When Dale and Ellen Swasey attend a Rescue the American Child convention outside of Boston, they hear a doctor describe something called hatching. Passionate right-to-lifers, the Swaseys decide they must kidnap a young pregnant woman and keep her safe until the child is an inevitability. Dale and Ellen fantasize about their plan:
Strange as it sounds out of context, we named this imaginary girl "Cindy." Again, it was just make-believe. It became a code word between us, one we could use with other people around.
"Do you think Cindy will like this?" Ellen asked when we bought a lamp or table.
"She'll love it," I said.
"I sure hope she does," Ellen said. "It goes with the dresser."
That's how it all got started.
Afterward I told Ellen, you give a name to something and it becomes re
al.
Set in a farmhouse in New Hampshire, Preggers is in the tradition of John Fowles's The Collector and Herbert Lieberman's Crawlspace. Terrifying and mesmerizing, this is a story of what goes on behind our neighbor's closed doors.