Baby Talk Read online

  Baby Talk

  Mike Wells

  Baby Talk

  Book 1

  by

  Mike Wells

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2011 Mike Wells

  http://www.mikewellsbooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Praise for Mike Wells’ Baby Talk

  5 STARS! “Baby Talk" is a hilarious and frightening story of a young couple with an extraordinary newborn. Mike Wells once again incorporates pieces of life that every reader can relate to, and spins a thick web of excitement around it. A must-read for anyone who enjoys thrillers, or anyone who enjoys dark humor.”

  5 STARS! “This book just flows, pulled me into the story and kept me reading. Reminded me of one of Stephen King’s books like maybe Carrie or The Shining. The ending blew my mind!”

  5 STARS! “I’m a clinical psychologist and I found the notion of a baby who is aware that her father wanted her aborted, “out to get him,” etc fascinating and highly original. I love the “is Neal crazy or is this really happening”? aspect too, that kept me nailed to this. The ending was good and quite unexpected. Wells is a damn good writer!”

  5 STARS! “As a nanny, all I can say is this book rocks!!! You will not be sorry buying it!!!”

  5 STARS! “I have 3 kids what can I say? Baby Talk is an awesome read, wonderful characters, though I cannot say I liked any of them so much but they are very real people and act real. It was a tragedy actually but very well written and CREEPY, I have to say that! I’m going to be reading a lot more of this author’s books.”

  5 STARS! “Feeeed meeeee, Neeeeaaaal!” What a frickin nightmare! I wasn’t sure about laughing or crying this book just knocked me out, I do not know how this author thought up such a weird story. I would recommend this book especially if you have kids. If you don’t have kids yet you might not want to have any after reading it. :) ”

  5 STARS! “A genuine horror novel. Okay...here it is. It's pretty simple. I'm an author myself and I could NOT put 'Baby Talk' down. It's a Chiller! Surprise yourself with one of the most haunting, horrific, *not* for babies, DAMNED good read you'll indulge in for a very long while.”

  5 STARS! “This book creeped me out! Horror lovers, get it, get it, get it!!!!!!”

  5 STARS! “Hahahahaha I love Baby Natasha she’s awesome Neal gets what he deserves I will read this a few more times and my friends, too. lol”

  5 STARS! “Insightful and multilayered...I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the characters introduced in this book. The writing style is smooth and flowing. I forgot I was reading most of the time. Mike Wells is a highly skilled storyteller. Well worth the money.”

  Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.

  —Mark Twain

  PROLOGUE

  Neal Becker was standing on a building ledge, a baby in his arms, the wind blowing through his hair.

  Nineteen stories below, police cars and mobile news crew vans were surrounding the front of the hi-rise. A fire truck rolled up with a long extension ladder—all the rescue workers were running around like little bugs, looking up at him. Out in the dawn sky, a couple of choppers flew lazily back and forth, keeping their distance but ready to move in on command. Police radios crackled every now and then.

  Neal tried not to look down. Sometimes the gusts of wind were strong enough to make him teeter on the ledge. Mostly he just looked out at the rising sun, keeping baby Natasha pressed up against his chest. He thought she was asleep now.

  He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. Over a matter of a few days, his life had become a nightmare. The fact that he was causing the movement of all these big, expensive vehicles and all these important people was hard to fathom. He was almost sure he was on TV now—down below, he could see large cameras with zoom lenses aimed at him.

  He felt ashamed and humiliated. But also panic-stricken.

  He had no idea why he was up on his building, or what he really wanted.

  “How’s it going?” a voice said from the right.

  Neal turned his head. There was a skinny guy in a blue windbreaker leaning out the window. He gave a relaxed smile, then slung one jean-clad leg over the windowsill and straddled it. He was wearing Docksiders and olive-colored socks. There was a little headset on his right ear, a small microphone curving up to the corner of his mouth.

  “Nice view from up here,” he commented, leaning back against the window frame, gazing out at the sunrise. He might have been sitting on a log admiring a tranquil lake somewhere in the mountains.

  Neal stared out at the sun. It had turned a bright orange, some long, thin pink clouds stretching out on either side.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Becker? My name is Stan, by the way. Stan Saunders.” He paused. “May I call you Neal?”

  “There’s nothing you can do for m-me,” Neal said, a gust of wind buffeting him on the last word.

  Stan watched him for a long moment. “I’d really like to help you, if I can. Is there something you want me to get for you? Or your daughter?”

  Neal felt tears forming in his eyes.

  “There’s nothing I want,” he said, fighting to hold his composure.

  Neal heard a low grinding noise and glanced down—the fire truck was raising its ladder.

  “Tell them to put that ladder down!”

  One of the helicopters was moving closer.

  “Get that helicopter out of here!” Neal shouted, thrusting Natasha out over the edge. “I’ll drop her, I swear to God!”

  He could hear frightened shrieks from down below.

  “Back off,” Stan said calmly into a microphone, gesturing to the chopper. “And tell the firemen to lower the ladder.”

