I Loved Her

I loved my wife. I loved her so much. She was unspeakably precious to me and we were so happy. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about how we met or our life before that house. It’s both unimportant and painful.
But I must stress that I loved her more than anything in the world. I’d watch her sleep, her eyelashes resting on her cheeks, her lips parted while she snored softly. I adored her from the moment we met, and that over-the-moon feeling never stopped. She was beautiful. She had red hair that she wore in a braid over her shoulder. One had was slightly bigger than the other and we joked about it. She was small, but not bird-like. When she laughed, I laughed too. She had a habit of bumping into me when we walked together in public as if she was just making sure I was there. I’d never met someone that I’d shared that much joy with. Who was so easy to be around.
I married her the second I got the chance. I loved her so much.
She got pregnant four months ago. We agreed our apartment wasn’t going to cut it, so we looked around for a nice starter house in the country. Nothing huge, nothing fancy. Just a one-story box we could raise our child in. We ended up getting a great deal on a small house about twenty minutes outside of town. Since I worked from home, the commute wasn’t going to be an issue. And we both agreed that we’d rather raise our baby away from the inner city.
My wife was raised on a large piece of property in Yorkshire, and was always talking about how nice it was. How you could go to sleep with your window open at night and only hear the sounds of the animals, the wind moving through the trees. The snow makes a sound when it falls. Did you know that?
She asked me once. It sounds like moth wings flapping. Like sighing. I’d been raised in a high-rise in the middle of a huge metropolitan area. I did not know that the snow made a sound when it fell. I was charmed.
We moved in around November, when she was about two months along, and the first night we were there, it snowed. I opened our bedroom window wide and listened. She held my arm. “See? It sounds like so many little things sighing.” We went back to bed and I held her close as I made love to her very gently.
We set up the house, decorated with a non-specific but pleasing theme. We met our few neighbors, whose houses were spaced a good distance from our and each other. Everyone was pleasant and seemed happy to have a young couple finally join the community. A few of us agreed to exchange keys in case of an emergency or an accidental lockout. It tickled me. I wasn’t used to such open hospitality.
My wife fit in wonderfully. A pretty young mother-to-be, our neighbors fawned over her. They showered us with cakes, dinners, casserole dishes, and hand-knitted gifts for the baby. My wife handled these gifts with her usual grace, and smiled sweetly when she received them. She’d hold the hand-made, misshapen clothes, and beam at the old women who delivered them. She’d make a great fuss, invite the women in for tea and make company with them, all the while exclaiming over the cuteness of the lumpy booties and bulbous hats.
When the women left, she’d show them to me and we’d laugh, wondering about what monstrous child could possibly fill them.
We were happy. My wife grew more and more radiant every day. Her small belly grew to a noticeable bump, and I’d walk in on her standing in the nursery, touching the walls, the crib, and whispering to the baby growing inside her.
I held her at night, my hands protectively cupping her belly. I kissed her neck and was so overwhelmed with how much I loved her. I told her I’d protect her, keep her and our child safe. She curled her toes around mine and sighed deeply as she drifted to sleep.
God, I loved her so much.
The sleepwalking started around her third month.
The first night it happened, I woke up in the middle of the night and sat up. It seemed like something had startled me out of my sleep. A sound or maybe a flicker of light I turned to look at my wife and found that she wasn’t there.
I wasn’t alarmed at first. More and more she got up to urinate multiple times at night. As the baby grew, it pressed against her bladder. She complained about it in a good-natured way, shuffling off to the bathroom.
I got up and knocked on the bathroom door. It opened. She wasn’t inside.
Slightly more awake, I padded out of the bedroom and wandered the house, looking into various rooms. “Honey? What’s going on, are you okay? Where are you?” She didn’t answer. My heart stared to beat a bit faster. I opened the hall closet and jumped back, startled as a broom fell out. I caught it and stuffed it back in.
Thoroughly spooked, I wandered the house, looking in the dining room, the living room, the spare bedroom and bathroom. My heart beat faster. My nerves rose with every space. When I flicked on the kitchen light, I yelped before I could stop myself.
She was standing on the kitchen counter, her head cocked to one side as if she were listening. My heart dropped and I ran over to her. “Ellie, Ellie, honey, come down. What are you doing? Are you all right?” She didn’t respond to my voice or my touch. It took me a moment to realize she was still asleep.
