Advertisement
Please wait...

A Parent’s Plea



Estimated reading time — 9 minutes

Throughout my years of reading people’s stories of this nature, I have noticed that many of them speak from the perspective of a child. This is entirely apt: we’ve all been children, we’ve all had the strange and unexplainable experiences before we “grew up” and convinced ourselves we’d figured out how the world worked.

As children, the rules are flexible. Monsters, flying, magic are all perfectly acceptable in our worlds until the droll, seriousness of ‘science’ takes over.

Please forgive me if I depart from this perspective and assume that of a parent, a father. I realise that many of you good readers, for plentiful reasons, have not had this experience. Those of you who have will agree that the becoming of a parent bestows upon one the weight of all responsibility. You are the one upon whom all the power of protection, reassurance and care rests. You have in your charge a unique and precious entity, your duty to preserve and nourish it. It is a sacred and terrifying burden. Thus is was with Corley.

When my first son – how I miss him! – was born, I confess I felt lost and terrified as well as the happier emotions new parenthood brings. But plenty of others do it, I thought. Millions all over the world, throughout history, have raised children and they managed. Poorer, less educated, even less evolved animals do it all the time! I would be fine!

Oh would it were so.

The first few months were the typical mundane, hectic, calm, chaotic, messy, joyous and absurd times of modern parenting. Corley was a difficult sleeper at first; hated sleeping alone. I can sense the parents reading this smile knowingly – for aren’t all babies like this? They have to be trained to sleep alone, heartbreaking though it might be. In infancy, Corley would scream for hours if he was separated from his mother or me; long after we had passed out from exhaustion, we would wake to hear him screaming. Eventually we relented. Surely any damage done by sleeping with his parents would be less than the obvious discomfort he felt screaming all night.

He developed into a spirited, highly energetic toddler. He was tireless, rough and boisterous but just as loving and relational as one could hope for. He was a little delayed in walking, and speaking, but every child is different aren’t they? Don’t rush them, says the literature. They’ll get there in their own time. And of course, he did. For a time.

Now reader, please allow me a small indulgence. You’ve heard about the horrors of parenthood: the sleeplessness, soiled nappies, drudgery, boredom. You’ve also heard about the “joy”, and the “amazement” and any number of superlative words of “wonder” that it brings. Thus it was when Corley started talking. More so, understanding. It is known that babies and children absorb huge amounts of information before they venture into language themselves. A new word, a colour, a concept. I was especially moved when he identified with me enough to give me a name: “Bab”.

The most special part of this for me was that instant of connection between two minds – that brief eye contact where he understood something, and I saw that he did, and he saw that I saw, and so on into that endless feedback loop that signifies the connection of two minds. We adults do that every day of course, with our friends and colleagues; but when you see it happen for the first time with your own child… then, you understand why we go on about it so.

Advertisements

And this must be when it started. Of course I didn’t realise at the time – who would with their first child? – that something was amiss. Shortly after I had begun to see these ‘connections’ regularly, I noticed that Corley would often shift his gaze from mine to a space in the room just over my shoulder. The look of understanding in his eyes would deepen. His smile would broaden. The first time I had assumed that his mother was behind me, and he was reacting to her. He would still acknowledge me of course, but his greatest recognition was reserved for that vacant space behind me, up by the ceiling, or at the top of the curtains.

“Bab!” he would say, as I caught his attention. “Bababab!” and he would give me that look of recognition before sliding his eyeline beyond, and smile and perhaps nod faintly as he acknowledged his unseen ‘friend’.

Now. I know at this point there are a thousand reasons that this could be. Perhaps his reactions were just delayed – he needed to stare into space momentarily as he processed his infant thoughts. Maybe a fly or a wisp of light caught his fancy. Or he was daydreaming! Why would I entertain foolish thoughts of him looking at ‘someone else’? Something else? For heaven’s sake, maybe the supernaturalists are right, and children do indeed see sprites and beings and auras and faeries and dragons, before the mighty hand of ‘science’ and ‘reason’ crush out altogether the world of the fantastical! If it’s normal and happens to us all, well then what of it?!

Like you, dear reader, I scoffed at my over-concern. And I would have forgotten it by now, as Corley is almost seven, had things eventuated the way I’d hoped. But as you see by now, they did not. Far from it.

