Read Hear the Children Calling Online
Authors: Clare McNally
Hear the Children Calling
HEAR THE
CHILDREN CALLING
Clare McNally
Copyright © 1990 by Clare McNally. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc.; the agency can be reached at
[email protected]
.
Contents
Prologue
August
21, 1969
W
HENEVER PARENTS DESCRIBE THE PERFECT BABY
, the item that always tops the list is sleeping through the night. After a day of meeting the demands of even the most complacent infant, Mommy and Daddy want nothing more than a solid eight hours’ sleep. Babies who sleep through the night at a few weeks old are rare. Babies who sleep through the night from day one are almost impossible.
But Lincoln and Georgina Adams had such a child. Lincoln Jr. never uttered a sound, not even at the moment of birth. Georgina, looking down over her suddenly flattened tummy at the glistening body of her firstborn son, did enough screaming for both of them.
From the neck down, he was perfect. But there would be no bothering to count ten little toes and fingers on this child. For the face on the slightly misshapen head was almost nonexistent. There was no nose, two piglike black eyes, and only the tiniest slit of a mouth.
Georgina screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
September
2, 1969
“I want you to kill him.”
Georgina’s voice was like that of an automaton. She sat up in bed with pillows propped behind her, a tray of untouched breakfast straddling her legs. She’d been here for the last week, ever since her husband put her to bed at the first signs of labor.
Lincoln poured her coffee, sighing deeply. “You know I won’t do that,” he said. “He’s our son.”
Georgina’s eyes were clear as she looked up. She’d finished crying days ago.
“Look at it, Lincoln,” she said. “What the hell kind of life is it going to have?”
“With therapy—”
“Therapy can’t rebuild its face, for Christ’s sake,” Georgina snapped.
“You don’t know that, Georgina,” Lincoln said. “Plastic surgery can be miraculous.”
Georgina regarded her cup of coffee for a few moments before picking it up and taking a long sip. “The trouble with you doctors,” she said, “is that you think you’re God. Nobody can reconstruct a face like that. It’s cruel to let it live.”
Lincoln slammed his fist against the headboard behind her, making her dishes rattle. Her eyes went wide.
“Stop calling him ‘it,’” he roared. “His name is Lincoln Junior! Why don’t you try being a mother to him? He’s a baby. He has needs.”
“He never cries,” Georgina said, going back to the same faraway voice she’d used moments earlier. “He never makes a sound.”
“Then you feed him on a schedule,” Lincoln said. “That special bottle I brought, the one for kittens, is the perfect size for him. He may be ugly, Georgina, but he needs love. I can tell that when I hold him, the way he relaxes in my arms, so content. He’s just a baby!”
“He’s a
freak!”
Georgina’s scream was accentuated by the sound of her tray crashing to the floor. She threw aside her covers and pulled herself up from the bed.
“Georgina, no,” Lincoln cried. “It’s too soon. You shouldn’t get up—”
“Leave me the hell alone,” Georgina seethed, limping on water-bloated legs to the door of the bedroom. She didn’t even glance at the bassinet when she passed it. Instead, she stumbled down the hall to the dining room, where she pulled open the liquor cabinet.
She’d get drunk. She’d get drunk and she’d forget and she’d pretend it was all a nightmare.
Lincoln grabbed the whiskey bottle before she could pour a second drink.
“This is no way to handle our problem, Georgina,” he said sternly.
She glared at him. “Oh, you cold-hearted son of a bitch. Who are you to tell me how to handle our problem? I carried that child for nine months. I prayed to God through six years of marriage to get pregnant. I was so happy when the doctor told me the news. And then this . . .” She leaned her head forward, empty tumbler in her hands, and began to cry.
Lincoln sat down and took her in his arms. He knew better than to say another word. He knew how much she hurt, because his pain was just as deep. But wasn’t a mother’s love supposed to transcend all boundaries? Why didn’t she love Lincoln Jr.?
He realized suddenly that she had stopped crying. Her breathing was slow and even. Somehow, she had fallen asleep. Gently, Lincoln picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom. He thought about her pregnancy and how it had come about. The medicine she’d taken . . .
No, that was impossible. Anything that had gone in her mouth had been thoroughly tested. He knew that for a fact, because he worked as a research biologist for Georgina’s father. Neither man would ever hurt that woman.
As he tucked her covers around her, he thought for a moment of laying the baby down next to her. Maybe physical contact would bring out her maternal instincts. But he thought better of it and turned to check on little Lincoln.
The baby lay on his side, just as Lincoln had propped him, a rolled-up towel set behind his back to keep him from rolling. His breathing was raspy but steady. Lincoln covered the small body with a little blue blanket. Georgina had crocheted it in anticipation of a perfect child. What she got was a monstrosity that
they kept well hidden from the world. Nobody, not even Georgina’s father, knew the child had been born. Lincoln had to take his time making the announcement, preparing just the right words. He wasn’t even sure if it would be a birth, or a death, announcement.
He left the room.
Georgina fell deeper and deeper into sleep, and finally began to dream.
