Introduction

In this psychological thriller with supernatural overtones, a young couple, Conrad and Joanna Harrison, attempt to save their marriage by starting anew in a rural turn-of-the-century former birthing house. One day when Jo is away at work, the former owner bequeaths a photo album that “belongs to the house.” Thumbing through these antique photos of miserable midwives and pregnant girls in their nineteenth-century dresses, Conrad is chilled to the bone: staring back at him with a countenance of rage is his own wife… Thus begins a story of possession, sexual obsession and, ultimately murder, as a centuries-old crime is reenacted in the present, with devastating consequences.

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Excerpt

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 was soft and his excitement ratcheted up another notch.
“-not ready,” she squeaked, rolling away.
Shit. Might not have been sleeping before, but was now. Snoring too.
Weird, he thought. Had she done this before? With the eyes open and the
talking?
Should he let her sleep or try one more time?
Yes . . . no. He kissed her goodnight and rolled to his back, allowing the
fan to push warm summer air over his fading, obedient hard-on. His mind
dropped into that lower gear, the one that is not yet sleep but somehow dreaming
already.
In the half-dream he was in the house, beside her, finding the wetness and
sliding in not for the first time but as if they had been moving this way for
minutes or an hour. He was all corded muscle and arched away, feeling her soak
him in her own undulations. The movement was soothing, almost non-sexual,
like being rocked in a crib.
Her grip on him strengthened and clenched, pushing back with legs and
ass, drawing his ejaculate out in a sudden burst that ended too quickly, leaving
him weak and sleepy all over again.
Drifting . . .
Until the dream, the same one or some new post-coital version, was split
by the sound of crying. His body twitched itself awake, and he knew these were
not Jo’s tears. This was the noise a newborn makes after sucking in its first
violent breath as it enters this violent world. It was a sound that had skipped
mewling and launched straight into wailing, and it was coming from behind a
wall or far away.
Faintly, under the baby’s hacking shriek, there arose another sound. This
one did sound like a woman, and he imagined the infant’s mother, or the
midwife, perhaps. This older cry in the dark was a trailing scream, as if
something was pulling her away from her child and down a long corridor that
narrowed to nothing.
Panicked, he rolled over to shake Jo—why hasn’t she woken up and
grabbed me?—and felt the cool stirring of air as she lifted off the bed. He could
see only blackness, and with the drone of the fan he could not hear her feet
padding on the wood floor. A flash of her silhouette in the doorway left a retinal
echo, but the room was too dark to grasp any details. If he saw her at all, she was
gone now.
To the bathroom, he thought. There she goes, carrying my seed. The
semi-sleep-molestation and abrupt ending made him wince with guilt, but he did
not seek her out in the ensuing silence. Exhausted from the day of unpacking
(and tossed dream sex), Conrad decided the crying was but a fragment of the
dream, a lingering scene planted by her words.
“. . . the behbee, the behbee . . .”
The crying returned once, quieter and farther away, until like a passing
thunderstorm it faded to nothing.
He hovered on the edge of sleep.
Something’s wrong.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. She had not returned.
“Jo?”
She did not answer.
“Jo,” he said, louder. “Baby, you okay?”
His eyes adjusted to the dark. The dogs were standing at the master
bedroom door facing the hall, whining, tails stiff like the hairs on their shoulders.
Conrad flattened his body and counted to ten. It’s rational, he told himself.
When something so unexplainable and real (the dogs made it real) as a crying
baby in your childless home wakes you, it is normal to ignore it and go back to
sleep. So back he went, as deep as a man can go, until he forgot the all about the
crying sounds and her cold departure, her absolute absence.
Even when, in the morning, waking to a half-empty bed, he padded
downstairs and found her where he’d left her before he stepped out for a smoke at
dusk, sleeping on the sofa.
Alone.
Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Ransom
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Discussion Questions

In The Birthing House, Conrad purchases the house somewhat impulsively, after the recent death of his estranged father. Later, the reader learns more about Conrad's history with Holly and his own fatherhood that never was. How do you feel Conrad's fatherhood issues and fears of becoming a parent played into the events of the story?


At the beginning of the story, Conrad is attempting to heal his marriage by moving from Los Angeles to rural Wisconsin. He is, the author repeats, “a man who likes beginnings more than middles or endings.” Do you think Conrad's attempt to have a fresh start is logical? Discuss new beginnings and whether changing our environment can help our relationships, how we think of ourselves, and our role in the world.


The Birthing House contains several references to the mating rituals of animals-the Boelen's pythons and the phenomenon known as parthenogenesis, the film March of the Penguins, and Conrad's adoption of the dogs, Luther and Alice. What symbolism and parallels do you think the author is implying about the mating rituals of human beings? What role does Jo and Conrad's temporary separation play in the story and the later consequences? Do you feel Nadia's close proximity to the birthing house influences Conrad's temptation and desire to be a father? Discuss how people in real life sometimes exhibit “wildlife rituals,” mating or otherwise.


As a man who lost his father and suspects his wife of infidelity, Conrad may be a sympathetic character. But as he becomes more haunted by his past and the house itself, and longs for Nadia, his actions become difficult to forgive. Did you find Conrad a sympathetic character, a victim, or a willing participant in evil deeds? At what point, if any, in the story did you feel he crossed the line from “good guy” to “bad guy”?


The Birthing House deals with the desire to be a father and also contains some sexual passages. With regard to male sexuality in particular, discuss the line between love and lust. How do men and women differ in their desires and biological drives? Where does the need to procreate end and lust begin? How are men and women different in this capacity?


Alma, the ghost who haunts the birthing house, is a distinct character who eventually reveals her history of suffering to Conrad. But Alma also bears a strong resemblance to Conrad's wife, Joanna. Why do you think the author chose to present Alma in the guise of Jo? Is Alma a figment of Conrad's imagination or a separate entity? Do you think her resemblance to Jo a coincidence, or was Alma using Jo's likeness to communicate something more to Conrad?


Part of the mystery of The Birthing House is the question of whether Conrad is losing his mind or if the house really is haunted. Do you feel like this part of the mystery was resolved completely? Do you believe in ghosts? If so, do you believe they are products of our environment, our minds, or a little of both?


What did you find most frightening in The Birthing House? The paranormal and psychological haunting elements, or Conrad's real-life relationship choices? Do you see parallels in the tension created by Conrad's arguments with his wife, Jo, and the manifestations of the ghost? Discuss how Conrad's inner turmoil may have fueled the haunting and “brought Alma to life.”


Have you ever seen a ghost, or do you know someone who has? Have you ever had a supernatural or paranormal experience? Discuss your experiences and the events in your life at the time.

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