Twelve Days of Christmas—Dark Tidings is a Substack special holiday event. Each day beginning Friday the 13th, we’ll count down to Christmas Eve with a dark tale featuring one of the gifts from the classic Christmas carol. A guide to all the stories can be found here.
Note to readers: As a horror story, “Beaks Bloody” contains darker themes and more graphic descriptions than my usual fare. More sensitive readers, please proceed with caution.
She should have known it was too good to be true. She didn’t win things, not even the raffle at her little small-town church.
Single mamas who worked for minimum wage at hardware stores didn’t get lucky, not like this. Not with an all-expenses-paid stay at a glamorous midwifery practice. She should have known.
She should have known as soon as she saw that the luxury birth suite was a tiny cabin up a long, winding path, out of sight of the other buildings, entombed by snow-heavy pine trees. Isolated. Silent.
She should have known.
Another wave of pressure, strong as a mountain, swept over Rita, squeezing her back and her belly, and she leaned against the wall, her breath pushed from her lungs.
They stood behind her, the three silver-haired women, unmoving and mute in the dim lamplight. They’d been so solicitous yesterday when leading her up the snowy path to the birth cabin, telling her their names. Margot, that was the name of the tall, silvery-haired, keen-eyed woman, the head midwife, wasn’t it? They’d all had French-sounding names, though now Rita’s pain-addled brain couldn’t recall the others.
She remembered the women’s nervous chuckles when they had passed a small, rickety work shed, the closest building to her cabin. A long-limbed man in a bulky coat had stood outside it, watching their slow progress up the hillside path. He’s a little slow, they’d whispered, asking her to excuse the staring, slack-jawed groundskeeper. They’d seemed so kind, so motherly. And she’d craved it – a motherly presence when she was about to become a mother herself.
She’d thought they were midwives, that they’d help her, comfort her, but now they stood watching her, a hungry anticipation in their eyes.
She should have known.
From somewhere inside Rita came a pop, and a trickle of wetness coursed down her legs.
Suddenly one of the women surged forward, something dark and round clutched in her hand. She held it beneath Rita, catching the gush of water before it dripped to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Rita screeched as another wave rose to crash over her, silencing her with pain and pressure.
When the whirl of pain subsided, Rita slumped over the side of the bed, resting her flushed face on the cool linen of the pillowcase. She watched the women through hazy eyes as, one by one, they lifted the strange black cup to their mouths and drank.
Her amniotic fluid. They were drinking her amniotic fluid, that had cushioned and warmed her baby inside of her for nine long months. They were drinking it.
Pain swelled over her again, and Rita’s hands grasped the sheets of the bed as she screamed a high, keening shriek.
“Low sounds,” one of the women said, her voice sharp. Her vowels were odd, round and fluid. Cathedral bells, soaring Gothic arches, gilded palaces, long cylinders of crusty bread –
“Low sounds make you progress faster,” another woman said in the same strange accent. “More productive.”
Gasping in ragged breaths, Rita forced her scream into a low moan, and more fluid spurted from her body.
The woman with the black cup darted forward again.
An egg. Rita caught a glimpse through the haze of pain. An egg, split in half like a round, black music box.
Up close, the woman looked younger now, somehow, her face smoother, the flecks of gray in her dark hair gone. She shoved the black cup down toward the rush of fluid, and a frightened, primal fury suddenly shot through Rita’s veins.
With a roar, she swung her fist down, knocking the cup from the woman’s hands. “Get away from me!”
On unsteady legs, Rita staggered toward the door.
She had one minute, maybe two, before another surge of pain immobilized her. She had to get out, had to get to her phone in the main building. No phones in the birth suites, they’d said. It had seemed reasonable at the time, but she should have known. She should have known.
She’d call an ambulance. She’d go to the hospital. And she’d sue them for all they were worth. If she could find a lawyer, that is, one she could somehow afford.
Margot, with her sharp eyes, shifted to stand between Rita and the door. She snapped her silvery-blonde head to one of the other women, who stood motionless beside the bed. “Get the ketamine.”
Her words meant nothing to Rita until the other woman pulled a syringe from a bag and popped off the cap with quick, efficient fingers.
Rita’s panic turned ferocious, crazed.
Snatching the lone lamp that cast its orange glow about the small cabin, Rita yanked it from the table, and its plug jerked from the outlet, throwing the room into darkness. The only light was the faint, blue-white reflection of the snow outside the windows.
