As God Intended

Supernatural Supsicions

John POV: Mary didn't look very happy, which wasn't exactly the expression John had expected from a new mother. Together they sat upon the living room couch, with Mary holding Hamish and shoving one of his milk bottles into his mouth. There was a sour look upon her face, though her eyes never left her baby's face. She was staring at him, and there was no softness within her glance. John was pretending to read on the opposite side of the coffee table, having bought himself a book about children in an attempt to get up to Father Holmes's level of child care. He was sprawled out upon the couch in his strange reading positions, though for all the effort he had given he hadn't even made it past page twenty yet. It was a slow, boring book, mostly filled with things he might've guessed from what he saw of parenting on TV. Tonight, however, he wasn't sure there would be a chapter dedicated to his situation. And so he took to observing instead, and kept his eyes up above the book so as to spy on his wife as she interacted with her new baby. There was a substantial difference in her movements than when the priest handled the child, as Father Holmes was gentle and caring, with his muscles relaxed and his face soft and inviting. Mary, on the other hand, was very tense. Her arms were locked, her eyes were dark, and there was no sign of a smile upon her face, not even a gentle tug at the corners of her lips. She looked downright miserable, which was strange indeed. Hamish was being just as adorable as ever, with his hands waving around and his legs kicking excitedly as he drained the last drops from his baby bottle. He wasn't crying, he wasn't making a fuss, indeed he was at his best! And so why didn't Mary looked amused, why didn't she even look tolerable?
"Hamish is pretty hungry, isn't he?" John offered at last, figuring she might be wandering off in her thoughts and migrating to her miserable resting face. Mary nodded starkly, rocking the baby back and forth in her arms to try to help the formula go down better. Hamish gave a yawn, as if this rocking was just what he needed right now. Even John couldn't help but smile, for his little gums were so cute.
"Ya, I guess so." Mary muttered with a sigh. John frowned, deciding at last that she wasn't distracted; she was quite in the moment. Though she was, in essence, quite miserable. Frantically John flipped to the section of postpartum depression, a simple little chapter that spanned all of two pages in length. Since this was a book about fatherhood it probably wasn't touched upon nearly as well.
"Are you feeling alright, Mary?" John asked at last, going through the checklist for a moment and trying to place her recent actions with the symptoms. "Sleeping well and all that?" he added a bit nervously.
"I'm fine, John." Mary insisted. "But I'm not sleeping, and neither are you, and neither is Hamish. Even Jesus on the wall can't get a moment of peace."
"What about...depression? How's your mood lately?" John asked quickly, scanning over the list for some other questions that may not be so often.
"What are you, my doctor?" Mary growled, getting to her feet quickly and stowing Hamish under one arm to grab at the book within her husband's hands. "What is this garbage?"
"It's my fathering book!" John defended, pulling Hamish gently from her arms to avoid his getting caught in the cross fire.
"Reading about what, then? Postpartum depression?" Mary growled, shutting the book with a snap and throwing it towards one of the church pews. Her aim was quite bad, and instead the book hit the wooden floor and went sliding off into the shadows. John winced as it hit, for the noise was enough to start Hamish blubbering again. For a moment the baby tried to decide if he wanted to cry or not, though John figured this would be the start of an even more violent mood swing from his wife. He shushed Hamish softly, rocking him back and forth in an attempt to silence his mouth which was now beginning to open in a long winded whine.
"There you go, making him cry again!" Mary demanded.
"Me? You're the one getting all violent!" John defended at last. Mary frowned, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head with a scowl.
"Stop with your self-diagnosing! It's offensive." Mary insisted with a very lethal look to her. John muttered a little response, a short defensive thing that wasn't worth even describing. He was afraid for a moment, not only of Mary's defensiveness but also what it might lead to down the road. Was she oblivious, or was she merely being stubborn? Was this a problem he should give more thought to, or even go behind her back to get her help? At long last Mary trudged up to the bedroom, telling John that he ought to just sleep on the couch if he was going to be so difficult. There was no door to slam in between the church and the balcony, though she hit upon the mattress quite violently and made the whole floor shake with her weight and momentum. John winced, holding Hamish almost dangerously close to his chest in an attempt to save him from his mother's anger. And there it was, the water works. As soon as Mary's temper tantrum was finished Hamish burst into tears, perhaps realizing that there was something seriously flawed in his childhood experience.
"Shush, shush Hamish!" John insisted, batting at the little child and poking his stomach anxiously. The boy continued, and at long last it was up to John to find out what was wrong. He decided he ought to lay Hamish down upon the couch, putting up a sort of blanket fort to keep him from rolling around too much. John wasn't brave enough to confront his wife, not even to deliver the baby up to his nursery on the top floor. Therefore it was up to him to make the boy comfortable, trying to snuggle him into the soft blankets as best he could.
