The Incubus, Succubus and Son of Perdition Box Set: The Len du Randt Bundle (8 page)

‘It’s because
you live so far,’ Luke said. ‘No reception there.’

Everyone
chuckled.

‘You might be
onto something there, Luke,’ Bill said. ‘I can’t help but notice that all the
guys having nightmares live in more or less the same neighbourhood.’

‘It’s a
government conspiracy,’ Rupert said. ‘They’re testing their new brain-wave
manipulators, and you guys are the lab rats.’

‘Everything’s a
conspiracy with you, Rupert,’ Luke said.

‘Have you guys
listened to yourselves the last two weeks? You
all
have bad dreams. You
all
fight with your girlfriends or wives. You
all
have a low sex drives.’

‘That’s because
we’re techies,’ Luke said and everyone laughed.

‘And it all
started at around exactly the same time,’ Rupert finished his thought.

For a moment
there was an uncomfortable silence among the guys. Rupert had a good point
supported by a valid argument.

‘Come,’ Luke
said and crunched the remainder of his cigarette inside an ashtray before
twisting it several times. ‘Time’s up. We gotta go.’

In less than a
minute, everyone had separated and gone their ways; scattered from the lounge
like roaches in a kitchen when the light goes on. Justin finished his coffee
alone and then made his way back to the workshop.

*    -    -    - 
  *

Rebecca dipped
her hand in the lukewarm bath water and moved it around to mix the hot and cold
water properly. As she did so, she stared at her own reflection in the mirror.
Was she gaining weight? Was she losing colour? The reflection that stared back
at her was someone else. The hair was unkempt, and the cheerful glow in the
cheeks, gone. She worried about the pregnancy; about the creatures she saw in
the corner of her eyes, the nightmares, but most of all, Justin’s
strange—almost aggressive—behaviour since they heard that she was pregnant only
two short weeks ago.

‘Are you losing
it?’ Rebecca asked the reflection in the mirror. ‘Are you going out of your
mind?’

The reflection
in the mirror didn’t answer.

Once the bath
was relatively filled up, she closed the taps and took off her gown. Slowly,
one foot at a time, she got into the warm water and melted away into the thick,
foamy bubble bath. She wet a face cloth and twisted it to drain the excess
water. Rebecca then laid her head back on the rim of the bath and placed the
damp cloth on her face. The warm water against her neck aided in relaxing her
otherwise very tense muscles.

The analysis
of your blood indicated the presence of the human chorionic gonadotrophin
hormone
, the doctor’s words echoed in her mind as
she thought about tomorrow’s appointment.
In other words, you’re pregnant.

Rebecca let out
a little chuckle. She was pregnant. Going to be a mother. The reality hadn’t
set in properly yet. Sometimes she didn’t feel pregnant, but Rebecca knew that
it would only be a matter of time before she would. She wondered if Justin felt
like a father yet. If he did, he hid it very well. He didn’t read the
strategically placed magazines and parenting books she left lying around the
apartment. He also didn’t talk much—if at all—about the baby and their future
as a family. Tiny bubbles popped softly in her ears and she sighed. Nothing
relaxed her as much as a long, warm, bubble bath. Eventually the water cooled
down and Rebecca used her foot to pour some more hot water. She re-dipped the
cloth and twisted it again, placing it back onto her face. After she had
repeated the process twice more, she decided that it would be best to get out
and prepare dinner. Justin would be home soon. She drained the tub of its water
and rubbed her hair with a towel. Rebecca wiped her hand over the fogged up
mirror and eyed her fresh, rejuvenated reflection.

Definite
improvement,
she thought approvingly. She didn’t
notice the light fixture slowly turning above her head. She brushed her hair as
she hummed softly to herself. The colour had returned to her cheeks, and she
hoped that it wouldn’t only be temporary.

The fixture
above her head turned faster.

As she stepped
into the cool hallway, a loud crash sound behind her made her shriek and jump.
She turned around and stared at the shattered glass on the floor where she had
been standing only seconds ago. She looked up at the glowing, naked bulb and
shuddered at the thought of the fixture smashing on her head. She tried to
fight the shock as mixed feelings of anger, fear, and sadness all overwhelmed
her at once. She lost the battle and buried her tear-stained face in her hands
as she slowly slid down the wall.

