He searched until he found an old latch. It’s metal loose and the frame to which it was attached twisted enough that neither met securely. He selected a tool, a short sliver of flexible metal that was flexible enough to navigate turns while sturdy enough to allow some pressure and he pushed it between the frame and latch.
It wouldn’t take long but he knew the trick was not to rush. The adrenaline and fear of discovery urged him on faster, and he fought it. He had chosen the spot to remain inconspicuous, and rushing would only create unwanted noise. It was better to be quiet than to be fast. The house was a comfortable distance from its neighbours, and he could almost certainly smash a window without drawing their concern. But those inside the house would sense the intrusion, even if unaware of the smashing glass.
Experience had told him this.
People sensed danger, so it was his job not to be one.
A minute later the window was open, and he did another cursory check for alarm wires or contacts but found none before he slipped the window open. It resisted, but again he gently persisted, until it was just open enough for him to slip through into the darkness.
He knew it would take a little while for his eyes to adjust, so he let his fingers slide across the countertop, searching for anything he needed to avoid. Finding nothing, he climbed through the window onto the counter. People who kept a clean house were a blessing. Dirty houses were far more difficult. You had no idea what you might be stepping into or what noise a careless step might make. Clean houses made things so much easier. Everything was in its place in a clean house, pots were in their cupboards and rubbish was in its bin. He almost felt sorry for people with clean houses. They spent so much effort doing the right thing only to have it make it easier for the likes of himself to slip in unannounced.
He slid onto the cold floor and sat there for a time, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The building was deathly silent, eerily so. Usually, a house would have some noise, a ticking clock, or the rumble of a water heater. More often than not there would be a sound. It was not uncommon for people to leave radios, or even the TV chatting away to itself through the night.
People hated silence, he thought that silence reminded them of how alone they truly were. In the silence the only person to listen to was themselves, and he thought what many heard disturbed them greatly.
The kitchen faded into view like an old Polaroid photo. At first, he couldn’t make sense of the images, then suddenly items would emerge from the noise of light and shadow as if he had always seen them there. Waiting in the dark always reminded him of those images made of coloured dots where some people could see a picture while others could not. He had realised that all he had to do was wait, and eventually, the image would be revealed.
In his experience, this was a lesson for life.
All things came to those who knew the value of patience.
In front of him was a closed door. To his right was another. The door on the right almost certainly led to the back door, so he took the one directly in front of him. It eased open without a sound, and he left it open an inch or so to listen.
He had seen nothing to indicate animals were in the house, but he was careful anyway. A disturbed dog could ruin his night extremely quickly, but a disturbed bird in a cage could be equally devastating to his plans. While others despised silence, he knew it was his best ally.
He heard nothing, so he opened it a little further.
The living room’s curtains were open and the full moon outside was bright enough to illuminate the room sufficiently for him to distinguish the colour of the couch and the pattern of the wallpaper. He could tell by the style, that whoever lived here was either old or were too poor to spruce the place up. He hoped they were old. Old often meant money was secured somewhere on the property, it also meant that he could subdue them and take his time searching for it.
He usually wouldn’t consider such direct action. He wasn’t a large man, and he had decided on this lifestyle because he couldn’t compete in any other way. He wasn’t all that strong, and he wasn’t all that smart, but he knew patience and guile. He had learned that was all a person needed to succeed in life.
The house was not a large building. He estimated there was space upstairs for two bedrooms and a bathroom. He looked around the room he was in, there were a few items of art that might fetch a small amount, but he knew that the real finds would be upstairs. He considered a moment. A small easy haul, or a larger one with risk attached, and made his decision. He made his way to the door on the far side of the room, and as he had suspected, it led to a small hallway with stairs that led upwards.
He took them slowly, testing each step and trying to minimise the sound he made. As he moved, he listened, and in the silence, he heard only his heartbeat. It was a steady rhythm, slightly faster than usual, but not quick enough to suggest his nerves had slipped over into fear. The silence around him pressed in as he proceeded up the stairs until he reached a right angle. He peered around it. There were three doors, two on the right and one on the left. One of the ones on the right was the bathroom. He crept up the remaining steps and turned to his right, clicking the door open the barest amount. Inside he saw a wall of white tile.
The door next to it should be the smaller bedroom.
He moved slowly, the floor beneath him moving slightly under his weight. The boards creaked, but it was not a shrill sound, the doorway between him and the occupants almost certainly muffling it.
He reached the next door and turned its handle.