"Happy Hamish?" John wondered with a smile, satisfied to hear that the octave of his wailing had decreased tremendously. Of course the child didn't respond, though he was silent after only a few moments of lying down. John sighed heavily, feeling quite satisfied with his fatherly work. Perhaps all of that reading had been well spent, and he finally had some subliminal communications with the baby. John settled himself down upon the less favorable couch, his eyes growing too heavy to bother with a pillow or blanket. Even before his head hit the cushion sleep took over, and for a long while he was stuck in a strange sort of limbo, between dreams and reality as the darkness overtook the church in a swarming, asphyxiating motion. There was no clock upon his wrist, though John's eyes opened to the darkness some hours later, jolted back into the world from an abrupt yet perfectly unknown sensation. He couldn't remember what had grabbed his attention, though his dreams had been vivid and strange. Suddenly the man sat up, anxious as to the sticky darkness around him. He couldn't see where his child lay; in fact he could hardly see his own hands in front of him! That was what happened when buildings stand in the way of the street lamps, utter darkness! John groaned, pulling out his phone and using the screen to illuminate a small circle around him, just enough to spot the floor at his feet and his exposed legs upon the cushions of the couch. The room felt terribly quiet, as if even the sound of his scuffling was being absorbed by a strange, incomprehensible depth. He knew that the church was surrounding him at all angles, he understood that he was lying where he had started the night, though for a moment John felt as if he was sitting in an abyss, with just the light of his phone screen to guide his way. It was moments like these that made the hair stand up upon his neck, frightened to do anything more than breathe and stare around, expecting someone to be staring back. At last John remembered the flashlight feature upon his phone, and so he quickly switched that on to make his perimeter of light a bit wider. By now John could see the baby where he slept, undisturbed upon his blankets and looking peaceful. But if Hamish was asleep, what could have pulled him out of his own dreamland? John hesitated, figuring that he was getting overwhelmed over something perfectly negligible. Perhaps a bird had flown into the window outside, or a car horn had honked once and was silent. The sounds of the city were strange and unpredictable, who knows what he was dealing with while in this echoing, ancient building? John took a deep breath, sitting back onto the couch and shutting off the flashlight hesitantly. He didn't like this permeating darkness, though it would seem as though he had no choice but to deal with it until he could fall back asleep. His senses were sharper, which in turn lead to the bang being much louder to his ears than to any other. It was a slapping sound upon the hardwood, so close to his couch that John jumped straight into the air, clambering on top of the couch until he could get his phone's flashlight on once again. First he looked to Hamish, worried that the baby had fallen, though he could see now that there was something else upon the floor, something that he hadn't left previously. The fatherhood book.
"Mary?" John asked at last, calling his voice through the darkness and expecting to hear a response much closer than from the balcony. How had this book gotten here, and above all how could it have fallen so far to make such a loud noise? John settled his phone upon the couch and grabbed the book in his hands, wondering if it had been retrieved by his wife and chucked off of the balcony at this strange hour of morning.
"Mary?" John repeated again, calling for his wife to see if she might have a hand in this.
"What?" growled her sleepy voice from above, undeniably having just been woken by his incessant shouting.
"Were you throwing things?" John asked at last, sounding a bit silly as he held the book in his hands, looking up towards the balcony to an undeniably innocent party. At long last the lamp light was turned on from above, the ceiling of the church flooded with a soft orange light. It made him feel better about things; at least enough to get off from the back of the couch and sit like a normal person. Mary appeared along the railing, her hair disheveled from the pillow and her face looking downright spiteful.
"What the h*ll do you mean by that?" she demanded. "I was asleep until a second ago!"
"This book fell. It made a loud noise, right by my head!" John exclaimed.
"So?" Mary grumbled.
"So? So how'd it get here? How'd it fall, who moved it?" John insisted.
"A ghost did." Mary said at last. John blinked, trying to determine if that was sarcastic or a legitimate theory.
"Don't try to scare me; I really don't need that right now." John insisted with a frown.
"Well what other suggestion do you have? Unless our previous occupant has stretched his holy hand towards your fathering book I really can't make a better suggestion." Mary admitted at last, shrugging her shoulders as if it really wasn't her problem. Presumably if the ghosts were downstairs that meant her husband was the only one affected, and so it was not her problem at all.
"I don't believe in ghosts." John defended a bit weakly.
"But you're on board for watching your neighbor shed fifty years?" the woman pointed out. John grimaced, rather upset that she would use that against him. Well that had been different; he had seen the results in an undeniable fashion! What else was he supposed to believe, if not the fountain of youth?
"That's different and you know it." John insisted.
"I don't know it, actually. Goodnight John." Mary insisted.
"Goodnight!? Mary, you can't just say goodnight to me, I'm in danger down here!" John defended anxiously, jumping to his feet and looking around in the darkness nervously. Anything could be lurking around there; anything could be waiting to jump out at him when the light had gone!
"Goodnight." Mary repeated, and with that her head disappeared from the balcony. John only had enough time to get his flashlight on before the lamp went out, and with another loud thunk he heard his wife fall onto the mattress and back to sleep. John grumbled, feeling quite shaken, though he looked towards Hamish quickly. The boy was now awake, his eyes open and looking around, though he seemed awfully quiet. John would've thought the baby would have begun to cry by now, given all the shouting that was going on between his parents. It was only after John settled himself back onto the couch and turned off the light that the baby made his first sounds, opening his mouth to a bone chilling giggle. This laughter lasted some moments, and John began to worry that Hamish was able to see things that his own eyes were blind to. The only cure for paranoia was exhaustion, and as long as Hamish was not crying it seemed as though John could fall back to sleep. It was only on the brink of waking and sleeping that he thought he heard another voice, a deeper voice, laugh along with the child. This memory was lost as he fell into his dreams, and for the rest of the night he was unbothered.