Short Story: Elijah

This road was away from anywhere with people. It was coloured with orange streetlight. A car entered and slowed, parking so one half was on the footpath. Inside it sat a woman: she looked in all directions before opening the door, having been told to come back if she saw even a single soul. But she’d known there would be no one around this way, not at this hour.
She walked round the car and lifted a baby from the passenger seat. Elijah was sleeping. He liked car rides - in the last week she’d found it was the best thing at soothing him. She hoped he would sleep through it all, that would make it easier.
This road, and the woods it led to, were far from town centre. A clearing, yards from the car, opened up into countryside, onto a long path where people walked their dogs during the day. It would be a dog walker, she imagined, who would find him.
She could see her breath in the air as she walked. She checked Elijah - who was wrapped in a large cloth her mother had given her - to see that he was warm. His skin felt hot and he looked well-rested. A very healthy boy the doctor and all the nurses had told her. He had been born with no complications, in only a few hours.
The lights on the path were sparingly placed and when in total darkness she held him tighter to her chest, supposing he could have inherited the anxious feeling she got when outside at night.
The path itself was too central and, after five minutes of walking, she walked off onto grass, through a clearing between trees. She then halted and focused her eyes forward. She waited until the bare outlines of the trees were visible and, realising this was as adjusted as her eyes would get, began to walk again. She could see only a few steps in front of her, and the ground here was not flat like on the path. The trees gave dark outline around her, contrasted with the blue-grey sheet of clouds above. The ground was damp, it having rained that morning. She kept a close look down to make sure of her footing and noticed the flowers, all unkempt, bursting onto each other with life. She could only see in black and white but this drew her attention to the shapes. Chocolate bar wrappers and takeaway boxes and lager cans lay among them.
The ground curved and she slipped and let out a wail as she stammered back regaining her footing, squeezing Elijah too tight. He awoke and began to cry. It was a horrible, thunderous sound. In the days - six days it had been - since giving birth she had hated every second of his crying. She’d go to comfort her baby but he, Elijah’s father, had told her no, that she shouldn’t get too attached. He’d told her not to name the baby, not to talk to it - always it, never he, never Elijah - but she’d done both. Even when he yelled at her she’d continued giving her son milk and rocking the chair where he slept.
Elijah was a loud cryer. It hurt her ears when she couldn’t quiet him in time. He hurt her now and she could hear the echoes of his noise bouncing off the trees. She stopped walking and began to rock him from side to side. He soon got quieter but didn’t stop. There remained a rattling from his mouth and sniffles from his nose. She spoke softly, as she’d seen her mother do with her little sister a long time ago; she said it would be okay and he should go back to sleep. She wiped his cheeks and the edges of his eyes with the cloth, although his eyes were red now, she could tell, even without any light. He has such sensitive skin, she thought, and such a sensitive temperament - she reasoned that maybe it was a good thing what she was doing, despite knowing this was a lie, the world not being a kind place for a sensitive man.
She walked on. Elijah’s eyes darted, peering up at the treetops and the clouds, and she could tell he was growing scared with confusion. His cries started up again every minute or so, and each time she responded by slowing her walk and speaking to him softly, repeating the same whispered phrases. She tried to quiet her mind the way she quieted him but the crying had awoken in her something that couldn’t be put to sleep. Her speech to the baby began to come out in stutters and she could see, by looking at him, she was shaking, trembling even. Her throat tightened. Reality seemed to be reaching her, finally, piercing through all the protective walls she’d erected. Here she was, Elijah was crying, she was here to kill him.
She walked through muddy splotches and forced herself not to scream when she accidentally kicked a glass bottle. There were no sounds other than the hum of insects. They were away from everything now. She only needed to find a spot to do it. He wasn’t here to instruct her now, she’d have to select the spot herself. He’d told her to do it with a rock, one forceful smack was all it’d take, but she saw no rocks and she’d brought nothing heavy to use instead.
She was crying, she only now realised, and making whimpering noises involuntarily, and she felt freezing, the chill hurting her joints and making her skin ache. She could have been crying and grunting since she got out of the car for all she knew. Everything was happening too fast for her to be observant.
