Miscarriage

Help. Please. Ever since I've moved into this house my life has been hell, I can't even think about anything lately. Constant screaming, constant crying. Here's my story, listen to it, be warned, don't step foot in this house. Nothing good will come of it.

20th of November, 2013.

My name's Hunter and my fiancees name is Emily and we're about to be a family! Emily is 26 weeks pregnant with a baby girl and we had to upgrade from our small apartment. We bought this house at a bargain, a pleasant surprise in the current housing market. The last owners were apparently a sweet couple, although they seemed a little distant. Which given the circumstances wasn't overly surprising. They, like us, were expecting a baby in a few weeks and had already painted and decorated one of the houses spare bedrooms. Unfortunately, they had a miscarriage a few weeks before the baby was due. They split up and went their separate ways after we bought the house. It seemed like they were trying to hide something the whole time but we couldn't figure out what, oh well, probably isn't a big deal.

“This whole deal, it seems strange, why would someone want to sell a giant house in the country for literally next to nothing. Something has to be going on”, Emily said to me. “Grief makes people do strange things, and it's not pretty to take advantage of grief but this is one of the only options we have.” I had to tell her, and occasionally even tell myself. As the moving day drew closer anxiety turned to excitement, in the contract the previous couple had agreed on leaving the furniture in the house, which was mostly beautiful antique wooden furniture. “Well here we are, all set up just for us” I said as I turned to Emily. “This house is pretty old you know, I wonder if it's haunted!” Emily said and we both laughed at the thought. “Oh yeah, baby ghosts, I can just imagine, 'I vant... to suck your pacifier!'” and that was enough to send us laughing again for a while, admittedly, we're a weird couple.

“One thing this place needs, a good sweep through with the vacuum cleaner, the dust is making my allergies go crazy.” I said between sneezes, “Oh yeah, but do you want to go and see how comfortable the bed is in this place first?” Emily said, complimented with a wink.

We lazed around in bed for a bit afterwards, “add a new mattress to the to-do list, I think I can feel the springs in this thing.” she said as I was trying to get comfortable in this mattress which was probably antique along with the rest of the furniture in this house. “Yeah, first off, time to clean stuff” I said as we both groaned, we hated cleaning and with a big new house like this, I bet we're going to start hating it even more. The cleaning wasn't that bad, the last couple just let things get out of hand, it was like they didn't even touch anything in the month that they were trying to sell it. Steadily the house got cleaner throughout the day, we planned on cleaning the first floor today and the second floor tomorrow. We were leaving the babies room that the last couple decorated, neither of us had the heart to go in there for longer than a few seconds let alone clean it. “Almost done sweetie, just got the lounge room to clean.” The lounge room had a beautiful white 1970s style shag carpet which complimented the furniture surprisingly well. Near the bottom of the stairs there was a Persian rug covering about a square metre. “Ugh, who puts a Persian rug on a shag carpet?” Emily said to me as she lifted it up and threw it to the side. “Oh my god, those bastards. Look at what they did! They spilt red wine on the carpet and didn't even get it out properly, it's probably there forever now, it's definitely been there for about a month.”. I looked at the stain and it was a very light pink stain, probably a foot squared, hard to notice. “Oh calm down Emily, you wouldn't even notice it if you didn't look at it, just put the rug back if it annoys you that much”.

That night, we relaxed to some wine ourselves and went to bed a little buzzed, but definitely not drunk. Heck, we probably needed to be a bit tipsy to get to sleep on this boulder of a mattress.

At 2:00 AM, I awoke in a daze to a weird crying sound, almost exactly like a baby. Emily stayed asleep and I figured I wouldn't wake her for no reason. It was probably just some animal or something outside, but it definitely creeped me out for a few minutes. The next day came and we cleaned the 2nd floor, which was honestly a lot easier than the first floor was. In the closet of the babies room we found a door to the attic. “What the hell, the real estate agent never said there was an attic.” Emily said as she investigated it with me. “Why's it so heavily padlocked, what's up there?” there was several heavy duty padlocks keeping the door shut. “Someone wanted to keep us out, or keep something in! Oooohhhhhhhhhhh spooky” Emily said as she made a ridiculous scary face. We both laughed for a bit and decided to go and get some bolt cutters later in the week for the padlocks. 22nd of November, 2013.