The three women converged on Rita, but she had a weapon now, and she had darkness on her side.
She flailed the lamp in wild swings, connecting with flesh and bone. Yelps in the darkness as she struck with all her strength. Someone fell to the floor with a thud.
Ivory tower princesses, never been in a real fight before –
A hand grabbed Rita’s arm, and a cold rush of panic flooded through her.
Then, a squeezing in her back, a spreading pressure clamping on her hips, her stomach.
No, not now, not now.
Rita doubled over, the pain engulfing her.
Hands scrabbled at her soft, thin birthing gown, snatching her arms with sharp-nailed fingers.
In the dimness, Rita’s eyes caught a glint of light, the long, pin-sharp point of a syringe, designed for piercing skin.
Through the mountain of pressure and pain, through the rising swell that engulfed her, panic tolled like clanging bells in her body, and with a raging strength she didn’t know her body held, Rita flung the heavy lamp upward, colliding with the hand that held the fluid-filled syringe.
The hard crack of bone, the soft thump of flesh – the lamp smashed against the women as Rita swung it through the air, again and again, until her back hit the door of the cabin and her sweaty hands found the handle.
Still clutching her weapon, trailing its long cord, Rita stumbled out of the tiny cabin and into the dark, snowy woods.
At some point, she didn’t know when, the swelling bloom of pain had dissipated. She had minutes, at most, before another struck.
Hobbling barefoot through the ice-cold snow that crunched beneath her feet, swallowing them with each trudging step, she staggered downhill. The other cabins were here, somewhere, through the thick trees. Maybe she could get into one of them. Maybe someone, one of the other mothers-to-be, one of the wealthy ones who’d paid to be here, whose amniotic fluid the proprietresses weren’t trying to steal – maybe, if she banged on the door and begged, one of them might let her in.
From up the hill came raised, shrill voices, and Rita ducked behind a tree just as another throttling wave of pain broke over her. For a brief moment, she thought of her footprints, a stark path leading straight to her, but then the tightening around her middle chased away all thought, and she breathed –
And breathed –
And breathed –
At last the tightening eased, and Rita stumbled further downhill in the biting, gnawing cold.
Where were the other cabins? She should have reached them by now, surely. Her cabin was isolated, but not this far from the rest of the birth suites. She was cold, so cold. Stabbing, red-hot pain needled her skin, but her feet could feel nothing. She could step on a dagger-sharp stick, stabbing right through her foot, and she wouldn’t know until she saw her own blood on the snow.
The faint glow of the snow, the only light around her, suddenly dimmed as Rita, still clutching the lamp, pushed through a stand of trees, and, squinting, her eyes found a ridge of dark stone rising up alongside her. Frigid panic rose like ice water, cutting off her breath. She’d never seen this ridge before.
She was lost.
Lost and directionless in the snowy woods, her baby about to slip out of her, strange women trying to –
Trying to what? What did they want from her, from her baby, from her body?
Rita crept forward on unsteady feet that felt nothing, not even the icy, crunching snow.
Why hadn’t they found her yet? What had happened to her contractions? It had been well over two minutes since her last one.
Her hand, sliding along the rough, dark rock, slipped suddenly into nothingness. A cave, like a yawning sinkhole shooting into the side of the hill.
Pitch-black, unknown. Anything could be in there.
But it was not a cabin with three crazed women drinking her amniotic fluid from a cup and waving syringes of ketamine. And, cold though it was, it was a shelter from the biting wind.
Rita hobbled inside, not knowing if her feet still walked on crunching snow or if she was stepping on jagged rocks.
Keeping her hand on the wall to guide her, Rita slipped further into the blackness. The faintest silver glow of snow and moonlight filtered into the cave, and Rita stepped just beyond the dim halo.
Then, suddenly, a surge of pain rolled over her, stronger this time – how could it be stronger? Rita dropped the lamp and fell to her hands and knees, biting back a scream, her teeth digging so hard into her lip that the salty, iron taste of blood touched her tongue.
Something was burning, burning, a fire clawing to get out.
Burning.
Rita clutched the rocks around her, seeing nothing, feeling nothing but the burning, and without her consent, her body started to push.
The little mewling, lip-smacking noises were her only way of knowing the baby was alive and well. As Rita’s eyes adjusted to the frigid dark, she could see the dimmest gray outline of a plump, tiny cheek, a small round head. The baby was warm, for now, tucked into Rita’s birth gown and pressed against her chest, her body hot from effort. She willed her own heat into the tiny little body, its umbilicus still attached to her.