Some nights later, I was heading to bed very late, congratulating myself on my brilliant fatherhood prowess, as I had only recently got Corley to sleep in his own bed calmly and without fuss. His mother worked night shifts as a nurse, so this formidable task had been left to me. As I passed his room I heard a voice. A calm, competent, clear voice. I inched closer, obviously in some confusion. The voice was Corley’s. He was holding a conversation! Proper sentences, and leaving a pause for the imaginary other participant, much as if he were on the phone. As I approached I was able to make out his dialogue.

“I can’t,” he said.

A brief pause.

“I’m not going to.”

Another pause.

“No. No I won’t. I would never do that.”

Of course I was stunned as he’d never said more than “bababab” or “mama” or “num num num” to me. And now he was negating hypothetical future situations? How was it so?

He continued:

“No.”

And then, after a longer silence:

“Because he is my father.”

Aghast, I strode into the darkened room. The curtain was open as usual, the sodium streetlight casting a dreary orange stripe on the far wall. It was dark enough to sleep, but light enough to see Corley sitting upright facing the end of his bed. He turned to me as I entered, his little face blank and neutral.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked him. He stared up at me, his face unreadable and innocent as a toddler’s.

“Bababab,” he replied. I knelt down by him, and gestured to the end of his bed.

“Who were you talking to?” I repeated, in a more kindly and soft tone. He continued looking at me and whispered “babab” again and put his hand gently on my arm. I tried a few other more complex questions to prompt him into revealing his powers of conversation with me, but he just continued to stare calmly, occasionally whispering “babab”. I was tired, I was rattled, but what could I do? I couldn’t demand he converse with me. I bid him sleep now, and he immediately lay down, placed his head on his pillow, all the while watching me as I kissed his forehead and left. Watching me with that same serene, impenetrable expression.
I slept poorly. The image of him in confident discussion with the end of his bed haunted my slumber, and the nature of his subject echoed on the edges of my conciousness. I rose some hours later to use the lavatory and heard Corley’s voice again. It was hushed this time, scarcely above a whisper. I crept to his door and listened to the following:

“I just want to go to sleep now.”

Advertisements

Pause.

“Please go, I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

A longer pause, and then something of a weary sigh.

“Alright. I will if I can go to sleep right now.”

Pause.

“I’ve said I would.”

I’m sorry to say I burst in at speed. Corley was fast asleep, snoring soundly, tangled in his cosy nest of blankets and toys. I tried to rouse him a couple of times but he was deep in slumber. ‘Dead to the world’, as the phrase goes.

As it was almost dawn and his mother would be home soon, I decided to resist the urge to sit up with him and watch over him. In any case he was now so deep in his dreams I reckoned that nothing could wake him, and I trudged back to my own bed and slumped into unconsciousness.

I decided against burdening my dear wife with the story; her work as a psychiatric nurse is traumatic enough and throwing a bizarre story at her about her son’s nighttime conferences wasn’t what she needed. And what would I expect her to do about it, I imagined her saying. Shouldn’t I, as the father, the husband of the house, the protector – the ‘man’ – be able to resolve it?

The next few days, indeed months and years, are of scant interest to this story. Suffice to say there were no more midnight communications that I was aware of, and though he was slower than most, and his distracted recognition of this unseen ‘friend’ of his increased and deepened, Corley grew. His character as observed by others, was of a quiet and solitary boy. Polite and serious when spoken to, his expression unknowable, gentle and reticent. The boisterous exuberance of his infancy was all but gone. Occasionally he could be seen running and laughing as he played outside, often alone, so as a family we weren’t particularly concerned.

When he was nearly four, his brother Antonio was born. Having experienced a new baby once already, we were much less stressed and ‘on-edge’ than with Corley. Antonio learned and adapted to life quickly. He could speak before two, and shortly after he could read several words and toilet himself. His knowledge of the basics – colours, animals, numbers, people – was considerable. Every day he seemed to learn a new word or phrase and begin using it. He would relish the idea of learning concepts and ideas. Corley, at six years old, was his idol, his hero. At least at first.

But as you will predict, the happiness receded and a darker time stole ever closer to us.

Corley grew more distant as his brother grew more competent. He had almost stopped talking to anyone, and seemed to run on autopilot. He ate mechanically. He read, wrote, engaged with other children, spoke, played only when directed. He never offered comment or opinion unless demanded, and then it was only ever “good” or “nice”. When we embraced him before school or before bed, his arms would automatically return the hug then drop to his side, devoid of emotion or warmth. His eyes would meet mine, but his neutral expression was even more pronounced. Please forgive my absurd oxymoronic grammar, but I could only describe it as ‘extremely neutral’.

