The ninth child and the starving ghost

Untitled Part 1

Amongst the pure children of a moral man, only the ninth was born alive. In the dead of the night it ripped the silence apart with a high-pitched cry, scarring away the ghost that observed from the corner of the room. The shadowy figure was petrified from the mortals shriek and jumped off the window to save itself. The doctors and the nurses heard and saw nothing suspicious, their eyes too immoral to see what the pure child saw. They cleaned and checked the child, a small girl with pink flesh, soft bones and a piercing shrill filling her lungs. The doctor approved and left the room while the nurses cleaned up the mess and helped the mother who was drugged out of her mind.

From the window the ghost was watching. Starving as it was, it waited for a chance. The flesh of humans, let alone children and infants was a legendary delight among its kind. The mother sooner or later would fall asleep and the child would be lulled by the soothing beep of the machines.

And so they did and the ghost was delighted. The mother was asleep, muttering words of terror in a slur in a bet with metal bars and a box attached. The prey was there, unprotected wrapped in white fuzzy clothes, it was almost taunting it to come and ripped it apart. Licking its teeth and smiling to itself, the ghost slipped through the window and went straight for the kill. It rushed towards the child, who was inside a box of glass.

The ghost tries desperately to open the box, crazed by the starvation. Like a stubborn Christmas gift, the walls of the box stay intact, protecting the child. It bites through the glass and howls in agony. Milky white blood showered the child. By instinct the child began shrieking, waking up the father who had dozed off on the chair near the beds. He saw nothing of the ghost, how could he? Only the pure can see the ghosts, but called the sister on watch to see why the child is upset. The sister came and checked the child, everything was normal, the child was dry, the heartbeat was normal and it wasn't hot or cold. Maybe it was just a nightmare or the first signs of a fussy personality? Everything was safe and sound.

The ghost was furious, muttering outside and biting the inside of his cheeks. How it angered it when children wouldn't obey their fate and stay still while it ate their petty flesh. Always the younger the child was the hardest was to keep it still. Human larvae with ear-raping cries that couldn't lift it own head without help but could keep demons at bay with their screams. It made the ghost wanting to snap his long teeth and return to his old ways of hunting; wandering around woods and feeding off whatever it could catch, but the taste.

The taste of a newborns flesh was something only the finest of poets could describe, according to the ghost. If it was a flower it would be a savory pink rose; if it was a sound, it would be Tsjaikovski's Waltz of the Flowers. It is and will be the purest, most precious and delicious meal a ghost could ever have from human meat.

It had ravished dozens and dozens of others, from sickly elderly men to newly born children. It had snap bones like crab legs and slurp the narrow, lick them clean, leaving the guts and the brain for dessert. It had saved the blood of hundreds and the fluids in jars and drank them as it morning's tea. It needed again to feel the taste again. It was starving and the child was like a finely cut oyster meat dangling front of a chained starving lion.

The ghost would get what it demanded, even if that meant killing the protectors of its meal.

And of course the child would shriek and writhe as loud and as powerful as its little lungs could to keep the devil at bay...

After two days the woman and the child took the hospital leave and return home with the father, all happy and loved, like all families with a newborn should be. Naturally the ghost was following, running an unnatural speed.