A Haunting of Words

by Brian Paone et al.

  He woke in the night, alone in his room. The evil smell of the crib had reached to where he slept.

  He climbed out of his bed and went again to the nursery. The door had almost closed—it did that on its own—but he pushed it open and peeked in. The crib still sat against the far wall. He took a few hesitant steps into the room. In the moonlight, the crib cast shadows on the wall like the bars of a dungeon.

  Ross knew what caused shadows; they didn’t frighten him. What made his heart trip and his breath wheeze like a dying man’s was the crib itself, revealed now in the semi-darkness; the ends of it, their outlines curved like broad-shouldered ghosts; the spindly legs, like human bones; but most of all, the white slats in the side, like long teeth, revealed in a ghastly smile that said, I see you. I know you’re there. And I’m very, very hungry.

  Ross stared at the crib, petrified. How could they leave him alone in bed with this thing one room away?

  The crib moved.

  Ross hollered and turned, but the door had nearly closed again, and he bumped into it, closing it tight. In his panic, the knob slipped in his hands, and he knew that the crib rolled closer to him on its new, silent wheels, but he didn’t dare turn to look, and at last, the knob turned, and he pulled the door open and dashed down the hall and into his parents’ room, crying and yelling and Mom asking, “What’s wrong?” until Dad shouted, “This is ridiculous!”

  “But the crib was after me!” Ross said. He tried to keep his voice calm because they always complained when it grew loud, but it slipped out of his control, like the doorknob had slipped in his hands.

  Dad grabbed Ross around the waist with one arm in the way he didn’t like, carried him back to the nursery, and flicked on the light. Ross could hear Mom padding heavily behind. The crib still sat where they’d placed it, its evil hidden again by the light. The wheel tracks from positioning it showed in the carpet, but no others.

  “Well? You said it chased you?”

  He thought it had chased him, but he’d been too intent on opening the door to look.

  “I saw it jiggle. I thought it was going to come after me.”

  “Then how could you say it actually came after you?”

  “Oh Frank, you don’t need to cross-examine him like one of your witnesses. Maybe you didn’t tighten something all the way and it shifted a little bit. That could seem frightening enough in the middle of the night.”

  “Everything was tight, all right. I made sure of it.” Dad was acting stubborn again.

  Ross saw Mom squeeze her lips, but she merely said, “He could’ve had a dream. Don’t be so hard on him.”

  Dad looked at Ross and relaxed a bit. “Maybe so. You probably dreamed it, fella. See how the crib didn’t move at all?”

  “Frank, that won’t do any good. He can’t tell the difference between dreams and waking yet. Leave it be.”

  But Mom was wrong. He could tell. The crib had moved. No good saying it though.

  So when they left Ross alone in his own room and turned out the light, he waited a very long time, listening for the crib. When he decided his parents had gone to sleep, he grabbed his pillow and blanket and dragged them downstairs to the couch. If that crib tried to follow him down the steps, it would at least make enough noise to wake everyone up.

  The next morning, he measured the width of the crib with his plastic pirate’s sword and figured that it wouldn’t fit through the nursery door. After that he slept better, until three weeks later when his parents woke him in the middle of the night during a gentle snowfall because the time had come to go to the birth center.

  Grandma held Ross so that he could watch the birthing.

  “It’s a girl,” she said.

  “A … girl,” Dad repeated.

  A girl? He had a sister? But Dad had acted so sure. Two days before, Dad showed Ross the little boy’s outfit he’d bought to surprise Mom.

  “Let me hold her.” Funny, Mom didn’t sound surprised at all. Just tired.

  “Lie back here,” the midwife said. “That’s good. Now let her rest on your stomach for a moment.”

  Grandma set Ross down, and he heard Dad mutter, “I knew we should’ve done an ultrasound.”

  The midwife put a clamp on the cord and handed a pair of surgical scissors to Dad. Dad put the scissors into Ross’s hands and guided them toward the place on the cord indicated by the midwife. Ross had practiced for this when no one watched, making ropes of Play-Doh and cutting them with his scissors. Of course, these scissors looked much sharper, with long dangerous points.