Time meant little to her now, though she knew she couldn’t have been long in the cold. The baby had come quickly, so quickly. But neither of them would survive long, not on this freezing night.
A sudden bright, stabbing light shone through the mouth of the cave, and Rita’s body spasmed with pain and panic. One hand flew to her eyes, shielding them from the light, and the other clutched her baby closer.
Through the glaring light, there was a silhouette, long-limbed and broad. Rita shrank back, though she knew there was no point now.
The light lowered from her face, hovering on the stony floor of the cave, and the figure stalked inside. The groundskeeper, bundled and bulky in his huge winter coat and his thick-soled work boots. His wide eyes stared at Rita, at the baby huddled under her clothes, with only a little pink cheek peeking out.
The chilling cold, which exertion and rushing hormones had for a while chased away, flooded into Rita’s skin, sinking into her bones, and she started to shiver.
They wanted her baby. She didn’t know how she knew, but there was a horrible certainty deep within her. The women wanted her baby. She’d seen it in their hungry faces, in the silver fading from their hair and the wrinkles smoothing from their skin: Her baby was a means to an end. And she was the disposable vessel.
The groundskeeper stood in the mouth of the cave, watching her with expressionless eyes. Then, slowly, he crouched to the ground.
In the low, cold light, Rita squinted to see what he was doing, her mind spinning with useless, barely-formed plans of escape. But where was she to go? Through the unfamiliar woods, hoping to find the other cabins? Toward the women who’d attacked her with a syringe, who’d stolen the very fluid from her body? She was barefoot, had no coat. She couldn’t run, couldn’t fight, not now with her shaking legs and her arms full of a soft, warm, vulnerable little body. The baby was still attached to the placenta; she couldn’t go anywhere.
The groundskeeper reached forward and laid something long and thin on the floor of the cave. He pulled off one of his gloves, revealing long, work-hardened fingers, and dug in his coat pocket. Dropping two more items on the ground, he stood, yanked his glove back on, and clumped back out into the snow.
Rita listened, her senses alert. Just outside the mouth of the cave, she could hear rustling, snapping, the gentle thump of fallen chunks of snow.
The groundskeeper’s huge, dark form appeared once more at the mouth of the cave, his arms clutching something. Rita shrank back against the cave wall. He released his arms, and the bundle clattered to the ground in a jumble.
Sticks. From the trees outside the cave.
Fixing his unreadable eyes on Rita, he watched her, watched the baby. Then, without a word, he turned and walked back into the snowy night.
Rita slid forward, inching her aching, bloodied body over the stones, until she came to the pile he’d left behind.
Sticks, in a small pile. A pocketknife. A tiny book of matches. A shoestring.
Rita stilled, a tenuous hope lighting in her as she stared at the little pile.
Pressing her lips together, Rita picked up the shoestring and the knife.
The groundskeeper must have meant for her to light a fire for warmth. But Rita had other plans.
If she was quick, as quick as she could be on her wobbly legs, then maybe she could follow his footprints, find her way back to the cabins, before her ice-cold feet gave out.
And then –
She had a plan, a desperate one.
The night was still, and above her the moon peeked through a gap in the clouds, casting its glow on the glittering snow. There – footprints. Not her own small, uneven stumbles, but the broad, purposeful treads of work boots.
Rita followed them, hobbling through the snow as quickly as she could. She ached, her body begging for a bed, for warmth, and blood seeped from her, leaving a horrible, conspicuous trail of red on the snow. But what other choice did she have? Light a fire in a cave, suffocating herself with smoke and alerting the three women to her location? Wait for them to find her, to finish what they’d started, whatever that was?
No. She would rather stagger numb-footed through the snow, trailing a ribbon of blood in her wake, than wait.
The heavy footprints took a straight path through the trees and ended at the small wooden shed where she’d first seen the groundskeeper.
So close, she’d been so close before. Had she only angled to the right, she would have found the other buildings instead of stumbling into a cave. Down the hill sat a cluster of large cabins with wide glass windows and winking lights. All the other cabins were close together, insulated from the cold and the dark wildness of the woods. All except hers.
She should have known.
