Whispers in the Night Read Online Free Page A

a calm feeling she wished she could have every morning. “Well, look at Mommy’s big girl!” Danielle said, propping herself up on her elbows.
    The baby sat straighter, and her mouth peeled back into a wide grin as she leaned forward, toward Danielle. Her eyes hung on Danielle, not missing a single movement or detail. She looked like a model baby on the diaper package, too good to be true.
    And Danielle knew, just that fast. Something was wrong with the baby.
    This isn’t Lola , she thought. She would swear on her grave that she knew right away.
    There were a hundred and one reasons. First, Lola started her days in a bad mood, crying until she got her baa-baa . The new sleeping arrangement hadn’t changed that. And Lola never sat that way, Indian style like a Girl Scout around a campfire. The pose didn’t look right on her.
    Danielle went through the usual motions—seeing if Lola’s eyes would follow her index finger (they did, like a cat’s), testing her appetite (Lola drank a full bottle and ate a banana), and checking Lola’s temperature (exactly 98.6). Apparently, Lola was fine.
    Danielle’s heart slowed down from its gallop and she laughed at herself, laying Lola down flat on the wicker changing table. The baby didn’t fuss or wriggle, her eyes still following Danielle’s every movement with a contented smile.
    But when Danielle opened the flaps of the Pampers Cruisers and the soiled diaper fell away between Lola’s chunky thighs, something dark and slick lay there in its folds. Danielle’s first glance told her that Lola had gotten her bowel movement out of the way early—until the mess in her diaper shuddered .
    It was five inches long, and thin, the color of the shadow that had been on her ceiling. The unnamable thing came toward Danielle, slumping over the diaper’s elastic border to the table surface. Then, moving more quickly with its body hunched like a caterpillar, the thing flung itself to the floor. A swamp leech. A smell wafted up from its wake like soggy, rotting flesh.
    For the next hour, while Lola lay in silence on the changing table, Danielle could hardly stop screaming, standing high on top of her bed.
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    Danielle didn’t remember calling Odetta from the portable phone on her nightstand, but the phone was in her hand. The next thing she knew, Odetta was standing in her bedroom doorway, waving a bath towel like a matador, trying to coax her off the bed. Danielle tried to warn Odetta not to touch the baby, but Odetta didn’t listen. Odetta finished changing Lola’s diaper and took her out of the room. The next time Danielle saw Lola, she was dressed up in her purple overalls, sitting in the car seat like they were on their way to lunch at Cracker Barrel.
    â€œWe’re going to Uncle June’s,” Odetta said, guiding Danielle into the car.
    Danielle didn’t remember the drive, except that she could feel Lola watching her in the rearview mirror the whole way. Danielle was sure she would faint if she tried to look back.
    Uncle June lived at the corner of Live Oak and Glory Road, near the woods. He was waiting outside his front door with a mug, wearing his pajama pants and nothing else. A smallish, overfed white dog sat beside him. Odetta kept saying Uncle June could help her, he would know just what to do, but the man standing outside the house at the end of the block looked like Fred Sanford in his junkyard. His overgrown grass was covered with dead cars.
    Odetta opened the car door, unbuckled Lola from her car seat, and hoisted the baby into her arms. As if it were an everyday thing. Then she opened Danielle’s car door and took her hand, helping her remember how to come to her feet.
    â€œJust like with Ruby’s boy in ninety-seven,” Odetta told Uncle June, slightly breathless.
    Uncle June just waved them in, opening his door. The dog glared back at Lola, but turned around and trotted into