31 Short Horror Stories for Halloween

Lullaby

We tried for fifteen years to have a baby. Nothing worked for us. We were that smaller statistic that couples ignored when they opted for fertility treatments. We were the unsuccessful percentage. I made peace with it and I thought my wife had too but life often throws surprises your way.

Our surprise came when my wife went for her monthly check-up. She was late and thought it was menopause. It turned out she was three months pregnant. She came home happier than the day we were married. I was happy for her, and I was concerned. She was forty-one. Could she survive this? Would the baby be healthy? Would we be around to bring it up?

None of this mattered to her. She read baby books, watched TV shows, and shopped for the baby. People congratulated us when we told them the news. When we looked away, they shook their heads in disappointment. We were being selfish.

The baby arrived one month early and it lived for eight hours. We never got to hold him. I took care of the funeral while my wife lay sedated in the hospital. She was routinely having hysterical fits.

Once she was home, she closed herself up in the nursery. She refused company and when her friends came to see her, to ask her if she needed anything she would get snippy. She would tell them she had a baby that needed to be cared for.

I knew she was going mad. I just didn't know what to do about her madness. She was happy in it. She would buy baby things. She would sit in the nursery. She would rock the very expensive cradle we'd had made and she would sing lullabies in her sweet voice.

It went on for a whole year. When I came home that night, I realized just how out of hand the situation was getting. There were balloons on our porch and a large Happy Birthday sign. I went in, angry. I stomped up the stairs, and threw the nursery door open. I will never forget what I saw.

A large table sat in the middle of the room with a cake on it. A solitary candle burning in its center. The room was decorated with balloons and the stench was choking me. I gagged as I watched my wife hum a lullaby to the pile of bones in the cradle. She had such a sweet voice.

Inspired by Lullaby [http://w.tt/1i19c3W] by User Topazzy [https://www.wattpad.com/user/Topazzy]