The Disappearance of Tommy Steinfeld (Part Two)

My name is Kat Steinfeld. Six weeks ago my son, Tommy, went missing whilst under the care of a babysitter. I'm sure some of you will be familiar with the babysitter, Zoe, as she told her version of events on this forum under a post entitled, 'The Disappearance of Tommy Steinfeld (Part One)" If you haven't read that yet, you probably should do so first, just so things make a bit more sense. I understand that many of you are searching for more information surrounding the events that took place that night and frankly, so am I. Now, before we get to what happened that night, I wanted to give you a bit of a background of our lives and our son. I would like to be clear here. I do not wish to scare you, I only wish to give you the facts.

Tommy was born nearly four years ago now, and the moment he was born we knew he was... Unique. And I don't mean in that "Oh, my child is so special." kind of way. You see, although Tommy is an only child, that wasn't the way things were meant to be. Tommy actually had an older brother, Michael, who would be nearly ten now. I won't go into too many details about that because this story is about Tommy, but Michael tragically died in an accident a couple of years before Tommy was born. We never told Tommy about his brother as we decided to tell him when he was a bit older and could understand the concept more. Despite this, as soon as he could speak he began asking us about his brother and telling us things that his brother had said to him. Obviously this greatly unsettled us, but we thought maybe he'd overheard us talking about his brother once or twice; and you know how a child's imagination can run. We would often find him talking to himself and giggling, but when we would ask who he was talking to he would proudly say "I'm talking to Michael, Mummy! Can't you see him?"

One thing you should know about our son is he is incredibly intelligent and advanced for his age. I don't just mean he was crawling a couple of months before the average baby or something like that, I mean he's smart; really smart. His doctor once joked that his language skills were so remarkable that he could articulate better than some of the adults he worked with. As with most children, Tommy always had one heck of an imagination, and because of that he always had a new story to tell. We first became concerned about him when his stories all seemed to have quite dark elements to them. He would recall his 'friends' telling him stories of animals being killed and children being hurt. When the stories continued like this we consulted his doctor who told us that many children go through similar phases to this and we shouldn't worry.

Taking comfort in what the doctor had said, I began to relax and not get as creeped out by the things he would say. "He's just expressing his imagination." I would tell myself. "I should be proud I have such a creative, healthy child." Thinking positively like this worked for a while until weird things started to happen. They seemed just like coincidences at first, Tommy would tell us a story and then a little while later we would realise it had actually happened. It started off very small, something like "My friend Pete said that you were looking for a book with three birds on the cover. He said it's on the top shelf in the shed." Then, what do you know, the book was on the shelf; somewhere that Tommy would never have been able to see himself. But then things started to escalate. He would recount stories of gruesome murders in such detail it was if he'd been there when they happened. I would always tell him off and say he should never tell stories of such horrible things and he would respond by telling me I was wrong and they weren't stories, they were real.
One night, after discussing it with my husband, he suggested we should google the stories to see if they were real. A feeling of pure horror drenched us as we found that nearly all of the stories were real. Shortly after finding out that our toddler somehow knew about all of these crimes and murders from the past, that's when the noises started.

As with the stories, the noises weren't all that noticeable at first. The first thing we noticed was that the floorboards in the house were creaking a lot more than they ever did before. Granted, our house was hundreds of years old so creaky floorboards are a given, right? But then we noticed some scratching sounds coming from the walls in Tommy's bedroom. After getting some specialists in to check through the insides of the walls, they said that they couldn't find any rodents of insects inside the walls, all they found were some very distinctive claw marks were the scratching was coming from. The scratching sound would get louder and louder every night until one night we were woken up by Tommy screaming in his bed. We rushed in and found him sobbing, saying that 'the voice' was scaring him. Thoroughly creeped out, we let him sleep in our bed for a few nights and then started using the old baby monitor again when he was finally back in his room. After the first couple of nights using the baby monitor, we decided we would have to buy a new one. Between the scratching and a weird static noise it was hard to actually hear what was going on in the room. We bought a brand new, high definition baby monitor and after the first night using it, life was never the same for us again. As we settled in bed for the night, I listened closely to the baby monitor. My blood turned cold as I realised the weird static noise I'd been hearing on the old monitor wasn't static at all. It was whispering. "The baby's all alone." it sang. "The baby's all alone... Well except for me that is." Scrambling out of bed I tried to make it to Tommy's bedroom when I heard the monitor say "Don't even think about it, you stupid B***H." The monitor fell silent for a second, followed by the worst scream I've ever heard come from my son. I burst into the room, my half asleep husband stumbling behind me, and saw Tommy sat in his bed with three slashes across his cheek. The exact same mark as the claw marks inside his wall.

Obviously, my first thought wasn't the paranormal, my first thought was an intruder. We phoned the police and cowered in our bedroom with Tommy until they arrived. After a thorough search of the house, the police found no intruder and no sign of forced entry. We stayed in a hotel for a few days after that and from that day, I vowed that Tommy would never be on his own again. We sealed off Tommy's bedroom and moved his bed into our room. I even quit my job so that I could be with him at all times. I know, I know, I sound crazy. But I would be damned if I was going to lose another son.

After a while, the scratches on his face healed but the memories of that night remained strong and they were the least of our problems. The scratching on the wall now moved into our bedroom and Tommy was spending even more time talking to people who weren't there, only now he refused to tell us who he was talking to. We reached a point where Tommy and I just needed some space from each other, and so we decided to look into hiring babysitters. We were honest with the first few we tried, about what happened, but I guess the whole thing was just too creepy for them and they never came back. We were having such trouble finding a new babysitter that we stopped telling them about that nights events all together. That's when we hired babysitter number seven, Zoe. She was such a sweet girl and she got on so well with Tommy. I was terrified of scaring her off so I didn't tell her about the things that had happened. I only told her he was troubled. I didn't even tell her about not leaving his side until we were about to leave her alone with him for the first night, out of fear she would reject the job. I try not to live my life with regrets, but I could not regret my decisions that night more. After an hour or so of our evening out, I decided to call to check on how they were doing. I thought about calling Zoe's mobile but I know phone signal can be a bit temperamental in the house. So instead I opted to call the house phone. There was no answer and I started to feel dread rising in my stomach. I suppose I wasn't thinking rationally enough to assume that they were just busy. So I called again. Little did I know Zoe had left Tommy in the bath on his own to answer this call. She picked up and her cheery voice came through the receiver. My whole body went cold as I heard that familiar voice singing in the background. "The baby's all alone." it sang. "The baby's all alone... Well except for me..." I knew in that moment. I knew we were too late.

When we got home there were police cars all over the area looking for our son. We weren't allowed into the house and had to wait outside for a police officer to come and speak to us. When he approached us he told us that our son was missing, there was blood in the bathroom and his babysitter was undergoing questioning. After what seemed like hours, we were finally given an update. Zoe had been released, very traumatised and being treated for shock. The police then told us that they believed the kidnapping was related to the same 'intruder' incident months earlier. But I know that what took my son wasn't human. We haven't been back to the house since. Friends and family collected our things and we're staying in the same hotel we stayed in that night which seemed so long ago now.

So here we are, six weeks later with no sign of our precious boy. No sign, except for the envelope which mysteriously appeared on our hotel bed when we got back one night. Inside the envelope was a Polaroid of Tommy, in clothes I didn't recognise. Written on the back of the envelope were the words:

"He isn't all alone anymore."

Reviews

[SamSim27]

I have read both Part One and Part Two and i have to say I am very impressed.
A fascinating story line.
I would love to know more about Tommy's 'gift' and the source of the creepy voice , so if you do write more, please send it my way.

Fantastic work!