Or maybe the question she needed to answer was: Was she crazy for even thinking any of this was even remotely plausible? As much as he loved her, Nathan would look at her askance if she told him everything, and she wouldn’t blame him one bit. How did you react when your loved one tells you they heard the voice of a dear friend who may or may not have just died at that exact same moment all the way across town?

  You’d think they were losing their mind.

  I would.

  Nathan didn’t eat when he came home. He’d already had lunch, then dinner with Carl. He was just tired. Beth let him shower and climb into bed, and saved all the questions she had for tomorrow. Or the day after that, if Nathan was still overwhelmed. Right now, they had to look out for Carl. Dany would have wanted that.

  The day had been a long one for Nathan, but it had gone relatively quick for Beth. The talk with Terri had done wonders for both their spirits. The hot shower, while Nathan snored in the bedroom, was better. Afterward, she stood in front of the sink mirror and looked at her protruding belly. Her son was coming. Two months from now. Perhaps earlier, like his father had been. Nathan was born two weeks early, according to his mother.

  Beth rubbed her belly. She had started showing right away, mostly because she’d always been a relatively thin woman throughout her life. Regular exercising during the early months of the pregnancy had helped. God, did she miss those mornings. There was nothing in this world that could stop her from going right back to her pattern once the boy was out of her.

  “Can’t wait for you to squirt out and me and your dad show you the world, kiddo.”

  They still hadn’t given the child a name yet. Nathan already had his choice, of course. That was, until he changed his mind. Then changed it again. Just like the writer that he was, her husband always came up with new ideas even when it came to baby names depending on his mood that day.

  She smiled. Maybe it was the loss of Dany, but she had come to appreciate the being growing inside her more than ever in the last twenty-four hours. She had always thought life was precious but had never felt so certain until now. She was only sad Dany would never meet her child.

  Stop it. Focus on the happiness. Dany would want that.

  There was a lot to be happy about, even if the sadness kept creeping in and trying to ruin everything.

  She wrapped the towel around her body, but trying to get all of it over the big belly was a chore. She struggled with keeping everything in place and reminded herself to get new towels. Bigger ones, this time⁠—

  Noises. Coming from the bedroom.

  Nathan?

  She opened the door. After the events of last night, a thousand bad scenarios flashed across her mind’s eye.

  Nathan was where she’d last seen him, on the bed, but he wasn’t alone. There was a figure writhing on top of him. A woman, her slender frame silhouetted against the moonlight flooding the room from the opened balcony curtains. Her husband was moaning in ecstasy, his hands outstretched, fingers groping the breasts of the form grinding against him, the woman’s palms flat against his bare chest as she moved.

  “Nathan?”

  He didn’t hear or seem to notice her presence despite the fact she was standing there, barely five feet away, with the bright lights of the bathroom all around her. He could barely keep his eyes open. His mouth quivered uncontrollably, as if he were trying to talk, but the only sounds that escaped his lips were all-too-familiar moans of pleasure.

  The woman, too, didn’t acknowledge Beth’s presence. Long black hair, the individual strands seeming to glisten against the moonlight, draped over shoulders and covered parts of her naked, flawless skin. Her face was completely hidden in the shadows, preventing Beth from spying the woman who had violated the sanctity of her marriage. Sweat dripped from the adulteress’s forehead, the strain of raising herself off Nathan, only to bring herself down again moments later, taking great efforts from her.

  Over and over, and over.

  “Nathan, stop. Please stop.”

  But he didn’t, and neither did the woman on top of him. They continued to move against one another, her husband thrusting up into his lover at the same time she came down, the sight of his naked, sweat-covered buttocks like knives stabbing Beth in the heart.

  “Please. Please…”

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there and watched, her mouth partially opened, her mind trying in vain to understand what she was seeing.

  Nathan. Her Nathan. The love of her life.

  Having sex with another woman.

  Here. In their bedroom.

  On their bed.

  None of it made any sense, so it couldn’t be true. This was a mirage. An illusion. The result of a pregnant woman’s fevered imagination.

  She snapped her eyes shut and counted to five, blotting out every noise beyond the sound of numbers going from one to two to three…

  She opened her eyes, expecting the woman to disappear, for Nathan to be alone in bed snoring.

  It didn’t work.

  “Nathan.”

  He continued to moan, hands ravaging the woman’s breasts, fingers squeezing, while their bodies violently crashed against each other. Over and over.

  “Stop.”

  And over…

  “Please.”

  The woman finally turned her head to confront Beth. The shadow that had been covering it evaporated, as if afraid to touch her flesh any longer. The eyes that peered at Beth didn’t belong to anyone she knew. There was an incongruity to the features that defied the nude feminine body attached to it.

  Nathan, oblivious to the horrifically grotesque thing grinding on top of him, continued to grope at its breasts. His eyes snapped open and closed, as did his mouth, while sounds of pleasure continued to flood out of him. Beth couldn’t remember if she had ever made him produce those kinds of sounds.

  But it was the woman that captured Beth’s focus. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the hideous thing on top of her husband. It had all the traits of a woman until you got to the face. There was nothing at all womanly there.