Terrified, I ran into the dining room and grabbed a chair. I walked over to her and with great difficulty I coaxed her to step down onto it. I scooped her up into my arms, holding her tightly and carried her back to our bedroom. Her eyes were wide open, unseeing .She mumbled something as I put her down and I shushed her as I tucked her in. She mumbled again, looked me in the eye, and went back to sleep. She was snoring before I was back in bed. Not bothering to go and shit off the kitchen light, I curled up beside her, holding her tightly against me. I stayed awake for an hour or so trying to see if she would get up again, but I was reasonably sure she wouldn’t. I fell back into a restless sleep.
The next morning, when we woke up sweaty and tangled together, I asked her if she remembered anything. Her blue eyes wide, she searched my face for truth. And when she saw it, she covered her mouth with childish alarm.
“You’ll have to start locking the bedroom at night, John.” She was adamant. She wouldn’t risk harm to our unborn child. I installed a lock that afternoon. But the sleepwalking continued. Almost every night I woke up to an empty bed, and I’d find my wife in various places around our room. In the closet, curled by the door, standing by the window.
One particularly terrifying episode I found her on top of our huge bureau. She was hunched against the wall, her eyes wide and feral. I had no idea how she had got up there, and I had to go and get a ladder to get her down. As I helped her navigate the steps, she said something.
Her small feet touched the carpet and she looked me in the eye with grave seriousness. “You can’t save us, John. But don’t worry. We’ll be waiting for you.”
It was eerie. How her eyes looked when she said it. Lit as if by some weird radioactive light. I shushed her and tucked her back into bed.
One night I found her at the window, opened, the curtains blowing around her like wings. I got up to help her and as I got nearer I saw that she was pressed against the windowsill. Her belly was crushed against it and her eyes stared out at the sleeping landscape. Her hands hung limp at her sides. I grabbed her harder than I intended and it woke her up.
Alarmed, she gripped my hands which dug into her shoulders. Her eyes were hurt, terrified. “John?” Her knees gave out and I managed to catch her. She clutched her belly, moaning.
I told her to hold still, to hang on, and to take deep breaths. She reached between her legs, and when she drew them back, there were spots of blood on her fingertips. She let out a breathy scream. The ambulance came and took my poor, terrified wife away. I rode with her, holding her hand, her smaller hand. Her eyes never left mine.
The ultrasound revealed that nothing was wrong. The baby hadn’t been harmed. Spotting, the doctor, said was not unheard of in this stage. But, the doctor warned us, to keep him informed of any more incidents. We were beyond relieved. I kissed my wife as she wept, relieved, and I dried her tears. The doctor prescribed her a very mild sedative to help her sleep at night.
She began taking the sedatives. As soon as it started, the sleepwalking stopped. She slept soundly, her hands curled under her chin. I watched her sleep, my heart full to bursting.
I loved her so much.
Shortly after my wife began to sleep at night, my nightmares began. They were always the same. I’d wake up and Ellie would be gone. I’d get up, frantic, and search the house for her. The rooms were empty, full of a strange, thick fog that burned as I inhaled it. It was caustic, smelling strong of ozone.
The fog made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I ran through it, as if it where electric. It slowed me down, made it hard to search for her. Eventually, I’d end up at the back door and find the back garden had been replaced by a featureless, gray landscape.
It was like stepping into thick mud, the way the earth grabbed onto my bare feet, wormed between my toes. I’d wander around the perimeter of the house, calling her name. The sky went on and on, cloudless and dark, and when I looked up with it I could feel a dizzying certainty that if I were to fall up into it, I’d fall forever.
The only thing keeping me on the ground was the sticky, mudlike stuff. I’d call her name over and over, the sound falling flat in the still air. I’d end up back where I’d started, and my heart would start to race.
Where was Ellie? Where was my sweet, pretty wife? I had to protect her from whatever was coming, and something was coming. I could hear it. The sound reverberated from the sky, rolling across the dead, flat land. A low, electric humming. The mud would cling to my feet, holding me in place, and I’d sense her behind me, as if she’d been there all along. “John?” I’d try to turn but could only move my eyes. Strain them, trying to look over my shoulder, to see her face.
She’d lay her hand, her larger hand, on my shoulder. “I love you, John. I love you.” I knew it wasn’t my wife. I’d scream, and I could hear the roar as the sky began to fall, racing towards the earth, falling to infinity to crush me, crush her, crush everything. And the hand on my shoulder would grip me tighter, and…
I’d fly upright, the sheets stuck to my damp skin, a scream caught in my throat. I’d immediately turn to her, my lovely, sleeping wife, and I’d touch her shoulder gently.
She’d frown, her lips pursed into a child’s petulant bow, and roll over, farther from my touch. I’d lay back down and watch the rise and fall of her back, breathing deeply.