  Neal looked into little Natasha’s face. She was awake now, turning her head this way and that, but she didn’t seem to realize she was hanging over 19 stories of empty space. How could she? She was only a baby.

  “Mr. Becker, why don’t you come inside and we’ll talk for a few minutes.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “No. But I think you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don’t believe you really want to hurt your daughter. Do you?”

  Neal felt hot tears running down his face. Of course he didn’t want to hurt little Natasha. He loved her. She was his daughter.

  Natasha started crying.

  That sound caused a lot of commotion down below.

  Neal pulled her back in and hugged her to his chest. “Shhh.”

  “Neal, why don’t you hand her to me, so at least she’ll be safe.”

  He hesitated, looking down at all the people, all the cameras.

  “Come on, give her to me,” Stan said.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Neal could see Stan reaching out for her. They were only a few feet away.

  “I didn’t kill my mother-in-law!”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I’m here because I’m concerned about you and your little girl. Why don’t you just hand her to me?”

  Neal turned and looked at Stan. “Don’t you get it? She’s bad, she’s evil.”

  Stan looked confused. “Who’s evil?”

  “She is!” Neal said, thrusting the baby out again.

  Natasha cried louder.

  “Take her!” Neal suddenly shouted, offering her to Stan.

  As soon as Neal f
elt the baby being pulled from his hands, he squeezed his eyes shut.

  And he jumped.

  CHAPTER 1

  It all started one sunny April morning, when Neal was standing in the microscopic kitchen of his and Annie’s apartment, waiting for his coffee water to boil. Only a few minutes earlier, he had picked up baby Natasha from her crib and carried her into the kitchen. If it had been up to Neal, he would have been just as happy to let the infant stay where she was and continue to sleep. Annie had an obsessive fear of crib death and insisted that Natasha be watched at all times. She had gone across the street to buy some formula at the supermarket, but she did not leave until she personally witnessed Neal picking up the baby.

  He was standing near the stove, the baby cradled in his left arm, staring absently at the little bubbles that start to swirl and dance when water is close to its boiling point.

  Natasha made some small movement that caught his attention.

  Neal glanced down at her face. Her dark brown, reptilian-looking eyes opened suddenly. In fact, they almost snapped open—this was the only way Neal could describe it later.

  The baby stared at Neal with an eerie, almost angry expression, one that he had not witnessed before.

  Then, without any hesitation whatsoever, she spoke.

  It was as if she had been formulating the short but shocking sentence for some time and had merely been waiting for exactly the right moment to deliver it—a moment in which her young, inexperienced father was still half-asleep.

  “I looooove youuuuuuu,” the infant said.

  Neal was so taken aback that he almost lost his balance, as well as his grip on his daughter. Staring at her little face with a combination of fear and disbelief, his first impulse was to get the hell away from her. He half-set and half-dropped the child on the counter, then backed up against the kitchen wall, shivering.

  “My god,” he muttered in a tremulous whisper, Natasha’s words still whirling in his mind. This wasn’t normal, it couldn’t be. She was only five months old...that was impossible. Neal wondered if he could have imagined the entire incident.

  I love you.

  Near shuddered again, the words still reverberating in his mind. Her voice had been so strange and creaky-sounding, almost sarcastic. And the image! He could still see Natasha’s inexperienced, infantile mouth crudely twisting out the words. Something about it made his skin crawl.

  He gawked unblinkingly at the baby, unable to get a grip on himself. The hair on his arms was standing on end.

  But Natasha didn’t say anything more. The angry expression on her little face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  She lay on her back on the countertop where Neal had hastily deposited her, staring up into space, kicking and wiggling the way babies do. It was as if the entire episode never happened.

  When Neal heard Annie coming in the front door, he finally snapped out of his paralysis. He glanced in the direction of the living room, then quickly stepped over to the stove and turned off the burner. He wanted to pick up Natasha before Annie came into the kitchen, but he could hardly bring himself to look at the child, let alone touch her.

  As soon as Annie entered the room and saw Natasha, she gasped.

  “Don’t put the baby on the counter!” she snapped, scooping Natasha up into her arms. “What’s wong, sweetie?” she cooed in baby-talk. “Did Daddy leave ooo on the counter while Mommy went bye-bye?”

  Annie turned towards Neal, her black eyebrows furrowed together.

  “What’s the matter with you? She could have fallen on the floor!”

  “I...she...” was all Neal could manage to say. He ran his hand uncertainly through his sleep-corkscrewed hair, debating whether or not to tell Annie what had happened. But he decided against it—he was sure she wouldn’t believe him.

  He pulled a mug from the cupboard and prepared his instant coffee, then sat down in one of their flimsy, vinyl-covered dinette chairs. It squeaked as he did so.

  “Well, Neal?” Annie said. “I’m waiting for an explanation. Why did you leave her on the counter?”

  Neal did not answer.

  Annie made a growl in her throat. “You know better than that. She could fall on the floor and break her neck, or some other bones. Babies have extremely delicate bones, and even the smallest fall can result in a fracture—my books say so. If you’re not careful, she could easily break...”