  “Right here,” the midwife said.

  Ross squeezed but the cord didn’t cut like Play-Doh. It possessed a toughness that resisted the sharp scissors. He gave an extra hard squeeze. The scissors cut through, and the baby was free, a separate person at last. She looked all purple with her little nose bent to one side and blood and sticky stuff in her sparse hair and all over her, and howling as if fit to be tied.

  Poor thing, Ross thought. She’ll need loads of help. She can’t do anything by herself.

  And in that moment Ross fell in love with her.

  Grandma shook her head. “I can’t get over it. In my day, they wouldn’t have let children anywhere near this. The husband either, for that matter.”

  “Or the grandmother,” said the midwife, laughing. “What will you name her?”

  “Good Lord,” Dad said, “we never considered girls’ names. We—”

  “Anne Louise,” Mom said.

  And that pretty much finished it, from Ross’s point of view. He fell asleep on the couch in the lounge until noon, when, the snow having long since stopped, Dad loaded up the car, with Anne in her car seat in back with Ross. He’d be able to watch her all the way home.

  Grandma slid into her own car. “I can’t get over it. In my day, she’d have stayed in the hospital a full week.”

  “Well, that’s why we came here instead of the hospital across the street.” Dad sounded annoyed.

  That puzzled Ross. Grandma had made a cheerful observation, not a criticism. If adults couldn’t understand each other, how could he expect them to understand him?

  The rest of the day passed in a blur. Dad stayed home and went out with Ross to build a snowman, but for the most part, Ross found himself alone more often than when he and Mom were the only two people in the house. His parents let him stay outside as long as he wanted, until so much cold leaked into his boots that he couldn’t stand it.

  Inside, Anne did nothing but sleep on shoulders, cry a lot, nurse, and nap with Mom. Whenever Ross tried to help, they told him not to get so close, or to wash his hands, or just to be more careful. He began to grow annoyed with his parents. They kept all the caretaking to themselves.

  Grandma brought supper over, and soon bedtime came. Dad read him a story and turned out the light. Ross felt exhausted in spite of sleeping through the morning. Only the crying of the baby downstairs and his parents’ arguing about how to make her stop kept him awake.

  At last the crying stopped. A minute later, he heard Mom and Dad tiptoe past his room. He crept from his bed in alarm and followed them to the nursery in time to see Mom lay Anne in the crib and pull the little quilted coverlet that Grandma had made over her.

  “No!” He’d forgotten, till now, why they’d purchased the crib in the first place.

  “Shh!” Dad said.

  “But don’t put the baby in the crib, please!”

  Dad’s face grew scarlet. “If she wakes up, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do something you won’t like, believe me!”

  “Frank, keep your voice down.”

  Dad glared at Mom, but she ignored him and pulled up the side of the crib. It locked in place with a SNICK! Anne didn’t move. Ross relaxed a little bit when Dad turned on the baby monitor. At least if anything noisy happened, his parents would hear it. Ross wished that they’d put the monitor there weeks earlier. He’d have slept better.

  Of course, sleeping tonight was out of the question. He didn’t know t
he crib’s abilities, but it wouldn’t surprise him if it could act silently. If his parents wouldn’t protect his little sister, he would do it himself, in spite of them.

  And for now, that meant going back to his bedroom.

  Ross started, horrified, aware that he must have gone to sleep. But maybe only for a little while. He heard no sounds, so his parents were probably in bed. He crawled from the bed and slipped down the hallway to the nursery. He listened.

  Silence.

  That didn’t reassure him. He pushed open the door and looked wide-eyed in the darkness at the crib. Somehow it seemed different. Of course, it held the baby, but something else … the shape seemed twisted …

  No. The mattress lay on a slant. One side had dropped a notch. Ross moved to the foot of the crib and peered through the slats, over the bumper guard. Anne had rolled over and lay with her face buried in the coverlet, where it had bunched up against the bumper guard.

