Playing Dead

Mary Wilcox locked her car and walked up the puddled steps to her front door. The rain was falling in heavy sheets, and the full moon’s ghostly beams reflected off of every surface. She rushed inside and placed her coat on the radiator to dry. She hated these late nights in the maternity ward, especially when there was a miscarriage involved. The baby had looked so helpless there. Early in his second trimester, there was no way he could have survived. The parents though, ever hopeful, had been ready to name him Steven, after his grandfather. They had been inconsolable. Mary shook the image from her head. There’s nothing I could have done, she thought to herself.

I’ll just...calm down with some TV...Jimmy Fallon’s usually on around now… She tried turning on the TV, but nothing happened. Hmm… She strode over to the light switch and tried turning it on, but the room stayed dark. A peal of thunder sounded in the distance. Power outage...the lightning must’ve taken down a power line somewhere. Mary’s watch read 11:47. The room was pitch black, so she fumbled around until she found a box of matches and the cheap scented candle she’d gotten at a Christmas gift exchange back in college.

She took out a match and prepared to light it, but before she could, she heard a noise. The creak of a floorboard, perhaps. It was barely audible, but just loud enough to be heard over the storm. Her heartbeat quickened. OK...so...there’s someone in the house… She stood a few minutes in the dark, listening closely for any noise, but all that could be heard was the occasional thunderclap and the eerie pitter-patter of rain on rooftop.

Mary thought back to when she had bought the house. She remembered what her mom had said: “I don’t trust old houses. Never have, never will. They make noises at night...keep you up tryin’ to tell you their secrets.” Yet she’d bought the house anyway, dismissing her mother’s guidance as superstition, and now here she was.

It had been a couple of minutes since she’d heard the noise. She doubted it was more than just the creak of a floorboard. It was probably just an old house thing… She lit the candle and used its feeble light to survey the room. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Her living room sat as it always had.

I need to go to bed. My brain’s playing tricks on me. She began up the stairs, but as she did so, a gust of icy wind brushed against her cheek. She looked into the living room. The window was wide open, and rain poured in, drenching the carpet beneath it. She froze and held her candle in the direction of the window. Still, there was no one there. She tiptoed over to the window and shut it carefully, but as she was about to walk back upstairs, she stepped in something.

She held her candle near to the floor. It was mud...in the shape of a footprint. The footprints led from under the window, across the dining room, and into the pantry. The footprints were small, almost childlike, and they certainly had not been there a minute ago.

Cautiously, she followed them into the pantry, where they stopped abruptly. Her heart stopped for a moment. The cupboards were thrown open, and yet nothing had been taken. Almost nothing.

What the hell?...Mary’s hand shook as she reached for a package of styrofoam cups that had fallen to the floor, ripped open. There was a large bite out of one, and scratched into it was the inscription:

Play with Me

Her heart was pumping fast. I need to call the police. She dropped the cup and began to back away. Suddenly, the candle flickered, and she felt a warm breath on her neck. Intuition told her it had come from the pantry window just above her head. Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned towards the window.

It was wide open, and the night wind blew cold against her face. She looked out into the pouring rain, and glanced at the full moon, shining through the rain like a bride behind a veil.

It was then that she saw it: a glint of white on the edge of her peripheral vision. She looked towards it, out into the rain. Slowly materializing in front of her was the face of a baby boy, smiling in the moonlight.

Then she blacked out.

---

Officer Nelson locked his police car and strode up the puddled walk to 1346 Pine Street. The hospital had called in at about 11 am that morning. One of the nurses had apparently gone missing, a certain Mary Wilcox, and he’d been sent to see what had happened.

He walked up to the door and jiggled the handle. Unsurprisingly, he found it locked. He took the pick lock off his belt and jiggled it in the keyhole. After a minute or so, the lock gave, and the door swung open with a resounding creak. The stillness was eerie, the house silent. Something wasn't right. Officer Nelson drew his pistol, swallowed, and entered the house. The living room was bare, with no signs of a struggle. He walked into the dining room. Empty. The pantry was similarly bare.

He was about to radio into headquarters when he heard a clanging noise from the kitchen. He cocked his gun and slowly entered. What he saw there caused his jaw to drop in disbelief. A young woman crouched on the floor with an overturned pot in front of her, which she was banging on repeatedly with a wooden spoon. Officer Nelson, shaking, lowered his gun. It took him a moment before he could form a sentence.

“Ms..M-Mary Wilcox, I presume?”

The woman looked from her makeshift drum and grinned foolishly, replying with a word that would haunt the officer till the day he died.

“Dada?”

---

When headquarters heard Officer Nelson’s story over the radio, their first response was uncontrollable laughter: “Ahahaha...and she was acting like a-haha-baby, you say?” But, since the officer continued to insist, they sent down a squad car to 1346 Pine, and found everything he’d said to be true.

The woman, after having been confirmed to indeed be Ms. Mary Elizabeth Wilcox, was sent straight to a mental institute. Medical professionals were baffled by her case, but there was always one thing they could agree on: She really seemed to have the intellect of a newborn baby boy.

The strangest part of her behavior, however, occurred months later when she was asked her name for some tests. She insisted her name was Steven.