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Dr. Hill is one of many doctors working with a very small, very powerful Satanic cult. She does something to the pregnant mothers, and then she delivers the babies to them. I believe they need the babies for a ritual of some sort, or a spell maybe?”
After all this time, could my own doctor, the person I’d trusted the most, be planning to take her away from me? I didn’t believe in Satan, but maybe I didn’t have to. It was enough that Dr. Hill did, that she thought she was engaging in some horrible ritual, that she was going to do something to my baby.
The warnings, I realized, after several long moments of quiet. They were the one piece of this puzzle that didn’t fit. And not just the warnings, but the altered appointment times and the sabotaged meds.
Finally, Cora brought the phone back to her ear, exhaling loudly. “Okay. I can talk now.” If I’d had any doubt about Cora’s involvement, it left me then. It
“I still don’t understand how,” I said. “Did you—? Were you the one who broke into my house?” “I didn’t break in.” Cora said, too quickly. “I mean, I…” and she trailed off, swearing under her breath like she’d said too much, which didn’t make sense. Of all the things she’d just admitted, the fact that she didn’t have to break in was what bothered her?
Is she the one Dex is sneaking around with!
I was replaying the night she broke in, how it had been dark, so dark that I hadn’t even been able to see her face. So dark that she hadn’t been able to see my face. I thought of the whispered rasp. Baby. I thought she’d meant my baby. But she hadn’t. She’d meant Dex.
He said he was going to leave you once this round of IVF was done. That’s why I told myself it was okay…that sleeping with him was okay. I’m so sorry, Anna.
She saw Dex leave and she was far enough away that she thought he was me. She thought he was alone. She’d thought she was climbing into bed with him. I remembered, suddenly, how long Dex had been gone that night. So much longer than it usually took to go get the dogs. Had he been looking for her? That wasn’t the only time he’d disappeared for hours with no explanation. Now,
I felt a sinking as I realized why she’d been trying to keep me from getting pregnant. I’d thought she’d been trying to protect me from whatever Dr. Hill was doing to me, but that wasn’t it. I thought of the message she’d left in my calendar. Are you sure it’s dead? I thought she’d been trying to give me hope, so I’d keep fighting. But she was just making sure it was gone.
“Cora? Why? I mean, what about?” I closed my eyes. It was the familiarity in his voice when he said her name—not like he was talking about a receptionist he’d said hello to a few times at the clinic, but like he knew her. I felt the sting of it in my cheek, in my eyes, as strongly as if he’d slapped me. Any doubt I had that Cora had been telling me the truth vanished with that one word.
I thought of Talia, standing beside me in the restaurant bathroom, her words careful, cautious. I never talk about their past, not ever… We all deserve a second chance. Something sick twisted through my stomach. “Oh my God…this is why you and Adeline split up? This is why you never want to talk about her. Did you cheat on her too?”
“Adeline wouldn’t have a baby with you, so you cheated on her,” I said, the realization settling over me like something heavy. “And then, when I couldn’t have a baby, you cheated on me too.”
I thought of all the times Dex hadn’t answered his phone in front of me, the late-night phone calls, the nights he’d left without an explanation, disappearing for hours sometimes. The heavy feeling moved to my gut. “Cora wasn’t the last, was she?”
“Do you love me at all? Or am I just a means to an end to you? An incubator for the baby you’re so desperate to have?”
But for the first time since this all started, I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t afraid of what the thing inside of me might do, what it might make me do. I wanted something to happen, I realized. I wanted the monster inside me to devour him.
“There’s a woman who calls the office sometimes. She’s been calling since before I started. I don’t know her name. She always says for me to tell Dr. Hill that her old friend is on the phone, and then Dr. Hill takes the call in her office with the door closed.”
This woman on the phone, she was looking for someone. She had specific characteristics she was looking for. Sometimes, Dr. Hill would tell her where she could meet these women in person, things like that. She said, ‘I know you like to vet them yourself,’ so I knew this wasn’t the first time. That’s when I started messing with your appointments and meds.
I’ll let you know whether the pregnancy takes, and then, I’m out.’ That was how she’d put it. I’ll help you find someone desperate enough.”
That’s why I came out here tonight, Anna. Because you can’t let this baby be born.” Her eyes flicked to my belly again. “It’s a monster. You have to get rid of it.”
The witch didn’t look frightened. She looked…defiant. And Alice knew. She knew it in her soul. That witch had done something to her baby.
wanted to hurt him, to shove him away from me, watch him fall down the stairs. But I wanted him to hold me too. I wanted him to tell me that everything was going to be okay, that I was safe, and our baby was safe.
I saw it for what it was: another Spellbound doll left for me to find.
I was suddenly aware of something inside of me, a dark presence that wasn’t me exactly, but wasn’t separate from me either.
