Chapter 2: Cry, Baby

            "You sure I can’t do it for you?"

            Mary leaned back and breathed heavy, one eyebrow perched high and ready to strike at another word from her husband, Samuel. She grimaced and placed one hand on the summit of her massive pregnant belly. "I don't even know what I want to eat yet and you want to do it for me? Drive in around the parking lot a couple of times. I'll text you on my way out."

            Her husband smiled sheepishly and opened his door. He ran around the front of the car and helped Mary to her feet. As he walked her up to the sliding doors he said, “I’ll just go park out there.” He pointed halfway down the parking lot to an empty space under a bulky fluorescent street lamp. “I’ll be able to see you when you come out.”

            It took Mary a full two laps through the entirety of the aisles to figure out what she wanted. She forewent a plastic bag and left the store with a jar of full-sized kosher dill pickles under one arm, and a medium sized bottle of ranch dressing under the other. The sliding doors opened and she breathed in the refreshing night air, feeling a kick from the baby. “Going to be the outdoor type?” she cooed.

            Mary looked in the direction where her husband parked, but the car stood there silent. She grunted and moved the ranch under her chin and waved. The car didn’t rev to life, the lights didn’t turn on. Mumbling under her breath, she started walking towards him. She wasn’t mad on principle, just annoyed he dangled that carrot, said he’d pick her up and then didn’t. At least he had to good sense to stay in one place.

            She rounded on the car from behind, squeezing towards the passenger door, her belly dangerously close to being wedged between the car and a large truck parked too close to the line. She bent at the waist and grabbed for the handle, but it pulled with neither a click nor tension. She tried again and realized the car was locked. She straightened her spine with a groan and wrapped her knuckles on the window a couple times.

Absolutely nothing. 

            With a flurry of more curses, she back out of the vehicular canyon and waddled around to the driver side. She rapped her knuckles once more on his window and then leaned over to yell. At whatever silly prank he thought he was doing- it was cold out here.

            But as she leaned over and looked him square in the eye, a shrill scream cleaved from her throat.

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Baby Samantha didn't cry, she barely cooed, she slept peacefully through the nights. For the past three weeks, the baby had been quiet and Mary found great comfort in that. Mary was miserable, but it helped.

            It may have been silly to think that the baby shared her pain, that it could be as gut-wrenchingly distressed as Mary was, but it made sense to Mary. Had to be true. The alternative was to think it was her fault. She had lost her appetite and barely eaten anything up until the birth. After seeing her husband in the car like that. . . .

            She cried and cried. And when the image rose to the surface of her mind, she wanted to throw up.

Mary didn’t know she could miss anyone like she did now. Samuel couldn’t wait to start a family. He wanted nothing more than to see his daughter. So now she did it all in his place, rocking the little girl in her arms at three in the morning: The baby slept as often as a normal baby, it just didn’t complain.

She didn’t know how it happened. The police couldn’t explain much and they certainly hadn’t found the killer. “Murder.” The police said it so directly when they first asked questions. No rhyme or reason, nothing stolen. Gutted from one side to the other and bled out like a pig.

            And no matter how much Mary cried, the baby did not. Like the baby knew Mary was that close to the edge. It was a god-sent at first, but as the weeks went by and baby Samantha refused to make a sound, it became worrisome. Mary wandered the narrow halls of their home like a ghost, their apartment a mausoleum. Mother and daughter found comfort in each other and grieved together. As Mary’s sobs faded over time, the two became a somber pair.

            Until one dark and stormy night. One month after Samuel’s death. One month to the minute Mary had discovered the body, baby Samantha started crying again.

 

            Mary woke, snapping to as a cry reverberated down the halls and clawed in her eardrums. She took a deep breath and one foot at a time dragged herself out of bed. Glancing to the window, her foggy eyes beheld the dark tumult of a night about to storm.

            It wasn't until her bare feet touched the chilled wood floor that the strangeness of the cry set in. She had never heard her baby cry. She knew that it was normal, she even knew she should be happy, but she wasn’t ready for normal quite yet.

            Mary stifled a sniffle as she crept into the long, empty hall that divided her from the nursery. Placing a hand on the wall to orient herself, Mary shuffled ahead confidently. Even with no sound reason to go to the nursery, she did it hour by hour every day. If she hadn’t worn a path through the wood yet, it was bound to happen soon.

