Heather found herself in bed, unable to move a muscle—trying her hardest to shift her arm and wake her husband sleeping next to her, but to no avail. She was in sleep paralysis—a phenomenon she’d read about but never experienced until then. It frightened her to lie there helpless, but she reassured herself that it couldn’t last forever. At some point, she would wake up. All she had to do was wait for it to be over.
As she waited, a dark shadow loomed over her. She thought it must be her husband David, coming to wake her, but as the figure got closer, she saw its face. Something so hideous, she couldn’t tell its gender or even whether it was human or not. Its bulging eyes stared back at her, and the creature smirked sinisterly.
Heather wanted to scream, but she still couldn’t do anything to stop it. She was terrified. She felt the weight of the creature lying on her chest as it slowly began to violate her. It groped her body and slid its hands underneath her clothes. She closed her eyes and screamed internally, praying for the ordeal to be over, whether it was real or a hallucination.
Finally, the alarm clock on the couple’s nightstand woke them both up. “Morning,” David muttered, silencing the alarm. Heather leaped out of bed, suspicious of him. “Did you… Were we… intimate last night?”
David looked genuinely confused. “I wish. You must’ve dreamt that.”
Heather went into the en suite and vomited in the sink. David couldn’t help but take a little offence. Their sex life was already losing its frequency, and Heather had become emotionally distant with him. They needed a long talk about their relationship, but with Heather unwell and David getting ready for work, there wasn’t time.
Later that day, Heather sat in Jane’s living room, cradling a teacup between her hands. Jane, a few years older, watched her quietly. Heather had only moved into the suburbs a few months earlier—newly married and still adjusting—while Jane had lived in the neighbouring house for years, rooted there by routine and familiarity.
Heather hesitated, then shook her head. “I shouldn’t. I haven’t been feeling well lately… And I had this horrible nightmare last night.”
Jane replied, “I used to have recurring nightmares, but then they stopped.”
Heather asked, “Really? Do you know what made them stop?”
“I think it was having kids,” Jane explained. “They quit the night my first arrived. Now he gets them—wakes mewling like I somehow passed the curse onto him. I know this all sounds like ridiculous superstition but I still feel guilty.”
Heather stared into her tea. “To be honest, Jane… I don’t even know if I want children any more… I don’t think I have that motherly instinct you have.”
Jane stiffened slightly. “Have you talked to David about this?”
Heather shook her head. After making Jane promise secrecy, she confessed that she was considering divorce—moving back to the city, returning to her office job, reclaiming the life she once had.
Jane took her hand. “Whatever you decide, your happiness has to come first.”
That evening, David lay in bed watching television. He muted it when he heard fumbling around in their adjacent en suite.
“Heather? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replied, her voice thin. “Just feeling unwell again.”
Behind the locked door, Heather sat on the toilet, staring at the test in her trembling hand. It was positive.
The choice she had been avoiding had suddenly closed in around her.
Heather dithered over what came next, burying the news from David—for now.
One evening a month in, as she tugged on a baggy jumper to hide the first swell, a chill brushed her belly—like tiny fingers testing the skin from inside. She froze, hand pressed flat, but it passed.
Heather moved through her days mechanically, hiding her changing body beneath oversized jumpers and loose pyjamas. David noticed the distance growing between them, the silence where intimacy once lived. He tried to reach her, desperate to repair what he didn’t understand.
One afternoon, he said softly, “Maybe we should try for a baby,” thinking this might lift her spirits.
Heather’s face crumpled. She turned away without answering.
The next day, David came home early with flowers. Heather wasn’t there. He placed them in a vase himself, hoping they’d soften the evening.
When Heather finally arrived, she looked shaken and pale. She said she’d had a medical appointment, offering no details.
She saw the flowers and broke down.
David pulled her into her arms. “I’ll try harder,” he said. “I promise.”
She cried not from gratitude, but from grief and guilt.