*    -    -   
-    *

‘Please remember
to keep the study door closed,’ Justin said as he got into bed.

Why? Why must
we always keep that stupid door closed? It obviously doesn’t want to be closed
to begin with.
‘I thought it was closed,’ she said
casually instead.

‘I just walked
past it now. It was open.’

‘Well, maybe the
wind just blew it open or something.’

Justin nodded.
He hadn’t thought about that as a possibility yet. It could very well have been
the wind. Maybe the door wasn’t closed properly and a stray cat came in through
the window and pushed it open. ‘Was it the wind that blew off the light fixture
too?’ Justin asked and laughed out loud at his own joke.

‘That’s not
funny, Justin,’ Rebecca said. ‘I could have seriously gotten hurt.’

‘I know, my
love,’ he said. ‘It was just a joke, okay?’

Rebecca didn’t
say anything. She merely nodded. Justin took her in his arms and hugged her
tightly. He then read her a scene out loud from his mystery novel before they
turned out their individual bed lights.

Soon, they were
both asleep. Neither of them heard the study door down the hallway click off
its latch and slowly swing open.

Justin and Rebecca waited. The
doctor was running late with a patient, and so they found themselves waiting
for almost forty five minutes after they should have been called in. Justin
sighed and looked at his watch. It was an absent-minded move. He didn’t take in
the time, and had to look at the watch again before he registered the actual
time.

‘Could you pass
me the Wonderfully Woman?’ Rebecca asked and held out a magazine.

Justin shrugged
and took the one from her hand and placed it on one of two piles of magazines
on a small wooden table. He then leaned forward a bit more, picked up the
requested magazine and shoved it into her hand.

‘Thank you.’

Justin forced a
smile and shifted uncomfortably in the little wooden chair that had been his
prison for the past hour already. It creaked under his weight as if scolding
him for not sitting still. Justin scanned his eyes across the room to see how
many future mothers had been bothered by his shifting, but found none looking
at him. He sighed again. It was so quiet that he could hear the seconds on the
wall clock tick by.

Tick. Tick.
Tick.

The phone rang
and Justin jumped a little.

‘Doctor Taylor’s
office,’ the receptionist said. She listened for a while, and eventually Justin
thought that she had fallen asleep on the telephone. He wouldn’t blame her.
‘Yes, Mrs. Goemans, we have a cancellation on Wednesday at around ten. Would
that be okay for you?’ She nodded and scribbled something down on her notepad.
‘Wednesday, ten o’ clock it is, Mrs. Goemans. Right. See you then. Good bye.’
The receptionist put down the phone and without looking up, continued with what
she was doing before the phone rang.

Tick. Tick.
Tick.

Justin shifted
again. He looked at Rebecca who was deeply engaged in an article about babies
or something. For a split second he wondered what would have happened if that
lamp fixture had fallen and shattered on top of her head. The image of a blood
coated Rebecca made him shudder. He then wondered if she didn’t perhaps turn
out the fixture and broken it herself in a desperate attempt for some sort of
attention. Since he got the job at Cybernetics Computers he didn’t get to spend
as much quality time with her as he used to.

Maybe that’s
it,
he thought, but decided to rather spend his
thoughts constructively by reading something instead. The chair creaked as he
leaned forward to pick up a magazine.

He looked up.

Nobody noticed.
Nobody cared.

Good.

Relieved, he
scanned the options of magazines. They were mostly family or pregnancy
orientated. He selected a family magazine and picked it up. After three minutes
worth of ‘reading’, he caught himself absentmindedly flipping through the
pages. He wouldn’t know what was on the previous pages even if he looked at it
again. He breathed deeply and then decided to actually focus and read an
article.

‘Mrs. Greene?’

Everyone looked
up.

Justin and
Rebecca both put down the magazines and stood. ‘Follow me, please,’ the doctor
said and Rebecca and Justin followed her sheepishly as she led the way to her
office.

*    -    -   
-    *

‘And how are we
doing today?’ Doctor Taylor asked as they entered her office.

‘Fine, thanks,’
Justin answered for them both.

