Beginnings - Awake, Sweet Baby

“You awake, Johnny?” Darci Sharp whispered into the darkness. “Johnny, I think I heard noises downstairs. Go check honey. Hey….. Johnny, please wake up!”


She wiggled an arm from under the cocoon of covers and felt around behind her, across the expanse of the king sized bed, for her husband. She felt rumpled sheets and a discarded pillow but no husband. She sat up with a start. Darci was suddenly fully awake.

“Johnny, where are you? She turned, threw the covers off and thrust both hands into the darkness, running them palms down in exaggerated circles across the far side of the bed, as if she were trying to smooth out a stubborn wrinkle in the sheets. Nothing!

“Johnny….. Johnny….”

Her whisper now was strained, cracked and beginning to rise. Fear increasing in the new mother as her imagination began conjuring up horrific images like staggered home movies through her mind. The noises… no husband… the baby! The thought struck her like a bolt of lightning, terror seized at her chest. She could not breath, her voice was gone.

She scrambled out of bed, groping for her robe which lay draped across the chair. Stepping on the hem of the robe as she swung it over her shoulders, she stumbled and fell. Her hands, caught in the folds of the robe, robbed her of any buffer from the fall. Her forehead squarely caught a smooth section of end post with a sharp smack. She crumbled and slid to the floor in a gasp of pain and a dull thud.

Struggling to her feet, she staggered, pushing through the open doorway. The blow to the forehead had dazed her. She fought to comprehend. She shook her head and a wave of nausea swept through her with force. She stopped in the hall and placed a hand against one wall to steady herself. Her head was throbbing and she could feel the sticky wetness of blood running down the side of her face.

Her hand was near the light switch so she instinctively flipped it on. As if electrocuted by bare wires, she retracted from the sudden brightness and the acute pain shooting through her brain to the base of her skull. The severe contrast caused her to make a pained squint. She continued down the hall in a drunken stagger. Suddenly her eyes focused and she gasped as air was forced from her lungs. The panic rose like a fever, shaking her faculties as she felt the loss of control creep in around her eyes.

The door to the baby’s nursery had been flung open. Two bright crimson trailing streaks of blood were smeared, at shoulder height, across the opposite door jam. Dark maroon drops trailed along the plush creamed carpet from the open doorway of the baby’s room, down the hall away from her.

She felt her legs go weak as if her strength had suddenly slipped out through her bare feet into the floor. She reached for the doorway and fell through as if it were a black hole swallowing up the light. She rushed for the crib, seized the rails with pale white knuckles. Peering in, the life blood sank from her face as her worse fears and nightmares were suddenly realized. Her baby was gone!

She turned, the walls spinning, nausea again rising in her throat. She held a trembling hand up to cover her mouth and staggered from the room. Frantic now, shaking uncontrollably, she tried to make sense of what was happening, what she should do. Where was her baby? Her body shuttered as she started to sob, her shoulders shaking uncontrolled. She gained a momentary flicker of resolve and turned again for her bedroom.

She rushed to Johnny’s bedside table. Where is Johnny? It was in her head. The question seemed to appear for a moment. There was something. She could not grasp the significance. She reached to make sense of it, to remember. The question was illusive and sunk beneath the waves of paranoia before she could retrieve it for examination.

The bottom drawer was flung open, pulled out of its tracks, contents scattering across the floor. The gun was there, black and cold, like death itself. Johnny had wanted her to learn to use it. He had asked her, pleaded with her to learn to shoot. It was for their protection, he chided. Well, what had it done to protect her baby….her baby? She snatched it from the floor, grasping it with both hands, as one would hold a steaming casserole dish, taken from the oven, up and away from her body.

Back in the hall, she descended the stairs towards the kitchen. Her nerves were at a fevered pitch, taunt and brittle. She was sobbing again, the tears blurring her vision. Where was the animal that had her baby? Was he still in the house? She would stop him. Where was Johnny? He should be here protecting the family. Where would he have gone? The thoughts were cluttered as if the drawers of her mind had been overturned, leaving the contents in a pile.

A thump! She swung her arms around wildly, pointing the gun out in front of her, like a stick, to block the evil from reaching her. Nothing but dark shadows were furniture once resided. The living room was empty. Her breathing was becoming shorter, more stunted, gasps, hyperventilating. The fear was creeping over her, numbing her limbs. The gun felt heavy in her hands. The evil could still be here. Who was she kidding? She could not do this. Where was Johnny? Where was her baby? Where was she?

She paused at the door to the kitchen, her emotions boiling over on themselves. She could no longer breathe. She leaned against the door, left slightly ajar, sobbing and fell through into the kitchen. As she staggered to catch her momentum, the world slowed. From the corner of her eye, she saw her baby lying on the kitchen table, a small blood soaked stain in the blanket wrapping her body. She was still falling, slowly, outside of herself. Over the baby’s body, leered the hulking evil, blood stains down his chest, a hand up, covering his mouth and nose.

A shriek of terror and rage escaped her lips as her hip slammed against the trash can, sending it sprawling. She was on her knees, looking down, fumbling with the gun that Johnny had kept for just these situations. The world was spinning slowly, the nausea was returning. With satisfaction, she grasped the rough handle and palmed the gun between her two fists. Her eyes rose from the floor in chorus with the muzzle. She started pulling the trigger, violently, even before her eyes were on the evil before her.

The gun bucked in her untrained hands, flame spouting forward, flinging bullets, shattering glass and splintering the faces of cabinets. Her eyes continued to climb above the noise in her outstretched hands. The evil creature had turned, arms raised in surprise. Her mind registered a shrill sound coming from the monster just before his body was turned and folded by the impact of the onslaught of bullets. As the evil was falling away towards the fridge and sink, hands flung to the sky, his shrill tone in her head transformed into intelligible words, words that she understood……”No…..Darci…..No!”

Silence hung heavily in her ears, like smoke swirling around her. It was sliced only by the sharp, shrill cries from the baby. Darci was transfixed upon the scene of chaos before her. She could not fully understand or make sense of things, like a puzzle with only some of the pieces. The walls were spinning and her head throbbed.

On the floor, like a rag thrown against the fridge, Johnny lay crumpled and dead, a blood pool forming an outline around his inert body. The blood across his chest was older, from a bloody nose while checking on a fussing baby. Clutched in one limp hand was a blood soaked paper towel.

Awake sweet baby!