“Olympia,” Malorie says. “You’ve got to cover the baby’s eyes. You’ve got to reach down. For your baby.”

Malorie can’t see her friend’s expression. But her voice reveals the change within her.

“What? You’re going to tell me how to raise my child? What kind of a bitch are you? What kind of a—”

Olympia’s words morph into a guttural growl.

Insanity fuss.

Gary’s diseased, dangerous words.

Olympia is baying.

Malorie’s baby is crowning. She pushes.

With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, Malorie inches forward on the towel. She wants Olympia’s child. She will protect it.

Then, amid all this pain and madness, Malorie hears Olympia’s baby’s very first cry.

Close its eyes.

Then at last Malorie’s child comes through and her hand is there to cup its eyes. Its head is so soft and she believes she’s gotten to him in time.

“Come here,” she says, bringing the baby to her chest. “Come here and close your eyes.”

Gary laughs anxiously from across the room.

“Incredible,” he says.

Malorie feels for the steak knife. She finds it and cuts her own cord. Then she cuts two strips from the bloody towel beneath her. She feels his sex and knows it’s a boy and has no one to tell this to. No sister. No mother. No father. No nurse. No Tom. She holds him tight to her chest.

Slowly, she ties a piece of the towel around his eyes.

How important is it that he sees his mother’s face when he enters the world?

She hears the creature shift behind her.

“Baby,” Olympia says, but her voice is cracked. She sounds like she’s using the voice of an older woman. “My baby,” she crows.

Malorie slides forward. The muscles in her body resist. She reaches for Olympia’s child.

“Here,” she says blindly. “Here, Olympia. Let me have it. Let me see it.”

Olympia grunts.

“Why should I let you? What do you want my child for? Are you mad?”

“No. I just want to see it.”

Malorie’s eyes are still closed. The attic is quiet. The rain lands softly on the roof. Malorie slides forward, still on the blood beneath her body.

“Can I? Can I just see her? It is a girl, right? Weren’t you right about that?”

Malorie hears something so astonishing that she is halted midway across the floor.

Olympia is gnawing at something. She knows it’s the child’s cord.

Her stomach turns. She keeps her eyes closed tight. She’s going to throw up.

“Can I see her?” Malorie manages to ask.

“Here. Here!” Olympia says. “Look at her. Look at her!”

At last, Malorie’s hands are on Olympia’s baby. It’s a girl.

Olympia stands up. It sounds like she steps in a rain puddle. It’s blood, Malorie knows. Afterbirth, sweat, and blood.

“Thank you,” Malorie whispers. “Thank you, Olympia.”

This action, this handing off of her child, will always shine to Malorie. The moment Olympia did right by her child despite having lost her mind.

Malorie ties the second piece of towel around the baby’s eyes.

Olympia shuffles toward the draped window. To where Gary stands.

The thing waits behind Malorie and is still.

Malorie grips both babies, shielding their eyes even more with her bloody, wet fingers. Both babies cry.

And suddenly Olympia is struggling with something, sliding something.

Like she’s climbing now.

“Olympia?”

It sounds like Olympia is setting something up.

“Olympia? What are you doing, Olympia? Gary, stop her. Please, Gary.”

Her words are useless. Gary is the maddest of all.

“I’m going outside, sir,” Olympia says to Gary, who must be near. “I’ve been inside a long time.”

“Olympia, stop.”

“I’m going to step OUTSIDE,” she says, her voice at once like a child and a centenarian on her deathbed.

“Olympia!”

It’s too late. Malorie hears the glass of the attic window shatter. Something bangs against the house.

Silence. From downstairs. From the attic. Then Gary speaks.

“She hangs! She hangs by her cord!”

Don’t. Please, God, don’t let this man describe it to me.

“She hangs by her cord! The most incredible thing I’ve ever seen! She hangs by her cord!”

There is laughter, joy in his voice.

The thing moves behind her. Malorie is at the epicenter of all this madness. Old madness. The kind people used to get from war, divorce, poverty, and things like knowing that your friend is—

“Hanging by her cord! By her cord!”

“Shut up!” Malorie screams blindly. “Shut up!”

But her words are choked, as she feels the thing behind her is leaning in. A part of it (its face?) moves near her lips.

Malorie only breathes. She does not move. The attic is silent.

She can feel the warmth, the heat, of the thing beside her.

Shannon, she thinks, look at the clouds. They look like us. You and I.

She tightens her grip over the babies’ eyes.

She hears the thing behind her retract. It sounds as if it’s moving away from her. Farther.

It pauses. Stops.

When she hears the wooden stairs creaking, and when she’s sure it is the sound of someone descending, she releases a sob deeper than any she’s ever known.

The steps grow quiet. Quieter. Then, they are gone.

“It’s left us,” she tells the babies.

Now she hears Gary move.

“Don’t come near us!” she screams with her eyes closed. “Don’t you touch us!”

He doesn’t touch her. He passes by, and the stairs creak again.

He’s gone downstairs. He’s going to see who made it. Who didn’t.

She heaves, aches from exhaustion. From blood loss. Her body tells her to sleep, sleep. They are alone in the attic, Malorie and the babies. She begins to lie back. She needs to. Instead, she waits. She listens. She rests.

How much time is passing? How long have I held these babies?

But a new sound fractures her reprieve. It’s coming from downstairs. It’s a noise that was made often in the old world.

Olympia hangs (so he said so he said) from the attic window.

Her body thumps against the house in the wind.

And now something rings from below.

It’s the telephone. The telephone is ringing.

Malorie is almost mesmerized by the sound. How long has it been since she’s heard something like it?

Someone is calling them.

Someone is calling back.

Malorie turns herself, sliding in the afterbirth. She places the girl in her lap, then gently covers her with her shirt. Using her empty hand, she feels for the head of the ladder stairs. They are steep. They are old. No woman who just gave birth should have to negotiate them at all.

But the phone is ringing. Someone is calling back. And Malorie is going to answer it.

Riiiiiiiiiiing

Despite their towel blindfolds, she tells the babies to keep their eyes closed.

This command will be the most common thing she says to them over the next four years. And nothing will stop her from saying it, whether or not they’re too young to understand her.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiing

She slides her ass to the edge of the floor and swings her legs over to rest her feet on the first step. Her body screams at her to stop.

But she continues down.

Down the stairs now. She cradles the boy in her right arm, her palm wrapped around his face. The girl is up inside her shirt. Malorie’s eyes are closed and the world is black and she needs sleep so bad she might as well fall from the stairs and into it. Only she walks, she steps, and she uses the phone as her guide.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Her feet touch the light blue carpeting of the second floor’s white hall. Eyes closed, she does not see these colors, just like she does not see Jules lying facedown along the right wall, five bloody streaks trailing from the height of her head to where his hand lies pressed against the floor.