She said something, but the words barely made it past her lips.
“What was that?” He relieved some of the pressure his knee applied to her back.
“I said…” She coughed, a deep honking noise, goose-like. She lifted her head a few inches from the floor. “I said… we promised to never speak his name. The both of us.”
She felt something pound her in the back of the head. Her face smashed against the tile. It took her several seconds to realize he had driven his fist into the back of her skull. A second after, her head launched backward, her neck stretching to its peak flexibility. Cold metal pressed against her neck again, and she wondered if her bones would break before he seized the opportunity to split open her jugular.
“I want you to say it for me, baby,” he rasped in her ear, the demonic version of her husband returning. “I want you to speak his goddamn name. It’s been so long since you’ve said it. It’ll feel good, I promise. Like a weight lifting off your shoulders. Or, in this case, a knife leaving the most vulnerable part of your body.”
“No,” she croaked.
“Yes.” He snarled in her ear, a cruel noise that sent shivers slithering down her spine. “Yes, you goddamn will.”
“NO.”
“YES.” He pulled her head back farther, cracking something in her throat.
“NO!” she screamed as loud as her strained voice permitted.
He slammed her head forward, crunching her nose against the tiled floor. A Rorschach pattern of blood appeared under her face. He pulled back her head again, slowly, allowing her to take in the scarlet sights before her. Crimson flowed down her face, steadily as a mountain brook.
“Say it, you bitch, or I swear to God I’m slitting your shit open right here and now!”
She opened her mouth, fully expecting to comply with her husband’s demands, but the only thing that came out was an inarticulate fragment of a word followed by a bout of heaving sobs. She tried again but ended up howling for help, screaming the neighbor’s name. This earned her another meet-and-greet with the floor, and she heard the violence of her nose shattering over the impact.
“Last chance,” he said. “Last chance to make this right, Angela. I’m a forgiving husband. Very loving. I can forgive a lot. I can forgive you for all your mistakes, your transgressions against our family. I can forgive you for losing our son, our only-fucking-child, the one thing in life that mattered above all else.” The man applying intense pressure to her throat wept. Maybe, she thought, maybe he’s still a man after all. “I’m a loving and forgiving husband, Angela,” he repeated, his voice cracking through the sobs. “I want you to make this right. I’m not asking for much.”
She had no idea what to say. Anything, she thought, was apt to get her killed.
Keeping quiet, she listened to one last demand.
“Say. His. Fucking. Name.”
He wasn’t crying anymore, and his voice had a ring of finality to it, like there wouldn’t be another request, and certainly no more opportunities to resolve this mess.
Speak his name or die.
Those were her choices.
She opened her mouth, and something like a breath fell out.
Terry sobbed again. Loud, as if something in his chest had suddenly fractured.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her ear.
She felt the blade split her flesh, sink in. A warm splash coated her throat.
“WILLIAM!” The name exploded from her mouth, with it, a gob of saliva and blood. “His name was William.” As her husband removed the weapon from her throat, she wailed with relief, frustration, and crushing sadness. She laid her forehead in the small pool of blood and saliva. Body violently trembling, she crawled away from her attacker, toward the door.
“Nuh-uh, Angela,” Terry said from behind her. He gripped her ankle. She was too weak to resist. “We’re not done yet.” As he bent down to retrieve a test, he wiped the glistening tears off his cheeks. “I hope you still have some urine left in that body of yours.”
X.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVES
Sure enough, Terry was right—she was pregnant. Or so the stick she pissed on told her. It wasn’t one of those cheap sticks either—it was one of those early detection pieces. And even so, she still believed her eyes were unveiling lies; no at-home pregnancy kit on the planet would test positive this early, not three days after the deal was sealed. Quick math told her it should be at least another week and a half before the test would display positive results—alas, here it was. The plus sign glared up at her like the eye of some dead cartoon character. The realization kicked her brain into the endless possibilities of how this was possible, each stray thought reverting back to notions of dream goblins and dream worlds and things that just didn’t exist. Still, she stared down at a bona fide miracle.
In other words, an immaculate conception.
This has to be a dream, she thought, another hallucination.
Terry paced the room. “I knew it. I fucking knew it!”
Slowly, Angela shook her head. “This isn’t possible.”
“Yes,” he said, getting down on his knees before her. She wasn’t sure if he was re-proposing or getting in prime position to wedge the blade between her ribs. “Yes, it is.”
Just looking at him made the small, shallow furrow on her throat burn. “How? How am I pregnant? Besides the other night, we haven’t fucked in over nine months. I haven’t slept with anyone…”
“…since William?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You still won’t say his name?” The disappointment in his voice was disconcerting.
She swallowed her own spit and that hurt, too. “Not unless you’re going to threaten me again.”
He shook his head like a wet pup. “I’m sorry, babe. I’m so goddamn sorry.” He placed a hand on her knee. It felt cold, impossibly frigid, like an icicle come summertime. There was something wild in his eye, something telling her the stress of everything was too much and Terry had finally snapped. Maybe this Ester Moore, whoever she was, knew how to push his buttons, knew how to make him cross the line of no turning back. Every psychologist on the planet would rule him utterly insane on his appearance alone, one look in those feral eyes. “But you had to say it. You had to let it out. You had to speak his name. William. William likes when you speak his name.” He glanced down at her stomach.
She followed his peculiar gaze. “What are you talking about?”
He pointed at her stomach with the knife. She recoiled.
“That’s our Will in there,” he said confidently, the words bringing an endearing smile to his face.
“What the fucking shit are you talking about?” Angela asked, and something behind her eyes began to burn. She thought it might be her brain melting from the insanity. He actually believes this. She hadn’t forgotten how he’d admitted to killing Rosalyn Jeffries and came very close to opening her throat like a sandwich bag, spilling its contents across the bathroom floor.
“Not our Will, not exactly. But a copy. The dream goblin wants the real William, but it’ll settle for a copy, an imitation. Ester says so. She can make a trade. The switch.”