap you down and stick it in.” She squeezed off a sly wink. “Just as well, saves all that fake orgasm stuff on our parts, eh?” She snickered lewdly and wiped a greasy hand across her mouth.
Zelda remained silent, having no idea what kind of response she was supposed to make to a remark like that.
Alice loudly cleared her throat and continued. “Anyway, the thing is, you treat Chirkah right, and he might be willing to grant some favors on his own, see?” Alice didn’t wait for an answer. “Here’s what you ask: I been wantin’ to get outta these-here caves and get back inta town again. I’ve done had me a whole batch of their little brats, and I got lots of ‘em that’re doin’ good work. Now I think I proved myself pretty good, and its time they let me go inta town and dig up some shit on my own, see?”
Zelda did see. Alice was getting close to the end of her child-bearing years. Maybe she was there already. Soon, the Kophet-kur would decide she was no longer any help to “the cause” and would get rid of her. She doubted that they had any retirement plans or homes for the aged stashed away down here. No doubt Alice would be swiftly and unmercifully dealt with in typical Kophet-kur fashion. They would show about as much compassion for her as she was showing for the snails she was so heartily slurping down.
Alice was scared.
Zelda smiled to herself, but she showed Alice her best poker face. She thought there might be some way to use this to her advantage, and she decided to hear the old hag out. When she said nothing, Alice went on. A crooked, forced grin split her ugly features as she attempted to put on a chummy attitude. Zelda thought how unnatural a smile of any kind looked on those lips.
“All I’m sayin’ is the next time you get a chance, you put in a good word for ol’ Alice — not the first time, you won’t be able to think of much at all the first time — maybe not even the second or third. I’m a patient woman… but not TOO patient.  One of these days soon, after you have shown him a real good time and he’s sittin’ back smilin’ to himself.  The cigarette break time, you know? You just start talkin’ to him about your ol’ friend down in the slave chambers and how she been doin’ such a good job here all these years. Tell him I could be real useful bringing information back and forth between him and his werewolf spies out there.”
“What’s in it for me?” Zelda asked, insolently.
The smile slipped from Alice’s pimply face. She glared menacingly for a long moment until Zelda worried she’d overplayed her hand. Finally, Alice shrugged and spoke.  “I’ll leave you alone,” she said simply.
“Not good enough,” Zelda pressed. “I need something more.”
Alice didn’t even look up, as though she’d seen this coming. She sat staring straight ahead and didn’t bat an eye. “You ain’t getting’ out if that’s what you think.”
“No, I realize even you couldn’t accomplish that. What I want is something much simpler: I want you to leave the rest of the women alone as well. Should I see you bullying one woman the way you acted with me earlier, all deals are off. See?”
Alice didn’t move and after a long time, she said, “Yeah.” There was no emotion in her voice, only flat acceptance. She’d been bested, no denying it, but she didn’t have to like the idea.
Zelda waited a moment for the pain to subside, and then played her trump card. “One more thing. Whenever you’re not here, I want it made clear that I am in charge. If I’m going to have to be stuck here as a slave, I might as well be top slave.” She held her breath, anxious to hear Alice’s response to her little ploy.
She hadn’t fooled the wily old woman for an instant.
“Bullshit.” Alice’s puffy eyes burned into her again. “You’re hopin’, as queen of the slaves, to get a better chance at escapin’. I can still smell the rabbit on ya, you ain’t foolin’ me one bit.” She chuckled to herself, hawked and spit. “Okay, I don’t give a shit what you do once I’m gone. They’ll just ketch you and roast yer ass anyway. Yer a feisty little bitch, I’ll give you that… Yeah, you got a deal.”
“Fine,” said Zelda.
Alice popped another snail between her fat lips and held the pot out in offering to Zelda, who declined it gracefully. “You ain’t got no idea who yer dealin’ with here, do ya?” Her eyes squinted even more, in the half shadows, but still Zelda could see an ominous glow, like two coals between her lids. It gave her the supernatural look of some demonic being, and she couldn’t return that gaze.
“These ain’t just some new kinda animal you’ve discovered, ya know. You ain’t Jane Goodall, livin’ with the chimps. These here are devils. As far back as man goes, we’ve known about ‘em. We’ve been pickin’ up their signals in our heads, just didn’t know how to put ‘em all together. You understand what I’m talkin’ about here? It’s good versus evil. That’s what its all about, this ‘great cause’. When I was little, my daddy read me the Bible every night before I went to bed. As I got a little older, he had other ideas ‘bout what to do at bed-time, sombitch. But, in the Bible, it talks about God casting Satan down outa heaven and him a-livin’ in the underworld. And it says that one day Satan and his devils are gonna come back and run the earth for a thousand years. Right?”
Zelda nodded stiffly.
“Then, it says God’s a-gonna come back and set up his kingdom, making everything right again. So, don’t you see? Chirkah IS Satan. The Fathers are God and his angels. Chirkah’s gonna win this here fight, and the earth is gonna be his until the angels do come back.  They’re gonna work with the Kofat-kurs to set up a paradise right here on earth. Later on, after things are runnin’ smooth here, they’re gonna take the faithful up to heaven with ‘em — heaven bein’ their own planet, get it? What I’m tellin’ you is right there in the Bible for everyone to read, if they’d just see it. Been there all along. Me, I’m plannin’ on bein’ one of the faithful, ‘cause I wanna live forever. I don’t give a shit whether it’s here on earth or some other planet. I don’t plan to ever pack it in… not this ol’ gal.”
