I am Maria
“Four months!” Wayne ticked off the monthly themes, holding up a finger for each: “Climate. Smells. Sounds…what was the first one?”
“Comfort,” Cliff said. “That’s when we got the fancy bed. And it was Comfort, Inspiration, Respiration and now Atmospherics.”
“Right. Right. And in all that time…”
“I know,” Cliff sighed. “What do I have to show for it?”
“She’s not changed a bit, right? All your research says she should be a dream factory in this quarter--”
“Trimester.”
“Whatever.” Wayne drew on his hookah. “Point is, she’s still flatlining, but you’re now having nightmares.”
“She will, too. She should—bad dreams, wild ones—” he shook his head. “I mean, yeah, I feel a little bad forcing it, but that’s the point. It helps her rehearse.”
“Rehearse what?”
“Delivery. They say it does. The REM, the cycles—if she’s getting more, the baby is too, and then it comes out…ready. Wired for it.”
“You made that up.”
“Did not.”
“Yes, you did. Just the other day you said you thought that might be true, but you couldn’t find any research, remember? You were hoping your little study might go a long ways toward proving it, but you were just hypothesizing.”
Cliff frowned at Wayne. “How’s a guy who’s toasted 24/7 remember things so damn well?” He’d thought it a million times before, rehearsed it, but it still came out a bit harsh.
“I like you better when you’re medicated, Clifford.”
###
Cliff was lying in bed the seventh of October, listening to Ria breathe. 98 nights and he hadn’t helped her yet.
She pulled a deep, languid breath. In 98 nights, she had not changed. Her dreams remained anemic.
Another breath tugged at the blankets. He longed to pull her close and spoon, but he didn’t dare disturb the experiment.
A breath—then a sigh. Too heavy. Too slow.
He’d do anything for her and the baby.
“Anything?” she sighed the question, a garbled challenge.
Had he just said that he would do anything for them? Had he said that out loud? Were they crossing over now, communicating--Cliff and Dream-Ria?
He noted the time: 3:30am.
Each deep sleep breath was exhausted in a throaty rasp--something beyond snoring. After three minutes of that, her exhales became moans, warbling and unhappy. It was exaggerated. Like a child trying to sound like a ghost. This would be something to share with her, a true breakthrough. He hesitated. Her soulful, wordless whimpering grew too personal, too mournful.
What have I done? He fretted.
He almost reached for her.
Then a fresh idea moved him: What can she tell me in the morning?
Hoping to record it, Cliff reached for his phone, but it fell from the nightstand. Her moaning stopped. Her breathing was shallow. He’d botched it.
He wanted to wake her right then. She’d been dreaming—recall was best right afterward. But even his sweet Ria had a tolerance, and waking her would cross it.
The dreamcatcher on the ceiling fan spun above him, slow and uneven.
He watched it until sleep took him.
###
You’re up early,” Cliff ventured. “Feeling okay?”
He found her in the kitchen. Still dark out. He never saw her at this hour.
She was hunched over the counter, her back to him. “I. Feel. So. Sick.”
Morning sickness, he almost said, then thought better of it.
He started toward her, but Ria waved him away. “Sit down. I’ll bring your cereal.”
“Thanks, babe. I…I don’t know what to owe this to.”
He told himself it was working. Even if the dreams had been rough.
She poured milk and replaced the carton. The fridge light spilled out, harsh against the dark kitchen.
“Even the smell of milk makes me want to gag!” she said, She set the bowl in front of him, thrust a spoon at him. “Eat.”
He smiled, grabbed the spoon, and dug in--then the smell hit him. Even in the dark it was clear: a bowl of vomit.
“Eat. Eat up, dammit.” She screamed. “This is all your fault.”
###
He lay in a pool of cold sweat, the sheets sticking to him, replaying that horror the rest of the night. Ria was direct, no doubting that, but she’d never screamed at him. “It’s all your fault,” she’d said, and of course, it was, in ways…he had impregnated her, after all….but to lash out at him? To scream at him?
What had he done to deserve the accusation? Every move he’d made had been for her own good, for the baby’s best interests. It was all his doing, but his fault?
###
“Oh, yeah, that’s a freaky-assed nightmare,” Wayne’s eyes were bulging. “Nasty.”
“It seemed so real, too. Everything but her screaming. That’s what woke me up.”
“Not the shock of the puke on your Wheaties or anything.”
“Maybe being repulsed by the idea I would follow through, just to keep her happy.”
“And that’s your problem, kid. You don’t know when to leave things alone.” Wayne rocked in his porch chair. “You’re trying too hard, Clifford.”
“How can you try too hard at a time like this?”
“Yeah. Like I said, let nature take its course. Pregnancy’s natural. Dreams--or lack of them--all natural. Don’t over-engineer it.”
“I’m just trying to help…”
They rocked in silence. Only the leaves crushing under the chair runners could be heard. He flipped the phone over and over in his palm.
“That all was like three days ago.” Just pulling up the app made him shudder. “Last night…last night I recorded her. Think you got the stones for this?”
Wayne rolled his eyes.
“Hit play,” Cliff handed him the phone, the recording all cued up.
White noise hissed from the phone. The screen lit Wayne’s face from below.
“Stick with it,” Cliff said. “At about a minute and thirty, it gets…good.”
On cue, the warbling woohoo began, faintly at first. It made Wayne smile, ear to ear. “This is it? Your wife’s a ghost!”
“Listen,” Cliff ordered, just as the sound returned to dullness. “Put it up to your ear.”