I have read enough about conditions and syndromes such as dyspraxia, autism, Aspergers and such, to know that the world is big enough to embrace every child, no matter their disposition. I know that children who are exposed to trauma or poison or drugs can develop conditions like this. In Syria there are children so affected by the horrors of conflict that there is doubt they will ever ‘come back’. In Congo there are child-soldiers who have been stripped of their personalities through drugs and exploitation. Haiti even has a legal status of ‘zombie’ for people who have disappeared and returned with their emotions and humanity drained. In areas of Eastern Europe are children who have been mentally erased through trafficking and prostitution. Every country hosts some of these tragic, blank beings. Though it was somewhat agonising for us, his parents and brother, and the underfunded and disinterested health-system being what it is, we never found out what it was that caused this ebb of passion, of vitality.

Advertisements

Months passed. Antonio grew disinterested in his brother, in favour of his other friends. He stopped acknowledging him altogether, and regarded him as something of a piece of furniture. He wasn’t cruel or disdainful, but I suppose since he never elicited any reaction from Corley any more, he just ceased his engagement with him.

It was another dark and heavy Autumn night, around the 25th or 26th of March (Northern Hemisphere readers please note, in New Zealand the Autumn seem to come quickly, as sunset clunks in early when Daylight Savings Time ends.) I was again heading to bed late when I heard a voice coming from my boys’ bedroom. Antonio’s voice. Again that one-sided conversation, as of Corley’s those years ago. Though my distress was obviously great, I again listened.

The conversation was much more animated than Corley’s had been. Antonio was discussing events from his day, subjects like his favourite toys, basic emotions – normal three-year-old stuff. And occasionally laughing, as if the ‘other’ party had made some amusing comment. Then I heard this:

“You’re my brother. I love you, Corley!” and a delighted laugh.

I rushed in. Antonio was sitting up in his bed, his attention directed to the foot of it, an empty space. Corley was asleep, silent and still in his own bed on the other side of the room. Antonio glanced toward me as I approached, then returned to his dialogue.

“Dad here,” he said to the empty space. “Come on, Corley. Come out.” He turned to me and smiled, saying: “Dad, Corley’s here!”, again directing his attention to the foot of the bed.
“Where you going, Corley?” he giggled. nad after a moment he simply said “goodnight” and clunked his head down onto his pillow.
“Goodnight Dad.”

Needless to say reader, he offered no explanation of his eerie actions. He just looked at me with a gleam of happiness in his eye until he fell asleep.

I never heard his nocturnal conversations again. And that is almost the end of my story, except for this final event. Some months later Antonio was sitting at the table finishing his dinner. Corley was there too, but it was almost as if he had regressed further. Antonio did not even register him any more. Even his mother and I had to remember to attempt to engage with him, as our busy working life and day-to-day business took up more of our time. I was trying to get Antonio to acknowlegde Corley, perhaps talk to him or share his thoughts with him.

Antonio frowned. “No,” he replied. I don’t like Corley. I replied with some platitude about that not being nice, he’s your brother, he loves you, and similar words.

“I don’t like Corley,” Antonio repeated more emphatically. “Corley screaming. Corley screaming all the time.” He must have seen my shocked expression as he shifted his gaze to over my shoulder, up to that space by the ceiling, still frowning. His tone became grumpy, as that of any annoyed three-year-old. He stared back down at his plate, his eyes briefly flicking up to that empty spot.

“He screaming all the time now.”

***

And that really is all there is to tell. But my plea is thus: all of you parents, and those that would become parents, and those that are thinking of becoming parents. Please hug your child every day and tell them that you love them. Take every opportunity to spoil them. For the time we can show them that love may be all too brief.

Credit To – Mastadon

Please wait...

Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.

29 thoughts on “A Parent’s Plea”

  1. I honestly just want to know if this is a true story, as the father of a 10 month old who often look so over my shoulder and smiles, or looked at a wall a wall and waves..

  2. I think that maybe Corley’s body was idk emptied of its soul or whatever causes personality and Antonio could see the “soul” detached from the body that used to be Corley but is now just a shell. I don’t even really believe in this stuff but this is just a theory if it does turn out to be real. I used to see things that could be turned into pastas but I see them much less now that I am on medications. I’m a skeptic but I do want to believe in this stuff. Maybe both children have some form of schizophrenia?j Again I don’t know I’m just theorizing.

  3. This was very constructive and unique. I understand the whole meaning of the story, and in my opinion, I Don’t think there are any flaws. Well done! Absolutely amazing. I wish i Could write as well as you.