Worrying she’d lose control of her hands and drop Elijah, she placed him down on the ground, not wanting to hurt him, and she saw no hypocrisy in this - she was there to kill her baby, not to hurt him. There would be a quick moment of pain, then nothing. At least as long as she did it right. Which she had her doubts about now.
After placing him down she slumped on a tree until she was sat on the ground. The muddiness felt uncomfortable on her bum and on her feet where the wet seeped into her shoes. Elijah lay silent now. She’d been thinking it was the darkness and her panicking that had unsettled him but it must have been the movement; he was still and contented now.
She shook, like an earthquake was erupting across her skin. And clasped one hand with the other, hoping this would steady both, but her spasms grew worse and she felt lightheaded, like she might faint. She talked to herself out loud now: Calm down, just calm down. This has to happen. It’s going to happen either way. So just calm down, please. Her head felt dizzy, hysterical almost. She thought if she passed out now when she woke it would be morning and there’d be people about and she couldn’t do it then and then he’d be angry with her, God knows what he’d do, and she’d end up here again tomorrow night to -
She looked out at the woods. It was peaceful, no wind, briskly cold but a nice night in its own way. The silhouettes of the trees furthest from her looked tinted in blue.
She couldn’t go back to the flat with Elijah, she knew that much. And she couldn’t go to her mother’s, not now, after months of not speaking. He had told her to drop all contact - one of the many commands he’d given her upon finding out she was pregnant. And she had done it. There was not a single thing he could ask her to do, she realised, that she wouldn’t do - and still this realisation changed nothing.
She could run away and start a new life with Elijah. The idea had entered her mind a good few times. He wouldn’t try to find them: he had too few friends and too little money to search for them, as long as they went far enough. But where would they go? If they were in a novel they’d be taken in by loving strangers, and if they were in America they’d hitch rides to the opposite end of the country - but they were in neither and they would end up homeless. And it was winter. She was too weak to go through with all that, she felt, and Elijah too young to survive it. No, there was only one thing to do, what he’d told her to do. She stood up and picked up Elijah and began to walk on.
She picked her route through the woods at random. She walked down a small hill and pushed her way through some weedy bushes and came out on a path. This was no good. He’d said to leave it in the bushes somewhere out of the way, wrapped up. She continued walking. She saw spots, small spaces hidden by foliage, away from the path, that were perfect for her purposes, but she kept on walking, despite not knowing why. She hoped she’d find something, anything, that would tell her what to do, that would release her and send her in a different direction.
While walking she thought carefully over everything he’d said to her. It was her fault, she knew it, he’d said to get an abortion, that they couldn’t do with a baby, not when she didn’t work and he hardly got paid. Then there was that accident on the stairs. She’d told him she’d get the abortion, said it lots of times, but it was always a job for tomorrow, like some household chore. She’d said she wanted to call the baby Elijah if it was a boy and Isabella if it was a girl and he’d laughed at the names. He said her family, by which he meant her mother and sisters, were bad for her. Which meant Elijah was the only person she had in the world besides him. She didn’t want to feel alone. Those 9 months had been the least lonely of her life. It had been like her body was a shelter, a sturdy building protecting the life inside. But now she felt alone again, separated, hollow.
She’d walked far now and wasn’t sure she’d be able to find her way back. But she’d have to.
All that week, what he’d been saying, she’d thought he’d been trying to justify it to himself, justify making her do such a horrible thing. But no, it came to her now, it was nothing to him, he needed no justification, he just couldn’t be bothered to do it himself, not when he could stay warm and have a few cans. He’d been trying to justify it to her. He kept bringing up Vietnam and saying those gooks over there are skinning people alive, dangling them from trees, burning down villages. Compared to that what’s one baby nobody loves?
A rattle came from the trees and her legs stopped before she’d told them to. From the sound it was a bird, woken by her walking. The sound of flapping, wings wafting - then she saw it overhead, travelling upwards. It sang wit-woo. Elijah giggled. She let out a nervous laugh too but felt the tears ready to come. They swam down her face and dripped onto Elijah who, not knowing what they were, began to cry. That horrible noise again. She still felt nauseous but reasoned if she put him down again she wouldn’t have the energy to pick him back up. Instead she walked faster, deciding the next good spot she saw was where she’d do it.
