71 - The Dunwich Doula

Anya seemed to think, as she retrieved her next candle. They were all burnt down to only a third or less now.

"We've told many stories about sex and pregnancy. We haven't had any stories yet about what it's like to actually give birth to something...unnatural. Who is there to oversee a supernatural pregnancy, both before and through the birth? This tale, then, is called

THE DUNWICH DOULA

It was the early summer of 1912 when Reiko stopped to consult the compass. A compass that did not point north, but was tuned to some other ****. She had traveled far from Dagon's Hollow, first on the railroads, then by bus. From Arkham she traveled by foot, along highways, and then dirt roads. To the small town of Dunwich, Massachusetts. To a farmhouse, on the outskirts. Ugly cattle looked up at her as she passed, but she paid them no heed.

She went up to the front door and knocked.

Reiko waited on the porch for a long time. Then, with a creek, the door opened.

Once, the man might have been tall, strong, and even handsome in his way. Now his lanky beard was grey, the top of his head bald. There were lines of long nights of study and worry etched in his face, and something darker in his eyes. Madness, perhaps. Or simply a knowledge and ambition that ate at him. Behind him, the young woman stood. Paler than pale, kinky hair white, eyes pink. Her hands instinctively covered the slight swell of her stomach.

"Who are yew?" he asked, and the old man seemed genuinely puzzled, not merely rude.

Reiko bowed.

"I am here to care for the mother," she said.

Doubt. Distrust. Yet also worry. Perhaps whatever was left of love and compassion for his own flesh and blood. Or that aching ambition that ate his soul.

"Lavinny," he said. "It's fer yew."

Not every unnatural child comes in the same way, at the same time. Reiko had studied the books and scrolls, yet she knew each was different. At first, she helped Lavinia with her daily chores. Slowly, as the children within her grew, Reiko did other things for her. Guided her through exercises. Walked with her in the fields and hills and woods. Brewed teas that helped when the sickness came, sometimes black, sometimes glowing bright colors that ate at the dry wood like acid.

The body can change a great deal during any pregnancy. Odd cravings can come upon the mother-to-be. There was a time when Reiko found Lavinia in the field, in the midst a cow. The cow had been pregnant, the calf a three-eyed thing. Her strong teeth tore the flesh from the stillborn animal. Reiko let her finish. She guided Lavinia, who hugged her stomach, so massive on her scanty frame, to the bath. The albino woman did not flinch as Reiko peeled the gore-stained shift from her body. Her sullen eyes that had looked on Yog-Sothoth with wonder stared listlessly at the cloudy water as the small Japanese woman rubbed soap onto her swollen white breasts, the great curve of her stomach, the parts of her back that she could not reach.

Reiko knew too, that there were other hungers. Her hand slipped between Lavinia's thighs. At first, the pale pregnant woman had flinched. Then slowly, as Reiko's fingers explored that warm, tight slit, she began to relax. To shiver with an echo of a sensation she had not felt since that night about Sentinel Hill, though Reiko's hand was a poor imitation of that transcendental moment.

During the winter, Lavinia could not walk outdoors. It fell to Reiko to feed the cattle, chop firewood, cook, and clean. At night, as old man Whateley read in his crumbling, forbidden books, he heard the creak of ancient bedsprings as Reiko comforted Lavinia. Warmed her with her body. Rubbed subtle scented oils into the distended skin. The twins moved strangely, hands and hooves and other things pressing against their fragile prison.

Their first kiss came on the winter solstice. Strange and tentative it was for the both of them. Then again, with more confidence. More passion. They shared the bed together, their two bodies warm and sweaty beneath the heavy blankets, and sometimes strange thoughts intruded on their dreams. Alien vistas. Fragments of knowledge. Impressions of being trapped inside a warm wet red cave.

Lavinia had difficulty sleeping, those last few months. She hardly left the bed. Reiko felt her own stamina taxed to the breaking point as Lavinia's demands in and out of bed became more fervent, more insistent. The doula's wet tongue against her pale slit, white and hairy, was sometimes all that could calm Lavinia down for a few hours of fitful sleep, the massively pregnant woman murmuring in tongues she did not know as all the forces from outside concentrated within and upon her.

The birth was an ordeal that might have strained any woman. The waters had burst onto the floor in a spray of colors that Reiko could not name, leaving a rainbow oilsick from the bed to the barn, where the old man had drawn a circle. He hummed and incanted, burned incense, prayed and exhorted. Reiko walked with her, in a circle. Trying to coax the children out. Twins were always difficult. She had prepared boiling water and clean clothes, sewing needle and thread, knife and hacksaw. Reiko hoped the last would not be necessary, but the children must needs be born.

Then they were. After grueling hours, as Lavinia held a rope tied to a rafter beam, her body in a squat, Reiko saw the first head crown. It was too large. That cunt she had pleasured so often, that she had stretched out with hand and fist, nearly split. Yet Reiko was there, murmuring words of encouragement, praising and waiting as the first child of a being greater than gods passed from her body and into this world.

The other came too fast. It hit the ground with a splat.

Which, very fortunately, did not seem to hurt it. More of its father in its anatomy.

Reiko helped carry the children, and Lavinia, back to the house. She changed the sheets and let the exhausted new mother rest. Two babes at her breast, their strange suckers locked on her teats.

Before Walpurgisnacht, Reiko's compass began to spin. She kissed Lavinny softly, on the lips. She caressed her cheek. They would always have that memory of their time together. Yet now, destiny called them apart.

"Perhaps it would have been different, if Reiko stayed," Anya said. "Or perhaps not. The old man, Lavinia's father, had only tolerated Reiko for his daughter and the spawn's sake. Now that her task was done, I imagine he was happy to see her go. Yet for all that folks remember the horror that came to Dunwich, all those years later...how few know of those long weeks of autumn and winter, when a woman helped birth those horrors into the world?"

So saying, Anya blew out the candle.