The Anderson Offering

Vangie's newborn lay sleeping at her breast and yet this most beautiful moment in her life was about to erupt into the most terrible nightmare. How could she do what they asked? How could she give them her precious baby? Even as she counted the infant's fingers and toes, her velvety eyes stalked the perimeters of the sterile hospital room. Near the doorway sat nurse Morgan whose sole purpose, according to Axel's family, was to tend to her every wish. But Vangie understood the truth that came to roost on her conscience. The room was being privately patrolled and from its only window the snowy rims of treetops betrayed a height far too high to jump.

She resolved to give her baby a name even though the elders had advised her against it. Emily Anne. Who were they to tell her what to do with her baby anyway? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly with the answer. The Andersons, that's who. How could such a hideous tradition be connected to such an innocuous, all-American, apple-pie name? If only Axel had told her before they married or before she became pregnant. Then she could have done something, perhaps made some other choice. Now there was no alternative except to honor the ritual of sacrifice passed down like family silver from one Anderson generation to another.

Today she and Emily would go home and she could think of nothing else except the promise she had made to The Dark One, and how she must break it, even if that meant leaving his grandchild, her loving and attentive husband of seven years. The clock on the wall told her that the elders would soon arrive with their doting, devouring eyes. They would take her home and there would be much celebration and then it would happen at dawn on the first Sunday of the new month in that long dark room behind the little white door at the far end of the hall closet. One baby for each generation of prosperity. She bit at her fingers. She must stop this. What must she do to stop this? In that instant Uncle Elsinore entered, carrying some beautifully wrapped flowers.