‘Please, have a
seat.’

The two of them
sat down behind her huge wooden desk.

‘Are you still
taking your vitamins?’ she asked.

Rebecca nodded.

‘That’s good.
And you haven’t experienced any problems like cramps, for instance?’

She shook her
head.

The doctor wrote
a few notes in a folder. ‘The last time you were here we did the ultrasound
scan and could see the Amniotic sac, right?’

‘Yes,’ Rebecca
confirmed.

‘Well, let’s
take a look and see if we can see the baby this time, shall we?’

Justin and
Rebecca followed the doctor’s lead and stood up. She directed Rebecca to
another room where she had to swap her clothes for a hospital patient gown.
When she was ready, the three of them went to the ultrasound room and Justin
simply
had
to look at the massive painting against the wall again. He
wondered if he would be able to paint like that if he ever picked up a brush
and just ran with it. He chuckled to himself when the probability factor
entered his mind:
less than zero
.

‘All right,’ the
doctor said. ‘Let’s see what we have here.’ Like before, she lubricated the
long electric toothbrush-looking gadget and then turned to face the screen. Justin
turned too, and after a few seconds, a black spot appeared on the screen.
‘There we have the Amniotic sac,’ the doctor said, almost in a tour guide-like
tone of voice. She twisted her hand and a few seconds later, Justin could see
what appeared to be a small finger shaped object inside the black spot area.

‘Is that...?’

‘That’s the
baby,’ the doctor said and Justin squeezed Rebecca’s hand. The doctor zoomed in
and clicked on two separate ends of the floating finger. The computer
immediately spat out and estimated age. ‘Seven weeks and two days,’ she said.
‘Now let’s find the heartbeat.’ For what felt like an eternity the doctor
twisted and turned. She zoomed into the image and zoomed out. She frowned. Then
she zoomed back in and twisted some more.

‘Is there...a
problem?’ Justin asked.

‘There is a
heartbeat,’ the doctor said as she twisted her hand again. ‘But it’s very
faint.’

Faint? What
on earth does that mean?
‘Uhm...faint?’

‘At this age the
heartbeat should be much stronger. Faster.’

Well check
again! What am I paying you for?
‘How much
stronger…?’

The doctor
pressed a button and the machine spat out a copy of the ultrasound screen. She
repeated the process twice more. ‘A lot,’ she said. Then she told Rebecca to
get dressed.

Justin’s mind
raced as he walked back to the doctor’s desk. He sat down and the two of them
waited in awkward silence until Rebecca returned.

‘It’s still too
early to know anything for sure,’ the doctor said once Rebecca joined them. ‘So
I want you to wait until the end of the weekend and come back on Monday morning
so that we can see what’s going on.’

‘Exactly what
is
going on, Doctor?’ Justin asked.

Doctor Taylor
looked at him like a mother would when trying to explain something to a child.
‘The heartbeat is not as strong as it should be,’ she said. ‘This isn’t
uncommon for some pregnancies at this stage.’ She sighed and placed her one
hand over the other. ‘You have to realize that one third of all pregnancies end
in miscarriage.’

Justin almost
choked.
Miscarriage? What are you talking about?
Justin didn’t speak his
mind. He just stared at her blankly.

‘But like I
said; it’s still a bit early to know for sure. Make the appointment for Monday,
and we’ll see if there has been an improvement over the weekend.’

‘What are the
chances for an...improvement?’ Justin asked.

Rebecca
swallowed hard. Her hands were shaking under the desk.

‘Sometimes there
is an improvement,’ the doctor said. ‘But I have to be honest and direct with
you and tell you that most often the pregnancy is terminated.’

Terminated?
Justin placed his hand reassuringly over Rebecca’s. He wasn’t sure
how much reassuring he was doing though.

The doctor made
some notes in the file and tore off one of the pictures and handed it to them.
‘I will see you on Monday then.’

Both nodded.
Both felt light-headed. They left the office and made an appointment with the
receptionist. Then they walked back to the car in stunned silence. ‘It’ll be
fine,’ Justin finally said as he opened the door for Rebecca. He took her in
his arms and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. ‘Everything’s
going to be okay. You’ll see.’