Wayne held the phone up, humoring him. He was listening intently, eyeing Cliff with doubt. After a time, he jerked the phone away and stopped the recording. “How do I rewind this damn thing?”
“What did you hear?”
The white rectangle of the phone screen was suspended in the space between them. Wayne shook it and insisted, “Back it up, Clifford. I don’t know what I heard.”
“I downloaded it and cleaned it up on Audition. It’s Spanish. She’s saying, ‘I am Maria.”
“I am Maria?” Wayne scooted his rocker a bit to face Cliff. “That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“Ria--Maria! I never thought about--”
“The only time I heard her referred to as Maria was on our wedding day when the priest said it. I’ve never even seen it on legal documents.”
“So…her name’s Maria?”
“Don’t you see? It’s a breakthrough. We’ve arrived on the other side. It’s like I’m talking to her childhood self.”
“I dunno, man.” Wayne went quiet for a moment, rocking.
He looked at Cliff. “You know what they say about demons. They come in through the names we don’t use.”
Cliff stared at him.
Wayne blinked, seemed to hear himself. "I don't know where that came from." He waved it off. "Forget it. Too much History Channel." He handed back the phone. "So that's it? I am Maria?"
“Freaky, right?”
“Gotta admit…it didn’t sound like her.”
“Yeah…well….get this” Cliff added. “When she said that, it got really cold.”
“Huh?”
“Like cold enough to see my breath.”
“Cold snap. You’ve been sleeping with the windows open--and besides, you said it was dark. How’d you see your breath in the dark?”
“Okay…cold enough I coulda seen it. Even bundled up. Bam! Freezing cold.”
Wayne shook his head and drew his pipe and pouch from his jacket. Cliff lost him in the dark until he sparked up the bowl.
“There’s more,” Cliff said.
Wayne exhaled.
“So play the rest,” he groaned.
‘The rest’ was four minutes of nothing but air. The void was disturbed only once by a rustling. “It’s coming up,” Cliff said. “I rolled over to hear it.”
“This is lame,” Wayne said. “And I grew up listening to the rad--”
“Sssshh. Listen.”
The voice on the phone chuckled. The corner of Wayne’s eyes crinkled.
“I see you,” the voice whispered in a teasing voice.
Cliff stopped it right there. He looked up at Wayne.
Wayne wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t rocking. He wasn’t puffing his pipe.
“That freaked me, Wayne. I asked her about it the next day, but she didn’t remember anything. ‘I see you,’ that’s some crazy talk, right?”
“It is…unsettling.”
###
The following night Ria had run through the rituals Cliff had created for her. Light stretching. Warm milk. Powering down at 8 o’clock.
He was whispering positive aspirations, even a few Bible verses, into her ear. The sleep monitor was off. The phone was in a drawer. He hadn’t bothered with the blackout curtains.
He’d leave it alone tonight.
“Going back to the August plan—the basic stuff?”
“Night off,” he said, snuggling closer to her blanket burrito.
###
1:17am
He felt it at first. A bit of an earthquake, maybe? Quakes had been happening lately, just tremors, but they’d dumped a shelf or two.
No, it was Ria. She was again on her side, facing away from him. Her body was quaking. Pregnant women got restless legs, all that jostling.
The quaking fell into a chortle, then a chuckle. “I want it out,” she laughed. Then the laughter turned to a long cooing, and that to a groan.
Cliff was awash in sweat. The room was cold, but heat poured off him.
He wanted to uncoil from the blankets, put an arm around her—
and he wanted to ride it out.
He was done experimenting. He just wanted to comfort her.
But waking her might make it worse.
In a heightened voice, she said, as clearly as if she were delivering a presentation: “It’s all your fault.”
He didn’t know what he said. He tried to apologize.
Her warble eased for a moment, but her breathing stayed off. The almost-laughing cough came back.
After the visit with Wayne, his research had changed. He did it in the quiet hours, hunched over his phone, always glancing over his shoulder at Ria. It carried into the daytime, too. He read about the supernatural, about possession starting in dreams. He was now convinced that Ria was infested, that there was some demon inside his darling. All the exorcism movies flashed through his mind these nights, and at that moment, right after she had leveled all her blame at him, Cliff was paralyzed.
What would sleeping with a demon mean? What would be the result? How would the baby come out into the world?
He had to agree with her, all this was his fault. He had done this—analysis, manipulation, pattern interrupts, affirmations. He had somehow invited the darkness into his wife.
If he woke it, what would happen to him? He imagined reaching to jostle her shoulder. She would toss his way, revealing a horrible face in the October moonlight, all teeth and hatred.
Cliff couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even touch her to bring her back to peaceful slumber. He was afraid of being bitten. He was afraid for her soul.
Still, he tried to set aside all superstition and supernatural and all of Wayne’s warnings, too. He leaned her way, pressing his chest to her back, looking over her shoulder at her ear and cheek. He had to know. He needed proof.
Cliff asked in a timid whisper: “Are you…Maria, are you…possessed?”
Her cheek stretched into a smile as she turned toward him. “No. I just wanted you to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“All of it. The counting. The themes. The whispering.”
“So what—you just learned Spanish overnight?”
“Spanish?”
Cliff froze.
She blinked, like she’d lost the thread. Then softer: “I just wanted you to stop.”
She leaned in and kissed his nose.
“Get some sleep,” she said.
He melted on his back and pulled the covers to his chin.
She had answered to Maria.
She didn’t know Spanish.
She had never kissed his nose.
Cliff recited childhood prayers in a tight stream of fervent, whispered words all strung together. He didn’t leave even a gap in his verbal wards. He prayed until dawn.