Voices

Voices

           It’s the summer of 1920, the birds are singing their songs, the sun is at its brightest, and I am giving birth to my second child. Or so we hope. I can hear all the doctors yelling and giving directions as I lay in the operating room. I hear my husband, Burt, saying, “Everything will be alright.” As he says this, I look into his eyes and I see the worry developing inside.
           I look at the head surgeon and his face holds the one emotion that I have been dreading; sorrow. I feel him lift my child from me, taking it away from me. I don’t hear the little screams of life, or the breath of life, all I hear is the yelling of the doctors. My husband looks at me again, tears swelling in his eyes, I know what has happened now, and I know my child is no longer with me anymore.
           I stare at my stillborn child, waiting for the sound I know I will never hear. I notice the room starts to grow dark. The voices start to die down, and disappear along with the doctors they are coming from. My husband also disappears with them, leaving me to stare at my child which I wish to hold even though it itself holds no life within it. The room grows even darker to where I can only see my child.  The whole room starts to shake violently, and a voice starts chanting in an ancient language. I can only pick out one word from the chanting, “Death!”The voice grows louder, so loud that my ears start to ring, I move my hands to cover my ears, but my hands are chained to the bed rails.
           A strange shape appears in the corner. It looks out from the shadows, peering at my child. I scream at it to get away from my child but it moves closer to my child. I scream at it again, but it still continues to move. In a flash of light my child is gone and the shape is standing above my hospital bed. It started to chant again, but this time it only said one word, “Death!” It leaned in close to where it was screaming the word into my ear. In another flash of light I felt something sharp in my stomach again.
           I bolt up in to a sitting position and I am back in my bedroom. Burt woke up, apparently surprised by my starling awakening, put his arms around my shoulders in comfort.
           “Are you alright?” he asked me as he pulls me closer. I don’t answer but I look down at my swollen belly. My child was still safe with me. I put my hand on my belly and lean on Burt for support. I notice tears start to swell in my eyes, I don’t mind them so I let them fulfill their duty and they fall down my cheeks in streams of salty water.
           “It’s alright.” He said to me, “It was just a dream.” Or was it?
           I awake to the sunlight streaming in through the window. Burt has already left for work, so I dress for the day. I walk down the hallway towards Stanley’s room. I open the door to find him still asleep. His blankets have been thrown across the room, a if a tornado has been through there.
    “You may be nineteen, but you still sleep like a child.” I said to him as I opened the curtains around the window. “Come on now. Wake up.” I hear him groan and I smile knowing he will be downstairs soon. I leave his room and walk downstairs to begin making breakfast.
    As I make breakfast I hear somebody talking behind me, as if they were chanting something that was focused in my direction. I feel an ominous force pushing and pulling at my body without physically touching me. I slowly turn around to see who this chanter might be, but I am face to face with a dark, looming shape that reeked of death. I dropped my frying pan on the floor in shock of this dark shape. I feel my body freeze where it was.

The sound of the pan dropping seemed to wake the shape out of its chanting state and look up at me. I stare at nothing but its glowing yellow eyes. As I stare the shape seems to stare back at me, almost as if it was looking into my soul, searching for something to use against me. I feel the warmth leave my body and all that's left is the cool, dark, damp corners of my soul. The smell of death grew stronger as the dark shape drew closer to me.

When it had gotten so close to me, to where there was nothing but a papers width between us, it started chanting again. The voice was familiar to me, I knew I had heard that voice before just recently. It was the voice from my dream, but this time it was only saying one word...

“Death!”

The chanting grew louder, just as it had in my dream. The chanting grew into a scream. This screaming shook me from my trance and I moved to cover my ears. At my movement the shape lifted his, what seemed to be, arm and with a quick flash swung at me and cut my arm, leaving five slash wounds into my arm.

I scream at the pain and fall to the floor. The shape moves toward me again, but, with whatever wits I have left, I move across the floor to get away from this new danger. In my quick thinking I was able to avoid the second blow I would have suffered from the strong arm that had been swung at me again.

I hear Stanley scrambling around upstairs at the sound of my screaming. As he runs down the stairs, the dark shape jumps back away from me and moves toward the stairs, but in a quick change of mind it disappears into nothing.

When Stanley finally reaches the bottom of the stairs he sees the black mist that had been left behind from the dark shape. The look on his face was filled with shock just as mine was.

As I sit on the floor, the pain in my arm grew massive. I could feel the blood from my wound seeping through my sweater and running down my arm.

    “What happened?” he asked as he made his way towards me to examine me. He pulled me off the floor and helped me to my room.  When we got there he bandaged my arm. After he was done he got up to leave.
    “Where are you going?” I asked him.
    “To get dad,” he answered, “He should be here.”As he said this he left the room, and left the house. Within minutes he was back with Burt. I hear Burt running up the stairs and he came bursting into the bedroom.
    “What happened?” he yelled,his booming voice traveling down the hall with an echo. “Who did this?” he yelled again. He started pacing around the room.
    I got up off the bed and wrapped my arms around his neck. He finally stopped pacing and pulled me close to him.
    “Why would somebody do this to you?” he whispered in my ear.
    “It wasn’t somebody,” I whispered back,” it was a something.” At this he pulled back to look into my eyes. I looked back at him and I could see the confusion in his eyes.
    “What do you  mean ‘something’?” he asked me. As he asked me this, a strange feeling swelled up inside me. Almost as if I was being watched by somebody not there.
    Before  I could answer Burt’s question, the house began to shake violently and a high pitched screaming rang through the house. We all fell to the floor in pain. A bright light filled the house to where I could not see anything.  
    After a few seconds pass, the shaking stops and the screaming along with it, and the light disappears too. I look up to where Burt was and he was gone. Now is when I believe the dark shape, this baby is a curse. I left the room and ran to the kitchen, I picked up the first sharp object I could lay my hands on. I took the knife I was using for breakfast and lifted my hand to plunged the knife into my cursed baby.
    Stanley ran after me and tried to stop me from doing this, but he was too late. The knife went into my stomach with one quick movement. The pain was excruciating but it was worth it.
    The next thing I knew I was in my bedroom. I look at my stomach and it i no longer swollen, my baby is gone. I start to cry, but they don’t feel real enough to me. I got up out of the bed and walked down the hallway to Stanley’s room. I turn the doorknob only to find it  locked. I call out to Stanley but no reply. It was not like Stanley to not answer me, something was wrong.
    I could feel the strange feeling coming from the inside of his room. It was the same feeling that  felt right before Burt disappeared. No good. I ran down stairs to get a pick from the kitchen. When I came back, the feeling was much stronger. I picked the lock but it was no good, the door wouldn’t open. All at once the feeling went away and the door opened itself. I pushed it opened to find every mothers nightmare, my only son was hanging from the ceiling with a rope tied around his neck. My only son had committed suicide. It was all my fault.

The End