78 – Beneath The Yard
Albert and Lily had tried everything in the beginning—dozens of tablets, powders, herbal mixes the town pharmacist swore by—but nothing worked. Month after month, the pregnancy clung to Lily as if mocking all their attempts.
The first weeks had been a blur of desperation—trips to the clinic, visits to the old midwife at the edge of town, whispered consultations with the herbalist who claimed to know "ways" to prevent a child from coming. Lily had swallowed more pills than she could count—bitter chalky tablets that stuck to the roof of her mouth, crushed roots stirred into lukewarm milk, drops of an acrid-smelling liquid that burned her tongue. Each one was followed by hours of tense waiting, hands pressed to her stomach as if expecting it to simply flatten away.
Nothing worked.
The child stayed.
By the third month, the hope—or fear, depending on the moment—had drained out of them. There was a quiet, grim acceptance in their house now. Whatever was meant to happen… would happen.
But acceptance didn't mean peace.
The fear changed form. It was no longer sharp and frantic, but slow and constant, settling into the corners of their lives like damp creeping into walls. It became part of their breathing, part of the silence that hung in the evenings, part of the way Albert's eyes lingered on her belly when he thought she wasn't looking. It was in the way she sometimes woke in the middle of the night, sure that someone—or something—was standing in the dark corner of their bedroom, watching.
---
Eight months in.
Lily was bigger, slower now, her back aching even when she lay down. That night, she had finally managed to find a comfortable position on the bed—She drifted into dreams that had no clear shape—flashes of the town's crooked alleys, the shadowed faces of women who had lost their children, the heavy scent of wet earth.
Then—something intruded.
A sound.
It wasn't sharp enough to startle her fully awake, but it was wrong enough to stir her. A dull thunk, deliberate and heavy. A pause. Then again—thunk. The sound was soft, but carried an odd weight, like the earth itself was absorbing it.
Her eyelids fluttered halfway open. For a moment, she didn't move, trying to place the noise.
Her arm, still heavy with sleep, slid across the mattress in search of Albert's warmth.
Her hand met only cold, rumpled sheets.
That woke her faster than the sound had. Her mind, still wrapped in fog, began to untangle itself. The room felt different now—emptier.
Her heart gave a small, nervous kick.
Slowly, she pushed herself up onto her elbows, wincing as her back protested. She turned toward the window, the thin curtains breathing faintly with the night air.
---
Outside, bathed in a pale slice of moonlight, Albert stood in the yard.
His figure was hunched, his silhouette thick against the patch of turned soil in front of him. In his hands was a spade, its wooden handle catching a faint gleam. He moved with slow, deliberate precision—plunging the spade into the earth, leaning his weight on it, then levering up a scoop of dirt and dropping it to the side.
Thud.
Pause.
Thud.
The rhythm was strange—unhurried, almost careful. Not like someone digging for work, but for… something else.
Her mind tried to find the ordinary in it. Maybe he couldn't sleep. Maybe the ground needed loosening before rain. But each explanation slipped away the longer she watched.
Albert didn't look around, didn't stop to wipe his brow. Just dug.
Her mouth was dry.
She stayed there for a minute—maybe longer—her mind floating between questions and a rising unease. But the weight of her own fatigue was pulling her down. It's nothing, she told herself. You're imagining it. He's probably just… She didn't finish the thought.
She lay back down. Closed her eyes.
The sound followed her into sleep. Thud. Thud. Thud.
---
Morning.
The kitchen smelled faintly of toasted bread and coffee. The light coming in through the small window was pale and cold, the kind of light that made everything look slightly faded.
Lily sat across from Albert at the table, her hands curled around a warm mug. He was eating slowly, staring at the plate as though the bread demanded his full attention.
She let the silence stretch, watching him from beneath her lashes. Then, as if the thought had just occurred to her, she asked casually,
"Albert… last night… were you digging in the yard?"
The change in him was instant.
The piece of bread in his mouth caught in his throat. His eyes widened slightly—not with guilt, but with the brief, startled flicker of someone caught off guard. Then he coughed. Hard.
The coughs were violent, dragging his shoulders forward, his face flushing red.
"Albert!" She pushed her chair back sharply, grabbed the glass from the counter, filled it with water, and thrust it into his hands.
He drank between coughs, the sound rasping in his throat, his chest heaving. It went on longer than it should have—long enough for her to begin to feel something colder than concern creeping in.
When it finally subsided, he sagged slightly in his chair, breathing heavily, his skin pale except for the flush high on his cheeks.
"No, no… nothing serious," he said at last, waving a hand in dismissal. His voice was hoarse. "Just… couldn't sleep. Felt tense about the baby. Thought I'd… work it off a little."
The words were too quick. The pauses in the wrong places.
Lily kept her gaze on him, searching for something—an expression, a crack—but his eyes were on the table, on his plate, anywhere but on her.
She said nothing more. But inside her, a small, sharp seed of suspicion took root.
And seeds, she knew, had a way of growing in the dark.
Later that day, after Albert had left for work, the house felt strangely still.
