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The Birthing House - Hardcover

Ransom, Christopher

 
9780312385842: The Birthing House
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312385846 ISBN 13: 9780312385842
Verlag: St Martins Pr, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

It was expecting them.

Conrad and Joanna Harrison, a young couple from Los Angeles, attempt to save their marriage by leaving the pressures of the city to start anew in a quiet, rural setting. They buy a Victorian mansion that once served as a haven for unwed mothers, called a birthing house. One day when Joanna is away, the previous owner visits Conrad to bequeath a vital piece of the house’s historic heritage, a photo album that he claims “belongs to the house.” Thumbing through the old, sepia-colored photographs of midwives and fearful, unhappily pregnant girls in their starched, nineteenth-century dresses, Conrad is suddenly chilled to the bone: staring back at him with a countenance of hatred and rage is the image of his own wife….

Thus begins a story of possession, sexual obsession, and, ultimately, murder, as a centuries-old crime is reenacted in the present, turning Conrad and Joanna’s American dream into a relentless nightmare.

An extraordinary marriage of supernatural thrills and exquisite psychological suspense, The Birthing House marks the debut of a writer whose first novel is a terrifying tour de force.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Ransom is a native of Boulder, Colorado, who has lived in New York and Los Angeles. He now resides with his wife and three rescued dogs in a 142-year-old former birthing house in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

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The Birthing House

By Christopher Ransom

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2009 Christopher Ransom
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312385842
They were in the house a week before it came for him.
Joanna Harrison was dozing on the couch in the TV room while her
husband stood on the deck, breathing through a sweet clove cigarette that burned
his throat and floated a candy cloud above his empty thoughts. The cigarette was
the kind found on the back covers of men’s magazines, the smoke of wannabes.
What Conrad wanted to be this night was content, and, for a few more minutes of
this vanishing sunset hour, he was.
Content equally with himself and his lot: a full acre of sloping lawn,
century-old maple and black walnut trees, and a garden as large as a swimming
pool, its aged gray gate roped with grape vines. Raspberry and clover grew thick
in the shade of the shaggy pines still moist with the day’s sweet rain.
He heard running water and looked through the window into the kitchen.
Her blurry, sleepy-slouched shape hovered for a moment, probably filling a glass
to take to bed. He waved to her. She either did not see him or was too tired to
wave back. She turned away and faded back into the house.
He wanted to follow her, but he waited. Let her brush and floss, finish
with a shot of the orange Listerine before she turned back the freshly laundered
Egyptian cotton. You can’t rush these things. These are delicate times. Eyes
closed, he could almost see her stretched out in one of her tanktinis and cotton
boy-cut underwear, a big girl-woman reading another marketing book he always
said were made for people on planes. She must be happy here. Otherwise, she
would be cleaning and planning and avoiding bedtime.
Summer had arrived early. The house was muggy. He wondered if she
would be warm enough to go without covers, but cool enough to allow his touch.
He had been shocked to discover that he wanted her more now. He was
still madder than hell about the entire stupid scene with That Fucker Jake and all
its implications, its mysteries. But he knew the balance of things and how he’d
not been holding up his share of them was half the problem. Maybe more than
half. She’d almost slipped away. Even before that nasty little homecoming it had
been months, and since the fresh start (that was how he thought of it, but never
named it as such, not aloud) he’d been watching for signs. If Luther and Alice
were in their crates, that was one sign. If she had showered that was yet another,
though never a binding one. None of the signs were binding, which added
suspense to the marriage and kept his hopes in a perpetual swing from boyish
curiosity on one side to blood-stewing resentment on the other.
He walked up the deck steps to the wooden walkway, into the mudroom.
He climbed stairs (the servants’ stairs off the kitchen, not the front stairs with the
black maple banister, which for some reason he had been avoiding since the
move) and felt the weight of the day in his bones.
By the time he finished brushing his teeth he was tired the way only people
who have unpacked ninety percent of their possessions in a single day can be
tired. His mind was empty, his muscles what his mom said his father used to call
labor-fucked, the old man’s way of suggesting that work is its own reward.
I’m sorry, Dad-
Work. He knew his hands still worked for her. He thought she liked his
hands better than just about every other part of him. He no longer relied on his
appearance as the catalyst, didn’t know many men married more than a few years
who did. He knew he wasn’t a Jake. At thirty he was what divorced female
bartenders had from time to time called cute, no longer handsome, if he ever was.
He felt remarkably average. He had acquired a belly, but the move had already
burned that down from a 36 to a 34. With the yard work he’d be down to a 32—
his high school Levi’s size—by the end of June. Jo always said she liked his laugh
lines, the spokes radiating from what his mother used to call his wily eyes. Wily
used to be enough, but now he was just grateful for a second chance. He could
live with average—so long as he could still seduce her.
Conrad wound his way through the back hall, making the S-turn through
the library, into the front hallway. The creaking floorboards were a new sound,
allowing him to birth one final clear thought for the day.
This is a healing place. This is home.
Conrad waded into the moonlight pooling on the new queen-sized bed—
another purchase, this one more deserved—he’d made without her input. The
ceiling fan was whirring, the dogs were curled into their crates on the floor, and
Jo was waiting for him on top of the new sheets. She was without a top, wearing
only loose fitting boxers (his), which were somehow better than if she were
naked. That she had gone halfway without prematurely forfeiting the under
garment was a gesture that made him feel understood. The arc of her hips rose
off the bed like the fender of a street rod and his blood awakened.
With his blood, his hopes.
No longer content, Conrad stretched out, not caring what funny tent shape
his penis made as it unfolded like a miniature welcome banner. He rolled to one
side, facing her. She smelled of earth and lavender and something otherwise
herbal—new scents for her in this new place. Her belly was nearly flat except for
the smallest of rolls just above the waistband, and he loved this, too. He called it
her little chile relleno and she would slap him, but it didn’t bother her, not really.
Her hips were womanly wide, but with her height she remained sleek, especially
when prone, like now. She stood a little over six feet to his five-nine. His fingers
grazed her fine brown navel hairs. Her eyes gleamed under heavy lids, glassy and
black as mountain ponds at midnight.
It was a beginning, and he was a man who loved beginnings more than
middles or endings.
“Come,” Jo said. Or maybe Con, half of his name.
“Hm?”
“. . . not ready.”
“Not what?” His hand found the elastic rim of her waistband, then moved
into the open front of his boxer shorts on her.
“. . . about behbee,” she murmured.
“What, Baby?”
Not baby. Uppercase, Baby. A nickname he used.
“. . . owin me the behbee…be-ah-eye,” she mumbled, which sounded like
was going to be all right.
“Of course,” he said, like it was his idea too. He had no idea.
“. . . bee woul’ go a father.”
We should go farther.
He pushed one, then two fingers lower to her mound, but her legs were
crossed and he swerved off course, touching only her thigh. Just her thigh, but
soft...

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Verlag
St Martins Pr
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312385846
ISBN 13 
9780312385842
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
308
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Verantwortliche Person
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