Sow by Tim Curran

Author:Tim Curran [Tim Curran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Dark Fiction, Paranormal, Witchcraft, Darkfuse, Novella
ISBN: 9781937771935
Goodreads: 18043337
Publisher: DarkFuse
Published: 2013-07-09T23:00:00+00:00

15

The next morning there was a knock at the door.

Richard answered it, half-awake, still wiping sleep from his eyes. Holly’s uncle Dick and aunt Pauline were there. They’d just come from church, thought they had better stop by, see how Holly was doing.

“Well, come on in,” Richard told them. “I just put the coffee on.”

He ushered them into the living room, told them both to sit down and brought them both cups of coffee. He honestly wasn’t sure whether them stopping by was a good thing or a bad thing. It was funny, but he almost felt like he had to hide Holly from the world. She was a dirty secret he coveted and had to protect…like a blow-up doll in the closet or a woman chained up in the basement. As if, if they found out the truth, it would make him look like some sort of deviant, a criminal.

Aunt Pauline touched her lacquered, fire-red beehive. “You sleeping okay, Richard? You look a little on the rough side, you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Ah…I…I had a few of the boys over last night. Played some cards, you know.”

Uncle Dick laughed until his belly shook. “Yeah, well I used to know,” he said, jabbing a thumb at his wife. “That was a good thirty years ago, though. You win anything?”

“No, lost my ass.”

“You got my luck then. Lost my paycheck once…but let’s not talk about that,” he said.

“Oh, Dick,” Pauline said. She turned to Richard. “I thought I smelled smoke in here. Secondhand smoke is bad for babies, they say. At least that’s what I heard on TV.”

“Shit,” Uncle Dick said. “I had a ciggie hanging from my mouth when George was born, when they brought me in the room.”

“That was forty years ago, Dick.”

“So what’s the difference? You listen to them health nazis, you might as well roll over and die now. They take all the fun out of life.”

Aunt Pauline shrugged. “Course, both of my children were X-rayed. Didn’t have ultrasounds back then. They used to X-ray mothers. Two, three times during your pregnancy. My kids turned out all right, though. They’re perfectly normal.”

Dick started laughing. “Normal, hell. Linda lives with another woman. You call that normal? Jesus H. Christ.”

“Dick…”

“Hey, Richard, the little mother up or is she still sawing logs?”

That was a good question. Richard knew how easily it would have been to lie his way out of it, but why? What did he owe that hag upstairs? Might as well put her on the spot.

He jogged upstairs and threw in the door to Holly’s room.

The hag sat there, glaring at him, eyes winking like dying suns. “I want some food, Richard. You will bring me some food.”

Richard just smiled.

Whatever was possessing his wife was not that smart, after all. It was hardly the all-seeing, all-knowing sage he’d thought it to be. It didn’t even know there were guests in the house.

“You awake?” he said. “Good.” He turned from the door and shouted out into the hallway: “C’mon up, she’s awake!”

The thing on the bed glared lividly at him.

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