The door wouldn’t open. It moved a little, but something held it closed. He glanced over the door and saw the bolt above his eye line. He drew it back and was about to open it when his gut told him to stop.
Something was wrong. Perhaps he had heard a sound, something so quiet that he only caught an impression of it. He froze in place, his one hand still on the bolt, and listened. He stood until his arm started to ache, then stood a little longer.
Slowly, he slid the bolt closed.
If he had heard a sound, he never heard another following it.
His heartbeat had quickened, and fear had set in.
No; something was wrong. He would slip back out the way he had come in and leave the place undisturbed. His gut was squirming inside him, and his fear response told him to run. He turned and saw that the other door had been opened to the larger of the two bedrooms, in it stood a figure silhouetted by the moonlight. It was tall and thin. It raised a hand and something in it gleamed.
The intruder lay sprawled across the hall carpet. He was bleeding but only a trickle and a bit of elbow grease would get it out, lickety-split. Father stood with the hammer slightly raised in case the intruder moved.
“It’s alright Father, he’s out cold.”
She moved forward, nudging the fallen figure with one naked toe.
“Careful Mother, he could be pretending.”
She slapped the man on the arm playfully.
“Don’t be silly,” she pointed to the man, “you prepare him and throw him in, and I’ll make sure our Little Darling doesn’t run out and create a mess.”
Father looked down at the man. He looked no more than seventeen, and undernourished, but still, it would be a chore. Father was not as young as he once was, and his lower back pained him. Tomorrow, no doubt, it would pain him a great deal more.
“Come on Father, or he’ll wake up!”
Father always hated this bit. She always deferred this job to him. Usually, it was animals, so the preparation was minimal, but sometimes a person was involved, and Father found it distasteful. He leaned down and pulled off the boys’ shoes, followed by his jacket, and then the rest of his clothes, placing them in a pile near the top of the stairs. They would go into the furnace later. Mother stood at the door with an air of impatience. She was always impatient. One day, Father mused, Mother might spend a night with their Little Darling.
He may have been dreaming, but he knew he wasn’t. Hands tugged at him and the cold engulfed him. He felt his testicles draw up into a tight knot, and he didn’t know if it was because of the cold or the fear. The hands grabbed him by the arms and lifted him with surprising ease. He sensed rather than saw the old woman standing in front of him, her eyes darted to his groin, and then she spoke to someone behind him.
A door opened and he was weightless for a brief moment. A second later the floor seemed to rise and slap him in the face. Behind him, the door was closed, and he was buried in darkness. Despite the fear that engulfed him his training kicked in.
He thought close your eyes, and he did.
Wait for them to adjust, so he did.
Time is your friend, so wait.
On that last thought, he was wrong.
He opened his eyes and saw the pale glimmers of a nearly empty room. The window had been covered but enough light crept through to allow his eyes to adjust. What covered it was not curtains or blinds but appeared to be a sheet of wood that almost covered the glass behind it. A thin gap ran down each side, illuminating the wall that reflected the light deeper into the room. He turned his head as the pain shot through him. He felt nausea but bit it back. There was another source of light, a thin strip along the bottom of the door leading to the hallway. He lumbered over and threw his weight against it. It didn’t budge and he knew the bolt had already been thrown.
“Open the door!” He screamed and from the other side of the door, he heard movement, as shadows cut through the light at the bottom.
“Shh,” a male voice answered, “you’ll wake baby.”
“If there’s a baby in here, I’m going to beat it to death, you hear me? Let me out.”
“Don’t you speak about our Little Darling like that you monster!” This was a woman’s voice and it was shrill with righteous indignation.
He thumped the door, grabbed the handle of the door, and rattled it in its frame.
“I’ll be doing the thing a favour; god only knows what you perverts do with it!”
He heard a gasp from the other side of the door.
“How dare you! You break in here. Up to God only knows what, and you say such horrible things to us. You deserve what’s going to happen to you.” The voice paused and then continued in a mocking tone. “It’s not like you’ve told anyone where you were going now. Didn’t leave an eye-tinery with the sec-tary.” He heard an unmistakable sniff of superiority. “Look up.” He did. “You see a little ring of blue lights?” He could see them above the door and instantly knew what they were. “That’s our baby cam, and I’m going to go and watch it now, and I’m going to enjoy every moment of it.”
“Every moment of what?” He muttered as heavy footsteps walked away from the door. “Every moment of what?” He said more loudly.