She merely
nodded.

‘We’re going to
get here on Monday and everything will be fine, okay?’ His words sounded
hollow, but he didn’t care. He would say anything—even tell a white lie—if it
made her feel better. In his gut he felt strangely conflicted. He was relieved,
yet also somewhat sad at the prospect of potentially losing the baby. It felt
as if the enormous responsibility of being a father was lifted from his shoulders
and he felt slightly less suffocated by the thought.

Without saying a
word, she got into the car. The drive home was silent and awkward. Both of them
were tangled in thought and inner conflict. Both were in denial. Justin
realized that this was going to be the longest weekend of his life.

*    -    -   
-    *

Simon felt an
urgent need to pray. He excused himself from the workshop and made his way to
the little garden next to the canteen. He didn’t know why, but he felt
extremely sad. By the time he reached the tree under which he usually sat
during lunch time, tears were blurring his vision. He blinked hard and sat down
underneath the tree.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he
said, but couldn’t finish what he wanted to say. He choked up and cried; his
body shaking as the tears just came out. ‘Help them, Lord,’ he prayed softly
through the tears. ‘Please help them.’ He didn’t know why he cried or who he
was praying for, but he felt a lot better a few minutes later. Simon then stood
up and walked to a nearby tap which he opened and splashed some of the cool
water over his face before heading back. ‘Please help them, Lord,’ he whispered
as he entered the workshop.

*    -    -   
-    *

‘Why us?’
Rebecca asked, barely audible through her sobs. ‘What have we done to deserve
something like this?’

‘We didn’t do
anything,’ Justin said as reassuringly as he could manage. His mind was racing
and he wasn’t sure whom he was trying to convince; Rebecca or himself. ‘The
doctor wasn’t sure of anything, Becky, and neither are we.’ He had to swallow
hard at the lump in his throat before he could continue. ‘Everything will turn
out fine, baby.’

Rebecca nodded,
but she wasn’t convinced. Something in her gut told her that everything was
not
going to be fine. The realization was more a sort of instinct than anything
based on solid evidence or facts. She just somehow knew, and therefore, all she
could do was nod.

Although Rebecca
nodded in agreement to what he said, Justin could see the doubt in her eyes.
‘If we get there and there’s no heartbeat,’ he said and paused. He waited until
Rebecca made eye contact before continuing. ‘If we get there and there’s no
heartbeat, we will just have to try again.’ He knew that there was a huge
chance that there would be no heartbeat, and thus wanted to prepare her for the
worst. ‘We will not be less of a family,’ he said. ‘I will not love you less,
and I hope that you will feel the same way.’

‘Try again...’
Rebecca repeated softly. The words left a bitter taste in her mouth.

‘That’s right,’
Justin said and forced a smile. He lightly placed his hand on her knee. ‘These
things happen, Becky,’ he said. ‘We didn’t do anything to deserve it. It just
happens. That’s life.’

Rebecca realized
that there was truth to what he was saying, but truth is not what she wanted to
hear. She wanted to hear that everything was going to be fine. She wanted to
know that the baby would be okay and that when Doctor Taylor did a scan on
Monday, she would find a strong heartbeat. But something deep inside her told
her that it wasn’t going to happen.

‘We just try
again,’ Justin said softly, trying to muster as much compassion as possible.
‘Everything’s going to turn out fine...’

*    -    -   
-    *

‘I’m so sorry,’
the doctor said on Monday morning. ‘But I can’t pick up anything.’

Justin and
Rebecca just stared at the ultrasound monitor, unsure of what exactly the
doctor meant, but both too afraid to ask.

‘There’s no
heartbeat,’ the doctor clarified. ‘On Friday it was weak, but now it’s
completely gone.’ The doctor allowed Rebecca to get dressed as she guided a
shaken Justin back to her desk. ‘I’m sending you two over to Radiology for a
second opinion,’ she said, ‘although I’m sure that they’re probably going to
find the same thing.’ She saw the frown on Justin’s face. ‘They have much more
advanced technology,’ she added, trying to sound reassuring, but at the same
time not trying to get their hopes up too much. ‘If there’s anything, anything
at all; they will pick it up.’