Nocturnal

A New Need

Aggie James stared at the bassinet.

No, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t allow himself to succumb.

Just ride it out … you’ll be free soon.

He looked away, not that there were many places to look. The tiny room must have once been part of the sewer system, back in the times when they built things out of rough-hewn rocks. At least it was warm. The room had power — Hillary had turned on a beat-up heater and an old dehumidifier as soon as they’d arrived.

He wore the same clothes he’d had on when Sly and Pierre had taken him to the white dungeon. The clothes had been waiting for him here. Hillary had cleaned the jeans, shirt and jacket. She’d given him a pair of tan work boots that were almost new, if you didn’t count the blood stain set into the suede.

For the first time Aggie could remember, he was clean, both inside and out.

Yet now he felt a powerful urge … an urge that made him feel dirty. How could he want that? How in the hell could he want that?

Aggie turned. He stared at the baby. So tiny. So helpless. But what would it become? Would it change to look like those things that had chased down the teenage boy?

The baby hadn’t hurt anyone. The baby just was.

Aggie walked to the bassinet and looked down. The baby slept so peacefully. So quiet, all bundled up in that blanket with the strange symbols. Aggie thought of the day his daughter had been born, thought of her tiny fingers and the way her eyes had closed when she’d slept against his wife’s chest. But this boy wasn’t like Aggie’s lost child. The boy was Hillary’s kind, the killing kind.

This was a creature of evil.

So why did Aggie wanted to pick the baby up? Why did he want to hold it? The urge consumed him. It was even more powerful than that inexplicable lust that had overtaken him while watching Mommy in her cabin.

It was more than a want … it was a need.

He needed to pick up that baby, needed to protect it.

He could fight it no longer. He reached into the bassinet and gently lifted up the tiny, sleeping form. Aggie held the baby to his chest, one hand under the baby’s tiny bottom, the other hand on the back of the baby’s head.

Aggie started to bounce lightly.

“Don’t you worry,” he said. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be fine.”

It was just a baby, goddamit. This child was no more responsible for what his kin had done than Aggie was responsible for the actions of his asshole grandfather. The boy didn’t have to turn out like Hillary — he didn’t have to turn out like those kids in the maze.

The small room’s metal door screeched as it opened, the bottom scraping heavily against the cinder-block floor. Aggie instinctively turned the baby away from the door, protecting it with his body. He looked over his shoulder to see who had come.

Hillary.

She entered, and smiled. “How nice. You are holding the baby.”

Aggie nodded.

She reached out her wrinkled hand and smoothed the baby’s blanket. Aggie fought an instinct to pull the baby away from her. He had to keep his cool.

She again looked at Aggie; her happy eyes returned to their normal hard-ice stare. “Are you ready to learn what you must do?”

Aggie nodded again.

“You are to find this baby a good home,” she said. “You take him out of here, find him a good home, a loving home, a safe home.”

She stared at him, as if waiting for an answer, waiting for confirmation.

He had no idea what he should say.

“Repeat it,” she said. “A safe, loving home.”

“Yes, ma’am. A safe, loving home. But … well, how do I do that?”

Hillary pointed a finger at the ceiling. “You live up above. Find someone who wants a baby. Someone who will stay in San Francisco, do you understand? They have to stay here. You must find someone. Do you know people?”

Aggie had zero idea of who would take in a little black baby, but he nodded. “Sure, of course. I know people just like that.”

“Good,” she said. “I knew I chose right when I chose you. When you find the people who will take him” — she reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out an overstuffed brown envelope — “you give them this.”

Inside the envelope, Aggie saw a thick stack of hundreds.

“You listen to me now,” Hillary said. “You listen carefully. I have people up there. No matter where you go, we can find you by your smell. You do what I say, and you are free. You do not do what I say? Then wherever you go, I will reach out from here and pull you back in, and then you will be the groom.”

That giant slug of a woman, being tied to the dolly, then the maze, the monster children … Aggie nodded madly. If this was the price of freedom, he would fulfill her mission.

“Yes, ma’am, I understand, but …” His voice trailed off. He wanted to ask a question, but what if the answer made her change her mind? No, with all the trouble she’d gone through, she wasn’t going to suddenly take the baby away. He had to ask.

“Why don’t you take him?” Aggie said. “I mean, I’ll do what you ask and thank you for letting me live, thank you, but why wouldn’t you just take him up yourself?”

She caressed the sleeping baby’s cheek. “I can’t go far from Home. When I am away from Mommy for too long, I start to change.”

“Change into what?”

She didn’t say anything. For a long moment, it was so quiet Aggie could hear her fingertips sliding across the baby’s cheek.

Finally, Hillary looked up. “You ask too many questions. Don’t you want to help me?”

Oh shit, had he blown it? Aggie nodded, hard. “Yes! I want to do this for you. Never mind I asked, just let me take the boy up, please.” He would find the boy a home. Forget the questions, that was stupid — all Aggie wanted was to get away from this crazy place and this crazy old woman.

She reached out again, but this time her fingertips caressed Aggie’s cheek. It took everything he had not to recoil in disgust.

“Now I let you go,” she said. “I give you life. In return, you give this baby a future.”

He nodded again, couldn’t stop himself from nodding. “Thank you, Hillary,” Aggie said, and he meant it. “I’ll do it.”

“Follow me, and be very silent. I will show you the way out.”