  Ross had never touched the crib in the past, but he didn’t think twice about it now. He moved to the side where Anne was. He could probably reach through the slats and push Anne away, but he had to get her out, and he could reach her best where she was. So he climbed up the side and leaned over the rail. Then he balanced on his stomach and reached down with his hands.

  His fingertips had barely touched Anne’s form when the railing beneath him dropped faster than he could fall, so that for a moment, he seemed to hang motionless. Then he plunged. The railing shot back up, smashed into his stomach, and threw him into the air. He landed on his back.

  His parents burst into the room five seconds later. Dad almost stepped on Ross in the dark before Mom turned on the overhead light from the doorway.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  Ross lay on his back and clutched his stomach. Tears streamed from his eyes. He couldn’t say a word. They wouldn’t listen anyway.

  “Oh my God!” Mom ran to the crib. “Look at her!” She dropped the rail and pulled the baby out. “Frank, her lips are purple.”

  “Is she breathing?”

  “I can’t tell—”

  “Here, give her to me.”

  “You can’t tell any better than I can.”

  “Sure I can. Now—”

  Anne’s face scrunched up, and she let out a cry that startled everyone.

  “Thank God.” Mom held the squalling infant close to her chest and looked at the crib. “How did that mattress get tilted?”

  Both his parents turned to look at Ross.

  “I—didn’t—do—it,” he managed to gasp.

  “The baby could have died,” Mom said. “Do you realize that?”

  “Why did you climb in there anyway?”

  Ross lay on the floor and gasped lungfuls of air against the receding pain in his stomach.

  Dad turned from him to straighten the mattress while Mom sat on top of the toy chest to nurse the crying infant. Dad reached for the hooks on both ends of the frame, lifted the frame a bit, pressed the hooks—they were four feet apart, and he needed to press both at once—then lifted the frame to the top level. When he released the hooks, they popped out and caught in their slots.

  “Frank?”

  “What?”

  “How …?” Mom stopped.

  “Well?”

  “How could Ross have done that?”

  Dad frowned, then flushed. “Are you saying I didn’t hook it right? It still wouldn’t have slipped if he hadn’t crawled on it.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I wondered if it could be defective. Could it happen again?”

  Dad rattled the mattress frame. “No.”

  “Yes,” Ross said from the floor. He felt a little sick, but he had his wind back. “It could.” No harm trying once more.

  “Not if you don’t climb on it again.”

  “The crib did it itself.”

  Dad reddened further. “It’s tight now. It won’t happen unless somebody makes it happen.”

  Ross sat up painfully. No point arguing, he thought. Dad doesn’t even hear me. He thinks I’m saying that it’s his fault. He thinks it is his fault. Well, maybe he’s right. But only because he won’t listen.

  Anne had fallen asleep again.

  Mom said, “Ross, are you all right?”

  He nodded.

  “Maybe we’ve protected Anne too much. Maybe tomorrow we can let you hold her on your lap. I’m glad you want to, believe me. But you mustn’t climb into the crib to sleep with her. Okay?”

  He nodded again. Did they really think he wanted to sleep in that crib? Sleep came in two types, and that crib was chock full of the wrong kind.

  “But now it’s time for all of us to return to bed,” she finished.

  He nodded, momentarily defeated.

  Back in his room, Ross put his pillow against the headboard and waited for the house to grow quiet. That crib didn’t scare him now as much as it used to. He’d seen that it couldn’t eat him. It didn’t eat Anne. It could only move its mattress frame and side rails; Dad really had screwed the rest together tightly. It couldn’t hurt Ross unless he climbed on it, and it couldn’t hurt Anne unless she lay in it.

  Which she did. So he needed to get her out, and without Mom or Dad knowing or they’d put her back. He could stay quiet enough not to alert them, if he waited until they fell asleep. He wondered how long the crib needed to act.

  Minutes passed. He slipped from bed and tiptoed down the hall, and when he peeked in the nursery, a glowing red eye shone from where the monitor sat on the toy chest.

  That monitor would have to go.