  There was nothing human.

  The shadowed thing hissed and pulled itself off Nathan before lunging off the bed at Beth. She stumbled back reflexively until she bumped into the sink counter and fell to the floor on her butt, splashing water that had pooled there from the shower.

  Beth threw her arms over her face and closed her eyes. “No! Stop! Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt my child!”

  Icy cold fingers grabbed her wrists and tried to pry them away from her face, to expose her to the sight of the unholy thing that had claimed her husband. Beth fought them, but they were stronger. So, so much stronger. She fought anyway, unwilling to see the inhuman face hovering over her up close.

  “Please don’t hurt my child! Please!”

  She kicked out as she resisted the hands gripping her wrists like machine pliers, easing them away from her eyes inch by inch. She managed to strike something with one foot and heard a loud grunt of pain. Surprised pain.

  “Beth! Stop it! Stop it!”

  The voice sounded human. Male. Was it--?

  No!

  It was a trick. It wasn’t anyone she knew. It was the creature. The inhuman thing that had seduced her husband. It was manipulating her by taking the voice of⁠—

  “Beth!”

  Her arms were yanked away from her face, and she opened her eyes and stared into Nathan’s own eyes, his face barely a few inches from hers. He was breathing hard, sweat dripping down his temple, and it was his hands that were holding her wrists to the sides.

  “Nate…?”

  He smiled at her, even though it clearly took a lot out of him. “It’s just me, baby. It’s just me.”

  She leaned to one side to peer past him and into the bedroom. An empty bed, with no one on it. There were no signs of the woman from earlier. Where had she gone?

  She looked back at Nathan. “Where is she?”

  He blinked confusingly at her. “Who?”

  “Her.”

  “Beth, who are you talking⁠—”

  “Her!” she shouted. “The woman you were fucking!”

  Nathan let go of her wrists and stumbled to his feet before stepping back and almost entirely out of the bathroom door. He spun to look behind him, searching, before turning back to her. “Baby, there’s no one here but us.”

  She stared up at him, then past him again. She’d seen it. The woman with the inhuman face. She (It?) had been on top of Nathan, grinding away on him. So why was Nathan still wearing his pajamas and night shirt? When did he have time to put those back on?

  Nathan must have seen the utterly crazed look on her face—and she felt herself being just as crazed, too—because he crouched back down and reached a hesitant hand toward her. “Honey, there’s no one here. I promise. It’s just us. Just us.”

  “Just us?”

  He nodded. “Just us.”

  “But I saw…”

  He shook his head. “There’s no one. It’s just us. I promise, baby. It’s just us here, right now.”

  She looked past him again. He was right. There was no one there.

  But she’d seen them on the bed. She’d seen the other woman on top of him.

  Hadn’t she?

  “I love you, Elizabeth,” Nathan whispered softly, patiently, as he put his arms around her.

  Of course he loved her. And of course he hadn’t been cheating with another woman. One that wasn’t even a woman. How could she possibly have thought he would do such a thing? This was Nathan. Her Nathan.

  She let him embrace her and cried streams of tears against his chest. What the hell was wrong with her? Was she losing her mind? First she thought she was hearing Dany’s voice last night, and now this, with that…creature.

  God help me, I think I’m going crazy.

  She suddenly pulled away and, still choking on tears, looked him deep in the eyes. “You didn’t cheat on me?”

  He all but laughed. “Of course not. I’d never cheat on you. You know that.”

  “I do…”

  “So why do you think I did?”

  I saw a woman on top of you, but she didn’t have a human face.

  But she said out loud, “Please don’t cheat on me, Nate. Please don’t ever cheat on me.”

  “You’re nuts,” he said, and embraced her again, the two of them sitting on the wet floor of the bathroom like unhygienic children. “I’d never cheat on you, dummy. Never, ever, ever. You get that through your thick head, okay?”

  “Yes…”

  “I said, Okay?” he demanded.

  She nodded, not that he could see her since his head was on her shoulder looking at the sink behind her. “Okay.”

  He rubbed her back, his hold on her lessening a bit so as not to hurt her. “You’re damn right. What’s gotten into you? You must be nuts to think I could do something like that to you.”

  Nuts? she thought, looking through the open bathroom door at the bedroom on the other side.

  Maybe she was just that, because what else would explain what she had seen, and was seeing, now?

  The balcony curtains had been pulled all the way to the sides, revealing the balcony under the moonlight. She glimpsed, if just for a brief heartbeat, what appeared to be some kind of shadowed form gliding from one end of the balcony to the other, before disappearing completely.

  It was tall and slender, and looked very much like a woman’s naked body.

  eleven

  . . .

  Nathan thought she was crazy. Beth didn’t need him to say it out loud, she could see it on his face. He was easy to read and had always been, especially when it came to her. Now, with the added worry of the child in her stomach, Nathan’s concern couldn’t have been more obvious if he had a neon sign above his head. Maybe he had every right to be worried. She was, after all, showing signs of…what?

  I’m losing it. God, I’m losing it.

