Born of Darkness. Rita Vetere
of the privilege he’d bestowed on her by impregnating her. He caught the look of disdain on the perfectly chiseled features of his face reflected in the glass and immediately masked it with a more appropriate one as he moved toward the ungrateful woman.
“The baby will live,” he whispered close to her ear, as the spirits yanked Lilli off the ground, suspending her in mid-air. “And what of you? Choose.”
The voices of his faithful spirits chanted all around him. “Kill her—kill her, Ahriman.”
When the woman said nothing, but only continued to avoid his gaze with her rebellious eyes, Ahriman did not bother to disguise his deadly intent when he uttered his next words. “Do you think I would hesitate to put an end to your life? You are nothing. Less than nothing!”
Still he saw no sign of submission in her, only defiance. “So be it,” he hissed. “Die, then. The child is mine.”
With the slightest motion of his hand, he signaled to the chanting spirits. He regretted the fact that the woman could not see the grotesque souls. The sight of them would have served to increase her terror. He watched as the dark ones pummeled the woman, and laughed at her feeble attempts to fight off her unseen attackers. When she began to sputter and gasp, Ahriman picked up the handset of the telephone next to him and depressed three buttons. Then he placed the open line next to the woman, who was now making hideous gurgling noises, and waited.
Moments later, the sound of a screaming siren cut through the night, and he gave the final order. “Finish her. Quickly.”
Chapter 4
Dora stopped dead in her tracks as she took in the scene playing out in her living room, one worse than any nightmare she could imagine. What was left of her family, her only sister, lay on the floor, pale and unmoving, in a pool of blood. A paramedic was in the process of cutting into Lilli’s stomach.
“Stop,” she screamed, bolting for her sister. A uniformed officer stepped in front of her, holding her back.
“Please, that’s my sister,” she cried, alarmed to see the medic paid no attention at all to Lilli as he continued to cut into her. More blood gushed to the floor beneath Lilli. Her sister did not move or make a sound.
“Miss, stay back. There’s nothing you can do for her,” said the officer as he continued to restrain her. “She’s dead. They’re performing an emergency C-section to try to save the baby.”
A cry of despair escaped Dora. A moment ago, her taxi had pulled up in front of the house to the flashing lights of an ambulance, fire truck and police car. Her heart in her throat, cursing herself for having left Lilli alone, she shoved some bills into the driver’s hand and raced past the emergency vehicles into the house, only to be confronted with the terrible news this man had just imparted.
A hush fell over the room, and the air was thick with tension as the medic finished making the incision. Within seconds, he had the baby out. Dora could see, even through her frightened tears, it was a girl. The medic cleared the infant’s mouth, but the tiny body made no sound, not even when he slapped the infant’s bottom, twice. The slaps rang out loudly in the quiet room, but they were followed by absolute silence. The room was well-lit and Dora could not help but notice the bluish-gray pallor of the infant’s skin through the placenta clinging to it. One of the attendants uttered a single whispered word that pierced Dora like a dagger. “Stillborn”.
“No,” she sobbed, refusing to accept that both her sister and the child were gone. “Please, do something!” The medic turned to look at her.
Suddenly, the baby let out a keening wail, and everyone cried out in relief and surprise. Dora wept, for the sister she had lost, and out of relief that the child had been delivered safely after all. She watched as the attendants bundled up the baby to transport her to the hospital.
Still numb with shock, Dora could only look on as the ambulance attendants placed her sister in a body bag and put her on a stretcher to carry her out. She whispered a promise to her dead sister, hoping somehow Lilli would hear it. “I should never have left you alone, Lilli. I’m so sorry… I’ll take care of your baby, I promise. I’ll love her enough for the both of us.”
* * * *
As she sat in the waiting room on the third floor pediatric unit, anxiously waiting for confirmation that the baby had suffered no complications, Dora fought to keep her grief for her dead sister under control. She blamed herself bitterly for having left Lilli alone. She should have tried harder to persuade Lilli to seek medical help, even though her many attempts over the past months had been met with stubborn refusal. She recalled their last conversation about it, just over two weeks ago.
“You need help dealing with what happened, don’t you see that? You were raped, for God’s sake. You witnessed your husband’s murder. You’ve suffered a terrible trauma, and you need to speak to a professional, someone who knows about these things.”
Lilli had just looked at her. The dead look in her sister’s once-sparkling green eyes frightened her as much as the words that had come out of her mouth. “I’m not crazy, Dora. And there’s nothing a psychiatrist can do for me. In fact, there’s nothing anyone can do for me. Just leave it alone, all right?”
Then, last week, Dora had awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of Lilli’s raised voice. When she had rushed to Lilli’s bedroom to make sure her sister was all right, she found Lilli crouched in the corner, crying.
“Lilli, what’s the matter? Who were you talking to?” The sight of her sister cringing in the corner of the dark room, and the fact that she’d been too frightened to do anything but sob hysterically, caused Dora to bring up the subject of getting help again.
“No,” said Lilly, when she was able to speak coherently. “I had a nightmare, that’s all. It’s nothing. Go back to bed,” she said, her voice shaking.
Not knowing what else to do, Dora got into bed with her and remained there until Lilli had fallen back asleep, worried sick that her sister was becoming delusional. The signs were there, and I didn’t act. I should have found a way to get help for her.
A heavy-set nurse in rubber-soled shoes came walking toward her, interrupting her sad thoughts. In her arms, she held Lilli’s daughter, all cleaned up and wrapped in a pink blanket.
Dora took the tiny infant carefully into her arms. The baby’s eyes were open and staring directly at her. The child resembled Lilli, she realized, causing tears to flow again. Dora searched the child’s face for any signs of resemblance to Charlie, but found none. Not for the first time, she wondered whether the child was Charlie’s or whether it had been fathered by the man who had raped her sister in Morocco. She decided it didn’t matter. She’d made a promise to her dead sister and she intended to keep it. She would raise Lilli’s daughter as her own and would give her all the love she had.
“Have you thought of a name for her?” the nurse asked, not unkindly.
“Jasmine,” Dora said softly, not taking her eyes off the infant. “It’s the name my sister had chosen for a girl. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
The nurse smiled and nodded. “I have to take her back now. If you want to stay for a while, she’ll be in the last bassinette on the left in the nursery.”
Dora spent the next couple of hours in front of the glass partition separating the nursery from the visitors, studying the little miracle that had entered her life and wishing with all her heart that her sister could be here to see the beautiful child she had given birth to.
* * * *
On the following day, as she prepared the house for the baby’s homecoming, Dora went about her work with a heavy heart. She had done her best to remain stalwart throughout the ordeal of her sister’s passing, but unanswered questions remained about the manner in which Lilli had died. Even though the cause of death was listed as heart failure, Dora picked up on the fact that bruises had been found on Lilli’s body, and she overheard one policeman