  He knew how it worked. His parents had let him play with it long after they no longer used it for him. If he unplugged it from the wall or turned it off, a burst of static would hiss from the receiver in his parents’ room. But if he just unplugged the power jack, the battery inside would take over.

  Ross walked softly, silently into the room—not like his parents, whose heavy bodies made the floor creak with every step. He noticed right off that the mattress had tilted again. The crib probably knew a limited number of tricks. But how long had it been that way? Anne must have slid less easily this time because the side of the mattress had dropped two notches instead of one. But the second notch had done the trick and Anne lay smothering.

  Or smothered.

  He almost called for help, but they’d just blame him again. Maybe lock him in his room this time. The thought made his throat tighten, but he didn’t start to cry. Too much noise. He couldn’t do anything until the monitor was out. He stepped to it and, trying to keep the touch of his hands on the monitor from making any sound, unplugged the jack. When the jack came out, the red light flickered, but only for a moment.

  He lifted the monitor, carried it to the bathroom, and set it without a sound on the soft bathmat. Then he left the bathroom, and gently, though it strained his patience, he closed the bathroom door. Things would stay quiet enough in there.

  Back to the nursery.

  He looked at the crib. Both side rails could move. He needed to get in over the tall foot of the crib, but he was too short to climb over it. A folding chair sat beside the door. He turned it around, grabbed the top, tipped it, and began to pull it backward toward the crib. On his first step, the back legs of the chair caught the carpet, and it folded with a muted CLANK! and a whining hiss.

  It took a fraction of a second for Ross to realize that the chair couldn’t hiss.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw smoke rise from the carpet where the crib’s wheels touched it. The wheels spun furiously until they caught, and the entire crib hurtled toward him at breakneck speed. He let go of the chair and jumped sideways.

  The crib twisted to follow him, but its momentum caused it to overbalance and careen broadside into the falling chair. The top of the chair drove through the slats and splintered them. For a moment, the crib and chair leaned against and into each other, with the top of the chair inside the crib, trapping Anne. Then the crib’s broken slats slid down the ch
air, pushing the chair upright and then over. The crib landed on its side, and the folding chair fell over backward onto the carpet. The crib’s wheels whirled uselessly.

  “Mom! Dad!” No point keeping quiet now.

  But then Ross realized that his voice wouldn’t come over the monitor. They’d think he was shouting from his own room, and that’s where they’d go first. He’d only slowed them down. And Anne needed help instantly. She still lay limp, her face still buried in the coverlet.

  He bent down to reach for her, and the broken slats stood up, like stakes in the bottom of a pit, a picket line between him and Anne. They waved slightly—fingers ready to snatch him, fangs eager to bite.

  He stretched his arms straight out, let himself fall forward, and stopped himself against the mattress. The splintered slats strained to reach him, but he had a good two-inch clearance. He reached down with one hand and grabbed Anne, but she was too heavy; he couldn’t lift her from his awkward position. He pulled at the coverlet instead, but the room lights came on, startling him. At almost the same moment, the top edge of the mattress pulled back another notch, tipping him forward. The rail on the floor kicked out and knocked his feet from beneath him.

  He fell. One of the fanglike slats pierced his chest while another angled to intercept his eye.

  A sharp tug stopped his motion. The splintered slat remained an inch away from his eye. He rose into the air, lifted by his pajamas, and the slat in his chest pulled free, having penetrated a mere half inch. Drops of blood fell down onto the slat and soaked right in.

  Dad held him. Ross looked up, blinking in the bright room light. Dad changed his grip to hold Ross in his arms but continued to stare at the crib in disbelief.

  “I saw it,” he muttered. “It really moved.”

  “Get Anne, Dad.”

  The direction of Dad’s gaze changed at the same time as his expression. He set Ross down and reached over the broken slats to retrieve Anne, who looked almost as purple as at her birth. Without bothering to check if she breathed, he covered her nose and mouth with his own mouth and began to puff air into her tiny lungs.

  A step sounded in the doorway behind them.