  Beth didn’t have lunacy in her family history. Her parents were as normal as every other parent; so were her siblings, and family on both her parental sides. There was nothing for her to reach for to explain why she was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there.

  That wasn’t Dany’s voice speaking to her two nights ago, because Dany was at Chong Hua Hospital dying. And that wasn’t an inhuman creature grinding away on top of her husband last night, because there hadn’t been anyone in the bedroom.

  It was all in her head.

  Which makes me what? Delusional?

  She didn’t want to think about it, and certainly didn’t want to talk about it. Nathan seemed to recognize that and didn’t bring last night up as they drove through the maddening Cebu City traffic. A sea of white taxis—most of them Toyota Vios—and sub-200cc motorbikes greeted them at every stretch of road. If she took the time to turn on Google Maps, she would see only red lines.

  They were headed to Carl’s. It used to be Carl’s and Dany’s, but it was just Carl’s now. From what Nathan told her, the poor guy was distraught and barely eating. Nathan had had to force him to eat yesterday, and even then he’d just mostly picked at his food. Which was why Beth had packed a solid lunch—chicken adobo and more lechon kawali—to coerce him into eating. Like most Westerners in the Philippines, Carl had developed a love for adobo and kawali.

  This was the first time Beth would see Carl since Dany’s passing. They hadn’t even scheduled her funeral yet. Carl was still waiting for Dany’s family to fly over from Baguio, a city in the north. Dany’s family were not rich, and taking time off work to attend her funeral would take some effort.

  She was thinking about that upcoming funeral when Beth realized she still didn’t know how her friend had died. She turned to look at Nathan, sitting silently behind the wheel waiting for the cars ahead of them to start moving. They hadn’t for the last two minutes.

  “Nate…”

  He turned to look at her with a smile. It wasn’t the normal Nathan smile and it wasn’t even close to the trademark Nathan grin. She could read the unasked questions on his face, most—if not all—of them about last night. “Hmm?”

  “You never told me how Dany died.”

  “Oh. I thought I did.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Oh,” he said again. Then, looking back out the front windshield at the parked cars, “They said it was cardiac arrest.”

  “It was her heart?”

  “Yeah. She was in her hospital bed, and by the time the nurses ran in, she was already gone. They tried to revive her but it didn’t do any good.”

  Beth stared at her husband for a moment, trying to understand what he was telling her. She knew all about cardiac arrests. They were usually caused by heart attacks and could hit at any moment. Usually it happened to people with poor lifestyles, smokers, those with high blood pressure, and unhealthy diets, among just a few of the causes. But they rarely happened to people like Dany, who had very little vices unless you considered “too much” rice and coffee to be vices. She was probably the fittest Filipina Beth had met since moving here, and spent three days a week at the gym for at least an hour each time. The woman was a health nut and was the only reason Carl didn’t drive everywhere.

  How did a woman like that have a heart attack while lying in her hospital bed?

  “Are you okay?” Nathan was asking her. She realized she hadn’t spoken in a while and was just staring blankly out the window at the congestion. “Honey? What’s on your mind?”

  “People like Dany don’t get heart attacks, Nate.”

  He shrugged. “There are no rules to these things, honey. It can happen to anyone. Even people like Dany.”

  “But they usually don’t.”

  “I understand, but that doesn’t mean it can’t.”

  She didn’t answer, probably he was right. Healthy people died from sudden cardiac arrest too. It wasn’t as common, or as likely, but it did happen. She’d heard stories about healthy athletes and celebrities whose hearts just gave up without warning. They were far and few, but they did happen.

  And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

  “They asked Carl if he wanted to do a more invasive autopsy,” Nate was saying. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Apparently if you have the money to pay for it, just about anything is possible.”

  It’s the Philippines, Beth thought. It was something Dany often said to her when she couldn’t wrap her mind around how this or that occurred.

  “Don’t fight it,” her friend would say with just the ghost of a grin. “Us Filipinos like to do just about everything differently from the rest of the world. It’s our thing, you know.”

  They’d had a good laugh over that. No one could put her country in such a simple perspective quite the way Dany could. She would know, having been born here, left, then coming back voluntarily even though she already had dual citizenship. To hear Dany tell it, her US passport was just to help her travel abroad easier.

  Nate was saying something, but she hadn’t heard it.

  Beth turned to look at him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “Carl,” Nate said. “He’s pissed, and rightly so. He paid a lot of money to take her there, and their staff failed spectacularly He’s thinking about suing them, but he hasn’t decided yet. Civil lawsuits are a crapshoot over here. The rules are…so damn malleable.”

  They didn’t say anything for a while, and the two of them sat still along with the rest of the world outside their windows. The only noise were car engines, the occasional motorbike, and the AC blasting through the vents.

  “Damn, I should have packed our comforters for the ride,” Nate said. “We’re gonna be here awhile.”

  It’s the Philippines, she thought again, remembering Dany. Her friend had endless horror stories about the traffic in Manila, where she used to live. According to her, Cebu City driving was a model of efficiency by comparison.

  A loud banging snapped her out of her thoughts. It was so loud that it made Beth jerk back and her head struck the headrest above her seat.

 

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