The morning's conversation about the digging—if that's what it had been—kept circling back in Lily's mind. The more she tried to dismiss it, the more her thoughts snagged on small details: the way his eyes hadn't met hers, how quickly he'd found an answer, how the cough had dragged on as though buying him time.
She shook herself out of it. She had errands to run. The pantry was nearly empty, and the shop was only a five-minute walk away. The short trip had become her small escape—eight months pregnant, she couldn't move fast or far, but the walk let her feel the air on her face, the faint stretch in her back, the tiny moments of normalcy.
---
The streets were quiet. A single cart rattled past, its wheels groaning over uneven stones. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once, then stopped abruptly, as if cut off.
At the shop, the familiar scent of flour dust and cured meat greeted her. The shopkeeper, an older man with permanent creases around his eyes, glanced up from weighing beans.
"Morning, Lily," he said, his voice warm but tinged with that careful gentleness people used when speaking to her these days—as though any sudden tone might harm the child.
She smiled faintly. "Morning. One packet of steak… and a kilo of potatoes, please."
"Right away." He moved toward the shelves, his back to her.
As he did, she became aware of voices from the far corner of the shop. Low, close to the ground, like someone leaning in so their words wouldn't carry. The sound of two women, perhaps, or a man and a woman—it was hard to tell at first.
But then the words sharpened.
"Did you hear? Rita's baby's gone. Just vanished last night."
Lily's breath stalled.
"What? I knew it… this place is cursed."
"Poor woman… first month, too. Didn't even get to—" The voice dropped, muffled, but Lily had already heard enough.
Her grip on the cloth handle of her shopping bag tightened until her knuckles whitened. She could feel her heartbeat in her palms, a deep thudding that matched the pace of her breath.
The shopkeeper returned, placing the meat and potatoes into her bag, unaware of the way her face had gone pale.
"Anything else?" he asked.
She shook her head quickly. "No. That's all."
---
The walk home felt longer than usual.
Her eyes kept drifting to the ground as she walked, her thoughts snagging on the rhythm of footsteps. She could almost hear—against her will—the echo of another rhythm: the slow, deliberate thud of a spade cutting into soil.
Albert, under the moonlight, shoulders hunched, digging without pause.
She told herself it was nothing. She told herself again. And again.
When she reached the house, she decided not to tell Albert about what she'd overheard. Not yet. She didn't know why—whether it was fear of his reaction, or fear of confirming the thought forming in her mind.
---
Days passed.
When the delivery day finally came, the hospital corridors seemed to stretch forever. Albert paced them like a man waiting for a verdict on his life.
From behind the closed doors, Lily's cries rose and fell, tearing through him in ways he didn't expect. He tried to focus on the patterns in the floor tiles, the flicker of the dim overhead light, anything but the sound of her pain.
Then—cutting through everything—a baby's first wail.
It was sharp, full of life, the kind of sound that should have been a promise.
Relief hit him like air after being underwater too long.
But then—silence. Abrupt, complete.
The relief drained out of him.
He stared at the door until it opened and the doctor stepped out, his face carefully neutral.
"It's a boy," the doctor said.
Albert's mind stuttered between two instincts—smile, or don't. His lips curved upward, but the smile felt foreign, like it belonged to someone else.
Inside, Lily lay pale against the sheets, her eyes closed, her breathing slow but steady.
Beside her, the baby was swaddled in white, asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling. Albert stepped closer, his throat tightening.
When he held the child, the weight surprised him—heavier than he'd imagined, yet so fragile. His eyes burned, tears welling before he could stop them.
---
Six months later, the child was still alive.
In this town, that was no small thing. People congratulated them, some with genuine warmth, others with smiles too tight to be sincere. Whispers followed them—maybe the curse had lifted, maybe this baby was different.
Others, Lily noticed, watched with something colder in their gaze—envy, or disbelief.
But neither she nor Albert relaxed. They knew too well that the danger didn't end until the child's first year was complete.
---
One evening, word reached Lily that a neighbor—a young woman named Marla—had just given birth. The news lit a small spark of hope in her chest. If their baby had survived this long, maybe Marla's child would too.
That night,
The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that felt too deliberate, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Halfway down the hallway, she stopped.
A faint sound reached her—running water, somewhere ahead. It was steady, unbroken, like a tap left on full.
She followed it, her bare feet whispering against the floor.
The bathroom door was slightly ajar.
She pushed it open just enough to see inside.
Albert was kneeling over the basin, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hands working furiously at a bundle of clothes submerged in dark water. His movements were rough, almost frantic, as if he could scrub the very fabric into nothing.
Beside him, propped against the tiled wall, was the spade.
The wooden handle was wet, droplets sliding down toward the floor.
And on the metal blade—faint but unmistakable—were streaks of dried, darkened red.
Lily's breath caught and held in her chest. She stood frozen, one hand against the doorframe, her mind tumbling into questions she wasn't ready to ask.
The sound of running water filled the space between them, masking the quiet thundering of her pulse.
---
To be continued…