A Haunted House

The Baby

The baby cried and cried for his mother, but nobody could hear him. He had suffocated in his sleep so long ago--a tragedy of the young maid leaving him to sleep on his stomach--and there was nobody who could cuddle or feed him where he was now. Stuck in the ethereal in-between, his wails desperately pierced into reality--a mere echo riding upon the howling winds, but of course now, nobody was around to listen.

There were some who heard his cries in the beginning, shortly after he had died. Desperate for his milk and the feeling of warm skin, he cried and cried all through the night. The young maid heard, and the cries stabbed her heart every night until she quit in tears, though the Lady and her husband had forgiven her long ago. The groundskeeper heard it, though he refused to let on to anyone that he heard it. He stood stoically in the garden, staring at the dark trees silhouetted against the twilight glow of the sky, unflinching before the wails of the long night.

His father heard. It drove him insane. Where the grief deafened his mother to the cries, his father was forced to relive the traumatic death over and over again. Grinding his teeth, he lay awake in the dark night glaring at the ceiling of his room. He did not know how he could escape the haunting wails, and as the sleep was torn from his restless fingers night after night, his guilt and grief turned to blame. And rage.

The cries of the baby he had loved so much years before tore him to pieces, and he began drinking in the dark quarters. His wife began singing again, awakening with the birds, and he hated her for it. His wife whispered to him in the night lovingly warm, yet how could she betray their child lost to God? How could she not hear the cries of their tiny baby? Resentment sank deeper into his veins, and the baby's cries called him to revenge. The madness consumed him, and the night was long and soaked with bloodied vengeance before the wailings finally released him in the end.