“Ah, you’ve gone and done it now son.” This was the man again. His voice was resigned, and the boy heard world-weariness in every word. “You’ve gone and done it now. Sometimes she’ll slip a razor blade under the door, you know, as a kindness, but you’ve gone and done it now.”
It was colder now and growing colder by the moment. The cold floor, which felt like linoleum, pressed against his knees. But the cold wasn’t just due to that, nor was it due to the loss of blood, the smell of which hung thickly in the room.
“What’s in here with me?” His voice had driven up an octave. “Please mister, let me out. I’m sorry. Let me out.”
“Can’t do lad.” The man sounded genuinely regretful now. “You’re probably not a bad sort. ‘Tis a phase you’re going through. Just bad luck is all. Of all the houses you picked this one. Right?”
“What’s in here with me?” The boy said. His cheek was pressed against the wood. He hated the beseeching tone of his own words but could not stop it. “Please mister, tell me that. Tell me what’s in here with me.”
“You sure you want to know, boy?”
Was he? Was he sure?
“Yes, please mister. Please.”
“Ah, her name is Clara Mae, and she’s our daughter’s only child. Pretty as anything you’d ever imagine. Looked just like her mother.” He grew silent, and the boy heard the man swallow heavily. “Her mother’s dead son, mauled by some beast while she was with that useless husband of hers.” He paused, and then his voice hardened. “Good job he died too; I can tell you. What that thing did to him was nothing compared to what I’d planned for him.”
“So, it’s a baby? It honestly is a baby?”
“Aye, that it is, son. By day at least.”
Across the room, the boy heard movement. It was the sound of a nail scratching across the wall. Then something scampered. It sounded like a large rat.
“Carla Mae was caught under her mother when she fell, and the beast had caught the child with one of its claws. Or perhaps one of its teeth cut her as it was… As my daughter died.”
His eyes had adjusted well enough to see the end of the room. It was still caught in murkiness and shadows, but he could see something huddled next to a nest of blankets at the base of the wall.
“The wound was not a bad one. It had healed fast, the doctors marvelled at it, and after a few nights they let her come home to us.” Now the boy thought he heard tears. “We took her to the funeral dressed in a little black dress. People commented that she never cried. Didn’t stop the rest of us though.”
The tiny figure over the far side of the room moved slowly. The movement was uncertain as if it had just learned how to walk.
“It was three weeks until the next full moon, and we had no idea.”
The tiny figure wobbled forward. It was low to the floor, its weight distributed on all fours with its rear end pushed higher than the rest.
“Gawd, that first night son! It was before we took care of her room. We heard the c’motion, and thought it was one of you fellas who’d broken in. I was going to come up, then Mother looked at the nanny cam.”
The figure lowered, its rear end swaying slightly.
“We watched our Little Darling rip through the room for the next seven hours.”
Its head tilted to the side, its eyes catching the light. Two bright spots of gleaming yellow stared at the naked boy.
“It was after that the little tyke needed to be weaned from the bottle.”
With agonising slowness, the figure began moving closer. It looked like a lion stalking prey. It was about the same size as a small dog or, the boy thought, a baby. As it neared, he could pick out more details. Its nose was moist and pink, the light catching it in such a way he could see it flare as it sniffed. The hair that covered its face was thin and sparse, much like his own meagre attempt at growing a beard, and as each of its front paws moved forward, he saw them tipped with thin, long claws that were almost transparent.
He tried to turn away but could not rip his eyes from the sight. Instead, he drew closer, he couldn’t help himself. The little animal’s eyes were mesmerising.
“She pushed the bottle away but we had to find something else for her. Solid food, but then we found that away, she was only interested in it if it were alive.”
The boy couldn’t hear the man anymore, his voice was loud and carried through the door easily, but the little animal’s languid movements had captured all the boy’s attention.
“I’m sorry son, I truly am, but she’s all we have.”
The boy knew the thing was preparing to jump on him no more than half a second before it happened. There was a tensing of its tiny body. It drew itself back slightly. Then it leapt.
The leap was a feeble one fitting for a newly born animal. It covered the length between where it was and the boy’s stomach. It landed on all fours. Its right rear leg slammed into his thigh. Four gashes of crimson parted across his flesh. Its left claw landed on the boy’s groin, ripping his member into ribbons. It clawed forward, and his testicles followed, the soft flesh shredded into bloody ribbons with the rapidly moving claws. The front paws landed on his flat belly, and immediately blood began to flow, but the tiny creature was not here to merely carve flesh. It opened its mouth and the boy saw wedges of small white teeth arranged in perfect rows. It dipped its head forward and clamped them onto his soft belly.
