What Cries in the Dark

The door clicked shut, the sound reverberating through the still house. She pressed her back against the wood, her breath shallow.

Her daughter was already dragging her injured foot toward the couch, mumbling complaints about the “dumb sticker” and asking for tweezers.

She tried to answer, but her voice wouldn’t come. Her mind was still outside, under the trees, where that shadow moved in a way shadows shouldn’t.

“You’re just tired,” she whispered, half to herself, half to the empty house.

But even as the words left her lips, they felt wrong.

Her daughter called again, louder this time. “Mom! The sticker!”

She pushed off the door and moved toward her, her steps heavy, the sound of the night still pressing against her skull. Kneeling, she reached for her daughter’s foot, brushing away dirt and dried grass. Her fingers worked automatically, plucking out the tiny burr.

“There,” she said, her voice finally steady. “All better. Go upstairs and wash your feet before you get in bed.”

The girl pouted, but the hint of tears glistening in her eyes kept her from arguing. She trudged upstairs, leaving her mother alone in the too-quiet house.

Her eyes drifted to the window over the sink. It looked out onto the backyard, the trampoline barely visible under the glow of the porch light, the trees beyond loomed black and endless.

“It wasn’t a baby.”

The thought cut through her again, sharper this time, a razor slicing through her rationality. She gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles white. She could almost hear the cry now, faint and distant.

But it had sounded like a baby earlier, no? That high, keening wail that tugged at the maternal part of her brain, the part that still stirred at the slightest whimper from her daughter. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, either.

The sound had been there three nights ago when she’d woken suddenly at 3 a.m., her mouth dry and her heart racing for no reason she could name. She’d stood at the window then looking out at the moonlit yard, her mind flickering between childhood fears of ghosts and adult fears of prowlers.

But she’d seen nothing after the initial cry. She’d told herself it was just the wind through the old house, a trick of memory and fatigue.

Tonight, though, it was different.

She turned away from the window, shivering despite the warm air. Upstairs, her daughter’s footsteps padded softly toward the bathroom. The sound comforted her, tethered her to reality.

And yet.

Her feet moved without her permission, carrying her to the back door. Her hand hesitated on the cold brass knob.

Don’t.

She twisted it anyway. The door groaned as it opened, the night spilling in, thick and oppressive.

The yard stretched out before her, the trampoline still and empty, the trees at the edge of the property impenetrable in their darkness.

She stepped onto the porch. The boards creaked beneath her weight, each step an invitation to the night.

“Hello?” she called, her voice barely above a whisper. She hated how small it sounded.

Silence answered her.

And then, faint and almost too soft to hear, it came.

The cry.

High and mournful, it rolled over the yard, distant and close all at once, as if the sound couldn’t decide where it belonged.

Her breath caught.

“It’s not a baby,” she murmured, her voice trembling.

Her body screamed to turn back, lock the door, crawl into bed with her daughter, and pretend this moment had never happened.

Instead, she stepped off the porch.

The grass was cool and damp against her feet, each blade a reminder of how real this was, how wrong this was.

The sound came again, louder this time.

And closer.

Her eyes darted to the trees, searching for movement, for the faint smudge of not-quite-shadow she’d seen before.

But the trees were still.

It wasn’t until she turned back toward the house that she saw it on the trampoline. A small, pale shape curled in a fetal position as if asleep.

Her breath hitched. “It’s not a baby,” she said again, her voice breaking.

But her feet moved forward, drawn by some primal instinct she couldn’t name, some ancient compulsion buried deep in her bones. The shape didn’t stir as she approached.

The closer she got, the less it looked like a child. Its limbs were too long, its skin pale, almost translucent in the moonlight.

She stopped a few feet away, her body trembling.

The thing on the trampoline shifted, its movements slow and deliberate, as if it knew she was watching. And then it turned its head.

The eyes were black. Not dark, not shadowed, but black, deep, and endless, and hungry. It opened its mouth, and the sound was worse than the cry.

It was laughter.