A minute or so later she heard a sound, a gentle buzzing, and followed in its direction. She hoped she hadn’t walked too far - through the other side of the woods was an industrial estate, that could explain the noise. She coddled Elijah firmly. He was still upset but calming again. This night was his first big trip out of the house - he’d been born in that house - other than trips to the shop at the end of the street, as she’d not wanted to leave him alone with his father. This was something very new.
The noise was the rolling waters of a stream. She’d known it was here but had never walked far enough to see it. The water looked fairly deep and continued further than she could see in either direction. They weren’t that far from the coast - it wasn’t impossible this water led out into the sea. How she wished she could’ve taken him to the sea. All the places she could have taken him! Blackpool in the summer. Up to York on the weekends where her sister lived. Down south when he was a bit older. Maybe he would have been brainy, went to uni, the first in the family, her smiling in his graduation photos. Or maybe a handyman, travelling about in a van, coming round to fix leaks in her house. Or maybe he’d be just like his father, he had the features so maybe the personality too, and he would have a dumb girl who loved him and would do anything he wanted, and it would be a cycle going on forever and ever.
She reached the stream, coming to stand on a grass patch a few paces from the water. She eyed the floor for rocks, anything heavy, but there was nothing. This wasn’t the wilderness, why would he expect there to be rocks here anyway?
She would drown him, she knew it right away.
She stepped toward the water, looking down at Elijah through the whole journey. His breath was slower and heavier now and was visible with cold, but she had no more layers to wrap him in. The cold would cause him to wail and she didn’t want to go through that again. She lay him in the grass and walked over to the water, crouched and looked in. The current was strong. The clouds had shifted and the moon was partly visible now and in the light she could see her reflection in the water, how sickly she looked, how pale, bags under her eyes like she’d never seen before - and the stars behind her. Elijah must have had a good view of them since the clouds first moved - how lovely, she thought.
She made a final check to make sure they were alone. There was a wooden bridge not far from her, tattered but walkable, leading over the stream, and on the other side was a landscape that mirrorer the one where she stood, where the trees grew in density until total darkness. She saw no one, heard no noise besides the odd cooing of birds, saw no light besides the stars and moon. The gleam of the stars provided the only colour to her retina. She hugged herself tightly in attempt to warm up. Which brought her thoughts to Elijah and how cold he must be and she ran back to him. He began to cry upon catching sight of her, maybe only now realising, again, the cold. It would be better for him to get it done now, more fair to him.
She picked him up and spoke in soft tones on the way to the water. She told him it would be okay, the pain wouldn’t last long, that she loved him, that she would remember him forever, her firstborn. She came to be kneeling by the water with Elijah held out; all that was needed now was to will herself to do it.
Thoughts rushed at her, booming in her ears like gongs, just like she’d knew they would. She would always be a murderer from this moment on. Always a child killer. That mark would never be erased. She would wish for time to be turned back but it would only flow on ceaselessly. Thinking would only stop her: act, don’t think. She pressed her hands towards the water.
She screamed and recoiled back. The water was icily cold - worse than she’d expected. Elijah cried more and she placed him down while she wiped her hands on her coat. The top of her fingers felt numb. But she fought the temptation to curse or whimper and stayed silent. He had said to her that, if there was nothing else, she could smother it, the baby, using her hands or her coat, or even a dumbed plastic bag if she saw one. She took off her coat. Underneath was only a thin jumper and a tanktop and she not only felt colder now but more exposed. Like the trees were watching her, staring through her body, judging every movement.
Elijah cried hysterically and didn’t calm when she approached. She made a final look around, hoping for that sign that would guide her, but there was only silence, and the image of him waiting at home, waiting to get annoyed at her for whatever had irritated him tonight.
She pressed the coat down quick onto its face, its nose. She felt only a minor strain - it wasn’t strong enough to push back. She held down tight, feeling wrong all over.