            As Mary approached the door to the nursery, the wailing stopped. The door was already cracked open an inch, but Mary didn’t want to intrude. If Samantha was back asleep already, good. One of them deserved a good night’s rest. Mary stifled her breathing and ever so subtly closed the door, her fingers quietly twisting the doorknob to avoid that metallic clang as it rested.

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            Mary walked back through the barren hallway, past the wedding picture sitting there in the dark, past the bathroom, past an empty cardboard box she hadn’t the heart to fill. Back in her room, she threw herself at the bed and fell asleep instantly.

 

            And then that infernal crying came again. Mary sat up bolt-straight like she was a spring tightened for that very moment.. She had just laid down, hadn't she? It couldn't be more than five minutes. She looked to the window– saw darkness, heard the trees creaking in the wind. No time had passed at all. But there was no denying it, down the hallway the wails of her baby rang through the apartment and she had no choice but to go again.

            Out of bed, down the hallway, Mary once again underwent the pilgrimage. But as she began to open the door, the hoarse cry of her little girl faded into nothing again. This time, Mary entered the room. Half decorated, half painted, a crib her father helped put together in the dead center.

            Mary crept through the dark nursery illuminated only by the moonbeams that snuck around the storm clouds and through the window. They lit the cradle in a halo of pale light. Her perfect little girl slept like an angel. Mary bent down and caressed the girl's cheek with a single finger before laying the back of her hand on the baby’s forehead.

            Everything seemed okay. There was no fever.

            Mary hesitantly looked outside as the rain began to pelt the ground in cold sheets. Mary bit her lip and considered moving the crib into her room tonight, but looking down at the baby now, she looked so peaceful.

            "Just bad dreams," Mary whispered, shuffling back to the door in a dark that was as black as pitch. Down the hallway she stumbled as the whistling winds received a groaning reply from the house. In the confusion, her foot kicked into the box and she nearly fell over, slumping against the wall and biting her lip hard to stifle a scream of frustration. Her arm snaked around the opening to the bathroom and fished for a second before her fingers found the switch. A light emanated into the hallway and Mary picked up the box and tossed it into away and into the living room. She flinched as it gave a hollow thud on the floor and swooshed to a stop. One eye on the door to the nursery, Mary shrugged and moved back to her bedroom, fell down on her bed a dead weight.

            As Mary pulled back the covers, sticking a single foot outside to stay at the perfect temperature, the crying returned– just as loud, just as unruly. Mary sighed deeply and cursed to herself. This was going to be every night from now on, wasn’t it?

She rubbed her eyes at the light, but no- this wasn’t right.

Mary had to stop and reset. She looked left to the bathroom, its insides dark and cavernous. She had left the bathroom light on, hadn’t she? Slowly, her head moved to gaze at the nursery door. Light crept through the cracks around the outside, faintly spilling into the hall. There could be no question that the light inside was on.

Was she losing it? Was the nursery light the one she left on? No, that didn’t make sense. That didn’t make even an iota of sense. But her baby was crying and it was late; it was so hard to think straight.

Her heart fluttered as she moved forward to the nursery door, nightgown flittering about her ankles. Mary blinked, double-checking there was no flash of lighting, no delirious vision. But it was still there. She wanted to call for help, call the police, do anything, but that light came from her daughter's room and she couldn't wait for any of that.

Mary reached out and grabbed the door handle decisively. And just as she did, the light within turned off. Her breathing quivered in her throat and her hand once so sure now shook with tremors. As she threw the door open, the cries of her baby stopped.

            Mary rushed to the cradle swaddled in darkness. Before she arrived, a streak of lightning lit the room for a second and Mary's heart fluttered in an odd breath of peace. She could just make out her child there in the crib, just a couple feet away. But in that instantaneous moment, Mary saw something else. Just out of view, in the corner of the room, she saw something here that should not be.

            And she screamed.

            A second bolt of lightning rent the night sky. Illuminated for the briefest of moments, standing in the corner was another person. Dressed in black from head to toe with a tape recorder in their left hand– they brought a bloody knife to their face and unfurled their index finger, pressing it to their lips.

            "Ssh," came the soothing sound from the corner as the room snapped back to black. "The baby is sleeping," the person said.

            And then Mary heard a click and the sound of her baby crying sounded through the room again. Not from the crib but from the corner, from the tape recorder.

            And as one last flash of lighting beckoned a torrential storm, the sounds of the baby's cries filled the room.

 

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