She looked closely at Zelda, checking her reaction, but Zelda retained her expressionless poker face. “What you’re messin’ with here is something supernatural. And it’s for dang sure bigger’n anything you ever come across before. See, the Bible was all bullshit… it was just the way men, back in those days explained thing to each other. That story about Adam and Eve and all — you think anybody’s gonna believe that? But we’re talking about simple, uneducated people here. They were sheepherders and farmers and stuff. Hell, they didn’t even think the world was round back then. How you gonna talk to ‘em about other planets and space travel and such? Not to mention genetics and hybrids and like that. But every religion you can think of talks about the same kinds of things. The return of the Messiah and everything.”  She shook her head in amazement.
“And all along, we’re scaring our kids with stories about demons and werewolves. That’s because, in the back of our minds, we knew they were out there. Why you think people have always been afraid of wolves? Even today, when we know that wolves don’t hardly ever attack people, we’re still afraid of ‘em.” Here she lowered her voice and whispered, conspiratorially. “But it ain’t WOLVES we been afraid of, it’s the danged Kofat-kurs. THEY’RE the ones we got to watch out for…” Suddenly Alice cut her narrative short, as though she’d forgotten herself for a moment and now had regained control.
“Anyways,” she sniffed. “That’s the way I see it.”
Silence hung like a curtain in the air between them as Zelda digested Alice’s ideas. Finally, Zelda asked, “If the Kophet-kur are the chosen species, how are you planning on being selected as one of the faithful and getting to live forever?”
But, before big Alice could answer, a commotion from the women gathered around the torches caught their attention. The baby was squealing, and the women were all jabbering at the same time. There was an air of excitement that seemed to even effect Alice. She jumped to her feet and grabbed Zelda by the arm. “Holy shit!” she swore, and her foul breath wafted in Zelda’s face. “It’s time for the gathering… COME ON!”
She dragged Zelda bodily across the room, and when they reached the crowd of women, Alice roughly shoved some of them aside so that she and Zelda could see what was happening. “It’s the full moon,” Alice gasped excitedly. “You ain’t gonna believe this… just watch!”
And watch she did. The air of awestruck excitement was infectious. Zelda’s hands trembled and her face flushed hotly as she saw Lynette hold the new-born child high above her head in her blood-streaked hands. The little baby screamed and shivered in the cold, kicking its legs and flailing its arms. Suddenly, the women all fell silent as a strange, dark shadow passed over the child. At this point, even the baby’s wailing died down and the only sound to be heard was the flickering torches, popping and crackling.
Way off in the distance, Zelda thought she heard something else. It seemed to come from a dream she’d had something else. It seemed to come from a dream she’d had some time, she couldn’t remember when, but nonetheless, it was familiar and it filled her with a dread that touched her soul like a cold finger. The sound was howling. Raw, primitive and somehow provocative.  It drifted down the corridors of this underground hell and echoed in the even darker corners of her mind.
While the howling continued, she watched the baby change. Slow at first, and unreal, as though Zelda were imagining it. The skin darkened, growing from pink and shiny to a dull brown, with dark shadows in the wrinkled areas. The baby’s nose began to bulge, and it turned black at the end. Its little face narrowed, and its head flattened out, while it squirmed and kicked helplessly. Zelda watched its fingernails darken and grow to needle-sharp little claws, which it stretched and flexed, while hair began to sprout and cover its body.
The howling sounds grew louder, reverberating, doubling and trebling until they reached a crescendo of unearthly wailing which caused the hairs on the back of Zelda’s neck to stand on end. She gasped as the baby turned its head and opened its eyes. They had gone from the traditional new-born metallic blue to a deep blood red, and they fixed on hers. Long, sharp teeth sprouted between its lips and curled down on each side of its chin. Its jaws had elongated, stretching the baby’s face into something resembling a muzzle, and it drooled and grimaced convulsively. Its little ears had moved, sliding higher on its head and sprouting long, shaggy hair like that growing and lengthening into a full coat over its whole body. Zelda felt she would swoon as she looked down to the baby’s feet and saw they had split into cloven hooves, with horny black claws flashing in the torchlight.
This whole nightmare world of devils, monsters and werewolves was too much. She couldn’t accept it as reality. How could she go on coping with a world that had turned upside-down everything she had ever believed to be true? Her head spun with confusion as she tried to sort out the events, sights and sounds of this incredible day.
Lynette’s voice rang in her memory, You too will have the opportunity to serve, and once you have become pregnant with one of these beautiful children… Beautiful children? Was she destined to carry one of these grotesque little horrors in her womb? She recalled Alice’s admonition from before, You ain’t got no idea who yer dealin’ with here, do ya?… these here are devils!
The faces of the women swam in her vision as the torchlight cast its yellow, flickering glow upon them. They were chanting something softly and Lynette was standing with the baby in her arms. With mounting horror, Zelda realized Lynette was turning to her and holding it out for her inspection. Before she could react, it was thrust upon her and she looked down to see the transformation was complete. In her arms, she held a live, squirming, snarling werewolf cub.
Down the corridors of the cave and through its vast hollow caverns, the howling became a living entity, crawling and stalking ever closer. It dragged sharp claws, squealing along the stone walls. And in her overwrought mind, it seemed to call her name over and over again.
The baby wriggled in her arms and she saw Alice’s ogre-like face leering cruelly at her. “Ain’t he a beauty?” she laughed, contorting her face horribly. “Mamma said there’d be days like this… but I always figgered Mamma was just a negative thinker!”
Zelda’s legs melted into butter beneath her, and she felt someone snatch the misshapen bundle of fur and fangs from her arms just before she struck the cold surface of the floor.