She stopped and chucked the coat aside and collapsed to her knees and threw up. A thin string of bile fled from her mouth. She cried when she’d finished being sick, her hands around her head, her vision spinning. Sweat all over her - feeling clammy now.
She looked back over at Elijah, who was still crying. She couldn’t kill him, she knew this for certain now. But she couldn’t take him back to the house, that was equally as impossible. They could take the car, his car, steal it, run it until the gas was all out, then pull off the road somewhere and they’d sleep in the car during nights. But he’d likely try to find them if she took the car. The bastard would probably phone the police. She could knock on a door, leave Elijah on the steps, run before they came out, like they do in the movies. That way she’d never know how her boy turned out, he’d always be a possibility, and on the loneliest nights she could dream up the life he’d be living and the people he was meeting and that way he could be anywhere doing anything. But where would she leave him? It couldn’t be too close, or his father might spot him out and about, and then she’d get it; but she didn’t have the energy to go far.
She wrapped Elijah up in the coat, curling it beneath him like a little hamper. And she took off the jumper and put it around his front. It would be enough to keep him warm. She walked to the stream and placed the bundle in for a few seconds then lifted it back out. Then she felt behind Elijah to see if his bottom half was wet. It wasn’t. The coat would be enough protection.
She kissed his forehead and told him she loved him, then again, and again, and kept saying until her throat felt too choked to continue. He had settled. His eyes were half shut as if ready to drift into sleep. And she lay the bundle in the water and he floated away and she was left with no cries only silence and he will float on past the towns and villages through the nighttime air and the coat will keep him warm and the bobbing of the water will rock him as if he was back on his chair and soon he’ll fall asleep and dream of things that make him happy and he’ll sail out through the docks into the sea the water carrying him like Moses down the river and the next morning while the sky is still a purgatorial grey the men of a small fishing boat will notice him being carried by the waves and they’ll rescue him and the hole crew will be astonished to find a little baby boy out at sea and they will all be charmed by the boy who giggles a lot but also cries painfully which makes the men feel protective of him and the captain a good man but a troubled man who himself once lost a son his only son to disease years before will take the baby home to his wife later that evening and they’ll phone the council who’ll put a bit in all the newspapers saying boy found at sea with a photo and a few weeks will go by and no one will have come forward to claim the bairn as their own and the fisherman and his wife will decide to keep him and raise him as their own and the look on the wife’s face when the fisherman says so will be warm enough to melt ice and since they will have no way to know the baby’s birthname they’ll get in the habit of calling him Eddie little baby Eddie named after the fisherman’s father Edward and they’ll have him christened with that name and the two them’ll have enough money to buy a crib and lots of colourful fluffy toys and the three of them will go for walks in the park on Sundays and as the boy grows older he’ll go out on the boat with his dad and learn to fish and his dad will tell him the boat will be his one day if he wants it and the boy will like this idea but he’ll be too caught up in his own interests to commit to it because he’ll want to be a scientist and he’ll collect sea shells and anything he can find in the woods and on the beach because the house won’t be far from the beach and he’ll keep it all under his bed and he’ll do well in school but he’ll be naughty sometimes and one day him and his friends will be found by the teachers drinking alcohol at the back of the bicycle shelter and they’ll all get detention but this will just be a rough patch and he’ll stick with his studies through all of it imagining himself doing experiments with a white lab coat on when he’s older and when he turns 18 his parents will tell him the truth that he isn’t their own that they found him wrapped up floating in the sea but they’ll always love him like their own and would do anything for him and his mother will be the one to tell him because his father will be too afraid fearing the boy will leave once he finds out the news and at first the boy will go to his room and cry feeling like his whole world has crumbled but after a few hours he’ll come downstairs and won’t be crying anymore and he’ll tell his parents he’s grateful they told him the truth and he’ll say he loves them and considers them his true parents and he’s not interested in who his birth parents are and his life will be mostly unchanged by the revelation and he’ll get back to his studies and on one happy sunny summer day he’ll get accepted into university and his mother will be the one to open the letter and tell him the news and they’ll all drink wine that night in celebration because he’ll be old enough then and