For the longest time, my husband and I have wanted a baby. When things did not go as smoothly as we expected, it put quite the strain on our marriage. My husband was obsessed with passing on the family name, having an heir to what he called his business empire. It meant everything to him, and I wanted a child to love.
Eventually, we decided to go with in vitro fertilization, better known as IVF. We met with a gynecologist, a reproductive endocrinologist specifically, Dr. Frost. He was a kind, patient, sympathetic man with a good sense of humor.
And finally, after 2 failed attempts, I was pregnant at last. My husband and I were overjoyed and celebrated, we talked like we used to all the time back when we first got married. I was the happiest I had been in a long, long time.
After 19 weeks, we had an appointment for an ultrasound. When we walked into the clinic there was a black man standing near the door, wearing all black and sunglasses. I asked the receptionist who this man was, she explained his name was Heinrich and that he was part of the security team.
After the ultrasound was done, Dr. Frost looked at us with a smile on his face. “Well Mr. and Mrs. Smith, congratulations, you are going to have a perfectly healthy daughter.” I turned to my husband beaming with happiness, but his face was hard as stone. “Thank you, dr. Frost. We’ll be leaving now.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked him once back in the car.
“We’ll talk at home” he said, as he gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white.
As soon as we got through the door he went straight for his bottle of scotch, poured himself a glass and downed it in one go.
“Honey, what is wro-” I tried to ask
“A daughter, a daughter” he said, chuckling.
He poured another glass of scotch.
“You, you dangle the prospect of a legacy in front of me, a son to take over the business, to carry on the name, but no, after years of failing to live up to your duty, you snuff out my last hope.” He said as he finished his scotch and approached. “If you can’t give me a son, what good are you?” Tears formed in my eyes. “You… are broken.”
I left the house and stayed at my sister’s place for the next few weeks. About two weeks before my due date, Dr. Frost called to schedule an ultrasound, because of my previous trouble getting pregnant he wanted to see how everything was “as it should be”. They had a spot open later that day.
The clinic was basically deserted, only Heinrich was sitting in the waiting room.
“Afternoon Mrs. Smith.” He said with a deep booming voice. I nodded as I walked past him into the exam room. “Nothing to worry about, this is just a routine ultrasound, can’t be to save now can we?” Dr. Frost said in his comforting, soothing yet upbeat voice. For the first time since the confrontation with my husband, I felt cared about.
My feeling of safety and security did not last long. I saw the feed from the ultrasound, and my blood ran cold. My baby had a stinger near her tailbone, feelers atop her head, and pincers beside her mouth. Dr. Frost looked at me, he noticed my horrified expression and turned the screen away from my view. “She looks perfectly healthy, wouldn’t you agree Mrs. Smith?” He said with his usual warm smile but it was perfectly clear what he wanted to hear. “P-perfectly normal.” I said fearing for my life.
“Very well Mrs. Smith, be careful driving home now.”
I rushed out of the building and drove to our home to see my husband. We had not spoken since that one fateful day.
“An insect?” My husband said incredulously.
“You really have some nerve, for years you’ve failed to give me a child, then when you do, you still rob me of my legacy, and now you come here to mock me?!”
I noticed the numerous empty bottles of scotch on the table we always used to have dinner at.
He turned around and walked towards the fireplace and grabbed the fireplace poker, and with a rapid pace approached me lifting his arm and getting ready to strike me. He paused as blood pooled on the floor between my legs.
I felt pain like never before and looked at my husband in desperation. He got ready to strike once again when suddenly a black reddish centipede wrapped around his head so tightly, that it burst open and blood, bone, and brains splattered over me and the walls.
His lifeless body dropped to the floor and behind him stood Dr. Frost, his jaw unhinged and the centipede retracted back into his mouth. I felt faint and the room spun around me and I fell backward. The last thing I remember before passing out was someone unexpectedly catching me, looking up I saw Heinrich.
While unconscious, I saw a vision of an incomprehensibly large monstrosity among the stars, dwarfing them, with a body vaguely like a centipede with a scorpion-like stinger and spider-like appendages beneath its head. Besides it were more abominations not of this world though smaller, seemingly subservient to the centipede-like creature, among them a bone-white spider with a humanoid face with a fell stinger, and a massive black bipedal beetle with more arms than I could comprehend and a horn lined with countless eyes.
A single word I heard over and over again, one that I will never forget: Shavar.
When I came too, I was in a hospital bed in my living room. Flies were buzzing all around my home. Dr. Frost was proudly looking at the floor at my baby crawling around, feasting on the corpse of my husband. There was barely anything left. When she finished eating his remains, Dr. Frost picked her up and cradled her. “That’s my girl,” he said. He then looked at me. “Oh yes, I have been meddling and cultivating your bloodline for centuries, and now finally, all my hard work has come to fruition. You are the Eve to my Adam.” He said smiling. I was at a loss for words, barely able to process what was happening around me.
Heinrich walked in with a police officer. “Now do not worry Mrs. Smith, everything will be taken care of. There won’t be any, let’s say legal, problems. Isn’t that right, sheriff McGill?” He nodded.
He then walked off with my, or I suppose our child. As he and Heinrich left that word came back to mind. “Shavar” I said. Nobody moved, nobody dared to make a sound. “Frost” then turned around. “Yes, I do suppose we are on a first-name basis, aren’t we, Lilith?”
And with that, he disappeared, officially my husband went missing while hiking in the woods. My medical records say I miscarried. The visions still haunt me, I know things like Frost, or Shavar, are out there. And they are ancient, intelligent beyond our understanding, and plentiful.