That night, as they lay in bed, David approached the subject of having a baby again. Before Heather could deflect, a sound drifted through the room—a baby wailing, faint but unmistakable.
“Did you hear that?” Heather whispered.
“Outside,” David said, drawing back the curtains. The street below was empty.
The wail stopped.
David went outside to look. Heather stayed behind, calling Jane, wondering if one of her children had wandered off. Jane checked every bedroom. All were asleep.
“Are you sure you heard it?” Jane asked.
Heather was sure.
When the call ended, Heather sat alone, staring into the darkness. Memory crashed over her—the procedure earlier that day, the mewling she heard as the doctor took her baby to the medical table to die. It had survived the abortion attempt—something Heather didn’t know was possible.
The doctor assured her that her baby would die painlessly inside her body, yet unfortunately, it had lived long enough for Heather to hear the cries of agony. “A rare occurrence,” the doctor explained, leaving the newborn to slowly cry out its last breaths on the medical table behind a curtain.
The cries sounded fragile to Heather, overwhelming her with guilt. It was the first time she felt like a mother, with a strong urge to comfort her baby. The doctor restrained her, saying, “We don’t allow our patients to see the remains. It’s better that way.”
He took off his surgical mask, revealing a sinister smile beneath. One that seemed familiar.
That moment, she felt she was in the presence of something evil and sinister—and a realisation that she had been led astray by it.
Heather began to sob again.
“Was it my baby?”
Time passed. David hadn’t returned.
Heather tried to ring him, then realised his phone was ringing upstairs. Panic surged.
A knock came from the front door.
Relief washed over her—until she saw the dark streak beneath the letterbox, creeping across the hallway floor.
The wail began again. Louder. Closer.
Heather felt the chilling presence of that evil once again, lurking in her home. It had come for retribution—a life for a life—though Heather wasn’t prepared to die without a fight.
She grabbed the largest knife from the kitchen drawer, her hands slick with sweat.
“I’m bigger than you,” she whispered, forcing herself forward. “You don’t scare me.”
Though it did scare her. It was the fear of the unknown and unseen—something she didn’t get to face in the medical room.
The trail of blood ended at the cupboard beneath the stairs. Small handprints were smeared into the blood on the bottom of the door. The faint mewls behind the door continued as Heather bravely yanked it open and brought the knife down.
She repeatedly stabbed into the darkness—blood splattering over her face and her skimpy nightgown. She stopped stabbing, noticing the groaning had ceased and only the sound of wet flesh being pierced remained. She used her arm to wipe the blood from her eyes; only then did she see the bloody remains.
Dimly lit, David lay crumpled inside in the foetal position, eyes wide, body folded in on itself.
She dropped the knife and fled upstairs, collapsing in the corner of the bedroom. She typed 999 into her phone but couldn’t bring herself to press call.
“Demons don’t exist. Babies don’t crawl their way through letterboxes. They would put me in a madhouse,” Heather said to herself.
The wail returned, growing louder, echoing through the house.
Heather sat rigid on the bed, her phone slipping from her fingers as something dragged itself into the room. It crawled with effort, its movements jerky and wrong, each inch forward accompanied by a wet, broken sob. A dark smear followed in its wake.
When she finally forced herself to look, terror hollowed her out.
The thing was small, but unmistakably real. As it got closer to her, she noticed its eyes—the same, bulging eyes from her dream.
It mewled as it crawled, a sound of constant agony, of something unfinished and furious at being made to exist. Its limbs bent and scraped as it moved, more animal than human, more demon than child.
And Heather knew then, with sickening clarity—This thing wasn’t a baby.
It’s a demon. A changeling… And it was looking for its mother.
Heather couldn’t move. She was helplessly paralysed with fear.
The mewling grew louder, more desperate, filling the room until there was no space left for thought.It reached her.
Dragged itself between her legs. Her nightgown offered little protection against it.
Heather’s scream broke as the sound reached its terrible peak.
The two had become one again.
Credit: John Stanworth
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