The baby was crying. No, no, that can’t be. It doesn’t make any noise at all. It doesn’t have a mouth.
But it was crying. And Georgina suddenly had the irresistible urge to get up and go to him. It was almost as if the baby was pulling her toward him with an invisible magnet, pulling her out of the bed, across the floor.
She didn’t want to look in the crib. Oh, God, she hadn’t looked at the baby since the moments after its birth. She couldn’t take it.
Please, no!
The baby commanded her to look at him. Not with words or cries, but with such incredibly strong emotions that Georgina felt a burning pain throughout her body. She could not resist. She looked in the crib . . .
And saw a perfect, blue-eyed baby boy.
No, Lincoln Jr. is a freak!
He smiled at her, a smile like sunshine. She smiled back, reaching down to lift him gently into her arms. It was all a nightmare, a mistake! Lincoln Jr. was perfect, perfect, perfect . . .
Lincoln, come and see our baby boy. Lincoln, you have to come see him! Lincoln . . .
“Lincoln!”
When Georgina cried out in her sleep, the sound awakened her. She was sweating on one side of her body. No, not sweating. Her milk had let down. Milk that should have dried up already. She felt an odd tugging at her breast. A cold chill washed over her as she slowly pulled back her covers.
The baby was there, latched to her, sucking away contentedly.
She knocked him aside with one swift are of her arm, sending him to the floor. Her screams brought Lincoln running.
“Georgina, what . . . Oh, God! What have you done?” He hurried to the baby and picked him up. Georgina watched with wide-eyed horror as he kissed the child over and over again. “Thank God you’re okay,” he said to the baby. “Thank God we have a thick carpet in here.”
He began to pace the floor as a father might do with a crying baby. Except that Lincoln Jr. wasn’t crying.
“Why did you do that?” Georgina demanded.
“Do what?”
“Put it in bed with me,” Georgina cried. “I told you, I don’t want it near me. How can you be so insensitive?”
“Georgina, I didn’t put the baby in bed with you,” Lincoln said.
“Well, he sure as hell didn’t get here by himself.”
“But I didn’t move him,” Lincoln said, a look of worry passing over his face. “I swear it!”
Georgina was pensive for a while. The dream came back to her, only now that she thought of it, it was more vivid and real than any dream she had ever had.
“He made me do it,” she said softly.
“What?”
“He made me pick him up,” she said. “He used his mind and he tricked me into thinking he was beautiful.”
“Georgina, you’re crazy.”
“I want him out of this bedroom, Lincoln,” Georgina said. “Either he goes, or I do.”
“I don’t think—”
“I want him out of here!”
Lincoln breathed in a deep sigh. “Very well.” He lay the baby down in the bed. Lincoln Jr. stared at nothingness with pig eyes. Not for the first time Lincoln wondered if he was blind.
He wheeled the bassinet out into the hall and down to the guest bedroom.
“Sorry, little guy,” he said. “Life’s giving you the short end of the stick, isn’t it? But I’ll make it up to you. I’ll research day and night until I find a way to help you.”
She hates me.
The voice was so loud and clear that Lincoln swung around to see if someone was standing behind him. The doorway was empty.
He was tired, that’s all. Hearing things.
My mother hates me. Why does she hate me? Why? Why?
No, this was impossible. He could hear a child’s voice in his mind. But how? He turned back to the baby’s crib.
I want her to kill herself. Kill herself before she kills me.
“This isn’t happening,” Lincoln said. “You can’t be using telepathy on me. You’re too young, and you don’t even know words. I’m imagining things! I’m going as crazy as Georgina.”
“Lincoln, will you come here?”
Not understanding why he was grateful to get away from the baby, Lincoln hurried down the hall to his wife.
She was sitting up in bed, her hands tucked under her covers.
“My mother hates me,” she said, her voice a strange parody of the childlike one Lincoln had heard in his mind. “I want her to kill herself. Kill herself before she kills me.”
“Georgina, how did you know?”
He saw the pistol, too late. A single shot aimed at her neck took Georgina’s life.
Down the hall in his bassinet, Lincoln Jr. shed his first and only tear.
1
Summer, 1988
A
CHILD WAS CRYING, BUT NOT ONE OF THE ADULTS
who stood around him could hear. The sound didn’t come from his mouth; his lips were pressed together in angry protest. It came from deep within his mind, a scream sounded for the thousandth time in hope that someone would listen. But no one did.
“You’re doing fine, Tommy,” a young man said as he taped wires to the boy’s forehead.
“Just a little blood sample, Tommy,” said a woman in white.
A pinch. The boy winced, but didn’t say a thing. He knew there was no use in it. No one would hear.
“Now, you know what to do, son,” his father said from somewhere behind the big green chair where the boy sat, wired to machines he didn’t understand. “It’s just like all the other times. Bring the toy tiger to life, Tommy.”
Tommy wanted to shake his head, to cry out “No!” But when he moved, the electrodes pulled hard at his skin. And he knew any protests would go unheeded now and he would be punished later.