A moment is all that it took for the little creature to bury its head into the boy’s stomach. With two bites it was through the muscle of the stomach wall. It climbed forward, its rear claws ripping the remains of his crotch to nothing. It slipped inside him headfirst, wriggling its snout between the coils of his intestine.
The boy didn’t realise he was screaming. He did not realise he was thrashing as he clutched at the animal. It was slick with his blood. His hand slid on its smooth skin. He fought and screamed but his mind was beyond any thought, gone to sense or belief or anything else recognisable as human.
It was inside up to its waist. Its legs kicked into the air as they tried to gain purchase on something to drive it in deeper. It twisted its head up and clamped its jaws onto the diaphragm that separated the boy’s abdomen from his thorax. It made a cracking sound as its teeth ripped through it.
Carla Mae ate his heart, and the boy gurgled his last.
It was dawn before Father opened the door. He was thankful it had been quick for the boy. Sometimes Carla Mae found herself in a playful mood, and Father would find her food curled up in a corner still twitching. But this had been quick, painful no doubt, but not as drawn out as it could have been.
He carried a large, hefty black bag. He scooped the remains into it. They would go into the furnace, along with the clothes that remained outside in the hallway. There was never much left. He marvelled at how much such a tiny baby could eat.
But then, she was a growing child.
Mother waited until he had cleaned up before she entered the room. Carla Mae had retreated into the blankets in the corner of the room. They were drenched with blood now, and Mother had to peel them from the little girl’s body before she could take her into the bathroom to bathe her.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
A half-an-hour later the room was clean, but the smell of blood still hung in the air.
Father took what was left down into the basement where the old coal-burning water boiler still stood. It had been out of commission for a great many years, but the old man was a dab hand at home repairs. Getting it back into working order had taken no time at all. He fired it up and tossed the black bag filled with the previous night’s remains inside. The bag shrank as the heat hit it, and for a moment he could see a hand wrapped in the black plastic before the flames grew too high for him to see anything.
Father watched it, smelling the odour of burning flesh.
Mother washed and dressed the baby. Her cheeks were rosy, and her little fingers grasped at Mother as she carefully fastened on her tiny dungaree set with the pink pony on the front pocket. On her head, she put a little baseball cap with a flowing letter C, and on her feet, she put tiny baseball booties.
She leaned back and appraised the beautiful child. Her wisp of hair was blonde, and her eyes were as blue as her daughters had been. For a moment grandmother and granddaughter looked at each other, and Mother thought she had never seen anything as wonderful. She lifted her into her arms and made her way downstairs to where they kept her pram.
The morning was a bright one, the air crisp. A few clouds marred the perfect blue, but they were the light, fluffy clouds that promised no rain for the rest of the day. Mother pushed the pram along the path, staying as far away from the curb as she could. She was waiting at the main junction at the end of their street when she heard someone move in beside her. She knew who it was, the tell-tale squeak of their pram wheel gave them away and made Mother cringe.
“Hi.” The voice was altogether preppy. It was filled with easy days and dream-filled nights, and Mother cringed some more.
The woman moved in close and leaned over to look in on Carla Mae.
“Oh, how she’s grown! In no time she’ll be walking I’ll bet.” She laughed an equally preppy laugh. “She’ll be a handful then. Getting into everything.”
Mother smiled and nodded. The woman didn’t see that the smile was fake.
“When she does, we could set up a play-date with my eldest, I think they should both be ready by then. Ooh. There will be no time and you’ll have to start thinking of preschool. Have you thought about one? I hear that the new one on Green Street is great.”
The woman continued but Mother’s attention drifted.
The boy’s eyes had glistened almost as much as Carla Mae’s under the light from the infrared camera. His screams had made the speaker pop. It was so loud. As she watched Mother had felt nothing at all for the boy. Sometimes she would care. She would hope the end for them was quick. But the boy had irritated her, and she had watched with some satisfaction when he died. She felt bad about that now, but at the time she had felt nothing.
Instead, she had thought about her daughter’s final terror-filled moments.
“Did you hear me? I think it’s a marvellous idea. Perhaps I can do the same for you as well, give you a break.” Mother saw the woman again. She had continued speaking regardless of Mother’s attention. “I’d love to look after little Carla Mae for a night, I mean I’ve never heard her so much as make a squeak, so I bed she’s no trouble at all.”
Mother smiled.
“Oh, my dear. That’s a wonderful suggestion, are you free at the end of the month?”