  4. I loved this. It was wel written, original and allowed you to interpret things a bit on your own.
    I feel that too many people go for the obvious, the gory, the same-old-same-old and that style of writing is- more often than not- taxing.
    I enjoyed the unsettling, eerie nature, along with the moral of loving your child, because you never know when tragedy may strike.
    Very good, sir!

  5. Mastadon I liked that you left the imaginary friend for the readers imagination to imagine what the imaginary friend looks like. Instead of giving a description of the imaginary friend. I just loved the whole story over all.

  6. Have you ever read “The Stand”, by Steve King? There is a character named Harold Lauder. You never get to read his writing, but I imagined something like how you wrote this story. It’s like you tried to articulate and be cultured and refined, but it just comes out condecsending and makes it difficult to care. By the third paragraph I gave up. “Poorer, less educated, even less evolved animals do it all the time! I would be fine!

    Oh would it were so.”

    “hated sleeping alone. I can sense the parents reading this smile knowingly – for aren’t all babies like this?”
    For Christ’s sake get to the point and stop injecting your little snippets. This is a written story not a play with asides and internal narration.

    1. While I thank you for your attempt at criticism, I don’t share your enthusiasm for that author. King for me has wonderful ideas but rather bland execution.

      As for telling me what and how to write – perhaps a better way than invoking your own preferred religious idol to press your point, just go and write a text yourself; the way YOU would prefer it to read.

      If you can’t be bothered, there is plenty of content online, even for the shortest of attention spans.

  7. i think this is about how corley’s “soul” was taken from his body and either possessed by what he was talking to or just was trapped outside of his body and the body was now “vacant” which explains why he seemed to be on autopilot

  8. I can’t get over how incredibly well-written this is. The story is the kind that leads you to your imagination by the hand, never coercing you, never dragging you, never threatening you…it just walks with you right to the edge, and it’s up to you whether you want to jump into that world…but you will because we are such curious creatures and we want the answers. It is the type of story that resonates the best with people who don’t require Cliff Notes or a movie version where everything is laid out in the public square naked and pulsing and in full Technicolor with surround sound and Smell-o-Vision, it is not suited for people who want their stories all wrapped up with a neat little bow on top and no loose ends. It’s the kind of story where you HAVE to think to really “get” it. It reminds me of the classic mystery story where you don’t see everything, there are shadows in the corners and blind spots in front of you; where your own curiosity is what wings you into the dark to go poking and prodding on your own, and it relies upon readers who will seek and look behind the curtains and under the bed for the answers.
    And for all of that, I say, “Bravo! Bravo! Thank you!!!”
    I hope to read any and everything else Mastodon has written, because this calibre of writing is exceptional, and so very enjoyable and satisfying to me. Thank you so much for such a great tale, and I apologize for going on so much. I’m just astounded to find such a gem of text! Thank you!

  9. I sympathise with your irritation with spelling and punctuation. As for the point of the story… I’m in your camp there too, I’m afraid.

  10. My thanks to all of your for your constructive commentary. I owe you a debt of gratitude.

    I feel I must recount some backstory. The tale in question is based on a true story. Names have been changed, but almost all else remains faithful. Where I have indeed taken licence is with the weight I’ve put on the supposed ‘other’ being. I confess I am not disposed toward superstition: demons, malevolent spirits or the like. I feel that within humanity itself we are more than capable of inflicting sufficient horror on each other and the world to put these entities to shame.

    But to the story: little has changed since I posted, I’m sad to say. “Corley” has regressed further and his mother and me are nearly in the grip of despair. It was at the suggestion of a counsellor that I commit some of this distress to paper, as a form of catharsis. Since I find it difficult to write to a ‘diary’, I thought that at least somewhere some good could come of it in the form of a creepy story for others to enjoy. I also adopt this faux-Victorian tone, to further distance myself from the reality of it. (We don’t speak like this in NZ, believe me.)

    To see the comments that some of you received some kind of enjoyment from the story gladdens the heart somewhat. Thank you all.

  11. Pierrot Crazymime Lunaire

    This is the kind of story I’d expect to find in a classic horror anthology. The style, choice of words, even the tone in which it was written denote an author of experience, one who apparently knows his or her way around a good tale of suspense. I wonder if the author is a fan of Victorian Ghost stories because this pasta brought a number of them in mind, including Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw”.

    Essentially, there was little to no direct suggestion to the existence of a creature or entity haunting the mysterious infant/child, Corley, albeit that hazy, eerie atmosphere surrounding the strange events, accompanied by the father’s own personal concerns managed to formulate a perfect scenery of terror that at times chilled me to the very marrow.