We got a new mattress and it amazing, it was so easy to get a full nights of sleep compared to having that rickety old springy mattress that we had for the past week. But again, I woke up at about 3AM for no apparent reason. The crying that I had heard a week earlier had intensified I still wasn't sure where it was coming from, but it sounded like it was coming from the ceiling, the unexplored attic. The crying went on for minutes this time, eventually turning into laughter, baby laughter. “Daaaaadaaaaaaaa” was the quiet voice I heard from the ceiling. Needless to say, I was freaking out at this point. Emily still stayed asleep, blissfully unaware. I tried to get back to sleep but all I could hear was a soft scuttling sound upstairs, almost as if a baby was crawling. I walked out of bed in a daze at 6AM, there was no way I was getting any more sleep.

I went to Bunnings to get those bolt cutters, I had to find out what was in that attic, it was eating at my sanity ever since I heard the baby. By the time I got back Emily was awake, seemingly unaffected by what just happened. “What's wrong babe” she said to me as she yawned and stretched, “I... I just want to check out the attic, that's all.” I tried to say convincingly. “Ooh, I'm coming too!” I slowly walked towards the hidden attic door in the closet. Do I really want to know... do I really want to know what's in there?

The bolt cutter struggled with cutting the padlocks, but after I cut them all off the attic door came down by itself, revealing a dark space that was only accessible via the rickety old ladder that extended downwards. Emily eagerly climbed the ladder with the torch as I stood down just staring at the hole. “What, are you scared?” she said with a smile, “Uhh... no, just a bit tired” I responded as I climbed up the ladder. Emily turned on the torch and what we saw made us gasp out loud. “What the fuck...”. The attic was set up with a surgery table. There were locked cabinets along the walls. But despite all that, the scariest part was the dolls. At the other end of the house, above our bedroom there were hundreds of baby doll heads, all somehow staring at the entrance of the attic. We frantically jumped out of the attic and both rushed to find any padlocks around the house to lock it back up.

We called the previous owners, both of them, and both numbers were disconnected. “Alright... alright, ok. I'm thinking that maybe the last owners used the babies as a coping mechanism you know, they bought heaps of baby dolls to try and cope with what happened to them.” I was trying to rationalise the situation, but Emily wasn't having any of it. “You call that a coping mechanism? No, that's some psychopathic shit or something and you know it! And both of the last owners somehow disabling their numbers...” she said, quickly slipping into hysterics. “Calm down. Panicking won't get us anywhere, listen, we need to just relax and go on living normally.” Reluctantly, she nodded and headed off towards the lounge room.

That night just got worse and worse. The crying was constant, piercing my ears, Emily had decided to sleep on the couch in the lounge room, she couldn't take sleeping underneath the heads. And I couldn't either, for hours and hours seemingly hundreds of babies were crying above, below and all around me this time.

25th of November 2013 Days passed and the crying wouldn't stop, I wasn't allowed to tell Emily, I would be punished if I did.

1st of December 2013 A week had passed, I hadn't gotten any sleep, there was no way with all the crying. There was only one way I could appease them. The babies had said it multiple times, there's only one way they can be appeased, they constantly hammered it into my brain. It was the only thing that they said apart from all the crying. I had to give in, they HAVE to stop. “YES, I'LL DO IT... I'LL... I'LL GET YOU … I'LL GET YOU A FRIEND.” I shouted at the ceiling. My vision turned misty red, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. Emily was sleeping. “I'm... sorry Emily”. I launched the knife into her stomach and started to carve out our little baby girl. Emily wailed in pain and tried to stop me but her grip was already weak. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, HUNTER, STO...” her shouting turned into gargling as I continued to carve. “I'm sorry Emily I'm so sorry. I have to do this, I need them to stop.” Finally, our baby girl became dislodged and I carefully carried her up to the attic, where I unlocked the door and gently placed our cute baby girl in a jar sitting on the surgery table. All of the cupboards swung open and revealed other fetuses in jars in varying stages of development, hundreds of them. I placed my baby girl in the cupboard next to our new friends and took in the silence. I locked myself in the attic and threw away the key. Why would I need to leave? All my friends are right here.