For The Best
by Christine Morgan
https://christine-morgan.com/
https://facebook.com/ChristineMorganAuthor
Copyright 2013 by Christine Morgan. All Rights Reserved.
Even the lashing of the rain wasn't enough to sluice the dirt and blood from her hands. Her nails were split, cracked.
In the west, where the clouds were tattered, a burnt-copper glow gave her barely enough light.
The sides of the hole crumbled. Sticky earth plopped into a growing puddle.
Thunder rolled in counterpoint to fierce stitches of lightning. Her ragged gasps, sounded loud as the shrieking wind.
Those sounds still couldn't drown out the crying.
But no one could hear. Not over the din of the storm, not way out here. Unless someone had followed her.
If she had been seen, sneaking out …
Nobody would understand. They wanted to take the baby away. Give it up for adoption. She couldn't allow that to happen.
Not this baby. Never this baby.
Her fingers tore at the ground, digging it away in clumps. The baby cried and cried. Almost as if the poor thing knew what was coming.
"It's for the best," she said. "I can't let them give you away. Never knowing the truth about your parents, being taken into another family. No. I can't."
The hole was deep enough. It needed no headstone. None of the graves here had headstones.
She unwrapped the blanket. The wailing increased as the rain struck the scrawny, naked body.
"They would have taken you away," she said. "I can't let them do that. It has to be this way. Poor baby."
At the loudest wail yet, she winced. If someone heard …
She thought of pressing the blanket over that little red knotted face. Silencing the cries. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not like that. Not having to feel the frantic little struggles of suffocation.
It was better this way. For the best. She had to tell herself that, until she began to believe it. This was for the best.
She scooped mud into the hole. It splattered over the baby in cold, wet clots and smears.
Suddenly desperate to have it over with, she attacked the earth. Her hands were throbbing and numb, blocks of miserable living ice.
More and more dirt avalanched in. It clogged the baby's wide-open mouth, choking off the cries-become-howls-become-screams.
She shoveled with her bleeding hands. Tears coursed down her cheeks, hot as they mingled with the cold rainwater.
No more movement beneath the mud. No more crying, not that she could hear. Only the sounds of the storm. Only her bleeding, ruined fingers.
Her knees ached. She rose, unsteady on her feet. The ground in front of her was raw and churned. No way to fix that. She'd just have to hope that no one would come out here until the weeds had reclaimed that patch of the field.
They'd never think of looking here. They'd assume the baby had to be hidden somewhere in the building. By the time anyone found the hole, it would be too late. Their plan would never succeed.
She could never let them know what she had done.
But it really was for the best.
* * *
"And you said it couldn't possibly be as good as it sounded," Paige said. "Time to eat those words, mister. It's perfect."
"Can you blame me?" Daniel asked. "After all the places we looked at … you remember that one, where the kitchen was in the hall and when the oven door was open, you couldn't get by?"
"Well, forget it," she said, dragging his face down to hers for a kiss. "We're here, in our new home. Nothing else matters."
He returned the kiss, and patted her stomach. "Nothing but you, me, and Junior here. You're really sure about all this, right?"
"Now he asks. After we pack, move, decorate, and unpack. Of course I'm sure, Dan." She spread her arms as if to embrace the apartment. "Two bedrooms - real bedrooms! - a kitchen big enough to turn around in, a fireplace, washer-dryer, new carpet, new paint … what's not to be sure about?"
"But why do you think the rent's so low?" Dan asked. "There's got to be a catch."
"It's pretty close to the highway," she said. "Traffic noise?"
"Hardly. With the windows closed, you can barely hear the cars going by. Maybe we're under the flight path."
"That must be it," Paige said. "Airplanes are going to drop lavatory blue ice through the ceiling. Or maybe the military buried drums of radioactive waste in the ground, and it's contaminating the water supply. If the baby's born with three eyes, we'll know why."
"Hey! You shouldn't even joke about things like that," Dan said. He touched her belly again, protectively.
"You know I didn't mean it. Just count our blessings, honey. We got a good deal. It’s close to your work, close to the stores and bus lines, and everything. We should be thankful."
"I am." He draped his arm over her shoulder. "So, what now? We're all unpacked. Should we go out, or cook our first dinner in our new home?"
"Out," she said. "Definitely out. We can walk to the shopping center on the corner. I think I saw a café there."
Their front door opened onto a second-story exterior walkway, which led to stairs at either end of the L-shaped apartment complex. As Paige and Dan descended the steps, Paige moving in a careful waddle, the door of the ground-floor corner unit opened and the landlady peeked out.
"Settling in?" she asked, fussing with a brooch at her collar.
The scent of furniture polish and other cleaning products wafted out around her. In the shadowy dimness of her apartment, Paige could see rank after rank of carefully-arranged and sparkling-clean knickknacks. Ceramic dolls, delicate china cups and saucers, crystal vases, blown glass animals. And not a speck of dust anywhere.
"Yes, Mrs. Renker, thank you," Paige said.
"If you need anything, just let me know." She seemed about to say something more, but bit her lip, shook her head, and retreated inside.
They exchanged a look.
"What's up with her?" Dan wondered. "I thought she liked us."
