CRY, BABY

"Let me do it for you.”

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

            Samuel 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 fluorescent pole light.

            Mary took a quick installation lap around the aisles and then began her search in earnest. She forewent the plastic bag and left with a jar of full-sized kosher dill pickles under one arm and a bottle of ranch dressing under the other. She breathed in the refreshing night air, feeling a kick from the baby. “Going to be the outdoor type?” Mary 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 forgot.

            She rounded on the car from behind, squeezing towards the passenger door, her belly dangerously close to wedging itself between the car and a large truck parked too close to the line, like a boulder in a very small canyon. She bent at the waist and grabbed for the handle, but it pulled cleanly with no resistance. Mary 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 backed out of the ravine 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 Sam 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.

###

Baby Samantha didn't cry, she barely cooed. For the past three weeks, the baby had been quiet and Mary found solace in that alone.

            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 her. A guilty verdict was the only alternative. 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 the times that the image rose to the surface, she wanted to dry heave.

As for the baby’s namesake, Mary had yet to find out what happened to her husband. 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 stuck pig.

Mary didn’t know she could miss anyone like she did now. Samuel couldn’t wait to start a family and the nursery was smothered in that love. As she rocked the baby in her arms at three in the morning now, she did so in the living room. Mary let the baby sleep where it belonged, but she avoided the nursery at all other times like anathema lest she be confronted by her husband’s handiwork.

Samantha slept now, which she did far less than a normal child would have. Instead baby Sammy would lay in her crib or on her blanket in the living room and stare up at the ceiling. Her eyes weren’t unfocused, showing the warning signs of something truly wrong deep down; she was just. . . herself.

            Tonight, as a storm prodded with its first snaps of wind, the god-sent that was the quiet finally grew thin. Her child worried her. Mary toted Samantha down the narrow halls of their home like a ghost, their apartment a mausoleum. The somber pair departed as Mary laid her child down to sleep.

            But tonight was not a night like all the others. One month after Samuel’s death. One month to the minute Mary had discovered the body, as Mary drifted into an empty sleep baby Samantha first began to cry.

            Mary woke, snapping to as a howl 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 out to orient herself, Mary shuffled ahead confidently. Even with no sound reason, she had made this trip 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, 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.

            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 crying needled her dreams 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 have been 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 underwent her 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, supplies for crown molding in the corner, 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.

            Mary hesitantly looked outside as the rain began to pelt the ground in cold sheets and 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 building. In the confusion, her foot kicked into the box and she nearly fell over, slumping against the wall and clenching her teeth 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 away. She flinched as it gave a hollow thud on the floor and swooshed to a stop. An appraising eye rested on the door to the nursery, expecting a renewed burst of yelps. Instead, Mary only 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 regretted wishing for this torture already.

Mary rubbed her eyes at the light.

She needed to stop and reset. She looked left to the bathroom, its insides dark and cavernous. Slowly, her head moved to gaze at the nursery door. Light crept through the cracks, faintly spilling into the hall.

Was she losing it? Had she turned the light on her last trip? No, that didn’t make sense. That didn’t make even an iota of sense.

Her heart fluttered as she moved forward to the nursery door, nightgown flittering about her ankles. Mary blinked, double-checking this was no flash of lightning from the storm, no delirious vision that would go away. 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. A streak of lightning lit the room for a second and Mary’s heart fluttered. 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 up and unfurled their index finger, pressing it to their lips.

            "Shh," came from the corner as the room snapped back to black. "The baby is sleeping.“ And then Mary heard a click and the sound of a baby—not her baby—crying filled the air.