And here was the worst of it: I still didn’t want to hurt her. Even now, I only wanted to protect her. She was my baby. Whatever happened to her, whatever she became, I was her mother, and I wanted—no, it was more than that, I needed—to keep her safe.
He was cradling his arm to his chest. I stared at him, trying not to gag. Everything past his left wrist had turned bright red, everything except for the jagged knob of bone protruding from his hand: his ring finger. It was broken, bone gleaming horribly bright against the ragged remains of his skin, his finger still gushing blood. His wedding ring was gone.
baseball cap standing on my curb back in Brooklyn. I remembered how she’d pulled the cap low over her face, hid her eyes behind oversized sunglasses. Hadn’t I thought that she’d looked like an actor? Hadn’t I wondered if I’d recognized her, even then? “No,” I said, swallowing hard. I felt numb all over. I didn’t want this to be true. I didn’t want to believe it. “No…Siobhan…”
“Emily isn’t one of ours. She’s just an ambitious young woman who didn’t realize how hard she was making things for you.”
Wow so after all that she really had nothing to do with any of it. Haha wow sorry Emily I definitely thought you were sus too.
Women I’d never seen before and women I saw every day; women much, much older than I was, and a few who were younger, barely in their teens.
If I listened, I could hear their voices weaving together. Chanting something in a language I didn’t understand.
Down down down the witches road.
I know you’re scared, but this isn’t a curse.” “It’s a gift.”
The contractions felt different than they did before. They were no longer rising and ebbing but piling one on top of the other—not waves but tsunamis, hurricanes. Unreal, unrelenting. I was drowning in them.
Somewhere in the swimming, blistering pain, I found myself thinking that I didn’t know how women ever forgave their children for this. For ripping their bodies apart, destroying them.
For a moment, the room went perfectly, utterly still. No one congratulated me or told me how beautiful she was. No one said a word. But no one screamed either.
The revulsion I’d felt only moments ago was quickly fading. She wasn’t a monster; she was a baby. She was my baby.
I found out, somewhere in the middle of this, that Dex had died. The blood loss and the accident were too much for him, and he passed the same night our daughter was born.
Well I aint in no way sad to see him go.
birth to my daughter too. She’d been rushed to the ER minutes after I’d gone into labor. At the exact moment I was bringing my baby into this world, she’d been taking her last breaths.
Siobhan passed away at Southampton Hospital, according to a statement released by her family. I stared, wondering how that could be. Siobhan had died here, just a few halls away from where I’d given birth? How? Why?
I authorized another member of our coven to go to you, to perform an ultrasound, to see if there was anything we could do to save the baby.” I saw a flash of red lipstick, dark hair. My stomach clenched. “Meg.”
“Fertility spells are easy,” Olympia continued, “but the kind of spell you were asking for, a spell to bring back someone who died, well, that’s a much different thing.” That night on the phone, Siobhan asking if there was anything she could do. And me, blurting, my voice choked with tears, Can you get me my baby back?
“It took an enormous amount of energy to work that spell. And Siobhan was already sick. She collapsed immediately after she was done.” I saw it. Siobhan curled on the floor of her apartment, fighting for her life, at the exact same moment that I was lying on my back in the basement, watching my belly move. It hadn’t been a coincidence at all.
“The dolls…you put them there?” “I’m sorry if they scared you. They weren’t meant to. They’re part of a protection spell meant to draw the pain out of your body and tie it to them instead. But then you found them, moved them.”
“Io’s beliefs are the reason she was never asked to join us. For forty years she’s spread harmful propaganda on that channel of hers. She tells lies, saying we worship Satan when Satan has no place in what we do or believe. Her words incite violence against us.” “As for Dr. Hill…we pay her for information, yes, but she’s just a means to an end. She helps us find people who might need us, desperate people, people who the medical system ignores.
she’s part of a system that regularly ignores women and other marginalized people. Think about it, Anna. Did Dr. Hill listen to you when you told her you were in pain? Have any of your doctors listened to you?”
When she lifted her chin, I saw that little handprint birthmark, just like Siobhan’s. My witch’s mark.
what Siobhan did, bringing your baby back like that, it was against the natural order of things. That’s part of the reason your pregnancy was so difficult. The magic can interfere with your mind; it can make you see things that aren’t there, experience things that never happened.”
the women in my coven don’t have to die. When our bodies give out, we can create a new body for ourselves in the womb of another. This wouldn’t have to be the end for me. I could get another chance to live again.”
If you allowed me to perform the transfer, I could assure you that the consequences would be minimal. But without it…” Siobhan faltered. “Your baby could be completely human. Or she could be…off.”
I was tired of pretending I wasn’t in pain. I was tired of being strong just because it made things easier for everyone else. I was tired of calming down.