"Maybe she's worried that we'll change our minds. Not likely, after we moved all those boxes -"
"We? As I recall, I was the one who did all the lifting and carrying. You supervised."
"All part of my plan," she said. "Why do you think I waited until this close to my due date to suggest that we move?"
"Sneaky woman."
The café proved to be a cozy place of light-colored wooden furniture, plaid cushions, ceiling fans, watercolor landscapes, and genial atmosphere. A brass and glass bakery case by the cash register displayed pies, cakes, muffins, and cookies the size of hubcaps.
Dan ushered Paige to a booth along the side wall. The waitress, a teenage girl with braces flashing from an unselfconscious smile, delivered glasses of ice water.
As she headed for the kitchen with their orders, a man approached the table and held out his hand.
"Jim Bryson," he said. "Saw you move into the building. I'm in 2-G, so we're almost neighbors."
Dan rose to shake Jim's hand. "Dan Sherman, and this is my wife, Paige. Good to meet you."
"Have a seat," Paige said. "We'd love to pick your brain about the neighborhood."
Laughing, Jim pulled up a chair to the end of the table. "What, nobody's told you all the horror stories yet?"
"Horror stories?" Dan raised an eyebrow at Paige. "I told you it was too good a deal to be true."
"Oh, stop," she said.
"Let me guess," Jim said. "You can't believe that such excellent apartments go for so cheap. There's got to be something wrong, you think. Am I right?"
"On the nose," Dan said. "So, what is it? Nuclear waste? Fault line?"
"The hosp
ital, of course," Jim said.
"Hospital?" Paige echoed blankly. "What hospital?"
The waitress, returning with their bowls of soup, said, "The mental hospital. The … what do you call it … the asylum."
"Where?" Dan asked.
"Just across the highway," Jim said. "You should be able to see it from your bedroom window, if your unit's laid out like mine. Behind the big line of trees."
"Once," said the waitress, "a friend of my uncle's was driving past it, and he got a flat tire -"
"Let me guess," Dan cut in. He made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "I'm in here for being crazy, not stupid."
"That tire story is an urban legend, Cassie," said Jim. "Like the one about the lunatic with the hook."
"I was just telling you what I heard," Cassie said, and flounced off to the kitchen in a huff.
"So what is the deal?" Dan asked. "The asylum still operating? How many inmates?"
"First off, it's not called an asylum. It's a psychiatric facility. And they're not inmates. They're mental health consumers receiving multidisciplinary treatment."
Paige stirred her soup. "Good grief."
"I used to work there," Jim said, shrugging. "As an intern. Before the budget cuts. They've got about three hundred beds now. Used to be close to a thousand."
"Where'd the rest of them go?" Dan looked around theatrically. "Did they just let them loose on the unsuspecting community?"
"Some of them," Jim said. "Nowadays, with the better medications and stuff, more people can be managed in less intensive settings. Supposed to be better for them, and it's cheaper than hospitalization."
"What does that mean?" Paige asked. "Less intensive?"
"Halfway houses, supervised living."
"Around here?" She heard the alarm in her voice, saw Dan's I-told-you-so smirk, and kicked him under the table.
"Nah. Various places all around the state. They closed the MIO ward too - that's Mentally Ill Offenders, the violent criminally insane ones - and now they've only got the few hundred chronics."
"And the MIOs?" Dan prompted.
"Prison, mostly."
"That's awful," Paige said. "Putting them in jail, I mean. It's not like it's their fault. How do they get the care that they need?"
Jim only shook his head. Cassie, her feathers still ruffled, came over with their sandwiches and frowned down at the barely-touched bowls of soup.
"Gee, thanks for spoiling their dinner, Mr. Bryson," she said.
"He didn't." Paige took a spoonful of soup. "It's very good, really."
"So the reason the apartments are so cheap is because people don't want to live this close to the asylum," Dan said. "Well, we're not going to move. I mean, it sounds like the inmates aren't dangerous. Right?"
"Consumers," Jim corrected. "And yeah, you're right. They're the bipolars and the chronic schizos, can't manage on their own, but not generally a menace to society. Sad, really. But no need to worry about the MIOs. In fact, this is where that ward used to be."
"What?" Paige had been about to take a bite, and stopped with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. "Here?"
"Sure," he said. "This all used to be asylum grounds. You could ask Mrs. Renker about it. I hear she used to work there."
"Nice," Dan said. "So, right where we're sitting now, this used to be where they locked up the dangerous psychotics."
"Basically," Jim said. His pleasant face contorted into a devilish grin. "You want to know the really creepy part?"
"Sure, go ahead, might as well," Dan said.
"Rumor has it that in the old days, when one of them died with no family or money to pay for a proper funeral, the body would be buried on the property. A potter's field, I think they called it. Unmarked graves in the dead of night."
"How terrible!" Paige said. "They got away with that?"
"Well, it's just a rumor," Jim said.
"It's not like they dug up any bones or anything when they were building the apartments," Cassie added as she topped off the water glasses.
"Our apartments?" Paige asked.
Jim snickered. "Bad enough to live on an old burial ground, but one for crazy people? Not just ghosts, but crazy ghosts! How freaky would that be?"