    After going through the story twice, I came to acknowledge the author’s talent enough to avoid taking the classic road down the “supernatural” alley, and put this work into some perspective. For starters, the story is written in POV (point of view) style, and all the occurrences described come from the viewpoint of what obviously appears to be a father in a state between despair and mental collapse. If the latter is the case, should his description of the story not be put into question?

    On the one hand, the protagonist of the story, is married to a nurse working in a psychiatric ward and who’s apparently spending most of her nights tending to her patients. Besides all the stress and potentially eerie narrations any employee in such a facility might feel the need to share in order to keep herself from going mad, the mother is also absent during what many deem to be the most sensitive time for babies, the night that is, bestowing all the burden and responsibilities of tending to an infant’s multiple needs upon the father. In fact the author takes a good deal of time discussing the character’s struggles with taking care of the baby, along with all the literature he has meticulously studied in hope of becoming a kind of “ideal father” for his son. Would that not be a stressful task though? A task leading a man into digging deeper and deeper upon a variety of things, studying the troubles of children from all over the world (e.g. Syria, Eastern Europe etc) and in the end being so fed up with all this anxiety that one might be driven-I don’t know-into madness?

    Of course, in many pastas there’s a method in one’s madness. Characters who have seen, or experienced events that defy their logic no matter how hard they try may often find themselves rushing head-straight to the wall or having profoundly long conversations with sunflowers. But that doesn’t mean that every character driven into madness necessarily had a supernatural experience. In the case of Corley’s father, the anxiety of raising a child and the tone of nostalgia and regret echoed throughout the passage made me wonder whether his statements are accurate or products of his suffering-inflicted imagination. What if, this imaginary friend, “Bab”, is actually a product of his own devise, a boogeyman figure meant for him to vent all the pains of raising a child alone, a figure that by the end of the story has consumed him completely?

    Of course, all of this is nothing more than mere speculation. The author might have had something entirely different in mind, but in any case, I do believe that a story that puts one into thinking is nothing less than time well spent. So, my personal thanks to the author are in order for significantly improving my evening with this beautiful and so very atmospheric piece of good, old fright.

    1. Most insightful reader! Thank you. I am indeed a fan of James, Lovecraft, Poe, Conan-Doyle and Blackwood among others. You may well have seen the workings of my mind which are so far invisible to me. I had never though that ‘Bab’ was more a child’s corruption of ‘Dad’, but even now I doubt my earlier scepticism for the outer-natural… alas, what doors we may open unawares!

      1. Pierrot Crazymime Lunaire

        Why, thank you very much in return, dear author! I am still uncertain as
        to whether I should be more pleased that you found my comments constructive or about the fact that our literary tastes happen to align so perfectly. The workings of your mind remain a mystery still; I only expressed the way I perceived them through the story. That being said, it is a great honor to hear that my speculations might have actually stricken some unconscious chord.

        Perhaps, you might also be interested in knowing that the word “Bab” has a great deal of meaning to it. Similar words usually denote something related to childhood. “Mab” for instance-the infamous queen of fairies in several Shakespearian dramas- stands in Cymric for “little child”. So besides being a corruption of “Dad”, the word “Bab” might as well be a corruption of the world “child”, or even the entire concept of childhood itself.

        What doors we may open, indeed!

  12. I think this is a “changeling”-ish concept, if I’m not mistaken. Some entity or whatever it is, took over the real Corley’s body and the real Corley went into the void, or that empty spot.

    1. That was my take-away as well. This was an excellently crafted story. It was creepy, sad, and had a good moral to boot.

  13. I honesty have no idea what happened in this story. Can someone please explain it? Or is it one of those things that can’t be explained?

    1. Epic PurpleCherry

      I think it is that sort of story where you have to use your imagination to understand and piece together the small fragments of story. The story (in my opinion) portrayed a boy whom lost his personality after a conversation with “an imaginary friend”. This seemingly escalated into the loss of personality (visible to the adults surrounding him). But his brother Antonio saw another side of him which screamed – tormented by who or what talked to him all those years ago. I believe that thing limited his speech to his father allowing him to seem mentally fragile/slow. The few fragments of speech revealed during the midnight encounter suggested the “imaginary friend” wanted to Corley to murder the father. Obviously he refused and must have switched places with “the imaginary friend” trapped and screaming only visible to his poor brother. :) Hope this helped. Bear in mind this is only what I comprehend!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top