Rita crept to the window of the shed and craned her neck to peer inside. Under a bare, naked lightbulb swinging from the ceiling, the groundskeeper was there, squatting as he rooted through a toolbox. He straightened and closed the toolbox, then picked it up and strode back out of the shed. Around the corner, Rita pressed herself up against the wall, holding her breath and willing her baby to stay silent.
The squirming baby’s skin was cooler now, but still warm, still alive. She had time, but not much.
Toolbox in hand, the groundskeeper clomped his way through the snow and back up the hill toward her small cabin.
As the man’s footsteps grew quieter, Rita crept around the corner and through the partly-open door of the shed. She flicked on the light, just for a moment, until her eyes landed on what she needed. She quickly turned off the light again, sending the shed back into darkness, and groped for the can of gasoline and a worn pair of old, too-large work boots.
As Rita crept back up the hill toward her tiny cabin, her numb feet sliding in the boots, she caught raised voices on the wind. High, shrill voices, jabbing and pecking, and a low, apologetic rumble in response.
She didn’t understand the words – were they speaking French?
Rita pushed the question from her mind and snuck to the windowless side of the house. With one hand clutching her baby, pressed against her chest and tucked inside her clothing, Rita set the gas canister on the ground and used her free hand to unscrew the cap. Then she poured, letting a river of clear, oily liquid spill onto the wood. She tracked along the outside of the cabin, avoiding the windows and pouring until the last drop of gasoline dripped from the cannister. Holding the book of matches, Rita struck a match.
It didn’t light, but slipped from her shivering fingers, landing in the cold, wet snow.
She tried again, again, her shaking hands betraying her. Then, at last, a tiny, flickering light.
Stepping back, Rita tossed the match at the base of the house.
A wave of heat erupted, forcing Rita backward. She watched, transfixed, as the house shot up in flame, the fire eating at the old wood.
Then came the screams. A jolt of guilt caught Rita in her stomach when the groundskeeper’s face swam into her memory. He had tried to help her. In a way, he had saved her. He didn’t deserve to die in a vengeful holocaust. Perhaps he’d escape. But she’d already made her choice.
Hugging the baby closer to her, Rita started back down the mountain toward the shed, stumbling as fast as her exhausted, wobbling legs would carry her. She didn’t know the key code for the main building, couldn’t trust that anyone would let her into their birth suite. Her baby needed to get warm, and quickly.
Staggering back inside the little hut, she slammed the door behind her. She’d seen a space heater in the shed before, and a single, rusty outlet. Rita searched the dark with outstretched hands and plugged it in, and, slowly, the old machine started to warm up, heating the little hut.
The baby fussed, wiggling against her, searching for food. Rita pressed the baby closer and wedged a crowbar across the door, barring it. Then, at last, she sat down in front of the space heater to feed her hungry baby.
In the warmth of the heater, sensation gradually leeched back into her foot in needles of pain that made Rita twitch and clench her teeth.
But they were safe. They were warm. For now.
In a wave too strong for her to fight, drowsiness crept over Rita, and her eyes drifted shut.
A dull thud against the door jolted Rita awake. Outside, a voice screeched in an unfamiliar language.
Rita shrank back, pressing herself against the wall. The baby was asleep in her arms, snoring with soft, contented little grunts, with no thought of danger.
Two more screeching voices joined the first, overlapping each other with an angry, high-pitched scolding. To Rita’s ears, the cadence of the unfamiliar words morphed to a furious squawking.
Then, suddenly, a face appeared at the window.
Margot, only a few slivers of silver left in her blonde hair. Her gaze latched onto the red glow of the space heater, and her eyes turned ravenous as they landed on Rita and the tiny, sleeping bundle in her arms.
Rita scanned the room, her heartbeat pulsing through her body.
Margot snapped out a sharp, trilled command, and the other women appeared with her at the window.
Dragging herself to her feet, Rita staggered along the wall, grasping the shelves for support. A crash sounded behind her, sending a spray of broken glass across her back, but she didn’t stop. Her fingers found the handle of a hatchet, and she yanked it from its place on the wall.
Rita whirled around, brandishing the hatchet. All three women scrabbled at the shattered window, their eyes crazed. Behind them, in the snow, Rita glimpsed a shadow, a figure moving quickly down the hill toward the other buildings, but in a moment it was gone.
Margot knocked the last of the jagged glass from the window pane, and the two other women pressed close behind her. The dim moonlight caught on the shining blades clutched in their hands. Kitchen knives, for slicing meat. Their faces were somehow sharp, like beaks searching for food. But it must be the light, just a trick of the light.
