Baby In My House

I got married when I was 17, pretty young. Since my husband and I were both going to college, and had a job, we didn't even try thinking about getting our own place. A year passed, and we lived in the dorm, when my mother said she found this gorgeous old house in a small town somewhat close to our college.

It was like a duplex, housing two families. Brad, my husband, said we should move in. My mother and I made a deal that we helped her buy the house. Soon enough, we bought it, before Brad and I even had seen it.

Finally, it was time for us to move in. It was on our Christmas break, and we had gotten everything packed up. We followed the moving van, and soon we entered the small town. It didn't look very modern; the houses were huge and old looking. It seemed like a dreary place, full of shadows. All of a sudden, there were less and less houses as we drove on, and they become shabbier, uglier. "Mom, is our house going to be the ugliest, most isolated one?" I asked. "No, our house has been fixed up, it's so pretty. And it's a bit isolated, in the woods," she replied. Woods? As soon as I thought of it, woods appeared, and we drove by them.

After a couple of miles, a big house loomed up in front of us. It was huge, and just as mom said, beautiful. It didn't look shabby, just old and mysterious. Great, I thought. This would be fun, moving in!

It took us about a week to get settled, and then my dad moved in with my mom. Brad and I fixed our side of the house up. I decided to look around the house thoroughly.

I went to my mom's side first. After looking at all the rooms my mom had decorated, I noticed a closed door. My curiosity stirred, I tried to open it. Locked.

When mom came back, I asked her about the room. Her eyes lost their glow, and filled with fear. "It was locked when I found it. Apparently, a newly wed couple lived here once, long ago. Maybe 20 years ago. They had a baby, and that room was the baby's room. The salesman said the baby died, although he didn't say how or why. As soon as the child died, the couple moved out; too many memories I guess," she said.

I was stunned. A dead baby? I didn't like the thought of it, although I tried my best to forget about it.

After a couple of weeks, my whole family was having lunch in our living room. My mom asked me to get her something from her bathroom. As I walked to it, I passed her bedroom. The door was open. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a baby playing with rattles on my mother's bed. I gasped and turned around. No baby there. I saw a small blue object on the bed though.

As I got closer to it, I noticed it was a little rattle, the kind little babies had. It didn't look new, so it couldn't have been something my mom bought for her future grandchild. It looked old, used. And it looked exactly like the one the baby had been playing with. How did it get here?

I ran with the rattle to the living room, and showed everyone. They told me it was nothing, although I could see fear in my mother's eyes again. That night we all went to sleep uneasy.

Somewhere around midnight, I awoke, a sound tingling in my ears. I sat up, trying my best to hear. It was a baby crying. I broke out in a cold sweat. My breathing quickened, and I felt my heart beating faster.
I got out of bed, and moved to my mother's side of the house. I walked to the locked door, the sounds of the crying becoming louder. I tried the door, and to my surprise, it was unlocked. I opened it with a creak, and the crying stopped. The room was light blue, with three shelves containing toys, books, everything a baby needed. In the middle of the room, was a crib. I walked over to it, and took a peek. There was a blanket there, waiting for a child to sleepily hug it. I went back to bed, telling myself I had only imagined it.

The next few nights, the same thing occurred. I woke up; a crying baby made me walk to the locked door. The door was locked each day, only unlocked when the baby cried. I came to the thought, that this baby wasn't just crying so I'd go to its room. It was trying to tell me something.

One day, my husband went to shop with my parents, leaving me alone in the house. I tried reading, when the crying began once more. I went to the room, opened the door, and stepped in. The crying didn't stop. For some reason, I went to the desk that was in the room, and opened one of the drawers. Baby drawings, nothing interesting. Then, in the next drawer, something written. I took the paper out, and the crying stopped. I heard a sigh, and then, a soft giggle. With trembling hands I held the paper, and started reading. When I was done, I was shaking, and crying. My husband found me like this, on the floor of the baby's room.

After I calmed down, I told him everything. The crying I heard, the room being unlocked, and the letter I found. A confession. A confession, written by the baby's father. A few lines, more terrifying than anything I read before, as he apologized to someone for killing the child.

I guess the mother never found this note. After this day, there was no more crying, just giggling once in a while, especially during the summer.