I loved her so much.
When we were reasonable sure her sleepwalking would not continue, my wife stopped taking her sedatives. They made it hard, she said, to get up and use the bathroom when she needed to. For the first few nights she was off them, I’d stay awake, watching her. My nightmares made sleep undesirable as it was, so I didn’t mind. Aside from her frequent trips to relieve herself, she slept soundly. I began to love these late nights, staying awake and watching her sleep. She mumbled sometimes, but nothing I could understand. I’d stroke her red hair, touch her skin. Sometimes she’d smile, sometimes she’d turn away.
Most nights, I’d be awake watching her until midnight. It was peaceful, listening to her breathing, watching the moon slip behind the clouds. The owls hooted, small animals moved through the bushes. I could appreciate why some people chose to be nocturnal like them.
But as sleep deprivation caught up with me, I began to drift off earlier and earlier. Her leaving always woke me up, but slowly, our routine began to go back to the way it had been before the sleepwalking, before the nightmares. We slept soundly, our rhythms in sync once again.
And, I loved her. I loved her more every day.
Two weeks ago, I woke up after midnight. It was snowing. My wife wasn’t beside me. I sat up and air felt thick about me, palpable. I felt an odd sense of calm, an almost medicated feeling. I had been deeply asleep, I supposed, but despite the drag of sleeping wanting to bring me back to the covers, the warm pillows, I waited for her to return.
I waited.
I watched the minutes pass on our small digital clock. I got out of bed and went to the window. I opened it. The sky was gray, lit with a dull light from the towns not far from us. Snow was falling. I could hear it settling on the branches of the trees, the half-buried grass. She was right, I thought. It sounded like the sighing of many small things. I watched it for a while, listening to the sighing snow. The land around us, our neighbors, tucked in and quiet. All of us in hibernation, waiting for the sunlight to tell us to come out, to see the new day. The air was cold in my face.
After some time, how much I don’t know, I closed the window and turned back to the room. It had been quite some time. I felt the pull of my wife, somewhere in our house. I opened the door and padded into the hallway. It seemed to me that I could still hear the sighing of the snow even through our walls. It was so quiet. The light at the end of the hall was on, our spare bathroom. I stood in front of the door and listened, hearing nothing but the small sighing of the many things outside.
I knocked gently and the door swung open, and for a wonderful moment, the last one, everything was still wonderful. My sleeping wife, my lovely child, my beautiful wife, must have gotten sick and gone here to avoid waking me.
I wanted to comfort her. I held my hand out to touch her back, which was facing me. She was curled by the toilet, her face in her hands. It was so sweet of her to think of me, as the illness, which came so rarely now, gripped her.
Her head in her hands, her red hair flowing over her shoulders and hiding her face, she was so small. So lovely and innocent. Her head bobbed and my heart ached for her.
I loved her so much.
Her hands, which were cut at her mouth, holding in the sickness.
I loved her so much.
I looked at her, down at my hand which reached out to her. Saw the blood that I had been standing in that had tracked onto the bottom of my trouser legs. I said her name, her name, that I whispered in her ear as I made love to her, her name that I turned into Ellie-Bellie when I was teasing her, I said her name and she looked up at me, her blue eyes so wide with wonder and that queer light.
Her face was smeared, covered with something more red than lipstick. It was on her hands, trailed from her past my feet, out of the door. Her hands that I loved to kiss and hold had something cupped in them.
She smiled up at me, her wonderful child smile, red was on her teeth. She smiled and the red dripped down her pretty face. “John, I love you, John.”
Her head dipped, brought the red mouth with the red teeth inside to the red hands. She bit, and swallowed, smiled up at me, dipped her head, bit, swallowed.
I watched her delicate throat move with each mouthful she took. I fell to my knees, into the red that tracked up her shins, her thighs, and was slowly trickling out of her darkening her nightie.
She smiled at me again. The red, the dark, dark, red, was caught in between her teeth. “John, I had to get it back inside. I had too. Don’t you see? I had to get it back inside.”
She held her hands out to me, one hand bigger than the other, just slightly. I looked at what remained and all I saw was red. Dark, dark red. She smiled. My innocent wife who I loved so much. “I had to get it back inside.”
And as she swallowed the rest, the rest of that dark, dark, red, I could hear the sighing outside turn into a low rumble. A roar. The sound of the sky coming down upon us. Coming down to consume me and my beautiful wife.
Who I loved so much.
The sky fell upon us, and I cried her name out into the dark.