The women were different now, desperate, their silky calm evaporated. Animalistic, like hungry birds hissing and screeching for their meal.
Margot managed to scramble above the others, thrusting her upper body through the window. In one hand she grasped the huge black egg, while the other clasped a knife.
Rita didn’t have time to acknowledge the sick, cold roiling in her stomach. She held her squirming baby in one arm, and with the other she raised the hatchet above her head, then swung it down. Margot jerked her hand back too late.
Rita brought the hatchet down with a slice and the sharp thud of a blade lodging in wood. Something heavy fell to the workbench, then rolled to the floor.
Margot screamed, a shrill, screeching wail. She fell back out the window, dropping the knife and clutching her bloodied hand. On the workbench, beside the hatchet with its blade embedded in the wood, two long, pale fingers lay in a spatter of scarlet.
A strange force, irresistible as gravity, dragged Rita’s eyes to the floor.
On the rough, wooden floor lay the egg, large and round and unshattered. Slowly, despite the screams outside the window, despite the brandished knives, Rita crouched down and picked up the huge, black egg.
It was a real egg, or so it seemed. From what kind of animal, she had no idea. But a gold clasp sat in its middle, a gold hinge on the other side.
Rita pressed the clasp, and the egg cracked open, its top bending back, opening like a ravenous mouth. From the window came a flickering orange light, the glow of moonlight melding with writhing flames reflected on snow. And in the light, dim as it was, the interior of the strange black egg was streaked the dark, rusty red of dried blood.
Bile sprang up Rita’s throat, and the egg slipped from her hand, landing on the floor with a hollow thud. She snatched the handle of the hatchet and jerked it out of the wood of the workbench. She raised it again, ready to bring it down on the next woman to shove through the open window. Then she stopped.
When Rita was a child, her aunt had kept chickens in the back yard. Empty-headed, stupid birds, she’d always thought. But once, she’d watched from the window as the chickens swarmed around an injured hen, jabbing and pecking until their beaks came away bloody. The taste of the blood had seemed to ignite something in them, some nascent predatory instinct, and the birds had descended on the wounded hen with the ferocity of wild dogs.
Outside the window, the frosted snow was spattered red.
Knives jabbed, piercing with a sickening squelch, but not at Rita, not at her baby.
Margot lay splayed in the snow, her body sliced open, and the two other women, without even trying to find their blood-streaked black egg, thrust their heads down, their faces coming away red, blood spurting between their teeth.
Knives out, beaks bloody
A distant, mechanical wailing caught Rita’s ears, but her mind couldn’t process it. She only watched, her body chilled through to her bones and marrow.
As Margot’s body grew white and cold, the remaining silver faded from the other women’s hair. The lines smoothed from their foreheads, the wrinkles shrinking from around their mouths and eyes.
Rita couldn’t move. Her mouth hung open, her feet rooted to the floor, the hatchet still raised over her head. The baby nuzzled against her chest, hungry and unaware.
Then a flash of blue, a glare of red, beamed through the window, ricocheting off the snow. Stuttering lights beamed through the woods, and a powerful engine groaned up the hill.
The two blood-soaked women sat up, their eyes wide and their red-smeared mouths open.
The groundskeeper was nowhere to be seen. She’d heard his voice in the burning cabin. The women had gotten out. That rushing shadow, streaking down the hill – where had he gone, what had he done?
The fire engine crested the hill, aiming toward the towering pillar of smoke from the burning cabin, but it squealed to a stop when its piercing lights fell on the blood-spattered snow, on the partially-devoured body, on the two women with blood-stained teeth.
With slow, mechanical movements, Rita hung the hatchet on the wall, where it belonged, and held the tiny, warm body of her baby more tightly in her arms.
Her eyes fell once again on the strange black egg, and her fingers itched to touch it. But instead, clenching her teeth, she raised her foot in the heavy work boot and brought it down on the egg with a shattering crunch.
Thank you to
for creating and organizing Dark Tidings and gathering so many storytellers together, and to for the amazing artwork!Read
’s “Hark the Heralds” for Four Calling Birds and ’s “Hungry Ground” for Two Turtledoves!
This was such a tense, horrific, emotional tale! I was right there with Rita, feeling her pain and desperation. The immediacy was terrifying. Excellent!
on the edge of my chair the entire time. wonderful!