  Neal gazed down at his cup, no longer listening to his 19 year old wife. Some of the instant coffee hadn’t dissolved. He watched the brown grains swirl around and around, like Annie’s lecture.

  “She talked,” Neal interrupted, at no point in particular.

  Annie’s mouth was still open, mid-sentence. She closed it and stared blankly at Neal. “She what?”

  “She talked, Annie.”

  Annie glanced down at Natasha, then back at her young husband.

  “I know it sounds strange,” he said, “but it’s true.”

  Even though such a notion was crazy, Neal could tell she at least wanted to believe him. He knew that some part of Annie was convinced she had given birth to the next Messiah, or, at the very least, a child prodigy who would grow up and change the world. He supposed all mothers held such hopes.

  “You mean, ‘ga-ga, goo-goo’?” Annie asked.

  “No. I mean words. Real words, Annie.”

  She laughed. “I hate to tell you this, Neal, but five month old babies can’t talk.”

  “I know.” Neal took another sip of the lousy instant coffee, wishing he had spiked it with a shot or two of whiskey.

  Annie watched him for a moment, then apparently decided maybe it wasn’t such a far-fetched notion after all.

  “What did she say?” Annie said, with hushed excitement. “What words, exactly?”

  Neal let out a laugh, but it sputtered to an uncertain halt. “I love you.”

  Annie’s face went slack. “‘I love you?’”

  “Yeah.”

  Annie let out a cackle that sent chills up Neal’s spine. She looked down at Natasha. “Did ooo tell Daddy that ooo wuv him?”

  The baby looked back up at her mother with a vacant expression.

  Neal took another sip of his coffee and stared at the floor. He felt like a fool. Over the past few months, he had grown quite accustomed to the feeling.

  Cradling Natasha in one arm, Annie open the formula she had bought and began to heat it on the stove. “You need to stop daydreaming, Neal, and get your mind back on your work.” There was a nasty undertone in her voice, one he had not known before they had gotten married. Or had been forced to get married. Neal certainly would not have married Annie under his own free will.

  Neal got up and dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink, glancing one last time at Natasha’s little face.

  For an instant, their eyes locked. Then, the baby gazed past Neal and flailed her arms around.

  “Guhhh,” she gurgled at the ceiling.

  As Neal walked out of the kitchen, he vowed to forget what had happened that morning, or what he thought had happened. And he might have, had he not taken that one last glance at Natasha.

  When he saw the look on her face during that fleeting instant, his heart had jumped into his throat.

  It seemed to be a look of hate.

  * * *

  Neal pulled his aging Toyota into the parking lot of Snell’s Flowers and sat for a moment with the engine running, savoring his last few moments of freedom. By his watch, it was only 7:57. That meant he still had three precious minutes left before he had to succumb to another long day of ass kissing. He had worked at Snell’s for less than two weeks, but it already seemed like months. He despised every second of it. Here he was, almost a degreed chemist, spending all his time behind the wheel of a white Chevy van with the words “SNELL’S FLOWERS—LET US MAKE SOMEONE’S DAY FOR YOU!” cheerily printed across it. He delivered roses and chrysanthemums and jonquils to people all over the city, happy people who had not taken a wrong turn in their live
s, like he had. If Neal had just pulled out of Annie just a millisecond earlier—just one lousy, goddamn millisecond—everything would be different now. Annie wouldn’t have gotten pregnant, Neal wouldn’t have felt obligated to marry her, and she wouldn’t have had the baby. And instead of driving a damn flower truck all over the city, he would be completing the last year of his college degree. After that, medical school.

  But, of course, Neal hadn’t pulled out of Annie in time. He had hesitated a fraction of a second to enjoy a little extra pleasure...and boom! His entire world had been turned upside down. Annihilated. One fleeting moment of extra pleasure in exchange for a lifetime of success and happiness.

  It just wasn’t fair.

  Neal dragged himself out of his car and, just as he locked the door, old man Snell rolled into the parking lot in his big blue Cadillac. He gave Neal a fatherly kind of nod as he glided the huge vehicle into the reserved parking space next to the front door. Two crimson pom-poms were visible in the car’s back window. Buford Snell had been some kind of football hero back when he’d attended University of Georgia. Based on his age and values, Neal figured it must have been back at the time football players wore knee socks, striped shirts, and those thin little leather helmets that looked like bathing caps.

  “Early bird catches the worm,” Snell said approvingly as he got out of his car. Neal cringed. Snell and the rest of the his “fambly”—his condescending mother, known as “Grammy,” his matronly sister, his loud-mouthed brother-in-law, all his bratty nieces and nephews—disgusted Neal. However, the feeling was not mutual. Neal was well-liked by all the Snells. This wasn’t surprising, considering the caliber of most of the other delivery boys. Even though the old man claimed to want to hire college students for these jobs, “to hep ‘em out,” most of the other drivers were pathetically poor, inner-city blacks. The reason, Neal had soon discovered, was that Snell refused to pay anyone with a last name different from his own a salary above minimum wage. Most college students just weren’t that desperate.