Storm child

You must have heard the story of your birth a thousand times by now, sweetheart. Your mother and I—home alone. The others were out watching Ana's dance recital, but your mom had been feeling tired, so she stayed back, and I stayed with her. She was just seven months along, but she went into labour. The storm struck, and the rest of the family were forced to stay at the school. Your father ignored the weather warnings and drove home anyway, to find he now had a beautiful little girl to love. Your parents' joy was immense.

What we never told you was that you were stillborn.

Your mother went into labour, and it was the fastest delivery I've ever seen in my life. She bled like a river, and I thought I might lose my own daughter.

I lifted you from her and quickly wrapped you in towels and placed you on the bed. I was panicking, and your mom was bleeding and she had fainted. The storm was raging, and I was watching my own baby girl die in front of me.

And then I realised you hadn't cried.

You were lying there, in those towels, ashen-faced and as silent as the grave. This tiny, beautiful little angel. And beside you was your mother, bleeding her life away.

I held you in one arm and her in the other, and I stared out of the window into that hurricane, and I begged for your lives. You know I was never very religious, but I guess there comes a point in every person's life where you give up trying to be strong and just want some higher power to help you. I cried like a madwoman and I begged for the lives of my daughter and granddaughter, whatever the cost.

I do not know how long I stayed that way. I do not remember what I offered for your lives. It did not matter. As long as my family was safe and happy, nothing else mattered.

"My life for theirs. My soul for theirs. Whatever it costs, I'll pay it a thousand times over. Just give them back to me. Let them live. Let them be healthy and happy and whole." I said it like a mantra, again and again until my voice gave out.

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Homeward

Then you stirred. Your tiny forehead wrinkled, and you cried. That first, piercing cry that announces the arrival of a new soul in this world. And then your mother shivered at that sound, and she opened her eyes.

"The baby?"

My joy was a thing so vast it drained me. I carefully, wearily, placed you on her chest. She held you, and she began to cry. Your father burst into the room and started laughing and crying at the same time. I left the three of you there, but just before I closed the door, I met your gaze. It was not the gaze of a newborn infant at all. It was the look of a soul a thousand years older than me.

I went to my own room and slept. Never before had I felt so tired, and never since. When I woke up, the storm had cleared and everyone was home. We took you and your mother to the hospital because you were premature, and I was still worried about the blood your mom had lost. You were both released from the hospital a few weeks later, safe and healthy.

Yet every time I looked at you, I knew. I knew I'd done something terrible. I knew I'd called on something I did not even understand in my desperation to protect you and your mother. And I knew, if I were to keep you safe, everyone had to be aware. I sat them around the dining table and told everyone clearly what had happened. We swore to keep this secret. We locked the door of the room you were born in, and we agreed never to let you in there. When your little brother was born a year later (normally, thank goodness, in a bright hospital full of doctors and nurses), we waited until he was old enough to understand, and then we told him about you.

And we kept a very careful eye on you as you grew.

You could feel things. Strange things. Your Grandda's friend was a madman who attacked and murdered a little boy, wrapped the body in curtains and threw him into a landfill. You sensed the evil in him and told us.

Your Uncle Sam began associating with a rough crowd, and he was slowly being drawn into their world. You heard their voices, and you asked about them. He stopped hanging out with them shortly afterwards. They were human traffickers.

The house next door caught fire a few days after you told Cam you'd seen smoke coming from under the door of the locked room.

Two bullies attacked a little boy in your school six months after you ran to your teacher, saying someone was hurt in the stairs. We convinced the principal to install a security camera there. Your teacher got to the child just before he fell down the steps.

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Terrible tea, terrible life choices

A woman broke into the zoo when you were a child and attacked a lot of the animals there. You knew that, somehow, and you told your father to look for the tiger's tail. The police found the woman's tooth, and she confessed.

Your sister overheard you talking in your sleep one night, that your father and one of your uncles were going to have a terrible argument. A fight that would tear the family apart. Your parents moved out just days later.

And then, last week, sweetheart, you left a message on my phone. Here…

Gramma held out her phone, and I took it from her.

I was shaking. My thoughts were a mass of chaos, chasing each other, screaming wordlessly. My mouth was painfully dry, and I couldn't swallow past the lump in my throat. My heart was a drum in my ears. Very dimly, I could hear a high-pitched keening, like someone screaming. Maybe it was my mind, rebelling at what I'd just heard. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was everything. Because the keening burst from my throat in a roar of horror and disbelief when I looked at my Gramma's phone.

It was a selfie of me holding up one of my sketches. I remembered sending her that picture, very proud of the mountain scene I'd worked for days over. But it was not a peaceful river valley I'd drawn at all. It was Gramma's living room, done up in Christmas decorations with the tree in the background, and fairy-lights everywhere. In the foreground was my family. My parents, sister, brothers, uncles, aunts and Gramma–on the floor. Their throats slashed open. Their eyes staring sightlessly forward. And there stood I, in the middle of those bodies, smiling serenely, blood on the knife in my hand, blood dripping down to my white dress from my mouth.

I broke the phone.

This is part two of "Storm Child", to be serialised here on Star Literature.

Sarazeen Saif Ahana is an adjunct member of the faculty at Independent University, Bangladesh where she teaches English and has a small cult of friends similarly obsessed with genre fiction.